Sketches : historical, literary, biographical, economic, etc. / by Thos. E. Watson

THOS. E. WATSON (From Hit Latest Photograph}

SKETCHES:
i
Historical, Literary, Biographical, Economic, Etc.
By THOS. E. WATSON
Author of " The Story of France," "Napoleon," " Life and Times of Thomas Jefferson," " Bethany," "Waterloo," "Life and Times of Andrew Jackson," etc., etc.
ILLUSTRATED
(THIRD EDITION)
PUBLISHED BY THE JEFFEKSONIAN PUB. CO.
THOMSON. GEORGIA 1916

C.I
Copyrighted BY THE AUTHOR
1916

CONTENTS
Introductory Chas. Bayne.
Kandom Reminiscences of Toombs and Stephens........................ 3 The Wise Man and the Silly King............................................................... 23 A Gross Insult to the Scotch............................................................................. 31 Robert Toombs: A Life Sketch; Some Anecdotes, and
His Last Public Speech.................................................................................. 45 The Glory That Was Greece........................................................................ 66 Edgar A. Poe................................................................................................................... 81 Wit and Humor ..__.......__............_.._........_..._................_.._..._...._..._._.._.._ 84 The Egyptian Sphinx and the Negro................ ..._... . ._._.. 95 The Passing of Lucy and Rollo............_..... .._...__.._..__.......... 129 Concerning Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War..................... 134 The Struggle of Church Against State in France___._ 149 With Brisbane at Delmonico's.-......-...-..-... ..... .-...._... ....._.... 157 The Roman Catholic Hierarchy and Politics............................. 173 The Oddities of the Great.................................................................................... 184 Pages Lost from a Book................ ................................................. ..... .... 189 Tolstoy and the Land.............................................. ......................._.............. 195 The Stewardship ............................................................................................................ 200 The Reign of the Technicality....................................................................... 203 Concerning Money ............................................................................_.......................... 208 A Bitter Attack Upon the South..................................................................... 214 "Take the Children" _................__........._..._..............................._......._..._..._._ 223 "Where Am I At?".................................................. .............................................. 229 The Man and the Land.....................................:... ................................................ 231 Is the Study of Latin and Greek Necessary to the
Practical Lawyer ? .................................._...._....__.....___.__..................__.. 251 As to Orators and Oratory ................................................._......................... 258 Socialism and One of Its Great Books................__......_._. 261 Common Sense Education _..._....__..._......................._____.__. 273 Some Aftermath of the Civil War (Stephens, Toombs,
'Ben Hill, the Ku Klux Klan, the Colquitt Campaign of 1880, Etc.) _......._.__........ .._...-........_....................-.......-..__.._ 278 Teasing a Single Taxer ................._..............................................._........ 293 Paper Money and John Law........__................._..._._.._........_ 300 The Dartmouth College Decision._......_.._..._...__....._.._ 305 Thos. E. Watson's Tribute to the Late Sam Jones on His Fiftieth Birthday _......_._.._.__.._.._.._..__._......_.._._........_._ 310 Our American Judicial Oligarchy ......._............................____ 315 Answer to Booker Washington_......_..._...._.___...._._ 321

Introductory
CHAS. BAYNB
IT is a remarkable fact that a Frenchman has written the best "History of English Literature," a British subject has written the best history of the "American Commonwealth," and an American has written the best and most popular "Story of France," and "Life of Napoleon." No man who is familiar with the facts will hesitate for a moment to place Hon. Thos. E. Watson in the front rank of modern historians, for in doing so he would merely accept the general verdict.
There is nothing doubtful about the story, which I have on the best authority, that in 1904 an American traveller, visiting in Paris, went into a book-store and asked to be shown the best biography of Napoleon he had in his shop. Without a moment's hestitation, he selected from the dozens of volumes dealing with the great Corsican, the familiar red-bound book Watson's "Life of Napoleon," and handed it out to the pur chaser. His name was L. W. Stephens, of Columbia, Mo.
(The same thing happened to Congressman Burnett, of Ala bama, Judge H. D. D. Twiggs, of Savannah, Ga., to J. A. Copeland, of Greensboro, Ga. and others, since 1904.)
The man who accomplished such a feat as the writing of that book a book regarded in France as the best history of her Emperor could be no ordinary man, from any point of view; but when we consider the fact that it was comparatively late in his career that Mr. Watson turned his attention to the writing of history, and had already won a high place in the making of history along entirely different lines, the achieve ment becomes all the more remarkable and our admiration all the greater.
"The style is the man," say the French, and there is a strong personality running, like a silver ribbon, through all of his work, whether on the stump, in the halls of Congress, before the bar, or in the quiet of his study, which leaves an unmis takable impress. In his graphic recital of the thrilling story of France, in presenting the rise, reign and fall of the most splendid figure in the history of modern Europe, in his por trayal of the life and times of the founder of Jeffersonian democracy or the rugged strength of "Old Hickory," there is the same vigor and refreshing charm. The humor, the sub dued pathos, the tender sentiment, and, above all, the faithful ness to life with which he drew conditions as they existed in

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the old South and gave the -world in his novel, "Bethany," the life-story of typical characters whose memory he loved, lent
that work a compelling force and a native grace which could have come only from the heart.
In this connection, I recall an incident which I can never forget. I betray no confidence in saying that when the MS. of this novel was submitted to the publisher he suggested that what the public wanted was the kind of novel in which the hero and heroine get married and "live happily ever after." "Bethany" was not that sort of book. It was a leaf torn from the great epic of the South. Along with exquisite sentiment, it was shot through with the red ruin of wa*r and the remorse less workings of fate. The author painted the picture as it was in actual life climax and all and he declined absolutely to change the logical ending into something that would win applause from the groundlings. "Because," he said lo me, with a tremor in the falling inflection, "in real life, it doesn't happen that way."
I have not enquired of late as to the sale of "Bethany." but I do know that it presents a picture of the old South which the world should not willingly let die.
And yet Watson, the historian Watson, the literary man belongs, as I have said, to the later phase. That he had been "hiving wisdom with the studious years" long before he sat down to write history was very evident when he once settled himself to that task and turned out with marvelous facility the histories which gave him an international reputation. To have written the "Life of Xapoleon." with its mass of incidents and its striking generalizations, in three months' time to have accomplished the same thing in practically the same length of time with his other historical works would argue long years of intimate familiarity with the subject before he put pen to paper, just as Goethe carried "Faust" in his head for twenty years, until, as he said, "it became pure gold."
But it was as a lawyer, an orator, as the champion of the rights of the people against the encroachments of corporate wealth and power, that he first won a place in the history of American politics and statesmanship. He had been the per sonal friend of Toombs and Stephens and Hill, and the men of light and leading of that time, and he had learned much from them. He preserved, none the less, a strong individuality which promptly impressed itself upon public life when he entered the Georgia legislature in the early eighties. Accept ing and advocating the principles of the Farmers' Alliance, he was elected to Congress in 1890, from the Tenth district. His canvass of the district in 1892 was an epoch in Georgia

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politics. His power as a stump speaker was never shown to better advantage, and it is admitted that on the stump he is one of the most persuasive men ever produced in Georgia. The best traditions of this form of debate were revived, and there was an added vigor which had never been seen before. Perhaps no higher tribute could be paid the man who fought his battles in splendid isolation in those days than to say that many who were his opponents, politically, remained his per sonal friends and admirers, and that many of the principles for which he contended then have since been enacted into law or have been adopted by the leading parties of the present time. What was regarded as radical then, is looked upon as essentially conservative in these piping times of rate bills and the agitation of an income and inheritance tax.
His career in Congress, where he secured the first appropria tion for rural free delivery, and among graver matters, gave a phrase to the vernacular in citing the remark of Mr. Cobb of Alabama, "Mr. Speaker, where am I at?" this part of his career, together with his canvass of the country after his nomi nation for the vice-presidency on the ticket with Mr. Bryan and his nomination for the presidency by the Populist Party in 1904, need not be enlarged upon here. It is a part of his life which is known of all men.
But this article concerns itself with the real Watson, whom few men know, for no man can really know him who has not seen him and enjoyed his delightful companionship in his home.
His fifty years sit lightly upon him. The "bright red poll" to which the funny men on certain newspapers make frequent allusions is in reality auburn as yet unstreaked with gray. It is in the strong lines of his mobile and sensitive face that time and application have left their imprint. His slender figure is of whalebone, as evidenced by every elastic step. Walking and riding are his tonic. Mounted on his favorite horse, raised and trained by himself, he gallops over the hills and fields which surround his home, or else, with the crisp air of a winter day sending the blood tingling through his veins, he strikes a pace, on foot, along the highways and byways which keeps the amateur pedestrian a bad second in Indian file. In this way he preserves a constitution which enables him to undergo the severe mental and physical strain to which he subjects himself, and on these walks he finds something more than a casual interest, not in botany and ornithology, perhaps, but in birds and flowers.
It would be impossible to describe the animation which shines in his countenance, the light that kindles in his gray

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s. when the conversation drifts to some subject which he is particularly interested at the time and I say "at the time" advisedly, for he takes all knowledge for his province, and nothing which interests humanity can fail to be of interest to him. Whether it be in describing the present situation in France, clarifying it with epigrammatic phrase and abundant information, or assailing the Dartmouth College decision as
being bad law and the parent of laws still worse, his indexed memory yields the needed facts with promptness and precision. During an acquaintance of eighteen years, I have never seen him use a note in making a public speech, and his great
lecture on "The South" has never been reduced to writing.
The Watson family is of English descent. Coming from along the southern banks of the Tweed, they settled first in North Carolina and afterwards in Georgia. As far as the records extend they were landed proprietors, and this inherited love of the soil, coupled with a desire to possess the very land occupied by his pioneer ancestors, has led the subject of this sketch to acquire the broad acres over which he is lord and master. In his possession is a royal grant dated 17GO, signed by Charles Watson as clerk of the royal council. The land thus conveyed is now in the possession of Thomas E. Watson. lineal descendant of Charles Watson, who countersigned the royal grant. So. also 153 the city residence in which he spent the most active twenty years of his life, and many thousands of acres besides. His estate in Virginia, lying in the Blue Ridge Mountains, is one of the most beautiful in the State.
But it is here in Georgia that Mr. Watson is most at home. On a summit which commands a view of the blue Piedmont foot-hills, with Graves7 mountain silhouetted against the sky line. and the prosperous little city of Thomson nestling, a mile away, beyond the grove, stands the imposing colonial home where the distinguished statesman and litteratuer has set up his household gods.
Everything that ingenuity and competent means can con
tribute to the comfort of himself, his family and the guests who are constantly gathering at his hospitable board is to be found under this spacious roof. Every detail bespeaks the
culture and refinement of the typical Southern gentleman, and his family.
Thomson has outgrown its swaddling clothes and has estab
lished its own electric light plant, so the Watson residence is a blaze of light within and without. The fine arts are repre sented in all their phases. And then there are books until the
brain grows weary. How many thousands of them there are
Mr. Watson himself does not know. He is too busy reading

A VIEW OF THE HOME.

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them and writing them to merely stop and count them. They are not only scattered about the study, with that delightful abandon which betokens constant use, but they overflow into the hallway and into the guest rooms and into the more formal precincts of the drawing room. They are everywhere big books and little books, old books and new books. Swinburne
lies cheek by jowl with Adam Smith, and Don Quixote leans his sorrojv-ful figure against the Beacon Biographies the "Life of Thos. Jefferson" in this series being, incidentally, by Mr. Watson himself. The latest number of The Congressional Record lies on top of a stray volume of Hansard, while Sinbad and Ali Baba, in a sumptuous edition of Lane's "Arabian Nights," are sadly crowded by a recent importation from Canada.
This is his kingdom. Around him he has gathered an efficient and devoted staff to assist him in editing Watson's Jeffersonian Magazine and The Weekly Jeffersonian.
Few men write more legibly and yet with more character in their chirography than Mr. Watson, and practically all of his historical works went thus to the printer, for they were pro duced in the days when his fights for the people had greatly reduced his worldly possession and he had to be his own amanuensis. But he finds no difficulty in dictating the most carefully wrought of his editorials, when occasion requires.
At his elbow sits the long distance telephone, by means of which he keeps in close touch with his two publications, directs the affairs of his various plantations, and keeps in communica tion with the world at large.
Behind him hangs a handsome oil painting of "Night," by one of the masters, its colors as fresh as if it were painted yesterday, and lending an appropriate atmosphere to the entire surroundings. The morning sun shines in at the wide east window and again comes in at the south, giving a cheerful aspect to this mental work-shop of his.
The birds are his companions and they seem to know by a sort of subtle instinct that he is their friend. The wood peckers may be heard drumming under the eaves, piercing their way to the interior of the roof, where they build and breed. These are depredations, of course, but he delights in their friendly association. When he was writing his "Life of Napoleon" there was what we call in Georgia a red bird the Kentucky cardinal of more pretentious literature which perched on his window sill daily, confident that he would be fed and treated kindly. He became a pet, free and unconfined. He was like a liveried herald from the Reign of Terror. Soon after the author had finished his work he found a dead red-

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bird, shot by some wanton boy, and the thought has haunted him ever since that in all probability it was his confiding feathered companion who had thus become the victim of a malicious shaft.
The house in which "Napoleon" and practically all of Mr. Watson's other books, except "Bethany" and "The Life and Times of Andrew Jackson" were written is still his property, though he has moved to larger quarters, but it is a striking illustration of the real nature of the man that for years he used that house as a means of repaying, a hundred fold, the kind-

Mr. Watson's old nurse, Amanda Bugg, whose name Js on the com plimentary list of the Magazine along with that of Mr. Watson's sisters, brothers, etc.
ness shown him by an old friend in the days when he began making his way in the world. He had been compelled to leave college without completing his course, because he could not continue without drawing too heavily upon the resources of his father. He went to Screven county and taught school in a log cabin quite small enough and dilapidated enough to meet the traditions of greatness in an early environment that cramped the soul.
He wrote his friend, one of his former school teachers, Mr. R. H. Pearce, at Thomson, and asked if he would board him for a year "on trust" while he established himself in the law. His friend consulted his good wife and consented. This was

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(ho beginning of his career nl tin- bar, during which his annual practice expands I from $-_M 4 (ho first your to as much as 18.000 per year at (ho period when he decided to abandon his profession. His gratitude for (ho assistance rendered him in that first year consisted of something more than u mere
payment of his board bill, for (he kind-hearted couple who extended the favor lived for many years, as his guests, in the home which was .so long his own.
The room in which he did his literary work has been de
tached from the old home and added to'the house next door, which is also his property. Here his daughter and her hus-

MOUXTED OX HIS FAVORITE HORSE.
band. Mi-. O. S. Lee. made their home, with a dimpled toddler of the third generation growing up under the shade of the very tree* planted by Grandpa Watson and his devoted wife.
And in this connection let it be said that no man ever had a help-meet more peculiarly fitted to "redouble his joys and cut his grief* in half." The Durhams of Oconee and Greene belong, like the Watsons, to the pioneer stock which cleared the primeval forests in the days when George the Third was

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king, and they have been prominent in the life of the com munity ever since. The gracious charm with which she pre sides over her hospitable home, the woman of culture combined with the efficient housewife, constitute the keynote of that helpful comradeship which has comforted her husband through
the storm and stress he has encountered and subdued. His son, Mr. J. Durham Watson, with his wife, who is a
native of Kingston, X. Y., make their home near Mr. Watson, and here another grandchild suffuses the household with the sunshine which can only come with the prattle and coo of budding infancy. Mr. Durham Watson has represented his

The present appearance of the little log school house in Screven County, where Mr. Watson taught school in 1875, near the residence of William Call. The place is now known as Goloid.
native county in the General Assembly of the State, and during his father's connection with the New York publication bearing his name, was the associate editor.
Such is the real Watson in his ideal home. Such is the man whom friend and foe unite in regarding as one of the ablest of his time. The factionalism from which so much bitterness was engendered is rapidly passing away. and. without stop ping to quibble about names and party lines, the people of the South and West, and many of those in the East, realize that the principles for which he stood, in the stirring days gone by, like one cr3Ting in the wilderness, are l)eing embodied into statutes. State and Federal, for which he. in a large measure, made straight the way. He has put aside all political ambition and only aspires to devote his time and talents

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through his publications, to the common good. He is deeply interested in the present movement of the Farmers' Educa tional and Co-operative Union, and as a disinterested friend and counsellor will devote some time to the furtherance of its interests. The members of this organization, composed of actual tillers of the soil, recognize in him an able and sincere friend and welcome his co-operation. So, on the platform, in the interest of this movement, and in his study, for the welfare

MR. AND MRS. THOS. E. WATSON.
of all mankind, he spends his time, serene in the enjoyment of domestic happiness and the companionship of his books. There are a thousand evidences that he is more powerful today in his peaceful retirement than when in office, and his strength and influence are growing every day. The shifting shuttle has wrought many changes in public sentiment. Those who pic tured him. in other days, as a reckless Jack Cade, swearing that the three-hooped pot should have ten hoops, and seven half penny loaves should sell for a penny, realize now that in a time of revolution he would have been, not the rude Kentish-
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man, but a Danton or. a Mirabeau and that even in the economic revolution for which he strove so mightily he was the fearless champion of prophetic vision and high intelligence, contend ing against the hosts of oppression.
Ordinarily it is a doubtful compliment to say that a man is honest. It is one of the things which should go without saying.
But is is a remarkable fact that a man- who has been so bitterly assailed, in the heat of factional politics, for so many sins, should have been regarded, even by his foes, as upright in his integrity and sincere in his convictions. Rancor itself has not come near him there and his legion of friends are multiplying as the years go by.
The leisure which Matthew Arnold called "the meat and drink" necessary to high development, is his, so far as the exigencies of life are concerned, but he keeps every moment filled with the work he has assigned himself. In this atmosph^re of philosophic calm, removed from the turmoil of the world, and yet with his fingers ever on the pulse of events, he works and dreams works as if he were a struggling young lawyer and with the world yet to conquer, and dreaming with that fine effectiveness which comes of a logical mind winged
with the faculty of imagination. His is the sane mind in the sound body, his daily regime preserving the heritage of health. No man would judge, from his appearance, that he had passed middle life and it is to be hoped that, in point of fact, that is true. He has encountered and overcome many obstacles. Like Orlando, he has "wrestled well, and overthrown more than his enemies." Great as has been his life work, perhaps his
achievements after all, are but an earnest of what he is
yet to do.

Random Reminiscences of Toombs
and Stephens
"LITTLE ELLECK" was the way I always heard it, when I was a boy: "Little Elleck" and "Bob Toombs" were the Castor and Pollux, the matchless heroes, in our neck of the woods.
Regarding Toombs, the feeling was one of boundless admira tion. His intellect, eloquence, imperial deportment, scintillant -wit, gladiatorial grandeur, were subjects of inexhaustible com ment. He was the privileged character of ante-bellum Georgia politics. He could say and do things no other public man. with out courting ruin, could have said and done. Inconsistent votes and speeches might injure others, but they never bothered Toombs. Shown up on the stump by an opposing speaker who produced the record to prove that Toombs had gone astray, the accusing orator triumphantly inquired, "What have you to say to that, sir?-' And Toombs would set the crowd to laughing and cheering by saying, "I think it was a d d bad vote."
Arraigned in public discussion for having said some outrage ous something or other, on a previous occasion, Toombs bristled up and declared defiantly, "I never said it!"
"Oh, but you did!" exclaimed the other fellow. "IVe got the dead-wood on" you here it is in this paper." proceeding to draw it from his pocket
"Well-. I don't care a d n, if I did say it," cried Toombs. and the crowd laughed, and yelled, "Go it, Toombs!"
Such an incident as this last seems apochryphal; but the late Rev. E. A. Steed related it to me when I was at Mercer Uni versity, saying that he himself was present when it occurred. In describing the scene and referring to Toombs, Mr. Steed added. "What could you do with a man like that ?"
Yes, Toombs was big and noisy and brilliant and overbearing and successful and magnetic; people were carried off their feet by the impetuous rush of his mind and his passions. He was
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great, and hero-worshippers trooped about him wherever he went. He could not stop on the streets and begin to talk, with out attracting a crowd. To advertise him for a public address, was to collect the folks for miles and miles around.

TOOMBS, IN HIS PRIME.
The last political speech he ever made in Thomson, was soon after his return from Europe, in 1875. Mr. Stephens was the orator of the day; and Toombs' name was not down upon the published program. Little Elleck occupied the morning session
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with his carefully prepared, statesmanly oration. But Mr. Stephens could no longer magnetize an audience. His voice did not carry far, and did not hold out any length of time; and, besides, the vital spark did not glow within the old hero as it once had done. Those who only heard Mr. Stephens after the Civil War, could form no conception of what his power had been.
Perhaps a vague feeling of disappointment pervaded the multitude, during the dinner hour, and made it natural that they should yearn for another and a different kind of speech.
Suddenly, some one shouted,
"Toombs! Toombs!"
As though an electric current had shot through the crowd, the multitude sprang to its feet, and there pealed forth a "Rebel Yell," and a roar for,
"Toombs! Toombs! Toombs!"
They would take no denial; and the old lion began to toss his iron-gray hair back and forth with his hand.
"Let the band play Dixie, then, and I'll give you a speech." They struck up Dixie, everybody yelling like mad, of course, and then the great orator stood forth to address the people.
"Fellow Citizens! About eight years ago, the best govern ment the world ever saw told me to 'git up and git,' and I did it." The allusion, of course, was to his enforced exile at the
close of the Civil War. Uncle Sam manifested a keen desire to get his hands upon Robert Toombs; and the manner in which he did "git up and git" is a thrilling story which cannot be told
here. The jocular reference to his own flight, set the crowd laughing; and, for an hour or so, Toombs did what the en feebled Stephens could not then do reached the audience with
his voice, entertained it with his wit, and inflamed it with his own unquenchable fires.
Such was one of the men of whom I derived, from environ ment, impressions of his grandeur, before I was old enough to understand what it was all about. The other was totally dif ferent.- The feeling which "the Stephens men" of that day had for "Little Elleck," was never aroused by any other Georgia statesman. People might or might not admire Bob Toomba and Ben Hill, but they were never loved, even by their most ardent admirers as "the Stephens men" loved Little Elleck.
Toward the "Pea-ridge boy" who had been educated by some charitable ladies and warm-hearted men; and who always
looked so boyish, and frail and sickly; who had made such a heroic battle against poverty and disease; who always defended
the unfortunate and never prosecuted; and who was ever for

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the under dog; and who had such inexhaustible fountains of human kindness for him. for "Little Elleck," there went forth
a tenderness, a touching trust, a fidelity which made for him a kingdom of his own a holy of holies, sacred to himself alone.
In the opening chapters of "Bethany," are descriptions of
visits by Stephens and Toombs to my grand-father's home, and of long conversations to which I listened. The actual visits
were before my day. and the conversations in "Bethany" were purely imaginary. I never saw Mr. Stephens until after the Civil War. when, in 1872, he wished to go back to Congress.
He and Herschel V. Johnson had been elected to the United States Senate in 1866. but the Republicans refused to let them take their seats. Then, in 1872, he had again become a can
didate for the Senate, but had been defeated by General John B. Gordon one of the most magnificent and popular soldiers
of the War. and one of the most irresistible campaigners the politics of the South ever knew.
Mr. Stephens was thought to have taken his failure very much to heart. General Toombs interested himself actively in
persuading certain aspirants in Stephens' old district to stand out of the way. and let "the hero" have a walk-over. After this had been diplomatically arranged, the announcement was
made that Little Elleck was a candidate for Congress. The progress of the perfunctory canvass brought him to Thomson, where I was attending school: and at the news that "Elleck Stephens is going to make a speech in the Methodist Church,"
I went to hear him. The house was not large, but there was plenty of room. In fact, the audience was small and not en thusiastic. They listened respectfully to the slender orator who
was so colorless and appeared so feeble, and who spoke in a .high, thin voice, clinging to the pulpit rail most of the time.
I think he was on crutches, because of injuries received by the
.falling of a gate upon him, at his home. He indulged in very little gesticulation. I remember he repeated that portion of his great ante-bellum speech on the Oregon Question, where he likened our system of government to Ezekiel's vision. This
passage brought applause. Again, when he was speaking of his record and how he had
sometimes had to differ from his own people and take positions that were unpopular, he stressed the idea that, in him, they had a leader who would always deal honestly and candidly with
them. TSaising his voice, and elevating his right hand a full length above his head, he cried in vibrant tones, "No matter
how wildly partisan passions may rage, you shall always know

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"what Elleck Stephens thinks" bringing the uplifted hand down upon the palm of the other with a loud, "Halleluja lick."
Hearty applause greeted this, but the speech as a whole made no marked impression.' Old-line Whigs, who had never for given him for going over to the Democrats, took oft'ense at some reference to their defunct party, and one or two walked out of the house. There were survivors of the Know Nothing movement who never could forgive Mr. Stephens for his violent tirades against them: and there were a few citizens of our com munity who attributed their loss of lawsuits to Little Elleck's strategy in the court-house. These and some other causes, combined to make our town and county somewhat cold toward him: and I well remember how such out-and-out Stephens men as Captain William Johnston and John F. Sutton exerted themselves to poll a creditable vote for the hero, at our town precinct.
Captain Johnston himself "sat on the election." at the court house. He took his place at the window which commanded Main street, and as electors would pass, up or down, the Cap tain would sing out "Come over and give Little Elleck a vote." In many cases, "they began to make excuse." and went their way. When the polls closed Mr. Stephens was elected, for he had no opposition; but the total of the ballots was not gratifying to his old friends. In after years, when the politi cians tried to put the hero out of Congress, the common people rallied to him with some faint echo of the fervor of other days.
"The Augusta thimble-riggers," as he dubbed them, opposed him. but had to submit to one check after another, until Stephens, who had been training with Dr. W. H. Felton and the Independents, was captured by the regular Democratic nomination and made Governor of Georgia, in which office Tie died.
Captain Johnston, to whom allusion was made, was a life long "Stephens man," of the most unselfish and devoted kind. He never tired of telling sympathetic listeners of the doing and sayings of his hero, accompanying the story usually with an attempt at mimicking Stephens' voice and manner. He told me of a case in the Superior Court of Lincoln County. Toombs was on one side and Stephens on the other. The presiding Judge was ruling against Little Elleck on the various points made, as the witnesses gave in their testimony; and Toombs was carrying everything with a high hand, dominating the Court and hectoring Stephens. It was apparent as the trial progressed that the latter was becoming intensely excited. His great black eyes began to flash and the wan cheeks to glow. When it came his turn to speak, he rose, turned his back upon

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the Judge and. without the customary "May it please your Honor." he began, in a shrill voice, shaken by passion, to ad dress the jury:
"Overruled by the Court, browbeaten by opposing counsel, to you. Gentlemen of the Jury! I appeal!"

ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS.
The Captain described how. after this startling outburst, the orator mounted higher and higher, in a speech which thrilled every hearer, and so won upon the sympathies of the

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9

men in the box, that Toombs' argument and the Judge's charge
were unavailing: Little Elleck got the verdict.
In the profession, it was commonly said, "Stephens is a case-lawyer." In general knowledge of the law, as a science and system, he was ranked far below Toombs and Cone and his own brother, Linton Stephens. But it was admitted that "Little Elleck" was marvelously strong in litigation where he had prepared the case for trial, and where the conduct of the court-house battle was left to him. Both in civil and criminal cases, he was a famous winner of verdicts. Of this fact, he was deservedly proud; and in his old age he spoke to me and to others of writing a history of his celebrated cases; but he never did. ' During his last years in Congress, the "Potter Resolutions," as they were called, came up in the House. These proposed a re-opening of the Hayes-Tilden electoral contest. Mr. Stephens took strong ground against them, and predicted that their
passage would lead to blood-shed. It was nearing the close of the session, when so much gets crowded on the calendar, and men become so brjutally selfish to get action on their own pet measures. Mr. Stephens "went on refining," or attempted to do so, but the impatient members began a clamor, to drown the feeble voice. Mr. Stephens ran his roller-chair into the open space before the Clerk's desk and endeavored to go on with his speech. But the House Republican, of course howled
him down. This was easy enough to do, since he had little strength of body or of voice.
This insult to his gray hairs, this want of respect to the ex-Vice-President of the Southern Confederacy, enraged him extremely. The incident helped to rekindle his popularity. He drew good crowds to the hustings in the speech-making
tours which followed the adjournment of Congress. One of his appointments was at Thomson. It was a fine summer day and there were several thousand people on the ground. A delega tion came up from Augusta Major Joe Ganahl, President John P. King, of the Georgia Railroad, and others.
Mr. Stephens require^ stimulants, these latter days. It got
to be a joke his way of concluding a passage of his speech
with the words "This is genuine Jeffersonian Democracy" and then putting
to his lips the little bottle which contained his liquor. After the big men all took their places on the speakers'
stand, that day I remember how they had to lift old Mr. John P. King it seemed that Stephens needed a little toddy before he'd be ready to begin. So Major Joe Ganahl was put up to kill time, and entertain the crowd. He did the former, to the Queen's taste. As to entertaining or enthusing a country

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crowd, he had no more turn for it than I have for pleasing a plutocrat. The Major made point after point that he expected to start the applause, but none started. You have seen how speakers look, wax hot and perspire, and gesticulate violently, when they pump for the cheering, and don't get it ? Well, that
was exactly the way Major Ganahl looked that day. Presently, some one on the seat behind, reached out, and
pulled the Major's coat-tail. Mr. Stephens had swallowed a
final sip out of the little bottle, and now felt able to make his
address. There was. at first, a deep silence and eager expectation.
Everybody present had so often heard of the statesman's ora
tory. Every one there was. more or less, his friend. They meant to vote for him. and to keep on doing it, as long as he lived. He had declared that he wished "to die in the harness," and the old man's wish had been tacitly accepted as the un written law of the district.
Nearest the small platform on which Mr. Stephens spoke
he was seated in his roller-chair were grouped the elderly men who had been his supporters when he was at his best.. These old constituents paid close attention throughout the
address. But after he had been talking a short while, this small portion of the audience were his only listeners. His voice could not reach those farther away, and the spectacle was that which is so often witnessed at public, out-door meetings. In front and near the speaker, is a well-defined minority,
seated on the benches: back of them and all around them is the circle, sometimes ten or twenty deep, in which the youngmen chat with the girls, or married people talk among them
selves. It is as though a girdle of babbling noise and con fusion were thrown around a small body of silence and quietude.
Only once, as I remember, was there any applause. Mr. Stephens related the "Potter Resolutions" incident to which reference had been made, and doing his best to make his voicesound big and strong, cried out. with the favorite gesture which has been already described:
'I told them they might howl me down in Congress but that they'd never howl me down before the American people."
After the speech was ended, there were the usual comments.
Those of Major Ganahl. I heard. He exclaimed to some of usr ''Well, sir, I never saw such people as these. They didn't
applaud rne. and they don't even applaud Mr. Stephens." The
fact appeared to be consoling to the Major, and he made quite a point of calling everybody's attention to it.
The most gratified man that I saw on the grounds was old man Anderson Faucett. This gentleman had striking pecu-

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11

liarities of appearance and deportment; and one who had once known him could hardly have forgotten him. Mr. Stephens had cultivated a good memory for faces, and he recognized his old friend at once. Mr. Faucett was deeply pleased. He came by the group where I was standing, and stopping, exclaimed, "He knew me, sir, he knew me! He called me by name, and I haven't seen him in" I forget how many years, but it was before the War.
In the summer time, when Mr. Stephens was at his home Liberty Hall I would board his special car, and go as far as Augusta with him, as he was returning to Washington. (His health was so delicate that it was necessary for him to have a private coach, whose temperature could be kept uniform.)
On one of these trips he told me the old story of the man who placed too much confidence in the prowess of his dog; and who in the utmost good faith pitted this canine against a peddler's monkey. The fight wasn't much of a combat for the monkey (as I recall it) jumped on the dog's back, took its tail between his teeth, and closed down. The dog was wholly unprepared, either in mind or body, for that kind of thing; and he lit out for the horizon yelping in horror and fright. The man who owned the monkey called it in, and went his way; but the dog was out of his senses, temporarily, and dis.appeared. The owner of the dog began to call him.
"Here, Towser, here! Here, Towser, here!" but no report from Towser.
"Here, Towser, here! Come on back that d n varmint's .gone."

It was most enjoyable to be at Liberty Hall. When I was there, Mr. Stephens was dictating to John M. Graham (now of Atlanta, and a mighty fine fellow) a "History of the United States." This work occupied him in the forenoon; but he would join us on that wide, cool, delightful back-piazza, after dinner. James D. Waddell, a bosom friend of long standing, was stopping with Mr. Stephens, at this time, and most excellent company he was. No man was better at telling anecdotes. His acting alone, was enough to tickle the ribs. For hours, he would have us roaring with laughter. Mr. Stephens enjoyed it as much as any of us; and even when Waddell related the unprintable story of how a mischievous boy had secretly changed the lettering of one of the New England Blue Laws, and thereby brought dismay and con fusion into the Court, when the next Common Scold stood up to receive sentence, Mr. Stephens had to struggle hard with the impulse to laugh, while his sense of propriety forced him

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to say rebukingly to his friend, "You'd better shut your dirty
mouth!"
There was a tall, well-made, elderly Irishman present a native of Augusta and a great friend of Mr. Stephens. He came up to my idea of Captain Costello of Thackeray's novel, only he was as sober as a judge, and a most tremendously dignified person. He had, of course, witnessed and heard Waddell's acting and telling the anecdote. He had fairly shouted with laughter. He had to wipe away the tears. As
we had renewed our peals, which we did several times, he had renewed his. I never saw a man enjoy a thing more. As the last of the sounds of merriment died away, and we sat silent from exhaustion, the stately Irishman approached Waddell and dropping his voice to a confidential tone, inquired "What letter did you say that boy changed?" And then we did explode, and Mr. Stephens let out all that he had been holding back. The very idea of that dignified gentleman laughing as he had done, without knowing what was the joke, was just too funny 1
I remember that Mr. Stephens took me into his library, where his studying had been done when he was practicing law. Some of the volumes were canted on the shelves, and he asked me to straighten them up. There were not very many books; and I get the idea, from his own works and the letters to his brother Linton. that he had only a slight acquaintance with history and literature. Some of his literary opinions, expressed in his correspondence, are quite crude, to use the gentlest pos sible word.
He was fond of children, but he knew when he had enough. I recall he was quite positive that a noisy, romping crowd of them should not spend the night at Liberty Hall. They lived in the neighborhood, and were inclined to remain over the evening was inclement, I think but the old man ordered the carriage, and called out somewhat sharply, "Xo, you must go home."
I was sitting outside on the back piazza one day, while Mr. Stephens was in the room, next to me, talking with a school boy. The lad happened to mention that the statesman's School History of the LTnited States was taught in the academy which he attended. In a quick tone of pleasure, Mr. Stephens asked:
"You say they teach my history in 3rour school?" I chanced to look through the window at Mr. Stephens, and he chanced to look at me; our eyes met for an instant, and I saw that he was confused. The vanity was so natural and so innocent I Yet he shied like a girl. When I went up to Crawfordville to represent, in a pre-

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13

liminary trial, the young white men accnsed of an atrocious murder, I took supper at Liberty Hall, after the hearing was over. It was late, and the others had all left the table. Dora, the mulatto woman, fixed something for me; and while I was causing it to disappear, in staggered a man, whom I will call Barleycorn, for he was one of the most habitual drunkards that we ever had in our midst.
Addressing me truculently and loudly, he said, in substance: "You are up here trying to defeat the ends of justice. Those men are guilty, and you know it, sir!"
There was lots more of the same kind. I told him that I did not know anything of the sort, and continued my supper afterwards joining the whist-players in Mr. Stephens' room. Dora must have carried to Mr. Stephens, while I was eating, a report on Barleycorn, for when he came lurching through the door of Mr. Stephens' room, he was stopped in short order, by a peremptory
"Mr. Barleycorn! I want you to leave my house!" The poor fellow looked at Mr. Stephens, stupidly and pleadingly
"You won't .go back on me, will you, Mr. Stephens?" "Mr. Barleycorn, I never go back on anybody. But you are drunk and you have insulted one of my guests, and I want you to leave my house."

Mr. Stephens loved his grove, the magnificent oaks that shaded his grounds. He was furious when the Crawfordville folks, in his absence, cut down one of the giants which stood on the lot which he had given for church purposes.
"The Vandals!" he cried, passionately. "The Vandals! Dick Johnston and I used to read under that oak, when we were young!" (This was Richard Malcolm Johnston, author of "Dukesboro Tales" and other nearly successful works.)
Judge Solomon Marcus, of Augusta a worshipper of Mr. Stephens wanted the passengers in the cars on the Georgia Railroad to have a better view of Liberty Hall. So the Judge took the liberty of ordering some of the trees cut but Mr. Stephens being in Washington at the time. Mr. Stephens did not like it, at all, and said so; but he had no words with his old friend Marcus about it..

One day at Liberty Hall, when he and I were alone, he told me that he regretted the displays of bad temper which he had made in his earlier years. He admitted that he had sometimes

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been too irascible and rough. "But," said he, "I was poor and sensitive, and I thought they looked down on me, and were trying to prevent me from succeeding, etc."
As a matter of fact. Mr. Stephens did let his temper run away with him. on many occasions; and he was often inex cusably harsh and impolite.
A friend once told me of an instance: General Glascock and young Stephens were holding a joint discussion on the hustings. Mr. Stephens had read something from a book. ''What page is that?" asked General Glascock. Stephens closed the volume, slammed it down^ and cried snap pishly "Find it for yourself." That was not only a flagrant breach of decorum, but a positive violation of the unwritten law of debate. It is my duty to tell my adversary from what page I read, even though he does not ask it. In challenging Herschel V. Johnson to fight a duel. Mr. Stephens allowed a very evil spirit to master him. In his quarrel with Judge Cone, he was altogether to blame and put upon that able lawyer, in public, an intolerable humiliation. Of course, it was most cowardly for Cone to afterward* assault him with a knife, when he was unprepared to defend himself.
In his quarrel with Ben Hill, and in the challenge which followed, he was altogether wrong. And. of course, he got worsted in the controversy. Mr. Stephens was no match for Hill, either on the stump or in written controversy. It took Toombs to meet Hill: and. even then, it was nip and tuck. In the great debate at Washington (Wilkes County). Ben Hill, who had met Stephens the day before and had "worn him out" as Stephens7 own friends admitted could do more than hold his own with Toombs. General Ranse Wright a par
tisan of Hill and the bitter enemy of Stephens and Toomb.s went from his home in Augusta to hear the debate. He told the late Marion McDaniel. at Barnett. where he was taking the train home to Augusta from Washington:
"Hill made nothing out of Toombs." In the encounter between Hill and Toombs. before the Georgia Railroad Convention, the younger man. in his very
prime, came off victorious. But in the Jack Jones bond casemuch later. Toombs won. Hill had the bad taste to enter the fight with a flourish of trumpets, sounded from Washington
City. "The honor of Jack Jones is the honor of Georgia !" And so forth. Old Toombs said nothing, but made ready for the battle.

"Mother, who caused this war?" I asked that one day. in the quiet and lonesomeness of 18G4. when my father, uncles.

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15

etc., had all gone to the war, and when the terrors of the period were felt, even by a boy of eight years.
"Mother, who brought all this about?" "Toombs," she an swered. But whether she explained matters, and described the great Insurgent. I can't recollect.
I remember, in 1870, going to the court-house and hanging around as long as school hours would permit of it, in the hope of hearing the big lawyers "plead." As though it were yester day I can see old Toombs, Ranse Wright and Judge Gibson.
General Ranse Wright's face and he was a splendid figure of a man! had on it a most extraordinary expression of pleased assurance of success. On the contrary. Toombs looked serious and somewhat worried. He was putting questions to one of his witnesses (Buck Binion), and the answers perhaps didn't suit.
The school bell rang, and I had to leave without having heard anything more than a portion of Judge Gibson's charge to the Grand Jury. I remember that he gave the Ku-Klux a severe excoriation, and as he was talking to them, and knew it. there could be no question of his courage.
"Little Ed" Gross, with whom I boarded while teaching school in Screven County in 1875. was a Ben Hill man. and he bore a grudge against Toombs. In truth, Mr. Gross had a dangerous temper and a long memory.
It seems that Toombs was walking about the camp one day during the War. when the General, feeling his liquor, was in his most royal mood.
"Get out of my way!" he would say. gruffly, to each human obstruction that happened to be on his line of advance.
The little black eyes of Mr. Gross snapped, as he told me of Toombs' insolence, and he concluded, with emphasis. ''I wanted to stick my bayonet in him!"
After my return to Thomson (1876). and at the village hotel, Paul Hudson introduced me to General Toombs. His manner was most affable. Something being said about the low state of law practice, he remarked to me. laughingly "Well! Mr. Watson, you will get the benefit of the rise."
Toombs was no believer in paper money was down on the Greenback currency. Colonel Bill Tutt one of the wittiest, and brainiest men I ever knew took the other side, of the question, and said:
"General, the only thing that I don't like about this Green back money is, that I can't get enough of it."
"Yes! you'd drink sea-water till your d d belly burst, and you'd never know that you were killing yourself."
Colonel Tutt doubled up and joined in the laugh, rather

1F1,

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sheepishly, but he didn't "scratch back" and Tutt was as bold
a man as you'd care to meet. The old General began to hold forth, vigorously denouncing
some public measure, whose name escapes my memory. Phil Carroll was trying to defend it, and stated, as a clincher "Why. Mr. Stephens says it's all right!"
"I don?t care a d n what Mr. Stephens says" was Toombs' retort.
Charlie DuBose, who knew that the General believed that jurors in criminal cases should be judges of the law, in the same sense that they are judges of the fact, asked him why it was that the Constitutional Convention, 1877, did not change the wording of the act on that subject.
The law reads now as it did before the convention met; and the Supreme Court has construed it to mean that the jury is the judge of the law, but that they must take it from the court which is sheer nonsense.
It is not a trial by one's "peers" when a city lawyer, grown to be a judge, tries an illiterate country farmer for his life.
Our law conclusively presumes that every citizen knows the law. excepting when he becomes a juryman. The moment he enters the jury-box, he is conclusively presumed to know noth ing about it.
When I reflect upon some of the fool decisions that our Courts hand down, I find myself inclined to strike out Mr. Bumble's "if," and to exclaim, "The law is a ass."
To Charlie DuBose's question, General Toombs made a reply which seemed perfectly satisfactory; but I cannot recall it. It must not have been "as good as it seemed, for our Supreme Court still serenely holds the idiotic position that the law, which makes, in so many words the jury, the judges of both the law and the facts, is complied with, when the jury is compelled to let the Judge be the judge of the law!
General Toombs probably told Charlie DuBose that the Supreme Court would seek the intent of the Constitution makers, in the speeches made on that subject, by himself and others. He could not foresee that Governor Colguitt would be incautious enough to pay, in full, for the stenographic report, before it was all written out; and that the Supreme Court would never have those speeches to aid in construing the law.
The judges should advise the jury as to law, but the juries should be the judges of it. as the Constitution directs.
I remember that, standing in the front porch of the hotel, General Toombs was speaking of the frugality of the French.
"Why." said he. "a Frenchman would get rich on what the average American wastes. Five of them would get rich on
what I waste."

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17

Some time afterwards, I recalled this remark to the mind
of Paul Hudson, a leading lawyer at our bar, and who had
been one of Toombs' colleagues in the Constitutional Con
vention of 1877, and who knew his habits well. "Oh, that was just some of Toombs' big talk," said Mr.
Hudson: "the old General doesn't waste much." And that was true.
While attending McDuffie Court, in the Seventies, the General stopped at the Greenwajy Hotel. The late Jordan E. White used to tell me of some of Toomb' peculiarities. The General would have Schneider, of Augusta, to send up a quart bottle of whiskey, every day; and at night, when the General
was in conversation with a dozen men who had come to his room, to hear him talk, the bottle sat on a table at his elbow. From time to time, he would fill his glass, and drain it. He offered nobody else any. Expressing my surprise, Mr. White described how the General would sit there in his lordly way, taking his liquor, and how the others would gaze longingly toward the bottle.
"Wesley Worrill was nearly dying for a drink!" said Mr. White, and would go off into a peal of laughter.
"The old General would say, with a nod at the table, 'This is Toombs' whiskey, gentlemen.'" .
It seems incredible that any man could "carry off" a thing like that, but the General did. He would empty the bottle before he went to bed. I asked Mr. White what his condition
would be, the next morning. "Perfectly sober and bright!" he answered.

While at Crawfordville, to collect a preferred debt against
the Hillmah estate (which Toombs represented), I was thrown
with him, at the old Williams Hotel. The manner of man he was, peeps out of this fact: when he
was in full practice at the bar, and was a regular attendant of the Inferior Court of Taliaferro County (which met monthly), a room at the Williams House was reserved for Toombs by the year. He spoke of this to me, saying with a flourish of
his arm: "Oh, I told Williams that if a gentleman came along, and
there was no other room vacant, he might be put in mine; but I didn't want any and everybody to sleep in my bed."
I asked him if it was true, as stated in the Stephens biograph
ies, that he, Stephens, never lost a case which he personally
conducted. "No! It is not so. Why, I gained many cases against him,
myself."
At the hotel that night, were Judge William M. Eeese,

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Milton Reese. Hal Lewis and. I think, Judge Columbus Heard and John Hart. Anyhow, it was quite a group which sat around the fire-place in Judge Reese's room, listening to Toombs talk. Hal Lewis and I lay across the foot of the bed.

TOOMBS, IX OLD AGE.
The old General went on from one topic to another, all of us paying the closest attention. It was a brilliant monologue, interrupted only by an occasional question. Judge Reese was in awe of Toombs: and of course we younger lawyers had sense enough to keep our mouths shut.

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At least, all but one of us did. Toombs was saying something about the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and he made a statement which I knew was wrong, for I had chanced to have been reading up on the subject just a few days before. On the impulse of the moment, I shot in a correction!
Whew! Always impatient of contradiction, the General could scarcely believe his ears, when a nameless little tyro of a lawyer ventured to set him right. He flashed at me a swift glance of wrathful contempt, and roared out a "D n it to h 11! D'you suppose I don't know what I'm talking about? 7'
Judge Reese turned his large, rebuking eyes on me, and re marked in a voice of shocked surprise
"Why, Watson, Toombs was there!" I was glad to get off so light though I whispered to Hal Lewis that the General was altogether "off," in his memory of that particular fact-
It was Judge Reese who elected himself the guardian of the old General's professional honor, after Toombs had reversed his opinion of the Georgia Railroad's indorsement of the Joe Brown lease of the State Road. President Charlie Phinizy. of the Georgia, transported himself up to Washington (Georgia), in his private car; and in consideration of $1.500. General Toombs changed his mind about that lease, which he had so often damned.
His ardent admirers were almost stupified. Judge Reese made himself the voice and the herald of their righteous indignatiqn. Betaking himself to Toombs' law-office which was in the basement of his mansion Judge Reese broached the subject of his errand, and told Toombs that his friends were deeply concerned about his glaring inconsistency. Old Toombs roared
"Reese, you tell my friends to go to hell." This happened many years ago, and it may be that some of them have gone there.
Toombs wrote a letter (published in the papers) accusing Joseph E. Brown of swindling "the Mitchell heirs" out of the depot, property in Atlanta. The ey-Governor had "ac cepted the situation," after the War; had attended a Republi can Convention; and had accepted, from Gov. Bullock (Re publican), a position on the Supreme Court bench. Ben Hill swore he would never take another case while Joe Brown was Chief Justice, and he retired in disgust to his South Georgia plantation in which, by the way, he lost that big Metcalfe cotton-case fee, and nearly erverything else that he had. As for Toombs, he made it the business of his life to go around abusing Joe Brown. He exhausted his own vocabulary of villification, and applied to Brown all the vituperation which Curran had heaped upon English and Irish "informers."

;; v U * h &"
.j. !' t t

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Brown had gone along, as though he heard nothing of it. But when Toombs put that letter in the papers, charging him specifically with stealing land from orphan children, Brown came at Toombs, as a bull charges. After going into the facts of the case, and giving his explanations, Brown ended his letter with a line which rang like a rifle shot. "Unscrupulous liar." was an epithet which many of Toombs' friends would have been sorry to see him wear; but nobody, excepting a few hot-heads, thought that two old men, like Toombs and Brown, ought to fight a duel.
Toombs took the worst possible course. He blustered, "made out like" he was going to challenge Brown, and then didn't do it.
There is only one explanation: he was drinking heavily, and he put himself in the hands of an adviser whose lack of ability for such an emergency was conspicuously displayed.
I heard Bishop Pierce say, on the train, between Camak and Sparta "Toombs' wife wouldn't let him fight."
It is a great pity that she was unable to keep him from acting in such a way as to make most men believe that the challenge would have been sent, had it not been so certain that it would be accepted. The incident damaged Toombs enor mously ; and it need not have done so.
When Ben Hill refused Stephens' challenge, he lost nothing: quite the contrary. When Murphey cursed him out on the streets of Atlanta, and Hill said to him, "I do not propose to give you the opportunity to assassinate me," nobody blamed him. If Toombs had ignored Brown, altogether, nothing would have been thought of it. But handled as it was, it made every Democrat in Georgia hang his head.
Yet, when General R. E. Lee certifies to a man's courage, as he did to that of Toombs. I ask for no better evidence. And when to Lee's warm testimony, I can add that of Lee's "Old War Horse," General Longstreet, I feel that Pelion has been piled on Ossa.
I used to talk with the old General, frequently, when attending the Legislature in 1882-3. He was up there much of his time, and had become the curb-stone attraction. Wherever he would stop to talk, a crowd would collect. Whenever I heard him. he was cursing somebody. And there would be so much -wit mingled with the profanity, that the crowd would be kept laughing.
I asked Henry Grady. one day, if Toombs was popular in Atlanta. "He would be." answered Grady, "if he would just cuss the same men. all the time."
There were a good many elements in Atlanta at the time that

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needed cursing; and the old General had landed on Grady's own coterie.
The only time I ever saw Toombs and Stephens together, was at the Kimball House, in the Eighties. ''Little Elleck" was in his roller-chair, in his room, and there were a number of gentlemen seated, or standing around. Toombs entered and dropped into a chair. He had dined, and had the appear ance of having done it well. He looked as though he had been free with "the rosy." I can't recall anything worth recording. It seemed to me Mr. Stephens was apprehensive that Toombs would say something which might, in the presence of the gentlemen in the room, cause him embarrassment. Indeed, Toombs rather enjoyed "shocking" the Sage of Liberty Hall.
It was my fortune to see, at the Kimball, the old General and the man who had been his second in the Joe Brown fiasco. They were coming from Toombs' room into the corridor. They were both as drunk as one could reasonably expect. I stopped to speak to the General, and he introduced me to his ex-second. Fixing his eyes, with all the solemnity of intoxication, on Colonel Nichols, the old General said:
"I put my honor in your hands." "And they are perfectly clean" responded the tipsy Nichols.
Notice that Nichols only spoke of his hands not of the "honor" which he had somewhat dimmed. I wonder if Toombs' remark was meant as a reproach!
The only time I ever heard him make a speech was in the anti-Colquitt caucus, in 1880. He made a witty, dashingly eloquent talk. He sailed into Gordon, Brown, and Colquitt. He repeated his statement that if General Gordon had been shot in the indicating the region with a backward gesture instead of the face, he would never have gone to the Senate.
Ex-Senator Norwood, of Savannah, put his palmetto fan up to his face, and pretended to blush. Others laughed: some Joe Brown men left, in a huff. In other words, the speech hurt the cause.
(By the bye, General Gordon's retort was pretty good. When told of the place where Toombs had, by supposition, placed his wound, Gordon said:
"If Toombs had been where I was, that's just where he would have been shot.")
Those trips to Atlanta were bad for Toombs. He fell in among thieves, signed a Power of Attorney, and debts to a ruinous amount were made in his name. When he died, his estate was reported all the way from $1,000,000 to $2,000.000. But it soon transpired that the Power of Attorney had been used to such an extent that his heirs got very little.
In his old age, Mr. Stephens was a particularly pathetic

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figure. Fastened to his roller-chair, he was almost as helpless as a child. In fact. I suppose that his man-servant had to wash him. dress him. lift him about, in practically the same
way that infants are handled. . His scanty hair was snow-white: he never had a beard. In
his pallid face, were a thousand wrinkles, little and big. Here and there, on his cheeks, were livid, uncanny splotches. His teeth were broken and black. His lips were thin and colorless. His neck and head were large, and the chin strong. His eyes were beautiful. It seemed to me that they were a very dark brown. His voice was thin and sharp less than full tenor.
I was in his room at the Kimball when he sent his note to the dying Ben Hill, asking if he. Mr. S., might call. Adolph
Brandt was present, and wrote the note. Brandt's handwriting was perfectly beautiful, in its way. being a pull-the-pen style, with much heavy shading and many curves. When Brandt handed his production to Mr. Stephens, to be signed, he exclaimed.
"Why. Brandt. you write a worse hand than I do." As Mr. Stephens" writing was simply unreadable. Brandt's feeling may be imagined. . The last time I ever saw the Sage, he was on his death-bed. A contested election case which the Governor would have to pass on. took me to Atlanta, but we found Governor Stephens too sick to attend to it. Of course. I went to the mansion to see him. He spoke of the case in a tone which indicated that he leaned to my side of it. and was confident that he would soon be able to resume his duties. But that Savannah trip had been too much for him. We had all gone down there to the Sesqui-Centennial. The weather was extremely bad- Mr. Stephens had delivered a long address (to which few paid attention), and the carriage in which he was driven through the streets, had open windows. That night. Dan Rountree and I (both members of the Leg islature), called on the old hero at his room. He was bright, and seemed none the worse for the exposure to the weather. Dnn went up. with the bow and smile of a courtier, and said, as he extended his hand "Governor Stephens, you must let me congratulate you on that splendid speech!" "Little Elleck" had been a politician himself, and he knew the breed well enough. He smiled, and said "Oli. I got out of it tolerably well."
In that sense, he did: but it was the general opinion that the trip cost him his life.
They gave the Hero a great funeral in Atlanta; but I think lie would have chosen a simple burial, at the family graveyard,
in his native county with the neighbors to come in their quiet sorrow, to cover him up with the sod of old Taliaferro.

The Wise Man and the Silly King
THE WISE MAN.
HAVE you read of the Seven Wise Men of Greece? One of these was Solon. Towering above the common run of men in natural capacity and in service to the State, he was made the chief magistrate of his people.
So great was the esteem in which he was held that he could have become king, could have founded a dynasty, perhaps; and thus handed down to his descendants the power which the people had entrusted to him.
Instead of this, he thought only of the public welfare. He was so much of a man, so clear in his ideas of true glory, and true nobility, real worth, that he counted as nothing the accu mulation of money and the holding of office.
Therefore, when Solon. as law-giver of Athens, had reformed the abuses of which the people complained; had broken up the monopoly of wealth and power which the few had grasped for themselves; had put back into the hands of the people the reins of government, he went away into foreign lands, leaving Athens free.
How did Solon restore democracy to the people of his country?
By vesting in the popular assembly the final word as to laws. and as to judicial decisions.
In our day, we would call this the Referendum; and the average Congressman and judge would have to ask somebody what was meant by Referendum.
The Initiative in legislation. Solon vested in a Council of State, to which the lowest order of citizens had the right to send one hundred delegates. The other three orders sent each a like number. Thus the lowest order had a share in the Initiative, and they had absolute control of the Referendum.
Moreover, any citizen whomsoever could at any time bring any offender, public or private, before the popular assembly. and have any breach of law passed upon by the people.
JLhus. you see, the humblest man in the State could compel the proudest to come before the mass-meeting of the people and give an account of himself.
In practice, this probably amounted to the same thing as would be accomplished by what is known as the Imperative Mandate and Right of Recall.

'!
L

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Such was Solon's idea of democracy, 2,500 years ago. By giving the popular assembly the right to pass on the conduct of citizens, to nullify the decisions of judges, democ racy was made supreme.
The people ruled themselves, in fact, as well as theory. Fool decisions got knocked in the head. High-rolling rascals were brought to taw. Common sense got a chance to be heard, and common right an opportunity to assert itself. Corrupt judges could not make decisions which shocked gods and men, without running against the wrath of an outraged people.
Solon effected another great reform.
He found his country brutalized by the bloody Code of Draco. The punishment of death was inflicted with frightful
facility. Even idleness was punished with death. In fact, Athens was about as barbarous as the England of
two hundred years ago, when more than one hundred crimes
were punishable by death. One of these English crimes was the shooting of wild
animals, game, in a nobleman's park. Another was the cutting
down of a tree therein. Another was the larceny of linen
from a bleach field. Solon did for Athens what Samuel Romilly and Henry
Brougham did for England humanized its code.
Yet another reform this great Democrat accomplished. He found the finance in the control of the few. These greedy seekers of gain had so fixed the laws that, in the race of life, the poor man had no chance against the rich. The laws all favored the creditor class. The debtor class was kept under the wheels. The situation had become so bad that a revolution was about to break out.
The masses of the people will endure a great deal are won derfully patient under tyranny and robbery, when the tyrant and the robber can give to his crimes the sanction of a written statute.
But there is a limit. Man is an animal, after all, and when driven too far, he breaks through the shell which civilization
has molded round him, and he becomes again the fierce brute he used to be, when he lived in the woods and ate raw meat.
At Athens, the creditor class had almost got to the dead line. Solon with one sweep of his pen relieved the tension, and saved his country. How?
By cheapening money.
The historian says, he depreciated the currency. What he did was this: he found that the existing supply of money had been gathered into the hands of the few. Th'erefore, money was hard to get. Therefore, the demand for

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25

money was constantly increased. Therefore, the price of money constantly rose. Therefore, debts were harder to pay at ma turity, than they had been when contracted. The poor debtor had to buy money to pay his debts with; and the amount of labor or of property required to buy enough money to pay the debts, grew greater and greater all the time.
This was unjust. Solon expanded the currency; that is, he increased the supply of money. In the language of today, money-sharks had "cornered" the market, and Solon smashed the "corner."
He also lowered the rate of interest on loans, and abolished imprisonment for debt. The result of these reforms was most happy. Debtors found that more money meant cheaper money, and were thus saved from ruin; whereas the creditors lost nothing but an unfair advantage which they had been harshly using to oppress their fellow-men.

THE SILLY KING.

In those days, there lived a certain king whose name became a synonym for riches, just as the name of Solon became the synonym for wisdom.
This king was Croesus, and he ruled over Lydia, in Asia Minor, an exceedingly rich and fertile country.
In the eyes of Croesus, there was nothing so beautiful as gold, silver and precious stones. In his philosophy, the purpose of living was to get rich. Money, according to his belief, was the all in all: whoever had the greatest amount of money was nec essarily the happiest man, the strongest man, the man to be most loved, feared, courted, and admired.
So the Lydian king bethought him not of just laws, honest administration, nor the welfare of his subjects, and of future generations! Neither was he diligent in the seeking after knowledge, nor in the study of problems, "What makes a State ? What is true prosperity ? What is real strength ? What is the right road to happiness? What are the things which a man should do all the days of his life, with whatever strength the gods have given him, in order that, when the evening is here, he may look with serene and fearless eyes upon the Shadow that comes creeping on, creeping on, to throw the shroud of eternal night over him?"
No; Croesus gave no thought to such things. Far and wide he sought gold, silver, precious stones. Day after day, year after year, Croesus heaped up gold, silver, precious stones. By fair means or foul, by straight ways and crooked, by

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lawful methods and lawless, Croesus added talent after talent,
until his treasury was choked with gold. And it came to pass that the King of Lydia prided himself
upon his wealth more than upon any other thing that he
possessed. He did not claim that he was the wisest man. nor the strong
est man. nor the bravest man. nor the noblest man, nor the
most industrious man. nor the most useful man. He did not pride himself upon having the best mind, body, character, and purpose. He did not boast of anything that he could think, speak, write, or do. that was better than what other men could think, speak, write, or do.
He simply thought that he was the happiest, greatest man on earth, because he had scraped together a larger quantity of
a certain sort of metal than any other living man. So it came to pass that whenever a traveler of distinction
reached Sardis. the capital of Lydia. the king would take the traveler to see his treasure. his gold, silver, and precious stones.
When the traveler came into the treasure-house, and looked
upon those vast heaps of riches, greater than he had ever dreamed of before, his hands would, of course, fly up and his eyes open out. and his mouth spring apait and he would make
exclamations of wonder, admiration, and reverence which
would cause the silly king to chuckle and chortle and puff
himself np with unspeakable pleasure and pride.
Then as the traveler went upon his way into other lands, he would naturally tell the tale to all whom he met the won drous tale of Croesus and his gold.
Thus the fame of Croesus waxed exceedingly great in all the countries round about.
Of course. Croesus had counted upon that result when he showed the travelers his treasures. He wanted to be talked about as the richest man in the world as the man who was happier, better, and greater than any other man.
What did Croesus intend to do with all this treasure? He did not know. He had never given a thought to that. His purpose was to keep on getting it more, more, more and ever more until he had the greatest fortune in the world. Then what ?
Go on getting more and more and more.
There never was a definite plan or purpose in his head beyond the getting of the money. What to do with it, after he
got it. was a mere irrelevant question, not to be considered or tolerated for a moment.
Drive on and on and on: get more and more and more:
that was the purpose of Croesus.

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And it came to pass that Solon. in the course of his travels, reached Sardis, and he was received as an honored guest at the court of the king for Solon's renown as a ruler and a sage
had gone abroad into many foreign lands. In the midst of that brilliant court, in the palace of the
king, Solon was the same man that he had been at home,
unabashed, clear-eyed, sensible, courageous, strong in his glorious manhood. His eyes were not dazzled by the glitter of gems, his spirit was not over-awed by the display of power,
his intelligence was not imposed upon by the pompous display of royal grandeur.
Swelling with self-complacency at the fine show that his court presented to the Greek, the king asked him. "Have you
ever seen a happier man than myself?" With great composure and impoliteness. Solon answered.
"Yes. It was a man named Tellus. a plain, substantial citizen
of Athens, who begot valuable children, supported his family in comfort by honest toil, and died gloriously in the defense of his country."
How this impolite reply to the king's question must have
scandalized the courtiers and shocked the king! But Croesus decided to give the Greek one more trial, so
he asked:
"Well, after Tellus. have vou ever known a happier man than I?"
Solon, as composed and impolite as ever, replied. "Yes.
There were two brothers, Cleobis and Biton, famous for the affection in which they held each other, and for their loving and dutiful behavior toward their moth'er. One day when she
was ready to go to the temple to worship, the oxen were not ready to be yoked to the cart, and these devoted sons put
themselves in harness and drew their mother, amid the acclam ations of the people, to Juno's temple. After the sacrifice,
they drank a cheerful cup with their friends, and then laid down to rest. They rose no more having expired during the night, without sorrow or pain, in the midst of their glory."
Crcesus was displeased, sorely displeased. Plain speech
delights not the ear of silly kings, or silly courtiers, or silly subjects. But Croesus had one resource left: he would show
Solon his treasure.
Then he would flatter: then he would fawn: then he would see what a mistake he had made in not declaring Crcesus to be the happiest of men.
So they led Solon into the treasure chamber, and showed
him the vast accumulation of gold, silver, and precious stones wealth lying there idle; wealth which had come from all
parts of the world; wealth which had once been the possession

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of thousands of others; wealth which denied the comfort of life to the many, in order that the one should have more than he could ever need.
Very coolly Solon looked upon the heaps of gold, in no wise overcome, his clear eyes seeing all things in their true relation as before which is the thing we call Wisdom.
To the proud and silly king, he said,
"If one comes against you who has better iron than you, this gold will soon be his."
When Solon departed from Sardis, he probably left behind him the worst name that the silly king and the silly courtiers knew how to give to one of the Seven Wise Men of Greece to one of the noblest men who ever worked for the betterment of the condition of his fellow-men.
What was the meaning of Solon ? By iron, he meant weapons of war; and, of course, the best men best wield the weapons of war. Solon meant that mere wealth did not make a king or a nation great and strong, happy or truly prosperous. He had already said to his own people of Athens:

"Thine own sons. O Athens, are thy pfate, And. slaves to gain, destroy the unconquered state."

Solon's prophecy came true in both cases.
Cyrus, rushing down from the highlands of Media and Persia, followed by hardy mountaineers, having better iron than Croesus, scattered the feeble troops of the feeble king, and took his gold.
And Athens, having become a slave to gain, lost her strength, sinking into the same wealth-loving decadence which prepared for Cyrus his conquest over Croesus.
In our own country we are making the same fatal mistake about gold, about money, about wealth.
We are nursing the insane delusion that, because our fortunes, individual, corporate and national, are the largest ever known, we are the strongest, greatest people in the world.
What madness, what folly! The deadliest weakness" of our system, our nation, is this same gold, this same wealth.
For the man is blind, blind, blind, who does not see that, as you take, from the common stock, the unequal shares which millionaires get, you increase the numbers of the unequal shares which the worker gets.
Show me a Rockefeller fortune, and I will show you as its logical, inevitable offset, a million men who have never a surplus dollar to lay by.

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29

We are grinding up thousands of children, the seed-corn, to produce a dozen millionaires, when these twelve millionaires, as men, may be less valuable to the State than any twelve of those children would have been.
In order that some department-store may amass a fortune for its owner, poor girls are paid five dollars per week; and when the girl complains that she cannot live on five dollars a week in Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, or New York she is told, with a cynicism that might abash the devil and cause a shudder throughout hell, -"Get you a gentleman friend!"
Lee Meriwether, special agent of the U. S. Department of Labor, made diligent investigation of the conditions of the working classes, both in Europe and America.
From his book called, "The Tramp at Home," I quote (page 16):
"Molly Smith went and told her boss she couldn't live on her wages; she was all the time hungry, and in the winter all the time cold.
"He said to Molly: " 'You are a pretty girl; why don't you get a young gentle man friend to help you?' That made Molly mad. She flew up and talked back, and got turned off. It was the dead of winter. She was took sick because she had no fire, and well I don't know just how it happened. All I know is, most any night, they say, you can see Molly on the Bowery. She never comes nigh us any more." Molly had been a factory girl. Factories are protected from foreign competition, you know, in order that they may be able to pay big wages to American labor. Molly had been getting $3.90 per week for her work in the factory. Out of this she had to pay room-rent and supply herself with food, clothing, fire, and all other necessaries of life. Mr. Meriwether made systematic investigation in several of the big cities and came to the conclusion that a large percentagt of the fallen women were graduates from the shop-girl class, who had tried to live on their pitiable wages and simply coudn't.
Mr. Meriwether's lady assistant was sent by him to make experiments in person with employers. "In some places the manager bluntly said, 'You are not good-looking enough.' At other places where the need of new hands was more pressing, 'I was offered,' she reports, 'three dollars per week.'
She remonstrated. "But I cannot live on three dollars. My car fare will be sixty cents. I live four miles from your factory." The manager answered, "We can't help that. You must get a friend to help you."

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In other words, she must barter virtue for bread. Muciamis declared. "Moneys are the sinews of war." Machiavelli answered, "There are no sinews of war but the very sinews of the arms of valiant men." There is no strength to a man or to a nation in wealth, alone. The arms of valiant men. the strength of strong men, always constitute the true greatness of a people.
We are growing richer, and we are growing weaker. In the advance of the army, the human debris in its rear grows appallingly larger and larger. In the onward sweep of the fleet, the wrecks that lie behind us cover an immensity of
horizon. Money is easy to find: men are growing scarce. The parrot
is everywhere: the eagle, seldom seen. "Poll-Parroting" is the order of the day in the sumptuous temples, in editorial rooms, in legislative halls, in legal arguments, in judicial opinions, in magazines and books, in universities, in the circles of
business. Kepeat what those in authority say. imitate what the ma
jority do. conform to the current creed, follow the crowd, play the game. money, money, money talks!
How much wealth do you want? What is the limit ? There is no limit. What is your purpose; what will you do with it after you get it? That is an irrelevant matter; the question te ruled out. We mean to get more, and more, ever more! Driven on, and on. and on: no matter who gets run over; no matter how many lose their mickle to make our muckle drive on and get more! And so. with a headlong rush after a false ideal of happi ness, of strength, of prosperity, we are aping the silly king, and
denying ourselves the wisdom of the sage.

A Gross Insult to the Scotch
THE following appeared in the press several days ago:
"CARNEGIE TO NEGROES.
"Says Lowest In South Is Ahead of His Ancestors Two Hundred Years Ago.
"New York, Dec. 1. Andrew Carnegie said today that the lowest negro of the South is more advanced than were his (Carnegie's) ancestors in Scotland two hundred years ago. He was speaking before the Armstrong Association.
" 'Talk about uplifting the negro race,' declared Mr. Carnegie, 'those who have attended the industrial institutions now established are already uplifted, and they, in turn, are spreading their knowl edge into every cotton-field and pine-belt south of the Potomac.' "
Of Andrew Carnegie himself. I do not care to speak. How he got his money, how he spends it. his relations with the controlling powers of this Government, his social equality practices, his donations to negro colleges all these matters are foreign to my immediate purpose, which is to prove that, in saying what he did about the Scotch, he lied, either wilfully or ignorantly; and that in blarneying the Afro-Americans, he lowered himself, at the same time that he insulted every man that has in his veins the blood of old Scotland.
First of all. the greater portion of the population of that country came from the same stock which peopled England, herself. The Lowlanders were Germanic in their ancestry and there never was a time when their condition was not vastly superior to that of the negroes of today. Time and again, it has been demonstrated that the Germanic tribes of the most 'primitive eras exhibited such magnificent traits of character that our present civilization is the logical and evolutionary result.
In the value placed upon personal liberty and independence: in the love of home and the domestic virtues; in the high and manly pride which preferred death to dishonor; in the respect shown to women, and the terrible punishment meted out by the tribe to the adulteress; in truthfulness, honesty, love of justice, admiration for mental and physical excellence they were as superior to the negro of today, as the respectable negro is to that occasional white man who disgraces his color, reveals his constitutional baseness, and fills all of us with a profound sense of disgust and loathing.

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In embryo, those Teutonic ancestors of ours had established the system of things as we now see it. Trial by jury, popular self-government, direct legislation, equality before the law, monogamous marriage, are institutions whose sources have to be traced back to the far-stretching woods of Germany. To compare such a race to the poor, thick-skulled, bestial, unprogressive. purely receptive and imitative negroes, is monstrous.
In the wilder, and more inaccessible Highlands, as well a in the Hebrides, a different people were found. These Gaels belonged to the great Celtic branch of the human family. The territory held by them was bleak and barren, its climate rig orous, its advantages few. Consequently, .the Highlanders were poor. The hut of the tribesman was destitute of the comfort of the average negro house. His wearing apparel was not so abundant, nor so good, as that of the industrious African of our own times. There was more illiteracy among the Celts than among the blacks, upon whose "education" we have squan dered so many millions of dollars.
I grant you that the Highlander lived a hard life, and there was no silver in his purse, that his hovel was pitifully humble, that he wore shabby clothes, that he went bareheaded and bare footed, that he couldn't sign his name, and that his food was scanty and coarse. But what was he, as a man ? What sort of women were his mother, sister, wife and daughter? What was the character of the Highlanders? What was their standard of morals? What was the degree of their untutored, undevel oped intelligence? What manly traits distinguished the men* What womanly virtues, the women?
Knowing the splendid record of this race, and realizing how huge is the debt which modern civilization owes to it, my blood boils with indignation against the negro-loving millionaire,,
who befouls his own nest, and traduces the great people from
whom he sprung. Where in the history' of the world, was a more heroic stand
made for freedom, for independence? For ages, Britain ex erted her utmost strength to enslave her weaker neighbor, and she never could do it. A simple gentleman, William Wallace,, shook England's power to its foundations; and at Bannock-
burn, the British got the worst whipping, in the open field, that they ever suffered. Even the Scotch-Irish Andrew Jackson did
not beat them at New Orleans more ruinously than did Robert Bruce at Bannockburn. Ireland she could conquer, because a Pope's decree had hopelessly divided the Irish people; but no
English army could do much more in Scotland than to hold
the ground it"camped on. In the Highlands, they could accom- plish nothing. Along those mist and cloud-crowned peaks, no
white flag of submission ever flew. Not until after the Union.

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33

with England, did British soldiers penetrate those wilds which Rome herself had vainly endeavored to subdue. The great wall which an Emperor threw from sea to sea, to protect England from the Scotch, is a memorial to their valor, their intrepidity, their audacity, which time can not efface.
What people ever resisted so constantly and successfully the tyranny of Kings? To their English and French neighbors, they set the inspiring example of rising in arms against their monarchs, and putting them to death! They were pioneers in the fight against priests and Popes. They would brook no encroachments upon their liberties. They were ever ready to seize their weapons and battle for principle cost what it might.
What finer soldier than the Scotchman ever walked a battle field ? In the thin red line of Great Britain, which has carried her drum-beat around the world, who has been more gallant
than he of the kilt and the tartan? From the lips of the greatest of all Captains, the Scot's Greys at Waterloo wrung the tribute of admiration: and the beleaguered of Lucknow were thrilled with the certainty that they would be saved, when the wings of the wind brought the bagpipe strains of "The Campbells Are Coming!"
In Spain, in France, in Germany, in America, in Hindustan, in Egypt, the Celt of the Highlands, like the Celt of Ireland, has been the very beau ideal of a soldier. It was the High landers who turned the tide of battle at Lutzen, and gained for Gustavus Adolphus the last victory of his career.
Who drove the human wedge into the Austrian center at
Wagram, and snatched the army of France from the doom which hung over it? Macdonald the Scotchman. Who was faithful to his Emperor when every other Marshal had deserted him ? The same leonine Macdonald. Who was the most splen did commander of independent cavalry that the world ever saw? General "Jeb" Stuart lineal descendant of the Stuarts of Scotland. Whose brigade was so conspicuously daring, in
the "Army of Northern Virginia," that it won the proud dis tinction of being known as the "Laurel" Brigade? Angus Mac-donald's. Who was it that Lee had chosen to take the place of Stonewall Jackson? John B. Gordon whose genius for war continued to develop, and whose bravery was proverbial.
"Bring on the tartan!" shouted the British General at New Orleans, when the other regiments had broken and fled before
those concealed, inaccessible foes who were enfilading them with deadly rifles. At the "double," came the Highlanders:
the mist lifted; they saw that they had been sent into a death
trap ; and they stood still, facing the flaming breastworks; and

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they fell in their tracks their dead bodies looking like the brigade in repose!
Here is Lord Macaiilav's tribute to the Scotch three hundred

"The populaton of Scotland, with the exception of the Celtic tribes which were thinly scattered over the Hebrides and over the mountainous parts of the northern shores, was of the same blood with the population of England, and spoke a tongue which did not differ from the purest English more than the dialects of Somerset shire and Lancashire differed from each other. In Ireland, on the contrary, the population, with the exception of the small English colony near the coast, was Celtic, and still kept the Celtic' speech manners.
"In natural courage and intelligence both the nations which now became connected with England ranked high. In perseverance, in self-command, in forethought, in all the virtues which conduce to success in life, the Scots have never been surpassed. The Irish, on the other hand, were distinguished by qualities which tend to make men interesting rather than prosperous. They were an ardent and impetuous race, easily moved to tears or to laughter, to fury or to love. Alone among the nations of Northern Europe they had the susceptibility, the vivacity, the natural turn for acting and rhetoric, which are indigenous to the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. In mental cultivation, Scotland had an indisputable superiority. Though that kingdom was then the poorest In Christendom, it already vied in every branch of learning with the most favored countries. Scotsmen, whose dwellings and whose food were as wretched as those of the Icelanders of our time, wrote Latin verse with more than the delicacy of Vida, and made discoveries in science which would have added to the renown of Galileo. Ireland could boast of no Buchanan or Napier. The genius with -which her aboriginal inhabitants were largely endowed showed itself as yet only in ballads which, wild and rugged as they were, seemed to the Judging eye of Spenser to contain a portion of the pure gold of poetry. ,' "Scotland, in becoming part of the British monarchy, preserved her dignity. Having, during many generations, courageously with stood the English arms, she was now joined to her stronger neigh bor on the most honorable terms. She gave a King instead of receiving one. Slie retained her own constitution and laws. Her tribunals and parliaments remained entirely independent of the tribunals and parliaments which sate at Westminister. The admin istration of Scotland was in Scottish hands: for no Englishman had any motive to emigrate northward, and to contend with the shrewdest and the most pertinacious of all races for what was to be scraped together in the poorest of all treasuries."
Tl'e cl'Mt WPS the family group: the blood of the Chief was the blood of his men. and the tie of affection ran from cottage to castle. The dan would die for the Chief: the Chief, for the clan. On the dav of brittle;1 he walked in front, not behind: where they fought, he fought: where they' fell, he fell. His quarrel was theirs: theirs, his: friends and foes of the Chief were those of the clan. Wrong the clansman, and the Chief flew to arms: wronsr the Laird, and the clan rallied, as one man.

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Never did the castle shut its gates in the face of the poorest
tribesman: never did the Chief kindle, in vain, his signal fires along the mountain tops.
So magnificent was their loyalty to one another and to the Chief, that they would deliberately go to a cruel death rather than betray a kinsman or a Laird. When the Clan Chatten revolted under the regent Murray, two hundred of the rebels were condemned to die: each of these two hundred was offered life and freedom, if he would tell where his Chief was con cealed, and not one of them would have life on such dishonor able terms. When the Pretender. Prince Charles Stuart, was a fugutive in the Highlands, every man in Scotland knew of the rich reward to be won by the Prince's betrayal; but not a soul wavered in its self-sacrificing loyalty. The Pretender got
safely away to France: his Highland followers remained, to meet their doom; and many a gory head was stuck on pikes, not only in Scotland, but in England.
(In Pepys' "Diary" it is noted that the last of the heads that
had been spitted on Temple Bar, had rotted away and fallen
from the spike.)
To the defeated foe, they were cruel; but at a time when other Europeans robbed and murdered the shipwrecked ma
riner, the Highlander gave him food, shelter and protection. Openly, daringly they would raid the Border and "lift"
cattle, that was open, honorable war and spoil, as they viewed it: but, in the relation of man to man, honesty was the rigid
rule of life.
The Minstrel was the Gulf Stream, in this Ocean of poverty and illiteracy: with his harp and his songs, he warmed the life of the lowly, as well as the great. He was at once bard, his torian and teacher. The very children learned his melodies, and his stories of Scotland's past. To the cotter's hearth, he brought sentiment which elevated, knowledge which to some
extent supplied the place of education, and rhapsodies, set to music, which kindled intense pride of race and love of country.
When was there ever, in the existence of the negro, an in fluence like unto that of the.wandering Minstrel of the High lands? Blind Homers may have sung amid those sequestered glens: Blondels, unknown to fame, harped by those dim lakes and tarns. Do we not know that it was a work of love for
Walter Scott, Robert Burns, and the "Ettrick Shepherd'
to rescue from oblivion the melodies and the poesy of
those ancient times, three and four hundred years ago? Don't we know that many of the finest songs of Burns are nothing but the modernized versions of those gems of ancient Scotch Minstrelsy? Does not the very music of those lyrics

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which our own generation most loves, come down to us from the Highlanders of centuries past?
It is now known that Macpherson's "Ossian," whose weird sublimity and wild imagery appealed so powerfully to the imagination of Thomas Jefl'erson and Napoleon Bonaparte, is based upon fragments of Gaelic minstrelsy sixteen hundred years old. That Macpherson himself did" not "fake" these poems, but merely modernized them, is proved by the fact that they are to be seen in the original tongue, both in Edinburgh and Dublin. (In early times Scotland and the West Coast of Ireland were peopled by the same race, speaking the same language.) The Ossianic poems were handed down tradition ally from generation to generation. Therefore, Scotland had a literature, similar to that of ancient Greece and Rome, Persia and Chaldea. as far back as the third century after Christ!
Allan Ramsay, who wrote the best pastoral poem that litera
ture contains. "The Gentle Shepherd," was born in 1686: does not his fame and success bear witness to the mental elevation of the Scotch at that distant era? What would "the lowest negroes of the South" know or care about a masterpiece of pastoral poetry ? They cannot even understand and appreciate the very simple rhymes of Paul Dunbar. Phillis Wheatley is about as far as the average negro can go, in that direction. A banjo and a fool jingle, without real meaning or sequence, is the preference of nine-tenths of the Southern blacks. They could no more enjoy the wonderful melodies of the Scotch improvisatore. than they could change their wool into hair.
More than four hundred years ago, Scotland had a King who was a patron of Letters, and who himself wrote poetry. About three hundred and fifty years ago. she had a Queen who both in Paris and in Edinburgh was unrivalled for wit, beauty and culture she also being a poetical composer. Not much less than two hundred years back, there came into the world Tobias Smollett, one of the really great writers of fiction his works palpitating with life. now. and as full of human interest as they ever were. His original and humorous characters, Strap. Bowling. Morgan the Welshman, Lismahago, and Mat thew Bramble never have been surpassed by Dickens, Thack eray. Hugo or Goethe. When will the small brain of the negro produce an Humphrey Clinker, a Roderick Random, a Pere grine Pickle?
It is universally admitted that more can be learned of men and manners of the period covered by Smollett's Novels, than from the histories.
Crossed on to some white man. and this hybrid crossed with another Aryan, we might see another Dumas pour his wonder fully gorgeous stories into literature; but no pure-blooded

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.negro ever will. And even Dumas was much of a faker and charlatan.
Two hundred years ago, the native land of Andrew Carnegie gloried in the fame of her scholars; the devoutness and fear lessness of her Protestant clergy; the piety, sobriety, morality and industry of her people; the purity of her judiciary; the growth of her literature; the foundation of her manufactures
and commerce. She had a University famous throughout Europe: she had sent forth teachers and missionaries to plant knowledge and religion in less advanced regions; she had shown the world how men might stand up and beard Pope and King, at a time when other European peoples were crawling on their bellies in adoration of both.
John Knox was every whit as robust a character as Luther. In fact, the great German was far more complaisant in his demeanor toward princes, than was the rugged Scotchman.
Luther winked at the shameless license of the potentates around him; and specifically gave his consent to bigamy in the case of
Philip I., Duke of Hesse. So far from falling into such an inconsistency, John Knox rebuked Queen Mary with such severity that she wept with mortification. Nor were other
Scotch preachers in awe of the great. We find Andrew Mellville plucking angrily at the sleeve of King James I., and calling him "God's silly vassal."'
Buckle did well, did justly, in the "History of Civilization"
to conclude his terrible arraignment of these preachers, for
their bigotry, narrowness and tyranny, by admitting the im mense debt the race owes to them:

"At a most hazardous moment,' they kept alive the spirit of national liberty. What the nobles and the crown had put in peril, that did the clergy save. By their care, the dying spark was kindled into a blaze. When the light grew dim, and flickered on the altar, their hands trimmed the lamp, and fed the sacred flame. This is their real glory, and on this they may well repose." They
were the guardians of Scotch freedom, and they stood to their post. Where danger was, they were foremost. By their sermons, by their conduct, both public and private, by the proceedings of their Assem blies, by their bold and frequent attacks upon persons, without regard to their rank, nay, even by the very insolence with which they treated their superiors, they stirred up the minds of men, woke them from their lethargy, formed them to habits of discussion, and excited that inquisitive and democratic spirit, which is the only effectual guarantee the people can ever possess against the tyranny of those who are set over them. This was the work of the Scotch clergy, and all hail to them who did it. It was they who taught their countrymen to scrutinize, with a fearless eye, the policy of their rulers. It was they who pointed the finger of scorn at kings and nobles, and laid bare the hollowness of their preten sions. They ridiculed their claims, and jeered at their mysteries. They tore the veil, and exposed the tricks of the scene which lay behind. The great ones of the earth, they covered with contempt;

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and those who were above them, they cast down. Herein, they did a deed which should compensate for all their offences ten times as great. By discountenancing that pernicious and degrading respect which men are too apt to pay to those whom accident, and not merit, has raised above them, they facilitated the growth of a proud and sturdy independence, which was sure to do good service at a time of need. And that time came quicker than any one had expected. Within a very few years, James became master of the resources of England, and attempted, by their aid, to subvert the liberties of Scotland. The shameful enterprise, which he began, was continued by his cruel and superstitious son. How their attempts failed; how Charles I., in the effort, shipwrecked his for tune, and provoked a rebellion, which brought to the scaffold that great criminal, who dared to conspire against the people, and who, AS the common enemy and oppressor of all, was at length visited with the just punishment of Bis sins, is known to every reader of our history. It is also well known, that, in conducting the strug gle, the English were greatly indebted to the Scotch, who had, moreover, the merit of being the first to lift their hand against the tyrant. What, however, Is less known, but Is undoubtedly true, is that both nations owe a debt they can never repay to. those bold men, who, during the latter part of the sixteenth century, dissemi nated, from their pulpits and Assemblies, sentiments which the people cherished In their hearts, and which, at a fitting moment, they reproduced, to the dismay, and eventually to the destruction, of those who threatened their liberties."

What nobler epitaph could be chiselled on the tombs of those heroic souls? They were the Scotch leaders mental and spir
itual standard-bearers of two centuries ago. "When I recall the glowing pages of Walter -Scott, and pass
in review his delineations of Scotch character, his pictures of Scotch life: when I think of the austere self-control and selfdenial practised by his countrymen of two hundred years ago;
when I witness the awful grief of parents when one of their children goes astray: when I see the beauty of such a character as Effie Dean, and recognize her as a type; when I witness the
devotion of the clan to the Chief, and the pride of the Chief in his clan: when I review the grand procession of the mighty men. and of the pure, lovely, forceful women; when I think of
them as a race that evolved its Napier, its Burns and Campbell and Scott and Eobertson; its Adam Smith and
Buchanan and Blair and Chalmers: its Erskines and "Christopher Xorth" and Lockhart: its Carlyle and Miller and
Hume I find myself marvelling, past all power of expression, that any Scotchman could be ass enough to say what Carnegie said.
To the uttermost limits of the habitable universe, the Scotchman has carried his racial characteristics. What are they? Perseverance, shrewdness, fortitude, sobriety, energy, fore-
thought, piety, high standards of morality, and a profound
regard for womanly virtue. He not only evolved his own

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civilization in his native land, but has been a pioneer civilizer in every country to which he has migrated. Commerce owes him much: manufactures are his debtor; science and art acknowledge his masterly conceptions and achievements; re ligion turps to him as a tower of strength; and literature,
without him, would be moonless night bereft of a girdle of
stars. In geology, in philosophy, in political economy, in
astronomy, in applied science, in jurisprudence, in oratory, in
history, poetry, music and song, the Celt is the peer of any man whosoever.
Blot out what he has contributed to the world's thought, to
its uplift, to its betterment, to its strength and sweetness and
glory, and the cloth of gold would lose the strands which make its completeness.
But the negro? Poor, inferior copyist of the master-race, he is as incapable of maintaining a civilization as he is of originating one. For himself, he can do nothing. Civilize him in America and send him to Liberia, and what happens? He sinks, lapsing toward the barbarous state; and begins to im
plore the whites to come to his relief. Civilize him in San
Domingo, and what is the result? As soon as the French go away, and the negro becomes his own boss, down he goes. The varnish of Latin culture wears off. and there's your negro. And such is the chaotic bestiality into which he plunges, that
the whites must needs rush to the rescue. In this country, we have seen the negro boys come home
from the colleges "educated gentlemen," according to the
Carnegies, Ogdens, and Rockefellers and, in a few years all the varnish is gone. The great mass of the race is in a
lower condition than during slavery. They are more immoral, more besotted, more lazy, more diseased. In Africa, where they live next to nature, wear no clothes to speak of. drink no vile liquor, use no cocaine, and have no syphilis, the traveller
finds the negro physically perfect beautiful as the leopard and the tiger are. But you seldom see, in one of our towns
and cities, a negro buck or young woman who has no bodily defect.
Go to the drug-stores of the larger towns and the cities, and inquire about the users of cocaine. You will find that the black men, especially the preachers, buy enormous quantities
of it. This drug excites the animalism of men. Think of this, in connection with the prevalence of veneral 'disease among the post-bellum negroes and you will realize why their race is tending downward.
Lacking in the characteristics that make for civilization, the
negro can not be educated into white black-men. School books can not supply traits, qualities, racial superiority. God must

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give these He alone. The poor negro never has had them, has not got them, never will have them. Like the Red Men, Eskimo, and the Australian, the negro must bow to the decree of fate, and take his place as a lower being. The Fatherhood of God no more implies that we must accept him as an equal than it means for us to sink to the plane of Ponca or Digger Indians. As to the "Equality and Brotherhood of Man" to see what that fatal doctrine leads to, we have only to consider the mongrelism which curses Mexico. Cuba. Central and South
America, as well as Portugal and a portion of Spain. Andrew Carnegie, talking to negroes, told them that "the
lowest negro of the South" was superior to his own ancestors of two hundred years ago.
What sort of beings are "the lowest negroes" of the South? How do they live, and what do they do?
They will ravish girls who have hardly passed from baby hood : they will go in squads, surprise some white man. and take turns lying with his wife, in his presence: they will grab a white girl at her door, gag her. drag her away to the negro section, violate her repeatedly all night long, then brutally kill her. and throw her lacerated body into the street. They will rape an old woman who is so bent and enfeebled by age that she can hardly walk with the aid of a stick. The very animals in the stables, are not safe from their bestiality. Two such cases came to light, and to Court, in my home county; and how many more there are. none but God can know!
Among themselves, the black men and women of the lower class have no morality at all. no sense of decency, none of shame. They simply have no comprehension of virtue, honesty- truth, gratitude and principle. Not to get caught, is the sole motive for secrecy in wrong-doing. To lie, to steal, to break contracts, to forget favors, to copulate are not criminal acts, in their eyes. The returned convict gets an ovation: the murderer, about to be hung for an atrocious assassination, is a heroic figure: the negro who has left some white girl to die of her wounds, or of inconsolable grief, and made good his escape, is envied and congratulated.
Were the Scotch ever such beasts? Read that fearlessly frank book. "The American Negro," whose author, Hon. William Hannibal Thomas, has negro blood in his veins; and who spent the best years of his life working for the uplift of the Southern negroes. He confesses the whole truth about these inferior, most unfortunate, and irreclaimable people. From the school-children who practise indescribable obscenities, pub licly, on the playgrounds, to the grown-ups, among whom sexual promiscuity respects neither age nor relationship, we see the irrepressible outbreak of innate, uncontrollable and

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bestial lusts. The negro preachers are regular Sultans, with whole female congregations for wives and concubines. Go to th city drug-stores and physicians and learn something about these colored clergymen and their flocks.
Compare the Scotch, of any era, no matter how ancient, to these unmoral swine these poor creatures who have no con ception of chastity, none of honor, none of gratitude, none of principle, almost none of incest, and none whatever of that spiritual consecration and heroism which made the Scotch preacher and congregation, of nearly four hundred years ago, the dauntless preserver of the true faith, of individual liberty, and of popular rights 1 Bah!
Read this terrible but truthful summing up, in "The Amer ican Negro." Remember that the author calls the negroes "my people," and that his book is full of paternal, sympathetic advice to them:

"Soberly speaking, negro nature is so craven and sensuous in every fibre of its being that a negro manhood with decent respect for chaste womanhood does not exist.
"These conclusions are reached because the facts show that the negro is slowly and steadily undergoing moral deterioration; not, however, because he can not keep pace with the advancing strides of an environing superior civilization, but because he has no ethical integrity, no inbred determination for right-doing, and consequently no clearly defined and steadfast aversion to wrong-doing. The American negro never had a conscientious and intelligent apprecia tion of the law of obedience, and for that reason either does not clearly apprehend, or else wantonly ignores, essential facts. In any critical analysis of this subject, we shall easily discover that the groundwork of negro degeneration rests on mental frivolity and physical pleasure, and that, owing to these characteristic traits, his confusion of mind is such that he fails to realize that between good and evil conduct there is a great gulf. He has yet to discern that there is such a thing as moral inexorableness, with every sin shadowed by its own penalty. The simple truth is that there is going on side by side in the negro people, a minimum progress with a maximum regress; or, in other words, an awakening of a minority of them, with an increasing degradation of the majority."

That is an awful thing to say, but it is the truth.

Annihilate what the Scotch have done for the human species, and you will have cast a shade over the brightness of the intellectual heavens: but what would be lost if the negro's share in civilization were destroyed? Nothing whatsoever. He has written books: there isn't in a single one of them the breath of life. He has delivered orations: not one of them has risen to the heights of the eloquence of the Red Man some of whose "talks" were gems. He has been a student: and no thought of his has added a jewel to the treasury of Letters.

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If everything that he has ever said or published were sunk to the bottom of the sea, mankind would not miss it.
As a race, the negro has never even set a great example, never made a heroic struggle for independence. For countless ages, they have sold each other into foreign and domestic servitude, have eaten each other, have devoured the bodies of the dead, have had no sense of sexual purity, have had no religion, no conception of God, of Justice and Mercy; have had no prayer, excepting the piteous plea that their devils \vould forget them. Sons and daughters, husbands and wives, have immemorialy wallowed in orgies of sensualism, without feeling of shame even as they so often do in this country. Their only melody was a heart-broken wail of superstitious fear: they offered up human sacrifice: they grovelled before Witch Doctors, who "smelt out" the witches that these demons, or the fiendish chiefs, wished to get rid of: they fed on carrion, as well as human flesh.
The only pure-blooded negroes who ever were classed as great, were Toussaint and Chaka: neither of them equalled, in statesmanly qualities, Pontiac or Tecumseh. And both Toussaint and Chaka were utterly devoid of the humane traits of the two great Indians. Red Men evolved an alphabet and a written language: the negroes did not even reach the heights of picture writing. The Indians produced statesmen who established and maintained powerful confederacies: the negroes never did. The Red Men maintained the right of the indi vidual against the Chief, and could only be sentenced to death after a trial: the negroes had no conception of individual rights, and the Chief had his subjects killed at his own pleas ure. The Indians evolved a rude form of representative gov ernment : the negroes never did. The entire negro portion of Africa may be ransacked in vain to discover any manufacture comparable to the Xavajo blanket, the bead-work and the pot tery of the higher tribes. Always ready for war, the negro had no weapon that could equal the Indian's bow and arrow. There are pathetic proofs of the Red Man's capacity for gratitude: the negro is totally without it.
To the negro, his wife was his slave, necessary to the grati fication of his sexual passions: the Indian warrior left all the drudgery to his squaw; but there is evidence that sentimental love very often led to his choice of mate. (I know the Seminoles to be affectionate husbands and indulgent parents.) The Indian believed in the immortality of the soul, and his idea of Heaven was as elevated as that of the Mohammedan: the negro either had no thought of such matters, or cherished the belief that his ancestor was still living, somewhere, in the same
shape as before death. If he had been a man of some power

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and property, cows, slaves, etc., were slaughtered, now and then, in order that the said ancestors might not get out of food and servants.
Yet with all this superiority to the negro, the Red Man never did develop a civilization how absurd, then, the faith of
those who believe that the negro can do it! We can teach him, govern him, Christianize him, veneer him
with an outward polish of culture; and he will use big words,
wear store-clothes, ride in an auto, hold an office, crowd himself into the company of white folks, and act so much like a "col ored gentleman" that the Negro-philes invite him to dinner. But he's a negro, just the same. In spite of all that he can do, the savage will crop out.
The negro is as God made him: with all your money and your books and your political patronage, you cannct create
racial characteristics. It takes the Almighty to do that. The Christian Work and Evangelist, January 8, 1910, has
an article glorifying the negro, and repeating the old, old absurdity, that during their fifty years of freedom, the blacks have made greater progress than any people have ever made in the history of the world. A stupider falsehood, one could not write. The white race, through ages of agony and cease
less effort, originated our Civilization. During Slavery, we taught the African savage how to imitate our ways, speak our language and ape our customs. Often we had to use the lash to compel him to do it just as the rod is used on the dis obedient child, and just as trainers, by judicious severity, tame wild animals.
After the slave was made a free man, our example and co ercion continued to act upon him. Our laws, our officials, our
advice, our domination united to put irresistible pressure upon the black man. Circumstances simply forced him to keep step, as best he could, with the progress of the whites. But his travelling has been like unto that of the man who is too feeble to stand alone', and who has to be supported as he walks by a strong man on each side.
His achievement, compared to ours, is like that of the school boy who learns by heart Patrick Henry's immortal speech, and
spouts it at the "Commencement." Or like that of the amateurs who go to the art galleries, and copy the original creations of
Raphael, Michael Angelo, Rubens, Titian, Holbein, Turner,
Millais and David. "Between myself and Raphael," said a conceited copyist,
"there is only a hair's-breadth of difference."
But, as Villari justly comments, "in that invisible hair's-
breadth, there stretched all the infinite gulf that divides the
genius of an artist from the pedantry of a copyist."

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The fair test of the negro's capacity is, what he does, when left to depend upon himself.
We know what the Celts. Saxons, Jutes, Angles, Danes and other white tribes did. when left to work out their own destiny.
We see it in the state of things in which we live. We call it, Christian Civilization.
Xow. what did the negro ever do when left to his own re-
resources? Nothing. For thousands of years, the blacks of Africa had just as good an opportunity to evolve a civilization as the Indo-Germanic people had: but the savage African tribe of five thousand years is faithfully represented by the savage
man-eating tribe of today. In Liberia, were located the very best American negroes who
could be induced to return to their native country. A modern state was set up. and these educated emigrants from the United States were left in control of it.
With what result? A failure so complete, so hopeless, that it would be ludicrous, were it not so tragic.

Robert Toombs: A Life Sketch; Some
Anecdotes, and His Last Public
Speech
ONE sunny morning, in the early summer of 1871, a scrap of a country boy who had walked into the town of Thomson to get the mail, saw a tall, portly stranger come stepping up Main street with the majesty of a King. There was a regal air, a bearing indicative of self-conscious power, that I have never seen worn by any other man. naturally, as this man wore it.
Old Mr. Cartledge was toddling down toward the postoffice his daily habit and as the distinguished-looking stranger met him, I heard the quick, but not cordial, salutation.
"Good morning, Mr. Catt-ledge." Now the little boy dared not address the formidable stranger; his very carriage forbade impertinence and familiarity; but Judge Cartledge was a friend of the family who rested his tired feet every day on our piazza, in his going and coming to and from the village, and therefore I did not hesitate to draw close to him and ask, "Who was that, Mr. Cartledge?" And somehow or other I felt it in my "bones that there could be but one answer, and that was, "General Toombs." The great lawyer had managed a case against Mr. Cartledge, and the two were not friendly, hence the curtness of the greetings exchanged. Doubtless I had seen pictures of Toombs in the books, though I do not remember to have done so. My real belief is that he had been described to me so often, had taken such a hold of my boyish fancy, and had become so much of a reality in my own mind that I would have known him anywhere, picture or no picture. For there never was another man like Toombs. Ben Hill was great. Alex Stephens was great, but neither of them ap proached Bob Toombs in the perfect symmetry and majesty of physical and intellectual manhood. Neither Hill nor Stephens impressed you, unless they were aroused and in action; Toombs impressed you always; and, in private conversation, the astonishing powers of his mind ex-

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acted the same mastery of his surroundings, that they gave
him in the court room, on the hustings, at the council board, and in the Senate.
Stephens in repose looked like a sickly boy, or like a withered spinister. dressed up by mistake in breeches; Hill was apt to scrouge down in his seat, even in the Senate, like a man on his shoulder-blades; but Toombs, without the hint of a strut, never let himself down; in action he was the lion aroused: when at ease, he was the lion at rest. I think I never saw the inborn, imperial superiority of Toombs make itself so conspicuously self-evident as it did in his lordly bearing at the breakfast table. It was impossible to think of him as slouch ing, trifling, dawdling, or merely acting. Always, everywhere, he was Toombs, high-headed, massive, forceful, or mantled in Websterian silence and dignity.
He excelled in the sagacity which pierces a problem at a glance: in the power of condensation, which crushes an op ponent with one sentence. He was the wittiest of men, because of the sheer native brilliance of mind which surpassed all ordinary standards in swift perception and happy expression. He spoke powerfully, because he felt powerfully; and the best speeches he ever made were due to sudden turbulenc of violent passions, aroused by the circumstances surrounding him.
Had Toombs subjected his powers to early discipline, there is no telling how far he might have gone. Senator Beck, like Mr. Stephens, believed that, in natural gifts, Robert Toombs was the greatest American of his day.
Rev. Dr. John M. White, told me that while Ben Hill was serving in the U. S. Senate, he remarked to him, (Dr. White), in the course of a conversation, "If Toombs were by my side here in Congress. I would give more for his help than I would for that of everybody else in the State of Georgia. He is a walking Encyclopedia, and he could tell me all those things that I do not know and which I need to know, regarding political history and these great questions concerning the national welfare."
It is said that the ancestors of Robert Toombs were royalists in England, and that it was on their estate at Boscobel that the young prince, afterwards known in history as Charles II., took refuge in the oak tree, while the Cromwellian troopers rode beneath, looking for him. Shortly after the battle of Worcester, the Toombs family left England and settled in Virginia. During the Revolutionary War, a regiment of
troops was sent from Virginia to Georgia, and the father of Robert Toombs was a major in this regiment. At the close of the war. Major Toombs settled in Wilkes County on the land which he had drawn from the State for his services as a

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soldier. He died in 1815, leaving a will which divided a large
estate in lands and slaves among his children, two sons and four daughters.
Robert Toombs was born in Wilkes County, July 2, 1810. He was slender, as a boy, and active and full of mischief, but was not considered particularly bright. He excelled in boyish
games, was fond of horse-back riding, and enjoyed the best of health. Upon one occasion he rode from his home in Wilkes to Milledgeville, a distance of sixty-five miles, and danced at a ball that night.

RESIDENCE OF GENERAL TOOMBS, WASHINGTON, GA.
He attended the old field schools of the neighborhood in which he lived; was then given a course of study by a private tutor; and was then sent to the State University of Georgia.
Toombs was no student, at college. He read a great deal, but did not apply himself to his textbooks. Violating the rules as to playing cards at night and fearing the disgrace of an expulsion, he prevailed upon his guardian to secure for him an honorable discharge, and thus left his alma mater. He was next entered at Union College, Schenectady, N. Y., where he finished his classical course and received his degree. Then he went to the University of Virginia, where he studied law cne year.

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In March. 1830. he was admitted to the bar in Elbert County, his license being signed by the celebrated Wm. H. Crawford. At that time, this distinguished Georgian was a mere wreck of his former self. A paralytic stroke had shattered mind and body, and his temper had been soured by disappointment and disease. As presiding Judge, he was sometimes very harsh to lawyers practicing in his court. Upon one occasion he and 3'Oting Toombs clashed, and Toombs made such a forceful pro test against the treatment which he was receiving from the bench that even Crawford was impressed and convinced.
Almost from the beginning Robert Toombs had all the law business that he cared to manage. He became an intense student. Xot only did he give the most scrupulous care to the preparation of his cases, but he mastered law as a science. Between himself and Ales. H. Stephens, as lawyers, there was no comparison. Between himself and H. V. Johnson, as law yers, there was no comparison. He was no greater advocate or court-house lawyer than Benj. H. Hill, but he far surpassed Hill as a master of the science of jurisprudence.
In the counties of Wilkes. Oglethorpe. Elbert. Columbia, Warren and Taliaferro. Toombs continued to practice for many years, doing the cream of the business and earning a princely income. Xeither Ben Hill nor Alex. Stephens knew what to do with money after they made it. Neither of them had any talent for investment or for business. Toombs on the other hand, was an all-round man of affairs. It is doubtful if he ever made an unfortunate investment until the clouding of his mind, during his last years, caused him to become the victim of sharpers, in Atlanta.
The far-t that young Toombs. while a student at the Univer sity of Virginia, rode all the way to Charlotte to hear John Randolph make one of his last political speeches, indicates a passion which he had for politics nnd public life.
He was hardly well on his feet as a lawyer before he ran for the Legislature, being elected successively in 1839, 1840, 1842 and 1843. As Chairman of the Judiciary Committee and as Chairman of the Banking Committee, he rendered ex tremely important services. The State was flooded with the notes of State banks which were circulating at about 40 cents on the dollar. Toombs compelled the banks to provide a fund to redeem their bills, and thus they were at once brought to par. In 1S40 as Chairman of the Committee of Internal Improvements, he gave his powerful aid towards the comple-
' tion of the Western and Atlantic railroad. A notable attempt of his. which unfortunately failed, was a bill to abonsn suretyship in Georgia. If the world had the statistics showing the numbers of men. women, and children who are reduced to

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poverty and ruin by the weakness of individuals who become securities for others, the good com'mon sense of Toombs would be apparent to everybody.
In 1844 Toombs was elected to Congress as a Whig. In
October of that year he had a memorable debate with George McDuffie in the city of Augusta. The political alliances of Toombs compelled him to defnd the Henry Clay tariff. Mc
Duffie, of course, assailed it. In the course of his speech. Mr. McDuffie was illustrating the effect of the tariff on various
commodities used by the Southern people. One of these was
broad-cloth. Mr. McDuffie himself wore broadcloth, and his carriage driver was also garbed in a livery of that material,
McDuffie being very proud of his fine horses and the noble
appearance of his equipages. It seems incredible that Toombs
could have turned the tide against McDuffie in a debate on a question of great national importance, by making a personal allusion, but according to the accounts given me by those who
had the story from those present on that occasion, Toombs completely unhorsed McDuffie by crying out:
"The gentleman speaks of broad-cloth and the effect of the
tariff upon the prices of broad-cloth. Why, fellow-citizens, I do not see anybody here that is we'aring broad-cloth except the gentleman from South Carolina and his nigger carriage driver!"
Toombs was himself afterwards somewhat ashamed of this thrust of the demagogue, and he admitted, in private conversa
tion, that he had not been able to touch McDuffie's argument.
Nevertheless, he was elected to Congress, taking his seat in
December, 1845. In January, 1846, he spoke on the Oregon question, making his debut, and "a grand debut it was," says
his life-long friend and then colleague in Congress, Mr. Ste phens. In July. 1846. Mr. Toombs made an elaborate speech
against the tariff bill of 1846. In this speech he was most assuredly wrong.
In each succeeding session of Congress. Mr. Toombs was one of the leading figures, until his election to the Senate. In 1850, he and Mr. Stephens threw themselves against the
Disunion movement, giving all of their influence to what was known as the Compromise of 1850. As Thos. H. Benton said, "Georgia was at the head of the States which had the merit of stopping the Disunion movement." In November, 1851, Toombs was elected to the United States Senate. In 185"4, he ceased to be a Whig. He acted with the Democratic Party from thence forward until 1860, after which year it is doubtful
if he considered himself a member of any political party. In his "Twenty Years of Congress" Mr. Blaine states that
Robert Toombs was the only one of the Southern statesmen

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who made a plain, definite, candid statement of those condi tions -which would satisfy the Southern States and cause them to remain in the Union. In brief, these conditions were that the Southern people should have the same rights in the terri tories as were possessed by citizens of other portions of the Union; that property in slaves should be entitled to the same protection from the Government as any other property; that persons committing- crimes against slave property in one State and fleeing to another should be given up to be punished; that fugitive slaves should be surrendered; that Congress should pass laws for the punishment of all people who should aid and abet invasion and insurrection in any other State.
In a speech of which Mr. Stephens used to say "If ever the pillars of that temple shook, it was while Toombs was making that speech." this Tribune of the Southern people declared:
"You will regard Confederate obligations; you will not regard constitutional obligations; you will not regard your oaths. What. then, am I to do? Am I a freeman? Is my State a free State? We are freemen; we have rights; I have stated them. We have wrongs; I have recounted them. I have demonstrated that the party now coming into power has de clared us outlaws, and is determined to exclude thousands of millions of our property from the common territory; that it has declared us under the ban of the United States everywhere. They have refused to protect us from invasion and insurrection by the Federal power, and the Constitution denies to us, in the Union, the right to raise fleets and armies for our own defense. All these charges I have proven by the record; and I put them before the civilized world and demand the judg ment of today, of tomorrow, of distant ages, and of Heaven . itself upon the justice of these causes. I am content, whatever it be. to peril all in so holy a cause. We have appealed, time and again, for these constitutional rights. You have refused them. We appeal again. Restore to us those rights as we had them: as your Court adjudges them to be; just as our people have said they are. Redress these flagrant wrongs seen of all men and it will restore fraternity, and unity, and peace to us all. Refuse them, and what then? We shall then ask you, 'Let us depart in peace/ Refuse that, and you present us war. We accept it. and. inscribing upon our banners the glorious words, 'Liberty and Equality.' we will trust to the blood of the brave and the god of battles for security and tranquility."
Historians will have no difficulty in reaching, finally, the facts concerning that deplorable rupture between the North and the South. The speeches of such men as Abraham Lincoln were full of conciliation and brotherly love, but Mr. Lincoln himself stood at the head of those who refused to make any

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concession to the South in the interest of peace. After all the efforts at compromise had failed, Mr. Toombs sent his cele brated telegram to the people of Georgia, and his powerful influence was thrown in favor of the ordinance of secession.
The seceding States having set up a government of their own, it is perfectly clear now that Toombs should have been at the head of it. He was the embodiment of Southern senti ment at that time. He was broad and he was practical. In his composition, there was none of the bigot or the martinet. No man in the South so fully realized that the success of the Southern Confederacy was a business proposition. Had he been made President of the Southern Confederacy, there is no doubt whatever that our cotton would have been stored in Europe and used as a basis of credit. Bonds and currency would have been based upon this cotton, which, in the nature of things, would have been advancing in price all the time. With these resources, wisely used communications between the Southern States and Europe would have been kept open and the blockade which ruined us could never have been estab lished in the face of Southern energy, aided by the self-interest of Europe. With Toombs as President, there might have been no war at all. He warned the Davis Cabinet that if they fired on Sumpter they would start the bloodiest war in history. The Southern Confederacy might have become a happy, pros
perous republic, just as Mexico now is, and just as Canada is for all practical purposes. Even if there had been a war, Toombs was the man to have finished it up, one way or the other, inside of a year.
Appointed Secretary of State by President Davis, Mr. Toombs had no real opportunities. He laughingly said that he carried all the papers of the Confederate State Department in his hat, and when the Government began to use unlimited amounts of paper currency, with no foundation for it to rest upon and no plan for its redemption provided, Toombs' dis gust was complete. He used to say the niggers run the presses all day making money for the white folks, then, at night, they
were allowed to work the machine to run off the money to pay
their wages. He and Mr. Davis were civil enough to each other in their
personal relations, for each was a gentleman, but the utter lack of harmony between them soon made Toombs' position un bearable to him. Besides, he had said so much before the war about fighting, that he may have felt that he must do some
of it. Throwing up his commission in the Cabinet, he went
to the army as Brigadier. Here his service was fitful, and not regularly worthy of him. He chafed under the restraints of
discipline; loudly criticised the stupid blunders of superior

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officers; denounced the West Point narrowness which, as he thought, dominated Mr. Davis; and was altogether a most turbulent Brigadier. He was sickened at the sight of the massacre of gallant troops at Malvern Hill, where the awful mistakes of Magruder and other Southern commanders re sulted in such frightful losses. He had a furious quarrel with Gen. D. H. Hill, challenging that officer to mortal combat. He was put under arrest by Gen. Longstreet for insubordina
tion, to be released upon terms most honorable to himself and to Lee's "Old War Horse." He displayed such fiery gallantry
at Sharpsburg. in holding the bridge, that he won for himself immortality as a soldier by being singled out for special mention in the official report of Gen. Robert E. Lee.

TOOMBS AS A FIGHTER.
What General Longstreet Has to Say About Our Bob.
In a conversation with General Longstreet, concerning the Con federate generals with whom he was associar ed, he said:
"Do you know General Robert Toombs, of your State, was one of the bravest and most daring soldiers that I ever saw on any field?"
"He was pretty hard to manage, was he not?" "Yes, sir; at first. He had literally no idea of subordination. He was born to rule, and had been carrying out the purposes of his birth pretty well, up to the time he entered the army. It was hard for him to give up his lordly habits even them. "I remember a characteristic instance in which General Toombs figured. I sent out his brigade on picket duty once. Of course, the discretion of placing the brigades was in the hands of the proper officers. Toombs had been out that day dining with a Marylander named Dennis, who had been one of his colleagues during his Con gressional career. They had old wine for winner, and Toombs was riding home feeling like a lord. ' Suddenly he ran against his brigade on picket duty. He was very much angered. " 'Who put you here?' he shouted. "He was answered that it was orders from headquarters. " 'Well, by G d, my orders are that you come back to camp. I'm not going to have all the picket duty of the army put on my brigade. Come along!" "And sure enough, he led them back to their camp. "As soon as I beard of It, I of course ordered him under arrest. "As was the custom, he was simply ordered to ride In the rear of his brigade. I thought everything was going off all right, when suddenly an officer came to me and told me that we would have a revolt in the army, if I did not interfere. I asked him what he meant and he told me that General Toombs was riding along in the rear of his brigade, and exhorting the soldiers against the oppres sion that had been practiced toward them and him. My informant said that the soldiers were getting very restless. "I at once ordered General Toombs back to Gordonville. I kept him there a day or two, when having received a very handsome let ter from him, I ordered him to the front again. He came as fast as his horse could carry him.

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"When he reached us, Gen. Lee and myself were together con sulting about the opening of a battle, which was just then pending. As Gen. Toombs rode up, and saluted, I stated that I would take ; great pleasure in sending a courier with orders restoring him to .his command. He spoke up rapidly and said that as a charge was imminent he should like to head it, and hoped that he might be the bearer of the orders himself.
"I of course assented. In a few moments Toombs' brigade passed us, hurrying to the charge, and Toombg flying in the front like a comet, leading them to the assault.
"He was as dashing a soldier as ever went on the battle field, and a hardy and impetuous fighter."
In the course of a long conversation, Gen. Longstreet repeatedly expressed his admiration for Gen. Toombs, and commented on his daring qualities.

After the collapse of the Confederacy, he made good his escape to Europe where he spent his time in traveling about, studying peoples and institutions; finally coming home when the dangers of arbitrary punishment had passed away with the utter failure of the prosecution of Jefferson Davis.
After the war, Toombs was practically a national outcast. His disabilities were never removed. He never took the oath of allegiance to the Federal Government. He gloried, to the last, in the fact that he was an unreconstructed rebel. By court-house work, he recuperated broken fortunes.
The oppression inflicted upon our people by railroad monop olies excited his deepest indignation, and he said: "If I were only forty-five years old, I would wage war against these monopolies and break them up." While in Europe, he had given much study to the railroad problem, and he came home with the fixed idea of making a struggle for governmental control of transportation companies. It was at his instance. mainly, that the Constitutional Convention of 1877 was called: and in that body he was the controlling spirit. The establish ment of the railroad commission was his own work, and he fondly believed that he had forever curbed the encroachment and the rapacity of the Northern corporations that were robbing the Southern people in freight and passenger rates. He had never ceased to denounce the manner in which the carpet-baggers had looted the treasury of the State by giving aid to private speculation and issuing bonds for all kinds of wild-cat enterprises. In the new Constitution he forever made that kind of public dishonesty impossible in Georgia.
The last great legal compaign that he ever conducted was in behalf of the State against tax-dodging railroad corpora tions. After a series of battles in which he met and conquered the ablest lawyers that could be brought against him. he suc ceeded in securing the recognition of a principle of taxation .against the railroad, which added tens of thousands of dollars

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to the annual revenues of the State.
One of the most beautiful traits of the character of this leoine man was the purity and tenderness of his devotion to his wife. While always more or less intemperate in his habits
and frequently intoxicated his indulgence in this respect at a banquet in Montgomery having been, it is said, the cause of his failure to be elected President of the Southern Confederacy his excess in that direction, deplorable as it was, never caused him to be even suspected of conjugal disloyalty. He might spend the whole night at the Kimball House, Atlanta, carousing with jolly companions, drinking freely of strong French brandy, and talking in the wildest, most reckless man ner: but if he were expecting his wife on the early morning train, as sometimes happened, he would suddenly exclaim, 'Gentlemen! I have got to meet Mrs. Toombs at the next train." and he would call for a pitcher of sweet milk, drink
perhaps a quart of it. and afterwards sally forth, as sober as a judge, to meet the morning train, and escort Mrs. Toombs, with all the gallantry of youth, to her apartment in the hotel.
During his later years, he reminded one of some crumbling, colossal ruin. One could realize that much of the mighty fabric had fallen, but that which remained towered aloft in a
grandeur of its own. so that even his decline was great. As
the Coliseum still suggests the might of imperial Rome, as the isolated pillars of Karnak are eloquent reminders of a glory that is gone, so the fitful flashes of Toombs' intellect, to
the very last, revealed a largeness of mental proportion which,
though in ruins, recalled former grandeur. He died at his home in Washington. Wilkes County, in
December. 1885. While Gen. Toombs. after the war. remained a national
outcast, his position and his personality were so picturesque and strong that he was interesting to the North as well as to the SouthT When the New York "Day Book" in 1876, published a letter from him in which he gave his views on public questions, the editor used this glowing language: "Robert Toombs is the grandest intellect on this continent. With all the breadth and depth of a Webster, he has a brightness and versatility vastly surpassing that of the ponderous New Englander: and though sometimes this brilliant and mighty in tellectual force is sadly marred by eccentricities of judgment as well as speech, it is a real calamity to this generation of Americans when such a man is lost to the public councils."
To have compelled a tribute of this sort from a Northern editor who had nothing to gain and much to jeopardize by uttering such a eulogy, is one of the most striking evidences of Toombs' power. The letter to which the editor referred

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55

was summed up in his own words as being a plea for the "Kestoration of the American or Jeffersonian idea of Govern
ment, simplifying and confining it to its legitimate function for protection of person and property for all alike, and for
bidding any party or faction to use it for any class interest or to create any public debt." This, Mr. Toombs contended, was the absolute necessity of the times, else the grand "Amer ican experiment" would prove a failure, both in the North and in the South.
Always classed as a fire eater, Mr. Toombs was ever more violent in his talk than in his counsel. Mr. Stephens used to say that a more prudent adviser never sat at a council board than Robert Toombs. Nearly all of his letters indicate pro found thought and wise conclusion. They are state papers that deserve to rank with the best that can be found in the English archives on either side of the water. In heart and soul and mind, he was an English Whig of the type of Charles Fox.
In mere street talk, curb-stone badinage, hotel-piazza con versation, he frequently spoke to the moment and to the humor of the moment. On occasions like these, he was sometimes volcanic in his fiery denunciations of all that he had hated. When Gen. Gordon, Henry Grady. Alfred H. Colquitt, and Joseph E. Brown were talking "New South" ideas and preach ing reconciliation between the sections. Toombs' grandly pathetic isolation became more marked with each succeeding year. To the last, he was known as a "cusser of the damned Yankees."
One day I heard a lawyer speak to Toombs about this, deprecating the fierceness of his feeling and language against the North. The grand old man. bent with years, straightened as though he had been struck, and his eye flashed as he im petuously broke forth: "Why shouldn't 1^ hate the damned
Yankees ? country 1
Didn't t send invading armies to crush my people? Didn't they hire the scum of Europe to burn our cities, sack our homes, violate our women? Didn't they hold us down after the war with bayonet rule and put the nigger in control of the life, the
liberty, and the property of his former master? Didn't they exhaust everv effort to destroy all that the Southern people most loved and cherished? Hate them? Yes, by God! I do
hate them!" Yet this was the man who. at the memorial service held over
the dead body of Alex. H. Stephens, was unable to flowingly express the mournful sentiments of the hour as the other

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orators had done. He stood there shaken with grief, the tears rolling down his cheeks, unable to speak.
The Grecian painter. Timanthes, depicting the sacrifice of Iphigenia. could express on the face of everyone else present the grief which was felt at the approach of the awful doom of the devoted maiden: but, unable to throw into her father's face the agony inseparable from the hour, the artist drew a mantle over the features of Agamemnon, and thus made the hidden face the most touching of all. So, at the funeral of Alex. H. Stephens, where orators of celebrity were delivering memorial eulogies. Robert Toombs. the greatest orator of them all. w#as mor*e eloq*uent th*an all.*thoug*h he sa*id .n* othing. *
Of the many anecdotes concerning Toombs. the following are authentic:
(1)
After the Civil War. a veteran who had served in the Con federate Army, and who had before that, listened to the fiery speeches of the Firewater, met him. and said
"Look here. Mr. Toombs. you told us that the Yankees wouldn't be a match for us. and that we could whip 'em with corn-stalks."
Quick as a flash, the old statesman answered "Yes. I did. but d n ?em! they wouldn't fight that way."
(2)
When General Grant landed in San Francisco, after his tour around the world, he received many telegrams. One of them was from Robert Toombs. It read this way:
"You fought for your country and won: I fought for mine, and lost. Death to the Republic!''
(3)
Old I'nfle Johnnie Cart ledge, who did not love Toombs, told me this, one day when lie had stopped at our home, on his way from the Post-office:
"During one of the hot fights. Toombs sheltered himself behind a big tree, at the same time that he was shouting to his brigade. 'Ifnull. hoys, msh !'
"Some officer inquired of him why he remained behind the tree.
"His reply was: "Toombs is too portly a person to-expose himself for the straps of a d rl Brigadier.'" This story is probably apocriphal: but it must be remem bered that Gen. D. H. Hill accused Toombs of cowardice at

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57

the bloody battle of Afalvern Hill, and that Toombs afterwards challenged his superior officer to fight a duel, on account of this accusation.

Toombs was defending X. H. of Columbia County, from the charge of rape. The alleged victim was a young white woman who had been living in the household of the accused.
The evidence against X. H. was very strong, and the brilliant Julian Gumming was conducting the prosecution with great power.
The defense claimed mutual consent. A witness for X. H. testified that he had seen defendant and the young woman alone together, and that she had allowed him, to place his hands upon her bosom. In his speech, he made the most of this. His climax on that point was the exclamation "When the breast works arc carried, the intrenchments soonfollow! Ain't that so. Tom-Peter Watson?" The juror addressed was my uncle, brother of my hero, in "Bethany." The juror answered Toombs "Yes. that's so." X. H. was cleared, upon the theory that the woman consented though it is practically certain that she was forced. This anecdote was related to me by Judge William R. McLaws, while I was reading law under him in the city of Augusta, Ga. The Judge was present at the trial and heard both Toombs and my uncle.
' (5)
Judge John I. Hall told me the following: He was with Toombs, near Macon, Ga., during the expiring agonies of the Civil War. Only a small body of soldiers was along. A courier brought Toombs a dispatch from headquarters wherever that was. His sage superior in command ordered that certain things be done, at once, to stay the advance of the hosts of General Sherman. Toombs was told to tear up some little bridges, over some little streams, cut the telegraph wires at a certain point, rip up the rail-road, at a certain point, and but Toombs' patience gave out. His scorn overflowed, and he roared "And in the big-road." This anecdote has never been in print before, but it is so characteristic of my subject that I venture to relate it leaving

K\

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the reader to imagine -what it was that Toombs suggested be done in the big-road, as equal to those other things that he was ordered to do. to stop Sherman's March to the Sea.

(6)
To revive the drooping spirits of the Confederate Armies of the West. President Jefferson Da vis made a speech in which, after many other re-assuring statements, he told the soldiers that they would soon be rested and refreshed when encamped amid the green fields around Nashville.
Toombs said that this reminded him of the dying Fallstaff "His nose was as sharp as a pen, and 'a babbled V green fields."

(7)
The negro man who had been servant to Gabriel Toombs in the Civil War. saved his master's life one day in battle, receiving a terrible wound in the breast.
This negro, after the War. killed a man, and was being tried for murder.
Robert Toombs volunteered to defend. In the course of his speech to the jury. Toombs worked up to a climax, and dramat ically tore the negro's shirt open, disclosing the scar received in defense of his master.
' Will you condemn a man like this a man who risked his own life in battle to save that of his master?"
The appeal went home, and the verdict was "Xot Guilty."
(8)
In another murder case, the prosecution had to prove arsenical poisoning.
The main witness was the great physician. Dr. H. H. Steiner. On the direct examination, the good Doctor testified to finding arsenic in the stomach of the deceased. Toombs. for the defense, rose to cross-examine. "Doctor, you believed that it was a case of arsenical poison ing",Yedsi.d"n't you ?" ""YYoesu."believed that you would find arsenic in the stomach?" ""YYeosu."looked for arsenic?" ""YYeosu."found what you looked for?"

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5&

"Come down, Doctor," said the shrewd lawyer, blandly and t*he test*imony* of the* witne*ss was*disreg*arded * by"th*e jury.
Toombs lay on his death-bed, his mind wandering. At the time his last illness seized him, the Georgia legisla ture was in session. Weeks wore by, as the sick statesman gradually neared the great ferry. Towards the last, in a lucid interval, some one in the room happened to mention what was happening in the legislature. Toombs roused himself: "Hasn't the legislature adjourned yet?" "No, General." "S* end fo* r Cro* mwell* .'" he* cried.****
After the Civil War, Toombs was a picturesque rather than an important personage.
Nevertheless, the newspaper reporters were glad to talk to him; and he was often urged to make public speeches. During Reconstruction days, when the military arm of the Federal Government held the South in subjection, he prepared a lec ture on Magna Charta that was said to be wonderfully fine. He delivered it in several of the cities of Georgia. But he never* wrot* e it ou* t, and* it is* lost. * > ***
From an old scrap-book which I kept when a young lawyer, I will extract some newspaper notices of Toombs, and will give one of his speeches one of his very last.
Indeed, I am under the impression that it was the last politi cal speech which he ever made.
(1)

A TAWS WITH TOOMBS. Th Leonine Georgian Unbosoms Himself as to the Situation.
(Correspondence Cincinnati Commercial.) Washington, Dec. 20. General Robert Toombs. of Georgia, na tionally known as the Southern nre-eater, and the gentleman who swore he would never yield until he called his slave-roll at the foot of Bunker Hill, is in the city, attending to important business before the Supreme Court. For the last three years he has been visiting Washington frequently, called hither to argue cases before the Supreme Tribunal. His law practice is very extensive, and is said to be more lucrative than any other private practice in the South. He never touches a case for a less consideration than $5,000. As a brilliant advocate and an able and calculating jurist, his reputation is as great now as in his palmy political days when he fired the Senate by his burning rhetoric and inflamed the South-

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era heart-string by his impassioned declamation. We met him as he left the Supreme Court today, and on presenting our card as a preliminary for a little talk we took a survey of the illustrious character while he was considering our claims for an audience. He is a man of five feet and ten inches in height, with a full 170 pounds mathematically distributed over his several limbs; his physique is not imposing, but it is Impressing to one on the first meeting that within the casing is an Iron soul, a steel heart and a golden brain; his face is broad and clearly cut; his eyes are still gray, and shine with but little dimness, though sixty-five years have passed since they first saw light; his hair shows the pencllings of "time and the approach of the grave; It is not snowy white, but thoroughly gray; in quantity it is abundant, and hangs in long, ^straight locks almost to his collar; it is roughly kept, showing that .comb and brush are not the most favorite utensils of his house\hold. His head is unusually large; the forehead is broad and ^almost excessively high; it is not a retreating but a projecting and joverhanging one; the cerebellum Is full and roundly developed, making the intellectual portion of the gentleman symmetrical and well-fashioned. Age has shown its mark in another particular by stooping the sholders that were once so straight and strong. His clothes are quite common and fit rather loosely. His shirt was not the cleanest we have seen, and his tie could certainly have sus tained a better Chesterfield twist. : "Well," says he, after glancing at our card, with a very polite bow and a warm grasp of the hand, "I am glad to see you, but I' do not want to be asked any questions of a personal or strong political character. You must remember that I am not a citizen of this country, so I should not be used as the oracle of the views of, any sect or organization."
After giving assurances that no personal questions should be introduced, we ventured on the broad question as to the condition of the South.
"The South," said he, "is poor, not on the verge of bankruptcy, but clear down in the abyss of poverty; not one decade, but two, it will take to restore the South to her pristine glory and position.
The war left us in a horrible condition, but by perseverence, economy, education, and the restoration of local government, we will in time fully recuperate."
"Who is the South in favor of for President in 1880 on the Democratic ticket; and if the Republicans are to have another Executive, who would the South prefer?"
"Well, I will answer your last question first. If, by the decrees of Omnipotence, we are not to be free for four years more from radical power, then I should say give us a full lion, not a sucking sheep. Grant is a lion. I have respect for the man, because he kills or wins. I have never forgotten how gracefully he treated
Lee and our soldiers at Appomattox."

(2)
TOOMBS ON THE SITUATION.
The Quiet Irony of the Retired Statesman.
Somehow or other, when General Toombs makes his appearance in town, he always stumbles against a Constitution reporter. He stumbled against one yesterday.

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL, LITERARY, ETC.

GL

"Well, General," said the newspaper man, "what do you think of the elections?"
"I think a good deal and say little. I'm getting too old to talk. I'm too old to work the roads and too old to vote. In ancient times they used to have infirmaries for old men. In these days, you boys merely want to hear them talk and they talk too much."
"But you see, General, we make allowances for that." "Oh, yes; I understand that. You make allowances, and then you go off and print what I probably ought to have said, but didn't. You are a nice set you editors. But I like you though, and for that reason I forgive you." "But about the elections?" persisted the reporter. "Well, they've gone pretty much as I would have had them go. That was a rare fight Persons made in the fourth." "It was a surprising one." "So you say. But it didn't surprise me. Persons is a man of Intellect and culture." "But how about Felton?" "Felton?" said the General, affecting surprise. "Who is Felton? Why, I thought The Constitution had compelled Felton to retire. He isn't elected, is he? Well, bless my soul!" "That's what they say, General. They say he's elected." Whereupon General Toombs chuckled gleefully, and remarked: "Well, I'll tell you what, the old man is a tough one. They say his face is hard enough to crack hickory-nuts upon, and when a load of squirrel-shot is fired at him he sheds it as a duck does water. That is the reason you didn't win. You fired at him with squirrel-shot. They didn't penetrate." "But suppose," said the reporter, "Felton concludes to run for Governor what then?" "Then I'm for him," said General Toombs, emphatically. Thereupon the reporter, weeping thoughtfully over the General's independentism, withdrew his forces and retired.

The Persons alluded to had been elected to Congress, as an
Independent (1874). Dr. Felton was a magnificent orator \vho fought against
Wall Street finance in Congress, and prophesied the evils of the Contraction policy of the Government.
He also made the fight for Free-of-tariff-duty Quinine.
And he saved the State Kailroad (The Western & Atlantic), from the sharks, that were after it.

(3)
GENERAL TOOMBS IX THE CAPITOL.
A Characteristic Speech, in Which the Tariff, the Public Debt, Pub lic Expenses and Official Extravagance Are Denounced. Mr. Bill Follows Him in a Ringing Speech.
During the past week General Robert Toombs has remained in our city as a guest of the Kimball. At frequent times efforts were made to get him to address the members of the legislature upon the current events of the day. Yesterday, he gave his consent to make them a speech, and during the morning session of the legis-

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lature a resolution was passed In the House tending him the use

of the hall during the evening. The announcement that he would

speak had the effect of bringing out a large crowd, and on last.

night the hall of the House of Representatives was crowded until

standing-room was not to be had for love or money. At 8 o'clock

General Toombs entered the hall and mounted the Speaker's stand.

As he was well known to all who were present, an introduction to

the audience that had assembled to hear him was unnecessary, and

he at once commenced the duties that were before him. He spoke as follows:

General Toombs' Speech.

Fellow-Citizens: I undertake the duty to which you have called me with some reluctance tonight; mainly on account of my own physical disability. The condition of the country suggests the subject. It is the subject that occupies all men's heads and all men's hearts. It is the public distress that is everywhere pervading the country, without reference to section, climate or pursuits. Hence, it becomes your duty as representatives of the people of Georgia to give your best exertions and efforts to searching out Its causes, and, as far as possible, to alleviate our distress. This gen eral distress is not the work of Providence. Old Mother Earth has not forgotten her children. Looking over this broad land from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the Lakes to the Gulf, general prosperity, abudance and plenty exist In all sections of the country except that portion which has been devastated with that terrible scourge. Elsewhere we have had health and abundance. That Is a general rule; of course there are exceptions. That is the general result all over the continent. Yet, in the midst of all there Is bankruptcy, turmoil and discontent pervading all classes of the people. Why? What is the reason, when nature is so beneficent; when industry has been devoting itself to the prosperity of the country; why are not the people happy and prosperous? Crimes are everywhere; discontent prevails everywhere. As I have told you, it is not the act of God; it is not the deed of Providence, but it is bad government that is the fountain of all your woea. (Applause.)
Seventeen years ago when the war between the States com menced, this Government was carried on for less than $60,000,000. The public debt did not amount to $60,000,000. We had a small army of about 6,000 men. We had a little navy, and we were an industrious, happy people. The revenue had been brought down to the wants of the people. The tariff was brought down 20 per cent. Every department of the Government was run with honesty and integrity. But the men of the Eastern States did not desire that state of things to continue. From the time our fathers sat with them at the council board at Philadelphia and all through the struggles that followed down to that day, they wanted to carry on the Government on a different principle. They wanted protection for all their products and all their manufactures. They wanted to bring money into the treasury and apply it to theli own benefit. They sought to sequester the public lands, and put them to their own uses, and not those of the people of the United States. The first thing they did was to commence carrying out that policy. They enlarged all your expenditures; they issued tens and hundreds of million of paper currency, the furnishing of which had hitherto belonged to the people of the different States. They then got other

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63

Institutions to help them. They commenced throwing away in mil lions the public lands of the country, the common domain of all the people, and turning hundreds of millions out of the treasury in carrying on a war not in any view that they cared for the prin ciples at issue they cared not one-half as much for the negro as the people of the South hut simply to retain control of the Gov ernment. They carried on the Government in. 1787 for one term under the elder Adams a very good man but the best of that class of men that the people trusted until Lincoln came into power. When they got into possession of the Government, the first object was to overthrow the South, to overthrow her Institutions, to invade her soil and to murder her inhabitants. And to effect this purpose they brought all the people they could from Ireland, Ger many and the lands beyond the sea. They got hold of the Gov ernment seventeen years ago and inflicted upon us the worst race of thieves upon the face of the earth. (Applause.) Nobody dis putes that. They take all the premiums for that. (Applause.) They stand out as a reproach to the human race. They have got so common that the public sensibilities have been deadened. After the war they flooded the treasury with seven hundred millions of greenbacks and a hundred millions of national bank notes. There never was a government on the face of the earth that could make money. There never was a government on earth that could make a fig-leaf to cover the nakedness of our mother Eve. They could draw money from the treasury and appropriate it to their own use, but they can't make a dollar of money. It seems to be the idea of some gentlemen in these days, and when I was a boy they had a good deal of that idea, that if you want money, you can just stamp it. All the Government has to do is simply to stamp it. You may stamp all you please, but how are you going to redeem It? On that subject, I believe very much in my old friend Preston's ideas on redeeming It. "I am against redemption," said he. "Take all the money and burn it up." (Laughter.)
These people thought they would protect the raw material of the country. Finally they caught up with the consumption of the United States, and it was a loss on their hands. Everybody could compete with them, and successfully. And what was the result? There were no United States ships that floated on the ocean. The fact was that we were ahead of no nation on earth but the Indians. (Laughter.) After that work was accomplished the Congress of the United States exerted all manner of means for retaining the power they had obtained. Frauds everywhere In the elections became a by-word, and you all know that to cap the climax they stole the Presidency. (Applause.) They had stolen towns, cities and States, and then stole the Presidency. They went on until they brought up the national debt to $2,000,000,0.00. We have not done as much, perhaps, because we have commenced later. (Laughter.) They robbed some of our States by their deputies. North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and the other States of .the South went through a second robbery a complete spoliation. Their great idea was to develop the country to make everybody .rich. If I should make a new dictionary to succeed old Worcester, I would make a new definition for development. Development means robbing the people. As I have said, here were the national debts. Then the tariff touched everybody. It protects the manu facturer, but plays the deuce with the consumer. (Laughter.) Building railroads whenever the State would indorse the bonds got us for some thirty or forty millions. We threw off some, and I

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wish the rest had gone with it. I shall not cry because my people will not pay for thefts, any more than I would pay for my own chains. (Applause.)
When the Republican party got through here, we were ten thousand millions in debt, everybody breaking, everybody ruined; and that is the condition today throughout the United States.
The money changer and the bondholder is the only one that holds his own, and he has to keep his hand on it all the time and pray for it. (Applause and laughter.) God Almighty curses them for it. Here is the vast number of people all over the country toil ing and struggling, and there never was a country on the face of the earth that worked harder and lived worse than the people of the Southern States. They have lived hard, worked hard and made nothing. It becomes us, and especially our legislators, to know how this is. It is not all the fault of the Government. Our own folly has something to do with it; but the great part of it has been done by bad government. We have had to pay heavy taxes. All these public debts, independent of people's own debts, had to be paid.
What is the consequence? You are taxed until it leaves no profit, until what you produce does not pay to make it; and "that's what's the matter with Hannah." (Laughter.) All that you can raise in cotton, and when you have done that there is not enough left to pay you. The debts of our people have gone on from day to day, and what is worse the greater number of people in this country don't care any more for their debts than you do. (Laughter.) They make a little cotton, have a little to start the new year on and then they go ahead. In Georgia you owe $11,000,000 of money. That is your part of the spoliation of Bullock & Co. Here are your citiesand towns with a tax of one and a half and two per cent. You have to go on and pay that. In this schedule, which has been furnished me by the comptroller-general, it states that you pay seven mil lions of dollars for transportation, while your cotton is not worth twenty millions. That shows simply the internal transportation. I remember the time when the people of my section never paid a dollar for transportation. They raised their own stock, and carried their cotton to Augusta and laid in their supplies, and came back again with money in their pockets. Here is a system that would have taken a generation to stand. It would have taken a miracle to have saved us, and that was the object of our enemies. Ruin aroused us. If you started a little bank of two or three hundred thousand dollars you would enter into a copartnership with some body in Xew York, and they caught you there. We suffered morethan anybody else from this system. If this factory here buys cotton today on the streets, it will be on the Livrpool price-current in gold. It is the fluctuation that troubles us. The time was when I saw fifty-three per cent, go up and down at one time in New York. "Black Friday," they called it, and it was a black day for a heap of them. I say to you tonight, gentlemen, it is my honest opinion, from close observation, that from the time I came back, in 1867, from abroad when I had run away from the thieves and radicals, until now, there has not a single sun set that did not find the people poorer than when it rose. Some people have risen, but I .say to you, it is my honest opinion that there has not been a day when the sun has not set upon the'people to find them poorer than when it arose. They have lived among sorrows and desolations, and they look to you to help them out of this condition.
The system of transportation is one of the most important of all questions to the whole world, and it is more important to the

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C5

United States than any other nation because of our extent of country. In this boundless extent of territory there is no question of equal importance to the United States and Georgia than the subject of transportation.
The great idea when the roads were chartered in our State was to leave everything to competition. That was the general belief, and it was my own. But it turned put very soon, as a great English engineer has said, that where combination was possible, competition was worthless. You need not be blind. That fact has been settled to the satisfaction of all. Here are three or four of these roads that meet here in Atlanta in defiance of competition, and in defiance of law, coming up every day and "pooling" over you. The news papers say every day these people have made no money.
Fellow-citizens, it has been my duty as the attorney of the State for several years to look into this business. I say that no regular industry in the State of Georgia has ever paid like the railroads. The Georgia Railroad has made an average of $1,500 per day. It has now ?1,500,000, and it has watered its stock.
That is the way the poor railroads are getting along. In the days of Bulloch they built roads where nobody ever wanted them. Like the road from Macon to Jesnp they started nowhere and stopped nowhere. That is the case with the Gulf road. They got a million dollars, and, of course, built it nowhere with everybody's money. The public went into it, and the man who started the road didn't have a quarter of a dollar to cover his eyes with. These were the roads that failed. These were the roads that didn't pay. We went into it with the money and they con
tributed the experience, and they come out with the money, and we have the experience.
Here we are getting poorer every day. For the last two years the taxes of the people of Georgia on taxable property have dimin ished ten millions per annum. We are going down, down, down! There Is a great work you have to do. Let the legislature look Into it. Let us destroy nothing. We have got nothing to destroy. We must try to save all we have got. Let us do justice to every"body, and start afresh on an honest bottom; start with an honest government; keep honest money, and honest contracts, and the country will be saved. (Applause.)

After Toombs had finished, Senator Ben Hill was called
upon for a speech. He began by a tribute to Toombs. of -whom he said: "We know that his head is great and his heart is true."

j I i I I j
u .j
; .v Jjj "i i 1" | I i \ i I t'
4'.

The Glory That was Greece.
THEY will tell you that the people are incapable of selfgovernment: that the mob is a great beast; that in every democracy lies the germ of dissolution. Very lofty and super cilious is the scorn with which your Allisons and Hamiltons and William Pitts look down upon plain commoners. Even genial Sydney Smith must have his fling at "them asses."
How odd it is that a recluse poet, like Gray, musing in a country church-yard, should strike a deeper, truer note in the study of possibilities than is to be found in the ornate orations of Burke. "What a proof of innate ideas it is that Robert Burns, the illiterate Scotch bard, should, in one impromptu, indignant burst of lyric verse, pour forth the essential truths of the Declaration of Independence. the creed of democracy.
The fathers who founded our Federal Government had no faith in the people. In a sly. covert way, the few who were dissatisfied with the Old Confederation set out to overthrow it. A loose Confederacy did not suit them; they wanted a centralized government in which the privileged few should manipulate the republic to their own advantage. They pro fessed a desire to amend the Articles of the Confederation; and the sincerity of these professions is shown by the fact that, when they convened for business, they drew from their pockets new constitutions creating a new national government. They deliberated behind closed doors, for fear that their constituents might learn what was going on and might arouse themselves to protest. They forbade the keeping of any record of their proceedings. It was not until 1842, when the Madison Papers were given to the world that the American people knew what had passed behind those closed doors.
It was then too late. Had the proceedings of the Convention of 1787 been faithfully kept and promptly published, Hamilton could never have overcome Jefferson in the matter of the National Bank, for the world would have known that the authority to charter a corporation, proposed in the Convention. had been voted down. Nor would Chief Justice Marshall have been able to make the decision in "Marbury vs. Madison." arrogating to the Supreme Court the Constitutional right to set aside Acts of Congress, for the delegation of power to the Court was proposed and voted down in the Constitutional Convention.
When the Convention of 1787 had finished its work, they

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67

offered to the country a scheme of government which was un democratic, in letter and in spirit. Instead of leaving sov
ereign power in the hands of the people, the new Constitution created a Senate which the masses could not control, a federal judiciary which was purely aristocratic and oligarchal, and a
President who wields greater power than the kings of mod ern, limited monarchies.
The fathers created this kind of government because they honestly believed that the people needed masters being in capable of self-government.
Yet, looking back over the long reaches of the past, what monarchy, what aristocracy, escaped the decline and fall which overtook democracies? Alike, they were born, grew into greatness, sunk into decrepitude and death. The five "Great Monarchies" what did they leave for us save a melan choly lesson and a few mounds from which archaeologists dig terra-cotta. tablets, winged bulls, mutilated sphinxes, and crude wall-paintings.
What did the aristocracies bequeath to us, excepting grue some records of human greed, weakness, vice, cruelty and crime? Nothing. Not an illustrious name, not an inspiring
thought, not a glorious achievement. Commenting upon the stifling effect which aristocracy has upon genius, Macaulay
says, the reference being to Venice: "God forbid that there should ever again exist a powerful
and civilized state, which, after existing through 1300 eventful years, shall not bequeath to mankind the memory of one great name or one generous action."
When we speak of "the glory that was Greece," we mean Athens. Spartan ruggedness and heroism, Macedonia's mete
oric career of conquest, Epaminondas and his dauntless Thebans, may each claim the tribute of admiration, but it is to
Athens that we turn to find the glory that was Greece the oratory whose rapt audience has been succeeding ages, whose poesy has outlived empires and peoples, whose art is the
despair of modern, as it was the pride of the ancient world, whose wise men and great men are yet types which defy ap proach ; whose ideals of home-life and state-life were as splen did as was the courage that conquered at Marathon and Salamis.
Says F. Hopkinson Smith, describing a recent visit to the
Parthenon: "What I saw was an epoch in stone; a chronic telling the
story of a civilization, a glove thrown down to posterity,
challenging the competition of the world." Remember this tremendous fact: what the writer so feelingly
4-Sketchei

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described, are the ruins left by more than two thousand years, left by vandal hordes that came to destroy; left by Goths, like Lord Elgin, who came to take and carry away.
The English monarchy is old and rich and powerful and civilized. tell us what there is in London that would with
stand the ravages of 2.000 years, the inroads of barbaric armies, the spoliations of countless Vandal hands?
Athens was a democracy. It was the state which set the
world the example of intrusting supreme power to the people. It was there that the principles of civic liberty were first given freedom of action.
The historian alluding to Athens "the eye of Greece,
mother of arts and eloquence" declares that the passion for gain had been lost in the strife for glory. No man was classi fied as great because he was rich. Alexander the Great as
sumed no superiority over Apelles" the matchless painter, nor over Aristotle, the profound philosopher. The Athenian standard of success was higher, truer, more of an inspiration
to good citizenship. "What has he done, in war or in peace, on the battle-field, in the academy, in the Council, in the Assembly, in science, art. or literature ? Has he carried off the prize in the Olympic Games? Do students flock to his school! Do breathless multitudes hang upon his tongue when he speaks ? Are his paintings visions of beauty ? Do his statues
attain the ideal? Is the temple that he rears a wonder of the world ?~r
These were the questions which probed character at Athens, and fixed the standing of her citizens. It does not appear that riches were able to rule this democracy; nor did the mere demagogue acquire ascendancy. On the contrary, no man ever
wielded over any people the personal influence which Pericles maintained so long over the Athenians; and Pericles was as far removed from the demagogue type as was Alexander the Great.
Because he was pure, because he was patriotic, because he was wise, strong and true, the democracy of Athens supported the great man who enriched history with the "Age of Pericles."
The money system of Athens was established by Sblon. The coins were the drachma, worth about fifteen cents in our money: the mina. one hundred times as much, or $15.00, and the talent. $900. The obolus was worth about two and onehalf cents.
According to the German scholar, Boeckh, the purchasing power of Grecian money, in the ancient times, was three times greater than it is now. Others contend that it was ten times greater.

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69

Both gold and silver were coined, the ratio varying from ten to one to fourteen to one, according to the difference in time and place.
In Dr. J. P. Mahaff's "Survey of Grecian Civilization," we find a statement which seems to show that in addition to gold and silver coin, there was a species of flat money used.
Says the learned Dr. Mahaffy:
"The practice of the Phoenicians was to seal up small bags professing to have within them a certain sum, which was stamped on the outside with the seal of the State. Though it was notorious that the coin was not there, such a bag, so long as it carried the seal guaranteeing its value in exchange, passed us actual money."
Hence, it appears that the Greeks and Phoenicians used a currency based upon government fiat. The credit system was in its infancy at Athens, and, therefore, they knew nothing of financial panics. There were no booms and no crashes, no bulls and no bears, no shearers and no lambs, no flotation of watered stocks and no organization of thievery such as we see in our Stock Exchanges.
The indorser was bound for a year, and the laws for the collection of debts were severe. The rich paid practically all the taxes, but the State gave ample protection to their business and their property. There were no banks which put their notes in circulation and grew rich off the usurpation of a
fovernmental function. Money lenders were plentiful, but th& tate alone supplied the circulating medium. The rate of interest was, usually, one per cent a month, but there was no legal restriction. Sometimes the rate rose to thirty-six per centum.
Imprisonment for debt was forbidden. Solon's Code put an end to that abuse five hundred years before Christ.
Athens excelled in manufactures, yet practised free-trade. No duties exacted at the ports held foreign goods at bay and compelled Athenians to pay extortionate prices for home made products.
In the domestic market, the retail trade was open to all. The average value of land was $30 per acre, and the holdings were small. An estate of 360 acres was considered enormous. The patrimony of the great Alcibiades was only 70 acres. I was present at a meeting of congressmen in Washington (1892) when a land-owner from Missouri referred boastingly to his big farm of 1,400 acres, and I recall the smile of goodhumored derision with which a Dakota member expressed the wish that his State could be cut up into little strips like that. Dakota farms often contain 40,000 acres. So greatly do dif-

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ferences of locality alter standards of magnitude! A French farmer of today would consider himself a nabob were he pos sessed of an estate like that of Alcibiades, whereas in Missouri it would be considered a bagtatelle and. further toward the Xorth-west, a joke.
Houses were built in Athens for $45. A fine dwelling might cost $1.800. The average home could be purchased for $1,000.
Slaves sold at prices ranging from $7 to $30, according to age. health and skill. Almost all of the free citizens owned slaves, the number owned by each ranging from one to fifty.
The ordinary horse could be had for $45, but a well-trained saddle-horse, or carriage-horse sold for $180. The price of a pair of mules ranged from $80 to $120.
It was necessary for Athens to import bread-stuffs, her own production being insufficient for her support. To prevent fore stalling and monopoly, severe laws were adopted. The quan tity which a dealer might purchase was limited, and the re tailer was restricted to a profit of less than two cents on the bushel.
At the time of Solon, a bushel of wheat was worth ten cents; the price gradually rose, until at the time of Demosthenes, it was fifty cents.
Wine was an article of food at, Athens and it was cheap. The Ijest vintage of Attica could bei had for two cents a quart. A fairly good wine could be bought for one cent a quart. The Chian wine, however, cost forty-five cents per quart.
The cost of living was low. With pure wine at half-a-cent
the pint, and wheat at twenty-five to fifty cents the bushel, the citizen could support life for a mere trifle, if he chose to confine himself to necessary food.
Thus the slave in Terence buys his old master a meal for two and a half cents. When a guardian charged his three wards about twenty-five cents for a day's support, his extrava
gance was denounced in Court! Socrates maintained his family at a yearly expense of $75T
but he lived meanly. (Our sympathies have ever been with
Xanthippe!) Demosthenes, the orator. living in his own house, paid $105
for the board of himself, his sister and his mother. There were so many slaves that the manual labor of the free
men commanded a sorry Wage. Ten cents per day about the average.
Common soldiers, in the infantry, received thirty cents daily to cover pay and rations: officers below the grade of general got sixty cents; and glory was the passion which ruled Athens, not love of money. The privates who immortalized the fields

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71

of Marathon and Platsea fought practically without pay. The generals, Miltiacles, Themistocles, Cimon did the same thing.
Actors in the theatres, however, could coin popularity into fortunes. For a two-day engagement, one of these was paid $900. This sum is said to have been the highest ever paid in Greece.
The Athenians governed themselves, in the literal sense of the word. They met in town meetings, debated public meas ures, voted for or against proposed legislation, and sanctioned or condemned public policies.
To encourage the citizen to attend the affairs of Government in person, seven and a half cents per diem was fixed as the compensation for attending the public assemblage. Historians assert that eight thousand Athenians constantly came to the meetings, and that each sovereign assemblage cost the State $600. There were forty regular meetings a year, and, there fore, the whole expense of legislation was $24.000 per year.
This modest little outlay is an agreeable contrast to the annual cost of one of our State Legislatures, and the yearly expense of one of our big cities.
The members of the Athenian Senate were paid fifteen cents per day. In Athens, nearly one-third of the free citizens sat daily as judges. Acting in this judicial capacity, they were paid seven and a half cents each. The entire cost of the judiciary of the State was $135,000 per annum.
The ten public orators, advocates and lawyers employed by the people were paid fifteen cents per day for each day of service. No citizen could draw pay for more than one kind of service on the same day.
In Athens, the State took care of the helpless poor and aged. The children of those who fell in battle were supported and educated at public expense. Those who were crippled in war were pensioned.
Incredible as it may seem, Solon included among his reforms the principles which in our times are embodied in the Initia tive, the Referendum and the Recall.
The great Athenian lawgiver vested in the Council of State the power to propose legislation. As constituted by Solon,
this body was composed of four hundred delegates, and the lowest order of citizens in Athens had the right to choose one hundred of these.
Laws proposed by the Council of State were referred back to a general assembly of all the people. In this, the lower orders out-numbered the upper classes, and, therefore, it is a literal fact that the common people of Athens controlled leg-

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islation. Not only was this so, but the judicial dedisions, even of the highest courts, were subject to review in the popular assembly. If rulings were made by corrupt, ignorant and prejudiced judges, which shocked the common sense of the Athenian public, such rulings were reviewed by the plain peo ple and annulled.

In our own day and country, we see the high-headed

oligarchy of Federal Judges setting aside Acts of State Leg

islatures and Acts of Congress,-r-doing so without authority of

law, and doing so in contempt of the rights of a helpless

Jt

people. No such anomaly was possible in Athens. The Judges, like all other officers of State, were directly accountable

to the general assembly, and no decision of a Court could

stand if the people disapproved.

In Aristotle's great work on "Government," it is stated: "Solon seems not to have altered the established form of government, either with respect to the Senate or the mode of electing magistrates, but to have raised the people to great consideration in the State, by allotting the supreme judicial department to them."

In our own times, a proposal to give to the American people

the supreme judicial power would be treated as the product

of a diseased intellect.

Aristotle further says:

"He (Solon) thought it indeed most necessary to entrust the

people with the choice of their magistrates, and the power of

calling them to account, for without that they would have been

slaves, etc."

That the Athenians exercised this power without favor and

with extreme energy, is proven by the case of Miltiades. All

the glory with which the victory of Marathon covered him,

could not save him from "the recall," when he went wrong

1

on the Paros expedition. He was dragged before the popular assembly, tried like any other offender, dismissed from his

military command, and fined nearly $63,000.

Other instances in which the great men of Athens, becoming

unfaithful or running counter to the popular will, were hurled

from power and banished are to be found in the cases of

Themistocles, Cimon, Aristides, Phocion, and Alcibiades.

Phidias, the unequaled sculptor, died in prison for he had

dared to offend his countrymen by the impiety of his monu

mental work. Aristotle, the preceptor of Alexander the Great,

escaped sentence of death by exile, for he had been too much

of a courtier and not enough of a patriot.

The financial condition of Athens had needed reform, and

- Solon had reformed it. The evil was that the many were in

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73

debt to the few, and that the amount of money in circulation

was so small that it was easily controlled by the capitalists.

Scion's remedy was, in the language of historians, to cheapen

the currency. What he did was to expand the volume. He

made more money. And more money meant a currency which

was easier to get. The poor man, needing money, and going

into the market to buy it, with his labor or his produce, found

that he did not have to give as much of his labor or his produce

for the same amount of money as he had had to do when the

supply of money was smaller. Consequently, more money

meant easier money, better times, debts less hard to pay, fixed

charges less difficult to meet. The more money there is floating

around, the better chance for everybody to get some of it.

That ought to be plain enough, even to a modern daily-paper

editor; it was very plain indeed to Solon, the wisest of*all the

wise men of Greece.

.;

Such was the economic and political system of Athens. Such

was the tree which budded and blossomed into the most won

derful and magnificent and elegant civilization that the world

has ever known. A democracy of less than half a million

souls! A territory not so large as some American Counties!

Yet against this small democracy, the huge empire of Persia

dashed.itself in vain; and it could only be weakened and sub

verted "When Greek met Greek" in the tug of war, and the

unconquerable Hellenes committed the most gigantic hari-kairi

that ever saddened the pages of history.

In science, art, literature, they led and still lead the world.

Save in the Orient, their architecture has never been rivaled.

Not even in the Orient was it surpassed. Their paintings dis

appeared under the waves of barbarian conquest, but we know

that the ancients considered the brush of Apelles as much of a

marvel as was the chisel of Praxiteles; and we know that

modern art is too inferior to Greek sculpture to admit of envy.

Orators yet vainly strive to found themselves on Pericles

to Demosthenes is paid the tribute of mental vassals to the

unapproachable king. Poets and historians saturate their

minds with Sophocles, Aeschylus and Euripides, with Homer

and Thucydides, hoping to assimilate the form and the spirit

of classic antiquity, no one dreams of reaching its perfection.

Consider what our own illustrious Emerson says of one of

the Athenian philosophers:

"Among secular books, Plato only is entied to Omar's fanatical compliment to the Koran, when he said, 'Burn the libraries; for their value Is in this book.' These sentences contain the culture of nations; these are the corner-stone of schools; these are the foun tain-head of literatures. A discipline it is in logic, arithmetic, taste,

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symmetry, poetry, language, rhetoric, orthology, morals or practi cal wisdom. There was never such a range of speculation. Out of Plato come all things that are still written and debated among men of thought. * * * The Bible of the learned for 2200 years. * * * Neither Saxon nor Roman have availed to add one idea to his cate gories. No wife, no children had he, and the thinkers of all civ ilized nations are his posterity and are tinged with his mind."

Was ever so noble a tribute paid to mental grandeur? What system of education aided the Grecian intellect to expand, enrich itself, and bear fruit?
Did the little boys and girls of Athens stagger under the armsful of text-books which tax the strength of our children ? Were they given the artificial, impractical and superficial training customary to our academies? Were they moulded into monotonous sameness, and lifted away from common-sense proficiency as is so often the case with our colleges? Or did they have a method of their own which encouraged individ uality, evolved the innate strength of each student, and pro duced men of all-round, practical capacity?
Listen to Macaulay:

"There seems to be, on the contrary, every reason to believe that in general intelligence the Athenian populace far surpassed the lower orders of any community that has ever existed. It must be considered that to be a citizen was to be a legislator, a soldier a judge one upon whose voice might depend the fate of the wealthiest tributary state, of the most eminent public man. The lowest offices, both of agriculture and of trade, were in common performed by slaves. The commonwealth supplied its means of amusement. Books were, indeed, few, but they were excellent, and they were accurately known. It is not by turning over libraries, but by repeatedly perusing and intently contemplating a few great models, that the mind is best disciplined. A man of letters must
now read much that he soon forgets and much from which he learns nothing worthy to be remembered. The best works employ, in general, but a small portion of his time. Demosthenes is said to have transcribed, six times, the history of Thucydides. If he had been a young politician of the present age, he might in the same space of time have skimmed innumerable newspapers and pam phlets. I do not condemn that desultory mode of study which the state of things in our day renders a matter of necessity. But 1 may be allowed to doubt whether the changes on which the admirers of modern instructions delight to dwell have improved our condition
as much in reality as in appearance. Rumford, it is said, proposed to the Elector of Bavaria a scheme for feeding his soldiers at a
much cheaper rate than formerly. His plan was simply to compel them to masticate their food thoroughly. A small quantify thus eaten would, according to that famous projector, afford more sus tenance than a large meal hastily devoured. I do not know how Rumford's proposition was received; but to the mind, I believe, it will be found more nutritious to digest a page than to devour a volume.
"Books, however, were the least part of the education of an

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75

Athenian citizen. Let us, for a moment, transport Ourselves, In thought, to that glorious city. Let us Imagine that we are entering Its gates, In the time of is power and glory. A crowd is assembled round a portico. All are gazing with delight at the entablature, for Phidias' is putting up the frieze. We turn into another street; a rhapsodist is reciting there; men, women, children, are thronging round him; the tears are running down their cheeks; their eyes fixed; their very breath is still; for he is telling how Priam fell at the feet of Achilles, and kissed those hands, the terrible, the murderous, which had slain so many of his sons. We enter the public place; there is a ring of youths, all leaning forward, with sparkling eyes, and gestures of expectation. Socrates Is pitted against the famous Atheist, from Ionia, and has Just brought him' to a contradiction in' terms.. But we are Interrupted. The herald Is crying 'Room for the Yrytanes.' The general assembly is to meet. The people are syarming In on every side. Proclamation is made 'Who wishes to speak.' There is a shout, and a slapping of hands: Pericles Is mounting the stand. Then lor a play of Sophocles; and away to sup with Aspasia. I know of no modern university which has so excellent a system of education."

Note: Macaulay speaks of Phidias as "putting up the frieze." The reference was doubtless to the Parthenon, certainly to one of the magnificent public buildings. This was a curious mistake in Macaulay. Phidias did no actual building, and therefore, he could never have been "putting up the frieze" on the Parthenon, or any other edifice.
The Parthenon was built by Callicrates and Intlnus. Phidias executed for it the collossal statue of Minerva, (in ivory and gold) which was placed inside the temple. He was an artist who worked mainly In hard-wood, ivory, gold and bronze; it is by no means certain that he used marble, save in the finish of hard-wood sculptures.

It is the fashion, nowadays, to say that woman, in the ancient world, was a mere chattel, a helpless slave. The tendency of modern teaching is to make us believe that under paganism, the wife was not truly loved, and that the Home was not truly happy.
We are asked to believe that during the thousands of years which God in His infinite wisdom allotted to the reign of paganism, there was no real nobility of character, no lofty ideals of private and public life, no proper conception of the beautj7 and strength of womanly character, no yearning for and appreciation of the sweetness and holiness of Home.
This demand upon our credulity is too great; we simply cannot believe anything of the kind. Human nature is always the same, and there must always have been loftier types of men and of women who livd noble lives, and whose homes were the abode of the Virtues which make for human bliss.
The literature of a people reflects the manners, the customs,

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the characters, the ideals of that people; and to the Literature

of Greece we confidently appeal.

First of all. Monogamy was the general system in Greece.

This fact, of itself, is of vast importance. According to mod

ern ideas, there can be no Home where Polygamy prevails.

The Oriental, then as now, had his Harem, his plurality of

wives, his ennuchs to watch and guard his women but he had

no Home. The Greek chose his one woman, made her his

wife, and established her as mistress of his household.

Search the whole field of European poesy, and you will look

in vain for a more beautiful picture of conjugal love than

>/

Homer gives in the mutual tenderness of Hector and Andro-

*

mache. All the dreary length of the ten years of the Siege of

Troy and the other years of voyaging were not too great a

'*'

strain upon the wifely devotion and constancy of Penelope,

waiting for the return of her lord. When the wife of the

dying painter. Millais, gives him a final kiss, knowing that it

"*

will cost her life, all the world is touched by the conjugal

.,

passion and sacrifice: but thousands of years ago, the heroic

Alcestis voluntarily died that her husband might live.

Indeed, what was the whole Trojan War but the uprising

of Greece to punish the violation of one man's home?

It is true that among the Greeks women are considered

inferior to men. but that idea still prevails. You find it

everywhere. Occident and Orient. Christianity and heathen

ism, are still in accord as to that. In law, in politics, in

business, in social life, the man is cock of the walk. Even the

|

kitchen and the millinery department is dominated by hateful

man. It should not be so, perhaps, but it is so, and always

has been.

With a' loud, raucous voice, modern historians complain

$

that among the Greeks, the suitor gave a sum of money to the .

father of his bride. This was mercenary and degrading, but

ti.

what does it prove? We must not contend that the father sold

:!

his daughter. That would never do. If we once adopt logic

of that kind, we would be driven to admit that, with us, rich

4-:

fathers hire men to marry their daughters; for it is a well-



known fact that foreigners of distinction do not wed wealthy

'.

American girls unless they are paid to do it.

^

The foreigners tell us. truly, that it is the custom of the

.*

country where they live for the father of the bride to give the

|

bride a dot to marry her off. Xo dot, no husband. The richer

}

the dot. the better the marriage. That is the custom in France,

'

particularly.

f

Xow. consider: was it worse for the young Greek to buy hU

sweetheart from her father, than it is for the French father

to buy a husband for his daughter?

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77

Under the Grecian system, it was the suitor who gave proof of his passion for the girl: under the French system, it is the girl who must offer the bribe to get the husband. Greece was Pagan: France is Catholic: which system appeals to you as the better?
For our part, we say, "Give us a custom which compels the suitor to prove his desire for the woman, rather than the obscene practice which compels the girl, or her father, to offer a dot to get a husband." (At a later period, the father began to pay the suitor, as in France.)
The Grecian wife gloried in the seclusion of her Home. Her existence was merged in that of her husband. In public, she was seldom seen. No male visitor could gain access to her, unless her husband were present. She was mistress of the household. She managed the slaves. It was she who acted as overseer in the domestic economics. She assigned the various tasks, disbursed the family income, and kept every thing in order. As public life demanded and absorbed the husband, so private life demanded and absorbed the wife.
But the Grecian woman was something more than a house keeper. If we may rely upon the picture of married life, aa drawn by Plutarch, the wife was the equal and the companion of her husband. Reciprocal duties were acknowledged, and the ideal of Home life, as there sketched, is not unworthy the best models of today.
Aristotle can be' quoted to the same purport. No wifely .character has been more beautifully drawn than that which he sketches in the first book of Economics. It is Aristotle who, contrasting his countrymen with the barbarians, declared that the Greeks did not, like other nations, treat their wives as slaves, but as helpmates and companions.
It would be foreign to my purpose to relate the thrilling story of Helenic conquest, how the light of Athens blazed along the Mediterranean, all the way to the pillars of Hercules; how it shone over the Dardanelles, and bathed the Islands of the Adriatic and Aegean Seas. Of the dependencies which looked to Athens for control and which poured tribute into her industry, there is no need to speak. These colonies, these distant possessions and dependencies, destroyed the integrity of her national life, mis-directed her energies, divided her counsels, dissipated her strength, and paved the way for her ruin.
That the mighty democracy of Athens was lured from its first great purpose, and made the fatal mistake which so many .monarchies, aristocracies and republics have made, is a mourn ful fact; but of all the states that have risen, flourished and

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fallen, none has left so splendid a legacy to mankind. Even from her tomb comes the inspiration which is worth more to the world than any other heritage which it takes from the pagan past. To her standards, modern ambition aspires, and to her thought, modern intellect is at once student and disciple
Weigh the impassioned testimony of Macaulay:

"If we consider merely the subtlety of disquisition, the force of

Imagination, the perfect energy and elegance of expression, which

characterize the - great works of Athenian genius, we must pro

nounce them intrinsically most valuable; but what shall we say

when we reflect that from hence have sprung, directly or indirectly,

all the noblest creations of the human intellect; that from hence

were the vast accomplishments and the brilliant fancy of Cisero, the

withering fire of Juneval; the plastic imagination of Dante; the

humor of Cervantes; the comprehension of Bacon; the wit of But

ler; the supreme and universal excellence of Shakespeare? All the

triumphs of truth and genius over prejudice and power, in every

country and in every age have been the triumphs of Athens.

Wherever a few great minds have made a stand against violence

and fraud, in the cause of liberty and reason, there has been her

spirit in the midst of them; inspiring, encouraging, consoling; by

the lonely lamp of Erasmus; by the restless bed of Pascal; in the

tribune of Mirabeau; in the call of Galileo; on the scaffold of

Sidney. But who shall estimate her influence on private happiness?

Who shall say how many thousands have been made wiser, happier,

and better, by those pursuits in which she has taught mankind to

engage; to how many the studies which took their rise from her

have been wealth in poverty, liberty In bondage health In sick

ness, society in solitude? Her power is Indeed manifested at the

bar; in the senate; in the field of battle; in the schools of phil

osophy. But these are not her glory. Wherever literature con

soles sorrow, or assuages pain, wherever It brings gladness to eyes

which fail with wakefulness and tears, and ache for the dark house

and the long sleep, there is exhibited, in its noblest form, the

immortal Influence of Athens.

"The dervish, in the Arabian tale, did flot hesitate to abandon

to his comrade the camels with their load of jewels and gold, while

he retained the casket of that mysterious juice, which enabled him

JLO behold at one glance all the hidden riches of the universe.

Surely it is no exaggeration to say, that no external advantage is to

be compared with that purification of the Intellectual eye, which

gives us to contemplate the infinite wealth of the mental world; all

the hoarded treasures of the primeval dynasties, all the shapeless

<r

ore of Its yet unexplored mines. This Is the gift of Athens to man.

Her freedom and her power have for more than twenty centuries

been annihilated; her people nave degenerated into timid slaves', her

language into a barbarian jargon; her temples have been given up

I

to the successive depredations of Romans, Turks, and Scotchman;

but her intellectual empire is Imperishable. And, when those who

have rivalled her greatness shall have shared her fate: when civil

ization and knowledge shall have fixed their abode In distant con

tinents; when the sceptre shall have passed away from England;

when, perhaps, travellers from distant regions shall in vain labor

to decipher on some mouldering pedestal the name of our proudest

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79

chief; shall hear savage hymns chanted to some misshapen idol over the ruined dome of our proudest temple: and shall see a single naked fisherman -wash his nets in the river of the ten thousand masts, her influence and her glory will still survive, fresh in eternal youth, exempt from mutability and decay, immortal as the .intellectual principle from which they derived their origin, and over which they exercise their control."

One can imagine a Greek of Athens soliloquizing in this
strain: "The world will never forget me: I will not wholly die:
in what I conceived and wrought I shall live forever. Of immortality of the soul I know nothing. Hope yearns, but Reason benumbs the hands. After all, I do not know.
"Even should I arise from the dead to live again, in another world, what would I be, there; what would I do, there ? Unless I could be much the same as here, the same to feel and hope and love and work, I would not care for it. The spirit which would be satisfied with perpetual rest, an eternity of fruitless bliss, would not be mine. Even if it were me, and Paradise meant idleness and perpetual peace and joy. were it not better to choose that kind of immortality which is certain to be mine?
"In my laws, arts, science, philosophy, social and political and literary models, I will survive the wreck of empires. Myriads of boys and girls, men and women, will drink at my fountain, to become pure and strong. As long as time shall last, my work will multiply itself in the efforts of others; thus my immortality will be the uplifting of all the genera tions that follow me, rather than a selfish quietude in some beatific but unprogressive Paradise. Wherever the orator shall speak with tongue of flame, I shall be heard: wherever the sculptor shall chisel beauty from senseless stone, I shall be seen: wherever warriors strike for liberty, poets embody truth and majesty in verse, statesmen evolve civilizations, and scholars and philosophers and scientists conquer new worlds, I shall be known and honored, deathless in the divinity of inspired purpose and work.
"I alone have reared an altar to Mercy. I alone have based civil and religious institutions on the Brotherhood of Man. I alone have endeavored to poetize the loveliness and the grandeur of Nature; no one else created dryads for murmuring groves and naiads for gurgling streams; no one else dreamed of making rural life Arcadian, and elevating the harvest into the enchanted regions of poesy and religion. I alone have practiced the splendid creed that no head is so high that it shall not bow to law, and no fellow-man so low that he shall not be the object of my care and protection.

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"The career open to talent, the tools to him that can use them lo! I stamped that motto indelibly upon the Golden Age: three thousand years hence, a Corsican boy, grown great, shall re-stamp it upon a forgetting world.
"Immortal? Yea, I am immortal. I shall live, not one idle, blissful unfruitful life in the eternity of the shades; but I shall live lustily, joyously, fruitfully, usefully, sublimely in all the years that are to come to this earth, side by side with
scholars as their shining faces tend upward to the higher sum mits of Thought, soul to soul with patriot statesmen who give
their days and nights to the noble problem of just laws, healthy conditions, happy homes!"

t
.4 fi.

Edgar A. Poe.
In Horace Greely's "Recollections of a Busy Life," he says: "A gushing youth once wrote me to this effect:
" 'Dear Sir: Among your literary treasures, you have doubtless preserved several autographs of our country's late lamented poet, Edgar A. Poe. If so, and you can spare one, please enclose it to me, and receive the thanks of yours truly-'
"I promptly responded, as follows:
" 'Dear Sir: Among my literary treasures, there happens to be exactly one autograph of our country's late lamented poet, Edgar A. Poe. It is his note of hand for fifty dollars, with my endorsement across the back. It cost me exactly $50.75 (including protest), and you may have it for half that amount. Yours, respectfully.'
"That autograph, I regret to say, remains on my hands, and is still for sale at first cost, despite the lapse of time, and the depreciation of our currency."
It may seem a little cruel to "pull the record" on the Poe enthusiasts in this manner- at the very time when they are striving so mightily to create a mythical Poe. Nevertheless, we think it important that we should know our great men. just as they were; and that the well-meant efforts of those who al low their zeal to distort the facts should be discouraged.
Edgar Poe was a creative genius of a very high order. As a master-mind, he compels admiration. But nature denied him the traits which go to make a man. Study his portraits, and mark the painful contrast between the upper part of the face and the lower; the brow is grand, the eyes luminous, spiritual, beautiful; but the mouth and the chin excite a pity ing dislike. They are not only weak, but unpleasant.
There have been few lonlier men than Poe. He had no talent whatever for mixed company, or for public displayHis personal acquaintance was not extended, and he made few friends.
Verily nearly all of the women who knew him, loved him and deferred to him, but with his own sex he was no favorite.
He was always miserably poor, had no turn for practical affairs, was compelled to borrow and was never able to repay. He was proud, and sensitive, and ambitious, and intensely de voted to his literary work and ideals. But lack of recognition disheartened him. and he often resorted to the bottle. His was

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such a delicate organism that one drink of whiskey put the
demon in him. Under the influence of liquor, he was unbear able. abusive, truculent, absurdly arrogant and altogether odious.
Sober, he was a perfect gentleman; drunk, he was a noisy brute. But the amount of his literary work, and the exquisite
finish of the greater part of it. prove conclusively that he was not often intoxicated.
One of the elements of manhood which he did not possess
was courage. Thomas Dunn English, author of "Ben Bolt,'' thrashed Poe on the streets of New York; Poe sought "satis faction" in a suit for damages in which he got a verdict for a small sum.
One of the reasons why Edgar Poe could not rise in the liter ary world of his own time was. that he emptied all the phials of his wrath and scorn upon the inflated mediocrities who were
then posing as the American Literati. Under his withering criticism, full many a mushroom reputation perished; and
even the great Longfellow was made to appear one of the lesser
lights in the constellations of poesy. In other words. Edgar Poe was a literary Ishmael and he
suffered as the Ishmaelites nrnst. Yet had he never written a line of verse, his critical essays
would have entitled him to a niche in the hall of fame. He it was who first erected a standard of literary excellence in
our country: and the fact that his ideal was so pure and high has been an immense benefit, not only to us, but to poets and story-writers throughout the European world.
In one of the recent publications concerning Poe, it was stated that there is no evidence that he was done to death in Baltimore by ward-heelers who made him drunk, voted him all over the city, and left him to die from the debauch. Indeed, the author of the article to which we refer said there was no contemporaneous evidence of the fact that Poe was drunk at all at the time of his collapse.
Dr. Snodgrass. who attended the poet in his last days, wrote a communication to a temperance paper, some years ago, which, in this connection, is convincing:
"On a chilly and wet November evening I received a note stating that a man answering to the name of Edgar Allan Poe, who claimed to know me. was at a drinking saloon in Lombard street, in Baltimore, in a state of deep intoxication and great destitution. I repaired immediately to the spot. It was an election day. When I entered the bar-room of the house, I instantly recognized the face of one whom I had often seen

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL, LITERARY, ETC.

83

and knew well, although it wore an aspect of vacant stupidity
that made me shudder. "The intellectual flash of his eye had vanished, or rather
had been quenched in the bowl, but the broad, capacious fore
head of the author of the 'Raven' was still there, with width in the region of ideality such as few men ever possessed. He
was so utterly stupefied with liquor that I thought it best not to seek recognition or conversation, especially as he was sur
rounded by a crowd of gentlemen actuated by idle curiosity
rather than sympathy.
I immediately ordered a room for him, where he could be comfortable until I got word to his relatives, for there were several in Baltimore. Just at that moment one or two of the
persons referred to, getting information, arrived at the spot. They declined to take private care of him, for the reason that he had been very abusive and ungrateful on all occasions
when drunk, and advised that he be sent to a hospital. He was accordingly placed in a coach, and conveyed to the Wash ington College Hospital. So insensible was he that we had to carry him to a carriage as if a corpse. The muscles of articula tion seemed paralyzed to speechlessness, and mere incoherent
mutterings were all that were heard.
"He died in the hospital after some three or four days, during which time he enjoyed only occasional and fitful seasons of consciousness. His disease was mama, a potu; a disease whose finale is always fearful in its maniacal manifestations.
In one of his more lucid moments, when asked by the physician whether he would like to see his friends, he exclaimed: 'Friend! my best friend would be he who would take a pistol and blow my brains out, and thus relieve me of my agony.'
These were among his last words."

Wit and Humor
WHAT is it that makes a saying a witticism? In other words, why do we laugh?
The greatest wits have striven to give a satisfactory defini tion of wit. and no one has ever succeeded.
Voltaire says that Locke had the most solid, methodical, acute and accurate of human minds and here is Locke's definition of the word:
"Wit lies in an assemblage of ideas, and putting them together with quickness and vivacity, whenever can be any resemblance and congruity, whereby to make up pleasant pic tures and agreeable visions of fancy."
That definition is as clear as the noon-day mud, isn't it ? You might use words which would do exactly what Locke's definition requires, and nobody would see a joke and laugh. Locke was no wit. but Voltaire was. Indeed, he was the wittiest of men. He was a wit all the way from a conversa tional jest to a book-wit which makes all the world laugh with him then, and makes it laugh now. The whole of "Candide" is wit. inextinguishable and immortal. His Philosophical Dic tionary is the vastest wedding of Wit and Wisdom that human intellect ever achieved. Yet. when this Prince Imperial of Wits undertakes to define what wit is. he breaks down as woefully as does the sobersided Locke: 'What is called wit. is sometimes a new comparison, some times a subtle allusion; here, it is the abuse of a word, which is presented in one sense and left to be understood in another; there, a delicate relation between two ideas not very common. It is a singular metaphor; it is the discovery of something in an object which does not at first strike the observation, but which is really in it; it is the art either of bringing together two things apparently remote, or of dividing two things which seem to be united, or of opposing them to each other. It is that of expressing only one-half of what you think, and leaving the other to be guessed." Now. it must be evident to you that Voltaire misses the mark. You can readily see that you could use words that would in every way conform to his definition of wit and yet not say anything which would be at all funny. Pope and Addison both tried their hands at the word, and the failure of both is lamentable.

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85

Addison says that wit is an assemblage of ideas which, to
pleasure, add surprise.
How lame! You might be rushing home to the bed-side of a supposedly sick child, fearing the worst, and be met by some one who told you that the report of the child's illness was false, that it was not ill at all. Here would be pleasure and surprise- united, but there would be no laughter, grateful tears, instead.
Pope's definition is well-known. According to the author
of the "Dunciad" and "The Rape of the Lock," wit is some thing that "oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed."
Now, your common sense tells you that Pope is as far wrong as Addison. The witticism which makes you laugh is apt to tickle you for the very reason that it is a new idea, or an old idea given some ridiculous application. The mere perfection of expressin does not bear any relation to wit. Your admira tion is excited by it, but not your laughter.
To be witty, one need not necessarily be wise; to be humorous, one need not ever to have seen the inside of a schoolhouse.
Three of the most facetious men that I ever knew had little wisdom or education. One of these frequently described a youthful prank of his in a way that reminded one of incidents narrated in "Georgia Scenes."
The time, some ten or fiften years "before the war;" the scene, the young and rising hamlet of Bearing, Georgia; the persons of the drama, old man John Harris, his wife, Cassie,
and the mischievous son, Jack. In those days, the supper table of country folk of humble
fortune was lit up by a long tallow candle, stuck in the oldtime tin candlestick. In those days, "Roman Candles" were a brand new contrivance in the way of fire-works, at least they were unknown to the country people of Georgia.
Young Jack Harris goes down to Augusta, about Christmas time, and is greatly interested in this new invention, this Roman Candle, which he finds Augusta boys shooting. Among other Christmas articles, he buys a few of these candles, and carries them home with him to Bearing. That night, after supper has been put on the table, Mrs. Cassie Harris calls everybody into the room, and proceeds to light the candle. It is dusk, her eyes are getting dim, she has no suspicions, and she does not in the least doubt that she is setting fire to the usual tallow dip. But young Jack had stuck one of his Roman Candles into the holder, and it is that which Mrs. Harris lights.
Old Jack and Cassie settle in their places, composedly, the candle giving a dim light as the paper end burns off, when, all
of a sudden, the first charge in the barrel is reached and then

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shoot!--up goes a ball of fire, the holder tips over, and the

room is in darkness.

Old Jack dashes out of the front door for dear life, and

Mrs. Cassie trots nimbly out of the back door, both in a state

of the greatest consternation. They stand outside, dumb

founded, waiting for more.

The Roman Candle is a good one, and, after the usual sput-

terings and fryings, shoot!--comes the second ball of fire.

Of course, the force of the discharge causes the Roman Candle

to "kick." whirl around, and do things to the crockery. First,

there is darkness and ominous sputtering, then, shoot!--and

-t

a sudden illumination; then a cup and saucer falls off the table

it

with a loud crash, then a plate or two, and then a pitcher old

Jack and Cassie listening in a state of the hightest excitement

and amazement.

From his side of the darkness old John is heard yelling,

"Caswy/ CasSAY!! What in the hell's the matter in there?"

And from Mrs. Harris' side of the gloom comes the feeble

and quaking admission, "I don't know."

Of course, the Roman Candle fires its last round in due time,

;

and the fugitives venture back into the house, strike a light

and investigate. Then, they see that young Jack has been up

to one of his tricks, and he comes in for angry verbal

trouncings.

Now. I am aware of the fact that some such story as this is

now to be found in the books, but I am sure that this particular

joke, as played upon his parents and afterwards related by

him. was original with "Jack" Harris.

Occasionally, he wrote letters for the county papers, and, to those who were acquainted with the people of whom he wrote, the letters were as humorous as Bill Arp's. In a small way,
Jack acted as attorney in the Justice Court of his militia district, and the manner in which he would sometimes mystify his honor, the J. P.. was comical. He actually had a levy dismissed once, upon the ground that the mule levied on was older than the Fi Fa.
When it was reported that a newly elected J. P. had been requested to come up to the County site and be qualified, Jack's comment was. "Well, they can swear him in, but all h 1 can't qualify him."

Another of these illiterate and obscure humorists used to describe an adventure in hunting. A party of young men, on a dark night, go out to a "new ground" to kill birds. The way of it is this: the party carry torches of "fat" pine, and they surround a large brush-heap, in which birds are roosting.

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87

The brush-heap is given a shake, and out fly the birds. The men, equipped with boughs broken from bushes, beat down the birds the poor things being blinded and bewildered by the lights and the noise. It used to be great sport.
On the night in question, the brush-heaps were very large, very dry, and quite full of birds. The young men were having a fine time. Suddenly, one of them, who had taken his position on a stump at the edge of a big brush pile, lost his balance in striking at a bird, and pitched head-foremost into the heap, head down and heels up in the air. Naturally, he threw out his hands in falling, and thus he plunged his blazing torch into the very midst of the dry leaves, twigs and limbs. His shout of alarm as he fell, the way in which the brush-heap took fire, right under him, the manner in which he waved his legs for help, they, of course, pointing skyward while his head was buried in the brush pile, his yells for "the boys" to come and pull him out; the ludicrous figure he cut, turned upside down as he was; his wild scrambling to get out of there, and his utter helplessness and growing terror, and the
increasing urgency of his cries for help, all this was described and acted in a style that was pure comedy.
The same man related an incident which he had witnessed. A farmer had a flock of sheep. They had eaten out one pas ture and he was about to let them into a new one. The sheep were very tired of the exhausted range, and very eager to leave it. So, when the farmer came to the fence and began to make motions like a man who meant to open a gap, they
were all attention. As he proceeded to lay off one rail and then another, the stately old bell-wether marched up, followed
by all the flock, ready to enter the new pasture. Rail after rail came down, the bell-wether growing more impatient every moment. Finally, when the farmer had almost got the gap to suit him, the bell-wether could wait no longer. The farmer was stooping, in the act of removing the last rail, when the impatient leader of the flock decided to jump over the stooping farmer into the inviting range beyond.
Just as the sheep leaped, the man was straightening, and the sheep struck him, knocking him down. But on went the leader of the flock, and of course, nothing could stop the other sheep. They had to follow their leader. Each time the farmer tried to get up a sheep would floor him, and this went on until he had been literally knocked down by every sheep in his flock.
This story was told me, with such particulars that no one could doubt the incident, but some years later, in reading one of the British essayists Leigh Hunt, I came upon a similar anecdote; yet I am sure Major Hendon witnessed the scene which he so often and so humorously described.

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Sometimes, the fun grows out of sayings and situations not intended to be funny.

Take for instance, this sentence from a court-house speech of Sampson Levy, of the Philadelphia bar: "Gentlemen of the jury, his iniquity stares you in the face with gigantic strides."

Or take an extract from one of the parliamentary orations of Boyle Roche. The gallant son of Erin was assailing the Government, of course, and was referring to the nefarious schemes of the ministerial bunch:

^.

"I know what they are at: I see the storm brewing; I smell

-.a

a rat. and I'll nip it in the bud."

In another of Sir Boyle's fervent addresses he enthusiasti

cally advocated some pet measures of his the Union, perhaps

and rapturously prophesied that, if adopted, it would

"change barren hills into fruitful valleys."

These sayings strike me as being funny, but they were not

so intended. Neither Sir Boyle nor Sampson Levy set up

for a wit.

;

Upon an occasion when I was spending the day at Liberty

Hall, one of Mr. Stephens' bosom friends, James D. Waddell,

spoke and acted a jury-speech of a certain North Georgia

lawyer. This attorney, was a man of family, past middle age,

and a leader of the bar of that circuit. His client was being

tried for murder. The man had shot the seducer of his daugh

ter. The old lawyer was putting in his best licks for his

client, lashing himself into a fury as he pictured the enormity

of the provocation which had caused the homicide. He not

only spoke of what any man would do under similar circum

stances, but put himself in defendant's place, telling the jury

what he the doddering old lawyer would have done had

any man wronged one of his daughters in that way. In a

burst of noble eloquence, he snorted, "Why, gentlemen of the

jury: if any vile wretch treated one of me own darters like

that. I'd shoot him down! 'jes as I would the bear that stole

me pig!!!"

:

As Jim Waddell spoke this, mimicking the tones and atti

tude of the old Marietta lawyer, Mr. Stephens laughed as boy

ishly as any of us. In fact. Alexander H. Stephens dearly

loved a joke or bit of pleasantry, and some of his own retorts,

on the hustings and at the bar, were as brilliant as the better

known witticisms of Robert Toombs.

On the other hand, one of the brainiest and wittiest men that

ever cut a figure in our public life S. S. Cox wrote a book

on "Why We Laugh." doing his level best to make it funny,

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89

and what was the result? Nobody laughed, and everybody said the book was wearily, drearily, deadly dull.
If wit were nothing more than what the various definitions claim it to be, one could teach it to others; or one who is not a witty person by nature could become one by culture.
Yet, we might as well contend that a teacher can implant into one's being the musical talent, the poetical talent, the talent which made Thackeray, Charles Keade and Dickens the greatest of English novelists, or the talent which made O'Connell a king among men.
When Coleridge, who sometimes delivered public lectures, asked the quiet and modest Charles Lamb, "Did you ever hear me lecture ?" and the demure essayist answered, "I never heard you do anything else," the humor does not consist, altogether, of anything that either of the two said: the smile comes in because you are familiar with the fact that Coleridge was a most inveterate monopolist of the conversation. Invariably, he did all the talking. No one else could edge in a single word. Read Carlyle's description of Coleridge and his monologues in the great Scotchman's "Life of John Sterling." It is the finest thing of the kind in the English language.
One might, in some sort, define the wit and humor of Mark Twain and of Charles Dickens, but, after the definition was completed, one would realize that it did not include the humor of Charles Reade that subtle, unobtrusive, delicious, and en tirely modest humor which, by the side of that of Dickens and Mark Twain, reminds you of a lily amid hollyhocks, a rose beside a sun-flower, a violet in company with a corpulent, Overgrown chrysanthemum.
Then, again, here's a queer thing: if the funniest of stories is advertised by him who is to tell it, or by some one else present, as being "the funniest thing you ever heard," it never is.
Almost invariably the fun is killed by the announcement that it's coming. The same thing would be true, perhaps, of the pathetic; but it isn't true of eloquence. Sometimes, though not always, an orator can talk off the damage done him by the speech of introduction. But a joke never survives. Prepare people to laugh, and you've put your witty man in a hole.
There is on record a case of a woman who aspired to be a social leader, and who was ambitious to have her "receptions" attended by the creme de la creme, don't you know. Well, she invited the wag of the town to be present. The funny man went. As soon as his hat was safely anchored and he had made his salutations in due form, the tactful hostess sang out, in a loud encouraging voice, "Now, Mr. So-and-So, you must be at your funniest tonight. You must make everybody laugh."

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The poor fellow was annihilated, and not a single witty thing could he think of that evening.
Then, why is it that some things are amusing when you first hear them, become nuisances ever after, while others retain their flavor and cause you to smile each time they recur?
For example, consider that idiotic, summer-time tormentor who asks, "Is it hot enough for you ?"
It is possible that this quotation, when first propounded, on a day of sultry heat. one sufferer dolefully speaking to an other. might have seemed ludicrous and might have been amusing.
I don :t say that it was, what I say, and all than can con scientiously be said by any God-fearing man, is that the idiotic question might possibly once have been, and for one time only, amusing. But I think you will agree with me that the inquiry has become a virulent and criminal nuisance, and the man who asks it an intolerable, pestiferous and unmitigated bore.
On the other hand, who would ever fail to get fun, at least once a year, forever, out of the celebrated case of "Bardell v. Pickwick:" the rehearsal of the servants in "She Stoops to Conquer;" and "A Coon-hunt in a Fency Country," appended to "Major Jones' Courtship." and the family quarrel, in Paris, which Thackeray describes in "Philip?" In the forgotten Southern author's book. "Flush Time of Alabama and Mis sissippi" you may find the record of the trial of a law-case equally as good as Dickens' "Bardell v. Pickwick." (It is ft wonder to me that some publisher does not bring out a new edition of that splendid work.)
In "Gait's Reports" is given an account of a hardened sinner who was prayed for at a religious revival by a solicitous church member. In the course of this voluntary appeal for the sinner in question, the member who was doing the praying saw fit to tell the Lord all about said sinner. According to the prayer, the subject of it had just about run the whole gamut of immorality.
The sinner did not relish this prayer the least bit. The more he thought of it, the madder he got. In a day or so he waa wrought up to such a pitch that he went and saw a Justice of the Peace. In those days, Federal Judges w^ere mollycoddles compared to country justices. This particular Justice took jurisdiction of the sinner's case, without hesitation, and issued a summons against the prayerful church member, haling him to court to meet the charge of libel.
The evidence was undisputed, and to the Justice it was one of Dan'1. Dennis' plain cases. He found the Defendant guilty, sentenced him to pay Plaintiff a sow and twelve pigs, and to

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91

give bond not ever to pray for Defendant any more. The Defendant took no appeal. He delivered the sow and pigs, paid the costs, turned and walked off.
"Hold on there.'" cried his honor, the Justice. "You haven't given bond not to pray for Plaintiff again."
"No use givin' bond," came the response. "I'd see him in h 1, before I'd ever pray for him any more."

Sometimes the wit is born of circumstances, and not of
words at all. For example, a few years ago when Queen Victoria was still
reigning, the "silver tongued orator of Kentucky," Breckinridge, became involved in a most scandalous affair with a
woman. It "came out" that Breckinridge was a rake of long standing. Well, to a certain extent, his friends rallied around him, while poor Madeline Pollard betook herself to a convent. During Breckinridge's canvass for re-election, and while ad dressing one of the crowds, he made the announcement that, immediately after the election, he meant to go to England. The band struck up "God Save the Queen!" and everybody, in Kentucky and elsewhere, laughed.
Could you put the why into a definition? Impossible.

Did you ever think of the important part which Wit has played in human affairs?
You have seen its triumphs in the court-house, where many a truthful witness has been made to seem a liar by the witty lawyer conducting the cross-examination. You have seen juries influenced by wit and humor, and led into the belief that the attorney who got the laugh on his opponent had the better case.
So, on the hustings wit often wins a victory at the expense of right. Many a man, totally unfit for the place, has won his way to Congress with catchy anecdotes and with his ability to make his rival appear ridiculous.
There is a well-known instance of a legislative Committee
being won over, to the wrong side, by a witty story. The victor was Chauncey Depew, and the fruit of his triumph was one more franchise privilege for the Vandebilt family, whose paid servant Depew was.
At every state capitol and at our national capitol are highlysalaried lobbyists who are hired by the corporations to in fluence legislators. One of the most useful talents of these hirelings is the ability to amuse their prey. They wine and dine the patriotic member and they tickle him with funny yarns, and the first thing he knows he sees everything through the glasses of his jolly entertainer.

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By his famous "Duluth" speech, Proctor Knott, of Ken

tucky, laughed out of court a subsidy bill; and General

Schenck by a witticism broke down the opposition to his Tariff

Act of 1870-1.

All who have studied the career of Mr. Lincoln know how

well his store of anecdotes, aptly told, served him in the court

room, on the hustings and in the grave deliberations of the

Cabinet.

It is certain that without his wit that marvelous Jew,

Disraeli, would never have conquered the aristocracy of Great

Britain: and it is equally certain that had not he been Premier

*

of Great Britain the history of the world would have been

"

different.

Yet. the excessive use of wit lowers its possessor, and he loses

weight no matter how learned and capable.

Tom Corwin. of Ohio, was a very much abler lawyer than

Mr. Lincoln; but because of his too lavish employment of his

laughter-provoking gifts, the country would never rate him

at his true value. The same was true of S. S. Cox, yet Cox

was easily the master of James G. Blaine in debate.

The wit may be a merry man and a hard-hearted, but a

genuinely humorous man is almost always a sad man, and full

of human kindness.

Of all our Presidents, Mr. Lincoln was the saddest, and

none of them had so rich a vein of humor. "We know of

Lowell's humor. and do we not have by heart that little poem

of hopeless, incurable grief. "After the Funeral?" In Poe's

fugitive writings, reviews, etc.. there are to be found gems of.

humor, and what figure is more tragic than that of this

dreamer. strayed from classic antiquity into backwoods

America ?

In American politics, the ill-timed jest has often upset the

best laid plans. Stephens A. Douglas probably lost the nomina

tion at the famous Charleston Convention because of a joke

cracked by the "little giant" at the expense of Howell Cobb

during a dinner at the home of Toombs.

The enmity which Vice-President Stephens, of the Southern

Confederacy, cherished for Benjamin H. Hill was a serious

handicap to Mr. Davis' administration. It is possible that

this enmity grew out of the Lexington debate, in which Mr.

Hill got the laugh on Mr. Stephens so completely.

It was the convivial jocularity of Kobert Toombs, at a

certain dinner table in Montgomery, that made a bad impres

sion upon delegations who did not know of Toombs' reserved

powers: and this idle jesting and wine bibbing caused him

to lose the Presidency of the Southern Confederacy. With

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93

Toombs as Chief Executive, we would either have whipped, or been whipped, inside of a year.
The humor of Spain, few of us know anything about, save as we enjoy it in Don Quixote. Cervantes said that he could have made the book much more entertaining had it not been for Inquisitorial and political intimidation. One can well
believe it, for Church and State in Spain were tempting tar gets for satire. Nevertheless, Sancho Panza, whether as humble squire or as Governor of the Island, is a source of perennial diversion. But Cervantes did not "laugh Spain's chivalry away," in the sense that Byron meant, for chivalry, as an institution, had already been blown away by gunpowder.
And that reminds me of a curious mistake made by lovers of Shakespeare. In Harry Hotspur's account of the court fop who came to him on the battle-field and minced and postured and put on airs, occurs the oft-quoted line: "* * * and said he would himself have been a soldier but for those vile guns."
Now, the whole world laughs over that saying of the popin jay, as though he had meant that he would have been a soldier, had there been no danger.
That is not the meaning at all. What the coxcomb was driving at was about this, "We no longer fight, altogether, with sword and lance; we can no longer rely upon armor and individual skill and strength; war is no longer a matter of chivalry, or personal prowess, in which the long training of the Knights tell on the battle-field. These vile guns which have been recently introduced have robbed war of its romance. A cobbler, or a baker, or a candle-stick maker, who has never been trained at arms, can now be taught to stick a torch to touch-hole of a musket, and with this vile gun, said vulgar Nobody may blow Sir Knight to kingdom come, and Sir Knight never be able to get near enough to said vulgar Nobody to spit him upon chivalric lance."
That's what the fine-feather dude meant. Like the dandies of the French Court, he was probably brave enough to fight and die, but he was disgusted with the gunpowder innovation which deprived aristocracy of its advantages over democracy in the shock of battle.

French wit and humor is better known to us than that of any other continental state. We are familiar with Moliere, Montaigne, Voltaire, LeSage, Beaumarchais, Rochefoucald, Chamfort, Beranger, Madame de Sevigne, Dumas, Balzac. to say nothing of racy collectors of stories, like Queen Marguerite of Valois, and numberless writers of memoirs and farces and short stories.

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But the richest and most varied wit and humor of which we

have any knowledge is the Celtic contribution to literature.

The great Germanic, or Teutonic, people were unromantic, had

no gaiety of soul, had no delicacy and brilliance of intellect,

had no tenderness and little imagination. They were a matter

of fact race.

Xow, these strong, fierce and unsentimental Germanic people

overcame the native Celts of England, and in the course of

time the two races blended. We are not Anglo-Saxons. Even

our russet-haired, blue-eyed types, tall and fair skinned are

no more than the recurrence of a lost type, just as a black

I**

child, woolly and smelly, is sometimes born to parents, one of

whom is white and the other nearly so.

The Germanic people who invaded and conquered England

were not so numerous as the native Celts, and the so-called

Anglo-Saxons of today are more Celt than Teuton.

On every hand, it is admitted that English literature owes its

most fascinating elements, not to the conquerors, but to the

conquered. The light play of fancy, the tenderness of senti

ment, the brilliance of wit and the richness of humor, the finer

qualities of our music and poetry, the gracefulness of literary

form and expression, are but items in the list of debts that we

owe to the Celt.

The Egyptian Sphinx and the Negro
EVERY few months, the New York Evening Journal, Mr. Hearst's paper, feasts its readers upon a brief editorial dealing in the most novel way with the Egyptian Sphinx and the negro. This editorial was used again a year or two ago and, asking the pardon of its author (whom I assume to be the very able and learned Arthur Brisbane), I propose to discuss it.
The Hearst paper, referring to the thick lip of the negro, declares that "those lips appear upon every Sphinx in Egypt ; v and that "the ancestors of the negro were laying the founda tions of our religion and were mapping the stars" at a time when our ancestors were "gibbering savages, living in caves, sharpening bones and eating raw meat."
Why should any white man tell the negroes that their fore fathers were vastly superior to ours? What possible benefit to either race can come from the publications of that kind! If we accept the Darwin theory we may, indeed, be forced to admit that the negroes are our progenitors, in the same sense that the apes are; but, if this concession compels us to adopt the theory that the negroes are the authors of our civilization, we might just as well go backward a step further and give the credit to the apes. Logic is never so captivating as when it makes us go the whole hog.
The Afro-American has had too much mischief put into his head, already, for the good of the country. New York Cos mopolitan Club pledged to miscegenation; Social Equality Colleges, like that which Bryan patronizes and helps with donations; negro politicians appointed to represent this Gov ernment abroad; Fred Douglas at Cleveland's wedding recep tion and Booker Washington at the Roosevelt luncheon; negro officers in the army; negro Registers of the United States Treasury; negroes in charge of Custom Houses; three thousand negroes on the national pay-roll in Washington; negroes as judges, city-councilmen and policemen, all these instances of "recognition" have but whetted the appetite for more.
Such negroes as Booker Washington and Kelly Miller con tend that their race is mentally equal to the Caucasian; and when their claim is virtually endorsed by a great newspaper, edited by a scholarly gentleman who receives the highest salary ever paid for work of that kind, the souls of the arrogant and aggressive Afro-Americans must feel greatly rejoiced and elated.

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I. Is it true that the white tribes, our ancestors, were ever "gib bering savages, living in caves, sharpening bones, and subsist ing on raw flesh?" I suppose it is conceded that we are descended from Ger-

ASSYRIAN SPHINX, WINGS, WOMAN, LION.
manic stocks. Teutons. Angles. Saxons, and Cimbri, or Celts. When were these people "gibbering savages?" Tacitus does not class them so, nor does Julius Caesar, yet,
both of these authorities were unfriendly. To Caesar, our ancestors were foes to be despised and destroyed. To Tacitus,
ASSYRIAN* HORSEMEN: WAR.
they were enemies whom he had never seen and of whom he had only heard through Roman soldiers who had fought them. Suppose General Sam Houston or General Wood had written

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97

a history of Mexico, what sort of treatment could the Mexi cans have expected? The whole nation would probably have been described as "greasers," and we should never have thought Mexico capable of the wonderful progress she made under Diaz. Yet Tacitus describes the Germanic peoples as semicivilized, and praises a portion of them, the Chaui as ideal characters.
Montelius declared that in the Scandinavian home of our forefathers there existed, 5,000 years before Christ, a civiliza tion similar to that described in Homer. It is certain that the Northmen navigated the ocean and had a commerce. They not only used feather cushions, pillows, and bed-coverings, but introduced them into Rome! It is certain that the Northmen

ASSYRIAN GROOM AND HORSES.
could weave cloth out of flax, and that both the men and women covered their nakedness with woolen, or linen garments. The warriors, on a march and in battle, however, wore nothing but the skins of wild beasts. They were herders, and farmers, they exported vegetables as well as cloth, leather, feathers, and amber.
They lived in wooden houses, built over cellars. A fact of the utmost value is that these dwellings were of the Aryan type. In winter, our ancestors lived in the cellar, because of the extreme cold. Travelers tell of just such dwellings in Siberia, at this day; and the people who retire to these caves, or cellars, are not "gibbering savages" any more than are the inmates of crowded, noisome tenements of New York Citv.

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Pliny says that the Germanic women spun and wove ex quisite linen; and Virgil paints a cozy scene in the cave, or cellar, where the Teuton family builds a cheerful fire out of large logs, and enlivens the long, wintry night with games and plays.
The Germanic people were notoriously fond of the bath.
"Gibbering savages" seldom are. So prone were our ancestors to plunge into hot springs and into the rivers, that they were frequently taken by surprise by enemies, who attacked them while they were bathing. Such was the case when Marius
saved Rome from the Cimbri. at the great battle of Aquae Sextae. Germany not being a hot country, fondness for cold
water proves a craving for personal cleanliness. That the Germanic tribes ate uncooked flesh is true, but our
American hunters and trappers used to do the same thing.

FIG. 4. MAX'S HEAD, EGYPT.
Most of us remember that when we were growing up it was customary, on each plantation, to dry certain portions of a beef: and we remember how we relished chips shaved off this raw. but dried joint. In like manner. Western hunters and trappers dried venison and buffalo meat: and such flesh, duly "jerked." was not less cooked than much of the so-called "rare" steak and roast which leaves a puddle of blood in one's plate.
Is the eating of uncooked food necessarily an evidence of savagery ? If one chooses to devour berries and fruits and nuts and eggs in a raw state, is it absolutely certain that he is doing the unnatural thing?

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Among us, at this day, we have faddists who tell us that cooking lessens the amount of nutrition in food, and renders it more indigestible. Can it be proved that these faddists are
wrong ? Besides the flesh of animals, there were many other articles
of food among the Germanic tribes. They used milk, butter, cheese, vegetables, white bread, honey, fruits and berries.
A tribe of "gibbering savages" has never been known to adopt and enforce a law to protect trees from injury; and savages have never been strict, among themselves, about land lines and boundary marks.
Yet our ancestors were rigorous on both subjects. He who altered a land line, or moved a "corner," was harshly pun ished; and he who wilfully injured a tree, was put to death.
This is the more remarkable, since Germany was almost covered with forests, and farming is supposed to have been a secondary pursuit.
To a student of human affairs, it would seem that our ances tors, coming from the treeless plains of Asia, set the highest value upon those vast forests, and were strict about land lines, by force of hereditary instinct. In the Old Testament, we find regulations of the same sort; and these ideas, as we all know, prevailed in Egypt and Babylonia whence the Jews learned so much.
In determining the status of a people, a factor of the first importance is' the relation of the sexes, and the value put upon chastity.
Tacitus, the unfriendly Roman, praises the purity of the Teutonic women in the highest terms, contrasting it with the decadence of morals among the Romans.
When the Emperor Caracalla gave some captive Germanic women the option of going into slavery, or being killed, they chose death; and when he sold them, anyhow, they killed themselves. The Cimbrian women did likewise, after the defeat of the tribe at Vercellae. They offered to go into captivity, provided they were allowed to serve in the temples and thus preserve their chastity. When this was denied them, they slew their children and themselves.
In the same spirit, the Cimbrian women captured by the Romans at Aquae Sextae, killed themselves rather than submit to the embraces of their captors.
Among our ancestors, the home was sacred, and the wife honored. She was given something of the dignity which i& her's today, centuries before Jesus Christ was an influence in the lives and homes of men!
Indeed, it was the Germanic woman who managed both the
5-Sketchea

3.00

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL, LITERARY, ETC.

household affairs and the farm: and she was the member oi' the family who did most of the reading and writing.

But there remains the vital question of Government. Our ancestors were free men, proud of their long red hair, which was the badge of their independence. Kings had but loose authority over them; and at first these chiefs were elective, chosen because they were the ablest to do. Every man of the tribe was a member of the General Court. The king had no power of life and death over his followers; and he could not arbitrarily tax them. They made their own laws. In time of war. the chief necessarily exercised monarchal authority: but in time of peace, the tribal government was almost a pure democracy. Local self-government was an actual fact among these mighty peoples. The freemen, themselves, heard all causes, tried all persons accused of crime, and fixed the penalty. A most queer lot of "gibbering savages," these! To sum up: the very earliest records show that our ancestors held a tradition of their Aryan origin and of their emigration from the remote East; they had a democratic system of gov ernment: they had a system of laws; they had a system of agriculture: they were navigators of the seas; they were builders of houses: they mined and made use of metals; they had a written language and some literature; they were manu facturers on a small scale: they had a sense of modesty and personal beauty, for they wore shoes and garments of wool and linen, as well as armlets, rings, and other ornaments. The man's house was already his castle and his home a sanctuary. If a faithless wife defiled it. her punishment was death. The Roman soldier not only dreaded the Germanic warrior, but the Roman generalship found more than its match in Arminius. who destroyed the legions of Varus. For five hun dred years, the Northmen waged war with Rome, were never subdued, and finally conquered her and put Northmen on the throne of the Caesars! But the flower of this primitive civilization was not the valor of the man, nor the stern jealousy with which he guarded the honor of his home. it was the virtue of the women. Glorious and indestructible was the foundation of that civilization on the chastity which rose into "the triumph of death." rather than sink into the degradation of personal impurity.
From the earliest times these Cimbri and Teutons made
weapons and tools of metal. They didn't farm with a stick,

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as the negro did, they had implements of iron and bronze, made by themselves. They were not only good blacksmiths, but they excelled in wood-work. Their wagons, their houses,
their ships were home products. When we call a man a wheel
wright, we use a term that is as old as the Germanic tribes. So with the word, smith, when applied to a branch of industry. The spear-head, the lance, fashioned from stone, iron or bronze,
date back to the remotest accounts of our forefathers, and
these weapons were made by their own workmen. The one great subject, Religion, is to be considered; and on
this I think it answers every practical purpose to say that the
religious systems of our Cimbric and Germanic ancestors was that of those Egyptians, Babylonians. Chaldeans and Assyrians who, according to the learned and able Mr. Brisbane, were the ancestors of the negroes, and who, according to him, laid the foundations of our own religious system.
Whether those ancient Eastern peoples were the forefathers of the negroes, we shall presently see.

II.
The editorial in the Hearst newspaper states that "the thick lips of the negro appear on every sphinx in Egypt."
Suppose that this were true, what would it prove? The Egyptians carved statues of Anubis a deity whose head was that of a jackal. To Osiris, a chief god, they some times gave a human body and a bull's head. To the goddess, Isis, was given the body of a woman and sometimes, the head of a cow. The human body of another deity ended in the he"ad of a hawk. This would seem to indicate that whoever carved the sacred statues of Egypt had no idea of constructing a national por trait gallery. The sculptuary does not necessarily reflect the sculptor, nor the painting, the painter. Some ages since, our civilization may be lost, our race disappear, and curious antiquarians may declare, dogmatically, that we were identical with the Greeks of the classic era. They will prove it by our gold and silver coins!

Candor compels me to admit that the national type is apt to be reflected in national art. The Grecian sphinxes have the pure profile of the Hellenes; and the Assyrian sphinxes cor
respond with other native sculptural work whose purpose is
that of portraiture. It is possible, and even probable, therefore, that the stone-

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cutter \vho chiselled the human head of the sphinxes, invol untarily portrayed the native type.
If that be so. Mr. Brisbane's statement concerning the negro lips becomes intensely interesting. I, at least, found it so, and have taken some pains to investigate.
Mr. Brisbane sweepingly avers that the negro lips appear on every Egyptian sphinx.
Just as sweepingly, and with equal emphasis, I declare that no sphinx of Egypt has the lips of a negro.
That's a clean cut issue, isn't it? Xow to the proofs.

PIG. 5. SAM LANGFORD.
The overwhelmingly important thing to find out is this: How did the Egyptians picture a negro when they meant to do so?
It does not concern us. in this discussion, to learn how the Greeks and Romans and Israelites and Arabs, or other peoples, pictured the negro face. The fact that does concern us is, howdid the Egyptians delineate the negro face, when they wanted to do that very thing?
Turn to Figure 6 of the accompanying illustrations, and you will find the answer. In that picture, you see how the 'Egyp tians represented the faces of the four distinct races of men.

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103

Note how they place the negro last; and note how faithfully

that flat nose, those blubber lips are portrayed. The general

inferiority of the typical negro could not now be better shown

than it appears in this illustration, which is thousands of

years old.

Compare this negro face with that of the sphinxes in Figures

9 and 10; and you see at a glance the total dissimilarity.

In Figure- 4 you have an Egyptian, man's face and head.

Compare it with the negro face and.head in Figure 5, and

remark the difference; then compare it with the Egyptian

sphinxes, and note the resemblance.

That head find face of the Egyptian man is of the same type

as the lace of the Egyptian sphinx; and both are wholly dis

similar from the negro type.

.

FIG. 6. FOUR RACES OF MEN.
The lips of the typical negro are.so thick that they curve backward and show the inner red surface. They are blubber lips. Now, the lips of the sphinxes are not of that character. They are merely full, the typical Eastern lip.
The "great sphinx," we should remember, has suffered much in the last century. Arabs, and others, have amused themselves by shooting at it. This target practice, aided by the corrosive agency of time, has greatly altered the face of the mighty monument. Recent photographs show the wreck of a face; but you will find (Figure 9) a. cut engraved from a drawing made in 1816. The lips, as shown in this picture, are not even full. In fact, one would not be attracted to the lips, at all, were it not for the issue raised concerning them, whereas, the typical negro lip, like his odor, challenges attention.

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As a further evidence that the Egyptian type is not the negro type, we reproduce the face of Cleopatra. Pictured on the inner wall of an Egyptian temple, the witching queen who

. -1
FIG. 1. CLEOPATRA.
fascinated Csesar and caused Antony to throw a world away, does not look much like a negress as she is claimed to be by certain Afro-Americans and their white sycophants.
Cleopatra's profile is that of a sensuous, even voluptuous,

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105

Semitic woman (Fig. 7); but very far removed from the flatnosed, blubber-lipped, woolly-haired negress, as you will see in the streets, in the fields, and in the illustrations found in this article. (Figure 8.)

PIG. 8. SOMALI WOMAN.
One more word, and we leave for Egypt. Study the plate, marked Figure 12. There you will see the faces of Egyptians, drawn by Egyptians, at about the time the great sphinx was hewn from the rock. Note the chin, mouth, nose, eye and long hair of the principal figure he who is seated and in the acting of drinking from a glass and trace, if you can, the slightest resemblance to the negro.
Then scrutinize each one of the smaller figures, there isn't a negro face among them.
Yet these were native Egyptians of the Pyramid era. At the beginning of Rawlinson's "Egypt," Chapter 3, we find the statement: "It is generally allowed by modern enthnologists that the ancient Egyptians * * * were not Africans." "We must regard the Egyptians, therefore, as an Asiatic people, immigrants * * * from the East, * * * nearly allied to the Canaanites, the Accadians, the primitive Baby lonians and the Southern Arabs." On page 54, the learned Kawlinson says:

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"Towards the South. Egypt had for her immediate neighbors, the Xahshi. or Xahasu. who were blacks, and (it is thought) true negroes, with out-turned lips and woolly hair, &c."
All Hamites were not Africans, and all Africans were not negroes.
What historian or ethnologist classes the Canaanites, the Phoenicians, and Cushites as Africans? Yet they were Hamites.
So. it is not by any means true that all Africans were negroes.
The Carthaginians were Africans, but Hamilcar, Hannibal,

FIG 9. GREAT SPHINX.
and Hasdrubal were not of the same race as Chaka, Cetewayo and Kelly Miller.
The Abyssinians are Africans, but they are not negroes. So with the Moors who overran Spain and held it for nearly a thousand years. The race of men that reared the Alhambra, and the great Mosque at Seville and who made agriculture a fine art were no kin to Guinea negroes whose Kraals were then, as now. loathsome and squalid lodges of cane and thatch, where the naked savages lived a brutish life.
Who can prove that the original dwellers in Egypt were the originators of architecture, astronomy and religion? Who can dogmatize on a matter concerning which no evidence can be produced ?
In a "History of Civilization." by Julian Laughlin, we are told by the author that he has devoted a great deal of labor to the investigation of ancient Egyptian history. His con-

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107

elusion is that the Nile valley was the home of a white race which laid the foundations of a civilization. He then takes up the story of the Hyksos, the Shepherd Kings, who con-

FIG. 10. GREEK SPHIN1X.
FIG. 11. EGYPTIAN SPHINX.
quered Egypt and who were the Pharaohs of the Bible. These Hyksos were a brown people, coming from Arabia, or some contiguous Eastern territory.

FIG. 12. EGYPTIAN WALL PAINTING.
During the reign of these Shepherd Kings, Egyptian con quests were pushed to the Euphrates and into the Soudan.
From the plains of Shinar. the Egyptians may have gained

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their knowledge of the Sphinx and of astronomy and, also, new ideas about religion.
What is certain, is that, from Ethiopia, they brought home negro prisoners, for they made pictorial record of that fact. The reader of this will find, upon examining Figure 14 of the accompanying illustrations, a string of Ethiopian captives.
That drawing is so true to life it fits the typical negro of our own time, although made thousands of years ago.
It has already been shown (Figures 4, 6 and 7) that the
typical Egyptian face was not that of a negro; but it may be argued that these illustrations depict the conquerors, the brown race, and not the subjected people.
Fortunately, it is possible to not only show, by a picture,

FIG. 13. EASTERN WORKMEN.
what manner of man the Egyptian laborer was, but also to show him at work, making sphinxes! Let anyone look at Figure 13. and spot his negro. He cannot do it. Those sphinxes which Mr. Brisbane says have negro faces, "every one of them." are being carved by men who are not negroes. Study the profile of the sphinxes themselves, and you will know that the workmen in the picture have not given the negro face co a single sphinx.
It may be said that these sculptors are not fairly represen tative of Egyptian laborers, the answer is complete: other paintings of the same era depict blacksmiths, shoe-makers, cultivators of the soil, herders of cattle, common workmen bearing burdens, etc.. and in each instance the faces are of the type as shown in Figure 12. (See Fig. 13.)
One more illustration, to prove that neither the ruling class nor the working class were negroes. and then I pass on. The

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109

picture has its pathos. (See Figure 16.) Neither the form nor the face and head of that poor woman of the laboring class are those of a negress. Indeed, she goes far toward sustaining Mr. Laughlin's theory of the underyling white race.
It can hardly be that Mr. Brisbane's reference to civilized ancestry of the negro meant the Chaldeans, the Babylonians or Assyrians; yet the general impression is that the Chaldeans were the first astronomers; and it is believed that the Israelites took much of their religious system from the peoples of the Euphrates. But the Ethiopian could not have got his black ness from the Semitic races who dwelt in the Babylonian regions. To say nothing of the Assyrian sphinx, (Figure 1) with its high-type head and profile, we have only to see the

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FIG 16. EGYPTIAN WOMAN.
portrayal of the Assyrian face (Figures 2 and 3) to be con vinced that the American must look elsewhere for ancestors.
The mighty builders, developers, rulers and conquerors who made such a garden out of the desert valleys of the Tigris and the Euphrates by canals, irrigation and intensive cultiva tion; who erected such magnificent quays, bridges, temples and palaces; who had a literature which included libraries; who had manufactures and commerce and a money system, and a regular and effective form of government; who excelled in music and other fine arts and keenly appreciated the .luxury and refinement of civilized life, these men were never the forefathers of naked, bestial, ignorant and unprogressive negroes.

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III.
Most authorities hold that our civilization is of IndoGermanic origin, and that our ancestors dwelt in the region south of the Caspian Sea. From Turkestan, for example, they could have entered Europe by crossing the narrow Hellespont, or by marching westward of the Caspian and making for the Danube.
Darwin, however, is inclined to think that West Africa was the original home of the human race. Why? Because it was there that the apes came so near to being like the men. Ap parently, he believed that somewhere in those vast jungles might be found a species of the monkey tribe which would form the connecting link between the gorilla and the lowest type of negro.
That West Africa has always been the home of this lowest

, FIG 14. NEGRO SLAVES. ...
of human types is practically -certain; -'No remains of antiquity yet discovered exhibit them as being" masters" of any other territory. When wall-paintings, sculptured groups, or tablet inscriptions prove their presence in any other land, these negroes appear as captives, or slaves, as envoys, or messengers. Records which admit of no doubt and which reach back into the very dawn of history, picture this lowest human being, giving him the very features that distinguish him today. In Rome he remained a negro; in Egypt, a negro; in Hindostan, a negro: in Turky. a negro; in South America, a negro; in England, a negro; in these United States, a negro.
The Dutch have dwelt in South Africa for three hundred years, and they are white men now as they were when they first went to the tropics. The native yellow man of Southern China lives under the sun as hot as that of Africa, and he goes almost naked, as the negro does in Africa; and yet the

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL, LITERARY, ETC.

Ill

Chinaman of Southern China is no more like the woollyhaired negro than he was thousands of years ago. That food, raiment, and climate do not alter racial characteristics, is
proved by the remarkable resemblance of the Esquimaux to
the natives of Southern China. The former inhabit the frigid
zone, live on fish and flesh, without vegetables, and wear the warmest furs obtainable; the latter are vegetarians of the

FIG.

ABYSSINIAN HEADS.

torrid zone, who wear almost nothing but their own skins. This example should convince all who are open to conviction.
Furthermore, the Abyssinians are geographical neighbors to the people of Guinea, but the two distinct types have remained distinct for ages' The Egyptians, the Canaanites, the Phoe nicians, were also neighbors to the negro, but the racial typea remained radically different, from century to century. (See Fig; 15.)
We must, therefore, accept the conclusion: The negro has

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ahvays been what he is. and he will always be what he is, no matter how many books you rub into his head, and no matter how much door-of-hope recognition may be given him.
Nature created him inferior to the Caucasian; and if ever the Caucasian lowers his level to that of the negro, in the vain hope of lifting the negro up. the crime against civiliza tion will be punished by the mongrelization and degeneration of both races.
The salvation and continued advancement of the United States pivot on this very subject. The negro is not a menace to our future because he is a negro, but because a certain number of misinformed and misguided Caucasians act upon the idea that the negro is a Caucasian painted black by the cruel caprice of God!
There, is the danger point. How silly and pernicious it is to judge the negro race by a few mulattoes like Dr. Booker Washington, or Prof. DuBois! Even though a Zula type of the pure-blooded negro should give proof of exceptional capacity. what does that prove for the whole negro race? The Zula type is rare; the low Guinea type abounds.
Why do not our Northern negro-philes recognize the great truth that the negro, in this country, is but a copyist? His civilization is a pale reflection of ours. His good conduct, in so far that it is good, results from our example, our encourage ment, our compulsion. Of his own initiative, he has never done anything, and he never will. In all the long reach of the ages, he has not contributed one ray of light to civilization.
Creative intellect was not given him. No original idea of his lives in poetry or song, in stone or upon canvas, in written book or hieroglyphic. Commerce owes him nothing; the ocean roared at his feet even as it did at the feet of our ancestors, but he never dared to build ship and brave the deep, as Celt and Teuton. Saxon and Angle did.
Agriculture owes him nothing: he lived on raw flesh, nuts, roots, fruits which nature gave him, and his fanning was done with a crudity that would have excited the contempt of a Creek, or a Cherokee Indian. For nearly 1,300 years he lived in contact -with Arabs, and about the only thing he learned from them was to boil fish. When hungry he eats it raw and undried. even now. (See Fig. 18.)
The science of Government owes him nothing; he was ruled by his fears, and never knew what law was, save as he trembled before his despotic King, or grovelled at the feet of his ignorant humbug of a priest.
The Arts owe him nothing: he lived in a filthy hut which a Seneca or an Iroquois would have scorned; his sculptuary

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confined itself to the carving of hideous fetiches; his music his much vaunted music! never took flight beyond a monot onous chant, until he caught the rhythm and the melody of ours.
To the negro in his native land, the grand march of the world's intellect was a thing unfelt, unknown, unsuspected. Into no written sign did he ever put a thought, a sentiment, a discovery, a message. Into his savage life, no mental bugleblast sounded. Against the bars of human limitations, the soul of the native negro never beat. If he ever had an aspiration which soared higher than the conquering of some neighboring tribe, the possession of more cows, and a plentiful supply of wives, the world does not know it.
Xature gave him a noble heritage in minerals, in timber, in water-power, in precious metals but he never showed the
slightest sign of appreciation. From highest to lowest, the
negro lived for the day, to gratify the appetites of the day, to revel in the lusts of the day.
For the past, he cared nothing. His life was bounded by
the Present tense. He had no ideals that called for labor and for sacrifice, to the end that the world might be made better.
Their great King was Chaka a monster of ferocity and sexuality who reminds one of the brutes who ruled and rav aged Haiti after the downfall of the French regime. Chaka was just a human beast, of tremendous force, whose soul seemed possessed of the devils of war, rapine, slaughter and lust. His bloody career cost the lives of probably a million human beings, of his own race: and if he was moved by any thing but the passion for killing, destroying and extending the
realm in which he was feared, it is not discoverable. He founded no institutions, spoke of none, and made no efforts to lift from his country its pall of barbarism.
When Chaka's mother died (poisoned by him. it was said), he elaborately conducted a funeral in which seven thousand of the mourners slew each other in their frenzy. In the grave, Chaka put ten young women and these were buried alive, along with the corpse of the King's mother. (See Fig. 17.)
The jealous tyrant could not bear the thought of death for himself, and the idea of having an heir was repugnant. Theretore, whenever one or his numerous wives gave evidence of being with child. Chaka put her to death. (And this was a Nineteenth Century King!)
Another negro King. M'tesa. who reigned in the 19th cen tury, amazed even the English by his atrocities. For any trifle that displeased him. his subjects were killed. Like Chaka. he was a monster of lust, and a succession of fresh

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115

wives was a royal necessity. To escape the encumbrance of too large a harem, it was M'tesa's practice to have an old wife slaughtered every time a fresh one was introduced.
An English, traveller tells of being present when four of the

FIG. 17. BURIAL OF CHAKA'S MOTHER.
wives of M'tesa offered him their four young sisters. He accepted the four, married them by the simple ceremony of sitting in their laps, hugging them, and rubbing his neck against theirs. This being done, he picked out four wives that he was tired of and ordered them to instant execution. This was in the year 1861.
In the last of the exploring expeditions. those of Grant. Speke. Baker and Stanley we find the same frightful condi tions which were revealed to the Ambassides, thirteen hundred years ago. when that division of the Arab race crossed the deserts, to escape the Ommiades of the Barbary States. And

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the conditions as found by the Ambassides in the seventh century, were precisely the same that existed before Christ.
At the time of the latest Stanley exploration, husbands would sell their wives, and fathers, their daughters. For a few needles, or an elephant's tooth, or a few cows, the belle
of the tribe could be bought, by any white man, or any colored man.
At this very day. Englishmen buy young negro women, to attend them on hunting or exploring trips, the price ranging from $100 to $200.
The young white men of one of the French expeditions pleased one of the negro chiefs very much by frankly admiring his numerous wives. After these white men and these negro women had almost publicly broken a certain Commandment, the Chief and husband openly expressed his gratification! He took the white men's act as a tribute to his good taste in the selection of his wives.
In the expedition of Sir Samuel Baker were some white musicians. Whenever this band would start up their music, troops of negro women, stark naked, would surround them, dancing in ecstacy. and with no sense of feminine shame.
Different from the white race in physical and mental struc ture, the negro differs even more radically in the matter of morals. The typical negro has no conception of chastity, none whatever. The men do not have it. and the women are without it. Of principles, of virtue, they are wholly devoid.

Note: "A few days before the departure of Speke and Grant from M'tesa's palace, one of his officers, K'yengo, informed him that, considering the surprising events which had lately occurred at court, the king being anxious to pry into the future, had resolved upon a very strange measure for accomplishing that end. This was the sacrifice of & child by cooking, and K'yengo was detailed to perform the barbarous ceremony, which is described as follows: The doctor places a large earthen vessel, half full of water, over a fire, and over its mouth a grating of sticks, whereon he lays a small child and a fowl side by side, and covers them over with a large earthen vessel, just like the first, only inverted, to keep the steam in, when he sets fire below, cooks for a certain. period of time, and then looks to see if his victims are still livingor dead. If dead, as they usually are, the omen is considered propitious, and the king at once proceeds upon whatever enterprise he may have been contemplating.
"After nearly three months spent with M'tesa, Speke and Grant prepared to leave Uganda for the Lake Victoria, an event which both the king and his visitors alike regretted, for notwithstandinghis incredible cruelties to his subjects he was really obsequious in his attentions to his distinguished guests, who hoped, through the great influence which they exerted over him, to induce him to abandon his inhuman practices. In this hope they so signallyfailed that on the very day of their departure one of the monster's.

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117

They think no more of the congress of the sexes than they do of the breeding of the beasts. To yield to a natural appetite
of that kind is, to them, no more of a vice than to eat when hungry and to drink when dry. (See appendix A.)
This lack of the sense of personal morality is one of the chief characteristics of the negro now! A hideous, ominous,
national menace! As to cannibalism, the story is too horrible to be dwelt upon;
the reader is referred to note below and to Appendix B.
As to their Religion, they have never had any. The Indian had his God and a heaven; the negro had neither. He offered up no prayer, for he had no sense of moral responsibility. There were no angels for the negro, nothing but evil spirits,

wives passed Speke and Grant with her hands clasped at the back of her head and crying in a most pitiful manner. She was pre ceded by the executioner, who was not permitted to touch her. She loved to obey her king and husband, and in consequence of her loving attachment she was permitted, as a mark of distinction, to walk unattended to the place of her death."
(February 26th, 1888.) "I went this morning to Nassibul's camp, which is situated abo.it an hour's march from our own camp on the Falls (Aruwimi). He received me with much ceremony, and at my request drummed to the natives, who were in two clearings at the back of his camp. A number came and went through the usual demonstrations at seeing a white man., Among them were about a dozen young women, with pleasing countenances and beautifully moulded limbs. They would have made worthy models for a sculptor. I selected a man as a model for myself, but it was very difficult to induce him to stand still while I sketched him. I then started for their village with Majuta, Mr. Jameson's boy, carrying my bag, and Fida, a native woman, who has been with the. Arabs for some time, to interpret from Swahili into the native language. "Almost the first man I saw was carrying four lumps of human flesh (with the skin on) on a stick, and through Fida I found that they had killed a man this morning and had divided the flesh. She took me over to a house where some half-dozen men were squatting, and showed me more meat on sticks in front of a flre; it was frizzling and the yellow fat was dripping from it, whilst all around was a strong odor which reminded me of the smell given out by grilled elephant meat. It was not yet the general meal-time, they told me, but one or two of the. natives cut off pieces of the frizzling flesh and ate it, laughing at Majuta, who, being disgusted, held his nose and backed into tbe brush. I spoke with the natives, through Fida, and they told me from what parts the meat was cut. One tall, sturdy native was quietly leaning against a tree and pick ing off pieces of flesh from a thigh bone with good relish. Other dainty joints were grilling at the fire. I send you a sketch of the scene, and some day hope to tell you all the horrible details of the cannibal habits and customs which prevail in this strange country." For further information see Appendix B.

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malignant demons, haunts, sorcery, and devils little and big.
Of all the black, stupid and fearful superstitions that ever enslaved human beings, that of the negro was the worst and the lowest.

The King was Law; the priest was Religion. To these two, even-thing and everybody belonged. If the King wanted a subject's cow. he took it; if his daughter, he took her. And when the King wanted a subject killed, he either sent his executioner to do the job. off hand; or, if there was some reason why this plan was not best, he would have his Witch Doctor to 'smell out" the victims, after which they were summarily executed. There were no forms of trial whatever, no barrier between the King's will and the subject's life.
To ward off the attacks of evil spirits, the negro, from king down to meanest subject, was ready to offer up any sacrifice. Their cattle, their sons, their daughters, their little babes they would give anything the priest demanded. Such was the practice of thousands of years ago; such is the practice at
this day.
Xo wonder that Darwin and Haeckel pronounce this the lowest of races, different radically in body, brain and spirit from the Caucasian, inferior to it. and incapable of a true inner culture and of a higher mental development, even under the fnvorable conditions in the United States of Xorth Amer ica. X~o woolly-haired nation has ever had an important history.
Xo wonder that travellers and missionaries who have lived among the natives of the Congo and the upper Xile declare that they cannot look upon the negro as "a man and a brother."
Xo white race of ancient times ever so regarded him. Every Aryan people that ever came in contact with him regarded him as an inferior. Greeks and Romans used him as a slave, just as modern nations have done: and history does not accusfc either Greece or Rome of kidnapping and slave-ship barbarities. Xegro chiefs were just as ready to sell their subjects into slavery two thousand years ago. as they were when
Rhode Island was the banner State of the slave trade. The Aryan Hindus would never admit the negro to equality
with themselves. He was their slave, and they made him keep his place. The Brahman would have killed his children rather than allow them to many negroes and thus pollute the
purity of the higher caste. When apostles of Social Equality and miscegenation are
sent out at the expense of the National Democratic Committee to preach their damnable doctrines under the thin disguise

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119

of making speeches for Bryan; and when the National Demo cratic Party becomes the personal asset of an Illinois-born, perpetual Presidential candidate, who, as a matter of choice, educated his own daughter and sons on a plan of Social Equality with negroes, it would appear to be high time for the people of this country to wake up. There is a, danger at the door which dwarfs all others.
As was forcefully said by the Right Honorable James Bryce (more to be honored because of his books than because he is Ambassador of Great Britain to the United States) this ques tion of a hybrid race concerns the whole of mankind. Says Mr. Bryce:
"The matter ought to be regarded from the side neither of the white nor of the black, but of the future of mankind at large. Now for the future of mankind nothing is more vital than that some races should be maintained at the highest level of efficiency, because the work they can do for thought and art and letters, for scientific discovery, and for raising the standard of conduct, will determine the general progress of humanity. If therefore we were to suppose the blood oi the races which are now most advanced to be diluted, so to speak, by that of the most backward, not only would more be lost to the former than would be gained to the latter, but there would be a loss, possibly an irreparable loss, to the world at large."
IV.

It has long been known that ruins, attesting the existence of ancient civilization, were to be found in the interior of Africa, Rider Haggard used this fact as a romantic basis for his most popular novel. Archaeologists are even now making further progress in unearthing evidence of this obsolete empire.
But what of it? Roman remains in England do .not prove that the British once had a civilization, and then lost it. Remains of Moorish splendor, in Spain, prove nothing for the
Spaniards. Central America once had a civilization whose ruins are now
surrounded by the tropical wilderness; but nobody contends that this civilization was developed and then lost by the natives who possessed the land at the time of Columbus.
Throughout Syria are mournful memorials of former gran deur. but who would assert that these mighty ruins prove the
remote civilization of the Arab, or the Turk? The Euphrates and the Tigris are lined with evidences ot
the power and culture of the empires which once flourished in Mesopotamia, but what connection had they with the ances-

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tors of the robbers and marauders who now infest those deserts ?
As Volney did, a traveler of the past day may wend his way to the Orient, may wander amid monuments of the past, wrecks of temples, palaces, fortresses, acqueducts and tombs;
may linger along the Orontes and recall the imperial argosies that once floated upon its bosom; may visit Palmyra and rebuild, in fancy, the magnificent city of Odenathus and Zenobia: may seat himself "upon a shaft of a column" and con template the moonlit, "stupendous ruins" a countless multi tude of cornices, capitals, shafts, pilasters, entablatures, "all and deep and depressing as such a traveler's musings may be, never once will he connect with the dead civilization whose monuments are before him, the wretched Arab peasants whose hovels are built within the area of those ancient palaces and temples.
AVere the whites of Europe and of these United States to take their hands off Hayti. and allow those negroes to slide back to the savagery from which the French drew them, it is very easy to imagine future archaeologists, visiting that Island, would come upon a lot of man-eating, fetich-worship ing negroes, who would not even remember the civilization which France once developed there. Digging down under neath the surface of things, the archaeologist would discover the traces of this magnificent French civilization. If he were then to believe that the negroes whom he found around him were the originators of that lost civilization, his case would be just as strong as that made by such writers as Mr. Brisbane and Ella Wheeler Wilcox.
It is a mere truism to state that nations have their infancy, their youth, their manhood, their old age, their decay and death, just as individuals have; and it is usually the ease that an enervated empire is stamped out by hardy barbarians who rear a new civilization upon the ruins of the old. It is by no means improbable that the Ayran or the Semitic races were once represented, splendidly, in what, for ages, has been
Darkest Africa. On the Mediterranean coast of Africa, there were at a very
early period, civilized Semitic States. It is probable that Aryan and Semitic peoples penetrated the -interior of the continent, and there established empires. These may have
decayed, in the course of ages, and maj have been destroyed by hardier men. even as Rome fell before the Northmen. Of the existence of such empires, however, the negroes, who have inhabited Africa from the earliest dawn of history, do not even possess a vague tradition.

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Now, it must be apparent to all that no people who had once evolved a civilization, could, while living in the same
territory, not only lose the civilization'itself, but lose, also, even the faintest recollection of it. Such a thing is absolutely incredible, Ella Wheeler Wilcox to the contrary, notwith standing.
The negro in Africa not only has no legend of a lost civiliza tion, but he has no tradition of the Deluge. In that respect, as in many others, he proves himself to be on the same racial plane as the native Australian.

V.
Leave the negro to himself, and cycles sweep by, empires rise and fall, races appear and disappear. the negro undergoing no change, making no advance, and dreaming of none. Inca pable of creative thought, cherishing no ideals, having no morals and no principles, having no hope of heaven and no fear of hell, he remains, century after century, the neighbor of the gorilla and the chimpanzee, making no more effort at civilization than they make.
Age after age, he gives his cow. or his child, as a sacrifice to some evil spirit that has put a spell on him; and he gives him self, his son, and his daughter to the blood-thirsty and sensual beast whom he calls King.
He has just the same opportunities to emerge from bar barism as all other barbarians have, but he alone makes no effort to emerge.
The yellow men and the brown men cease to be savages; cease to be barbarians; evolve a civilization, erect temples, purify their religion, rear palaces, refine their manners: adopt systems of jurisprudence, of government, of education: develop arts and sciences-. Even black men. not negroes, do something of the same sort. Indeed, the ancient civilization of the Hindu and the Moor was the very highest that the world had then known, if we except that of Greece. And the moral teachings of ancient Hindostan were not inferior to those of any nation of antiquity.
But the negro, in his nartive land, sat squat in his degrada tion, moved by no inner promptings to lift himself and im prove his surroundings.
Left to himself a barbarian, he will, when left to himself, lose any civilization which he has acquired.
VI.
God knows, I hold no malice in my heart against the negro. Grand-children of my grandfather's slaves are living on land

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v.

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of mine, just as their fathers did. There isn't a black man who knows me that would hesitate to come to me for protec tion, and be certain of getting it. In his contracts, in his property, in his home and school and church, in his absolute rights as a human being. I would despise myself if I denied him the same treatment that is given to the whites.
It is only when he claims to be our equal, wants to thrust himself into our social life, wants to claim equality in political privileges, wants to mingle the blood of his race with the blood of ours, wants to lower the standard of our civilization by
mongrelizing the superior race. it is then that I meet him in the gate, ready for battle.
To my mind, the most dangerous doctrine that can be preached to the people of America is that Social Equality, mixed marriages, mixed schools, and political equality offer the solution of the Xegro Question. Experience has forced upon me the conclusion that the true way out of our troubles is to give to the negro, fully and universally, those absolute rights to which the law of nature is said to give to every human being. But political privileges voting and officeholding. he should not have at all. To exclude him utterly
from affairs of government, would mean peace, to him and to us. As to social equality, that would inevitably breach the walls of racial purity. Mixed marriages would become more common, the hybridizing of the race would set in, and nothing, then, could prevent the downward movement of the great Caucasian race.
The well-meaning bnt mistaken negro-petter who bemoans the condition of the negro, and laments the fact that he was brought away from Africa and put into slavery, is a most
absurd creature. His talk is idiotic twaddle.
Had not the African kings sold off the surplus of their subjects, the negroes who were brought to Europe and America might have been cooked and eaten by hungry friends, offered up as a sacrifice to placate offended "spirits." killed in battle by neighboring saA-ages. or buried alive to keep company in the grave with some member of a royal family, or starved miserably in some season of famine. Left in their native country, they never would have heard of God; never would have heard 'of Christian virtues. Christian lives, Christian heaven, nor Christian hell: never would have known what it is to read, write, wear store-clothes, and to undress in the presence of white ladies in a Pullman sleeping car; never
would have felt the joys of being electioneered, of voting, of preaching, of passing the hat around, of sitting at a shoeblacking stand and reading the morning paper. "seegyar" in

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123

mouth while a little white boy kneels down to polish his number twelve: never would have known what it is to ride to the polls in a white man's automobile, or to get ten cents per vote for casting twenty-odd ballots in the same box on the same day, or to be called "Mister," and "Doctor," and "Pro fessor," and "Bishop," or to be town councillor for a village like Baltimore, Judge in a hamlet like Chicago, Custom House boss in various proud American cities, and U. S. Minister to states like Honduras and Haiti.
Had he been left in his home in Africa, the negro of this land of the free and the freaks would never have known the delicious flavor of Federal pap, philanthropic donations, Carnegie dinners, White House receptions and Presidential luncheons: never would have known how good it felt to send a white girl to prison because of her refusal to wait on him in a restaurant, or to see his children educated at the expense of white men whose own children are in the cotton field and the cotton mill, or to read an editorial in a Hearst newspaper reminding him that his ancestors laid the foundations of modern civilization at a time when ours were "gibbering savages."
Had he not been purchased from his King and brought to this country, what good things our negroes would have missed! Funerals, in whose enjoyment there are no fears of being buried alive as company to the deceased: Excursions, with the luscious delights of plenty of whisky and plenty of women and plenty of time: Hot Suppers, beginning with a wild frolic and winding up with gun play and razors in the air: Revi vals, runnnig.by the month, and climaxing in the riotous "Comin' thro's;" Secret Societies, where colored gentlemen instruct colored audiences in the gentle art of making them selves intolerable to white people: Free Lectures, by speakers who are paid by .Uncle Sam to inform the Afro-American that Hannibal was a nigger, Cleopatra, a niggeress, and Sap
pho, a "mulatto." Poor, downtrodden American negro! "We brought him
here," tearfully and contritely confess the white negro-philes who expiate so nobly on the duties which we owe the negro.
How ridiculous! "The truth is that his position as a slave was better than anything he had ever known at home. It was others who made themselves miserable about it. His main objection to slavery was that it made him work, regularly. Save in rare cases, he showed no disposition to "run away." He was generally well-fed, well-clothed, well-housed, welltreated. In exceptional instances, he might have had a master who was as cruel as the chieftain of his tribe, but this did not happen often. Occassionally, he may have had as rough a

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time as he was accustomed to at home, but this was seldom

the case.

Why was it that Abolition plotters could never goad the

slaves to revolt? Because the negroes did not crave emanci

pation. Why did they remain quiet during the war? Because,

as a whole, they were content. Therefore, the John Brown

raid was a miserable fiasco.

In Africa the negroes had never been free. They held life

and property at the pleasure of cruel, jealous, capricious kings.

The shadow of death hung over them, all the time. No mem

ber of the tribe knew what moment some look, word or act

of his might enrage his chief and cost his life.

It is a notorious fact that the number of negroes who "run

away" from their own chiefs, and take refuge in Dutch and

English settlements in Africa, is larger than the number of

fugitive slaves that formerly escaped from the Southern

owners by the "Underground Kailway!"

Contact with us improved him; and a process of gradual

emancipation was lifting him to a higher plane, when a lot of

madmen who supposed themselves to be statesmen played

into the hands of fanatics, kindled the hell-fires of sectional

hate, and let slip the dogs of war.

Four millions of people, who had recently been "gibbering

savages." were given their freedom so suddenly that they did

not know what to do with it. This being the case, the vindic

tive rage of such men as Thad Stevens and Charles Sumner

brought forth the Reconstruction laws, and the 14th and 15th

Amendments. These acts of legislation were ambitious efforts

to do something which the Almighty alone could have done

to make a mass of ignorant negroes the equal of a mass of

'

civilized Caucasians. The effort was a crime, the experiment a calamity.

But the triumph of the Southern whites in throwing off the

yoke of Northern oppression and negro domination ought to

M

forever settle two questions: (1) Local self-government is, with the Indo-Germanic

peoples, a primitive instinct, an imperishable principle, an

unconquerable ideal:

(2) The superiority of the Aryan will assert itself, no

matter how overwhelming may seem to be the -odds against

him.

A final word and I am done: the natural repugnance of our

race to equality of social relations with the negroes is the

instinct of racial self-preservation. It is God-given, and its

purpose is the high and holy one of keeping pure the blood

of our superior race. To do this is best for us, best for the

negro, best for our country, best for mankind.

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125

APPENDIX A.
"In certain tribes of Central Africa both boys and girls after Initiation" (circumcism and excision) "must as soon as possible have intercourse, the belief being that if they do not they will die. Narrlnyeri boys during initiation after the preliminary rites had complete license as regards unmarried females, not only such as they might lawfully marry, but even those of their own clan and totem. After the seclusion of a Kaffir girl at puberty, she is allowed to cohabit with anyone during a festal period which fol lows; and Kaffir boys after being circumcised are allowed to seize any unmarried women they please, and have connection with them. A similar custom is found on the Congo. The Muhammadan negroes of the Sengal are circumcised at fourteen. They are looked after for a month, during which time they walk about in a procession! 'They may commit during this period any violence against girls, except rape and murder.' After the month is up, they are men. A Zulu girl at puberty goes through a ceremonial process. Secluded in a special hut, she is attended by twelve or fourteen girls. 'No married man may come near the dwelling, and should anyone do so he Is beaten away by the girls, who attack him moat viciously with sticks and stones. During her seclusion the neophyte must on no account see or address any man, married or unmarried.' At the end of the period a number of girls and unmarried men have Intercourse in the hut. After a further period of seclusion the girl bathes and Is 'clean,' and after the perforation of the hymen by two old women, she is a woman. After initiation to the warrior's set, El-Moran, the Masai young men associated freely with girls; In fact each El-Moran had a woman who went about with him."'
(From "A Study of Primitive Marriage," by Earnest Crawley, M. A.)
APPENDIX B.
"The king of Gnongo ruled a small but very powerful and very populous country, and was the terror of all his neighbors to the North and West by reason of the number and ferocity of the slaveraids that started from his dominions, and were almost invariably successful. The whole religion of these people necessitated attacks upon their neighbors, for its basis was constant human sacrifice, and the simple law of self-preservation taught the Gnongos, for their own safety, always to keep at hand a goodly supply of the necessary victims. The true history of the place would be a dismal record of ruthless and brutal doings to death of human beings, often apparently for no reason whatever except to satisfy a ghoulish craving for the sight of human blood flowing fresh, or blackening, clotted and nasty In the open, in the town, in street, In square, in court-yard nay, upon the very household utensils themselves.
" 'On this, the third day, were to be erected with all the proper ceremonies the six main uprights of the new Juju House. The reason, or even the simple mythology of these acts, it is hopeless to expect; one might as well hope to learn the mythology of mon keys; though verily, I believe, the daily annals of a collection of the higher quadrumana would be more sane and cleanly and far less bloodthirsty than those of the baser, lower bimana.

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" 'But now it was time for things to begin, and as etltfUette,

dangerous to evade, constrained all to take part in the ceremonies,

fasting, so far as a solid meal was concerned, all real eating and

drinking had to be deferred till the proceedings of the day were

concluded.

" 'There appeared to be no regular commencement, but, seemingly

by a kind of general impulse, drums began to be beaten, horns

blown, and trade muskets discharged in the air. Then cows' horns,

filled with powder and tamped with clay, were flred off with a

thundering report and considerable danger to the neighbors, and,

with the exception of the king, who practically never appeared in

.

public, and of his immediate attendants, the whole population of

the town flocked to the spot where the ghastly preparations were

already well advanced.

" 'The priests and the warriors and women gathered in a great

circle round the pits; the slaves who had carried the victims from

the town, bound hand and foot to poles and rolled in cheap calico,

at a sign came forward and laid them two and two beside each

excavation, one man and one woman to each. Cutting the lashings

that secured them to the poles, they took these .away. Then one of

the priests began a sort of exhortation to the people, telling them

which would be for the general benefit; then, after animadverting

upon the crucifixions of the young women that had taken place two

days previously for the prevention of famine and drought, he

referred to the head-cutting of the day before, and declared that

the auguries drawn from the positions in which the heads had

fallen had been most favorable, that the posts of the Juju House

were about to be set up in accordance with them, that the heads

would be fixed upon the building, and would bring great luck, and,

to prevent and minimize occurrences of such evil omen for the

coming year, those women who had borne twins in his majesty's

dominions during the year gone by would now be buried alive in

the hole in the center of the house, over which, when a proper

dwelling-place had been provided, a most powerful Juju would pre-

side. He ended by saying that the king had given orders for a

great feast to conclude the three days' proceedings, and that his

royal bounty had provided for his people a more than usually liberal

dole of rum and palm wine.

" 'He finished amid the frantic applause of the crowd and more

discharging of muskets and banging of drums.

.,

" Xow the warriors got into some sort of order In front and

began to chant a monotonous song or hymn, to which the women

marked a rude time by grunting at regular intervals and slapping

their breasts and thighs. " 'While this hideous anthem was being sung, the executioner

and his assistants seized the victims two and two as they lay, male

and female, and binding them face to face, pitched each couple into

the long holes lying ready excavated beside them. This done, he

and bis daubed and painted assistants in all their disgusting para-'

phernalia of charms and bones, began to dance about the pits,

rattling hollow calabashes full of small nuts, and seeds, and par

tially drowning the groans and screams of agony that proceeded

from the wretched beings below.

" 'But now arose the cry of "Rice-pounders! Women! O, women,

bring your rice-pounders! Let the family be fruitful and the year

give many slaves! Women! O, women, bring you rice-pounders!"

"'These words were shouted and yelled by the warriors, but

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127

promptly taken up by the whole crowd, which, wild with excite ment, began to stamp and dance with gyratory motion about the spot occupied by the executioner and his assistants.
" 'Several scores of women had rushed off to the town at the first words, and were now streaming back, each one armed with her rice-pounder, or hard, heavy wood, about three inches in diame ter and six feet Vong, shod with iron at the lower end. As they came up they were speedily arranged in rows round the pits, and at a given cry from the warriors and the cry of "Now, O women, pound the sacred rice to feed the gods!" they commenced pounding away with their formidable rammers at the wretched creatures below.
" 'The piercing shrieks that immediately rent the air soon ceased, and soon, save for a low groan or two, no sound rose from the blood-stained mortars except the monotonous beat-beat of the horrid pestles.
" 'But while the women pounded, the people and the executioners yelled and danced till the excitement attained a frantic pitch. Theji, suddenly closing in, the crowd seized the great pillars lying on the ground, hoisted them up by main force of arms, and, plant ing each one in the centre of the gory mass below, filled in the loose earth and. stones about them.
" 'Not till the earth was packed hard round the pillars and level with the surface of the surrounding soil did the women cease their ghastly labor. Then they stopped, exhausted, and rolled about, many of them apparently afflicted with a species of epileptic frenzy. (Just such a frenzy as we see the colored women exhibit at their religious camp-meetings and church services in the United States at the present day.)
" 'At once each became the centre of an admiring circle, for their frenzy was a sign of good omen, a sign that the sacrifice had been accepted with pleasure by the gods, whose spokeswomen they had now become, for the time being, at least.
" 'After awhile things quieted down; the crowd once more became attentive, for the final ceremony was at hand. As already men tioned, another pit had been excavated in the centre of the pillars, now so firmly erected. Alongside this centre hole, a dozen or more miserable women were dragged. These were the unfortunates who had given birth to twins during the previous year in the king's dominion, and so brought evil upon it. One of the priests gave the people his views upon the subject, views that will hardly bear reproduction in these pages, and then the executioner, carrying an iron bar about two feet long, and followed by his assistants rolling a short thick log, threw the women down one after another, and, deliberately smashing their arms and legs in two places, doubled them up behind them and flung the poor creatures into the hole.
" 'Not a sound broke the silence, save the screams of the unfor tunate victims of this horrible cruelty, and as soon as the last of them had been pitched, shrieking, into the pit, the earth was filled in over them while they were still alive, and with a wild shout the whole body of spectators rushed in and commenced stamping it flat with their feet. In a very short time all trace of the excavation had disappeared, and the whole space, inclosed by the uprights, and even several feet beyond them, was tramped smooth and flat and as hard as a threshing floor.
" 'No one passing could have guessed at the terrible crimes which

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had been committed, for hardly a splash of blood upon the pillars gave evidence of them.
" 'With firing of muskets, blowing of horns, and general con gratulations and jollity, with praises, yelled and chanted, of the goodness of their king and his liberality, the crowd returned to the town, the women to prepare the evening meal and make such festive arrangements as were demanded by the king's orders, the men to talk over the day's celebrations, plan future schemes of blood and rapine, and discuss the next slave-catching expedition, all separating later on to secure betimes the royal dole of drink.
" 'I have described the day, the night I will leave to the reader's imagination and to its fitting veil of darkness.' "
(J. Cameron Grant's "Ethiopia," 19th century explorations.)

The Passing of Lucy and Rollo.
GENTLE reader, did you ever steep your mind in one of those Sunday School books which were in circulation previous to our Civil War? If not, ransack your grandmother's garret until you find a specimen of that Arcadian literature.
The little boy in those blessed books never quarrelled, never had a fight, never had dirty hands, and would have been in expressibly shocked had he made a conversational slip in grammar. He was an intolerable angel in breeches was this little boy of the Sunday School book. He couldn't "talk back.'' nor handle slang, nor throw rocks, nor skin-the-cat, nor ride the billy-goat, nor tie things to a dog's tail, nor put a pin in a chair for somebody to sit on. If the Bad Boy hit him in the stomach, he wept meekly, quoted a text, and went home to his mamma.
In common conversation, the language of this Good Boy was drawn from wells of English undefiled. Erasmus never used choicer words; and Chesterfield was not more perfect in manners, than was this detestable Good Boy.
Among youths of his own age, he was a miniature Socrates, washed and otherwise purified. Wisdom oozed from him in hateful streams- The sagacity of sages sat on him with un canny ease.
When a grown man spoke to this Good Boy, the G. B. never replied until he had lifted his right hand and ejaculated "Oh, Sir!" After the salute and the "Oh Sir," came the response, which always did infinite credit to the manners, mind and heart of this outrageously Good Boy.
Life was an easy-going affair to the G. B. All things came his way. He was virtuous and he was happy. Nothing ever occurred to soil his clothes or tangle his hair. His nose never bled, he never bit his tongue, never struck his funny-bone, never hit his thumb with the hammer, never had his drink to go the wrong way. He was never drowned while bathing in the pond, for the simple reason that he didn't "go in" on the Sab bath. The Bad Boy "went in washing" on Sunday and was drowned, as a matter of course.
Daniel in the lion's den was not safer amid the perils than was the Good Boy among the ills which are incident to boy hood. Past vicious bulls and snappish curs he walked serene and unharmed. Neither his gun, nor his pony ever kicked him; neither the wasp, nor the bee, nor the yellow-jacket ven tured to sting him; nettles avoided his bare feet; no boil came

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to afflict his nose, nor stye to distort his eye. No limb of a tree ever broke under him. and gave him a nasty fall. He never tumbled into the creek, nor snagged his "pants," nor sprained his ankle, nor cut his finger, nor bumped his head, nor walked against the edge of the door at night.
Nothing could happen to this insufferable Good Boy nothing bad. I mean. His shoes never blistered his heels, his hat never blew away, he never lost his handkerchief, never had a stone-bruise, never missed his lessons, never soiled his book, nver played tuant. and never ate anything which caused him to clap both hands to a certain place in front while he doubled up and howled.
Oh. a pink of perfection was this odious boy of the ante bellum Sunday School books.
And nest to him in comprehensive unbearableness was the little girl who was the counterpart of this little boy.
Her name was Lucy. Or, perhaps, Mariella. Or, for the sake of variety. Lucretia.
And what a portentous proposition in pantalettes she was, to be sure!
She talked just as exquisitely as did the Good Boy. Her selection of words was artistic, and her grammar immaculate. If William Pitt's natural style was that of the "State Paper," the colloquial standard of Lucy, Lucretia and Marielle was that of Madame de S.tael.
She walked with primness: if she ran at all. it was with dignity; she did not giggle, did not romp, never made a mud pie. never pinched the Good Boy. and was such a formidable little thing, generally, that even the Bad Boy never snatched her bonnet. Such a thought as that of stealing a kiss from her never entered the head of any boy. good, bad or indifferent.
Times have changed, manners have changed, types have changed. What is responsible for the bold-eyed girl the girl of loose speech and loud manners? What is responsible for the irreverent boy the boy of the cigarette and of the look which undresses every hand'some woman that he meets? These are the boys that greet girls with a "Hello F' and a leer that should offend. These are the girls who shout "Hello!" to the boys and who lie prone by the side of young men during a ' straw-ride" at night. Are all such maidens the daughters of mothers who drink and gamble? Are all such youths the sons of men who have no morals? By no means. Our'whole social and industrial situation has changed, and the people have changed with it.
Would that I could believe that our Public School System is guiltless in this matter. Use your eyes as you pass a crowded academy and note the conditions which make against decency

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131

to say nothing of that deference and respect with which
every properly trained boy should treat members of the
oilier sex. But there are causes deeper, more universal than the promis
cuous mix-up in the Public Schools. The centripetal power of class legislation is drawing capital inward to the small centre of the Privileged. To the masses is left a constant!}1 smaller proportion of the nation's annual production of wealth. In turn, this law-made and abnormal condition of things over crowds the cities. In fact, rural life has become so unattrac
tive that the trend of population is from the farm to the town..

"ROLLO, LUCY AND MARIETTA WENT TOGETHER."
Every village has its surplus the men and boj's, white and black, who have no visible means of support and who cannot be pursuaded to work. In every town is the girl who hardly knows why she's there. but she's there.
And the pace-that-kills in the Chicagos and New Yorks ia faithfully represented, on a small scale, in each of our towns. Don't all of us know it ? We do. But what is the remedy ?
The temperance people believe that whiskey is at the bottom of the trouble. The church people believe that irreligion is the source of the evil. The school-teacher believes that educa tion will save the day.
But can not the student of human affairs see that the de-
6-Sketches

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moralization incident to four years of civil strife shook our
entire social system like an earthquake? Did not the Spanish war light up. luridly, vividly, horribly. the most universal
corruption which had seized upon the body politic?
"Eat. drink and be merry tomorrow we die." When a nation rings with that cry. it is close to the whirlpool. "Let us have a good time!" The man drinks and makes much of
his food: the woman drinks and thinks a deal about her eating; the boy drinks and knows the good dishes; the girl drinks and daintily scans the menu. "Hello!" shouts the dashing boy;

"OH! LOOK," CKIED. LL'CY.
"Hello!" answers the dashing girl, and off they hurry to some place where talk, songs, pictures and conduct are "up-to-date," and in many and many a case the Hello couple are reeling helhvard by midnight.
Don't we know that our national statute-book is the Iliad of our woes?
The few are wickedly rich while the many are helplessly poor, because the laws have been made for the purpose of bringing about that very state of affairs. There is a fierce struggle for existence which waxes more desperate every year. Men fight each other for a job. with a ferocity like that of starving dogs fighting over a bone. Girls are forced into posi tions where delicacy of feeling is trampled out and where it

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL. LITERARV. ETC.

1-33

requires heroic courage to resist the tempters who are ever on her trail to pull her down.
"Who does not know that the ten million dollars which one of our religious denominations recently sent abroad for For eign Missions would be better employed if it were devoted to the breaking up of our hideous marketing of white women to lewd houses? Who does not feel that the hundreds of millions which our Government has spent in the Philippines had better have been left in the pockets of the taxpayers here at home? Who does not know that we ought to tremble for our future when we see how our law-makers have been the willing tools of those who ruin the millions of men and women, girls and boys, in order that a few hundred of ravenous rascals like Rockefeller and Carnegie and Havemeyer and Ryan and Vanderbilt and Gould and Harriman shall each be richer than any king ever was?
Most of us do know it! Some of us have long been trying to arouse the patient, victimized millions to a sense of their own wrongs. But it is an up-hill work. Some despair, some scoff, some are callous, some won't listen, some are timid, some are interested in keeping things as they are. some think it is
God's will that a favored few should reach the Paradise of unlimited riches while the unfavored multitudes sink into a hell of eternal wretchedness.
The lotus-eater's plaint of "Let us alone" is to me as fearful as that reckless, creedless. madly selfish cry "Let us eat. drink and be merry: tomorrow we die."
Jay Gould contemptuously dismissed the suggestion that, some day. the American people might rise in arms against its swinish plutocracy. Said Jason, the cynical:
"I could hire one-half of the people to shoot the other half.''
The man who said that was not more contemptuous of us than are the plutocrats who rule and rob us now. But perhaps what he said is the truth. They manage to keep us divided, about half and half, in the bloodless battle of ballots: perhaps, if it came to a shooting they could divide us the same way.

Concerning Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War.

WHEN the editor of a Northern magazine applied to me for

an article on Abraham Lincoln, my first inclination was to

decline the commission. Although it is high time that some

one should strike a note of sanity in the universal laudation

of Mr. Lincoln, a Southern man is not, perhaps, the proper

person to do it. On further consideration, however, it oc

curred to me that my position was radically different from

that of any other public man in the South. People on the

other side of Mason and Dixon's line cannot be ignorant of

the fact that for the last twenty j'ears I have waged warfare

upon the Bourbonism and the narrowness of my own people.

In every possible way I have appealed to them to rise above

sectional prejudice and party bigotry. While I, myself, have

1 v |{

suffered terribly during this long series of years, some good

1

has followed my work. Twenty years ago, a white man in

"'

the South who openly professed himself a member of the

.'

Republican party was socially ostracised. Every one realizes

>' '

how completely that state of things as been revolutionized.

'

My part in bringing about this change for the better is so

well known in the North than no well informed man or woman

1 ^*

will attribute to sectionalism anything in my estimate of Mr.

I i,

Lincoln which may appear to be harsh or unjust.

' . *'

Let us see to what extent the adultation of Mr. Lincoln

.'

has gone.

j '-.

In Harper's Weekly for "November 7th. 1908, a British gen-

^ * *''

tleman of the name of P. D. Ross offers to amend the high

estimate which Colonel Harvey had already placed upon Mr.

Lincoln by classing our martyred President as "The greatest

man the world has produced." Colonel Harvey soberly accepts

the amendment. thus Miss Ida Tarbell is left far behind, and

Hay and Nicolay eclipsed.

One of the more recent biographers of Mr. Lincoln hotly

denounced as untrue the statement that "He used to sit around

and tell anecdotes like a traveling man."

Do we not all remember how. as children, we were fascinated

]

with the story of "The Scottish Chiefs." by Miss Jane Porter'?

,6

Did not the Sir William Wallace of that good lady's romance

appeal to us a perfect hero, an ideal knight, exemplifying in

himself the loftiest type of chivalry? Yet. when we grew to

be older, we were not surprised to learn that Sir Walter Scott

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135

certainly a good judge of such matters, and certainly a patriotic Scotchman wrathfully and contemptuously found fault with Miss Porter because she had frittered away into "a fine gentleman" a great, rugged, national hero. Every well balanced American, North and South, ought to feel the same way towards those authors who take Abraham Lincoln into their hands, dress him up, tone him down, polish him and change him until he is no longer the same man.
Let us study Mr. Lincoln with an earnest desire to find out what he was. Let it be remembered that the biography of him written by his law partner, Mr. Herndon. was that biography in which the best picture of him might have been expected. His law partner was his friend, personally and politically. It was that law partner who converted him to abolitionism. To the task of writing the biography of the deceased member of the firm, Mr. Herndon brought devotion to the memory of a man whom he had respected and loved; yet, being honest, he told the truth about Mr. Lincoln, painting his portrait with the warts on. The fact that this record, written by a sorrowing friend, was destroyed, and a spurious, after-thought Herndon biography put in its place, must always be a fact worthy of serious consideration.
I can imagine one of the reasons for the suppression of Herndon's original manuscript when I note, with amusement, the vigor and indignation with which a later biographer de
fends Mr. Lincoln from the terrible accusation of "sitting around and telling anecdotes to amuse a crowd."
Those who take the least pains to ascertain the facts as to Mr. Lincoln's story-telling habits soon convince themselves that nothing said upon the subject could well be an exaggera tion. In his day, the broadest, vulgarest anecdotes were cur rent in the South and West, and thousands of public men. who ought to have been ashamed of themselves for doing so, made a practice of repeating these stories to juries in the court house, crowds on the hustings, and to groups in the streets, stores and hotels.
Upon one occasion, while I was in conversation with Thomas H. Tibbies, a surviving personal acquaintance of John Brown and Abraham Lincoln. I interrogated him eagerly as to both. Directing his attention to this matter of Mr. Lincoln's fondess for the relation of smutty stories, Mr. Tibbies very promptly replied that the very first time he ever saw Mr. Lincoln he ^as directed to his room in the hotel by a series of bursts of laughter. Mr. Tibbies' curiosity was aroused by the continuous hilarity which resounded from this particular room and he went to it. There he found a great, long, raw-boned man

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seated in a chair with his big feet up on the table, telling smutty yarns to a circle of men who were exploding with laughter at the end of each story.
Every man must be judged by the standards of his time. People of elegance and refinement, according to the standards of the Elizabethan age. listened to comedies which were con sidered in good taste then, but which would not be tolerated in any decent community now. The manners of the West and of the rural South in Mr. Lincoln's day, were quite different from what they are now. Even now, however, there are men who call themselves gentlemen, and women who think they are ladies, that make a speciality of cultivating a talent for the relation of doubtful stories. The fact that Mr. Lincoln let his
gift of entertainment and his fondness for the humorous lead him down to the low plane of his audience does not by any means indicate a defect of heart or mind. As a lawyer and as a politician, it was a part of his business to cultivate popu larity. He made friends in just such circles as that into which Mr. Tibbies walked. The men who laughed with Mr. Lincoln, enjoying the inimitable way in which he related anecdotes, naturally warmed to him. and they gave him ver dicts and votes.
Herndon tells us that "Lincoln could never realize the im propriety of telling vulgar yarns in the presence of a minister of the gospel."
Lamon admits that "Mr. Lincoln's habit of relating vulgar
yarns (not one of which will bear printing) was restrained by no presence and no occasion."
General Don Piatt bears emphatic testimony to the same effect.
In Rhodes- "History of the United States" Vol. 4, p. 518
we are told how Governor Andrews of Massachusetts during the Civil War went to the White House to consult President Lincoln about a matter of importance, and how the President disgusted the Governor by telling a nasty anecdote.
In earlv manhood. Lincoln kept a grocery store, in which he sold liquor. Herndon says "Lincoln's highest delight was to get a rowdy crowd in groceries (dram-shops) or on street corners and retail vulgar yarns too coarse to pt in print."
Dennis Hanks, a cousin of Mr. Lincoln, said, "Abe had a great passion for vulgar yarns."
Cousin Dennis was asked about the songs that Mr. Lincoln loved best when a young man.
Cousin Dennis answered "Religious songs did not suit him at all: his favorite songs were unprintable. One of them
began thus: "There was a Romish lady, brought up in Popery."

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137

You can readily guess the rest. The propensity to the low-comic was so strong in Mr. Lincoln that it overcame him even on the field of battle, where new-made graves were all around him. In 1862, the Sussex (Xew Jersey) Statesman published the following:
"Lincoln on the Battlefield."
"We see that many papers are referring to the fact that Lincoln ordered a comic song to be sung for the battlefield. We have known the facts of the transaction for some time, but have refrained from speaking about them. As the newspapers are stating some of the facts, we will give the whole affair. Soon after one of the most desperate and sanguinary battles, Mr. Lincoln visited the Commanding General, who, with his staff, took him over the field, and explained to him the plan of the battle, and the particular places where the battle was most fierce. At one point the Com manding General said: 'Here on this side of the road five hundred of our brave fellows were killed, and just on the other side of the road four hundred and fifty more were killed, and right on the other side of that wall five hundred rebels were destroyed. We have buried them where they fell.' 'I declare,' said the President, 'this is getting gloomy; let us drive away.' After driving a few rods the President said: 'Jack,' speaking to his companion, 'can't you give us something to cheer us up? Give us a song, a lively one.' Whereupon, Jack struck up, as loud as he could bawl, a comic negro song, which he continued to sing while they were riding off from the battle ground, and until they approached a regiment drawn up, when the Commanding General said: 'Would it not be well for your friend to cease his song till we pass this regiment? The poor fellows have lost more than half their num ber. They are feeling very badly, and I' should be afraid of the effect it would have on them.' The President asked his friend to stop singing until they passed the regiment."

After the story had been frequently reprinted, and after Mr. Lincoln had' told "Ward H. Lamon that he would not notice it. he wrote an extremely cautious and curious evasion, rather than a denial. Mr. Lincoln's letter concludes thus:

"Neither JlcClellan nor anyone else," he wrote, "made any objec tions to the singing. The place was not on the battlefield, the time was sixteen days after the battle. No dead bodies were seen, nor even a grave that had not been rained on since it had been made."

But this letter was not mailed or published, and no denial of the ugly story was made in the life-time of Mr. Lincoln. General McClellan and the officers who were present when the comic song was sung amid the fresh graves of Antietam.
*******
Mr. P. D. Eoss. Editor of the Ottawa (Canada) Xational, claims that Mr. Lincoln was "The greatest man the world has

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produced." and the editor of Harper's Weekly soberly falls into line.
Well, there should be some standard by which one is enabled to measure a man's greatness. Mr. Lincoln was a lawyer, a statesman, and a Chief Magistrate of a republic. In each of these capacities let us see what was his rank.
Does any one claim that he was the greatest lawyer that ever lived? Surely not. There is not the slightest doubt that Mr. Lincoln was a famous A'erdict getter. He could do about as much with a jury as any advocate in the West, but he certainly never won any court house victories that were more famous than those of Tom Corwin, Dan Voorhees, Emory Storrs. Bob Ingersoll. Matt Carpenter. Sargent Prentiss, Ro1>ert Toombs and of scores of other lawyers who could easily be named. In knowledge of the law force of mental power of the judicial sort. such as Chief Justice John Marshall and Daniel Webster and Rufus Choate had, does any body for a moment claim that Mr. Lincoln out-ranks all other lawyers ? Surely not. He is not to be named in the same class as Reverdy Johnson. Jeremiah Black. Senator Edmunds, and Charles O'Connor. to say nothing of Jeremiah Mason, of Massachusetts, and Luther Martin, of Maryland, William Pinckney. of the same State, and Edmund Randolph, of Virginia.
Mr. Lincoln served in Congress. Did he cut any figure there '. Xone whatever. He appeared to be out of his element. His Congressional record is not to be compared to that of Thaddeus Stevens or Stephens A. Douglas. We look into the
lives of such men as Benjamin Franklin, the elder Adams, of Thomas Jefferson, of Clay. Calhoun and Webster, of Alexan der Hamilton and George Washington, and there is no trouble
in finding their foot-printings on the sands of time; but in the achievements of statesmanship where are the footprints of Mr. Lincoln ? You will look into the statute-books in vain to find them. We have a great financial policy, born of the creative, forceful statesmanship of Alexander Hamilton and Henry Clay: we have a great protective system, owing its origin to the same two statesmen: we have a great homestead policy, which owes its birth to Andrew Johnson, of Tennessee; we have a great national policy of internal improvements, but Mr. Lincoln was not its father. Consequently, there is not a single national line of policy which owes its paternity to this statesman whom Mr. Ross classes as "The greatest man the
world has produced." In the State of Illinois, compare Mr. Lincoln's work with
Mr. Jefferson's work in the State of Virginia. Did Mr. Lin-

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139

coin leave his impress anywhere upon the established order in Illinois? I have never heard of it. In Virginia. Jefferson found the Church and State united, both taxing the people and dividing the spoils. Mr: Jefferson divorced the Church from the State, confiscated the Church's ill-gotten -wealth, devoting it to charitable and educational purposes; and put and end to legalized religious intolerance. In Virginia there was a land monopoly, perpetuated by entails and primogeni ture. Mr. Jefferson made war upon it. broke it up, and thus overthrew the local aristocracy. He formulated a school sys tem and established in America its first modern college. Can anything which Mr. Lincoln, the statesman, did in Illinois compare with Mr. Jefferson's work in Virginia?
So far as national statesmanship is concerned. Mr. Lincoln is not be classed with either of "The Great Trio," nor with Mr. Jefferson, nor with Alexander Hamilton. Each of the five named were statesmen of the first order, possessing original, creative ability in that field of work. There is no evidence whatever that Mr. Lincoln possessed that talent.
It must be, then, as chief-magistrate of the republic that he won the title of "great." That, in fact, is the case. He was a great Chief Executive. As such, he deserves immortality. Because he sealed his work with his life blood, his memory will always be sacred. But, is it absolutely certain that no other American would have succeeded in piloting the vessel of State through the storm of Civil War? Is it quite certain that Stephen A. Douglas, himself, would not have succeeded where Mr. Lincoln succeeded? Who knows and can dogmati cally say that Thaddeus Stevens or Oliver Morton or Zach Chandler, or Ben Wade could not have done it? What was it that Mr. Lincoln did during the Civil War that was so much greater and grander than what might have been expected from Andrew Jackson in the same crisis? Somehow I fail to see it. He did not lose courage, but there were brave men before Agamemnon, and the world has never been lacking in heroic types that stand forth and meet emergencies.
In studying Mr. Lincoln's course during the Civil War wt. can discover a great deal of patience, a great deal of tact, a great deal of consecration to patriotic duty. He struck the right key-note when he said that he was fighting not to free the negroes but to preserve the Union. This insight into th& possible position showed political genius of a high order. This alone would entitle him. to be classed as a great statesman, a great chief magistrate, a g[reat national leader. But it must be remembered that the idea originated with William H. Seward, and that Mr: Lincoln merely adopted It.

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When we calmly reflect upon what he had to do, and the means which were at his command for doing it, we see nothing in the result that borders upon the miraculous. All the advantage was on his side. The fire-eaters of the South played into his hands beautifully. They were so very blind to what was necessary for their success that they even surrendered posses sion of Washington City, when they might just as well have held it and rushed their troops to it. thus making sure not only of Baltimore, but of the whole State of Maryland to say nothing of the enormous advantage of holding possession of the capital of the nation. It was a clever strategy which, while talking peace, adopted those measures which compelled the Confederate authorities to fire upon the flag at Fort Sumter. But that most effective bit of strategy appears to have had its birth in the fertile brain of William H. Seward. The diplomacy which kept dangling before the eyes of the border States the promise to pay for the slaves until the necessity of duping the waverers had passed, was clever in its way; but there is no evidence that the fine Italian hand of Mr. Seward was not in this policy also.
After the battle of Bull Run. Congress passed a resolution declaring that the war was being waged for the sole purposa of preserving the Union, and that the Federal Government had no intention of interfering with slavery. This was subtle politics and it had the desired effect upon the doubtful States: but there is no evidence that Mr. Lincoln was the first to suggest the resolution.
Was Mr. Lincoln sincere in making the beautiful and touching plea for peace, in his first inaugural? Unquestionably. Yet he would make no concessions, nor encourage any efforts at reconciliation. He opposed the Crittenden Compromise, which demanded no sacrifice of principle by the Xorth and which surrendered much that had been claimed by the South. Of the 1.200.000 square miles of public domain, the Southern leaders offered to close 900.000 square miles to slavery, leaving it to the people of the remaining 300.000 square miles to decide for or against slavery when they came to frame their constitu tions. Democrats. North and South, favored this Compromise. The Republicans rejected it. Then, the last hope of peaceable settlement was gone.
Mr. Lincoln threw his influence as President-elect against the Peace Congress, and rejected the South's offer to adjust the sectional differences by a restoration and extension of the old Missouri Compromise line.
The proclamation in which Mr. Lincoln assured the seceding States that slavery should not be disturbed provided the insur gents laid down their arms by the 1st of January, 1863, proves

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141

that Mr. Lincoln is not entitled to the very great credit that is given him for signing the Emancipation Act. Mr. Lincoln
was never a rabid abolitionist, and was an eleventh hour man.
at that; he bore none of the brunt of the pioneers' fight; he could show no such scars as TTendell Phillips and Lloyd Gar rison and Cassius M. Clay carried; he never ran the risk of
becoming a martyr, like Lovejoy; he stood aside, a good Whig, until the abolition movement was sweeping his own section, and then he fell into line with it like a practical, sensible,
adjustable politician. He himself joked about the manner in which Thaddeus Stevens, Benjamin Wade and Charles Stunner nagged at him from week to week, and month to month, because of his luke-warmness in the matter of emancipation. Of and concerning those three more rabid abolitionists, Mr. Lincoln told his somewhat celebrated anecdote of the little Sunday School boy and those "same three damn fellows.
Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego." Not until it became a military necessity to do it. did Mr.
Lincoln sign the Emancipation Act. Therefore, his hand
having been forced by military policy rather than by the dic tates of philanthropy, it does not seem just to class him with the crusaders of abolition government.
If he meant what he said in his famous letter to Alexander H. Stephens; if he meant what he said even in his last inaug ural, to say nothing of the first, it was never Lincoln's intention to go farther than to combat the South in her efforts to extend slavery into the free States and Territories.
In Seward's famous "Thoughts for the President's Consid
eration," written a month after Mr. Lincoln's first inaugura tion, we find the suggestion of the change of issue, from Slavery to Disunion:

"First," wrote- Seward, "we are at the end of a month's admin istration and yet without a policy.
"Second. This, however, is not culpable, it has been unavoidable. The presence of the Senate with the need to meet applications for patronage have prevented attention to other and more grave matters.
"Third. But further delay to adopt and prosecute our policy for both domestic and foreign affairs, would not only bring scandal on the administration, but danger on the country.
"Fourth. To do this we must dismiss the applicants for office, but, how? I suggest that we make the local appointments forth with, leaving foreign or general ones for ulterior and occasional action.
"Fifth. The policy at home. My system is built on this idea as a ruling one, viz: That we must change the question before the public from one upon slavery or about slavery, to a question of Union or Disunion. In other words, from what would be regarded as a party question, to one of Patriotism or Union. The occupation and evacuation of Fort Sumter although not in fact a slavery or

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party question is so regarded. Witness the temper manifested by the Republicans of the Northern States, and by the Union men in the South. For the rest I would simultaneously defend and rein force all the Forts in the gulf, and have the Navy recalled from foreign stations to he prepared for a blockade, &c."

Then follows the cynical advice to pick a quarrel with France and Spain.

On April 4th. 1861. Seward said to Russell, the London Times correspondent:

"It would be contrary to the spirit of the American Government to use armed force to subjugate the South. If the people of the South want to stay out of the Union, if they desire independence, let them have it."

On April 10th. 1861. Seward officially wrote C. F. Adams, then Minister to England:

"Only a despotic and imperial government can subjugate seceding States."

Subsequently. Mr. Lincoln himself wrote to Horace Greely of the Xew York Tribune:

"My paramount object is to save the Union, and not either destroy or save slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing the slaves, I would do it. If I could save the Union by freeing some and leaving others in slavery, I would do it. If I could save It by freeing all, I would do that. What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union."

On another occasion Lincoln wrote:
"I have no purpose to introduce political or social equality between the white and black race. There is a physical difference between the two which probably will forever forbid their living together on the same footing of equality. I', as well as any other man, am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position. I have never said anything to the contrary."
Simon Cameron. Lincoln's first Secretary of War, wrote General Butler, then in Xew Orleans:
"President Lincoln desires the right to hold slaves to be fully recognized. The war is prosecuted for the Union, hence no question concerning slavery will arise."
In his inaugural Lincoln said:
"I have no lawful right to interfere with slavery directly or indirectly; I have no inclination to do so."

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143

When General Grant was Colonel of the Twenty-first Illinois Infantry he expressed himself plainly on the negro question:

"The sole object of this war," said Grant, "is to restore the Union. Should I become convinced it has any other object, or that the Government designs using its soldiers to execute the wishes of the Abolitionists, I pledge you my honor as a man and a soldier I would resign my commission and carry my sword to the other side." Democratic Speaker's Handbook, p. 33.

In the light of these facts, where were the Sincerities, during the Civil War. which cost the lives of at least one million of white men, and which has sunk into the slavery of Commercialism at least ten millions more ?
And it cannot be forgotten that President Lincoln officially approved the laws which built up this Commercialism and its wage slavery. His name is attached to the National bank Act, the Morrill Protective Tariff Act. and to the financial laws whose cu* lmina* tion is * the Mo* ney Tr* ust. **
In guiding the non-seceding States through the perils of civil strife, Mr. Lincoln's position was never so difficcult as was that of Mazarin, nor that of Richelieu; not so difficult as that of Cromwell; not so difficult as that of William the Silent, or William of Orange, and very much less difficult than that of the younger Pitt, "the pilot that weathered the storm" of the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. Mr. Lincoln's achievements as Chief Magistrate and as a statesman certainly do not outrank those of George Washington, nor even those of Cavour, to ^vhom modern Italy owes her existence; nor of Bismarck, creator of the German Empire. Finally, it should be remembered that the South was combatting the Spirit of the Age and the Conscience of Mankind. This fact lightened Mr. Lincoln's task', immensely.
How do the people of the South feel toward Lincoln? Kindly. We honor his memory. We think that he was broadminded, free from vindictiveness, free from sectionalism, free from class-hatred. We think he was a strong man, a sagacious man, and a very determined man. We have always regarded
his assassination as the worst blow the South got after Appomattox. We think that he, alone, could have stemmed the torrent of sectional hatred, and could have worked out a simple
plan of restoring the seceding States to the Union which would have reunited the family without that carnival of debauchery and crime known as the "Reconstruction period."
We think that the man who made the appeal to the South which he made in his first inaugural, and the man who at Gettysburg, soon after the battle, praised the courage of the

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troops who made the effort to storm such heights as those, and who on the night of Lee's surrender called upon the bands to play "Dixie/" was not a bitter partisan of the Thaddeus Stevens stripe, who. after the guns had been stacked and the
flags furled, would have used all the tremendous and irresisti ble power of the Federal Government to humiliate, outrage,
despoil and drive to desperation a people who were already
in the dust.
It is not true that Mr. Lincoln offered generous terms to the
South at the Hampton Roads Conference. He did not say to the Confederate Commissioners, "Write the word ''Union' first and you may write whatever you please after that."
It is not true that he offered payment for the slaves. The official reports made to both Governments, as well as Mr. Stephens' story of the celebrated Conference, conclusively
prove that Mr. Lincoln demanded the unconditional surrender of the Confederacy, as a preliminary to any discussion of
terms.
In fact, at the close of the Conference of four hours, Mr. R. M. T. Hunter, one of the Confederate Commissioners, feel-
ingly complained of the harshness and humiliation involved in the ''unconditional surrender" demanded of the seceding
States. Mr. Lincoln declined to commit himself, officially, to the
proposition that the South, by laying down her arms and sub
mitting to the restoration of the national authority throughout her limits, could resume her former relations to the Govern ment. Personally, he thought she could. He refused officially
to commit himself on the subject of paying the slave-owners) for their slaves. Personally, he was willing to be taxed for that purpose, and he believed that the Northern people held the same views. He knew of some who favored a Congressional
appropriation of $400.000.000 for that purpose. But give any pledges ? Oh. no. The Confederacy must first abolish itself,
then there would be a discussion of terms! Fort Fisher. North Carolina, had recently fallen; the Con-
federacy was reeling under the shock of repeated disaster, the
thin battle lines of the Gray were almost exhausted, and Mr. Lincoln was now certain that secession was doomed.
In the "Recollections" of J. R. Gilmore, there is a curious account of an informal mission undertaken by himself and Col. J. F. Jaquess for the purpose of ending the war. According to Gilmore. he went to Washington, had an interview with Mr. Lincoln, and drew from him a statement of the term which he was willing to offer the Confederate Government.
The gist of his several propositions was that the Confederacy should dissolve, the armies disband, the seceding States ac-

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knowledge national authority and come back into Congress with their representatives, that slavery should be abolished and that $500,000.000 be paid the South for the slaves. This was in June. 186-i.
Gilmore and Colonel Jaquess were given passage through the lines, went to Richmond and saw Mr. Davis. After listen ing to the unofficial proposals of the self-appointed envoys, Mr. Davis declared that the South was not struggling to main tain slavery, but to make good "our right to govern ourselves.'5
As the terms offered took away this fundamental right from the South. Mr. Davis declined to treat.
How hopeless, at that time, must have seemed the cause for which Jefferson Davis stood! How eternally assured that of Mr. Lincoln! Yet. see how old Father Time works his mira cles. the Jefferson Davis principle has risen from the ashes, a very Phoenix of life immortal. The Lincoln position has been abandoned by the Party which made him its first Presi dent. The cause of Home Rule is stronger throughout the world than when the fugitive President of the broken Confed eracy faced his official family, at its last Cabinet meeting, in the village of Washington, Georgia, and asked, despairingly. "Is it all over?"
The hateful Amendments, which struck so foul and cruel a blow at "our right to govern ourselves." are now nothing more than monuments reared by political partisans to their own vindictive passions. The better element throughout the North would be glad to forget them. They have been distorted by the Federal Judiciary and have proven to be a curse to the whole country, in that the are the refuge of the corporations which plunder the people.
Republican leaders look on. acquiescent, while State after State that seceded from the Union puts into practice the prin ciple for which the South fought in the Civil War. the right to regulate our own domestic concerns.
"We are fighting, not for slavery, but for the right to govern ourselves." So said our President; so said our Statesmen; so said our soldiers; so said our civilians. And today we are vindicated.
The insanest war in history, as one studies it, is seen to have been fought for a principle which both sides now admit to have been right, and which Mr. Lincoln repeatedly and most earnestly declared was right, before a shot was fired.
i
During the War. as all the world knows, Mr. Lincoln treated the Constitution as a dead letter. He suspended the Writ of Habeas Corpus; and had many a Bastile filled with prisoners who were arbitrarily arrested by the soldiery.

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It is also well known how he used the military arm, in his second race for the Presidence to win the prize which he so eagerly coveted.

In fact, he made a joke of the Constitution, as several anecdotes attest.

When the ever infamous Xational Bank Act was under con sideration. Salmon P. Chase. Secretary of the Treasury, flatly characterized it as a violation of the Constitution.
Mr. Davis Tailor, carried to Mr. Lincoln n message to that effect from Mr. Chase.
' Tailor.'' said Lincoln, "go back to Chase and tell him not to bother himself about the L'nited States Constitution. Say that I have that sacred instrument here at the White House, and I am guarding it with great care."

Chase. Tailor and Lincoln then held a conference. Chase

explained how the scheme to raise money was a violation of

the Constitution. Lincoln, after his usual habit, swept away

Chase's statement of facts by a story:

"Chase." said Lincoln, "down in Illinois I was held to be :i

pretty good lawyer: now this thing reminds me of a story.

An Italian captain run his vessal on a rock and knocked a

*

hole in her bottom. He set his men to pumping and went to

^ '

prayers before a figure of the Virgin Mary in the bow of the

if i

hip. The leak gained on them until it looked as if the vessel

would go down with all on board. Then the captain, in a fit

of rage at not having his prayers answered, seized the figure

>,

of the Virgin Mary and threw it overboard. Suddenly the

;i

leak stopped, the water was pumped out and the vessel got

j*'

safely into port. When docked for repairs the statute of the

}.^

Virgin Man- was found stuck head foremost in the hole."

Chase, who never liked Lincoln's stories, told the President

he did not see the application of the story.

"Why. Chase." returned Lincoln. "I didn't intend precisely

to throw the Virin Mary overboard by that I mean the Con

stitution but I will stick it into the hole if I can."

And he did stick it in the hole. The Iowa editor told the

tale more tersely, when he admiringly said:

"Abraham Lincoln kicked the Constitution into the Capitol

cellar, and there it remained inocuous until the war ended."

Yet this was the same statesman who. an January 13, 1848.

said on the floor of the Xational House of Representatives

fi

that-

k

"Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power,

have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government and

to form one that suits them better. Nor is this right confined to

Eg

t?ases in which the people of an existing government may choose to

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL. LITERARY, ETC.

147

exercise it. Any portion of such people that can, may make their own of such territory as they inhabit. More than this, a majority of any portion of such people may revolutionize, putting down a minority intermingling with or near them who oppose their move ments. Appendix to Congressional Globe, 1st Session, 30th Con
gress, page 94.

If tha* t is no* t good* secess* ion do* ctrine,'-w* hat is* it?
Was Abraham Lincoln a, lover of power and office? Most of the larger histories will tell you how he used 5.000 Union soldiers, under the command of Gen. Butler, to intimidate opposition voters in New York City, when General McClellan ran for the Presidency, in 1864: but was Mr. Lincoln jealous of possible rivals? Was he ever tortured by the lust for office?
Concerning this, James Harrison Wilson related an incident, in his article, "The last days of General Grant," published in The Century magazine a few years ago:

Amongst the most sagacious and prudent of General Grant's friends was J. Russel Jones, Esq., formerly of Galena, at that time United States Marshal for the northern district of Illinois, and also a warm and trusted friend of the President. Mr. Jones, feeling a deep interest in General Grant, and having many friends and neigh bors under his command, had joined the army at Vicksburg and was there on the day of its final triumph. Lincoln, hearing this, and knowing his intimacy with Grant, sent for him, shortly after his return to Chicago, to come to Washington. Mr. Jones started immediately and traveled night and day. On his arrival at the rail way station at Washington he was met by the President's servants and carriage, taken directly to the White House, and at once shown into the President's room. After a hurried but cordial greeting the' President led the way to the library, closed the doors, and when he was sure that they were entirely alone addressed him as follows:
"I have sent for you, Mr. Jones, to know if that man Grant wants to be President."
Mr. Jones, although somewhat astonished at the question and the circumstances under which it was asked, replied at once:
"No, Mr. President." "Are you sure?" queried the latter. "Yes," said Mr. Jones, "perfectly sure; I have just come from Vicksburg; 1' have seen General Grant frequently and talked fully and freely with him, about that and every other question, and I know he has no political aspirations whatever, and certainly none for the Presidency. His only desire is to see you re-elected, and to do what he can under your orders to put down the rebellion and restore peace to the country." "Ah, Mr. Jones," said Lincoln, "you have lifted a great weight off my mind, and done me an immense amount of good, for I tell you, my friend, no man knows how deeply that presidential grub gnaws till he has had it himself."
How Mr. Lincoln tried to buy off General McClellan himself, with brilliant appointments for himself his father-in-law, and

148

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL. LITERARY, ETC.

a substantial recognition of the Democratic party, is told in Lainon's "Recollections of Lincoln."
*******
In Ida Tarbell's Life of Lincoln, we find this extra-ordinary statement, as related by Joseph Medill. of the Chicago Tribune:

"In 1S64," relates Medill, "when the call for extra troops came, Chicago revolted. Chicago had sent 22,000 and was drained. There were no young men to go, no aliens except what were already bought. The citizens held a mass meeting and appointed three men, of whom I (Medill) was one, to go to Washington and ask Stanton (the War Secretary) to give Cook County a new enrollment. On reaching Washington we went to Stanton with our statement. He refused. Then we went to President Lincoln. 'I tfannot do It,' said Lincoln, 'but I will go with you to Stanton and hear the argu ments of both sides.' So we all went over to the War Department together. Stanton and General Frye were there, and they both contended that the quota should not be changed. The argument went on for some time, and was finally referred to Lincoln, who had been silently listening. When appealed to, Lincoln turned to us with a black and frowning face: 'Gentlemen,' he said, with a voice full of bitterness, 'after Boston, Chicago has been the chief Instru ment in bringing this war on the country. The Northwest opposed the South, as New England opposed the South. It is you, Medill, who is largely responsible for making blood flow as it has. You called for war until you had it. I have given it to you. What you have asked for you have had. Now you come here begging to be let off from the call for more men, which I have made to carry on the war you demanded. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves. Go home and raise your 6,000 men. And you, Medill, you and your Tribune have had more influence than any other paper in the North wweasntt.'in" making this war. Go home and send me those men I
Medill says that he and his companions, feeling guilty, left without further argument. They returned to Chicago, and 6,000 more men from the working classes were dragged from their homes, their families, forced into the ranks to risk limbs and lives in a war they had no part in making, while the men that torched the war on an unwilling people remained at home in comfort and safety, and made enormous fortunes by the war.

-I
J.fj

The Struggle of Church Against
State in France.
THE most glorious night in the history of France, is that of August 4, 1789.
On that famous night the National Assembly tore up Feud alism, root and branch. So universal and irresistible had be come the rage against Feudal burdens, Feudal privileges and Feudal tyranny, that the Breton Club, filled with ambitious and enthusiastic young nobles who had embraced liberal prin ciples and who were then leading the Revolutionary move ment, determined to put forward one of their leaders to move, in the National Assembly, that the peasant be given the right to buy out his lord's Feudal privileges.
The young Duke of Aiguillon had been selected to make this motion. But Count Noailles, who as a younger son had no Feudal privileges to lose, had heard of the Duke's purpose and jumped ahead of him that night gained the floor himself, and made a speech proposing not only the privilege of re deeming Feudal right in money, but the abolition of forced labor, and all personal service without any redemption. Thus a young scion of the Aristocracy, who little dreamed what he was doing, struck at the very heart of the Old Order.
Feudalism had stood in France for a thousand years. Six months previous to the night of August 4th it had seemed to be as formidable as ever. Its huge form met the eye at every turn. Its battlements rose high, were thick, looked strong. Its dungeons were deep and dark. In its hands were both sword and purse. The State guarded it; the Law drew its charmed circle about it; the Church blessed it, and was its partner. Who could have believed, six months before, that the purse was empty, the sword all rust, the walls ready to crumble at a touch, the whole elaborate fraud and imposture feeble with incurable decay?
After Noailles sat down, the Duke of Aiguillon rose, painted a frightful picture of the conditions then prevailing through out the country, and admitted that the violence of the pea santry found its justification in the wrongs of the Feudal system. He proposed that corporate bodies, towns, communi ties and individuals, that had theretofore enjoyed special privileges and exemptions, should for the future, bear their share of the public burdens.

150

SKETCHES: HISTOBICAL, LITERARY, ETC.

Great excitement followed the Duke's speech. An enthu

siastic impulse of patriotism began to take possession of the

entire Assembly. One after another, deputies rose, made pas

sionate speeches and proposed the destruction of some oppres

sive feature of the Feudal system. Springing to his feet after

the Duke had sat down, a Breton deputy, dressed in the plain

clothes of a fanner, made his first speech and so far as I

know, his last in that Assembly. Said he, in words which

the privileged few of all nations might now take to heart as

an indication of the wrath to come. "Had you burnt the title-

deeds of Feudalism yourselves, the peasants would not now be

burning parchment and castle together. Those Feudal burdens

crush and degrade humanity. Let us burn the privileges

which yoke men like beasts of labour, and which compel men

to beat ponds at night to prevent the frogs from disturbing

the sleep of their voluptuous lords."

By this time the assembly was in a whirl of excitement.

The next attack was made upon bloated pensions and out

rageous salaries. Carried away by the generous contagion, the

nobles voluntarily agreed to sacrifice, for the public good, those

pensions and salaries. Their announcement was received with

thunders of applause.

r

The Marquis of Beauharnais proposed that hereafter all citizens be equal before the criminal law, and that employment

of ever}- kind should be open to every citizen alike. Voted

amid shouts of approval. And so the beneficiaries of special

privilege rose, one after the other, and. inspired by the spirit

of that glorious night, surrendered up to be burned upon the

altar of sacrifice those special privileges which had plunged

France into the horrors of civil strife.

A writer in the Xew York Herald, of recent date says that

j(j

'

upon the night of August 4th. the clergy of France caught the

Li

patriotic infection, and that they themselves rose to the splen-

'j|

did height of voluntary renunciation of their special privileges

s;4j<

for the benefit of the fatherland.

i^J

The Xew York Herald is utterly, absolutely wrong. The

v, f \

clergy did nothing of the kind. Upon the contrary, they were

conspicuously wanting in sympathy with the patriotic spirit

pervading the Assembly. It was upon the initiative of others

that the Assembly voted away from the clergy the privileges

and abuses which they had refused to voluntarily renounce.

The Bishop of Xancy. who had in a recent sermon attacked

so bitterly the salt tax. and the extravagance of the court, was

the spokesman of the church upon that historic event. The

utmost which the bishop would offer in'the way of concilia

tion and compromise, was that the peasant might redeem in

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL. LITERARY, ETC.

151

money the Feudal privileges which the church had long en joyed. The rich clergy gave nothing to the common cause.
The poor cure offered to renounce his fees. The Assembly, profoundly touched by this spirit in the poorer clergy, refused to accept the sacrifice.
It is true that the revolutionary leaders pressed right on until the proud aristocracy of the church -was stripped of its un-Christian wealth, privilege and power but not once did the
higher clergy manifest the slightest public spirit or patriotic impulse.
On the contrary, when the royal treasury was empty, the
deficit yawning wide and deep, the life of the Bourbon Dynasty at its last gasp, the minister of the Bourbon King implored
his brother Catholics to lend to the state a beggarly $300.000 to save the throne from ruin.
The Archbishop of Brienne. who made the plea, was a good Catholic. And his prayer was coldly, flatly, emphatically
scorned by those princes of the Catholic Church who paid no taxes and whose revenues amounted to more than $15.000.000 per year.
In order to understand the crisis that now threatens civil war in France, it is necessary to take a look backward, but, first, it is absolutely necessary for us to understand that this
is a falling out among Catholics. It is not a conflict in which Protestant is arrayed against Catholic: it is not a struggle in which the believer is at dagger's point with the unbeliever.
It is a division of the faithful into two camps. Now for the look backward. There has for generations been trouble among the French
Catholics. In fact, so far as the writer now remembers, the Catholic Church in France has never been entirely at peace with itself save when there was a conflict between believer and infidel, or between Protestant and Mother Church. Ever since the Catholics obtained a complete triumph over the Protestants, there have been dissensions in their own ranks. These have been extremely bitter; and upon the stormy sea of Catholic factions, the ship of State has had difficult navigation
time and again. For the purpose of this article, it is not necessary to mention
every dispute between the papal court of Rome and the French Catholic Church. It will answer every purpose to recall that there has always been at least two distinct groups of French Catholics. One of these favored Home Rule, and the other
favored Rome Rule. The one faction were in favor of a Galilean church, which
should be, to all intents and purposes, independent of the Vatican in matters of discipline and mere church government.

13-2

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL, LITERARY, ETC.

Opposed to these Home rulers was the faction of French

Catholics called I'ltrn Montaines, who believed that the

Vatican should be supreme and be obeyed in all things.

Of course, the tendency of the policy of the Rome rulers was

to erect within France a power greater than the king's; thus

making the Church greater than the State.

Let me remind the reader of the time when the most mar-

velous woman that ever lived, Madame de Maintenon, wrung

from Louis XVI. those concessions to the Orthodox Catholic

Church which resulted in the Revocation of the Edict of

Xantes. and in the Dragonnades. The Huguenot gathered up

his household goods, shook the dust of his country from the

soles of his feet and sought in Great Britain and in the Xew

World the liberty which was denied him in the land of his

birth. Those Protestants who remained in France were with

out power and without legal recognition. The Catholic was

monarch of all he surveyed. The Catholic Church was a huge

religious monopoly. Its hierarchy was intrenched in a power

before which the king himself was a secondary potentate.

Then followed those consequences which have always followed

when too much power is granted to any set of men. The

Catholic Church absorbed much of the wealth of the land.

The higher priesthood became an aristocracy, imitating in

even- respect the feudal aristocracy which was rich, idle and

licentious. Just as the State regarded the subject from the

standpoint of taxpayer only: just as the State imposed upon

the common people all the burdens of government while deny

ing them the benefits: so the nobility of the Catholic Church

lived sumptuously, lazily, licentiously shirking their duties,

forgetting the responsibilities of their sacred calling, neglect

ing the flock committed to their care, allowing ignorance and

superstition to take full possession of the minds of the common

I ,,

people. In the records of the human race there can be found no

1

evidence more damning to absolutism and the union of Church

and State than is to be found in the degraded, besotted condi

tion of the common people of France immediately preceding

the French Revolution.

All France was orthodox. The masses believed. With

1i,[

boundless credulity they knelt at the foot of the priest.

\

Yet. what had the priest done for them ? Had he introduced

ji,

books among them? Xo. Liberal ideas? Xo. Schools? Xo.

>ty

Information upon such matters as concerned their material

'y'-

welfare? Xo. Had the church ever pleaded the peasant's

'jj(;f

case at the bar of public opinion? Xo. Ever besought the

"-'

king to lighten the weight of his heavy hand? Xo. Ever

n

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL. LITERARY, ETC.

153

protested against feudal wrongs? Xo. Ever shown the least desire that the condition of the masses should be im proved ? No.
Royalist writers dwell scornfully upon the ignorance, bru tality and prejudice of the lower orders in France at the time of the Eevolution let them write ever so scornfully, the lower they degrade the peasant, the higher mounts the evidence and the indignation against those who had been his keepers!
This government of France had been absolute. The State and the Church, the king and the priest, had had entire control. The people had no voice, no vote, no power. They had never been consulted. The entire responsibility had been assumed by the monarch and his privileged few and here was the result. Theirs was the tree, theirs the fruit. "Whatsoever :i man sow, that also shall he reap;" and the crimes, the igno
rance, the brutality, the poverty, the misery of the masses of the French people in 1789 stands as a permanent judgment of condemnation against the ruling classes, who were responsible for the material, mental and spiritual condition of a people who had so long been under their absolute control.
These conditions cried aloud to Heaven for reform. The reform came in the thunder claps and the lightning flashes ot revolution. Why? Because neither the Church nor the State would listen to the voice of the reformers, such as Turgot and Xecker and Mirabeau. who had vainly endeavored to arouse the Church and the State to a realization of the dangerous situation. The nobility selfish, ignorant, bigoted, full of class pride and class prejudice, utterly repudiated the idea that the
common man had any rights which they were bound to respect; and with a madness which was as blind as it was suicidal, they expelled from office one minister after another, the moment that minister pointed to the real source of all the trouble that was threatening to 'engulf the State, to-wit: Privilege! Priv ilege! Privilege!
Equally blind, equally selfish, equally mad. were the higher dignitaries of the Catholic Church. Their minds seemed to be hermetically sealed to any new idea; their hearts were steeled against any appeal to patriotism or humanity.
Whence sprung the revolt against the higher orders ? From Protestants ? By no means. The Protestant was an insignifi cant portion of the population. The revolt against the aris
tocratic Catholic noble came from the Catholic common people. Therefore, the French Revolution was a revolt of the Cath
olic common people against the Catholic nobility of Church and State.
The revolt against the higher dignitaries of the Catholic Church came from the poorer, humbler Catholic priests, who as Cures, were obliged to bear the burden of church-work, and

154

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL. LITERARY, ETC.

had to exist upon crumbs which the lordly princes of the

hierarchy disdainfully flung to them.

Almost every historian has stated that the Revolution made

war upon religion and set up atheism. This is not true. Whal

the Revolution did was to divorce the Church from the State.

Our forefathers did the same thing when they founded our

republic. In Virginia there was a union of Church and State.

Mr. Jefferson made war upon it, and succeeded in divorcing

the Church from the State. During the French Revolution

the leaders wanted to do for France precisely what Mr. Jeffer

son did for Virginia. They wished the Church to occupy its

own sphere of action and usefulness; they wanted the State

to occupy its own sphere of action and usefulness. They had

realized the danger of union between the two. Now remem

ber, those leaders who wanted the Church separated from the

State were not all atheists, free-thinkers, infidels, deists.

Many of them were true Catholics. Talleyrand was born and

reared in the bosom of the mother church, and he had worn

the robes of office as a bishop of Rome. The Abbe Seieyes was

as true a Catholic, perhaps, as the Cardinal De Rohan. Many

others of the prominent leaders of the revolutionary move

ments were as true Catholics at heart and in mind as any of

those cardinals who had the ear of the Pope in the Vatican.

Therefore, it was not a question of conscience; it was not a

'

question of religion: it was not a question of policy; a question,

of whether the State should be sovereign in its own sphere

:i

of action.

;'

It is frequently said and currently believed that the Catholic

\>

Church in France was closed by the Revolution, and that it

I

never revived until after the advent of Napoleon. This is

', t.

ludicrously false. During the whole time of the Revolution

!t

the Catholic Church stayed open, and the faithful flocked to

fc.T

its altars.

True, there was a tremendous row which threatened the life

of the reform movement. But was was it? Some Catholics

were willing to obey the law which separated the Church from

the State, while others were not willing to do so. Those who

submitted went forward regularly with their devotions. Those

who defied the law became incendiaries, rebels, and did their

utmost to aid the foreign invaders in crushing the life out

of the fatherland.

During the Reign of Terror, the Catholic worship went on

without the slightest interruption, excepting as I have just

said, that some of the Catholics refused to obey the law, which

separated the Church from the State.

It is known to but few that these priests of the Catholic

Church who conceived it to be their duty to obey the voice oi

the Statet and accept the constitution, were proceeding with

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL. LITERARY, ETC.

155

ever-increasing usefulness, power and success in building up a Home rule church. These noble-hearted priests stood at the post of duty, subordinating their priestly pride to their con scious conception of duty, while the Chief Priests of the hierarchy stood moodily, selfishly, irreconcilably aside, or
fled to foreign countries and instigated invasions of their own country. Those noble-souled priests of the Catholic Church bowed to the will of the nation as expressed through the GalHcan Church, ruled by Frenchmen and supported, as all religious denominations should be, by the voluntary contribu tions of the faithful. This is one very important chapter in the history of the French Revolution which most historians have entirely slurred over, or misrepresented.
During the years when I was making a close study of French history, in order to write "The Story of 'France/' and the "Life of Napoleon," I came upon these facts and my surprise was very great at finding them.
Thus matters stood when Napoleon began his imperial career. When Lafayette told him, "You want to have a certain little bottle broken over your head." Napoleon smiled, but did not deny. The little bottle alluded to was. of course, the vial in which was held the sacred oil which was used in anointing the head of him who is crowned ruler of <3ie French.
Napoleon realized that if he came to terms with the Pope, that he would at once draw to himself the support of the strongest faction of the Catholic Church. Acting with the astute selfishness of the politician, he made his celebrated treaty with the.Pope, which is known as the Concordat. (1801.)
In this treaty between Napoleon and the Pope. France was to pay clerical salaries to the extent of $10.000.000 per year. Of course, this money which was paid to the Church, was first taxed out of the people by the State.
In my "Life of Napoleon." I took the position which I havfe never seen any reason to change, that this Concordat was the unpardonable sin of his career. It cut the ground from under those clericals who were willing to subordinate their lawmaking body, established a truly priestly pride to the will of the nation as expressed by the legislature, and who in abolish ing fees for the administration of the sacrament had given such convincing evidence that they wished to get closer to the standard of Christ than the Catholic Church had been previous to the Kevolution.
By the Concordat, Napoleon destroyed this independent Catholic Church, restored the rule of Rome, put the French Catholics under the feet of the Italian priests, and laid those foundations upon which the Roman Hierarchy built the power which afterwards antagonized the supremacy of the State.
It will be remembered that Napoleon celebrated the restora-

150

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL, LITERARY, ETC.

tion of the union between Church and State in France by gorgeous ceremonial in Xotre Dame. It required all the authority of the First Consul to compel his own generals to attend.
As the ceremonial was proceeding, Napoleon turned to
General Delmas and asked him what he thought of it. With the bluntness of a soldier, General Delmas replied: "It is a fine harlequinade, needing only the presence of the million men who died to do away with all that."
Napoleon himself afterwards realized what an enormous mistake he had made. For when he himself began to totter under the repeated blows of foreign coalitions, it was the Roman Hierarchy which struck him the blow from which he could not recover.
The relations between the Church and the State remained as Napoleon had left them, until the present French republic enacted the legislation which the Pope now defies. That legis lation merely seeks to divorce the Church from the State, just as was done by the leaders of the French Revolution.
The government of France is today seeking to do no more than that which our own forefathers did. and which the Catholics themselves do in our own country. The French government desires to put the Catholic Church on the same level as that occupied by all other denominations. If the Catholics of France accepted the new laws of the republic, and put them into operation, they would occupy substantially the same position as that occupied by Catholics in America. Consequently, the reader will understand at once that there is no question of conscience or religion involved. It is a wrestle
for power. Who shall be greater in France, the Pope or the constituted authorities of the republic? The Pope is asking the individual Catholic to defy the laws of the State in which he lives. Would we tolerate such a thing as that in America* Would any American Catholic think for one moment of lifting his hand defiantly against the police power of the State? Certainly not. The idea is preposterous. The State would not attempt to control the Catholic, the Baptist, the Methodist, the Episcopalian or the Presbyterian in any matter of con science: but the State has a perfect right to say in what manner religious corporations shall be formed. It is a part of the police power "of our Government to regulate the manner in which corporations, religious or otherwise, shall constitute and conduct themselves. No sensible Catholic in all the broad scope of this American republic would think for one moment of denying to the constituted authorities of the State the right to use precisely the same legislative power which the Church is now combatting in France.

With Brisbane at Delmonico's.

j

i.



FOR months and months Mr. Arthur Brisbane, the great

>

editor of the Hearst Newspapers, had been urging me to come

j

to New York, to take hold of an oar on board the wonderfully

L

constructed trireme of William Randolph.

?:

From letters, the pressure grew to telegrams, and the im-

j

pression was gradually engraved upon my mind that unless I

f

dropped everything and flew to the rescue, the Hearst news-

j

papers would suffer irreparable damage.

1>

Finally, there came over the heated wires the Brisbane

distres-call of "Do Come!" and I could resist no longer. '

r

Not being able to bear the idea of what would happen if I

did not go, I telegraphed Brisbane that he might expect me

on a certain day. I was also particular to specify the right

time of my arrival because it seemed a pity to have Mr. Hearst

in his automobile miss the right train and meet the wrong one.

So I put off from Thomson Thomaston Thomas-Thomasville

Tompson Thomason Tomson Tompkins.

That's where I live.

The name of the place has turned my hair prematurely gray,

but nothing can break my toe-holt on the local situation, and

I expect to live just as long as I possibly can at Thomson

Thomaston Thomas Thomasville Thompson Thomaston Tom-

son Tompkins.

And a smart little town it is, too. We have electric lights

that keep you busy.buying bulbs; we have an artesian well

from which a steam pump extracts the water; and we have a

Town Government which may be somewhat of a myth and a

joke to Vagrants, Pool Rooms, Blind Tigers and Keepers of

pig-stye nuisances, but which is a dreadful reality to taxpayers.

Please do not laugh. This is no joke. It is solemn state

ment of melancholy fact.

But, as I was saying, I boarded the cars at the simple little

town where I live, and was taken to New York, with the cus

tomary missing of connections and enjoyable delays which

have given the Southern Railroad the very worst name among

all the law-breaking public-be-damned-Railroads.

In spite of all that the Southern Railroad could do. I finally

landed in New York.

McGregor. my traveling companion, and I waited in the

depot, in a well-bred manner, until the jostling crowd of ferry

158

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL, LITERARY, ETC.

and car passengers should scatter. We wanted Mr. Hearst to

have plenty of elbow room for his automobile when he should

come up to the front entrance looking for me. The crowd lost

no time in dispersing itself in various directions. In a little

while. Mac and I were almost alone at the front entrance of

the depot. Then we looked about for Mr. Hearst's automobile.

'Twasn't there!

William Kandolph was nowhere to be seen.

Then we concluded that Mr. Brisbane must have come

around in has carriage to meet us, and we began to inspect

the carriages. But Brisbane's carriage wasn't there.

Assuming at once that both Hearst and Brisbane had been

kept away from the depot by circumstances over which they

had no control. I began to look around for the Messenger Boy

that I felt sure must have been sent to seek us and to deliver

a message from my illustrious friends Hearst and Brisbane.

>

In vain did my eager eyes search the regions about for a

tt

messenger boy who might seem to be looking for a small man

from Thomson Thomas Tompkins and the rest of it.

Sighing a weary sigh. I told Mac we would take a cab for

the Hoffman House.

This we straightway did. and in about five minutes we

alighted at the side entrance of that imposing hotel.

When we travel together Mac invariably carries the purse,

and on this occasion when we alighted from the cab it was

Mac's part of the performance to settle with the cabman.

"How much?'' says Mac.

"Three seventy-five." says the cabman, grim as death.

"What ?': asked Mac. cupping his ear.

"Three dollars and seventy-five cents," said the cabman with

extreme deliberation and distinctness.

I was almost in tears, for it was my money, you see; and

whenever Mac hesitates a moment about spending it, the case

is alarming. So I said. "Mac. step there to the clerk's window

and ask if the charge is right."

Mac strode along the corridor, while I followed slowly and

b,

respectfully. Says Mac to the clerk:

\t'

"How much ought the cabman to chai-ge me from the Penn-

Jj!

sylvania Railroad depot to your hotel?"

Said the clerk to Mac:

"How much does the cabman want?"

Innocently Mac fell into the hole.

Said Mac:

"He wants to charge $3.75."

Said the clerk:

"Pay it at once. You're getting off light."

The clerk didn't know that I was travelling with Mac, else

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159

he would not have glanced at me solemnly and -winked, when Mac had gone back to lower my available assets to the extent
of $3.75. But the clerk did look at me solemnly and wink his eye.
The scamp.
When I came to settle my bill at the hotel a few days later, I had reason to suspect that the cabman who charged me $3.75 for a five minutes ride in a one-horse hack was related by blood and marriage to the Hoffman House management.
But that's neither here nor there. Subsequent, journeys to New York taught me how to tip a station boy with 25 cents and thus get a Pennsylvania Kailroad
cab which would carry me almost anywhere for 35 cents; but that, you see, was later.
If ever you fall into the hands of a New York cab driver,
may the Lord have compassion upon you.

We registered. We were assigned rooms. Then we took up the question of Hearst and Brisbane. How were we to let our illustrious friends know that I was there? We debated the subject seriously. Finally, we decided to blaze away on the telephone.
During the remainder of the day, we made every effort to
get in touch with my illustrious friends. No go. Apparently, I had been forgotten.
All next day we labored with the Hearst office, trying to reach mv illustrious friends. No go.
That night. I felt bad. Real bad. That night I could have read one of Senator TBeveridge's magazine articles without laughing at Beveridge. Whenever I am that low down in spirits, I'm almost at the
jumping off place. If there had been any air-tube passage back to you know the name now. don't you? I wouldn't
have lost a minute in going in at the New York end of it, and signalling the other end for suction.
You see, we country people can never get accustomed to the ways of city folks.
City people sometimes appear to us to be selfish, inhospitable,
and neglectful of the genial courtesies of life, when they don't mean to be so at all.
Mr. Hearst and Mr. Brisbane are such extremely busy men that we must make large allowances for their seeming lack ot attention to one whom thev had summoned from a distant State.
On the third day, our patient persistence was gloriously rewarded. We actually got in touch with my illustrious friends.

1(50

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After that, everything was most pleasant and satisfactorj'. "Meet me at Delmonico's tomorrow at 11 and take lunch with me." Or. perhaps, he said "12 o'clock:" no matter.
Brisbane's invitation was gladly accepted. Xext day. I shambled up town in my awkward way, stop ping here and there to make inquiries.
Country people are rather helpless in big cities. Getting about in Xew York is a formidable task to a shy man like me.
That day I practiced at the mark considerably before I hit it. Sometimes I found myself above DelmonicoTs; sometimesbelow: sometimes to the left; again to the right. Finally, victory perched upon my banners and I located Delmonico's. I presume you know what it is. Delmonico's is one of the most famous restaurants of the world. To take luncheon there was" an event: to take it with Arthur Brisbane was an epoch. I was a trifle late, and he was waiting for me, book in hand. The great editor reads, even on the run. If there is any good thing in that book, you may bet your bottom dollar that Brisbane found it. and worked it up into an editorial. It's a habit he has. Few of the celebrites have kept out of the Appropriation clause of the Brisbane mind. Huxley, Darwin. Spencer. Carlyle. Euskin. each in his turn has gone into the Brisbane hopper and been ground into Hearst editorial*.
So much the better. Hidden away in books, the wisdom of those sages would have been lost to the average man. Brisbane rendered the world a service when he cast the heavy metal into his pot. melted it up. and issued it in small coin stamped with his individual and powerful impress. As an interpreter of the mighty dead, he has done vast goodr to say nothing of his own immense contributions to the cause of popular education. Putting the book aside. Brisbane rose, greeted me cordially, and led the way into the splendid dining room. I felt as much at home there as a blacksmith looks in his Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes. On this account, and a few others. I said little, and Brisbane did the talking while we waited to be served. Brisbane is not imposing in personal appearance. He is neither tall nor large; he has no Presence. He is inclined to baldness, stoops rather than carries himself erect, and would never cause a casual passer by to turn for a second look. When he talks his words come from his lips as though they were

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161

being pushed out through the small end of a funnel. There

is an impression of tenseness, of concentration, of incisiveness,

of compactness; and every thought is set forth in clear-cut

simple strength. He is so sharp in his mental sight and so apt

in working his vivid thought that he is sometimes witty almost.

Never quite so.

His mental view takes in a situation so fully that his com

ment upon the absurdities of it almost attains humor.

Almost, but not quite.

His eye is so keen for contrasts that he seizes upon every detail of a horrible condition, and in sketching it with his

iI'

pen he almost reaches pathos.

Never more than that.

To melt into tears himself, and thus be able to draw the

" tears from your eyes, is foreign to his nature. Penetrating,

clear-minded, wonderfully gifted with the power of expression,

of condensation, of seizing, upon the strongest points of any

subject; rich in illustration, boundless in knowledge of men

and things, a fighter of inexhaustible resource such is Bris

bane. In general, most considerate of others and most atten

tive to small courtesies, you feel that if you got in his way. the

locomotive of his fixed purpose would crush you without hesi

tation or remorse.

His forehead is curiously cut up with wrinkles. His brow

seems to be laid off in three terraces, the first two of which

recede slightly, while the third bulges boldly forward, giving

his dome of thought a slight resemblance to one of those Dutch

or Flemish houses where the third story hangs over to peep

at the ground floor. A very remarkable head that of Brisbane massive above

and in front of the ears, being both wide and lofty in fact a

most intellectual head. You feel that he has read much,

thought much, looked through all shams sounded most preten

sions and found them hollow: and that at heart he is a well-

bred, even tempered cynic playing the game with the in

flexible determination to win. His voice is low. musical, distinct. He speaks rapidly. And

when he speaks he invariably says something worth hearing.

'I cannot imagine Brisbane saying anything silly, or feejble.

Wrong he may be and often is, but never is he weak. Non

sense I have read in his writings, error I have heard fall from

his lips, but the will-power and mental strength of the man

bears off even his errors in apparent triumph. I never agreed with him nor he with me. He knows when

he has said something that I reject: and I know when he

-differs from me; and we let it go at that.

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That's the best way. after all. In clue time. we were served and we ate. Of many things Brisbane talked during the meal, and upon all subjects he was instructive. I listened with admiration; and why not ? My companion at table is the best paid editor on earth. Milton got $25 for Paradise Lost; Shakespeare was consid ered lucky to have cleared a few thousand pounds upon all of

K
MEX OF LITERARY GENIUS NO LONGER LIVE ON THE CRUMBS FROM THE RICH MAX'S TABLE.
his plays after a life time of labor: Wordsworth was ever poor: Coleridge ate the bread of dependence: Robert Burns lived and died in comparative squalor.
Arthur Brisbane earns $47.500 per year with his brains and pen.

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL. LITERARY. ETC.

163

Said Brisbane to me:
"Mrs. Clarence Mackay told me a few days ago that her winter sojourn in the South was spoiled by seeing the little children who work in the South Carolina Cotton Mills going home from their work after dark, and lighting their way across the fields with lanterns. Suppose you write something on that."
Afterwards. I did write something on that. Brisbane said,

THIS IS THE SIGHT THAT SPOILED THE PLEASURE OF MRS.
CLARENCE MACKAY DURING HER WINTER STAY IN SOUTH CAROLINA.

"I was at George Gould's not long ago. He's very fond of

your Story of France. Reads it so intently that his wife said to

me 'Mr. Brisbane, I wish you'd take that red book away from

George he has it in his hands nearly all the time.'"

Curious that George Gould should be reading a book which

holds as much of the author's heart and soul as was ever

breathed into printed pages a book which was so aggressively

!

7 Sketches

164

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radical in its plea for oppressed humanity that the blue pencil of the publisher's Reader ruined some of its most important chapters.
But I was a despised Populist in those days an outlaw
whom everyone could revile and outrage with impunity; and
among other bitter pills which I had to swallow was the destruction of scores of pages of my principal book.
Said Brisbane to me: "Suppose you take charge of Hearst's Morning American,
at $10.000 per year. You could come down to the office once a day. look over a few exchanges, dictate an editorial, and then
have the remainder of your time to give to your more serious literary labors.
"If within the year you can make a success out of the Amer
ican, you can practically fix your own salary thereafter. Of
course, if you don't make the American a success, Hearst will have no further use for you."
To the point, you see. But nothing came of it. The Presidential Campaign was
on: it was necessary to wait till after the election; and after the election I fell an easy prey to our Town Topics friend,
Col. Mann. When, upon a later day, I told Brisbane about the arrange
ment with our Town Topics friend he remarked quietly and with decision.
''He's a d d old rascal: simply wants to exploit you."
In the course of our conversation, mention was made of a. certain well known Special Correspondent of Newspapers.
"He doesn't know anything." said Brisbane. "Besides, he has brown eyes. You never saw a brown-eyed man that had
any sense. Grey eyes are the eyes of genius. "There was Caesar, bom of a black-eyed race, but having
grey eyes. Xapoleon. born of a black-eyed race had grey eyes." and so on.
He said all this quite earnestly, with every indication of settled conviction.
Naturally. I took notice of the color of Brisbane's eyes. They are grey. At the same time, he was noting the color of mine. They are grey.
To this hour I am uncertain whether Brisbane was hoaxing" me. or whether he actually believes that queer thing about grey eyes.
Beginning with Webster and Robert Burns, I could enroll a list of black-eyed men of genius that would convince even Brisbane that his theory about grey eyes is more curious than sound.

ill?

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165

It was an enjoyable meal, seasoned with much Brisbane knowledge of men and things, but we couldn't tarry forever, even at Delmonico's, so Brisbane tipped the waiter 50~c. in cash. and had the luncheon charged to his regular account.
A very careful man is Brisbane about giving tips. It's a part of his religion. He defends and glorifies the tipping system in his editorials.

SS/Si ?-HOW STffANOE iAT yoUKS ANO A SHOULD BE GRAY
MR. BRISBANE AMUSES HIMSELF BY ANNOUNCING THE STARTLING THEORY AS TO THE COLOR OF THE EYES OF MEN OF GENIUS.
This is one of the Brisbane eccentricities that I can no more understand than I can understand why he editorially alludes to Joe Gans, the negro prize fighter, as "a colored gentleman.''
II. Upon one occasion, after he had completed the reorganiza tion of Government in the Italian States. Napoleon exclaimed:

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\

"My God! how scarce men are! In Italy, I have been able to find but one Melzi."

In our own day. the thing which is scarce is that which Xapoleon found so scarce in the decadent Italy of his time manhood. You may find a score of brilliant minds, where you will find one man.

"What is meant by intellectual greatness, we all understand. What is meant by a great man, perhaps is not so well under stood.

TVhen we say that one is a great man, we mean that he towers above other men in those elemental qualities which round out his character, and give him a superority which attracts attention and compels respect. Those qualities are courage moral as well as physical honesty, truthfulness, loyalty to conviction, fidelity to duty, boldness of initiative, tenacity to purpose, loftiness of aim, purity of motive, the strength to stand for what he thinks is right, though he stand alone; the patience to work, and to wait. No matter how much the world may scoff and jeer and disparage, he knows that his work is good for all true men know their true worth. Therefore the true man goes forward with his work, unhasting yet unresting, as the stars go.

To be an intellectual giant is one thing. To be a Great Man is another. One may have a grand personality, and yet not have a grand intellect. On the other hand, one may have a grand intellect, and not possess grandeur of personality.
For instance: Lord Bacon had one of the greatest of minds, yet he was one of the most ignoble of men. His intellect was transcendent, broad, deep, creative, powerful. But he was mean, cowardly, false-hearted: true to nothing and to nobody.
Rousseau possessed creative genius of a high order. His book. The Social Contract, probably changed the destinies of modern Europe. But Eousseau himself, as a man, was beneath contempt.
Edgar Poe was a great, original, creative genius; as a many he was pitifully small and weak.
Take Rudyard Kipling. Here, again, we have mental greatness: here again we fail to find a man. He allowed his brotherin-law Ballistier is the name. I believe to lash him with a whip on the public highway, and he did not then or ever afterwards resent the assault. Yet this contemptible coward has exerted all the powers of his great intellect to fan into flame the militarism of Great Britain, and stir up in the Englishman a savage lust for battle and blood and conquest.
Curran was a great advocate, a great orator: he was a pitifullv small man.

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL, LITERARY. ETC. . 167

O'Connell was a great advocate, a great orator, and a great

man.

!

Patrick Henry was the greatest orator since Demosthenes

and, like Demosthenes, failed in being a great man.

Charles James Fox was great both in Intellect and Manhood.

,

After his preliminary mistakes, due to environment and vicious

training, his nobility of heart and grandeur of mind swung

!

him into the proper position and made him the greatest Eng

lish Statesman of his time. Battling always for those rights

of the individual man which some people call Democracy,

J,-

others call Kepublicanism, others call Liberalism, but which,

;

by whatever name called, are the great elementary principles

?

upon which all just Government of man by man must be

founded, his career is one of the most glorious that history

;,

records.

On the other hand, William Pitt, the lifelong rival of Fox,

,;

possessed a great mind, but was not a great man. He was

{i

cold, mean, selfish, theatrical, narrow, envious, an apostate

I'

from principle, a slave to Power, a recreant to his own sense

of Duty.

f

jj

Just as one may have a great intellect and not be a great

jj

man, so one may possess those qualities which make a great

|

man, without possessing those mental traits which constitute

intellectual greatness.

George Washington was a great man a very great man.

But he was by no means a genius. His mind, indeed, while

broad, was somewhat sluggish. Mental work was to him a

labor of Hercules. It is true that he brought to it, when

once aroused, the strength of Hercules, but the Treasury of

Thought owes not a single gem to George Washington. He

lives and he towers into an immortality which few men will

ever rival, and none will ever excel, by reason of the fact that he possessed in rare completeness the essential qualities of

stalwart manhood.

In comparison with Jefferson. Washington's mental gifts

shrink into insignificance, but when Jefferson is contrasted

with Washington as a man, it is Jefferson who suffers by the

comparison. Take the case of Marlborough and Napoleon Bonaparte.

Maryborough was a great General one of the best that ever

handled an army. In mere military genius, it is by no means

certain that he was inferior to Napoleon himself. But there

all thought of comparison must be abandoned. As a man,

Marlborough was nothing. A more despicable specimen of the

human trouser-wearing animal than he. it would be difficult to

conceive.

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But Xapoleon was even greater as a man than he was as a

Captain.

Take that scene on the deck of the British Man of War,

Bellerophon:

Xapoleon had fallen from the highest pinnacle of human

success into the abyss of irretrievable failure. The whole world,

including his own flesh and blood yes, including the wife of

his bosom have deserted him. His enemies have trampled

his eagles into the mud. have caged him, and are sending him

to that rock}- prison, where he is to be tortured till he dies.

A British Admiral, in obedience to the brutal orders of his

Government, approaches his captive, and says to him:

"England demands your sword."

See with what unbending pride Xapoleon straightens him

self, sets that firm, square jaw. fixes that hawk-like, unquailing

eye and. laying his hand lightly upon his sword, stands at bay.

This is manhood. To die rather than submit to personal

indignity: to be true to one's self in the moment of universal

disaster: to rise above all that circumstances can do to you ^

this is manhood. And on board that British ship, where he

stood a helpless captive, the sheer manhood of Xapoleon Bona

parte backed down the Admiral of the British Xavy, and

backed down the British Government itself. This triumph of

unaided manhood, is to my mind more glorious than Marengo

or Austerlitz or Wagram.

Take Xapoleon at St. Helena, caged in that miserable little

cow-house. Every day of his life he is badgered, tormented,

nagged at. by that contemptible jailer. Sir Hudson Lowe.

II

This abominable character had taken it into his head that he could earn his own promotion from his official masters by

heaping indignities upon the greatest man the world ever saw.

"With this odious conception of his duty controlling his course

of action. Sir Hudson Lowe one day announced to Bertrand

that every day thereafter Xapoleon must submit himself to

the personal view of his English guards; and that if necessary

the Englishmen would force his door to satisfy themselves

that he was still there.

Again Xapoleon revolted. His manhood recoiled against the

indignity. Rousing himself, he said:

"Although I am here alone. I am as unconquered as when I

was at the head of half a million of victorious troops, and

gave laws to half of Europe. Let them break down the door

if they like, but I will kill the first man who enters."

And again the Englishmen backed down. And again the

Government backed down.

If the records of the human race can show manhood in finer

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169

fullness than is displayed in these two examples. I am not aware of it.
But what has all this to do with Mr. Arthur Brisbane? Just this: You have read this article to no purpose if you have not already understood me to mean that Arthur Brisbane's is one

CAPTIVE HALTS THE VICTORIOUS ENGLISH GOVERNMENT.
of the great intellects of this generation. It is extremely doubtful if he has, in his own peculiar field of mental work, an equal anywhere among the sons of men. Therefore, the question of his own intellectual greatness being conceded, one naturally asks himself:
Is Arthur Brisbane, also, a great man? The answer depends entirely upon the point of view. In one respect Mr. Brisbane seems to be radically deficient in manhood. He allows himself to become submerged in

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Hearst: engulfed in Hearst; swallowed up in Hearst, losing all identity of his own. For every bit of the work done by Brisbane, the credit save among the initiated few goes to Hearst. The outside many, who are unitiated, suppose that the editorials in the Hearst newspapers are written by William Randolph Hearst. Even when Brisbane's incisive, luminous, powerful editorials are published in book form, they come to you under the name of "Hearst's Editorials." Therefore, at first blush it would seem that Brisbane lacks those essential qualities of great manhood bold initiative, fearless assump tion of responsibility, and the undying determination to make one's identity felt.
But there is another view probably, the correct one. Mr. Brisbane may belong to that class who believe that they can accomplish their purpose by keeping in the background; by directing others from behind the curtain; and by putting others forward, and working through these nominal masters.
Richelieu worked behind a feeble king, and thus used the king as a tool of his own. The astute Minister, working always through his king, broke the power of a haughty feudal nobility so effectually that the turbulent viceroys of one generation became the servile courtiers of the next.
Robert Walpole. working behind two stupid kings George the First and George the Second and thus making use of these royal instruments laid in England the solid foundation of Parliamentary Government.
The Prussian Statesman. Stein, working behind a blockhead of a king, abolished feudal abuses and built upon these ruins the glorious democratic institutions which have made Germany the wonder of the world.
Xow it may be that Arthur Brisbane, years and years ago, conceived the splendid plan of getting permission of the young millionaire. William Randolph Hearst, and working through this nominal master to accomplish his own purpose.
It may have occurred to his profound intellect that the very best way to serve his own purpose was to efface himself; sub merge his individuality: stay in the background; direct the play from behind the curtain: and thus make William Ran dolph Hearst and his colossal fortune a stalking horse for Socialism.
If this was Brisbane's idea, it was a magnificent conception. If in losing his own identity, or appearing to lose it, in that of Hearst. Mr. Brisbane deliberately planned a renunciation and a sacrifice of himself, then there dawns upon my mind a con ception of his grandeur as a man. that would lead me to place him far in advance of any one of his contemporaries. . Goldsmith beautifully illustrated the same idea, operating

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL, LITERARY. ETC.
'IS BRISBANE THE POWER BEHIND THE THRONE?"

IT-2

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL, LITERARY, ETC.

in the mind of a lovely girl, in the play "She Stoops to Con quer." The same idea has been very frequently and success fully used by others in various ways; but if in Brisbane's case the same stratagem has been employed, then it has been made to attain the sublime.
In other words, if in appearing to lose his own identity and individuality in Hearst. the purpose of Mr. Brisbane was that of making a huge appropriation of the Hearst millions for the good of humanity, then I would say that the quiet, unpretend ing gentleman, who writes all those epoch-making editorials, is one of the greatest men this country has known.
Using Hearst and the Hearst millions and the Hearst news papers, as a speaking trumpet, this self-effacing Socialist is doing a greater educational work than all the other Reformers put together. He is today the mightiest Individual Force
that acts upon Public Opinion. I wonder if Brisbane suspected that thoughts like these
might be passing through my mind, that day when he amused himself by talking nonsense to me about grey eyes that day when we lunched together at Delmonico's.

The Roman Catholic Hierarchy and
Politics
DURIXG the year 1906, when the French Ministry was Bringing about a separation of Church and State, in order that the French Republic might occupy practically the same ground upon which our forefathers reared our own Government, the temper and the strength of the Catholic Church in America was demonstrated in a manner which ought to have aroused much more attention than it did. In New York, Washington City, and other great centers of population, indignation meet ings were held, in which our sister republic, France, was de nounced in the most violent language for doing precisely what the founders of our Government did at the beginning.
The greatest mistake of Napoleon Bonaparte was the Con cordat of 1801. in which he came to an agreement with Pope Pius VII.. which virtually chained France once more to Super stition, Idolatry and Priest-rule. In addition to power, the Catholic Hierarchy was given annually ten million dollars from the national treasury. This money, of course, was raised by taxation. Therefore, every Frenchman, whether a believer in Christ, or not, whether Catholic, or anti-Catholic. was compelled to contribute towards the support of a specially favored priesthood. In the course of time this situation became intolerable. One of the disastrous consequences of the Con cordat which Napoleon concluded with the Pope, was the Prussian war of 1870, which was precipitated by that bigoted dupe of her confessor, the Empress Eugenic. The politicians of the Vatican bitterly hated Prussia, first, because it was a Protestant country and. second, because it opposed the Jesuits; and, manipulating the French government through the Em press, France was precipitated into a conflict for which she was not prepared, and in which she was crushed.
It was not, however, until Clemenceau became a member of the French Cabinet, that the formal abrogation of the treaty which Napoleon had made with the Pope was attempted. After the bitterest opposition, in which the priesthood resorted to all of their various pious frauds -and complicated wire pulling, the French government succeeded in putting the Cath olic Church on the same footing occupied by all other churches in France. In this struggle, the Roman Hierarchy was actuated by the most sordid motives. They did not want to lose that ten million dollars per year, and they did not want to lose the political power and prestige which their alliance with

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the government gave them. They angrily resented the idea of occupying precisely the same ground as that occupied by all other churches. They wanted special privilege in France, and they fought stubbornly to maintain it.
The wily politicians of the Vatican made the most of the immense progress of Catholicism in America. The purpose was to throw the public opinion of the United States in the scales against the French government. Our Vice-President, Mr. Fairbanks, so far forgot the proprieties, that he attended, in Washington City, one of the meetings in which a friendly government was outrageously misrepresented and abused. Not a word of protest or disclaimer did the Yice-President utter.
During this agitation. Cardinal Gibbons, of Baltimore, a Jesuit and an Ultra Montaine, was conspicuous for the violence and the untruthfulness of his public statements. He boldly declared that the French Ministry hated God and were making war upon religion. Of course, the cardinal knew that these statements were false. The cardinal very well knew that those
who were bringing about the separation of Church and State in France were, as a rule. Catholics themselves, and they were simply combatting clericalism and the special privilege which
had been given by law to the Catholic priesthood. Bishop Keiley. of the diocese of Savannah. Georgia, felt it
his duty to declare that if the State of Georgia should pass a law interfering with the church duties of a Catholic, "I would be the first to announce that I expected the people of my diocese to break the law. The Pope is supreme and has au thority from God. and no true believer would hesitate whether to obey the law of God or man. It would not be necessary for me to make any announcement, however; for, if the United States should attempt anything like France is doing, the Catholics would rise of their own accord and remove the bigots from power. The Catholic Church needs no secular arm to protect it.r
Here we have the same spirit of clerical pride, arrogance and assumption of identity with God. which, in the old days, when men were more superstitious, ignorant and idolatrous than now. compelled a German emperor to stand bare-footed three days in the snow, knocking in vain for permission to enter Canossa and plead his case with the Pope.
The Bishop of Savannah is as much a supreme power as the Bishop of Rome, for all historical students are well aware of the fact that the Pope is simply the head of the Church by Clerical usurpation, and that in fact he is the Bishop of Rome, just as Keiley is the Bishop of Savannah. One of them has as much authority from God as the other.
Those who have carefully watched the course of events, of

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175

late years, have not been slow to realize that in every great city

of this Union the Catholic Hierarchy controls. The political

alliance between the saloon-keeper and the priest is an open

secret, and it is largely responsible for the utter corruption

that marks municipal politics everywhere.

Cardinal Gibbons himself has been unpleasantly conspicuous

during recent years, and has been vehemently suspected of

making political deals, first with one of the old parties and

then with the other. It would be interesting history if we

could learn by what methods Cardinal Gibbons and Archbishop

Ireland have been able to secure for their Church so many

millions of dollars of public money on the strength of petitions

signed with the rude marks of wandering Indians. If the

manner in which the Catholic Church draws money from the

National Treasury to support its denominational schools among

the Indians is not a violation of both the letter and the spirit

of our Constitution, then there can be no case cited which would

be an outrage upon that fundamental law.

In the City of Washington itself, the Catholic institutions

are constantly drawing money from the public funds. In one

instance, which occurred a few years ago, it was claimed upon

what appeared to be Convincing evidence, that these appropria

tions were obtained from the Republican leaders upon the

distinct promise that in thirty doubtful congressional districts

the Catholics should be ordered to vote the Republican ticket.

It is a coincidence, which may or may not be significant, that

the Catholics did get those appropriations for Washington

institutions, and that the Republicans did carry those thirty

doubtful districts.

In the spectacular quarrel and correspondence which broke

out between President Roosevelt and Bellamy Storer and his

wife, "dear Maria," anyone who wanted to get at the true

significance of the situation could readily see that while Mr.

Roosevelt was Governor of New York his relations with Arch

bishop Ireland had been exceedingly close, and that after

Roosevelt became President he wanted to use all of his influence

with the Pope to have something good done for the archbishop;

but "dear Maria." forgetting Talleyrand's famous caution to

his' diplomatic agents, displayed zeal. She was imprudent;

talked too much; was too active; created scandal in diplomatic

circles. The natural result was that Bellamy and "dear Maria"

both were given a sharp call-down, and were loudly disavowed

.^

and repudiated.

f;

We all remember how Grover Cleveland became President.

.{,,

The luckless Burchard. making a perfunctory talk in the

presence of Mr. Blaine. declared that the three evils from

which this country had suffered most were "Rum, Romanism

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and Rebellion/' Within twenty-four hours, every Catholic
voter in Xew York had received his orders from the hierarchy to vote against Blaine. Cleveland was declared to have carried the State of Xew York, which gave him the presidency, but it is a mooted question to this day as to whether the Catholic
politicians of Tammany Hall did not steal the majority for him.
As to Tammany Hall itself, which has been the dictator in Xational Democratic Conventions and the despot of local politics in Xew York City, it is nothing in the world but the Catholic Hierarchy allied to the bar-room interests, thus con trolling the city. Recently they have increased the city debt by the enormous sum of $356,000.000. This great metropolis of America is but a huge carcass, upon which Tammany and the Catholic Hierarchy feed, and in which such exploiters of franchise privileges as Thomas F. Ryan grow enormously wealthy at the expense of the common people.
Only a few weeks ago. Anthony Comstock. acting at the
instigation of the Catholic priests, arrested a vender of news
papers, upon the ground that the papers which he was selling were abusive to the Pope. If our press were not itself in
deadly fear of the stealthy influence of the Catholic Hierarchy, this act. which violates the freedom of the press, would have
been denounced in thunder tones from one end of the country
to the other. As it is. not a whisper has been heard. Denounce the President as much as you like: distort his countenance and character by caricature and cartoon: lie about him to any
extent that you please: abuse Protestant preachers and Prot-
estant bishops to the extent that your malice suggests. Xobody "will interfere the freedom of the press protects you; but it
would seem that in Xew York there is to be one great and
glorious exception. The Pope is to be immaculate, as well as infallible, and whoever dares to print and circulate anything
against him. or his system, is to be treated as a criminal. I think I state the exact truth when I say that I am free
from religious bigotry. I have no prejudice whatever against any citizen because of his religious faith. I have the utmost respect for the individual Catholic who honestly believes in his creed: but the difference between one church organization and another may be a matter of extreme political importance, and I cannot understand how any student, conversant with political history, can be indifferent to the peculiar hierarchy of the Catholic Church. Xo other church organization claims to exercise the right to say what books its members shall read. Xo other church" openly'takes part in political affairs. No other church sends and receives ambassadors. Xo other church holds a court, at which royal ceremonial is observed, embassies

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from foreign governments received, and far-reaching questions of international policy debated and decided. There is not a government of the civilized world, at whose capital the Cath olic Church is not represented by a resident agent. Xo question of national policy, which may directly or indirectly affect the Catholic Church, is decided upon until the Pope has been consulted. Throughout the civilized world run the threads oil Papal diplomacy, and the most prominent feature of recent political progress has been the wonderful success of Catholic statesmanship.
In Spain the progressive elements have striven in vain to shake off the yoke of Rome. In Portugal mediaevalism ia still an anomaly and an abomination. In Austria Catholicism is as supreme as it was in the days when the Jesuits and the Inquisition met and turned back the reformation of Huss, Wyclif. Calvin and Luther. In France, it is true, clericalism has been unhorsed. In Italy, where the Pope is seen at close range, and where the workings of the hierarchy are known intimately, the people have shown a determined inclination to revolt against Vatican tyranny. Recently the Catholics of the city of Rome itself elected to the mayorality a man who is at once a declared enemy of the Catholic Church, a Mason who occupies a high office in the order, and who is, besides, a Jew. In fact, the double lives led by the Roman Conclave, and the deep duplicity and selfishness which mark the policies of the Vatican, are so well known in Italy, and so thoroughly detested, that the secular arm of the State has been necessary to the protection of the lives of the priests.
On the other hand, the German emperor, like his remote predecessor, has been made to go to Canossa. The laws which expelled the Jesuits have been repealed. The growth of democ racy in the empire has been so phenomenal that the shrewd politicians of the Catholic Church took advantage of the help lessness of the government, forced an alliance upon it. and thus got for themselves what they wanted, while giving to the government the majorities needful to the passage of govern mental measures.
In Protestant England the Catholic Church is now the power behind the throne. The most influential members of the aris tocracy are devoted Catholics. The trend of conversation among the rich English lords is distinctly towards the Catholic Church. When Thomas F. Bayard, ambassador from the United States to the Court of St. James, gave his first grand, banquet to the nobility of Great Britain, not a single Prot estant divine was invited. Catholic cardinals were there, upon, equal footing with the Prince of Wales, but no man of God tainted with the touch of the Reformation was present.

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That the secret influence of the Roman Hierarchy controls Congress is shown by facts which cannot be disputed, and which cannot otherwise be explained. Why was it that the school teachers in Xew [Mexico could not be instructed to teach the English language in the public schools? Why was
it that the continued and exclusive use of the Spanish lan guage was sanctioned by law in this American territory? The English language was objectionable to the Catholic Hierarchy,
because it would carry with it the knowledge of the English Bible: and the Catholic Church did not want any Protestant Bibles in New Mexico. . By teaching Spanish in New Mexico, the Catholic Church preserves its monopoly, and our cowardly
politicians voted as the priests demanded that they should. McKinley's Cabinet was partly Catholic, and the influence
which the Pope exerted upon that administration was shown
by the way in which the War Department hastened to grant the Catholics a portion of the national domain at West Point. They asked for some of the Government land to build a church on. and they got it. Other denominations have not been ablfc to get any of the national property.
Mr. Roosevelt's Cabinet was partly Catholic. Attorney-
General Bonaparte was. probably the selection of Cardinal Gibbons for that high position, and it is probable that the secret of why the Department of Justice did not bring Edward
H. Harriman and Thomas F. Byan to the bar. and punish them for crimes which they had notoriously committed, was that these two gigantic criminals were both liberal friends of
the Catholic Hierarchy. Ryan gave a million dollars for the building of the Catholic cathedral in Richmond. Va., and
HarrimanV gifts to the Church were on a scale of the same
calculating generosity. Wherever the Catholic Church controls, it persecutes. Xo
Protestant can safely preach or sell Bibles in Spain, or in Portugal, or in South America. This could not be done in
Mexico until the revolt of the Liberals against the Clericals. It was not until Mexico threw off priest-rule that she began to
make those magnificent strides upward and onward, which
have excited the admiration of the world. As an evidence of the intolerance of the Catholic Church
when it has full sway, remember that it was made a felony in
Italy to read or to vend the works of Charles Dickens. He
had visited Italy: had been shocked at the.poverty of tha people, the tyranny of the priests, the idolatry and superstition
which prostituted the name of religion: and he wrote a descrip tion of conditions as he saw them, just as he wrote about the
United States, and about his own country.
In the Philippine Islands, shortly before their occupation

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1T9

by the Americans, torture was applied to captives and to

heretics, in the same manner that it was applied by the Inquisi

tion to heretics in the Middle Ages. Only a few years ago. the

Literary Digest, of Xew York, copied an article from a leading

paper in South America, in which the Inquisition was eulogized

in the highest terms, and the rack, the wheel and the stake were

hysterically praised.

In Canada, a few years ago, a Catholic newspaper of liberal

tendencies ventured to act independently of the hierarchy, and

to oppose the Church on some questions of policy concerning

the schools. The hierarchy was so powerful that it actually

compelled the postal authorities to exclude the offending news

paper from the mails. The Canadian Government did not

dare to punish these insolent priests, who had violated Cana

dian laws and destroyed legitimate mail.

Quite recently, the present Pope, or Bishop of Rome, has

declared war upon what he calls "Modernism." He is alarmed

at the growth of independent thought. His purpose is that

which has ever actuated the head of a hierarchy. He wishes

to discourage research, to check inquiry, and to fasten again

the rebellion minds of men to the old. old orthodoxy, which

was never so happy as when the world took in a literal sense

the clerical admonition that men should become as children.

Papal endorsement has been given unreservedly to the dogma

that the Protestant religion is not better than no religion at

all. The papal position is that Protestantism must be up

rooted and cast out as a damnable heresy. And. in plain

terms, he says that Catholicism must carry out its mission

"even to the shedding of blood."

Thus the spirit of Torquemada and of Alva is abroad again!

Where a church claims and exercises the right to exert

political influence, it behooves good citizens to study the history

of that church and the tendency of its teachings.

To judge a tree by its fruits is a fair rule. Xow that the

Catholic Church is likely to take such a controlling part in

our national affairs, it is well that we should ask ourselves a

few questions.

When and where has the Eoman Catholic Church done any

thing for the masses of the people for the sacred cause of

freedom of labor, freedom of vote, freedom of speech, freedom

of thought, or freedom of conscience?

When has it ever failed to side with enthroned tyranny as



against Reform. from the days of Philip II., when it burnt

v

one hundred thousand men who dared to think for themselves,

down to the day in 1896. when the Pope's blessing was breathed

upon the Spanish flag, and his prayers went with the troops

who were to burn Cuban houses and fields, torture and slay

fi-!

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Cuban patriots, insult and outrage Cuban maids and matrons,
and make a smoking hell of a country whose people demanded no more than the Catholics of Ireland demanded of Protest ant England, and upon far better grounds?
To the very last, the Catholic Church stood by the institution of slavery, and was the last to give up her slaves. To the very last, the Catholic Church opposed freedom of conscience and of worship. To the very last, it opposed the general education of the masses, and is today the mortal enemy of the public
schools. To the very last, it opposed self-government by the
people, and is today the staunch defender of the "Divine Right of Kings."
A very particular reason why the people of this country
should be concerned about the startling growth of Catholic power is that the Catholic Church boasts that it never changes. The good Catholic claims today that the Pope is infallible, and that all the Popes have been true and worthy vice-gerents
of Christ. He claims that the Protestant is a heretic, and he believes
that it would be a mercy to bind him upon a jagged iron
wheel and beat said heresy out of him with a club. He believes that his priest can pardon sin and that money
liberally spent in buying prayers can lift the sinner out of hell.
He believes that the wine of the Sacrament is the actual blood of Christ, and the bread the actual body.
We are all prone to believe that which is constantly said and never denied. The profound policy of the Catholic Church is to cut off its converts from the world and keep them from. hearing, reading or thinking anything which might encourage doubt.
The Catholic Church wants its converts to have faith in the priest, faith in the Church, and faith in the Catholic state ment of every case.
To reach this result, the Pope dictates what books shall be read, what newspapers shall be patronized, and what pictures shall be used.
Pope Leo XIII. revised the list.of "Forbidden Books." He declared that the new rules on the subject of "Forbidden Books" were so mildly formulated that it would be easy for good Catholics to obey the new rules.
What are these new rules which a Good Catholic must ob serve in choosing his reading matter?
1. "All those writings which were prohibited previous to tha year 1600. except where special decrees have since made excep tions, are prohibited now."
What books wez-e prohibited previous to the year 1600r

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181

and which of those books have been acquitted of blame during the 31G years since 1COO?
2. "All books written by apostates, heretics, schismatics, are forbidden."
Away goes your Milton and your Shakespeare, your Burns and your Byron, your Cowper and your Wadsworth. your
Tennyson and your Browning! They were all heretics. Hume must not be read, nor Gibbon, nor Hallan, nor Fronde,
nor Carlisle. They were all heretics. A good Catholic must not drink the pure delight of Gold
smith's "Deserted Village." nor must he ever hang enraptured
over the "Greccian Urn" of Keats, nor must his eye ever grow dim as he reads Byron's verses to his sister. He must never
walk the rich fields of Charles Keade and Charles Dickens never laugh with Thackeray, nor sigh with Hood; never soar with Shelley, dream with Coleridge, nor view the gems of Walter Savage Landor.
All the golden fruit of genius, choicest apples of literature's Gardens of Hesperides. is fruit forbidden to a good Catholic. for when God lit the lamp of genius in the minds of these wonderfully gifted heretics and touched their souls into celes tial music, He forgot that the Pope would measure all the mental universe with the contemptible little tape-line of de
nominational intolerance. To a good Catholic, all the eloquence, wit, wisdom and
patriotism of American history is a lost land, for the deadly brand of heresy lies upon the whole of it. Excepting Charles
Carroll. of Carrollton. and a baker's dozen besides, the whole outfit from Washington, the Episcopalian, to Jefferson and Thomas Paine, the Deists, were rank heretics, deserving to
be burnt. What sort of intelligence would a good Catholic have, if he
should obey the rules which the Pope says are so mildly framed ?
What sort of knowledge does any man have, when he is for
bidden to read on both sides of the case? What better scheme could be devised for putting power into
the hands of the priests? How could a good Catholic ever be anything, mentally, but
a child, if he is denied the privilege of reading, thinking,
comparing and judging? But the rules, which Pope Leo XIII. so mildly framed, do
not stop here. They forbid the good Catholic to read any book on religion, except those written by Catholics. They forbid Catholics to read any edition of the Bible, except the Catholic edition. Books which criticize the Pope, cardinals, priests.
church doctrines and usages, are forbidden. The Pope does

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not wi^h that his people shall be told a great many things which they ought to know. He wants them to know nothing beyond what the priests see fit to tell them.
Xo good Catholic must read any book, or other publication, which treats of religious subjects, without submitting said book or publication, to the judgment of the priests.
Such rules as these sound strangey out of place in this age of progress and research.
If a creed is sound, why should it fear investigation?
Conscious error should not possibly show more guilty timid ity in screening itself from honest inquiry than the Catholic Church displays in these rules which command good Catholics to read no books excepting those which have been inspected,
tagged and branded by the Pope. Of all the slavery in this world, the most degrading is mental
and spiritual slavery; and we look upon the huge growth of the Catholic Church in political power as an ominous fact, because the natural tendency of its creed is to make the people superstitious, intolerant and priest-ridden.
But while our politicians continue to be cowards, and our Protestant ministers continue to be silent, Catholic diplomacy will march onward triumphantly, until the day will come when Protestantism, will have to fight for dear life in a land which
its blind devotees believe is dedicated forever to free speech, free thought and free worship.

THE JESUIT'S OATH.

"I. A. B.. now in the presence of Almighty God, the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Blessed Michael the Archangel, the Blessed St. John the Baptist, the Holy Apostles St. Peter and St. Paul and the saints and Sacred Hosts of Heaven, and to you, my Ghostly father. I do declare from my heart, without mental
reservation, that the Pope is Christ's Vicar General and is the true and only Head of the Universal Church throughout the
earth, and that by virtue of the Keys of binding and loosing given to His Holiness by Jesus Christ. He hath power to depose Heretical Kings, Princes, States. Commonwealths and Govern ments, all being illegal without his sacred confirmation, and that they may safely be destroyed. Therefore, to the utmost of my power. I will defend this doctrine and His Holiness's rights and customs against the now pretended Authority and Church in England and all Adherents in regard that they be Usurped and Heretical, opposing the Sacred Mother Church
of Rome. "I do renounce and disown any Allegiance as due to any

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183

heretical King. Prince or State, named Protestant, or obedience
to any of their inferior Magistrates or officers.
"I do farther declare the doctrine of the Church of England, of the Calvinists, Huguenots and other Protestants, to be
damnable, and those to be damned who will not forsake the
same. I do further declare that I will help, assist and advise all or any of His Holiness's agents, in any place wherever I
shall be; and to do my utmost to extirpate the heretical Prot estant doctrine, and to destroy all their pretended power, regal or otherwise. I do farther promise and declare, that notwith
standing I am dispensed with to assume any religion heretical for the propagation of the Mother Church's interest, to keep secret and private all her agents' counsels as they entrust me, and not to divulge, directly or indirectly, by word, writing or
circumstance whatsoever, but to execute all which shall be protected, given in charge or discovered unto me, by you. my Ghostly Father, or by ony one of this convent."
"All of which I. A. B.. do swear by the Blessed Trinity, and Blessed Sacrament which I am about to receive, to perform, on my part to keep inviolably; arid to call on all the Heavenly
and Glorious Host of Heaven to witness my real intentions to keep this, my oath. In testimony whereof. I take this most Holy and Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist and witness the
same further with my hand and seal, in the face of the holy
convent."

The Oddities of the Great
Is it a fact that men of genius are more apt to be eccentric than average mortals who are not so gifted? Or is it that nobody cares to notice the peculiarities of the obscure, while a hero-worshipping world fastens greedy eyes upon the smallest detail which illustrates the manner of man that a genius hap pens to be?
The grouchy old Thomas Carlyle declared, most unreason ably, that Harriet Martinau's description of Daniel Webster's manner of lounging before the fire-place with his hands in his pockets was worth more than all the books which that indus trious blue-stocking had written on history, biography, politi cal economy and what-not.
The surly sneer is undeserved, of course, but it illustrates the human appetite for details about great men. Carlyle put upon paper his own expressions of Webster, after having been in "the great expounder's" company, and a most masterly por traiture it is. "Steam engine in breeches," and so forth.
If you thought it worth your while to make a study of the comparatively unimportant individual who owns the adjoining farm, or keeps the fruit store, or who presides over the Justice's Court, or who represents the railroad at the ticket-window, or who assigns your room at the hotel, or who takes your fare on the cars, your would probably find him just as full of a sense of individuality as any of the Great: and his daily life, his home traits, habits, his little personal peculiarities are just as marked as were those of the more conspicuous mortals who possessed genius.
Nevertheless, we are not going to pester ourselves to gather facts concerning the queerness. the eccentricity, the small meanness, the odd freaks of intellect which characterize the anonymous Toms. Dicks and Harrys: what we do want to know is the whole story, every detail, concerning the lofty men who dominate our hero-worshipping souls.
Did Jones, who owns the adjoining farm, cut a large hole
in the door for the use of the cat. and a small one for the kitten \ We don't know, and what's more, we don't care. But if Sir Isaac Xewton does a thing like that. behold the bug is amber! literature will tell the tale to the remotest posterity.
Suppose a miscellaneous city dude hires a horse and buggy, takes his gum-chewing Mary Lou to ride, and is confronted with an emergency which requires that he unharness the horse, and he doesn't know how. The fact does not even attract the attention of the rural correspondent of the country paper,

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185

as does the largest turnip, the earliest watermelon, and the goings and comings of the local John Henry's and Susan Anns.
But how different it is with Coleridge and Wadsworth! Those mighty monarchs of the realms of rhyme come driving home, find the hired man absent from the post of duty, and fatuously undertake to strip the gear off, all by themselves. The poets progress famously until they try to take the collar off. In those days the collar did not buckle and unbuckle as now. It was a continuous ring of leather. The two poets could not get it over the horse's head. In vain they pulled and pushed. No go. They then fell back to get a good view of the horse. Was he sick ? Had his head swollen after the collar was put on ? Manifestly something unusuaL had happened. It was the same collar, the same horse; yet the collar which had gone over the horse's head was too small to come off.
The two poets gravely and anxiously discussed the matter, and made another earnest effort to pull the collar off. Nothing doing. Happily the servant-girl caught sight of the puzzled philosophers, and went to the rescue. Turning the big end of the collar upward, she passed it over the horse's head. and sailed off triumphantly, full of pride and the exultant sense of superiority. In her eyes, the men who didn't have sense enough to unharness a horse were mighty sorry creatures, even though they had written "The Ancient Mariner" and the "Excursion."
The visitor who found Shelley climbing a picket fence, every time he left or entered the yard of the Italian villa he had rented the owner having left the gate locked was vastly amused at the poet's simplicity. "Why don't you break the lock, and use the gateway ?" asked the sagacious visitor.
"Bless my soul, I never thought of that!" said Shelley, im mensely relieved at the idea of not having to climb that picket fence again.
Can you doubt that the visitor went away pluming himself upon his advantage over the radiant intellect of that whose marvelous fruitage are the "Adonais," the "Cloud," and the
"Ode to the Nightingale?" If Shakespeare had any peculiarities, we don't know it: he
is so rounded-out. symmetrical, and perfectly healthy as to be
almost impersonal. So I would speak of Goethe, were it not for his cold brutalities to the women whom he fascinated.
But, with these two exceptions, it is almost impossible to name a single literary genius whose eccentricities were not conspicuous. You will dispute this, and remind me that Sir Walter Scott's was a heart of gold, his mind eminently sane and free of the morbid. But you would be wrong terribly wrong. Deep down in the soul of Sir Walter there was that

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unmanliness which crouches and cringes. It is a hard thing to

say of him who wrote the "Young Lochinvar," "Marmion,"

and the battle song in ';The Lady of the Lake," but it is a

true saying.

Had Sir Walter treasured, as a sacred heir-loom, some cup

which had touched the lips of Wallace, or even of Robert

Bruce. or of that magnificent brute. Richard the Lion-hearted,

we could understand him. and respect him for it; but when we

see him catch up and put in his pocket, to carry home and keep

as a holy relic, a glass whose wine had been guzzled by George

the Fourth, that most putrid of all putrid kings, a gust of scorn

and contempt sweeps over us. Why? We see the crouching

of the courtier to the office of King. We see that, after all,

Sir Walter's was the soul of the lackey. The cringing to power

and wealth and militarism saturates all his books. His neck

is ever bent to the yoke, in Church and State. A Tory to the

very bottom of his heart, he hates a rebel as constituted author

ity always does. Upon the Dissenter, in religion and in politics,

lie empties the phials of his uttermost derision, doing his level

be*t to make him ludicrous and despicable. "Submit yourselves

to those in power: bend your necks to Kings and Popes;

believe that every wrong is right if you found it established

when you came into the world." that is the message of Sir

Walter's books, and it has done enormous harm.

l<t

The oddities of Carlyle would of themselves fill up a lengthy

chapter. The crowing rooster bothered him grievously; the

lowing cow was not his favorite: and the dog that sat in one

place and barked all night found no favor in his sight; and

the piano banger next door sometimes got notes that were not

on her scale. Poor old philosopher, telling all mankind how

to live and be good and happy, and raving like a madman

most of the time himself. Discovering after marriage that he

had no business marrying, he humbly went to work to make

both himself and the unfortunate wife wretched. Caught in

a similar predicament. John Buskin gave his wife away, to

the painter Millias. who made her. and a fine lot of children,

idealy happy. Apparently, no other man sought to win Mrs.

Carlyle. and she was left to the life which caused her to say,

in the anguish of her hungry, tortured soul. "I feel as if I were

the keeper of a private mad-house."

Lamartine says. "Genius bears within itself a principle of

destruction, of death, of madness."

This is unquestionably true a very terrible fact. Such, men

as Byron. Coleridge. Shelley. Alfieri, Dante, Swift. Tennyson,

Poe. Landor. are assuredly non-sane, if judged by ordinary

standards. There is an unbalance of faculties, a lack of mental

symmetry and poise.

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187

What a motley procession it is that of the great men of English literature! There is burly, surly, overbearing Doctor Johnson, with his drawing-room amenities, such as "I per
ceive, Sir, that you are a vile Whig!" and his catching hold of the hands of one of the company to prevent gesticulation
during the conversation; and h-is stopping in the street to pick
up orange peel, for some mysterious, undiscoverable purpose,
and touching the lamp-posts regularly, as he walked along:
and swallowing without a wink the absurd story about the
Cocklane Ghost; and compiling a Dictionary in which he
scornfully defies a pension as a bribe taken by a traitor for the betrayal of his country, and then accepting a royal pension for himself.
There is poor Chatterton starving in his garret, and Henry Fielding reeling toward home, after midnight, drunk as a
lord. There is Dr. Smollet, poor as a church mouse, writing masterpieces of realistic fiction that have delighted millions
and made fortunes for publishers and book-dealers. There is the satanic figure of Dean Swift, hating the whole human race, venting his impotent rage in torrents of bitter obscenities.
incidentally breaking the hearts of the only two fellow-beings that ever loved him.
There is Pope, the little cripple, who is so bright and so ready to sting; who has to be sewed up in a sack every morning,
and put to bed like a child at night; and who threatens to spite the unappreciative age in which he lives by writing no more poetry.
There is Oliver Goldsmith, the sweetest spirit that, ever touched the chords of human feeling; and there is Sheridan
who, when arrested one night for maudlin drunkenness, and asked his name, answered, thickly, "Wilberforce" that being the eminently respectable name of England's pioneer Pro hibitionist.
Yes, and here is her ladyship, Mary Worthy Montague,
high-born dame, of brilliant wit, known as the introducer into Europe of the extremely dubious vaccination practice; and
whose high-breeding once manifested itself in a rather famous repartee. Some daring person having ventured to remark to
the Lady Mary that her hands were dirty, that courageous
patrician retorted, daintity, "You ought to see my feet!"
And there is Southey, tearing along the road of that haggard existence of his, coniposing monumental epics which nobody
reads, and throwing off a few lyrics and one biography which are classics and immortal.
And let us sigh for Keats, the sensitive, and wish, for his
sake that he had learned to pay as little attention to adverse criticism, as we roast-proof moderns do. Who cares a rap

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what the reviewers say. nowadays? Did he really creep to bed. turn his face to the wall, and grieve himself to death because an immensely inferior man made fun of his poems? I hope not. His work has so wondrous a quality that it >s painful to believe that he was so structurally weak. How much finer was Byron, when the same Quarterly Review ridiculed his ridiculous early poems. Instead of going to bed, my Lord Byron gulps down a few bumpers of wine, seizes his gray goose quill, and goes after the whole tribe of English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, putting some of them in bed. In fact, Byron hadn't written a line that was worth while, until then. The lash of the reviewer roused him.
Much of what the poets write is unintelligible. Perhaps they themselves understood it. but that is doubtful. Don't you get the idea that Goethe lost his way in the latter part of Faust? Does Coleridge always make his meaning knowable? Are you quite sure that Poe and Browning knew what they
were trying to say. all the time? We live in a land where Walt Whitman has many warm
admirers. Let me close by quoting a few lines from the in
spired Walt. The devotees will doubtless unravel the poet's meaning, but a lunacy commission would be justified in hesi tating a long while before deciding that such writing is not
evidence of mental aberration:

' Divine am I inside and out. and I make holy whatever I touch or am touched from:
The scent of these armpits, aroma finer than prayer; This head more than churches, bibles and all creeds. If I worship one thing more than another, it shall be the spread
of my own body or any part of it."

Pages from a Lost Book.
OXCE upon a time I sat me down to write a book. the story of a great people. The still watches of many a night found my lamp burning and my pen flying. With the statesmen, the orators, the heroes of the past, I lived. With the troubadour I vagabondized from castle to castle, with the Knight I rode down the lists, with the crusader went to the Holy Land, with the soldier marched to the wars. I saw the wh'ite plume of Navarre lead the charging line at Ivry; heard the fierce warsong of the Midi as the dark men of Marseilles tramped along the dusty roads to Paris; was there when Mirabeau thundered his defiance of the King's messenger; saw Camille when he jumped upon the table in the garden of the Palais Royal and ficed the crowd into stripping the leaves off the trees to pin on their coats as cockades of revolt; was in the thick of it when the Bastille was stormed; saw poor Louis the Sixteenth be headed; and heard the very tone in which the leonine Danton roared, "The confederated Kings of Europe threaten us. Very well: we throw at their feet, as gage of battle, the head of :i King!"
Yes, for months I lived with these historic people, knowing them more intimately than I knew my next door neighbor. At length the big task was finished, and the manuscript went to the publisher.
Quite naturally, a conservative publisher found many pages of my "copy" too radical. It was many years ago. remember. Radicalism is the fashion now. It was different when "The Story of France" went to press. Hundreds of its manuscript pages were thrown away. Indeed, the first volume was con siderably mangled. The chapter on the Reformation was toned down until it wasn't mine at all. Perhaps it was better so. Perhaps not.
In the second volume, I was allowed a freer hand, but even there the "Reader" of the publishers landed on me heavily. For instance. I wanted to contrast the Let-it-alone citizen, who adapts himself to every wrongful condition, with the reformer who rebels. The "Reader" rejected the pages. See what is printed within the parenthesis, in the quotation which follows. Those italicised words appear in red ink upon the rejected Ms., written there by the publisher's "Reader." Note that I was asked to omit the pages, and that the printer was per emptorily instructed to omit them! As the French Revolution
devouring its own children, the passages on the cruel fate

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of the reformer seemed to me eminently appropriate. The "Reader" didn't think so. hence red ink veto, enclosed below in the brackets.
[These pages, areti't they best omitted? They say what is
tme. and say it finely, but are they not best omitted in a book on thf French Revolution? To the printer: Omit these pages.]
''These pages"' were as follows:

Let it alone! It is all well enough as it is. Perfection you

must not hope for: bear the ills you see around you, lest you

fly to others which are worse! All I possess is invested in

the system of Today! My salary flows from it; my dignity is

derived from it: my power depends upon it. In self-defence

I must fight you to the death if you touch the system which

deals gently with me!

In this language, substantially, the favorites of Social,

Political, and Religious systems admonish the Rebel who seeks

|. ,

to disturb the repose of Zion. Woe unto the reformer! His

F

Crown is heavy, for it is of thorns. As he staggers beneath

f-j

his Cross, there are none to cheer his fainting Soul. His

enemies raise the yell of brutal triumph, his friends are afar

off and silent. The unprivileged in whose behalf he condemns

himself to the Crucifixion, can be counted among those who

shout "Give us Barabbas." Not all of those who smite him are

of the Privileged whom he has antagonized. Not all of those

who spit upon him are of those whose tyranny he denounced.

The spear that pierces deepest is thrust into his quivering

flesh by those whose wrongs had moved him to pity and to

protect.

Ever and ever, the heart of the reformer breaks because of

the ingratitude of the people he sought to save. Ever and

ever the prayer of the reformer must be. "Father forgive them,

thev know not what they do.'* Woe to the reformer if he

looks for any reward among men! If he finds not his strength,

his consolation in his own conscience, he is the wretchedest

creature that lives. Better had he never been born. Better

had lie never laid his hands upon the sword. He will perish

by it as surely as he is earnest, unselfish and undaunted.

Does the liberated slave celebrate Garrison, Phillips and John

Brown? Xot at all. The Negro's Saint is Lincoln, the poli

tician, who deprecated agitation, held himself aloof from the

Abolitionists, and only put his sickle with the harvest when it

was dead-ripe, and could be garnered for the purposes of

Practical Politics.

It will l>e rememljered that the King and his nobles had

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191

brought France to bankruptcy by their extravagance; that a deficit existed which steadily grew larger; and that it was for the purpose of asking the nation for financial relief that the King summoned the States-General, and thus started the Rev olution. I wrote several pages upon this subject, but they were thrown out. See the curt orders to printers, in the paren thesis below. On the Ms. the words are in red ink.
(Omit these pages.) "These pages" read:

The Deficit, the Deficit! how it did intimidate the strongest nerves! How it did knock off their unstable feet one minister after another! How confidently each, in turn, went up against it, and how swift was collapse, and flight from the field.
Where now was this Deficit, before whose terrors no royal minister had been able to stand ? The Revolution had soothed it into submission and docility. The lion now "roared you as gently as any sucking dove."
What was the secret of the change? Expansion of the currency; only this, and nothing more.
The Assignat had gone abroad through the land, and whatever it touched turned to gold. Land was bought, houses built, farms put into cultivation, labor set to work: with paper money. Trade was busy in all her marts; manufactures thrived to the music of its myriad whirling wheels; agriculture smiled in .all her fields. Who .heard the cry of Famine in 1790 and 1791? No squalid mob of hungry wretches pleaded for bread. What had become of the ever-present rioters of 1788 and 1789? They were at work. The unemployed no longer hung upon the streets. Money made work, and work made peace. The baker's shop was pillaged no" more! The baker's head rested calmly'on his shoulders not hideously on the end of a pike. The "record of paper money is the same, always. It quickens production, inspires energy, nerves enter prise, booms values, distributes and increases wealth. This is invariably so. No historian denies it. Under John Law it did so, in the time of the Regent Orleans; under Pitt it did so, in England, during the Napoleonic wars: in America it did so, under Lincoln and in the years following the Civil War. The same tree bore the same fruit for the French Revolution. Not until the foes of paper money insidiously assailed it. did the same system bear bitter fruit. The foreign governments who counterfeited the Assignats by the million, and flooded France with them; the hoarders of gold who legislated against them; the enemies of paper money who wished to kill it by creating an excess of it: the wrecker of the Commercial seas who longs for the storm of Contraction, so that helpless argosies may be

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driven in ruin to the reefs where he can plunder them: these are the influences which have always combined to destroy paper money, as soon as it has done its work of saving the State. Paper money offered to save the Old Regime from the roaring Deficit, but the Privileged foolishly scorned the offer. The Revolution caught up the rejected slab, and made it the Corner stone of the Xew Order.
In 177<1 a bank called the Caisse cl' Escompte was established in Paris with a capital of about $1.500.000. Until 1782. this bank prospered. It had issued notes, payable on demand, to the amount of $7.500.000.
In that year, the pressure of the war with England, forced the government to borrow a million dollars from the bank.
This depletion of its capital caused the bank to suspend specie payments. By royal decree, Sept. 27, 1783. the notes of
the bank were made legal tender. The refusal of the nobles to accept this paper money brought
on the crisis with the Royal Treasury. Xo historian of the French Revolution appears to have been
struck with this fact. By their scornful defiance of the royal decree, by their selfish insistance upon specie payments, these pampered parasites of the Old Regime drove the King to tho~e desperate expedients which culminated in the summon ing of the States-General!
In June. 17S7. the outstanding notes of the bank had reached S20.000.000. Calonne. who was at this time running his wild career of lavish expenditure, compelled the bank to advance him $2o.000.000. This forced another suspension of the specie payments. which before this had been resumed. In 1789, the totterinsr bank was given a final push by backer. He borrowed, from it"$18.000.000!
This ruined it. though it did not cease to exist (in a dying condition) till the Convention abolished it in 1793.
We find from a note in the Diarv of Gouverneur Morris that the only currency circulating in Paris in 1790 was the paper
money of this bank. Specie had disappeared.
When the National Assembly began to issue paper money in the name of the Xation. the bank notes of course fell into disuse. TTith the State notes, lands, at least, could be bought;
with the bank notes, nothing.

One more illustration, and I'm done. The lines in the first parenthesis which follows were written by me. Those in the second parenthesis were written by the "Reader." in very red ink. Notice how sarcastic.the poor author had become.

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193

(This page and the two which follow, are offered with that timidity which is born of anticipated discomfiture.)
(Omit since this matter belongs to a theory of finance which rather too deeply colors the preceding pages.)
The "omit" killed the following paragraphs:
f
In saying that the issue of paper-money brought prosperity to France, we; of course, wish to be understood as meaning that the prosperity was merely fictitious. In common with other historians, we feel bound to caution the reader to put no faith in the facts. While it is true that in 1790-1. the issue of treasury notes quickened the step 6f industry, stimulating its strength in every field of production, the results were not substantial. Ships stood out to sea. but they were phantom ships: golden argosies might seem to ride the waves, but they bore only the wealth of dreams. Barns were full of grain, markets bustled with activities, men hurried here and there to tasks which seemed to be real, which seemed to be useful. but the harvests of results were barren idealities; the wheat was not actual wheat, the men of the market were illusory men:
he who had on good clothes was only apparently clad; money in the pocket was a delusion and a snare: food in the stomach was there by necromancy; and it appeased the hunger of man. wife, and child only by force of patriotic imagination. Papermoney is a tricky conjurer whose wiles are known well in the Academy, in the Senate, in the back-pai-lors of the lords of
finance. Full of guile, it will deceive unless watched. It spreads these appearances of prosperity to dupe the unwary. To prevent the world's being permanently misled on so grave a matter, governments which issue paper-money in times of distress, destroy it when peace returns; the effects of the cur rency depart with the currency itself, and the deluded people then discover that the good results of paper-money are evan
escent. Had the currency not been suppressed, the apparent prosperity might have endured, and thus the world, chained to a grievous error in reference to government money, might have escaped the crafty tutelage of the money-changer whose presence in the Temple gave such offence to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Sir Archibald Alison complained bitterly of the Tories of England, that his services as historian had not been adequately rewarded. He had found the Tory interest sadly in want of a good history, and he had written one for it: hence he claimed payment at the Tory hands. If it is in this spirit that histories are written, God speed the day when some mighty man of the
pen will do justice to the story of the people.

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Some easily discouraged people croak "Keforms come slowly!" But is it so?
The very publishing house which cast out the radicalism of Watson, in the Nineties, now eagerly welcomes the Manuscript of the boldest Socialist. From sea to sea, the public opinion which the reformers have created, bends the politicians as the storm bends the willows. Instead of slow progress, reform sentiment has moved like a tidal wave, and its power is felt all the wav from back-woods cabin to the White House.

Tolstoy and the Land
THE London Times publishes a lengthy article which Tolstoy has written on the land question, and this article is reprinted by Mr. Louis Post in his excellent paper. The Public.
The position taken by the Russian philosopher is that the land must be restored to the people, that every child born into the world has a natural right to a portion of the soil, and that all political reforms will be vain until this fundamental reform is brought about.
I do not see that Tolstoy has added one cubit to the argument already built up by those who have gone before. He adds some homely and striking illustrations, he mixes the question of religion with it, but of substantial reason or fact he makes no contribution whatever.
Is it true that the real grievance of the masses is that the land has been taken away from them? Will no reform bring them relief until the land has been given back to them ? Will universal happiness be the result of putting an end to the private ownership of land ?
These are grave questions, and they deserve the most serious consideration. As a guide to our footsteps the past must always be, to some extent, our light, our teacher. Human nature today is probably the same that it always was. There is nothing new under the sun, and the problems which vexed the brain of Tolstoy doubtless puzzled the minds of Moses and Confucius.
Ours is not the only civilization the world ever saw. We may be sure that all the vital principles of government, all the problems of complex society, have had the best thought of the wisest men that ever lived in the ages that are gone.
If historical teaching is worth anything at all, the land question may be considered absolutely settled. No civilization was ever able to develop as long as the tribe owned everything in common. Not until it became a matter of self-interest for some individual to improve the land, was it ever improved. As long as each individual felt that his parcel of land might go out of his possession at the next regular division, there was no incentive to improvement and there was no improvement.
The waste remained a waste, the hovel remained a hovel. Not until the individual became assured that the benefit of his labor would accrue to himself, did the waste become a farm and the hovel a house.
8- Sketches

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If the history of the world shows anything at all, it shows this.
And the reason why this is so is that human nature is just human. If men were angels it would be different. As long as men are nothing more than men. each citizen is going to get
what belongs to him. if he can.
Xow. what is it that justly belongs to each citizen?
It is his labor and the products thereof. How did private ownership in land begin?
Tolstoy speaks of those who have seized upon the land and who keep it from the masses of the people.
As a matter of fact, the right of each citizen to hold as his own a certain portion of the soil, began with the laborer who
claimed the products of his lalwr. While a score of tribesmen were fishing or hunting or drink
ing and gambling, one tribesman cleared the trees off a piece of wild land, converted the rough soil into a seed bed, fenced it in to keep off the cattle and came to love that which his labor had created.
Having put his labor into the land, having changed it from a waste into a farm, it was the most natural thing in the world that he should claim it as his own. Why shouldn't he? He had made it a farm.
Was it just that the twenty idle tribesmen should take away from the one industrious tribesman, that which his labor had created ?
If it was not just for the idle to rob the industrious, then
we must leave the farm to the man whose labor made it a farm: and there you have private ownership of land.
The moment the industrious tribesman saw that the tribe would protect him in the enjoyment of the products of his
labor, he began to advance toward civilization. He built
something better to live in than a mud hovel. As long as the regular division of the soil was in practise, he had no home. How could he have one ?
The home is the sweetest flower of individual ownership.
There can be no such thing as a home a home to love and beautify and consecrate to the holiness of family life where
there is no private ownership. Tolstoy and every other opponent of private ownership
makes the point that nature gives no support to the system.
That is true. Nature does not teach the principle of private ownership, nor does nature teach the doctrine of monogamy the one wife.
Xature does not recognize the marital relation at all. If
nature teaches anything on the relation of the sexes, it teaches polygamy. The marriage relation, as we know it, is not

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197

founded in nature, but is the product of convention and is a

comparatively modern contrivance.

In other words, it is a man-made institution.

Does Tolstoy believe in it ? If he does (as must be assumed)

he admits the supreme power of society to fix the laws by

which it shall be governed, whether those laws seem to be laws

of nature or not.

The one wife, one husband, marital relation, justifies itself

by its results.

We judge the tree by the fruits.

It is far from being a radiant success, but we've got it. and

we propose to keep it lest worse things happen.

As to the land question, the situation is much the same.

Society, as a matter of self-preservation, admitted the principle

of private ownership of land. Had society never done so. the

land would never have been more than nature's handiwork

the limitless range for cattle, the uncleared wilderness, the

thirsty plains and deserts whose parched lips would never

have tasted the life-giving waters of irrigation.

Labor made the land worth owning, and that which labor

made, labor was allowed to keep. That is all there is to it.

The civilizations that have died were not killed by private

ownership of the soil.

No; a thousand times, no!

The civilizations with whose wrecks the shores of time are

strewn, owed their destruction to misgovernment. Vicious

men made vicious laws, and vicious rulers enforced them.

Excessive taxation imposed burdens which crushed the victims.

Privileged orders exploited non-privileged masses. The

aristocratic few lived riotously at the expense of the

democratic many. The moriey of the Nation was concentrated

in the hands of the dominant class. The many had to pay

ungodly prices for the use of this money. Usury is a vulture

which has gorged itself upon the vitals of nations since the

dawn of time.

"Great.estates were the ruin of Italy." says the historian;

but what created the great estates? Before a few could buy

up all the land, there must have been some great cause at

work, some advantage which the few held at the expense of

j'|

the many. What was that advantage?

**

Dig down to that and you will then have the true cause of

the ruin of Italy.

Consult the books, and you will find that the ruling class at

Rome had concentrated in their own hands all the tremendous

powers of State. They fixed the taxes, paid little and spent

all. They controlled the money, and the noble Brutus was

one of the patriots who loaned out his capital at 48 per cent.

interest!

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Give to any ruling class the power to levy and spend the taxes, give that class the legal right to enrich itself at the expense of the others, give that class the power to dictate the price at which the masses shall have the use of money, and it is good-bye a long farewell to the prosperity of that people.
It is infinitely easier to enslave a people through the misuse of the powers of government, than through the laws of
property. The power to tax is the power to confiscate. Give that power
to one class, and what more does it want? The only limit to the extent to which the victims can be robbed, is the limit of
their capacity to pay. Add to this the control of the currency system, the life-blood
of the nation, and you need nothing more. You can absolutely prostrate any people on earth by the
misuse of the two powers. No matter how much land you give the Russian peasant, or any other peasant, it does him no permanent good, as long as the rulers can so fix the laws of taxation and of money as to rob him of his produce as fast as
he makes it. So plain is this truth to me that I marvel at Tolstoy, when
he virtually prophesies that the millennium will set in when
we shall have given everybody a piece of land. Consider a moment. Who are the present masters of the
world ? Those who control the money. The Rothschilds are typical
of the class referred to; do they own any land ? Do the kings of high finance buy up vast domains in order
that they may be served by a lot of tenants ? By no means. The Rothschilds own no land except their
town and country homes. Yet even the ruthless Bismarck feared them so much that
not a penny-worth of damage was done to the Rothschild property in the havoc of invasion which swept over France
forty-odd years ago. Why should the kings of finance bother themselves with the
ownership of land and the collection of rents, when* they can
so easily fleece both the landowner and his tenant ? "Why should railroad kings hunger for land, when they hold
at their mercy the produce which toiling millions bring forth
from that land? Why should the manufacturing class reach out for provinces
to own and rent, when they can so frame the laws as to draw enormous annual tribute from the agricultural classes, without any of the risks or any of the responsibilities of ownership?
Change these infernal laws, and anybody who wants land can buy it. Land is plentiful and it is cheap. Not only has

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199

the Government vast areas of land awaiting the settler, but the country is dotted with abandoned farms, which can be had almost for the asking. Thousands of them can be bought for less than the improvements cost. Why were they abandoned ?
Because the men who owned them could not make a decent living out of them after paying taxes, railroad and express company extortions.
Give the people land while these conditions prevail, and they could not keep it to save their lives.

Note: In the official report of the Land Office (Washington. D. C.), it is stated that Uncle Sam still has upwards of 695,000,000 acres of land to give to Homesteaders, under the Acts of 1S6S, and xtra inducements are being offered to have these public lands settled. October, 1912.

The Stewardship.

WHAT are you doing with the talent \vhich God gave you?

In what way are 3-011 trying to live for your fellow man as

well as for yourself? What is your conception of your

responsibility as a wonderfully-made, God-sent messenger to

the world ?

It is easy to say that we will cut loose from the noisy crowd

and retire into a privacy upon which the world shall not

break. But can we do it ? Can we detach ourselves from the

world, its hurly burly, its stern realities? Can we harden

ourselves against the prickings of Conscience, deafen our ears

to the call of Duty?

You see that the world needs earnest workers, and you are

ashamed to fold your hands and sit in slippered ease at your

fire-side. You hear the din which rises from the great battle

field of life: you see the lines of the righteous waver and

break: you hear the trumpet which calls for you and you are

ashamed not to go. You cannot bear that evil shall triumph

while conscience calls you "coward!" because you will not take

your place in the battle-line. Xo; it may be madness, but

wheresoever Eight unfurls her flag and cries "Follow me!"

you must drop all and march.

The law of nature rules us all. The easy-going, bask-in-

the- sun man is one thing, and a very useful sort of thing in

some ways. He can. under favorable circumstances, fill the

house with children, delight the Roosevelt soul, and wear out

chair bottoms on the village sidewalk, while his over-worked

wife earns and cooks the dinner, and the tax collector takes

from thriftier citizens the money which educates his children.

But the law of your nature is different, and where it com

mands you dare not disobey. It says "Come!" and you come;

it says "Go!" and you go. Xo matter how distant the journey,

it must be taken; no matter how hopeless the task, it must be

tried.

In no other way can you quiet the voice within; on no other

terms can you make peace with yourself.

Death were better than loss of self-respect, and to keep that,

you and Duty must walk the long path hand in hand.

What, truly, is the life worth living?

It is to cultivate, expand, energize and consecrate all that

t

is best within you: to search for Truth and Right and to lay

i

your willing sword at their feet; to combat all shams and

hypocricies and superstitions and frauds and errors and

oppressions: to love the best interests of your fellow-man and

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201

to put your whole heart in the struggle for his advancement, in

spite of his own cruel hatred and persecution.

What though this life condemns you to unrequited labor,

unappreciated effort, the ingratitude which cuts like a knife,

and the misrepresentation which chills worse than the wintry

wind? All this is outward, temporary, inconsequent, the

j

mere passing of the fleeting clouds, nothing more than inci-

>

dental discords on the great harp of life. Things like these

]

wound, inflict pain, sadden the soul somewhat, but they do

';

not change the course of the vessel nor make coward him who

;

stands sturdily at the wheel steering through the night by the

everlasting stars.

He knows, he knows that he has laid his course aright; and

that if. when morning breaks, the harbor is not in sight, the

fault will not be his.

He will keep his rudder true: no more is in his power.

4

The life which is worth living has not always led to ease,

wordly success, happiness and earthly honors.

Too often the man who consecrates himself to the nobler

purpose has been what the world called a failure, has been

t

led away into captivity by pitiless foes, has died at the stake

amid tortures.

But. like the Indian brave, such a warrior has never feared

the stake nor the tortures.

! j,

Like the Indian brave, such a warrior despises those who

:=

torment him. and amid the flames in which he dies his death

; ''

song rises to thrill the world.

\\

"I have fought a good fight. Never once did I lower my

'

flag. To the Eight, as God gave me to see it, I was always

true. Not once did I bend the knee to the Wrong, consciously.

"All my life I fought .for the betterment of humanity!

Here are the scars to show it. Defeat has rolled over me, but

not dishonor.

"To no man or woman have I knowingly done hurt; if I

have not done some good, it is not because I failed to try.

"On millions of my fellow-men I found the chains of a

bondage more galling than slavery: I did my utmost to show

them how to be free.

"Millions I found hungry, naked, homeless: I did my best

to point the way out of Poverty into Plenty.

"I found the old foes of the human race winning ground

day by day: the rich man grinding the face of the poor: the

tyrant using Law and Government to rob the people; the

priest again spreading the cloud of ignorant Faith over the

sunny fields of God-given Reason; the Church and the State

once more uniting to plunder the human race and to divide

the spoil.

i

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"Against these ancient devourers of men, against these relentless foes of the freedom and development of humanity, I raised the cry of defiance, fought them with all the power that was within me. doing what man might do to arouse my fellow-man to a sense of the peril which was coming upon him.
"Yea! I have fought a good fight. Here are the wounds. Xo white flag flew over my citadel. It held out to the last.
"Loneliness pained but did not subdue me; persecution saddened but did not conquer me; friends deserted me and foes multiplied, but I was not utterly cast down. The sacred torch of human progress I held aloft, even as better men had done in the ages of the past.
"Its light will not fail. Others will seize upon it and bear it on. Some day the night will pass, and the human race will no longer grope in the gloom.
"In that my faith is strong. For that I have never ceased to watch and pray and work.
"And now my part is done. The shadows gather about me but I am not afraid. The voices from the darkness call for me and without regret I go.
"Duty grants me her honorable discharge; Conscience acquits me of her service: the boon of Peace within settles upon me with the caress of infinite calm and so I pass down into the turning of the darkened road, with no pang of remorse in my heart and no chill of doubt or fear on my soul."
Thus one will have lived the life worth living, whether he dwells in log hut or stately mansion.
While it is yet day and he can work, he works, unhasting and unresting. At the loom of time he toils persistently, weaving into his life-garment, threads of gold.
The creed of such a man is an inspiration; his life a call to duty. His tomb becomes an altar; his death a song of triumph. Neither rust nor time shall dim the splendor of his effort: and the influence of his thought and his example shall
not be lost upon the world as long as Duty has a devotee and
Truth a holv shrine.

.i :

The Reign of the Technicality

WAS there ever a judicial system more utterly abused than

j

that which we English-speaking people have established?

>

Is it really anything better than Trial by Combat? Or

t

walking over heated plowshares ? Or being tied hand and foot

'\

and tossed into the water to find out whether one will float

or sink?

I

After all is said and done, the present method of trying law

cases is nothing but a battle of the lawyers, and he who has the

strongest lawyer generally wins. It is only when the Judge on

the bench lends his powerful aid to the good cause, that the

weak lawyer can win against an attorney who outclasses him.

In bygone days, the man accused of crime was too cruelly

treated. He was inhumanly tortured, to make him confess.

To escape the frightful suffering, many innocent persons con

victed themselves of crime. In swinging away from this

barbarous mistreatment of the prisoner, the pendlum of

"human tenderness swung too far the other way. The State

is not now permitted to ask the accused any questions at all,

unless the prisoner voluntarily goes to the witness box. This

is obviously nonsensical. No innocent man could have any

possible objection to going on the stand as a witness, and no

guilty man should be allowed to escape for the reason that he

alone can establish his guilt.

Under the practise in most States, a prisoner can make his

own statement, say anything and everything he pleases relevant

to the case, and yet the State cannot ask him the simplest

question.

The result is that the guilty are constantly walking out of

the Court, acquitted, because the State is unable to establish

some fact necessary to a conviction.

In "Ten Thousand a Year," we have a fair illustration of

the faultiness of our system as a means of meting out Justice.

A clerk Has been given a deed to engross. It must be written

on parchment, which is costly. In transcribing, he makes an

rror in a word of no importance. Fearing that his employer

will discharge him for carelessness if he reports the error and

asks for another parchment, the clerk neatly erases the word

which is wrong and writes in its place, the word which is

right.

The thing is so neatly done that% the Attorney never detects

the erasure. The deed is duly executed, enrolled, and made

part of the muniment of title to an estate worth ten thousand

pounds, ($48,000), per year.

204

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL. LITERARY, ETC.

After a\Yhile. a keen lawyer discovers, as he thinks, a flaw in the title to this estate. Tittlebat Titmouse. Esquite, is
thought to be the true heir, and is coached as Claimant. Tittlebat is a poor clerk a poor one in all sorts of ways,
and the author displays him as a bumptious idiot of great proportion and variety.
A big law-case starts up to try the title to that estate. The lawyers want a slice of that Ten Thousand a Year. In due
time, the case comes on to be heard, and no book that I know of contains a better account of that battle of legal giants than does this of Samuel Warren, himself a lawyer.
At first. Tittlebat Titmouse seems to have proved his title. He is the true heir, and the proud family which has luxuriated
in that noble income of ten thousand a year must give it up to
Tittlebat and his lawyers. But the other side brings its guns into action, and begins to
bombard the plaintiff's position. Deed after deed is produced,
link after link in the chain of title passes through the hands
of lawyers and judges and no flaw is found. Tittlebat's case seems to be boing slowly but surely up Salt River. Blue funk begin? to take possession of Tittlebat and his backers. Then the crisis comes. Defendants offer in evidence the very deed which makes their chain complete.
Confidently the paper is offered. anxiously it is taken in
hand by Plaintiff's counsel for examination. First one. then
another of the big lawyers scan the deed. It seems to be all right. But. hold on! is that the right stamp? One of the Plaintiff's attorneys dives into a bag. fishes out a law-book, finds the stamp-act for the year in which the deed is made. Alas! the stamp is the right one. So that precious dream of
an "objection" to the deed goes glimmering. Exultantly, the leading lawyer on the other side extends his hand to take back the deed, so that he may offer it. and take his verdict.
But no no. indeed ! one vigilant, lynx-eyed fellow on the Plaintiff's side discovers what he thinks is an erasure! Great excitement follows. Consternation on the one side, and elation on the other. A magnifying glass is called for; the small
speck on the deed is made to yield up its secret yes there is. unmistakably, the evidence that the clerk in writing out the deed erased a word which had no business there and put
in one which belonged there. Tittlebat wins an estate that isn't his and. for a brief season,
enjoys another man :s property. And all because the law is, in very many respects what Mr. Bumble conditionally said it is, "a ass."
In running away from the perils of forgery, in legal papers,
the law went too far in the opposite direction. Since "Ten

It

SKETCHES : HISTORICAL, LITERARY, ETC.

205

;'

Thousand a Year" was published, there has beeen a relaxation

of the rigid rule which did not allow explanations of changes

in notes, deeds, etc., but where the Technicality loosens its

hold at one place 'it tightens it at another.

A veteran Georgia lawyer declared, in a recent address to

the Bar Association, that seventy-three per cent of all the

cases are decided on technicalities.

Pray reflect upon that. There is deep significance in the

statement. It means that nearly three-fourths of all law cases

are not decided on their merits.

Can such a system be meeting the requirements of Justice?

The question carries its answer with it. We might as well

let John Doe hire a man to fight Richard Roe's man, and make

a ring, put the two champions within it. and say as in olden

times, "Fight, and God defend the right."

Not long ago, I was in the Supreme Court room of Georgia,

1

awaiting my turn to present a case. Preceding our case was

'

one in which a man convicted of willful, deliberate assassina

tion was seeking to upset the conviction.

The undisputed facts in the record showed that the deceased

had not killed himself.

,

There was absolutely no question raised by the defense

upon that point. The whole case had proceeded upon the self-

evident fact that somebody had killed the man. There was no

pretense whatever that he had killed himself. Yet the techni-

' ;..

cal rule is that the plea of Not Guilty throws upon the State

:\

the burden of proving the unlawful killing, and in this case

]

the Judge of the Court below had, in his charge to the jury.

>j,

referred to deceased as having been killed. Defendant's

counsel therefore was asking that the Supreme Court set aside

;

the verdict because the Judge had expressed an opinion upon

'*

a disputed fact.

Technically the fact was in dispute actually it was not:

yet the Supreme Court strongly intimated that it would be

compelled to grant the man another trial.

Consider the California decision, by which those grafters of

San Francisco are escaping just punishment for their crimes.

The Mayor, Schmitz. and the Boss, Abe Reuff. compelled

certain saloon and restaurant men to pay large sums for the

privilege of continuing their business under the customary

license. Unless they would pay bribes to the Boss and the

Mayor, they would have to close up their shops and go out

of business.

Yet the Appellate Court decides that there is no crime!

With astounding effrontery the Court says that although

Schmitz and Reuff did threaten these saloon and restaurant

keepers, and did thereby force money out of them, "the indict-

SOB

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL. LITERARY, ETC.

ment is insufficient because it does not allege or show that the specific injury threatened was an unlawful injury."
So it would seem that some of our courts, eager to screen miscreants who deserve the severest penalties, have evolved a new kind of injury which one man may do to another. There is a lawful injury which I may do my fellow man, as well as an injury that is unlawful.
The Mayor of a city may collude with the local Boss, and the two may go the rounds of the stores, saloons, restaurants,, hotels, etc.. saying. "If you don't cross these itching palms with gold, you'll get no license to continue business See?"
Yet this shameless California Court announces that such a threat as that is not a threat to do "an unlawful injury."
Of all the triumphs won by the imperious Technicality, surely none is more gorious than this last one in California.
"What we need is something that will lessen the power of the lawyers, liberalize the code of practice, destroy the tendency of technical rules to defeat justice, increase the control of the Judge and jury over the management of the trial.
At present, a court-house combat is too much like a mere tournament where the lawyers come into the lists and tilt for their clients, while the crowd sits there to acclaim the victor, and the Judge presides to award the prize.
In every case, the Judge should be the Chief Manager of the trial: he should question each witness; he should call attention to errors of omission and commission, in order that the merit* of the cause may get fairly presented: he should question every defendant in criminal cases; he should instruct the attorneys on either side to correct their pleadings when a litigant is in danger of losing his rights on account of some error of his lawyer: he should see to it that no man wins or loses a case on. Technicality: he should be ready, at any time before the verdict has been received, to reopen the case for material correction of any and every sort.
In other words, a trial of a law-suit should be an earnest, conscientious effort of Judge and jury to measure up to the highest standard of duty, and that is to find out how this case should be decided on its merits.
In a rough way. the following anecdote illustrates my idea: After William H. Crawford had had his first stroke of paralysis causing him to lose the Presidency his day of usefulness in the national arena was over. He was appointed Judge of the Superior Court of the Northern Circuit, and died in that office. On one occasion he was presiding in Taliaferro County, and a smart lawyer from Augusta was leading" a case, on one side, while the other side was represented by a member of the Crawfordville bar, no match for his adversary.

.if

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL, LITERARY, ETC.

207

The Augusta lawyer was carrying things with a high hand

and having it all his own way. Old Crawford was "scrouched''

down in his chair, and seemed to be nodding. The little

country lawyer, who had right on his side, was in great dis

tress. Time after time he jumped up, objecting, remonstrat

ing, and correcting, but Crawford took no notice. Finally it

came time to make the speeches to the jury. The country

lawyer made his, as best he could, and then came the big lawyer

from the city of Augusta. Having the conclusion, he made

the most of the advantage. He misstated the evidence, put

the law as he wanted it, made fun of his opponent, and was

having a fine time, generally. Old Crawford dozed, the jury

enjoyed, the little country lawyer suffered. He kept jumping

up, interrupting the Augusta lawyer, and disturbing the

slumber of the Judge. Finally Crawford opened his eyes and

said, "Never mind, Mr. S. never mind. You sit down and

rest easy. Let Mr. B. go on and get through. I've got the last

whack at that jury."

Naturally, this observation of His Honor dampened the

ardor of the Augusta lawyer, considerably, and he hastened

to a conclusion.

Then old Crawford roused himself, those great blue-gray eyes kindled, and when he had his full "whack at that jury,"

: r

the best lawyer had lost the case, and justice had prevailed"

Concerning Money

Ix the early days of the reign of Queen Victoria, there

came on to be heard, before her Lord Chancellor, a very

unusual case.

The Emperor of Austria had brought process against Louis

Kossuth. the Hungarian patriot, to restrain him from issuing

certain bits of paper which he had caused to be printed in

England, for the purpose of circulation in Hungary.

Translated into our language, the wording of these strips of

paper was as follows:

"One Florin.

"This monetary note will be received in every Hungarian

State and public pay office as

" ;One Florin in Silver.'

"Its nominal value is guaranteed by the State. In the name

of the nation.

"Kossuth, Louis."

It was shown that more than one hundred millions of these

florin notes had been prepared, and were intended to be used

in Hungary as money.

The Emperor contended that "the introduction of said notes

into Hungary will create a spurious circulation, and thereby

cause great detriment to the State and to the subjects of the

plaintiff."

It further appeared in evidence that the Emperor had sur

rendered to the National Bank of Austria the privilege of

supplying the Empire with paper money, and doubtless this

bank was the instigator of the Bill in Equity brought against

Kossuth. The National Bank of Austria had the same feeling

against Kossuth that our Whiskey Trust has against the

Moonshiner. In each case, the name and power and money

of the Government is used by a Monopoly to stamp out Com

petition.

In delivering his opinion, the Lord Chancellor uttered this

truism: "The right of issuing notes for the payment of money,

as part of the circulating medium in Hungary, seems to follow

from the right to create money belonging to the supreme power

in every State. This right is not confined to the issue of por

tions of the precious metals of intrinsic value according to

their weight and fineness, but under it portions of the coarser

metals, or of other substances, may be made to represent vary

ing amounts rent. 7"

in

gold

and

silver,

for

which

they

may

pass

cur

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL. LITERARY. ETC.

209

Kossuth was enjoined from issuing the notes, upon the sole

ground that he was an exile in England, with no de facto

authority in Hungary. He. himself, had admitted that the

Emperor Francis Joseph reigned over Hungary, and was. in



fact, its Emperor. For this reason, the Chancellor held,

properly, that the Emperor, alone, had the right to supply

Hungary with notes to be used as money.

.i

In the history of the world there never was a period when a strong, orderly government allowed a subject to coin money.

,!

The state, invariably, held on to this mighty lever, as one of

the indispensable prerogatives of sovereign power. To make

laws, to appoint public functionaries, to levy taxes, to control

navigable streams, to police the public highways, to control

the army and navy, to hold the national purse and sword, to

negotiate treaties with other nations, to regulate foreign com

merce, to establish courts, to declare war or make peace, and

to create money, were among the universal, inseparable attri

butes of royalty.

When the State was weak, powerful vassals waged private

war, robbers infested the highways, pirates roamed the seas.

and private citizens created money. When the state recovered

its strength, it invariably swept the pirate off the sea. the

robber off the highway, put down the strife of lord against

lord, and took back, with stern admonitions, the exclusive

right to create money.

Historians, writing of the Dark Ages, never fail to tell us

how the anarchy of the times revealed itself in the disintegra

tion of sovereign power. Private citizens encroached upon the

state; the lords usurped the prerogatives of the King; the

security of the rights of the individual disappeared. Each

man held what he ov his order were strong enough to hold,

and no more. Even in the Middle Ages, it required all the

resolute courage of the strongest Kings to redeem the sovereign

prerogatives which the feudal lords had arrogantly usurped.

As chaos gave way to sj'stematic government, the state was

seen to have reco'nquered the sovereign attributes which the

haughty nobles had usurped: and thereafter no lord had

courts of his own. dungeons of his own. gibbets of his own,

warfare of his own. or money coinage of his own. The King's

law, the King's courts, the King's money, were supreme and

exclusive.

Was gold usable, as money, before the King placed his

stamp upon it and declared, by law. that a certain amount of

gold thus stamped, should be a guinea? Did God make

pounds, shillings and pence, or did the King do it ? Was silver

usable as money until similarly favored by the law and the

royal stamp? Could one take a silver cup and go into the

210

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL. LITERARY, ETC.

market, and pass it about as money? Could the King himself, take the gold plate off his table, and go into the market, and circulate the gold plate as money?
Before the passage of the law making the stamped gold legal tender, money does not exist. The law and the stamp
make the money out of the gold. God made the pine tree, but the sawmill makes the lumber. God made the chicken,
but the cook makes the fricassee. God made the swine, but man made the sausage.
Kicardo declared that the universal adoption of gold and silver as money metals had been an immense benefit to the
world, for they drove out such clumsy currency as the "Wooden Stick of England. ("Tally rod" of the British exchequer), the Tobacco of Maryland and Virginia, the Peltries, of the "\Vestern States. Wampum of New England. Leather of France and Spain. Bark in China. Lead of Burmah. etc., but he said that the time had come when a still greater benefit to the world would result from the abandonment of metallic money, altogether, and the adoption of a scientific paper currency.
Upon this, all independent thinkers who understand the subject, have long been agreed. Those who really know how completely the Money Trust dominates the world, and how that remorseless tyranny is based upon metallic money, can
not but denounce, with "divine indignation." the horrible greed of the comparatively few money-changers who use the coin fetif-h to hypnotize and plunder the nations of earth.
When gold threatens to be plentiful, (as was the case after the discoveries in California.) the money-changer loses his affec tion for gold and pays his court to silver: when silver becomes too common and gold scarce, silver loses favor and gold is again the Money King's favorite. Even now. paid writers of the Money Trust are demonstrating with admirable skill, the fact that the present panic has been caused by the huge increase in the output of the gold mines.
Why does the Money Trust want to limit the supply of real money ? For the same reason that any other Trust wants to limit the supply. The bankers seek control, and the smaller the volume of real money, the more easily they can control it. If the bankers control the money, they rule. Even the Emperor of Germany, with all of his imperious arbitrariness,
would never dare to go to war until he had consulted the Rothschilds. Bleichroders. and other monarchs of the realm of money. This tyranny of the banker is world-wide. Come war or peace, come famine and pestilence, come seven fat years or seven lean years, the banker rules: and he does it with "coin."' He first chains the nations to the word "coin;" then

II

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL, LITERARY, ETC.

211

he gets his grip on the supply of "coin;" thus he holds the

chain which fetters the globe.

How simple it would be to shatter the chain and escape this

odious servitude, by doing precisely what Louis Kossuth pro

posed to do for Hungary! By the exercise of that right

which the Chancellor of Great Britain declared to be a part

of the supreme power of every State, a scientific system of

paper currency could be created, based on the strength of the

State, answering the needs of every citizen of the State, and

absolutely independent of the bankers. To smash the Money

Trust, whose monstrous rapacity preys upon every nation,

it is but necessary that the State shall assert its inherent

power to create its own currenccy. A dollar, whether in

metal or paper, should be inscribed, "this is a dollar." That

declaration, and the law which makes the dollar a legal tender

for debts, are sufficient. There should be simply the sovereign

mandate, "This is a dollar." Absolutely nothing more is

necessary to make that currency as good and as strong as the

Government which creates it.

All governments, being composed of human beings, may

perish. Of course when the Government is overturned, its

currency is lost. But that is true of its bonds, also.

The editors of our daily papers are dreadfully uneasy, lest

the small notes issued by the Government should go the way

of Confederate money. But why are they not nervous about

the bonds?

If the Union should go to pieces, as the Southern Con

federacy did, the bonds would fare no better than the notes.

The East India Company, acting through the King's mis-

tress, decoyed Charles II. into sanctioning a scheme which

gave to the Company and to the gold-smith class control

over the royal mint. The law by which this was done is known

as the "Mint Act of 1666." and the bribe to the Villiers woman

is named in the Act. The "joker" clause of this Act was so

framed that the gold-smith class and the East India Company

obtained almost absolute control of the supply of money.

Moreover, these same intriguers secured a fourth charter for

the East India Company, in 16T7. which authorized the cor

poration to coin in India with its own stamp gold, silver.

copper and lead.

The Constitution of the United States expressly invests the

Federal Government with every sovereign prerogative

necessary to its performance of those functions for which it

was created. To make peace and war, to collect and disburse

-Si

taxes, to control national and foreign commerce, to make laws

,*'

and enforce them, to create offices and fill them, to control the

41

212

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL. LITERARY. ETC.

army and navy, to create money. are among the necessary sovereign powers conferred upon the general Government. To surrender any one of these royal prerogatives in whole or in part, is to maim the Government. Who would not protest, if it were proposed to delegate to private individuals or cor porations the power of regulating foreign commerce? Where is the man in public life who would dare to propose that the Government should surrender to private individuals or cor porations the power to control the army, or the navigable waters, or to operate our postal system? Yet. in abdicating in favor of six thousand national banks the sovereign pre rogative of creating money, the Government has surrendered a power infinitely more precious than that of regulating foreign commerce.
The very life-blood of the commercial and industrial world is money. the artificial creation by which we have agreed to take the measure of the value of all commodities, in exchange. And we have surrendered, to a rapacious six thousand, the terribly dangerous power of saying how much life-blood shall flow into the veins of the body-politic!
With their unconstitutional and calamitous Gold standard, their absorption of all the surplus cash of the national treasury, and their usurpation of the right to stamp their own notes as money, the six thousand national bankers have as complete a trust as the Standard Oil. or the Steel Trust.
THiat a shameful spectacle, that of a Government of 05.000.000 people chained to a fetich by a handful of Wall
Street rascals! Oh. for one year of Andrew Jackson, to smite these infamous scoundrels and to assert the power of the Gov ernment !
Listen to the Supreme Court of the United States, (39 Barb. 427). announcing its decision in Hague vs. Powers:
"Money is the medium of exchange the standard or repre
sentative of all commercial values. It is that which men receive in exchange and in satisfaction of labor, and its various products: and whether it is intrinsically valuable or other
wise, it is the standard of value by which alone they are all measured. Gold and silver are not naturally money, any more than any other metal product or fabric. They are made so by law only.
"These metals become money by the force and operation of law alone.
"The power (to create paper money) is clearly one of the attributes of Governmental sovereignty and may be exercised wherever it is deemed necessary or proper by the sovereign power."

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL, LITERARY, ETC.

213

Thus the highest Court of the United States has done, as the highest court of Great Britain did, made a clear state ment of a fact that is as old as government itself, and which was never disputed until the money-changers, using the liber tine King's harlot as their tool, took possession of the irresisti ble and sovereign power to control the money supply of the world.

;'^ i,

A Bitter Attack Upon the South
EVER since the close of the Civil War there has been a grow ing sentiment on both sides of Mason and Dixon's line in favor of mutual forbearance, the purpose being to speed the day -when the North and South shall beccome reconciled.
In the South no speaker -will now add to his popularity or influence by reckless abuse of the North.
We had supposed that the North vras equally tired of the speaker or writer who puts the torch to sectional prejudice or who wantonly inflicts upon the South a blow which he must realize will arouse angry resentment.
When the last gun was fired at Appomattox, the biggest, bravest, best hearted men on each side united in the effort to stem the tide of sectional hatred and knit together the bonds of brotherly love.
General Grant, by his magnanimity at the surrender, set a sublime standard.
General Lee. by his noble advice and example, gave the South a lesson whose influence for good cannot be over estimated.
Horace Greely. when he volunteered to sign the bond of Jefferson Davis. and Senator L. Q. C. Lamar. of Mississippi, when he pronounced a magnificent memorial address upon Charlels Sumner in the Senate, were but following the illustri ous precedents of Grant and Lee.
Later, there came the mission of Henry Grady and of John B. Gordon, upon the one side, and the conciliatory words and deeds of William McKinley on the other.
Nor should we forget the fine tribute paid to Southern character and courage in the writings of Theodore Roosevelt, who as President, had honored the sons of Stonewall Jackson, Jeb Stewart and General Beauregard. and who. in one of his latest appointments, had given preference to General Rosser, the youngest of the Confederate brigadiers.
The battle-scarred veterans of the North have been meeting in memorable reunions the survivors of those who followed Johnston and Forrest and Jackson and Lee; and the most touching and inspiring scenes have been witnessed at these encampments where the South and the North recognized each others honesty, valor and generosity, and each section vied with the other in the glorious work of harmonizing the nation.
At the grave of General Grant it was the presence of our Southern soldier. John B, Gordon, which testified to the North the sympathy of the South.

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL, LITERARY, ETC.

215

And during his administration President Roosevelt inquired

diligently into the circumstances of the widowed Mrs. Gordon

to know whether or not an appointment as Postmaster for the

city of Atlanta would be acceptable to her.

During the Spanish War the South sprang into the ranks

under the old Flag, at the tap of the drum, and the blood of

a Southern boy was the first that was shed in the conflict.

I

It was the ranking cavalry leader of the expiring Con-

j

federacy who steadied the lines before Santiago, prevented a

,I

retreat, and brought from Mr. Roosevelt the manly ack-

j

nowledgement that to General Joseph Wheeler, more than to

:' <

any other man, was due the fact that we won the victory.

It was a Southern boy who took his life in his hands in the

effort to block the Spanish harbor, and worthily earned the

title of "The Hero of the Merrimac."

It is sad to think that all this patriotism may not have made

a deep impression upon the country.

It is sad to realize that the work of such men as Alexander

H. Stephens, Benjamin H. Hill, Senator Lamar. Thomas Nel

son Page and Henry W. Grady has left so much still to be

done before that man, North or South, who endeavors to

inflame the passions of the sections, shall be made to feel that

he has excited for himself the contempt and disgust which he

deserves.

In a recent issue of the New York Independent comes Albert

Bushnell Hart, Professor of History at Harvard University,,

distilling as much bitterness and gall as ever fell from the

lips of John J. Ingalls or Thaddeus Stevens.

He writes an article called "Conditions of the Southern

Problem." and a more thoroughly exaggerated and Kbelous

contribution to public discussion has not been made during the

last twenty years.

The average reader will get some idea of the value of Mr.

Hart's conclusion when he comes upon the sober statement

that "white mountaineers (of the South) have been known

to take their, children out of school because the teacher would

insist that the world is round."

Who stuffed Dr. Hart with that old joke?

What credit does he do to himself when he' shows to the

world that he accepts such worn-out jests as facts?

Does he not know that there are plenty of wags all over the

world even in Pullman cars who take a delight in playing-

i,

upon the credulous?

fcj

He will meet men who will tell him that in certain back-

-*

woods communities "the people don't know that the war is

over," or he will be told that in some mountain counties "they

are still voting for Andrew Jackson."

216

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL. LITERARY. ETC.

But would Professor Hart take such statements for any thing but jokes?
Doesn't he know that the jest about the rural belief that the world is flat instead of round belongs to the same grayhaired family?
Even a professor of history should learn that there is just as great a difference between jokes and facts as there is between facts and jokes.
Professor Hart says that "in a few communities, notably South Carolina, the poor whites have unaccountably discovered that if they will always vote together they always have a majority, and they keep a man of their own type in the United States Senate. In most other States, however, politics is directed by intelligent and honorable men."
Isn't this a rippingly reckless arraignment of the entire State of South Carolina? Does the Professor of History at Harvard mean to say that the politics of South Carolina is directed by men less intelligent and honorable than those of ' most other States?"7
If so. upon what ground does he base the accusation?
As a matter of fact, the poor whites do not control South Carolina. It is the middle class whites who control South Carolina, and who elected Ben Tillman to the United States Senate.
But why should a Northern writer select a Southern Senator and a Southern State to be held up in this insulting manner to public odium? In what respect does Tollman's record in the Senate, for honesty and ability, compare unfavorably with that of Quay of Pennsylvania. Platt of Xew York. Aidrich of Rhode Island, or German of Maryland ? Each one of those Senators has been basely subservient to thievish cor porations, and had helped them to fatten on national legisla tion at the expense of the great body of the people.
Dr. Hart asks. "Why should the negro expect protection when the white man is powerless against any personal white enemy who chooses to shoot him down in the street, when not one white murderer in a hundred is punished for his crime?"
Dr. Albeit Bushnell Hart is evidently thinking about the case of James Tillman. of South Carolina, who shot down in the street Editor Gonzales. and who was acquitted, on his trial.
By all sane persons it is admitted to be utterly unfair to judge the entire South, or Xorth. by any one case, or by any one crime.
It is useless to argue the guilt or innocence of James Till man: but we all know that human nature is prejudiced by political feeling: and none will deny that the feud between Tillman and Gonzales was a political feud. The killing was a

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL, LITERARY. ETC.

217

political killing. In a case like that the action of court and

jury will be influenced by political feeling, whether the result

be right or wrong. .

Has Albert Bushnell Hart never heard of a political feud

in any other part of the world than the South, and has he

never known political feeling to protect one who was prose-

cuted for a crime ? Has he never known of instances in Xorth-

ern cities where prisoners at the Bar apparently owed their

salvation to secret societies of any sort or to political pull of

any sort ?

It has not been so very long since Edward S. Stokes met

James Fisk on the staircase, in the Grand Central Hotel, in

New York City, and shot him down.

' One might think this amounted to about the same thing as

the shooting down of a personal enemy on the street.

Fisk died, as Gonzales died. Stokes was tried, as Tillman

was tried. Stokes was not hanged in Xew York any more

than Tillman was hanged in South Carolina.

Will Dr. Hart please furnish an explanation which will not

fit the South Carolina case as snugly as it fits the Xew York

case?

Professor Hart asks. "Why should the Northern people

believe that the South means well by the negro when such a

man as Governor Vardaman, of Mississippi, brutally

threatens him and his white friends in the Xorth ?"'

When and where has Governor James Iv. Vardaman

"brutally threatened the negro and his Northern friends?

Governor Vardaman, not many days ago, risked his politi

cal life, to say nothing of personal danger, to protect a negro

from a white mob. Perhaps every white man in the mob had

voted for Vardaman,' and was his personal and political

friend; yet, although it was generally believed that the negro

was guilty of a heinous offense. this Governor, who has been

singled out for abuse, did not hesitate one moment to jeopar

dize his whole political future by throwing around the hunted

negro the official protection of the law.'

Xo matter how much Governor Vardaman may be mistaken

in some of his views, and some of his utterances, no man

ought now to deny that he possesses personal and political

courage, or that his respect for law is of that high character

which proclaims, "The color of a man's skin shall not be the

measure of his legal rights."

^,

Furthermore, Dr. Hart says, "in one respect the poor whites

* ']

are terrible teachers to the negroes: they are an ungovernable

people and do not allow themselves to be punished for such

peccadillos as murder."

O Mr. Professor of History at Harvard! has your blind

:I

218

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL. LITERARY, ETC.

passion against the South lost you to all sense of proportion in the making of public statements?
If the poor whites of the South "do not allow themselves to be punished for such little things as murder," why do they go to the penitentiary at all?
You will find a sufficient number of poor whites in the penitentiaries of the South are they there just for the fun of it ?
Speaking of the negro. Dr. Hart again says, "he may not murder or assault, or even speak saucily to a white person, on most dreadful penalties. Partly for self-protection, still more from a feeling of race supremacy, it is made a kind of lesemajesfe for a negro to lay hands on a white man; even to defend his family or his own life, the serpent must not bite the heel of the chosen people."
What utter disregard of facts! Let me cite a few cases which come within my personal knowledge.
In Mclntosh County. Georgia, one of the most prominent white planters was deputized by the Sheriff to arrest a negro who had been engaged in a riot. The white man authorized to arrest the negro went to his house and called for him at night. The negro refused to come out. The deputy forced his way in. and the negro shot him dead. There were three negroes in the house, all participating in resisting the officer.
The white man :s court acquitted two of the negroes, and sent one up for ten years.
In the penitentiary of Georgia, at this time, are some white men serving out their terms at hard labor for an outrage com mitted on a negro man in one of the country counties near Atlanta.
A white man. by the name of Alec Harvill, belonging to the class of poor whites, was tried for murder in one of the Piedmont counties for which Mr. Hart has such a contempt, and was convicted.
He is now serving a term in the penitentiary, as he has been
doing for the last five or six years. How was he convicted? Upon the testimony of a single
negro witness. Xobodv saw the alleged crime, or pretended
to have seen it. except this negro boy. And yet the white judge and the white jury believed the
negro in preference to the father and mother of the accused. In another of the Piedmont counties of Georgia a white
man outraged a negro woman. Within the last ninety days that criminal has been tried by
a white judge and jury the prosecution being pushed by the State of Georgia through her Attorney-General.

5 Is

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL, LITERARY, ETC.

219

The lower court convicted the criminal, the Supreme Court has affirmed the finding, and the white man will have to meet the penalty of the law for his violation of a negro woman.
Several years ago a white man named Robinson, living in Waynesboro, Ga., killed a negro.
The white man had cursed a negro woman, who had "put in her mouth" while he was holding a conversation with a negro man.
When Robinson cursed the negro woman the deceased threw off his coat and rushed at Robinson, exclaiming, "I won't stand that!"
Robinson backed, saying, "Don't come on me! Stand back!" The negro continued to advance; Robinson drew his pistol and shot his assailant. Robinson was tried, convicted and sent to the penitentiary. In Wilkes County, Georgia, a convict boss whipped a negro convict who sulked and wouldnt work. The negro had a bad character, and was serving sentence for a grave offense. The whipping may possibly have caused the negro's death, though there was much testimony to the effect that he died from natural causes. At any rate, a white judge and jury convicted the boss who inflicted the whipping, and he had to serve his time in the penitentiary. Robert Cannon was his name. In another instance I myself furnished the evidence of maltreatment of a negro convict in the Georgia penitentiary, and, the facts being made known to the Governor of Georgia, a fine of $2,500 was imposed on the Convict Lessee Company. The Governor was General John B. Gordon. The name of the negro convict was Bill Sturgis. Examples like these could be multiplied indefinitely from Georgia and every Southern State. Another astonishing fact is related by Dr. Albert Bushnell Hart. "The most intelligent white people admit the fact that they are trying to keep the negro down because otherwise the lowest white men will marry negro women." Now, where on earth did Dr. Hart get that? Does not Dr. Hart know that the antipathy between the negro and the poor white is, and always has been, greater than the antipathy between the negro and the propertv-owning white? Does not Dr. Hart himself, in another part of his article, express the belief that a dangerous antagonism exists between the poor whites and the negro? Does Professor Hart believe that the true reason why the Southern people wish to maintain white supremacy is to keep
k
i

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SKETCHES: HISTORICAL. LITERARY. ETC.

poor white* from marrying negro women? Does he not realize that he makes himself a laughing-stock when he gives his name to a statement of that kind? Xo white man. rich or poor, wants a negro woman for a wife!
Dr. Halt may put that down as a proposition which is abso lutely true.
There are many white men. unfortunately, who establish relations of concubinage with negro women, and this crime is frequently punished in the Southern courts; but where is the
evidence that white men wish to take negro wives? If that inclination is so strong, so ungovernable as to become
the motive of the South in maintaining white supremacy, it
should be capable of proof. Xow. where is the proof? Pro duce it. Dr. Hart!
The simple truth of the matter is that Dr. Albert Bushnell Hart has allowed himself to be stuffed with a whole lot of non sense upon a subject which he does not understand.
Xow for a parting quotation from this precious article of Harvard's professional historian:
"Good people (in the South) rarely make much distinction between the man who is guilty and the man who looks like a criminal: between shooting him down in the street or burning
him at the stake: between burning the guilty man or his innocent wife: between the quiet family inferno with only two or three hundred spectators and a first-class, advertised
ffufo-ftft-fc with special trains, and the children of the public school? in the foreground."
There you have it. in all its true amplitude and animus! "The good people" of the South dp not strive, according to Dr. Hart, to draw the line of distinction between the man who is guilty and the man who simply looks guilty. They establish no real distinction between the guilty man and his innocent wife. It makes no difference to these "good people" whether they have a quiet family inferno, with two or three hundred spectators, or the first-class, advertised burning, when special trains are run and the public-school teachers give the children a recess in order that they may attend the exhibition. If that is not mere partisanship, frothing at the mouth, what is it '. It certainly cannot be seriously taken as a truthful summing up of a general situation. An irresponsible stump-speaker, in the reckless rush of a hot political campaign, would have better sense than to deal in hyperbole ir. that furious fashion. But when a man of Dr. Hart's standing publishes stuff like this it does harm. It misleads the Xorth and arouses passion-

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL, LITERARY, ETC.

221

ate indignation in the South.
When Dr. Hart does work of that wild sort he is no longer a historian; he is simply an incendiary. He is a child playing with fire.
If I were to apply to the North the same measure which
Professor Hart has applied to the South, could I not convict the "good people" of his section, as he has convicted "the good people" of mine ?
Are "the good people" of the entire North to be held up as utterly lawless, making a jest of "such peccadillos as murder,"
because of the late doings at Wilmington, Delaware, or at Springfield, Ohio?
Has Indiana had no lynchings; has Colorado had no car nival of crime?
James Tillman. of South Carolina, "shot down in the street" a mortal political foe who had, beyond all question, given him great provocation.
I do not say that James Tillman was justified in his act I merely say that he had provocation, great provocation.
He was acquitted, but he was not sent to Congress. He left the court-room a broken, chastened man; and is now leading a life of sobriety, industry and rectitude. Not many years ago, on a Sunday morning, a saloon-keepet
and his son, in the city of Boston, Mass.. beat down a drunken man who had broken a window-pane of said saloon beat him
down on the streets, and kicked him to death after he was down.
Apparently the man's sole offense was that he had broken a pane of glass and refused to pay for it.
The saloon was open in violation of law. The glass was broken by a man too drunk to know what he was doing.
And the two men of Boston fell upon the helpless, drunken wretch, and kicked him to death in the streets.
Was Massachusetts and all the North condemned for that?
What became of the homicides? In the House of Representatives of the United States for Boston, Mass., actually sent to Congress the man who had helped to kick another man to death in the streets! His name? John A. Sullivan. I beg pardon it is: The Honorable John A. Sullivan. South Carolina is far behind Massachusetts she has not yet
sent James Tillman to Congress. In the name of the Good God who made us all are we never
to hear the last of these bitter revilings of the South ? Are we never to reach the Era of Good Feeling for which

J.
. ', >. | -4.4
' 11 ! (J
^j J|l >|| ;f I ;tJ 11

2-2-2

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL. LITERARY", ETC.

so many strong men have toiled, so many pure women have prayed?
Will the blind Apostles of Hate never "Let us have Peace?" Shall the marplot and the bigot and the partisan and the Pharisee forever be able to thwart the noble efforts of nobler men? Shall Eansy Sniffles always succeed in embroiling those who want to be friends? When I think of Abraham Lincoln magnanimous, broad,
far-seeing, praising the Confederates who had stormed the heights at Gettysburg, calling upon the band to play "Dixie" on the night following Lee:s surrender and then contemplate this narrow, spiteful, out-of-date Professor of History at Harvard. I realize more than ever how much the South lost when a madman assassinated the statesman who had her blood in his veins, sympathy for her in his heart, and a knowledge of her in his mind.
In vain will Congress return the battle-flags of the Lost Cause, in vain will the McKinleys and the Roosevelts labor
for the Era of Good Feeling, if the violent partisans of the North, playing into the hands of the almost obsolete fire-eaters of the South, give to sectional hatreds a new lease of life.

>!

"Take the Children"

i

IN France the Privileged Classes had created a situation

'!

which pleased them perfectly.

\

A fifth of the soil belonged to 30,000 noble families; another

-1

fifth belonged to the clergy; another fifth belonged to the

King and city governments; the remaining two-fifths belonged

to all the other people, middle class and peasants.

To the support of the Government the clergy contributed

nothing except as a free gift: the nobility contributed pretty

much what they pleased, and they did not please to contribute

a great deal.

The King's family spent $55,000.000 per year. Two brothers

of the king spent $2.000,000; and, to pay the debts of one

princely bankrupt, King Louis XVI. took $3,000,000 out of

the public funds.

Two hundred and ninety-five cooks served in the King's

kitchen. Nearly two thousand horses stood in his stables. A

squad of soldiers escorted his dinner to the table. A magnifi

cent band furnished music while he ate, and a dozen gallant

lords, paid- for the service, helped him to undress and get to

bed when the arduuous do-nothing of the day had been

finished.

Some 30,000,000 Frenchmen did not enter into this world

of privilege. The merchant, the lawyer, the doctor, the

manufacturer, the farmer, the laborer all these stood outside

the pearly gates, catching only a glimpse of the radiance

within, hearing only, as from a distance, the music of this

Eden, created by class legislation.

The peasant neither owned his land absolutely nor himself

absolutely. Over him and his was suspended the heavy sword

of class privilege.

The noble hunter of game, who enjoyed the exclusive privi

lege of killing game, might trample down his grain with the

utmost concern, at whatever time the pleasure of the noble

huntsman dictated. Mr. Peasant was not allowed to protect

his fields and crops by putting up any kind of inclosure.

Mr. Peasant must not kill the wild boar or the antlered stag,

even though those noble beasts, reserved for noble huntsmen,

were destroying the crop upon which he and his family were

dependent for a living.

He could not, under any conditions whatsoever, destroy tht

pigeons which came sweeping down upon his grain, nor must

he, during certain seasons, manure his crop or hoe out the

22-t

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL. LITERARY. ETC.

grass, lest he injure the flavor of the young partridges, and deprive them of the shelter necessary for their comfort and growth.
He could r.ot press his grapes save at the nobleman's wine press, nor grind his wheat save at the nobleman's mill, nor bake his bread elsewhere than in the nobleman's oven.
These monopolies were peculiar to the lord, and the peasant must pay toll lest the lord's revenues decrease.
The peasant could not vote, had really no civic existence, was not considered in the government of the country; could be made to work, whether he wished to do so or not. for the noble and the King. His horses could be taken from the cart, or from the plow, if his superiors demanded it. Neither for his labor nor his horse was he paid. He could not put *alt into his victuals without paying a high price for it. and he was not allowed to eat his victuals unsalted. The law com pelled him to buy a certain portion of salt every year at an exorbitant price.
The church took from him one-tenth of all he made, besides which he must pay fees for christenings, marriages, burials and pardons for sins to say nothing of prayers in behalf of the living, the dying and the dead. The feudal lord took from him annually a certain part of all he made.
The French historian Taine says that in some portions of France the peasant paid in feudal dues, church tithes and royal taxes more than three-fourths of all that he made. In other portions of France the entire net produce of the soil went to the Church and State, and so great was the intolerable burden that the peasants quit in despair, left the land to become a desert waste, and flocked to the cities to swell the army of The Wretched.
To throw off the shackles of this frightful system of misgovernment the French Revolutionist roused the people.
At first Great Britain rejoiced in the movement which Lafayette. Mirabeau. Xecker. Sieves and Camille Desmoulins inaugurated. These early revolutionists declared their pur pose to set up a constitutional government in France such as Great Britain enjoyed, but when these moderate and consti tutional reformers were thrown aside by the radical demo crats who were determined to establish a republic when this democracy had confiscated the lands held by the Church, had issued paper money and had taken for national uses the aban doned estates of the immigrant nobles, the ruling powers of Church and State in Great Britain became greatly alarmed, and it was resolved that war to the death should be waged against the principles of the French Revolution.
Unless this were done, democracy might assert itself in

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL, LITERARY, ETC.

225

Great Britain, and those things which had been taken from

the people under forms of law might be restored in the same

way to the original owners. Therefore William Pitt. Prime

Minister and actual ruler of Great Britain, declared war upon

France, blockaded her coasts, organized European kings into

confederacies against her, and for more than a dozen dreadful

i

years poured armed legions upon her.

j

During this era of "blood of iron," men- were torn from

]

peaceful pursuits throughout Great Britain, to supply the navy

;

and the army with food for powder.

i.

As a necessary consequence, the demand for labor was

greater than the supply; and as England depends especially

upon her manufactures, it was there that the scarcity of labor

was most injuriously felt.

It is said that a deputation representing the manufacturers

waited upon the Prime Minister and laid their grievances

before him, asking the question, "What must we do?"

Mr. Pitt is reported to have answered. "Take the Children.''

This story may not be true, but it is a fact that it represented

precisely the emergency, and the manner in which the

emergency was met. It also represents correctly the attitude

of Mr. Pitt as defined in his speeches in Parliament.

A cruel, unjustifiable war had devoured the laborer who

should have been at his task. The laws had dragged him into

.,. j,

the army and into the navy whether he wished to go or not.

;; 1

Press-gangs had prowled about the lanes and alleys clutching

;i ^

at every poor man who happened to be sound of limb, and had

:J

carried him off by force into a battleship, where he might be

kept until the bride whom he had left at the church door had

counted him as dead, or-until the family which he had left

contented and happy, had been lost to the knowledge of men.

Having taken the father, the same remorseless class-greed

demanded the child, and took it.

Upon the altar of English lust for money has been sacrificed

more helpless men..women and children than ever fell before

the ruthless hordes of Tamerlane or Attila.

"Within carefully guarded limits, child-labor is no more to

(

be objected to in manufactures than in agriculture, but in the

tji

early days of the factory system these limits were utterly dis-

: |J

regarded.

"In the infancy of the system it became the custom of the

master manufacturer to contract with the managers of work

houses throughout England and of the charities of Scotland,

to send their young children to the factories of the great towns.

.?

Many thousands of children between the ages of six and ten

were thus sent, absolutely uncared for and unprotected, and

left to the complete disposal of masters who often had not a

226

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL. LITERARY. ETC.

single thought except speedily to amass a fortune, and who knew that if the first supply of infant labor were used up there was still much more to be obtained.
"Thousands of children at this early age might be found working in the factories of England and Scotland, usually from twelve to fourteen, sometimes even fifteen and sixteen
hours a day. not unfrequently during the greater part of the night. Destitute or drunken or unnatural parents made it a regular system to raise money by hiring out their children from six. sometimes from five, years old. by written contracts and for long periods. In one case brought before Parliament a gang of these children was put up for sale among a bank rupt's effects, and publicly advertised as part of the property. In another an agreement was disclosed between a London parish and a Lancashire manufacturer in which it was stipulated that with every twenty sound children one idiot should be taken."
"Even as late as 1840. when the most important manu factures had been regulated by law. Lord Ashley was able to show that boys employed in the carpet manufacture at Kidderminister were called up at three and four in the morning, and kept working sixteen or eighteen hours: that children five
years old were engaged in the unhealthy trade of pin-making, and were kept at work from six in the morning to eight at night." (Leckr. "England in Eighteenth Century.")
In the coal mines and in the salt mines men. women and children were literallv beasts of burden were chattels, and when the mines were sold, the human machines passed from one owner to another, just as the mechanical apparatus passed.
There were women who in these coal mines, where the tunnels were too narrow to allow them to stand upright, had to crawl back and forward on their hands and knees for four teen to sixteen hours a day. drawing after them the truucks
loaded with coal.
These trucks were securely fastened to the woman by means of a chain which passed between her legs and was attached to a belt strappepd round her waist. The woman seldom wore any clothes except an old pair of trousers made of sacking.
"Little children were forced to work underground from year to year. Deep in the gloom of a night which had neither moonlight nor stars: rarely ever seeing the face of nature and of day lost to God's glory of sunlight, shady woods, silvery waters lost to intelligence, happiness, enjoyment, reduced to the helpless condition of beasts of burden."
What was true of the mines was also true of the factories. Men. women and children were forced to work for a number

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL, LITERARY, ETC.

227

of hours absolutely inconsistent with physical and moral development.

In the year 1833 Lord Ashley led in the noble effort to

redeem the children from the clutches of unscrupulous com

mercialism, and to lighten the burden of men and women by

".

regulating the hours of labor and the conditions of service.

j

After a most stubborn resistance, in which the corporations

]

urged against the reform every reason which we hear urged

!

in our day, England did herself the immense credit of check-

j

ing the tyranny of those who were grinding the lives out of the

j

poor in order that the rich should become richer. In this country the cry of commercialism is the same as that

which in Great Britain said, "Take the children."

Corporations want cheap labor. If they can?t get the adult, they take the child.

In the Southern States the tendenccy to employ children has had alarming development. In 1880 the total number

of cotton factory employees was lfi,740. Of these. 4,090 were

children under sixteen years of age. In the year 1900 the total

' ~! *

number of employees had increased to 97.559. Of these,

' |( ?*

24.459 were children under sixteen years of age.

In the States outside of the South there were, in 1880,

115.803 employees in the cotton factories. Of this number.

24,243 were children under sixteen years of age. In the year 1900 the total number of cotton factory employees in States

outside of the South was 205,302. Of these, only 15,796 were children under sixteen years of age.
In other words, within the Southern States the children

under sixteen years of age constitute now, as they did twenty years ago, 25 per cent, of all the operatives employed: whereas,

in the States outside the South the children under sixteen

,.,v

number less than 8 per cent, of all those employed. There-

''%:

fore the situation which was justly considered so bad in Great

'' '

Britain that it was reformed seventy years ago, and which

has been reformed ift most of the States outside of the South,

*.'

is three times worse in the South than it is in any other por

.,'>;

tion of the Union, and is just as bad now as it was twenty

:V,

years ago.

In The Tradesman, of Chattanooga, Tenn., August 15. 1902, the statement is made that the number of children under six teen years of age now at work in the Southern mills approxi mated 50,000.

The 50.000 little ones who troop to the mill every morning,

,.

breathe the steam-heated, dust-laden, germ-infected atmos-

$.;

phere of the close rooms throughout the entire day, who light,

. |j

with lanterns, their way home across the fields when darkness

''$

has fallen, are white children. During the same hours that

8--Sketches

228

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL. LITERARY. ETC.

these white boys and girls are finding their way to the factory vrhere their energy and strength is offered up as a sacrifice to mammon. 50.000 black children are singing merrily on their way to school, where they are gaining what the white children are losing.
Glance forward twenty years and ask yourselves what will be the relative positions of the 50.000 white children and the 50.000 black children. It will be a miracle if most of those white children are not either in their graves, or in the hos
pitals, or in the slums, or in the prisons, while the 50.000 black children will be holding clerkships in some department of the Federal Government.
The kind of civilization which we are going to have in the future is being determined now. Race development and pro gress cannot be extemporized or bought ready-made. It is a
matter of preparing the soil, planting the seed, cultivating the crop.
"We shall reap as we shall have sown.
The most profoundly disgusting feature of the Southern political situation today is that the Democratic bosses who control our State legislatures, will not allow us to give our
white children as good treatment as the negro children are
getting. Almost universally the Southern mills are controlled by
Northern capitalists: but it is the Southern politician, office
holder, editor or stockholder who rushes to the legislature
saying that child slavery must continue because it is good for the child.
These Northern capitalists who own Southern mills are. to a large extent. Republicans in politics. The unprincipled
Southern men who put up a plea in behalf of child slavery are almost exclusively- Democratic.
Just as J. P. Morgan, the Republican railroad king, used the Southern Democratic machine to rob the people through
his railroads, so the Northern Republican millowner uses the Southern Democratic politician to rivet upon the Southern white child the chain? of commercial serfdom, ruinous to the
child and ominous to the future of the white race in the South.
It M-as class-greed which first raised the cry. "Take the
children." It is class-greed which now says. "Take the
children."

Where Am I At?"

A LIE which is popular has more lives than a cat. It travels

with a speed which defies competition. Trample it out in one

place and it springs up in another.

Politicians do not hesitate to declare that a good campaign

lie is more serviceable than the truth. Every student of history

knows that there is no death for the lie which has once tickled

the public ear.

Cambronne, the commander of the Old Guard at Waterloo,

did not say "The Guard dies: it does not surrender." Welling

ton did not cry out, "Up, Guards, and at them!"

The English at the battle of Fontenoy did not say, "Gentle

men of the French Guard, will you please fire first?" Nor did

the Comte d'Auteroche reply, "Gentlemen, we never fire first."

General Taylor did not exclaim, at the crisis of the battle

of Beuna Vista, "A little more grape, Captain Bragg!"

Yet all of these alleged statements are so popular that they

are immortal; and the man who would undertake to root out

their existence from historical, rhetorical and oratorical litera

ture had better swap his job for that of Dame Partington,

who tried to sweep back the Atlantic Ocean with her broom.

In like manner .the phrase, "Where am I at?" clings

imperishably to the man who did not use it, and is never attributed to him who did.

.I

The New Orleans Picayune is supposed to be edited by men

of average information, who ought to have some recollection

of public occurrences within the last few years, and yet the

A

If:

Picayune repeats the old, old story that I was the Congressman

who. in the course of a speech in the House of Representatives,

asked the famous question, "Where am I at?"

The official record of Congress showed at the time, and will

show now, that the expression was used by the Hon. Jas. E.

Cobb. of Alabama, during the course of a speech on a con

tested election case from New York, the Hon. Buck Kilgore,

of Texas, being in the Chair.

I took no part in the debate at all. I was simply an amused

listener to the discourse of the gentleman from Alabama. I

was one of those who joined in the merriment when Mr. Cobb,

having been momentarily drawn off from the tangled thread

of his discourse by questions put to him right and left, turned

to the occupant of the chair and inquired, "Mr. Chairman,

where was I at in my argument?" To which the jovial Kil

gore replied. "The Chair does not regard that as a parlia

mentary inquiry."

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SKETCHES: HISTORICAL, LITERARY, ETC.

Soon after this I compiled and published a "Campaign Book" for the use of the People's Party, and in a chapter devoted to a general exposure of Congressional conditions referred to Mr. Cobb. his evident tipsy condition, and his now celebrated phrase. "Where was I at?"
When the book was published it caused a general stir among Congressmen.
Little Joe Wheeler, of Alabama, was especially wroth. He read the passage alluded to on the floor of the House, and denounced me as a liar. Amid the most riotous scene of dis order I rose in my place, reasserted the truth of the state ments contained in the book.
A committee of investigation was appointed, the intent being to expel me from the House. I produced the original stenographic notes, swore the stenographer and proved the accuracy of my published statement. Not only that, I proved it by reporters and by members of the House. Hon. W. C. Gates, the colleague of both Mr. Cobb and General Wheeler, was manly enough to testify before the investigation committeee that he became convinced that Mr. Cobb was in no con dition to continue his speech, and that he went to his colleague and persuaded him to take a seat.
Mr. Cobb. of Alabama, was an excellent gentleman. The personal relations between himself and me were friendly.
I did not personate him. It was never my intention to expose him.
Xo name was given in my Campaign Book. Xo name was given in my reply to General Wheeler on the floor of the House. Indeed, when Hon. Joseph W. Bailey, of Texas, came to me and urged me to keep the name of Mr. Cobb from being exposed. I readily promised to do so. But when the investiga tion committee began its sessions and the scope of the investi gation widened. Mr. Cobb became convinced that there was no further hope of keeping the secret: therefore he himself came before the committee, and thus he was for the first time identified as the Congressman who had beeen referred to as the author of the phra.e. "Where am I at?"
A funny thing happened while the "investigation" was in progress.
Little Joe Wheeler called me into his committee-room and suggested that if I would apologize to the House he thought Congress would agree to "drop it."
Having told nothing but the truth, and having proved it, I was not able to see the wisdom of the General's advice.

The Man and the Land

CERTAIN good friends of mine were shocked, a few months

j

ago, when they learned that I was one of those monsters who

f

believe in the private ownership of land.

]

Some of them deplored my ignorance, and urged me to go

;

straightway and read "Progress and Poverty." Well, I had

read Henry George's book soon after its publication, and had

once had the precious advantage of serving a term in Con

gress with the great Tom Johnson; yet I never had been able

to see the distinction, in principle, between the private owner

ship of a cow and the private ownership of a cow-lot.

Certain other friends made the point on me that I did not

understand Count Tolstoy. That is possible. In his various

ramblings into various speculative matters, Tolstoy, like our

own Emerson, gets lost, sometimes, in mazes of his own mak

ing; and he uses language which may delight professional

commentators, but which is sorely vexatious to an average

citizen who really wants to. know what the philosophers are

driving at.

Tolstoy is careful to avoid History. The flood of light

,.

which might be thrown upon the land question by the records

<1 )

of the human race is shut out altogether.

And this is the weak spot in the armor of every champion

who enters the lists against the Private Ownership of Land.

If History makes any one thing plain, it is that a Civilization

was never able to develop itself on any other basis than that of

Private Ownership.

Like other champions of his theory, Tolstoy forgets the

elemental traits of Human Nature. He forgets how unequal

we are by Nature: how we differ, in character, capacity, taste

and purpose: how ew there are who will labor for the "good

of all." and how universal is the rule that each man labors,

first of all. for himself.

He forgets that every beast of the field has its prototype

in some member of the human family; he forgets that the

man-tiger is now more numerous than the four-footed sort:

that the man-fox is more cunning than his wild brother: that

the man-wolf hunts with every human herd: that the man-

sloth is marked by nature with her own indelible brand: that

some men are born timid as the deer are: that some are born

j'J

without fear as the lion is: that the human hog grunts and

* -'

gorges, and makes himself a nauseating nuisance, on the

streets, in hotels, in the Pullman cars in fact everywhere,

but most of all where people have to eat and sleep.

232

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL. LITERARY, ETC.

This is the fundamental error which doctrinaires are prone to make. They forget what Human Nature actually is, always
has been, and perhaps, always will be. They argue about ideal conditions, unmindful of the fact
that ideal conditions require ideal men and that we haven't got the ideal men.
Every society, every State, must from necessity be made up of the Good, the Bad. and the Indifferent and the law-makers of that society, that State, will from necessity be compelled to frame laws suited to that community. Hence, the laws will not be absolutely the best, considering the question as an abstract question, but they will be the best which that com munity is capable of receiving.
All legislation, like all Society, is a compromise. In a state of Nature I would be absolutely free. But I would be alone. To protect myself in person, property or family. I would have to rely upon my individual arm. My absolute freedom would be an absolute isolation and a relative
helplessness. I would find that I could not endure such a life. I would
therefore seek companionship among other men who felt the
same needs that I felt, and we would come together for the "good of all." One hundred families coming together in this way form the nucleus of Society, of the State. Each man gives up a portion of his individual freedom when he enters this union of families which forms such a nucleus.
Why does he surrender a portion of his wild, natural,
individual freedom? Why does he agree to be bound by the will of the Community instead of his own will ? Why does he consent to be governed by the public when he had previously been his own ruler? He does it because it is to his interest to do it. He finds that, while he has surrendered much, he has gained more. The Community throws around him the pro tection of a hundred strong arms where previously he had
but his own. The Community, in a hundred ways, ministers to his wants,
his weaknesses, his desires, his prosperity. In other words, the Community gives more than it took. Association which improves the Community tends to improve
each member thus associated; and from this association come
all those blessings which we call Civilization. Resolve the Association back into its elements; let each
individual separate from the mass; let each one say, "I'm my own man." and what becomes of Civilization?
It perishes, of course. Now where will Tolstoy find the basis of Society in Nature ? In the human instinct for getting-together. And that

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL, LITERARY, ETC.

233

instinct seems to grow out of our hopes, and our fears, our

profound belief that we need our fellow-man, and that we are

not strong enough to stand alone, no matter how much we

would like to do so.

Deep down in our heart you will find the primeval, natural

craving for independence, individuality, separate living.

separate doing. With the great common mass of humanity

this tendency has been weakened by disuse until it is not an

active principle. It is like a muscle which has lost its strength

from inaction. Hence, the common man goes with the herd,

just as a flock of sheep follows the bell-wether.

Society, then is a matter of conviction: Nature did not

frame it.

Nor does Nature impose upon us the relation of Husband

and Wife.

Why do we adopt the present marriage system, which differs

in so many respects from Nature, and from former practices

of the human race?

Simply because we believe it to be an improvement. We

,,{ *

know it is better than the promiscuous intercourse of the sexes:

11

we believe it to be better than Polygamy; we hope that it will

some day be a more radiant success than the Divorce Courts

would seem to indicate.

Now as to the land.

% I)

Undoubtedly, the earth was given to the human family as a

j!

home for the family. Undoubtedly. Nature teaches that the

j

earth belongs in common to the entire human race.

Thus it was in the beginning. But. just as the wild horse

became the property of the bold tribesman who caught it and

tamed it; just as the natural fruit of the forest belonged to

him who gathered it: just as the cave or hollow tree became

the dwelling of the first occupant, so the well in the thirsty

plain became the property of him that had dug down to the

waters; and the pasturage which one had taken up might not

be taken away from*him by another.

Mine was the dark hut which my labor had built: mine was

the canoe which my hands had hollowed out: mine the bow

and arrows which I had fashioned: mine the herds and flocks.

<

the goats and asses which I had tamed and reared and cared

'&

for till they had multiplied.

Should the idler, or the thief of the tribe, take from me that

which my labor had produced? Must my canoe belong to the

whole tribe? Must my garment which I had made out of the

skins of the wild beast belong to the sloth who loafed in the



tent while I risked my life in the woods?

'j

Nature said. No!

lit
4

234

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL. LITERARY, ETC.

Nature, speaking through elemental instinct said: "That \vhich your labor made is yours."
Yours the hut. j-ours the canoe, yours the garment of skins, yours the bow and arrows and that was the beginning of Private Property in Personalty.
But look again at the ways of Nature and of the tribe. Pasturage failed after awhile; natural fruits were no longer sufficient to sustain life; game disappeared from the forest; fish grew scarce in the streams. Something had to be done to make good the shortage. The soil was there, suggesting culti vation. The products of Nature must be supplemented by human industry. But before the soil could be cultivated, the trees had to be cut away: cattle and wild beasts had to be fenced out: the virgin earth had to be made the bride of toil before the fruitful seed would bring forth harvests. Now who was to do the work ? The Idler wouldn't: the Feeble couldn't; the Hunter didn't;
the strong, clear-headed Laborer made the farm. Those who assail private ownership of land say that "the
man who makes a farm doesn't make it in the sense that one makes a basket or a chair." They see clearly that, if they admit that the pioneer who goes into the wilderness or the swamps
and creates a farm, is to be put on the same footing as the man who goes into the woods, gets material and makes a canoe, or
a chair or a basket, it is "farewell world" to their theory about
the land. Therefore they say that the farm was already there, waiting for the farmer. All the farmer had to do was to go
there and tickle the soil with a hoe, and it laughed with the harvest.
How very absurd! You might just as well say that the
willows that bent over the waters of the brook were baskets waiting for the tardy basketmaker to come and get them. You might just as well say that the hide on the cow's back was a pair of ladies' shoes waiting for the lady to come and fit them to her dainty feet.
Must we get rid of our common sense, our practical knowl edge, before we can argue a case of this sort? Do not these doctrinaries know that they are denying physical facts, plain
everyday experience, when they say that a piece of wild land in the desert, in the swamps, on the mountain side, or in the woody wilderness is a farm waiting for the farmer? Sheer nonsense never went further. But they are compelled to this extent because of the necessities of their case. They see at
once that if ever they admit my position that the laborer takes raw materials with which nature supplies him, and out of those raw materials creates something that did not exist before, then
the laborer is entitled to that which his labor creates.

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL. LITERART, ETC.

235

Now, do you mean to tell me, that for thousands of years

there were farms waiting the pioneers here in North America?

Consider for a moment what the New England or the South

ern, or the Western farmer had to do before he had made a

farm. He had to go into the woods with an axe in one hand

and a rifle in the other. Very frequently he was shot down

|

before he could make his farm, just as Abraham Lincoln's

1

grandfather was killed. Very frequently he died from the

,

fever engendered in the woods before he had made his farm,

>

just as Andrew Jackson's father did, in the effort to make a

j

farm in the wilderness of North Carolina. Supposing the

farmer was able to snatch up his gun quick enough to shoot

the Indian who was trying to shoot him, and supposing that

his constitution was strong enough to resist the malarial

atmosphere in which he had to labor while creating that farm,

what was the process through which he went in making that

farm ? He had to cut off an enormous growth of timber. He

had to grub up stumps and roots. He had to plow and cross-

plow the soil until it had become a seed bed. He had to

inclose the farm to keep out the wild animals which would

have devoured his crop. If in a rocky section, he had to

remove the stones which encumbered the ground. If in 'a

damp, swampy section, he had to exercise skill, as well as

labor, in draining the soil. After four or five years, the laborer

had made a farm something as different from the wild land

which he found in the woods as the pine tree is from the

lumber which lies upon the lumber-yard; as different as the

wool on the sheep's back is from the coat which you wear;

something as different as the willow and the bamboo are from

the chairs and the baskets which are made from them.

Now, the doctrinaires say that it would be a sufficient reward

to that laborer to give him the crop that he made on the land.

Would it? For what length of time will you give him those

crops ? If you ask the laborer, he will say, "I made this farm;

I risked my life in th.e work: shortened my days by the labor,

the exposure, the drudgery of making this farm. I never

would have gone to this amount of toil if I had not believed

that society would secure me in the possession of the farm

after I made it."

Having established him in his security of possession, which

I say is tantamount to title, suppose that laborer, wants to

<S.

change his farm for a stock of manufactured goods, or for

*

silver and gold, or for horses, or for another piece of land, do

**

you mean to say he shall not have the right to do it? If so,

,i

you limit his title, and you have not the right to do so. That

which he made he ought to have the right to dispose of on

- ;>l|

such terms as please him. His title having originated in the

'B

236

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL. LITERARY. ETC.

sacred rights of labor, yon should not limit his enjoyment or
his disposition of that which his labor created. If you recog nize his right to exchange all products of his labor for others. In other words, by plain course of reasoning, you arrive at
the principle that the bargain and sale of lands is founded upon
the right of the laborer to exchange the product of his labor
with those who may have product of labor which he could use
to better advantage than he can use his own. Xow. let us see. The laborer who made the farm dies. What
shall become of it ? Away back in the origin of property, occupancy was the first title recognized. As long as one indi
vidual, or one tribe, occupied a certain spot, their right to use it was recognized, but no longer. When possession was abandoned, the next individual, or the next tribe who occupied
that spot, had the right of possession. When tribes ceased to
wander about, the occupancy of the spot which the tribe had taken possession of. became permanent.
Therefore, the title to that spot grew up in the tribe along
with permanent possession. Xo civilization was ever created by wandering tribes. It is only when the tribe fixes its per manent residence in some particular spot, recognized as
exclusively its own. that there is any such thing as law and order and civilization. It is clear enough "when we consider
one tribe in its relations to other tribes. Let us consider the tribe in its relations to its members. Each individual in the
beginning had a title by occupancy to the spot which he cultivated, and this security of possession lasted so long as the
occupancy lasted. If the tribesman abandoned his spot of
land, with the intent to surrender the same, then the next fortunate tribesman who came along could take possession of
it and hold it. But. in the course of time, this created great
inconvenience, because, as favored spots became more desirable, the competition to get them was fiercer. Hence, there were
feuds, bloody struggles, disorders in the tribe. Consequently, by natural evolution society was forced, first, to recognize the right of the individual as long as he wished to occupy the spot
which he had taken possession of: second to provide for the succession to that title when the spot became vacant.
The learned men tell us that, at the death of the occupant, his own family, his own children, being naturally the first who
would know that he was dead, were naturally the first who would take possession after his death.
Therefore, the sons of the deceased tenant always became the first occupants of the vacant land which had been left
vacant by the death of their father. This succession of the sons to the father? becoming universal, was finally recognized by the
law of the tribe: and in the course of time it was recognized

J

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL, LITERARY. ETC.

237

further in the law which allowed the tenant to make a will and

to say who should take his property after his death.

Thus by slow and almost imperceptible degrees, the tribe

recognized, first, the right of the man who had made a farm

to hold it as long as he lived: second, the right of his children

to follow in his footsteps and to receive the benefit of that

which their father had created by his labor: third, and last.

came the law of wills and testaments which allowed the tribes

man to say what should go with his property after his death.

If the occupant died without heirs and without having made

a will, the land went back to the tribe, or the State, to be dis

posed of as public property. This principle is recognized to

this day in the doctrine of escheats.

Property in land differs in nowise from property in horses

and cows. The law of property is the same naturally in real

estate as in personal estate, and I can conceive of no revenue

in any community which is so just as that which lays itself

with an equal burden upon all kinds of property in proportion

to the amount thereof. In the beginning, one tribesman, like

Abraham or Lot. might have his cattle browsing upon a thous

and hills, while another tribesman might have made a little

farm in some secluded valley, or upon some thirsty, rocky

mountain-side where vines were planted, or where olive trees

bore their fruit to the industrious citizen who had year in and

year out watched and tended their growth. Would there be

r; j-.

any justice in compelling those little farmers to supply the

revenue for the common purpose of the tribe, and not compel

['

a contribution pro rata from the men who owned "exceeding

many flocks and herds?''

The trouble about these doctrinaires is that they start at

the present day and reason backward, while I start at the

fountain head and reason down. I take things as history

shows them to have been; they take things as they think they

ought to have been.

The doctrinaire further says that if the tribesman who made

a farm had been satisfied to fence in his farm. only, the com

mon would have remained after all had been supplied. In

this country, we have millions of acres of "commons" now

waiting any one "member of the tribe" who wants to go and

take his share. The truth of it is. the doctrinaire doesn't want

'Si

to go out into the wild land and make n farm. He wants to

stay where he is. and take one that some other fellow has made.

Especially doth he crave a slice of the Astor estate, which

']!

doctrinaires have talked of so much that they can almost

*

identify their shares therein.

One of the doctrinaires quotes the following from "Progress

and Poverty": "If a fair distribution of land were made

238

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL,, LITERARY, ETC.

among the whole population, giving to each his equal share, and laws enacted which would impose a barrier to the tendency to concentration, by forbidding the holding by anyone of more than a fixed amount, what would become of the increased population ?"'
I do not consider it any part of my task to assail the posi tion taken in "Progress and Poverty*" but I think it a satis factory answer to the foregoing question to say that in the very nature of things posterity must be the heirs-at-law of the conditions of those who went before. To say that we can frame a social fabric so flexibly and automatically as to give an equal share of everything to every child born into the world hereafter, regardless of whether that child's parents were thrifty, industrious, virtuous people, or, on the other hand, were thriftless, indolent, vicious people, seems to me to be one of the wildest dreams that ever entered the human mind. No matter how equal material conditions might be made today by legislation, the inherent inequality in the capacities of men, physically, mentally, spiritually, would evolve differences tomorrow. There is no such thing as equality among men, and no law will ever get it to them. What the father gains the children lose: and the grandchildren may regain. While one man runs the race of life and wins it. another man, equally tall and strong will run the race and lose it. Just why. it is. in some cases, difficult to tell.
Some men naturally lead: some naturally follow, some naturally command: others naturally obey: some are naturally strong: others are naturally weak. The law of life to some is activity, others say that they were born tired, and there is a certain pathos in their excuse for indolence, for they were born tired. One man is naturally brave physically, morally and lie will venture. Another man is naturally a coward physicallv or morally and he will not venture. A dozen different traits, or combinations of traits, make failure or success in life, and to say that success or failure, vice and virtue, good and bad. are the results of environment and social conditions, is as misleading, as a general statement of fundamental facts, as to say that the dove and the hawk, the tiger and the sheep, the rattlesnake and the harmless "black runner" are the results of environment. Nature in its act of creation, made the difference between the fowls of the air. the beasts of the field, the fish of the sea. the men and women who inhabit the earth. From the remotest ages, of which we have record, human nature has been the same that it is today. Paganism presented precisely the same types of man in its savagery and its civiliza tion that Christianity now presents in its savagery and civili zation. "There is nothing new under the sun." and the very

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL, LITERARY, ETC.

239

theories which the doctrinaries now think are matters of modern discovery, unknown to our ancestors, and which would have been adopted had our ancestors been as wise as we. were discussed in the days of Aristotle and had the very best thought of the sages of antiquity.
Let it be remembered, however, that I have always qualified the Private Ownership of Land by acknowledging the supremacy of the State. The tribe, the community, the State, the Government holds supreme power over the life and liberty
of citizens, and over the ownership of the soil. The State calls for me to give up my individual pursuits, my individual liberty, my individual preference, and to take my place as a
soldier in the ranks of the army. I am compelled to obey; that is an obligation which rests upon me as a member of society. Thus the State can demand my life of me whenever
the State declares that it is necessary for the defence of the State. In like manner, the State can restrain me of my liberty. For instance, in times of epidemics, we have shotgun quaran
tine which destroys my liberty of movement. I would be shot down like a dog if I sought to break through the lines of quarantine, although to make such an escape might mean my individual salvation, whereas obedience to law amounts to sentence of death. In this case, as in the other, the State
practically demands my life as an individual as a sacrifice
for the good of the greater number of citizens. So, as to prop
erty, no man holds an absolute title to land as against the State. The Government, acting for all the tribe, for all the people, can tear down or burn my house to stop the spread of
fire. It can confiscate my property for public purposes, when the public need requires it. It can take my land for public
buildings, for canals, for railroads, or for new dirt roads through the country. My rights in the premises would be recognized in the payment to me of damages. My individual rights would be assessed in so many dollars and cents. Thus
my home, which might be almost as dear to me as my life, would be coldly valued in money, and although I left it with bitter regrets, "even with bitter tears and a bitter sense of
wrong, I would have to surrender my individual preference to
what is supposed to be by constituted authorities the necessity of the State. This right of the public to take away any por
tion of the soil from the individual, and to dedicate it to the
use of the public, is called the right of Eminent Domain, and
is a remnant of the old system which recognized that the title to all the lands was in the King. Of course the King stood for the State. Centered in the personal sovereign were those
sovereign rights which belong to the people as a whole, and the people as a whole represented by the King, were admitted

240

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL. LITERARY, ETC.

to be the owner:- of the ultimate fee in the land, and could
compel any individual to surrender his individual holdings
for the benefit of the entire people, just ccompensation having
fust been paid to the individual. It is in that sense that I say
private ownership of land is just as holy a principle, just as equitable, as private ownership in the basket -which I made
from the rushes I gathered along the stream, or from the
splints which I rived out from the white oak: just as sacred
as my right to the boat which I hollowed out from the forest tree, or the bark hut. or the hut of skins, which my labor
erected to shelter me and my family.
The doctrinaire asks: "Could he not be as secure in his possession if the land were owned and exaction made by all
the people?" Certainly. That is my contention. The whole tribe did exercise dominion over the land, but to encourage
the individual member of the tribe to improve a particular portion of the wild land, the tribe agreed to protect the
individual in that which his labor had created, namely a farm.
My contention now is that the ultimate ownership of the land
is in all the people: but society had a perfect right to divide
it on such terms as were thought best and to guarantee to each
individual "security of possession." or title, to that which he had produced. The great trouble with Mr. Doctrinaire is
that he does not begin at the beginning. If he would study
the condition of the human race as it gradually evolved from the patriarchal state, the tribal state, the nomad state, into that fixed and complex status which we now call "Christian
Civilization." he would readily understand how private
ownership of land was the axis upon which the improvement
of the conditions of the individual and of the State turned. As long as tribes wandered about from province to province, with their herd.- of goats, or sheep, or cattle, nibbling the grass
which nature put up. and moving onward to another pasture as fast as one was exhausted, there could be nothing but tent
life, nothing but personal property. The house had to move every time the family moved. Therefore, when the herds
devoured the grass in one place, and the tribe had to move to
another, tents were struck, the few household goods were packed on the backs of the wives, or on the backs of other beasts of burden, and the family moved. When man and beast
multiplied to such an extent that nature no longer supplied a
sufficiency of food, it became necessary for the tribe to settle down, and to divide the territory upon which they settled
among the various members of the tribe. That was done in Germany, as well as in various other countries, but I take Germany because the German tribes were our own ancestors. Thev divided the lands everv vear. It was seldom the case

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL. LITERARY, ETC.

241

that the same tribesman occupied the same home for more

than one year. Like the Methodist preachers of today, their

homes were always on the go. The farmer's home in those

days was precisely like the Methodist preachers homes today

a matter to be fixed at the annual conference. The Methodist

preacher who today is preaching in the town may next year

be sent into the remote rural precincts: the mountain parson

may next year be sent to the seaboard. The church is fixed

and the parsonage is stationary, but the preacher and his wife

and his children are forever moving. Now in precisely the

same manner the tribesmen of the German tribes used to be

going from farm to farm, and there were no considerable

improvements made while that state of affairs existed. Why ?

Because we are just so constituted that we do not care to build

houses for other people to live in, if we know it. "When we

start out to beautify a home, we may never enjoy it, but we

expect to do so at the time, and without that expectation there

would be no beautiful homes.

Mr. Doctrinaire thinks because each tribesman would try to

grab the best piece of land, there was original injustice in

allowing private ownership. If he will think for a moment,

he will realize that the native selfishness of man does not make

against the private ownership of land to any further extent

than it does to the private ownership of personal property.

When the tribesmen went out to hunt, each hunter sought to

bring down the finest stag. Each hunter naturally wanted to

hunt where the best game was to be found. Hence those eternal

wars between the Indian tribes which brought down the

population on the American continent. Hence also those feuds

and tribal wars which desolated the East in the times of

nomad life.

We find Abraham and Lot in a bitter dispute over certain

pasture; but as to the well which Abraham "had digged"

there was no resisting his claim, that well was his property.

Why? Because in the quaint language of the Bible "He had

.,

digged that well." Jn other words, while nature put the water

;j

in under the soil, a-nd while nature made the soil itself, it was



Abraham's judgment which selected the place where he could

find the water, and it was Abraham's labor that removed the

earth which covered the water. In other words, Abraham

made the well, in precisely the same sense that the pioneer in

the wilderness makes a farm.

But, as I said, the competitive principle, each one wanting

.

to get what is best, reveals itself in all directions. Everj

4.

fisherman has always wanted the best fishing grounds. Nations

have been brought to war by this cause, to say nothing of

tribal disputes and individual contests.

242

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL. LITERARY, ETC.

Xowhere have I contended that it was private ownership of land that made it possible for the laborer to claim and retain
the product of his labor. I could not have said that because I know quite well that personal property preceded property in land. In other words, the laborers acquired a full title to the rude garments in which they clothed themselves, the rude implements which they used in the chase, their weapons, canoes, etc.. long before they ever made farms. This has been explained fully elsewhere and does not at all antagonize the statement tha.t after a tribesman has acquired by his labor an interest in the land, the government of the tribe may be so arranged that the produce of the land will be taken away from the land-owner as fast as he produces it. Instead of robbery by taxation in land products preceding private ownership in land the reverse is the case. To fleece the laborer of what he produces on his farm was the after-thought of those who governed the tribe.
This is shown by the wretchedness of the peasant class in Russia today. Historians tell us that the Russian peasant for merly owned a very considerable portion of the land, just as the French peasants did. and in addition to the individual
ownership which was in the Russian peasantry, there was a large quantity of communal land which belonged to each com munity of peasants as a whole. In the process of time, the
ruling class in Russia put such burdens upon the peasant pro prietor that he gradually lost his land and became a serf. Of course, Mr. Doctrinaire recalls that in 1860 the serfs of Russia were freed, and they were given a large portion of the land
which had been taken away from them by the Russian nobles. Thev also held the communal lands. What has been the result ? The ruling clashes have put such heavy burdens in the way of due* and taxes upon the peasants that their ownership of the land, communal and individual, has brought them none of the blessings which they anticipated. Thus we have a striking and contemporaneous illustration of the great truth which I have sought to emphasize, namely, that the mere ownership of land does not emancipate the people.
Arthur Voting, the famous "Suffolk Squire." rode horse back over the rural districts of France, just before the Revolu tion broke out. He found that the French peasants owned their own farms. He marie a close and sympathetic study of their condition.
And what was that condition?
Wretched to the verv limit of human endurance. The king, the noble, and the priest were literally devouring the Com mon People. Privilege. Titles. Taxes. Feudal dues were driv ing the masses to despair, to desperation.

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243

Yet the French peasant had "access to the land." In England, at that time, the peasants did not own land, and yet their condition was incomparably better than that of the French. Why? Because they were not ground down by Taxes and Feudal dues. Could you ask a more convincing illustration? Mr, Doctrinaire makes the point that when one member of the tribe decided to undertake the arduous task of making a farm out of a few acres of the millions which belonged to the tribe, this industrious member of the community "robbed" all the others when he claimed as his own that which his hands had made. I can see no more "robbery" in this case than in that of another tribesman who went and cut down one of the millions of forest trees which belonged to the tribe, and with painful labor hollowed out this tree and created a canoe. At the time the one tribesman made the canoe, every other tribes man had the same chance to do the same thing. At the time the one tribesman went into the woods and made a farm every other tribesman had the same right. If Mr. Doctrinaire thinks that the first occupant of any particular spot did not have the right to locate a farm, he might as well say that the first finder of the cavern, or the hollow tree, did not have the right to occcupy that which he had first found, and yet he knows perfectly well that this right of discovery and occupancy was always recognized from the beginning of time and that from the very nature of things it had to be recognized to pre vent the bloodiest feuds in every tribe. (A curious survival of this Right of Discovery is to be seen even now in the claim to the "Bee Tree" by the first to find it.) Mr. Doctrinaire says, impliedly. that if the tribesman had fenced in no more than the spot out of which he had made a farm, injustice would not have been done to the tribe: but he says the tribesman went further and fenced in a great deal more "vast acres," which he could not use, and also "claimed" these as his ownv How does Mr. Doctrinaire know that? I did not state anything of the sort. Xor does the historian state anything of the sort. I was tracing title to land to its origin, and I contended that the origin of title to laud was labor. Consequently, my contention was that the tribesman fenced in that which his labor had redeemed from the wilder ness his original purpose in fencing it in being partly to identify what was his own, partly to assert his exclusive pos session, but chiefly to protect his crop from the ravages of the wild animals that were still roaming at large in the forest. Mr. Doctrinaire must remember that the fencing of the farm was one of the most tremendous difficulties that the pioneer

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met with. He had no barbed wire: he had no woven wire, he had no convenient saw-mill from which he could haul plank. No: he had to cut down enormous trees, and by the hardest labor known to physical manhood, he had to split those trees into rails, and with these rails fence in that little dominion which he rescued from "the world." that little oasis in a great desert of savagery.
To put up the fence was heroic work. To keep it up was just as heroic, for forest fires destroyed it from time to time. ..I-.--! the pioneer had to replace the barrier against the encroach ment of animal life and the inroads of savagery with as great a tenacity and as sublime a courage as that of the people of Holland, who tore their country from the clutches of the ocean and barred out the sea with dikes. Tell me. that after the pioneer had created this little paradise of his rude though it might have been amidst the terrors and the toils and sacri fices of that life in the wilderness, it should be taken from him by the first man who coveted it. and who said: "Here, take your crop. That is all you are entitled to: Take your crop and give me your farm !"? Would that have been right, at the time private property was first recognized by our people in Germany I Would that have been right at the time our pioneer farmers in New England and Virginia created their farms, endured difficulties and dangers which make them stand out in heroic outline on the canvas of history I Xo, by the splendor of God! It would have been robbery and nothing less than robbery for the tribe to have confiscated the farm which the pioneer of America had made partly with his rifle, partly with his axe. partly with his spade-^-and throw it into the common lot where the idler and the criminal would have just as much benefit from it as the pioneer who had made the farm.
As to the abuse of land ownership, that is an entirely different question. I agree that there should be no monopoly of land for speculative purposes. The platform of the People's Party has constantly kept that declaration as a part of its creed. The abuse of land ownership is quite a different thing from land ownership itself. I am not defending any of its abuses. I am simply saying that the principle is sound. All those things which belong to the class of private utilities should be left to private ownership, because I believe in indi vidualism : but all those things which partake of the nature of public utilities should belong to the public.
Mr. Doctrinaire says that railroads have their power based in the fixed principle of private ownership of land. I deny this utterly. It was always necessary for the civilized com munity to have public roads. Even the Indians had their

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great trails which were in the nature of public roads. A public
road never of itself did anything injurious to a community.
The taking of land for a public road confers a benefit upon the entire community. It is for that reason it is laid out. Tho amount of land which is taken for a road, whether you cover
it with blocks of stone, as the Romans did. or whether you cover it with iron rails, as modern corporations do. can infliot
no injury whatever upon the community unless you go further.
For instance, if you erect toll gates on the public highways
and vest in some corporation the right to charge toll on freight and passengers at those toll gates, then you have erected a
tyranny which can rob the traveler and injure the community. In that case, you can clearly see it is not the road, it is not the
land over which the road passes, that is hurting the individual
and the public. The thing which hurts is that franchise which empowers the corporation to tax the citizens and the property
of the citizens as they pass along that highway. In like man ner, the road which the transportation companies use could never have inflicted harm upon individuals or communities. The thing which hurts is the franchise which empowers the corporation to rob the people with unjust freight and pas
senger tolls as they pass along the highway.
Mr. Doctrinaire mires up badly in trying to evade the point which I made about Italy. I contended that while it was true that great estates were the ruin of Italy, there had to be some general cause at work, injurious to the average man. before the
soil could be concentrated into these great estates. This is very obvious to anyone "who will stop to think a moment. Mr. Doctrinaire thinks that the great estates in Italy were acquired
by simply claiming the land and fencing it in. by "each indi
vidual claiming far more than he could use/' If all the land of Italy had been claimed and enclosed, the power that these land claimers had over subsequent comers is obvious: but how did "the claimers" get the lands? The most superficial knowledge of Roman History ought to convince Mr. Doctri naire that Ifaly was cut up into small holdings until one branch of the government, the aristocracy, represented by the
Senate, gathered into its own hands by persistent encroach ment all the powers of the State. After that had been done, they fixed the machinery of government so that the aristocracy
were almost entirely exempt from public burdens, whereas the common people had to bear out not only their just portion, but
also the portion which the aristocracy shirked. The ruling class, the patricians, not only escaped their burdens in uphold ing the State, but they appropriated to themselves the revenue which the Roman State exacted from the lower class, the
plebians. The result was that the Italian peasant found him-

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self unable to sustain the burdens which the government put
upon him and he abandoned his farm, just as the French peasant quit the land, for the same reason, prior to the French Revolution. In other words, the small proprietor had to sell
out to the patrician, and the patricians got these great estates in the same manner that Rockefeller, for instance, got the estate which he now holds at Tarrytown. The Standard Oil
King did not simply stretch his wires and "claim" land. He bought out the people who found themselves unable or unwill ing to hold their lands. Rockefeller stood relatively on the same ground of advantage held by the Roman patricians. Governmental favoritism, and special privilege, the power of money which he had attained through unjust laws, made him more able to buy than the individual owners around him were to hold. Therefore he absorbed the small estates, and his estate became the "great estate," just as such great estates were created in Italy.
Mr. Doctrinaire can see the process going on around us. He can see how great estates absorb small estates. Our legislation for one hundred years has been in the interest of capital against labor. A plutocracy which enjoys the principal bene fits of government, and contributes almost nothing to the sup port of the government, has been built up: charters have been granted by which large corporations exploit the public; and in this way great estates, whether in stocks or bonds, or gold, or land, have been created.
The same principles, the same favoritism, the same privi lege, working in different ways, brought about the same results in France before the Revolution, in Rome before its downfall, in Egypt, in Persia, in the Babylonian Empire. If there is any one word which can be appropriately used as an epitaph for all the dead nations of antiquity, that word is "privilege." The government was operated by a ruling class for the benefit of that class, and the result was national decay, national death.
Mr. Doctrinaire asks me: "How did the ruling class at Rome come to control the money ?" I might answer by asking
him: "How did the controlling class in the United States come into control of the money?"' He would certainly admit that they have got control of it. How did they get it? They took into their own hands, in the days of Alexander Hamil ton, the control of governmental machinery. They erected a tariff system to give special privileges to manufacturers. Out of this has come the monopoly of the American market which the manufacturers enjoy. The natural evolution of the tariff act which Alexander Hamilton put upon our statute book more than one hundred years ago. produced The Trusts.
Again, the power to create a circulating medium to be used

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as money and to expand and contract this circulating medium, thereby controlling the rise and fall of markets, was a vicious principle embedded into our system by Alexander Hamilton, more than, one hundred years ago.
Again, the granting of charters to private companies to exploit utilities, is another means by which our patrician class has secured the control of money. Now at Rome there was a
similar process. Instrumentalities were different, the names of things were different, but the ruling class at Rome had the power of fixing the taxes, and they appropriated to themselves the proceeds of these taxes. They had the power of legisla tion in their hands and exploited the public for their own benefit. In this way they secured, of course, the control of money. The one advantage of paying no tax themselves and of appropriating to themselves the taxes which they levied upon the plebians, was sufficient to give them not only the control of money, but the control of the land and of the man. In fact that tremendous power to fix the taxes and to appro priate the public revenue, is all that the ruling class of any country need have in order to establish an intolerable despotism over the unfavored classes.
Mr. Doctrinaire has the fatal habit of crawling backwards with his logic. He says that the Roman Patrician could not have controlled the money until he got control of the land. The slightest reflection ought to convince him that this cannot be true. No class of men ever secured the control of money by merely controlling the land. Just the reverse is the uni versal truth. Without any exception whatsoever, governmental machinery, the taxing system, usury, expansion and contrac tion of the currency hold the land-owner at their mercy. The land-owner, as such, never had them at his mercy and he never will.
Another instance of the crawl-backwards method of reason ing is given when Mr. Doctrinaire says that usury grew out of land monopoly instead of land monopoly growing out of usury. When & man gets himself into such a state of mind that he can deliberately write a statement of that sort for publication, he is beyond reach of any ordinary process of conviction and conversion. My statement was that usury is a vulture that has gorged itself upon the vitals of nations since the beginning of time. Mr. Doctrinaire says this is not true. On the other hand, he says that land monopoly came first, and then usury. If rich people got all the land first, so that they had a land monopoly, upon whom did they practice usury?
How could they fatten on those who had nothing? If Mr. Doctrinaire is at all familiar with the trouble between the Russians and the Jews in Russia he knows that one of the

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accusations brought by the Russian against the Jew is that
the Russian land-owner has been devoured by the moneylending Jew. If he knows anything about our agricultural
troubles in the South and in the West, he knows that the Southern and Western farmer complains that he has been devoured by usury. If he knows anything about the history of the Russian serf, he knows that the money-lending patri cians made serfs out of the small land-owners by usury. If he will study the subject, he will find that in Rome, Egypt and Assyria the small land-owner was devoured by usury, had to part with his property, and thus surrender to those
who were piling up great fortunes by governmental privilege and by the control of money.
Take the Rothschild family for an example. Did they have
a land monopoly which made it possible for them to wield the vast powers of usury? Theirs is a typical case. Study it a moment. A small Jewish dealer and money-lender in Frank
fort is chosen by a rascally ruler of one of the German States as a go-between in a villainous transaction whereby the little German ruler sells his subjects into military service to the
King of England. These soldiers, who were bought, are known to history as the Hessians, and they fought against us
in the Revolution. This was the beginning of the Rothschild fortune, the transaction having been very profitable to the
Rothschild who managed it. Later, during the Napoleonic Wars, the character of a Rothschild for trustworthiness became
established among princes and kings who were confederated
against Napoleon, and many of the financial dealings of that day were made through him. Of course, these huge financial transactions were profitable to the Rothschilds. Again, a certain German ruler, during those troublesome times,
entrusted all of his cash to the safe-keeping of a Rothschild, the purpose being to put the money where Napoleon would
not get it. For many years the Rothschild had the benefit of this capital, and he put it out to the very best advantage in loans and speculations, here and there. By the time Napoleon was overthrown at Waterloo, the Rothschild family had become
so rich and strong that it spread over the European world.
One member of the family took England, another France, another Austria, another Belgium, the parent house remaining
in Germany, and to this day the Rothschild family is the
dominant financial influence of the European world. In other words, by the power of money and the power of usury, they were able to make a partition of Europe and they are more
truly the rulers of nations than are the Hapsburgs. the Hohenzollerns. the Romanoffs, or any other one dynasty which nomi
nally wields the sceptre.

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Now. can Mr. Doctrinaire ask for a better illustration of the truth of my statement that the power of money is not based upon the monopoly of land; and that the monopoly of land is the fruitage of the tree of usury ? Originally, the Rothschilds owned no land. It was only after they had become so rich that they were compelled to look around for good investments that they began to buy real estate. Their vast fortune, which staggers the human mind in the effort to comprehend it. was
not the growth of land monopoly, but was the growth of usury. What the Rothschilds have done in modern times, men of like character did in ancient times, and just as the modern world will decay and collapse if these evil accumulations be not prevented, so in ancient times people went to decay and extinction because no method of reform was found in time to
work salvation. Mr. Doctrinaire asks me what is the cause of the Standard
Oil monopoly. I thought that if there was any one thing we all agreed about, it was that the Standard Oil monopoly had its origin in violations of law. in the illegal use of those publicroads which are called transportation lines, the secret rebate,
the discriminating service, the favoritism which the trans portation company can exercise in favor of one shipper against all others, to the destruction of competition. You might end land monopoly, but as long as the railroad franchises exist, the
Standard Oil monopoly will exist, if they can get the favored, illegal treatment which they got in the building up of their monopoly, and which they still have in sustaining it. The
power of Privilege in securing money, and the power of money in destroying competition, was never more strikingly evident
than in the colossal growth of Standard Oil. Mr. Doctrinaire might own half the oil wells in America, but unless he made terms with the Standard he would never get his oil on the market at a profit. The Big-Pistol is not the ownership of the
oil well. The Big-Pistol is the mis-use of franchises. With all the power that is in me, I am fighting the frightful
conditions which beset us, but I know, as well as I know any thing, that the principle of the private ownership of land has
had nothing whatever to do with our trouble. Repeal the laws which grant the Privileges that lead to
Monopoly; equalize the taxes: make the rich support the gov ernment in proportion to their wealth; restore public utilities
to the public; put the power of self-government back into the
hands of the people by Direct Legislation; restore our Con stitutional system of finance; pay off the National debt and wipe out the National banking system; quit giving public money to pet banks for private benefit; remove all taxes from

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the necessaries of life: establish postal savings banks; return to us the God-given right to freedom of trade.
With these reforms in operation, millionaires would cease
to multiply and fewer Americans would be paupers. Trusts would not tyrannize over the laborer and the consumer, Cor porations could not plunder a people whose political leaders
they have bought. Some statesman might again declare as Legare declared twenty years before the Civil War: "We have no poor."
English travelers might have no occasion to say, as Rider Haggard said some years ago. that our condition was becoming so intolerable that there must be reform or revolution. On the contrary, the English travelers might say once more, aa Charles Dickens said in 1843. that an Angel with a flaming sword would attract less attention than a beggar in the streets.
And with these reforms accomplished any man in America
who wanted to work a farm of his own could do it. I cannot promise that he would get one of the corner lots of
the Astor estate, but I have no doubt whatever that if he really wanted a farm, and were willing to take it a few miles outside of the city. town, or village, he could get just as much land as he cared to work.

Is the Study of Latin and Greek Necessary to the Practical Lawyer ?

Hon. Thos. E. Watson.

University of Missouri,

Dear Sir: I read with Interest in a number of your Magazine

your advice regarding what you consider a proper preparation for

the study of the law, and while your eminent success as a lawyer

and statesman abundantly qualifies you to speak with authority on

the subject, yet I believe your statements in that connection would

not command general assent.

You say, for instance, not to waste four years on a general college

course; that a thorough English education is sufficient as a basis

for specializing. But how can one obtain a thorough English

education who has neglected the Latin language from which we

directly derive more than a third of our English words, and how is

it possible to obtain a thorough knowledge of the Latin language

without having studied the Greek? The Latin language is, without

doubt, the most logical language the world has ever seen, and the

value of translation in forming a correct English style has always

been recognized. It was largely by this method, combined with

practice in debate, that G rattan, Pitt, Brougham, Gladstone great

lights of the legal profession were enabled to conquer a style

which convinced courts, persuaded juries and moved parliaments.

And, again, how can a student really understand constitutional

law, the great questions of personal liberty, who has not sought the

genesis of these provisions in the forests of Germany, who has not

traced their development in Holland and England, whence we have

received them as a precious inheritance? How can he thoroughly

understand even the technical rules of the law of real property

unless he is familiar with the history of the Middle Ages and the

rise and development of the feudal system?

Of course, one may become a succesful practitioner, a conductor

of litigations, without knowing any of these things, hut I doubt if he

would ever become a great lawyer. While a four years' college

course may be unnecessary for a prospective law student, he who

aspires to proficiency in the greatest of all sciences, the science of

justice, should have a broad and firm foundation on which to build,

whether he lays that foundation in the halls of academic learning

or in private study, and, other things being equal, the student who

has the best preparation will be likely to distance his competitors

in the race for success.

Yours respectfully,

V. E. PHELPS.

ANSWER.

The foregoing letter, which comes from one of the best of our colleges, is cheerfully published. The writer takes issue with me on the proposition that a four years' course in college

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is not necessary to prepare a young man for the practise of law.
It is a subject upon which we may have an honest difference of opinion without any hair pulling. Mr. Phelps thinks that we must learn Latin before we can know the English language, and that we must learn Greek before we can know the Latin. "VThere does that lane lead to ? Were there no languages back of the Greek?
If we must learn Latin to understand English, and learn Greek to understand Latin, what must we learn to understand Greek ? Won't we have to finally hook on to Hebrew, Sanscrit or some other old language away back yonder in the dim regions of antiquity? This thing of rooting up the dead languages to learn how to talk English is a tremendous sug gestion.
I hope Mr. Phelps will not think hard of me for saying that his plan might result in a first-class philologist, but would not necessarily t>ring forth a first-class lawyer.
"How can one obtain a thorough English education who has neglected the Latin language from which we directly derive more than a third of our English words?*'
That is Mr. Phelps' first question. It occurs to me that it is possible to learn the meaning of one-third of the words which came from the Latin source, in the same way that one learns the meaning of the other twothirds. Mr. Phelps says one-third came from the Latin. I haven't counted them, but take his word for it. Xow. where did the other two-thirds come from? What languages must one study to get at the source of the other two-thirds? Some of the words composing the other two-thirds came from the French the Xorman French. Must I study the French language before I can learn the meaning of these words '.
Some of the words of the other two-thirds come from Celtic sources, some from Scandinavia, some from the land of the Moor, some from the Saracen, some from the native tongues spoken by the races who were over-run by the Germanic tribes.
Must I learn each of these mother-tongues before I can talk
Ensrlish? Then we have a few expressive words which we get from the
Indians and the negroes. Must I study the savage dialects of the Red Man and the
black before I can. with proper intelligence, fling at the head
of the jury the words "squaw" and "tote?"

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This, of course, is the "Reduction to the absurd." but the case warrants it. The study of words is a beautiful study. It is one which can be sincerely recommended and encouraged. There is no issue between Mr. Phelps and me on that.
But the point I make is, that such a study of words is not a condition precedent to becoming a tiptop, all-round, successful lawyer.
"And the same I am free to maintain." In the course of a thorough High School education a boy learns just as many words as he knows what to do with. If he needs more, in later years, there is the Unabridged Dictionary. But he will not need more. A good High School training will give him absolutely every English word that he need ever use before court or jury, before the people on the hustings or the Solons in the Senate. Mr. Phelps alludes to Grattan, Pitt. Brougham and Glad stone. Those names neither conflict with my theory nor prove his. Each one of those great men would have been great without Latin and Greek. Their knowledge of Latin and Greek did not make them what they were. God made them great not the schoolmaster. Patrick Henry was not only their superior as an orator, but he was superior to Brougham and Grattan as a lawyer. Pitt and Gladstone were not lawyers, but statesmen, and Henry's debates with Edmund. Randolph and James Madison on the adoption of the Constitution of 1789 prove him the equal of Pitt and Gladstone in his mastery of the principles of govern ment.
Did Shakespeare understand the English language? Mr. Phelps will remember that the man to whom is conceded the first place among the intellectual monarchs of the human race, was a country boy who did not even have a good High School education. Did he not know how to use English words ? Did he have to learn Latin to know his own tongue? Milton and Dr. Sam Johnson were laboriously educated in Latin and Greek. They clung to Latin and Greek forms and derivatives throughout their lives. Shakespeare, Goldsmith, Byron, Burns, clung to English forms and English words. Few people now read Milton save as a necessary task; nobody reads Dr. Johnson at all; millions of people read Shakespeare, Goldsmith. Byron and Burns. Lord Macaulay was a fine scholar, but his speech was Eng lish, not Latin-Greek-English. When the Edinburgh cobbler boasted that he had understood every word of a great speech which Macaulay had just made,

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Macaulay took it as the highest compliment which the cobbler could have paid him.
And for the best of reasons. The speaker who does not use words which all can under
stand, does not know his business. The lawyer who thinks more of showing off his big words
than he does of making the jury catch his meaning, will lose
his case. Read John Bright's speeches John Bright, who was a
greater orator than Gladstone or Pitt. Do you find any Latin-Greek-English? No. you find
English brief, strong, clear English; English which cuts like
a knife when he wants to cut. and which is sweet as music
when he wants to charm. Read the speeches of Daniel Web ster, who was classed by Thomas Carlyle as the greatest wordfighter in the world. Do you find his language to be dependent upon Latin and Greek derivaties?
To the highest possible degree Webster's speeches are monuments to the power, grace, force and endless variety of the English tongue.
You will find more big words in one of Grover Cleveland's
ponderous "Messages." than you will find in all of Daniel Webster's speeches.
Yet Mr. Phelps would hardly contend that Cleveland ranks with Webster as a scholar, a statesman, an orator or a lawyer.
Henry Clay had no classical training, but no man of his day
knew better how to use the English language. No man could stand against him in the court-house or on the hustings; and on one memorable occasion he cowed and silenced Rufus Choate in the Senate Choate the great classical scholar.
It cannot be too often repeated: school-books and school masters cannot make great men.
Andrew Jackson had no classical education, yet he put to rout the combined hosts of Webster. Clay and Calhoun. They had the better schooling, but he was the greater man. Before
the onset of his resistless purpose, courage and sense of being Ri. rht. the scholars went down like broken reeds.
Consider the case of Charles Dickens. Where did he learn
how to use the English language? He liarl almost no education, so far as the school-house was
concerned. As a student, he never saw the inside of a High
School, much less a college. Yet who excels him as a master of expression ? Who uses the English language with finer
effect? His description of the storm at sea in "David Copperfield"
is the sublimest thing of its sort in the whole range of litera
ture.

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"A Child's Dream of a Star" is a prose poem which needs no classical lore to make it perfect.
His Christmas pieces will melt hearts as long as sweetness and tenderness and pity abide in the homes of men. No English was ever more fitted to pathos, humor, scorn, hatred, eloquence, gentle play of fancy or connected narrative of fact.
In truth, Charles Dickens was so absolute a master of the art of expressing himself in the English language as to draw to his feet, in loving admiration, the whole English-speaking world.
And he did not learn how to talk and write at a college, either. He did not learn English by studying Latin, and learn Latin by studying Greek. Had he waited for all that he might not have sprung into fame at twenty-four by writing the "Pickwick Papers." Had he adopted the idea of Mr. Phelps, he would have spent four years learning dead languages and might then have awakened to the disagreeable fact that the "morning-glories" of his genius had begun to lose their fresh ness. In the running of a race, it is possible to go back so far to get a start, that the runner is tired before he reaches the starting-point.
Consider, likewise, the case of Abraham Lincoln. This country-born lad had almost no schooling at all. He never did become, in any ordinary sense of the term, a scholar or a learned man. He was not even profoundly versed in the law. But how many lawyers of Lincoln's day were his match in the court-room? How many of our scholars, learned men and profound jurist, could cope with him on the stump? How many of our intellectual and cultured people could write or speak the English language so well ? I do not now recall any passage in the writings of the scholarly John Quincy Adams or the scholarly Thomas Jeffer son which will compare in majestic simplicity, dignity, force and pathos with Lincoln's concluding paragraphs in iiis firet Inaugural, and his memorable brief speech at Gettysburg. On that occasion the untutored backwoodsman soared far and away beyond and above the most cultured of scholars, Edward Everett. "How can a student really understand Constitutional law. the great questions of personal liberty, who has not sought the genesis of these provisions in the forests of Germany, who has not traced their development in Holland and England. whence we have received them as a precious inheritance?" That is Mr. Phelps' second question. A student will not thoroughly understand the subjects named unless he makes a study of them, but he need not spend four years of his life in a college to make that study. To

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become a practical lawyer, the student has already been advised, in former articles, to study Blackstone, Kent's Com mentaries. Greenleaf on Evidence and the Code of his own State.
When he shall have mastered these, I venture the statement that he will be able to attend to all the practice he is likely to get. during the first few years after his shingle has been hung out.
Of course. I have assumed that the young lawyer will con tinue his reading, broaden and deepen his studies all the while that he is speaking to justices of the peace and to juries about the issues involved in the first cases he will get.
The average Justice of the Peace is not an expert in Ger manic "genesis." nor is the average jury greatly influenced by a knowledge of the "developments in Holland and Eng land."
The mind of judges and juries will be found to be con cerned mainly with prosaic, practical, almost vulgar con siderations of sworn testimony and statute law.
Did my client take and carry away the personal goods of the other fellow with intent to steal the same?
Did my client say of and concerning the other fellow the following false and malicious words, to-wit:
"You are a d d thief ?": Did my client burn the ginhouse of Abe Jones, being led thereto by the instigation of the devil ? Did my client take possession of land which belonged to someone else, refuse to surrender the same, and thus compel John Doe to arm himself for another tilt against Richard Roe? Did my Sambo steal the other Sambo's hog? Concrete issues like these will engage the best attention of the young lawyer from the first day that he opens an office, and he will find the fewest number of occasions to display his knowledge of what happened in Germany and Holland a thousand years ago. without hurting his case. Abstract questions of "personal liberty" cut no ice in the court-house, and the petition of a prisoner to be allowed to come out of jail, on bond, can be argued for all it is worth by a lawyer who understands that particular case, no matter if he has not chased "the genesis of these provisions in the forests of Germany." "The technical rules of the law of real property" are laid down in Blackstone. and the Feudal system is therein explained as fullv as a practical lawyer needs to know it. Hallam's "Middle Ages'" Robertson's "Charles the Fifth," and such works a<= Hallam's "Constitutional History of Eng land." Tapp's "History of Anglo-Saxon Institutions" are

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valuable to the statesman and. in some respects, to the lawyer,
but they are books which can be read at leisure, and at home, while the young lawyer is attending to the practical work of
his profession. Such books will in no wise help him to win his case in the court-house.
Practical lawyers will bear me out when I say that expert knowledge of Latin and Greek, and laborious research into Germanic origins of the great principles, had no more to do with their success at the bar than a scholastic knowledge of
Botany, of Chemistry, of the ethnological status of the negro, and of the historic genesis of the turn-plow and the mule, has to do with the success of a Southern farmer who manages
free niggers and makes buckle and tongue meet, by steady attention to the practical details of farming.

As to Orators and Oratory.
A GREAT orator is eloquent by reason of certain inherent mental and emotional qualities, and these qualities will bring him success in any department of public speaking. To say that a man who is an orator of the first class would be eloquent in the pulpit only is. in my judgment, as untenable a proposi tion as to say that a refined lady is refined only in her own parlor.
Intrinsic qualities are inseparable from the person: they go with us. Acquired culture may be lost, our power to use it may vary with the accident of locality and circumstances, but a man who is a born poet will make verses even behind a plow, as Burns did: and the born orator will be eloquent in whatever field he goes whether that of lecturing, law-pleading, stumpspeaking or preaching.
I do not say that the born orator will not sometimes fail. On the contrary, it is the born orator who will make the very greatest failures. The reasons are not far to seek. He relies much on the inspiration of the occasion: he must be under the spell of a certain amount of mental irritation, excitement and exhiliration: his natural faculties. must get into a glow, a heat, a struggle for expression: great thoughts, generous feel ings must crowd forward for utterance, and the peculiar language of oratory stands ready to fold its drapery around each mortal creation as the inspiration bodies it forth.
Orators of the first class must have the faculty of composing instantaneously of creating as they go.
What are the laws of this mysterious power? Nobody knows. It may come when least expected: it may be sought ^in vain when most needed. The ma'n of talent, capable of making a certain sort of speech, can always make that sort of speech: just as a poet o* a certain talented class may manufacture a certain number of talented verses, at any time he may see fit to turn the grind stone. But the man of genius cannot work that way. He cannot write to order and he cannot speak to order. To arouse his peculiar and mysterious mental and emotional powers, is an absolute prerequisite to his success, either in writing or speak ing. Hence, he is more in danger of making failures than the man of talent. But when he does succeed it is Shelley rhapsodizing on ';The Cloud:" it is Coleridge lifting his voice in the Hymn in

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the Vale of Chamouni; it is Byron penning the last two cantos of "Childe Harpld;" it is Burns wringing his hands in grief for "Mary in Heaven;" it is Poe tracing the weird lines of "Eldorendo;" it is Mirabeau in the Assembly, denouncing Bourbonism on the one hand and Sansculottism on the other; it is Henry before the Burgesses. O?Connell on the hustings. Wendell Phillips on the lecture platform, and Sargeant Prentiss everywhere.
Oratory like Grattan's had no arbitrary limits of time, place and circumstances. He was a master in every sphere of speech. O'Connell was supreme at the bar. on the hustings and in Parliament. Gladstone says he was greatest on the hustings, yet in the British Parliament, where his audience was hostile, he spoke the pen out of the hands of the official reporter Charles Dickens and the record was blotted with tears instead of stenographic notes.
Wherever Phillips spoke he was eloquent; wherever Toombs and Yancey and Ben Hill spoke they inflamed the hearts of men.
Henry was as great in the court-house as on the hustings; as great before the Legislature and before Congress as he had been before the bench when "he plead against the parsons."
And where was it that Prentiss found a realm he could not conquer? What boundary line stayed his winged feet? He was matchless at the bar, matchless on the stump, matchless in Congress, matchless in the lecture field for he took, at New Orleans, an audience which Richard Henry Wilde had soothed into somnolent apathy on the subject of Art, and in ten minutes had electrified it into cheers.
"Hello! Wilde is waking up!" said some gentlemen who had been in the audience, and who had stepped out to get a drink, and who heard a sudden burst of applause from the theatre
where they had left Wilde speaking. "There it goes again!" they said as they sipped their liquor,
another round of applause having come thundering from the
theatre. And then, as they put their glasses down, there was a crash
of cheers from the audience. "Hell! that's Prentiss!" they cried, and they broke for the
theatre to find that the princely orator. Prentiss. was in full career of inspired speech, clothing "thoughts that breathe, in words that burn" upon the old. old subject of "Art."
So true is it that the orator is born, not made; so true it is that the orator is eloquent because he was born that way: so true is it that it comes as naturally to him to move the hearts and minds of others when his are moved as it does to a bird

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to sing when the sunlight of spring flashes over the awakening woods.
Both Webster and Clay were powerful at the bar and on the hustings as they were in the Senate; and Toombs was never greater than when he lectured in Tremont Temple on slavery or in Georgia, later, on "Magna Charta."
When an orator devotes his life to one department of speak ing he may not eminently succeed in others, if he comes to them late. This is because his mind may have acquired a certain rigidity of thought and mode of expression; but I cannot think that one who is really endowed with the gift of eloquence
would find himself bereft of it simply because he stepped from the hustings to the lecture hall.

Socialism and One of its Great Books
DANIEL WEBSTER declared that the novels of Charles Dickens had done more to ameliorate the condition of the English poor than had been done by all the statesmen Great Britain had sent to Parliament.
The time may come when some American author, moved by the same broad and deep and tender sympathy for the suffering of the human under-dog. will bring to the task a genius com parable to that of the uneducated Dickens, and will write the death-warrant of intolerable conditons in this country, just as Dickens wrote it in England.
And it may be that the man and the task have already met. It may be that oppressed humanity in America has already found the pleader whose appeal will be irresistible, the advo cate whose impeachment of heartless commercialism will rouse the soul of the nation and sound the death-knell of legalized Greed and Murder.
"The Jungle" is a great book; possibly the greatest book of its kind that any American has written. The author displays an amazing mastery of details, of appalling facts, of horrible conditions. Taking the reader in hand, he leads him through the under-world of the laboring and non-laboring poor, and when the story has been finished, the reader feels that a spirit akin to that of Dante has shown him through the black regions of another Hell.
The story begins with a marriage and a marriage feast, conducted after the Lithuanian fashion; for the people whose lives and adventures we are to follow are immigrants from. Lithuania.
This description of the marriage festival, with its tumultu ous hilarity, deep drinking, heavy eating, promiscuous danc ing, and tipsy quarrels is a masterpiece.
Then we go with the young married couple to their homelife and their work. Jurgis, the man, enters the slaughter house of the Beef Trust. Ona, the wife, also gets work in the stock-yards. The pay is small and the work is hard.
The author reveals the innermost workings of the Beef Trust. Not a single sickening detail, apparently, has escaped him. We are shown the system upon which the packers operate. The frauds that are perpetrated upon the public, the diseased hogs and cows that are used, the collusion between the Government inspectors and the packers, the chemicals which are applied to spoiled meat to give it the appearance of

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being sound, the dead rats and the rat dung which go Into the vats along -with the rest, the foul water in which the workmen have washed themselves, and have spat, and yet which goes into the vats along with the rest: the occasional workman who falls into boiling grease to his death and whose body goes along with the hog grease into the making of "Prime Leaf Lard."
There is no language which can reproduce the picture of these stock yards as drawn by Mr. Sinclair. One must read "The Jungle."
Zola is vivid and impressive in his description of the lifework of the toiling French in the mine, in the market, on the farm, in the laundry: but Zola never surpassed the realistic portrayal of life-work in the Chicago stock-yards as drawn by Mr. Sinclair.
On the whole, I doubt whether this portion of "The Jungle." has its equal anywhere. His sketch is so complete, so broadly conceived, so minutely finished that it approaches perfection.
He not only shows the Beef Trust in its own mechanism as a complete machine, but he shows its relations to the consumer, its relations to local and national politics, its relations to its employees and its relations to the courts. The characters in the book are real men and women, not lay figures.
Jnrgis is very human, so is Marija. so. also, in a less degree, is Ona. The little fiddler is true to life, and one regrets that
Mr. Sinclair did not make greater use of him. He might have been instrumental in putting into ''The Jungle" an occasional
burst of sunlight, which the book needed to relieve its un broken gloom.
Even in Dickens: most heartrending stories, there is always the relief of humor, the play of light and shade. In "The Jungle" there is no lifting of the sable pall. Dark, darker, darkest is the trend of the narrative, and in this Mr. Sinclair is at fault.
The jolliest frolics that were ever known were those in which the Southern slaves used to celebrate their holidays, or their Saturday nights, or their Christmas week. In this story of four hundred pages, dealing with the laboring class in Chicago, there is no scene of merriment at all, after the nar rative gets under way.
Does Mr. Sinclair mean to teach that the wage-system of
today is that much worse than the old slave-system of the Southern States? Is the present wage-system so much more of a heart-breaker and soul-killer than that against which Mrs. Stowe launched her immortal book?
With Jursris and Ona it is tragedy from the beginning to the end. They begin by investing their little surplus of cash

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in part payment for a house. They sign notes for the unpaid purchase money, and these are made in the form of rent notes so that Jurgis can be quickly put out if he fails in the install ments.
Then they have an extravagant marriage feast which costs some $300. In Lithuania the custom is that the guests pay for the feast by voluntary contributions. In Chicago that custom does not prevail. The consequence is the loss of all the ready money of the young couple and a debt of $100.
Debt is hell! and they had run into it on their \vedding night.
Then begins the struggle; then they enter the jungle, from which they are never able to escape.
Ona does not know how to apply for a transfer on the street car, is carried on a block or so, has to walk to her work in the rain, and suffers in health. A child is born; Ona is never quite herself again. Jurgis slips on the flooring while at his work and sprains his ankle. Neglecting the limb, and continuing to use it, he pays a cruel penalty; he is bedridden a long while. Poverty pinches. Ona becomes frightened, and she yields to the lust of one of the bosses in the yards Phil Connor. She does this to save her loved ones from starvation.
Jurgis at length limps back into the struggle for bread, and soon discovers that Ona has gone wrong.
"The Jungle" becomes painfully dramatic during this epi sode, and the power of the author is strongly felt.
In blind rage, the husband rushes into the stock-yards and, coming upon the seducer of his wife, strikes him down, and sets his teeth in his face. Jurgis is torn away before much harm has been done to Connor, but not before irreparable harm has been done to Jurgis. Poor fellow, he is condemned to a term of imprisonment for the assault which he has com mitted. From pride or shame he conceals his provocation, and to the judge who. sentences him, the. case appears to be that of an unjustifiable assault and battery.
When his sentence has been served out. Jurgis goes back to his home to find another family in the house. The monthly instalment has not been paid, the land company has fore
closed, and the wife and child of Jurgis have disappeared. The story, then, of how Jurgis finds where Ona is. the story
of how she dies in the agonies of child-birth, is a climax of
tragic narrative. The old Dutch mid-wife is only seen and heard for a few minutes, but she makes her impression upon the mind as distinctly as Sairey Gamp made hers.
Then Jnrgis takes to drink and "the Jungle" grows denser than ever. By turns, he plays many parts. He is a tramp, a

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farm-hand, a union man. a strike-breaker, a gambler, a robber, a ward-heeler, a beggar, a sub-boss, a hotel porter.
When Jurgis betrayed the labor union and became hench man to a politician "with a pull." he found himself in clover.
For a time he had all the money he needed.
Then he got drunk, met Phil Connor again, assaulted him again, and went to prison again.
Connor "stood in" with the man who had the "pull," and poor Jurgis was sacrificed.
The first-born of Jurgis and Ona is a fine boy who is drowned in the gutter of a neglected street. Another boy
belonging to the group drinks too much beer, goes to sleep in
a ramshackle building, is locked in for the night, and is devoured by rats.
Marija the most life-like and attractive woman in the book
deliberately enters a house of prostitution, as the only way to make a living for those dependent upon her.
Mr. Sinclair throws the light upon the life of fallen women in the great cities, until that portion of our social hell is as
lurid as the devil himself could want it. During the progress of events up to the time that the home
less. job-Jess, starving Jurgis stumbles into the Socialist meet
ing, the author has held his reader in a grip of steel. Why?
Because his feet have been on the earth all the while, and he has been dealing with actualities. The reader has felt in his heart of hearts that men. women and children in Chicago can and do toil, suffer, and perish just that way. He can not quite
believe that all the bad things happened to any one man. as they did to Jurgis, but he knows that they might have done so.
All the ravenous beasts of the jungle do not pull down and
devour the same lost traveler, but each and all of them might. But at the very moment when Mr. Sinclair pulls the reader into that Socialist meeting, his hold begins to relax. The
reader immediately feels that he is leaving solid ground. He intuitively draws back. He doesn't willingly go up into the air with the orator who is performing on the platform.
Indeed, the reader almost feels resentment against the author. Was this what you were driving at all the while ? Did you harrow up my soul with all those pathetic details
just to make a Socialist out of me? Did you think to capture me as easily as you captured your
poor, stupid, blundering Jurgis?
Couldn't you turn the reader loose without syringing a Socialist campaign document into him?
Dear me alive! I can step into any book-store and buy,
for a few pennies, as good a treatise on Socialism as you have

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tacked on to the end of your novel why, then, talk "shop" in the novel ?
Suppose Mrs. Stowe had diluted "Uncle Tom's Cabin" with a homily on Emancipation; suppose she had caught the reader by the hair of the head, pulled him into one of the Abolition Societies and drenched him with Abolition harangues; sup pose that she had explained to the bored reader how those Michigan reformers met at Jackson, on July 6, 1854. and set in motion the organization that afterward became the Repub lican Party; and suppose she had inflicted upon the reader a description of the leading personages and newspapers engaged in the Abolition cause, together with an explanation of the working methods of the Abolition Societies: and then sup pose she had interlarded the closing chapters with election returns, and had wound up her book with the campaign cry of "New York is ours! New York is ours!" would she not have spoilt "Uncle Tom's Cabin?"
Mrs. Stowe put everlasting human interest and pathos into her book, by making Uncle Tom the victim of the system against which her pen was inspired. The martyrdom ot Uncle Tom is left to do its own work in rousing the passions of men against the system which took his life.
Mr. Sinclair wrote a book to prove that the system of today drags the wage-earner down and crushes him. Consequently, he should have made Jurgis a victim, a martyr. As actually happens in our great cities, Jurgis should have fallen and died of exhaustion while vainly seeking a job; or he should have been found, some wintry morning, frozen in some wretched alley, or under the arch of some bridge where he had curled himself up for sleep.
Such things happen all over the East. Xorth and Xorthwest. where our Protective System has been at work for one hundred years, levying its contributions of billions of dollars upon the American consumer, in order that American capitalists may be able to pay American laborers good wages.
"When Mrs. Stowe started out to fire the Xorth against the South, she sprinkled blood in its face the life-blood of Uncle Tom.
The novels of Charles Dickens had already blazed this trail, and Mrs. Stowe modeled her books on those of the greatest Master of Reform-Fiction this world has ever seen. With the victims of a system does Dickens batter down the walls of that system.
Charles Reade pursues the same method when he assails the awful abuses of the private mad-houses.
With these illustrious examples of how to do it. before him. Mr. Sinclair's ''less of the trail" is the more surprising.

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"The Jungle" was written with a definite purpose to show that there is no escape for a wage-slave under the present sys
tem, save in Socialism. It is certainly a curious thing that the ruin of the people in Mr. Sinclair's book is not due to the
wage-system, but to their own mistakes and misdeeds. "The
Jungle"' does prove that the life of a wage-earner is hard, that the employers are unsympathetic, harsh, exacting, dis
honest: but ''The Jungle" does not prove that the wage-
earner is crushed to death. The first great mistake made by Jurgis and Ona was in
buying a house which they thought was new. healthy and fair-
priced, when in fact it was old. unhealthy and over-priced. The wage-system had nothing to do with that first huge
blunder, which proved to be the mill-stone around the necks of this poor couple.
A man who cannot tell a new house from an old one, is a lamb whom the wolves will eat. sooner or later.
The second great mistake of Jurgis and Ona was that extravagant wedding debauch, with its sweeping away of all
their cash, and its plunging of them into a debt of one hundred dollars. Think of a poor wage-slave spending three hundred
dollars to furnish stewed duck, white cake, unlimited ham, potatoes, macaroni, bologna sausages, rice, milk, candy, penny-
buns, foaming pitchers of beer, a free-whisky bar, and a paid
string-band to play all night! The extravagance of this bestial indulgence was enough in
itself to ha\-e swamped the small life-boat of these two foreign
ers, who were so ill-fitted in a variety of ways for the complex and intense struggle for existence in such a city as Chicago.
But for these two mistakes of the young couple, there would
have been money on hand while Jurgis was laid up with a
sprained ankle: and his wife would not have felt that she faced the alternative of prostitution or starvation.

The non sequitur. in the hands of the average Socialist, is just as good a piece of logic as he wants.
Says the average Socialist, "This is wrong therefore
Socialism is right." In this way he can prove anything and so can you. Houses of ill-fame are wrong: the Christian States all
tolerate houses of ill-fame: Turkey has no houses of ill-fame; therefore Turkey is a better country than any of the Christian
States. Is that logic? Compared to the reasoning of the average
Socialist, it is most admirable logic. Bar-rooms are bad: the Christian Nations tolerate bar-

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rooms: there are no bar-rooms in Turkey; therefore the Christian Nations are worse than Turkey.
With logic of this kind, I blow mine opponent out of the water in spite of his best efforts to keep in the swim.
The conclusion arrived at in the two examples given, namely, that Turkey is a better country than any Christian land, is what the logic-choppers call a non seqiiitvr.
That is to say, it does not follow that Turkey is better than the Christian Nations because she has no brothels or bar rooms.
.But the vast preponderance of Socialist argument is based upon the non sequitur. They point to this, and to that, and to the other, and they say, "Those things are wrong; therefore we must adopt Socialism." My contention is that the con clusion does not follow the facts.
A. B. gets sick: he needs physic: three doctors come upon him, the Allopath, the Homeopath, the Osteopapth while the Christian Scientist, and the Faith Curist. and the Mental Suggestionist hover, near by, ready to pounce down.
Each one of those Healers of the Sick, being permitted to speak, will say: "You are sick; you are entitled to good health; therefore, my method of healing will effect a cure."
Which of those Schools of Medicine has been tried and found wanting absolutely and hopelessly? Whichever that is, that is the one which the sick man had better let alone. And it is Socialism that has been tried and found wanting.
No matter what frills and flounces, laces and embroideries, may be placed upon Socialism, let no man doubt for an instant that the reason why the Have-nots, the poor, embrace it is that they understand it to mean an equal division among all men
of all kinds of property. "Collective ownership" is to take the place of individual
ownership, and all those who now own nothing are to be given an equal share with those who now own everything.
The Astor estate is not the only one to be confiscated, divided up and handed around: the fortunes of the Vanderbilts, the Goulds, and the Standard Oil group are not the only ones to be seized and distributed; every house and lot. every garden and farm, every small accumulation of money or chattels, is to be taken away from those who have earned it, or inherited it, and there is to be a glorious universal-brotherhood division of everything among the good and the bad, the weak and the
strong, the white and the black. The meanest thug on the Bowery, the filthiest harlot of the
Tenderloin, will be given an equal share with the worthiest laborer in the field of honest industry, and with the virtuous

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woman, whose pure life and lofty character are the saving power of the human race.
The most vicious negro that ever lurked in the bushes by the road to clutch the innocent white girl as she comes from school to clutch her and drag her into the woods, to leave
her torn, bleeding, dying, the victim of his brutish lust will have just the same share, in all the accumulated wealth of the age. as will be had by the very best man on earth.
"Collective ownership" has its meaning, and that meaning cannot be shirked.
Xo matter how much difference there may be in the Tomor
row of Socialism, in its Today, when it shall be inaugurated as a system, all things must be owned Collectively; and that means that the high and the low come to a common level; the
good and the bad start even; the idle and the industrious share and share alike: the illiterate and the learned, the capa ble and the incompetent, the fool and the wise man, the virgin
and the troll, the negro and the white, all come to the Uni versal Brotherhood pot. and ladle out an equal porringerful of pottage.
God! What a sordid, sickening dead-level! What an
enforced equalizing of all men and all women, in a world where God never made two grains of sand, two leaves of the forest, two birds of the air. two fish of the sea, two beasts of the field exactly alike.
Only in a political sense can anyone even dream of two men being equal, for our eyes, our common sense, tell us that
such a thing as equality in strength, capacity, character, or in the elements and achievements of manhood has no existence among men.
Socialism proceeds upon the idea that equality is there, or
can be put there: and the effort to prove that the idea is cor rect has been made time and again and again. It was not only tried among the Ancients, but it has been tried in modern times and it was tried by the colonists who first settled in Xorth America.
Failure, dismal failure has been the result of every experi
ment. Why? Because Human Nature is radically, eternally
different from what the Socialist assume it to be. If all men were equal, and all were good, Socialism would
be unnecessary, even from the standpoint of the Socialist. Give us absolute equality and universal goodness, and we
don't need anything but a little time to reach an equal dis
tribution of wealth and an era of Peace on Earth and Good
Will to Men.

Mr. Sinclair takes no account of the extent to which

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voluntary conduct brings suffering and ruin upon the human race.
For example, he dwells with passionate earnestness upon the grinding cruelty of the employers of wage-earners, but he makes no mention of the immense sums of money spent every year for intoxicating liquors.
Our national drink-bill has reached the almost incredible total of one billion and four hundred millions of dollars!
Think of that. Mr. Sinclair. Will men and women drink less under Socialism ?
Then consider the enormous national waste in tobacco. Lavishly extravagant as our National Government is, it but reflects the extravagance of the people. On liquor and tobacco we squander enough to carry comfort to every suffering man, woman and child in America. Will the people, Mr. Sinclair, quit using tobacco when Socialism rules the land? Once more consider the gambling habit. See how much is lost in small games of chance, as well as in speculations on the Stock Exchange.
The one gaming-hell of Monte Carlo "cleared" more than $5,000,000 last year. There are thousands of similar establish ments. How much money do you suppose is lost to these establishments every year, by the voluntary act of the losers?
Also consider the lottery-ticket gambling, the race-track gambling, the bucket-shop gambling: who can guess how many hard-earned dollars are lost every year in these gaming devices by the voluntary act of the losers?
Will the gambling fever be taken out of the blood of men by Socialism?
No study of social and industrial conditions is complete unless allowance be made for evils which exist by reason of the voluntary acts of men and women.
No system of government or of industrial organization, can possibly take away from the human race those elemental passions, that mixture of Good and Evil, which have been there ever since the dawn of Time.
No system of laws will save the unsuspecting dupe from the sharper, or protect the honest man from the thief, nor the woman who is weak from the strong man inflamed by lust.
"The Jungle" was meant to be an indictment against our industrial system. But it isn't. "The Jungle" succeeds in showing the evils brought about by overcrowding in the centres of population. Mr. Sinclair has simply demonstrated the truth of what Adam Smith wrote in "The Wealth of Nations." If the labor market be overstocked, wages fall. If

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in the labor market, the supply of labor be less than the demand, wages rise.
Mr. Sinclair demonstrates this to perfection. "The Jungle" tells us that so long as there were more applicants for jobs than there were jobs, wages were at starvation figures; but when the strike came on. and the supply of labor was less than the demand, wages became accordingly high. In fact, the wage-earner then named his own price, and the packers had to give it.
That condition prevails throughout the South at this time. The demand for labor is greater than the supply, and the negro in the cotton patch works upon his own terms. He comes nearer to getting all that his labor produces than any other laborer in America or in Europe. The Southern States could, right now. absorb and employ, at good wages, every surplus laborer in the United States. Georgia could put to profitable work every surplus laborer in New York.
Into Florida, where I spent the past winter. Mr. Sinclair could drain off the entire labor-surplus of Chicago. Upon the railroad which Mr. Flagler is building southward from Miami. 20.000 men could find jobs at good wages. In the truck farms, in the orange groves, in the lumber camps, the work is clamoring for the workmen. The climate is ideal, natural food-products abound, and the pay for a nine-hour day. at the commonest kind of work, is $1.25 per day.
Can Mr. Sinclair draw into these fields of industry the surplus which gluts the labor-market of the cities? Xo. Xeither he nor anyone else can do it. The attempt has been made often, and it fails every time! Flagler brought great numbers of Xew York City men down here and put them to work on his railroad. They have quit and are going back. You can see them tramping northward in sullen, sinister gangs of fifteen and twenty. They yearn for the city. They crave the city crowds, city noise, city amusements, city dissi pations. The quiet, the solitude, the monotony of the country wear them out: they must get back to riproaring Chicago, Philadelphia. Xew York. Thus, like moths struggling for a chance to singe their wings, these fascinated human beings rush into the large cities, drawn by a mixture of motives, and they create that glut in the labor market which is partly responsible for the conditions so vividly set forth in "The Jungle."
It is clear to my mind that we need not go to Socialism to find remedie? for everything that is remediable in our industrial arid political system.
In the big cities two men compete for one job;.in the rural communities two jobs compete for one man. Surely that is a

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problem Avhich may be remedied, provided the willingness to
work can be made to overcome the inclination to live in the big cities.
If city life presents such irresistible fascinations that men
will persist in crowding into the already overcrowded centres of population, what can you do? How will Socialism manage
to work the miracle of supplying two men with a job where there is only one job?
Mr. Sinclair lays much stress upon the nasty work which is done in the stock-yards. He uses language which the reviewers consider unquotable in describing the butchering of hogs and cattle and the making up of the carcass, entrails, etc.. into all sorts of merchantable products, including fertilizers. The fertilizer making is peculiarly repulsive in its nastiness.
Well, fertilizer is a right good thing in its place; and I rise to inquire whether Socialism prohibits fertilizers? If so. let us know, so that we can get our gardens, fields, etc.. manured up, before Socialism cuts us off from the bases of supply. But, even if Socialism permits us to assist nature with extra plantfood, will not the making of fertilizers be about the same thing that it is now?
The work is nasty, of course. There is a great deal of nasty work which necessity compels people to do. or to have done.
Mr. Sinclair talks quite literally about the guts of hogs and cows, and the nastiness involved in handling the same. I fully agree with him. The work is not nice work. But will Socialism bring about such a change in the habits and food of cows and hogs that the guts can be cleaned in the front room, as a part of the evening's pastime, while we listen to the phonograph or the pianola ?
If. under Socialism, the same repulsive work will have to be done which we now have to hire someone else to do, what will be the process of selecting the fellow who must go out and
clean the guts ? It seems to me that when Socialism selects the poet or the
musician, or the artist or scholar, and orders him into the fertilizer department, the chain of Universal Brotherhood will snap in a very disconcerting manner.
If. under Socialism, each man can be what he pleases, no one will do the dirty or dangerous work. If eah man is not to be allowed to do what he pleases, some system of coercion will be necessary. And coerced labor is slavery, isn't it?
The world today suffers from the twin evils of concentrated wealth and concentrated population. Socialism proposes to deal with the first of these two by substituting "Collective Ownership" for individual ownership. This means the setting aside of all law, written and unwritten, which protects private

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property, and inasmuch as there will inevitably be a powerful minority who will refuse to surrender their title, even though Socialism should get in the majority, there would be civil war. With the legal guarantees of hundreds of years on their side, the holders of property would most assuredly not give it up \\iihout a fight. So it would seem to me that Socialism is shutting its eyes to the real difficulty in dealing with the first of the twin evils to which we have alluded.
As to the second, the concentration of population. Socialism can apply no remedy which cannot be tried without going to Socialism.
Wherever several million human beings crowd into the same place, as they do in London. Xew York, Chicago and other centres of population, there will be a more tragic character given to the struggle for existence, no matter what the political and industrial system may be.
The conclusion of the whole matter is, in my opinion, that we have departed from the democratic-republican ideal of our fathers, and we must return to the old landmarks. We must abolish privilege: nationalize and municipalize public utilities; equalize taxes: practise Direct Legislation; elect all officers by the people: restore to the Government the exclusive right to supply the country with metallic money and paper cur
rency: extend the ^ ^. D. and adopt the Parcels Post, so that the dwellers remote from the city may enjoy the advantages of the city: and establish Postal Savings Banks so that the people will have a safe and convenient place of deposit for
their savings and accumulations. As devoutly as I believe that Right is better than Wrong,
Good, better than Bad. Virtue, better than Vice, I believe that reforms like these will sweep away all our troubles, and give us as perfect a government as imperfect human nature can successfully maintain.

Common Sense Education.
I AM indebted to Professor M. AY. Parks, of Georgia, for a copy of an address delivered by him last May before the County School Commissioners' Association.
It is a refreshing thing to know that the President of the Georgia Educational Association holds the views set forth in this most interesting address. His subject being "Agriculture in the Public Schools," Professor Parks commences by stating some facts which are certainly unknown to most of our readers and which, therefore, they will be glad to learn.
"Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina. Georgia, Ten nessee, Alabama. Mississippi, Louisiana and Nebraska have passed laws requiring agriculture to be taught in the schools. I think Maine and probably several other States have recently taken similar action. In addition to this a large number of counties in Illinois, Iowa, Missouri and Ohio, and all of the counties in Maryland are requiring agriculture in the schools.
"In Europe, agriculture is taught in connection with school gardens and there are said to be more than 100,000 of these gardens. France alone has nearly 30,000, as the teaching of agriculture has been obligatory since 1882. Austria has more than 20,000 gardens. In Russia no school will be accepted by the State to receive State funds unless a garden is connected with it. In a single province of Southern Russia 257 schools have gardens aggregating 300 acres. In 1895 these gardens contained among other things 111.000 fruit trees, 2-40.000 forest trees and more than 1,000 bee hives.
"In Belgium all teachers are required to be able to give 'theoretical and practical instruction in botany, horticulture and agriculture.'"
Professor Parks then quotes a good sound piece of common sense from an address of Professor L. H. Bailey, of Cornell University:
"The study of Greek is no more a proper means of education than the study of Indian corn is. The mind may be developed by either one. Classics and calculus are no more divine than machines and potatoes.
"What a man is, is more important than what he knows. Anything that appeals to a man's mind is capable of drawing out and training a man's mind."
Nothing could be truer than that! yet the world is full of pedagogues who devoutly believe that no boy's mind can be

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properly trained without being pulled through the barbedwire fence of Greek and trigonometry.
Professor Parks also quotes President Eliot, of Harvard:
''We have lately become convinced that accurate work with carpenter's tools, or lathe, or hammer and anvil, or piano, or
pencil, or crayon, or camel's-hair brush, trains well the same
nerves and ganglia with which we do what is ordinarily called thinking. We have also become convinced that some intimate,
sympathetic acquaintance with the natural objects of the earth and sky adds greatly to the happiness of life and that this
continues through adolescence and maturity. A book, a hedge
row, or a garden is an inexhaustible teacher of wonder, reverence, and love.
"The idea of culture has always included a quick and wide sympathy in men: it should hereafter include sympathy with nature and particularly with its living forms, a sympathy based on some accurate observation of nature."
Professor Parks proceeds to say: "In my opinion slowly formed after years of experience and investigation agriculture, if properly and adequately studied, as a science, can be a means of culture as well as
Latin or higher mathematics." "Give the same time to agriculture that is now given to
Latin/' says the Professor, "and the educational results will
not be inferior in educational value." ''Some of us." he con tends, "have divorced education from the child and from life. Too often we attempt to teach subjects that ought not to be
taught, and omit subjects which ought not to be omitted. Many of our small high-schools and country schools are forc ing upon the many the subjects that should be for the few.
Many a nervous girl is poring over the abstractions of trigo nometry who ought to be cultivating roses. Many a poor boy
is endeavoring to translate Latin who ought to be learning how to transplant fruit trees."
True as Gospel! A vice of our present system is that we adopt the brick-yard method, forgetting the difference between mud and human
nature. Xo two boys or girls are alike, yet we try to force their
minds into the same molds, as if we wanted a thousand bricks of uniform size, whereas true education should always develop, draw out. each boy and each girl along the lines of his or her
individuality. In the learning of the elementary branches, the stepping
stones to knowledge, the feet of the children must of necessity patter along the same path: but in the preparation of each

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL, LITERARY, ETC.

275

child for life work the question that should run in letters of
living light along the lintels is this: "What is the individual capacity of this child ? What is this
boy best fitted by nature to do?" Surely, the boy -who means
to be a mechanic should take a different road from the boy
who means to be a lawyer. The rudimentary branches having been mastered, surely the lad who leans to the mercantile busi
ness should not be yoked to the lad whose mental trend is to the literary life.
Says Professor Park: "Let us bring our elementary educa
tion closer to life; let us teach the child the things all around
it, let us be less bookish in our work, let us help the child to get more knowledge at first hand and less at second hand, let us help the child to learn by doing, let us aid him in develop ing his powers by self-activity."
Golden words! Professor Parks makes the startling assertion that our sys tem of education tends to dissatisfy country children with farm life, educates them away from their environment, and causes them to abandon their homes in the rural communities.
Our schools, then, are partly responsible for the concentra tion of population in the towns and cities. Our schools, then, are partly responsible for the scarcitj^ of labor on the farms.
Our schools, then, are partly to blame for the frightful con ditions of city life.
If Professor Parks is correct in his opinion, and I believe
that he is, one of two things should be done, and done quickly; either the system of teaching should be changed in the man ner he advocates, or the compulsory payment by one man of the school bills of another should be stopped.
"Children cannot be educated by books alone. They need sense training by contact with nature and they need develop ment through bodily activity." Again, Professor Parks
beautifully and truly says : "If we bring our country schools closer to life and teach
more about farming, what effect will it have on our ideals? Are there not some who claim that the introduction of agri
culture in the schools will tend to lower our ideals? And yet are they not wrong? Are the problems of arithmetic, about banks and money, any more idealistic than the forests or field of corn? Are the horrors of war so fully narrated in our histories any more ennobling than the beauties of nature? Are the technicalities of grammar any more inspiring than a
bed of flowers? "Xo. Our cities are wrong. Nature study does not lower
one's ideal. Manual labor is not degrading. Mr. Frank
Darling, superintendent of the vacation schools at Chicago, in

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speaking of the results of garden work as a means of educa tion, said that, in point of educational value ,viewing character as the product, his garden experience was the greatest he had ever known."
It has always seemed a strange thing to me that our schools have no text-book containing, in simple form, the general principles of our laws and our Government. Little bits of girls carry armsful of books to and fro, almost struggling under the load: the boys study algebra and physiology and Latin and Greek: but what are they ever taught about the system of Government under which they must live, the laws which they must obey, the general plan by which the State acts upon the citizen and the citizen controls the State?
Would it not be practicable and beneficial to teach every boy and girl some of the more important facts concerning our laws, concerning our State Government, concerning our National Government? Without partisan prejudice, it seems to me that a text-book might be prepared which would enlighten the average boy of sixteen upon the system under which he must live and work a system which holds sway over his life, his industry, his property, and which, if abused, can destroy his prosperity and take his life.
Yet our schools are turning out graduates by the thousand who cannot answer the simplest questions concerning the nature and operation of the laws of the land.
If Professor Park be right in his conception of the ideal school and I feel that he is he will be rejoiced to learn that the State of Georgia has at least one which comes up to the standard: I refer to the school of Miss Martha Berry, near Rome. Here the boys are not taught from books alone. They have the usual book teaching, but they have also the nature teaching, the self-help teaching which Professor Parks so convincingly advocates. These students of Miss Berry's school do actual, successful farming. Their fields adjoin the play grounds. They play ball close to where they fight grass. They build their own houses: and they "keep the house" after they have built it. In the blacksmith* shop they can make the tools they work with: they not only construct the cow-house but milk the cow. They lay out the ornamental grounds, trim the undergrowth, and cultivate the flowers.
And a cleaner, snugger, more attractive little world than these boys from the mountains of North Georgia have created out there in the woods. I have never seen.
The cottages were built of logs, but such log-houses as those you never saw anywhere else. There is a charm in the variety of design, a charm in the perfect fitting and joining, a charm in the exquisite cleanliness of floors and furnishings. No

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL, LITERARY, ETC.

277

matter how fine may be the house you live in, whenever you see Miss Martha Berry's log cabin you are going to covet the cabin.
What a brave fight this little woman has made in the build ing up of her school! What patience, what tact, what tenacity of purpose, what knowledge of human nature, what boundless sympathy for the ambitious boy of the poverty-cursed mountains! One loves to take off his hat to a woman like this, and to honor her as the courtier honors the queen.
Far better than most queens have deserved it, does this noble sister deserve it. To her devoted efforts thousands of young men will owe that early up-Iift, that priceless "start,"' which is half the battle in the great struggle of life.

Some Aftermath of the Civil War.
STEPHENS. TOOMBS. BEX HILL. THE Ku Kucx KLAX, THE COLQOTT CAMPAIGN- OF 1880. ETC.
(The folio-wing Chapter giving some account of the conditions following the Civil War was written to form the conclusion of Mr. Watson's book "Bethany." For reasons not worth mention, it was omitted. It is now published for the first time, just as the author originally wrote it.)
THE cruel War was over. Southern soldiers, putting trust in fair promises, laid down their arms. Had we been fighting any other antagonist than the Union, we would never have given up so soon. We were not exhausted. We had soldiers enough in the field to have kept up the strife indefinitely.
With such a vast territory as ours, abounding in positions of such enormous natural strength, a guerilla-band warfare could have been waged forever. But our people were divided in opinion as to the necessity for the war; a large percentage of the population felt the strife to be unnatural: they yearned for their old place in the house of our fathers; they believed that brotherly love would come again when the family fight was ended.
This was the feeling and the sentiment which had more to do with conquering the South than all the armies marshalled against her. Had we felt towards Grant ?s soldiers and the Northern people as we had felt toward Cornwallis and Great Britain, we would have continued to struggle in the Sixties, as we did in the Revolutionary War till the land was a desert and its last man in the saddle. But we wanted to be at peace again with our brethren: old associates appealed to us; the old flag, which our fathers had helped to make glorious, was dear to us: we wanted to go back home to our old place in the Union.
This. th!% was the sentiment which, more than all others, made the South grow weary of the war.
Nobody doubted that a sincere, fraternal reconciliation would follow Appomattox. The flag was furled and the musket stacked in that belief. Grant had been magnanimous to Lee's veterans: and when the soldiers of the two armies lowered their guns thev had clasped hands. The individual "Yank" did not hate the individual "Johnnie." They had proved each other's pluck: they knew each other to be brave and kind: thev were readv to be the best of friends'.

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279

Shame forever upon the professional place-hunters who

dangled "the bloody shirt" before the eyes of these brave men

for twenty years after the war, and, for partisan purposes,

'.

kept alive the passion of the Civil War!

But nobody dreamed of that in 1865. "Let us have peace !" said the big-hearted Grant; and he meant it. "You will need your horses to make your crops; take them."
Generous conqueror greatest in that he was considerate and compassionate in the hour of supreme victory!
Yes. Let us have peace. Let us forget the awful past. Let us cure the ghastly wounds of war. Let us beat the swords into ploughshares, and cover the land once more with the splendor of harvests. Let the peaceful hum of industry shame the war bugle into eternal silence.

Who dreamed of the horrors of reconstruction ?

Who dreamed of the deliberate, vindictive crusade against

Southern civilization? What prophet warned us of Loyal

't

Leagues and carpet-bag hosts bearing down upon us to destroy

j

the white man's pride and purity of race and system, to plant

;*

upon its ruins the foulest negro domination ?

'-t

We had understood that all that was required of us was to

[

lay down our arms. That done, our place in the house of our

fathers was again open to us. That done, we were to be

treated as brethren who had erred, but who had repented.

In this spirit, we had understood Abraham Lincoln to speak

at Hampton Roads. In this spirit, we had understood Grant

to speak at Appomattox. We never dreamed that when the

fc i

sword of the brave, generous Northern soldier was sheathed,

j'i

and we were disarmed, that the vindictive and cowardly and

utterly selfish politician would be permitted to wreak his

vengeance upon us with legislative pen.

Had that ghastly program of Thad Stevens and Charles

Summer been suspected, had it flashed through the minds of

lj f

Southern leaders that Appomattox was to be followed by the

|.:

most rancorous and persistent efforts to debase, degrade and

4^

destroy everything which the white people of the South held

sacred, no power on earth would ever had lowered the flag of

the Confederacy while a brigade could be mustered to defend

it. If Lee had proven too much of a gentleman-soldier, too

iijjj,

much of a West-Pointer, to organize guerilla war throughout

;||

the mountain fastnesses and the swamps of the South, he

'*-

would have been discarded, and the despair of the South

would have found its leaders in such men as X. B. Forrest.

Rather than have ingloriously permitted the coming of the

day when whites were to be disarmed and negroes armed,

fir-i

whites disfranchised and negroes vested with the ballot, the

{!|j

doors of office closed to the representative whites of the South

ijf'

ft:
n fjf.

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SKETCHES: HISTORICAL. LITERARY, ETC.

and opened to the most ignorant negroes, a war of extermina tion would have been fought, in comparison with which the
heroic struggle of the South African Eepublics against Great Britain would have been child's play.
In spite of all that England could do against those weak republics they utterly refused every offer of peace which did not include the stipulation that the Boers themselves should deal with the blacks. The awful experience of the Southern States, whose leaders had fatally neglected that precaution, had made its impression throughout the world; and the men, the boys, the women, and even the girls of the South African Republic were found fighting in the ranks, determined to die
with guns in their hands, rather than submit to the horrible treatment the Xorth inflicted upon the South after Lee's sur render.
Great God! What Southern man or woman can forget it? General Grant did not do it. The brave soldiers who fought us did not do it. Xo! The monstrous crime of putting black heels upon white necks was the deed of cowardly politicians
who had never smelt gun-powder. They had ridden into office upon the wave of sectional hatred, they devised the infamous Reconstruction policy to keep alive that hate and their own supremacy.
Beaten in the open field: misled into a surrender of their cause: mocked, outlawed, pillaged, and nigger-ruled, what was the white man of the South to do? Should partisan hatred be allowed to reverse the order of nature? Should the blacks dominate the Southern people, debauching the South to the level of Hayti and San Domingo? Should the white men of the Southern States be the sole exception to the law of nature that the superior race shall dominate its inferior?
Against such an idea every instinct of Anglo-Saxon man-
hocrl revolted. It never had been so. It should not ever be so. I)e:ith were better than such unbearable degradation. We
luid been duped, betrayed, disarmed by fair promises but we were not remediless.
Almost within the compass of a night, an invisible empire sprang to life: and the very best minds and hearts of the South were its sworn subjects.
The order of the White Camelia. and the Ku Klux Klan sprang, full-armed and desperately determined, into the crisis; and against these secret societies negro domination and carpet bag dictation went down, never to rise again.
General Forrest did the South immense service during the war. but his chief glory is that when the Knightly Lee had disbanded the troops, tie reorganized them in a secret league against which the Xorth was utterly powerless.

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL, LITERARY, ETC.

281

John B. Gordon was a magnificent soldier in the field, and

his star shone with unceasing lustre to the very last, but he

was even mere effective after Appomattox when he was direct

ing the iei?tless energies of the Klans which had sworn to

redeem Georgia, or die!

Toombs had been forceful in the Senate, valiant in the field,

but he was not less a power when, through his son-in-law,

(Gen. DuBose) he was an active counsellor of the Ku Klux Klan.

Hampton of South Carolina was great at Manassas. when,

with blood blinding his eyes, he refused to obey Beauregard's

order to retreat, sending back the answer, "We did not come

here to retreat; :' but the noblest service he ever rendered the

Southern people was when he led the fight to re-instate white

people in the control of their own land.

,

And the work of such soldiers as these was splendidly sup

plemented by the fiery eloquence of tongue and pen of Ben

Hill.

.

At last, the fearful ordeal was ended. At last, the South

.

shook off alien rule and negro domination.

^

And the odds against which she struggled, and the complete-

f

ness with which she triumphed, constitute the most

j

resplendently glorious chapter in her history.

The danger passed. Negroes ceased to vote. The white man

':

had it all his own way. Democracy and the Solid South were

fixed facts. Republican delegates from Southern States could

f !<

dictate the choice of Presidential candidates in national con-

t! |

ventions but could never give them a vote in the electoral

'*

colleges. A queer situation, for which no remedy has been

found; a gruesome legacy of war. True, these Republican

,;

delegations from the South are regularly bought; but that is

not a remedy. Perhaps it is an aggravation of the disease.

Upon the other hand, the Democratic Party at the South

;

holds its own in local matters by surrendering its body and

i*

its soul to the Northern wing of the party. No matter who is

.(

nominated, no matter what is the platform, the South must

' ';

vote the Democratic ticket for fear of the negro.

'>.

Out of this anomalous state of things has grown as corrupt

a political situation as the world ever knew.

Once, and once only, in the long history of Rome the

imperial purple was put up at public auction, and sold to the

.

highest bidder. The very Pretorians who did this thing grew

.,

ashamed of the act: and the wretched Julianus had to wipe off

,( t

the disgrace with his blood. With us, the process of barter

:'

and sale occurs regularly every four years; and we have passed

t<

the point where we are ashamed. It has become a custom, and,

like all customs, has achieved respectability. Where royal

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SKETCHES: HISTORICAL, LITERARS-, ETC.

concubinage is the practice, royal bastards are the peers of 't"hSeocrieeatylm.": and the strumpets of the kings set fashions for
The Solid South presenting an unbroken front in national politics, found causes of difference, locally, in the distribution of the spoils. Feuds, factions, bitter antagonisms arose. As a balance of power, the negro was called in to decide the contest. By -whom ? By Southern Democrats. Thus in their greed for office, the Democrats opened up a new chapter in Southern politics a chapter which my friend Dr. Thomas Dixon seems to have skipped.
Let us tell the truth and shame the devil! It was the South ern Democrat who lugged the negro back into politics from which the Ku Klux Klan had driven him. So far as the State of Georgia is concerned, this momentous event occurred in 1880. when the mischief-making two-thirds rule split the Democratic Convention: and two Democratic candidates were running for the governorship. In this campaign followers of one of the candidates declared over and over again that no race had ever, in the same space of time, made such wonderful progress in civilization as the negro race had done since the Civil War a ludicrous!}- false statement which did enormous harm. The other candidate had taken the position that the whites ought to rule, and that negro suffrage was a failure. He was overwhelmingly beaten at the polls, for all the blacks voted against him.
Georgia, by her "White Primary." and other Southern States by Constitutional amendments have made strenuous endeavors to put the negro back where the Ku Klux Klan left him: but the success of the effort is far from complete.
It was a bad day for the whites of the South when her office-hungry politicians took the sacred nigger by the hand and led him. with flattering words, back to the polls to decide the issue of the campaign.
It was a bad day for the South when this same greedy political element permitted the negro leaders to play one faction of the whites against the other thus securing from Southern Democrats what Northern Republicans could never have given. In this manner, they again entered the doors of office: in this manner, they have educated themselves at our expense: in this manner, they again armed themselves into military companies: in this manner, they secured political recognition.

There was a great gathering of politicians in Atlanta. The Kimball "House corridors and rotunda were thronged. Up and down the marble stirway, hurried feet came and 'went.

I'1*

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL, LITERARY, ETC.

283

Alec. Stephens was going to run for Governor. He had

been sent back to Congress, after the war, and had been

industrious and effective in departments; but his feeble con

dition rendered him powerless on the floor of the House. A

pale, pathetic figure, propped in his roller-chair, he had been

treated with indulgence so long as he was obstructing nobody,

but the moment he tried to stop the progress of the majority

on the then famous Potter Resolution, he was howled down.

It suited the Georgia politicians, for certain reasons, to run '

the old statesman for Governor in 1882, and he was now at the

Kimball House, in one of the large parlors on the second floor,

receiving a constant stream of visitors.

He had written a constitutional history of the "War Between

the States," which earned him nearly fifty thousand dollars;

and he had spent the money educating young men. and in

running a daily newspaper in the vain effort to teach latter-

day Democrats what Jeffersonian Democracy was. The old

'

statesman was wan as a ghost; his pallid, shrivelled face

.

spotted with unwholesome dark splotches. But his expression

,' u

was beautifully benevolent, and his eyes were radiant with

,*

the tenderness of a noble heart.

'

After a long career of labor and opportunity, he was poor.

j

He owned a house and lot in a country town; that was all.

r!

Old Harry, his body-servant owned a house and lot beside his

jj

former master's; and it was believed that the negro was the

| j;

richer of the two.

"f |.

Grand old Statesman! His mind had been a mountain-

peak in loftiness; his spotless purity of character tipped it

!

with snow.

'.'

Not far from the Kimball House, at his lovely home on

Peachtree Street, languished the great Ben Hill, a cancer

eating his life away.

He had been sent to Congress, had bounded into national

fame as a debater, had measured strength with Carpenter and

Conkling and Blaihe. He had joined issue with the Plumed

Knight on the question of the Anderspnville horrors, and

.

thrilled the South with the pride of his triumph.

Not until he had taken his seat in Congress had any South-

^

ern representative dared to "talk back." Ben Hill did it, and

|j;

did it so grandly that a new life entered into Southern politics.

But his eloquent tongue was stilled at last. Never again

would he plead the cause of his people at the bar of public

opinion; or rebuke in National councils the partisans who

would keep burning forever the fires of sectional hate. I was

present and heard Mr. Stephens dictate the last message that

ever passed between himself and his ancient foe. The shadow

of death, the white face of the dying orator, was a flag of

I'

284

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL. LITERARY, ETC.

truce: and in the late hour of the evening of life these two mastermen of the South were forgetting the bitter animosities of the past.
General Toonibs was on hand. He had made his escape to Europe after the war. and had remained abroad several years. He had returned at length, and had resumed the practice of law making enormous fees. He had led an attack on the Railroads which were dodging their taxes, and had fought the cases through to the highest courts succeeding all along the line. He had put a fee of forty-five thousand dollars into his own pocket, and a yearly revenue of about two hundred thousand dollars into the State's coffers.
He had sued the Treasurer of Georgia, a life-long Demo crat, and had recovered, in spite of Ben Hill, a large sum to the State: for the officer had negligently kept his accounts and paid State obligations twice.
At the instance of Toombs. a State Constitutional Con vention had been called, to pay the expenses of which he had advanced, as a loan, twenty-five thousand dollars. He had dominated it: and had so written the law that it seemed to the people that the public revenues would be forever safe, and Railroad monopoly and extortion made impossible. It was not his fault that the law. in both instances, has been thrust a*idp. and that money is constantly being taken, illegally, out of the treasury, while the Railway Combination bosses the State and its absurd Railroad Commission.
If there be anything on earth more farcical than a State Commission to control the railway corporations, it is the National Commission salaried and sworn to do the same thing.
A disappointed man. Toombs drank heavily, was often drunk: and his habit was to denounce pretty much everything and everybody.
Politically, he no longer counted for anything. But he was rich, stood at the head of the bar. was more or less feared because of his terrible tongue, and held in a respect which was reminiscent of his past glory and his tried loyalty to the South.
Wherever Toombs passed, curious eyes would follow him; wherever he stopped a group would gather to hear him talk. Xobody pinned faith to what he said: nobody altered his course a jot because of any opinion he expressed, but every body delighted to see him and to hear him talk. It was like going to see Vesuvius in eruption.
I saw General Toombs rise slowly and heavily from one ol the tables in the dining room, and come into the corridor lead ing to the elevator. He leaned upon a gold-headed cane, and

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL, LITERARY, ETC.

285

'

walked with a stoop. Two country delegates, coming from

Mr. Stephens' room, recognized the General; and over their

rough faces spread an expression of joy and pride. One of

them cried to the other:

"See here, Sam! this is Toombs old Toombs!" using the

word old as a term of endearment.

Toombs had drunk just enough wine to be quarrelsome.

The lion was in no mood to be fondled. To the confusion of

the honest country men, who stood before him bowing and

smiling, he roared:

"Don't call me old, sir! By God, Sir. It's an offensive

term! Get out of my way !" And with a flourish of his cane,

he strode majestically to the elevator.

Late that evening he was down in the bar-room, back of the

clerk's desk. He had had his after-dinner nap; the fumes of

the wine no longer dulled his brain or ruffled his temper. He

was in high good humor, was talking in a rapid, high voice,

and was surroun'derl by a group of eager listeners.

His eyes were as bright as ever, his play of wit and invective

i.

as keen, the flexibility of his lips and the animation of his man-

4

ner as great. His hair was iron-gray, abundant, disordered,

like the mane of a lion, but as becoming to him as in his prime.

Decidedly, he was the most leonine old man I ever beheld. He

was a ruin, but majestic and impressive. No matter how much

you might revolt in judgment at what he said, he carried you

,

with him fpr the moment. There was a power in him which

'j

made him royal on the curbstone, or in the bar-room, just as

i

it had done in court-house and legislative hall.

As I drew near the noisy group where the" old General was

holding forth, in his wildest way, I caught the words:

'

"Well, boys, Henry Ward Beecher almost broke his heart

over the morals of the South, and now, by God! he has taken

Theodore Tilton's wife away from him!"

;

Toombs laughed boisterously, and there was a regular roar

'

all around. "Poor .Tilton!" exclaimed one.

,';;,

"Poor hell!" retorted the General. "I've got no more pity

:;i !

for Tilton than I have for Beecher. Tilton was an Abolitionist

lecturer, too, and was just as fanatical about the South as

Beecher was. Those two humbugs worked in harness together

to bring on the Civil War, and now at this late day the preacher

has to debauch his friend's wife. Xice fellows to go crusading

on morals! Perhaps they did it on the idea that they were

!

certain of their sins and damned doubtful of their salvation!"

;I

Shouts of loud laughter of course.

"I wonder if old Thad Stevens lives with that nigger wife

,-

of his yet?" continued Toombs.

"You know there are two good reasons why he wants revenge

2Sfi

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL. LITERARY, ETC.

on the South. One is that Gen. P. M. B. Young's cavalry destroyed his. foundry at Gettysburg: and the other is, that
he loves his negro concubine better than he ever loved a white woman."
Another volley of "Haw. Haw. Haws."
The General rattled on. "Yes. and I see that Cash Clay (Cassius M. Clay) of Kentucky has shot a nigger! By God! I knew he would!": It seemed to tickle Toombs immensely that tins noted Abolitionist and professional champion of the
negro race had wound up by having to shoot one of his pets. "By God'. I wish that every d d Yankee who is eternally
fgonizing over the niggers could be made to wear one of them a-straddle of his nose."
This is not exactly what Toombs said, but conveys his idea
as well as can be done in print. His actual wish and words were shockingly coarse and irresistibly funny.
Toombs: exclamation was received with the usual burst of laughter.
The General was a privileged character in these days, and could say thing? which no other man could have uttered. It was a constant thing for him to denounce the Democratic politicians who were controlling the South. He ridiculed their management and despised their cowardice. They had gone to Louisville. Kentucky, and adopted a national platform in which they declared that the Democrats of the South adored the 14th and loth Amendments in common with the other portions of the Constitution.
For this astounding mendacity. Toombs had no language to fullv express his indignation and contempt.
"The cl rl fools! Do they expect to deceive the North by any such lies as that? Do they expect to win respect either at home or abroad by base truckling and shameless falsehood? "What right have the Democratic bosses to humiliate the South ern people by wallowing in the mud like that?"
He likewise denounced the Democratic Party for supporting
Horace Greeley for the Presidency. He regarded this as a pusillanimous surrender of principle. Greeley at the session of the Southern States had first said, as General Winfield Scott had clone. "Let the erring sisters depart in Peace:" but when the wind set the other way Greeley had shifted his sails and become vindictively antagonistic to the South.
True, he had signed Jeff Davis' bond, but that act alone could not reverse the i*ecord of his whole career.
To goad him on. one of the young men said to Toombs:
"General. I believe you hate the North as much as ever." ' Hate it? Of course I hate it. Why shouldn't I? Am I more or less than human? Haven't they given me cause

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL, LITERARY, ETC.

287

enough ? Didn't they drench my country with blood and sweep it with fire? Haven't they deprived me of the rights of a free

man ? Haven't they injected millions of black savages into the

body politic for the sole purpose of blotting out our civiliza-

tion ? Did any other white people, since God made the world, ever try to set the black race over the white? Haven't they so

organized a hell in the South that no white woman dares to venture beyond white protection, for fear some lustful brute

will make her his prey? Hate the North? Yes, by God! I do

hate it not the good men and the true who can be found there,

as elsewhere, but the dominant party which makes cruelty to

the South part of their political capital men who in the

fanaticism of love for the nigger and hatred for us would

mongrelize our race and pollute our civilization."

A mild-looking traveller, evidently a Northern man,

attracted by the loud talking and the excited group, drew near and listened.

As Toombs paused to take another drink, this Northern gentleman said:

"General Toombs. I was one of those who heard your lecture

on slavery in Tremont Temple in 1854. Let me ask you if you

do not believe that education will remove all trouble between

the whites and blacks in the South ?"

Toombs glared at his questioner a moment, as though half

inclined to cut him short with some insulting thrust, but the

^

man's attitude and expression was so respectful and earnest,

;fj

that Toombs' better nature prevailed, and his reply was:

&>

"No. sir. I do not. Education never changes character.

j;

Notions and individuals have certain characteristics which are

inborn, ineradicable. Education cannot reach and alter these.

It cannot take away traits of character from nations or indi

viduals, nor can it give them. God makes character. school-

teachers can only train what is already there."

"But." persisted the Northern man. "the Frenchman, the

German, the Anglo-Saxon, the Celt are no longer the savages

they used to be. Education has civilized them." "In part, yes." answered Toombs. "But in character the

Frenchman is today what he was when a savage. lustful,

brave, fickle, enthusiastic, emotional. Among the German tribes women always held a high, sacred place: and a sense of

iprlividual freedom and independence was predominant. Those

characteristics of the savage state are their .characteristics

todav. Education has refined them, but has not changed them.

So the Celt. The Irishman and the Scotch-Highlander of

today is precisely what he was in race characteristics, when he

was a bare-legged savage. You can't educate the fun and the

courage out of the Irisman. You can't educate the seriousness

288

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL. LITERARY. ETC.

and courage out of the Highlander. Now take the negro. In his native home he had no morals. These naked savages lived promiscuously, and indulged their passions as openly as goats. They were brought over here and we put clothes on them. We compelled them to lives of outward decency. But they have no real morality." The remainder of the General's story is unprintable.
The look of mingled amazement and disgust which spread over the Northern man's face at this brutally frank statement
was a sight to see. Without another word, he turned and walked off. followed by shouts of laughter from the young men who "surrounded Toombs.
"General, what's going to be the end of this negro problem?"
asked one of the bystanders. Toombs was silent, reluctant to speak. a most uncomomn
thing with him. At length he spoke very earnestly and impressively:
"Unless all human experience and foresight is vain, there are only two possible solutions: either the negro must be accepted as a social and political equal, or he must be kept in subjection by some form of coercion. To give him education, and at the same time condemn him to political and social inferiority, is impossible without a fight. Let the South
get ready for one of two things, negro equality, or the forcible holding down of the negro. Pitiful little politicians dickering
for office, may suggest temporary expedients to allay the
trouble, but to the statesman it is clear that one or the other of these two alternatives must come."
"Then you oppose the education of the negro. General?" "Oh. I make no objection to his being taught to read and write, but as a rule when you do more for the negro you have turned loose upon society a social incendiary, agitator and
revolutionist. He will never contentedly sink back to his place as a negro, but will ever afterwards crave a higher position."
"You hate the negro race. General?" ' By no means, sir." he promptly answered. "As long as a negro keeps his place I like him well enough. There are some good negroes loyal, honest, true to death but they are few. As a race, they are vastly inferior to whites, and deserve pity. This pity I am willing to extend to them as long as they remain negroes, but the moment a nigger tries
to be a white man. I hate him like hell." "General, do you ever expect to take the oath of allegiance
to the Government?" some one asked. "Xo. bv God. I will live and die an unreconstructed rebel!"
"But after all. General." asked a voice in the crowd, "was it
not better that we got whipped in the war?"

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL, LITERARY, ETC.

280

"Whipped ? We never got whipped. We wore ourselves out whipping them! Gentlemen, let me tell you Bob Lee was too soft-hearted, too much of a gentleman, to be a successful soldier. Had he been as ruthless as Frederick the Great. Napo leon, or Wellington, we would have won the fight during the first two years. Think of Lee in Maryland and Pennsylvania putting the fence rails back in the fences, and forbidding his famished soldiers to forage! When did the North really begin to make headway against us? It was when she put gentle manly, squeamish commanders aside, and selected ruthless generals like Grant and Sherman. Then we caught it!
McClellan and Burnside and Meade they never would
have conquered the South. It required such a man as Grant who didn't care a damn how many of his men got slaughtered,
provided he could win; Sheridan, who got up out of the bed
and galloped to Winchester to rally his men to victory, and who left the Shenandoah Valley a smoking blood-soaked desert; Sherman, who said 'war is hell and you can't refine it,'
and who was the only general of modern times to issue orders to kill non-combatants and burn undefended cities. Lee and Stuart and Johnson and Beauregard made war like gentlemen and got thrashed.
"Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan made war like soldiers, and won. After all war is hell, and the squeamish man had better stay out of it."
Recurring then to the original query, Toombs continued: "No, I am not glad Lee surrendered. We ought to have won our independence. The Southern States should form an empire of itself. So ought New England. So ought the North.
So ought the West. The republic is too big. Legislation fails when applied to so wide a territory. The welfare of the four great sections is too antagonistic. Gross injustice to some one part of the country, or class of the people, is unavoidable in so huge a realm. From the foundation of the Government agriculture has been pillaged to build up manufactures. Public
^"nds have been diverted bv the billion to embellish the North.
The wealthy classes really pay no Federal tax. The corpora tions pay none. National legislation is bought and sold. Visional finance is given over to the exploitation of the bank ing fraternity. If ever the common people of the land can be made to understand how they are robbed under the forms of leffislation if ever our financial and tariff systems are so exposed that their wickedness is clearly seen, there will be a
revolution which will shake the world. "But I am an old man. Mv day is passed. The people seem
to have lost heart. The South is ruled by as cowardly and venal a lot of place-hunting politicians as ever lived. Like

290

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL. LITERARY, ETC.

putrid bodies in the stream, they rise as they rot. They would sell their souls for office. They" lick the feet of Tammany corruptionists. and grovel in the dust before Northern money. But Southern pride and principle will one day assert them selves again. Our people will not always submit to this damnable state of affairs. The issues will be rejoined some day and the South will be better prepared.
"Unless the North lets us alone, ceases to oppose us with unjust legislation, quits this everlasting business of trying to force us to accept the nigger as an equal fate has no day more sure to come than another colossal Civil War in which the East and North will be crushed by the South and West."
"But General.'' said one of the crowd, "Mr. Stephens coun sels peace."
"I don't care a damn if he does!'' blurted Toombs. "TTenrv Grady cries peace too. and so does Jack Gordon and Ben Hill and Lushe Lamar. What do I care for the talk of politicians and opportunists? They may cry 'Ppace!' till the heavens fall, but there will not be peace till good-will between sections is restored: and good will cannot be restored by mere chin music and sweet air. Let them give us justice, let them quit bothering our domestic affairs, let them get over their hallucination that the nigger is a white gentleman accidentally clothed in a black skin. Then, the Union may again be one of love and patriotism. At present, it is one of force, and no brave people can long be held down by force. "Boys excuse me I've got to go and send a telegram to General Grant!" In his majestic way Toombs stalked over to the desk of the telegraph operator, and penned a despatch. The operator looked pretty wild about the eyes as he scanned the words to figure the cost; and well he might for the tele gram read: "General U. S. Grant.
"San Francisco. "You fought for your country and won. I fought for mine
and lost. Death to the Union! "R. TOOMBS."
This dispatch was handed to General Grant during the
festivities which celebrated his return home from his voyage
around the world. He read it. smiled slightly and said never a word. It was the despairing cry of the baffled minority, unheeded then and now by a militant, irresistible, aggressive
majority. Being by nature a non-combatant, ready to crawl through
a barbed wire fence at any time to avoid strife of any kind,
I was greatly disturbed in my mind by Toombs' talk. Finding

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL, LITERARY. ETC.

2.91

Mr. Stephens almost alone in his room, I told him what the old

General had said, and asked him what he thought of it. He

smiled, and pushed his roller chair back and forth as he

answered: "Oh. well. Toombs talks sometimes just to hear

himself talk. He loves to create a sensation and arouse anta

gonism. Were there any Northern travellers down there?*'

I answered that there were; and repeated what Toombs had

said.

'

Mr. Stephens' eyes danced with merriment; he said, "Toombj

is never so wild as when he knows some Northern man is

listening to what he says. He delights in sticking pins in

them."

"Then yon don't fear another war between the sections?''

I asked. "Xo, I do not. Xorth and South are being knit

together more inseparably every day by the imperishable

bonds of self-interest. Commerce, banks, manufactures, mines,

foundries, railroads every new investment of Northern money

in Southern fields is an additional rivet in the clamps which

holds the two sections together. No; there will never be

another secession or war between the sections!"

'But the negro?" I ventured to ask.

"It is a question which will settle itself." he answered.

"The North will grow cold after a while, and will see things

as they are. They will learn to know the negro. Blacks will

go North and whites will come South until the facts will be

clear to all. Northern intelligence will realize that the negro

is not a white man with a black skin. The Civil War was to a

great extent the result of misunderstanding. Such a calamity

will not occur again. Noble men and women throughout the

North will gradually waken to the truth, and the fashion of

idealizing the negro will pass away."

"Then there is no reason to fear social equality?"

"None whatever. There never was such a thing as social

equality, even among the whites. There will always be negroes

who will prove themselves to be vastly superior to the masses

of their race. Such exceptions may be treated with something

of the consideration which is the due of the average white.man.

In like manner, there were exceptional Indians who used to be

treated as social equals by the whites, but the mass of the

Indian race were never admitted to anything like social

equality. So as to the Chinese.

';rrhe North understands the race prejudice against the

Indians for they shared it. She understands a Californian's

distate for the Chinaman. In God's own time she will under

stand the Southern prejudice against the negro. Then she will

cease to interfere. The North has never understood the negro,

Jl--Sketches

292

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL, LITERARY", ETC.

nor the negro question. In the days of slavery she was deceived about conditions here, and she is being deceived now.
"But I know enough about racial history to believe that blood will always be thicker than water, and that the white men of the North can never be held to any policy whose inten tion is to degrade the whites in the interest of the blacks. It would be too horribbly cruel and unnatural.
"San Domingo. Hayti. Liberia, Africa from all these will
come object lessons and prophetic warnings, which will rouse the Xorth to the perils of those who indulge in illusions about the negro.
"When it has sunk deep in the minds of the Northern people that nothing keeps the Southern negro from relapsing into barbarism save the example, the discipline, and the driving-
power of the whites, they will feel toward the weak, super sdtoit.'i7ous, lustful, inflammable, dangerous creature just as we
I rose to say "Good night." but the aged statesman held me a moment by the hand as was his habit with young people whom he liked. "There was one thing. Mr. Horton, which
Toombs said that I endorse." I was all attention. "If ever there is another war in this republic it will not be
sectional, but social. There is grave danger of bloody strife
between classes the too rich and the too poor, the illegally plundered and the lawless plunderers. If ever the masses of the people can be made to understand our system of classlegislation, taxes and finance, there will be trenchant reform
or frightful revolution." As he uttered these words, in his most earnest manner, the
old man's eyes blazed with their ancient lustre, and his withered right hand smote its fellow, as it had done in the days when he warned his people not to go out of the Union.

Teasing a Single-Taxer
THE following letter, given in full, is published from a sense of fairness to our friends, the Single-Taxers:
Litchfield, 111. Hon. Thos. E. Watson, Thomson, Georgia.
Dear Sir: Referring to your single-tax articles: About one hundred years ago a. young Scotchman named Ersklne located in St. Louis, Mo. He became owner of a lot 50x147 feet in dimensions, at the northeast corner of Eighth and Olive streets, in the brush at that time, for which he paid $500. He paid the taxes on it for a few years until somebody wanted It when he leased it for twentyfive years at so much a year ground rent binding tne lessee to make certain improvements, to be the property of the owner of the land at the expiration of the lease, tne lessees meantime to pay all taxes of whatever sort. At the expiration of the twenty-five years he leased it again, binding the lessee to tear down the old improve ments and make new ones costing much more, to pay all taxes as before and to pay a big advance on the ground rent. Thus he and his heirs continued to do until the last twenty-five year lease expired January 1, 1895. Then the estate leased it again for ninetynine years for $20,000 a year, ground rent and improvements, taxes to follow as in previous leases; and at present one of the biggest Bkyscripers in the city occupies the lot. Understand, since the date of the first twenty-five year lease the owners of this lot have never paid any taxes or improvements and the growth of the city has made the enormous increase in the value of this 50x147 feet of ground, until, for the ninety-nine years from 1895, the heirs of this estate have an income of $20,000 a year without turning a hand for it. The city as a whole created this $20,000 a year in the land value of this lot and the city ought to have it.
If not, why not? What have the heirs of this estate done to entitle them to $20,000 a year for the next ninety years?
The writer of the foregoing doubtless believed he 'had dealt me a "sock dolager." His illustration is merely the well-worn "Astor estate argument" carried down to St. Louis, and given a change in name.
To the superficial mind, it carries overwhelming conviction. But it will not bear analysis. The train of reasoning which would confiscate the Astor title in New York and the Erskine title in St. Louis would explode pretty nearly every vested interest on earth.
At the time Astor bought in New York, and Erskine bought in St. Louis, every other human being had the same oppor tunity. They came into new communities and "staked out their claims." complying with the laws which the community hud nia^e.
They took their chances on the investment. It happened

294

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL. LITERARY. ETC.

that their judgment was vindicated by events. It might have
happened otherwise. In thousands of cases it has happened otherwise. Some men just naturally have more sense than others more foresight, more pluck, more strength of purpose,
more skill in knowing when and how to hit. Astor struck it
right, but how many thousands of men have put their money into town property believing the town would become a city
v. hen in fact the town couldn't even hold its own as a town ?
Yvii will find dismal remains of busted "boom towns'' all over
the Union, to say nothing of those which once lived but which are now classed as "dead." Shall Society make good the losses of those men who bet on the wrong town ?
How absurd such a proposition would be! Yet Erskine and Astor did no more than put their stake on the wnining town.
If your logic confiscates the winnings, why shouldn?t it make good the losses ?
Xo law compelled a hundred thousand people to go to New York, or St. Louis, to live after the first hundred thousand had gone there. Xo law compels people to pack themselves into the big cities. Humanity would be better off if they did
not do so. "The world would be cleaner, happier, and better if population would distribute itself more evenly. The unuttera ble horror of life in the great cities would not then stagger
one's faith in the progress of civilization. But the crowding does occur, nevertheless, and it does not
seem to me that the early settler, who bought when land Avas cheap, should be stripped of his property simply because the
li-ttle town grew to be a large city. If I find it to my interest to sell out my holdings in the town
of Thomson and to rent a house from the Erskine estate in St. Louis. I do so with my eyes open. Xobody compels me to
do it. If. as a part of the rent. I also pay Erskine's taxes to the .State and city, that's my lookout. Xo law compels me to do it. And I don't do it unless I find it to my interest to do it.
The same conditions which have added to the value of the Astor and Erskine land have constituted those attractions
which would have induced me to sell out in Thomson and go to XW York or St. Louis. These cities must possess certain advantages, real or imaginary, over the average town, and those advantages whatever they are make up the sum total
of the inducements which lead several million people to crowd together, as they do on Manhattan Island and its immediate vicinity.
Xo merchant in a small town has the opportunities which the large city gives. Will you confiscate the profits of the X'ew York merchant? If not. why not? He. also, reaps his
gains from the fact that so many people live so close together.

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL, LITERARY, ETC.

295

The newspaper publisher has greater opportunities in a city
like Xew York than in a town like Thomson. Will you con fiscate the newspapers of Mr. Hearst because they profit by the fact that so many people bunch themselves together? If not, why not?
Wonderful as is the genius of Mr. Hearst and of his chief
editor, Mr. Brisbane, they could not make a great deal of
money out of two daily newspapei-s published in Thomson, Georgia.
My town is a great town, but less than two thousand people have as yet discovered the fact. The other benighted millions of our fellow-citizens may catch on. a hundred years from now. and then my modest patrimony in Thomson will call forth
communistic howls. At present I do the howling when I look at the bill for taxes.
Many a time in the history of New York the original Astors may have been sorely tempted to sell out and invest elsewhere. Hundreds of owners, who had just as good a thing as Astor
had. did lose confidence, sell out and invest elsewhere. Astor held on: and now. after the lapse of generations, comes the
brilliant William R. Hearst and the brilliant Arthur Bris bane, and they gloriously, beneficently reap the advantage of the mere physical facts in the case namely, that Xew York and its adjacent towns supply millions of readers to the morn-
ing and evening newspapers. The Single-Taxers and Socialists take a toe-hold upon the
argument that "Astors revenue is increased by the bare increase of population: the city made itself big: therefore the city, and not Astor. should have the increase in land value."
Evidently, this reasoning is superb, but I have my doubts as to whether Mr. Hearst would like to see the muzzle of such
a gun pointed his way. Astor's genius was manifest in the selection of his location
and in his stubborn holding on. as that of Horace Greeley. Pulitzer, and Hearst in the conduct of their newspapers, but
Greeley, Pulitzer and Hearst profited by the same physical conditions that increased the Astor estate. In each case, the newspaper publisher exploited a great city which he had had nothing to do with making great. In each case the newspaper
profited by the bigness of the city, just as Astor did. Again we musf remember that mere numbers do not make
a city great. The right kind of men must be in the lead. Three million Digger Indians dumped into another Manhattan Island, wouldn't make another Xew York. Supplant the
present inhabitants of Xew York with an equal number of blacks from the Congo Free State, and what' do you guess

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SKETCHES: HISTORICAL. LITERART. ETC.

would be the effect upon the value of the Astor estate and the Hearst newspapers?
In the up-building of great cities, you may be sure that great men were enlisted. The men who pioneered New York, Chicago. Boston. Galveston. San Francisco. St. Louis, New Orleans. Philadelphia and the others were in many respects the equals of the men who built our Republic. If you will read the volumes called "The Old Merchants of New York." you will understand what I mean.
My point is that quality rather than quantity makes the
great city. New York is not great because of the hordes of the slums: but in spite of them.
Now. to confiscate that which the great men create, and dump it. practically, into the common pot. where all are equally entitled to an equal share of the pot-liquor, does not seem just.
The equity of the case is met. not by confiscation, but by taxing each estate pro rata. compelling each citizen to con tribute to the support of the government in accordance with his wealth.

A man. usually a tenderfoot, stumbles upon a gold mine, or a diamond field.
Is it his? If he complies with the regulations made for such cases, it is his.
By what right ? By that which we used when we shot the Indians away from their homes. The right of discovery.
Nature made the gold and the diamonds, but Nature hid them: consequently we give them to the fortunate finder.
But does it occur to you. Mr. Single-Taxer. that the gold and the diamonds would not be worth picking up in the road if it were not for the very same general condition of things which put value into the Astor estate?
The value of the gold and the diamonds depends upon the standards of our civilization.
They can hardly be said to have intrinsic value at all. In no sense of the word are diamonds necessary to the human race, as wheat and corn and cotton are.
The finder of the gold and the diamonds adds nothing to their value.
He reaps the benefit of what the human race has been doing for thousands of years. He gets his fortune out of conditions which he did not help to make. He deserves no credit what ever for the system of things which prevails and which gives immense value to gold and diamonds. Yet even the single-

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL, LITERARY, ETC.

297

taxer will not dispute his right to reap the benefits of the sys tem into which he came by birth.
In Voltaire's famous book, "Candide," the hero's adventures carry him into a South American State, peopled by Indians, where gold is so plentiful that the natives value it no more than they value common mud. They laughingly tell Candide that he can have as much of it as he wants. Naturally he wants all he can carry away, and he proceeds to load up. In a most diverting manner Voltaire relates how Candide lost most of his treasure on his way home to France. He manages to hold on to enough, however, to make him rich in France.
The gold, in South America, had no value! In France, a small amount was wealth.
Why?
Because of Civilization, its laws, tastes, customs, standards. Candide, being a Frenchman, got the benefit of the French system as a birth-right. Of course, he inherited the dis advantages along with the advantages! just as we do in our Republic. Take another illustration! A fisherman finds a pearl, either by design or accident. In either event, the Single-Taxer does not combat the proposition that the pearl belongs to the fisherman. The pearl was under neath the water, doing no good to anyone. Intrinsically it had no value. It was a mere pebble amidst millions of pebbles. Even when it was found to be different from the other pebbles, in color, etc., it yet remained intrinsically useless. The fisher man could not eat it when hungry, drink it when thirsty, clothe himself with it when naked", or warm himself by it when cold. On the basis of Nature's arrangements, the pearl was worth less to the fisherman than a peck of corn. But the finding of the pearl raised the fisherman to riches. The peculiar kind of pebble which he found turned out to be worth thousands of dollars. Why? Because the laws of Fashion, the cravings of Taste and Pride made the market for the pearl, and this market for the pearl, which he had had nothing to do with making, brought the fisherman wealth. All the fashionable world made the market for the pearl: according to Single-Tax logic the fashionable world should have thrown the fisherman down and taken the pearl away from him.

All of us are familiar with the story of the Florida Indian queen who swapped a long string of large pearls to De Soto for a few bits of bright colored velvet. Under the standards

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of barbarism, the pearls had no greater value to the queen than the bits of velvet: under the standards of civilization the
pearls were worth a king's ransom to De Soto: both the queen and the Spaniard were inheritors of fixed conditions.
In many other ways. I could illustrate the truth of the
statement that the argument against the Erskine title is an argument that undermines almost everything. Born to this European system of things, we inherit from all the great men of the past: we are the legatees of their struggles, their suffer ings, their aspirations, their victories. Every boy that comes
out of our schools, equipped for his life-battle, wears armor which was hundreds of years in forging, gets the benefit of conceptions, suggestions, plans and experiments which reach
back to Alfred the Great. The boy gave no hand to the build ing of the system. He gets the benefit of what was done by others, long before his ancestors set foot in the land. Every man and woman now living in the European-American world
is a legatee of ages of the best efforts of the best men and women of the race. All of us get the benefit of conditions which we did not bring about. We also must bear burdens which came to us along with the inheritance, for our system,
like ourselves, is wonderfully and fearfully made. Some of these burdens worry me more than the Astor estate
does, because they are unavoidable. The Astor estate is pegged down on Manhattan Island. It
can't get away. It can't chase me down to Thomson. If I don't want to get bit by that particular snake. I needn't go near
its hole. There is not a man in Xew York who cannot escape the Astor estate if he wants to: all that is necessary is that he shall pull up stakes and leave. There are a good many desirable places to live on in this world besides Xew York though it is difficult to persuade a Xew Yorker to that effect.
The inherited burdens which worry me most are those that I cannot resist and cannot escape. They hold me prisoner, no
matter where I go. What those inherited burdens are, you
know if you have been a reader of my writings. With 200.000.000 acres of public domain awaiting the
settler: with irrigation plans in operation which will add at
least 300.000.000 acres more: with abandoned farms through out the land which can be bought for less than the houses on
the land cost. I am not bothering my head about the Astor
estate, or that Erskine property. Of course, as long as several million people want the Astor
land, and each of them competes for that particular spot of
ground, all the angels in heaven couldn't keep the price from advancing. If everybody wants the same thing at the same

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time, the upward tendency of the market is not to be checked by remonstrance, argument, protest or pleading.
One of the "Old Masters" may not be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, but if a great number of wealthy snobs
compete for the painting, it fetches hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Likewise, those hideous old China and Japanese pots and vases may not be worth a place in the kitchen: so far as I am concerned I wouldn't give ten dollars a ton for them: but if
they become a fad among the rich, and thousands of men and women go into competition to see who can pay the highest price for the ugliest old vase why. the market for ugliness gets so stiff that I almost conclude to have my own features
cast into antique Japanese mugs.
The moment those three million men quit wanting Astor land, all at the same time, that moment its value will begin to decline. But so long as that number of men want their land in the same spot, at the same time, the identical principle which caused Maud S. to bring $40.000 when Kobert Bonner bought her. will uphold the market price of the Astor land.
And society has no more right to confiscate Aster's title because he got what so many others want, than it has to confis cate the title to the fastest race-horse, tlie finest painting, or
the ugliest Japanese pot.

Paper Money and John Law *
Ix all civilized countries the requirements of commerce have compelled the use of paper money. Xot for a single day could the trade of Great Britain. France, Germany. Russia or the United States be sustained by metallic money alone.
The reasons are obvious. The metallic money is too scarce: it is too inconvenient: it is too easily cornered: it is too slow: it is too uncertain in its volume: it is too soft to bear the incessant handling.
For these reasons, and others, metallic money rarely cir culates (in the full sense of the word) during these rushing days of modern commerce. Paper money really does the exchange business of the world. But the Banks have seized upon the paper money business, and they monopolize it. They have driven the Government out of the governmental business of creating the money.
They have usurped the enormous power of expanding and contracting the volume of the currency on which the business of the world is done.
In this manner the Banks hold the world in chains. Their feet are upon the necks of the markets. They shrink the volume of money, and prices fall. They expand the volume of money and prices rise.
Voltaire, in one of his letters to a friend, explaining how he. residing at Ferney. on the borders of Switzerland, could so readily make money in Paris, wrote:
"A friend of mine who is a director in the Bank of France lets me know in advance when they desire to lower prices by decreasing the amount of money, and then I sell; he also lets me know in advance when they decide to raise prices by increasing the supply of money, and then I buy."
The secret which Voltaire so frankly communicated to his correspondent a hundred and fifty years ago is the secret of the banker policy of today.
Every argument against paper money comes from those who have seized upon this great governmental function, and who are now using it for their own gain and to the injury of their fellow-citizens.
Populism says: coin all the gold, coin all the silver at the same mercantile value which existed before you sunk the value of silver by making laws against it: then issue national paper money in place of the paper money of the Banks, and don't say that this paper money shall only have the power of being
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swapped for a metallic dollar, but declare by law that this paper dollar of the Government shall be receivable at its face value for all debts and taxes and you will have a dollar
which is as strong as your Government, and as rich as your people.
The law overrides us all controls our wealth and commands our obedience: Let the law say that a paper dollar shall be good for taxes, good for public and private debts, good for all the purposes which gold dollars answer, and you'll have paper dollars going side by side, as equals, with gold dollars as far as the flag floats, and as long as the Government stands.
What will be "back of" such paper dollars'? The credit of the Government and the power of the law. The same Government Credit which bears up an issue of bonds, burdened with interest, would surely bear up an equal amount of paper dollars not burdened with interest. The
credit which Cleveland used to float a quarter billion of bonds to gratify the Wall Street millionaires was strong enough to bear that ungodly burden and carry the bonds to a magnificent premium. The bonds rose with the sun on the day that fol lowed the midnight deal between President Cleveland and the W*>11 Street bankers.
Why should editors be so mortally afraid to see the national credit tested in the interest of the people, by the issue of as mucl^money, in paper dollars, as the bonds issued by Cleve land to the millionaires amount to?
There can be only one reply: the Banks are using the paper money monopoly, and they do not intend to return this pre rogative to the Government from which they took it.
How much paper money would you have? No man can say definitely, and more than he can say just how much he should eat and just how much he shall drink. The question must be left to the wisdom of the Government. Can't the Government decide it as impartially as the Banks
now decide it? Would it not be as safe to intrust the decision to all the peo
ple in Congress assembled as to intrust it to J. Pierpont Mor gan, August Belmont, Thomas F. Ryan and other Bank mag nates who meet in the private parlor of a Wall Street bank?
If we must submit to the Government on questions of
property, of liberty and of life, shall it be said that \ve must not submit to it on questions of finance ?
Cannot the Government as safely say how many paper dol lars we shall have as it can say how many troops shall com pose the Army, how many post-offices shall distribute the mail, how many officeholders shall collect its revenues, how much tax

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we shall pay. and how many dollars shall be spent every two years?
If the Government can't govern, then it should quit the business, and let the banks boss the job.
But the creation of money is not a banking functon; they have usurped it: the making of money is a governmental function, and the Government should unhorse the Banks, and get back into the saddle itself.
Some contend that the Government has no constitutional power to create money out of paper.
The Supreriie Court of the United States has decided other wise. It has decided that the words "coin money" must be taken in the sense "make money." or "create money," and that the Government can in its discretion use paper or any other material in the creation of its money.
Those who oppose paper money continually harp on John Law and his "Mississippi Bubble." I wonder sometimes, how
much these critics know about John Law. This scribe has given some study to the career and financial principles of the said John Law. and he ventures to say that Law has been utterly misunderstood. "\Ve have not studied Law's own
books: we have studied him through the books of those who condemn him. and yet we say that John Law has not been impartially tried nor justly condemned. John Law's theory of finance is the very same as that upon which Lord Macaulay eulogized the National Debt of Great Britain. John Law's theory of finance is the very same as that which the statesmen of Great Britain adopted when they wanted more money for the overthrow of Xapoleon Bonaparte. John Law's theory was put into practice by our own Government when it needed more money with which to put down the Southern Confed eracy, gold and silver having "hid out." as they always do when mo.st needed.
John Law's bank in Paris was the parent of the present Bank of France, and was a brilliant success until the Regent of France (the Duke of Orleans) insisted upon its becoming a Government bank. Even then it prospered until Law fell into the clutches of the most voracious and unprincipled aristo crats that ever plundered a people. The Regent and his favorite nobles robbed the bank and ruined it. That is the real truth, and I can prove it from authorities unfriendly to Law.
It has been the fashion to jeer at the "Mississippi scheme" of Law. as though it were the craziest of day-dreams.
What is the truth about it ? John Law's company owned the vast "Louisiana Purchase."
including Xew Orleans and the Mississippi River, and all the

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great States and Territories that have since been carved out of that imperial domain. John Law "had as good a thing'' in the United States as the East India Company of England had in India. He had a far better thing than the great Hudsons Bay Company had in Canada.
John Law had not only a magnificent territorial empire upon which to base the value of the stock he issued, but he went to work wisely and on system to develop his property. He established a line of vessels between New Orleans and France, exchanging the products of one country for the other. He sent out settlers from France to the New World just as Spain and England did. Those settlers are represented by their descendants in the "Louisiana Purchase" to this day. In other words, John Law foresaw the immense importance of our Mississippi country, its vast waterways, and its measureless capacities for production. He saw it in advance of his time. And that was his crime.
Jefferson saw it nearly a hundred years later, seized the opportunity, bought the John Law property, and all men praised Jefferson justly and ridiculed John Law unjustly.
Out of the John Law property has been carved the great States of Louisiana, Missouri. Iowa. Wisconsin. Kansas, Nebraska, Minnesota, the Dakotas, Colorado and Montana.
Why did Law's company fail ?
Because his associates demanded rich returns too quickly. They wanted to get rich in a dny. The speculative mania seized the excitable French and hurried them into madness. Law tried to stem the torrent, but could not.
The nobility drove him into measures which wrecked all his plans. They not only compelled him to issue carloads of paper money, but they demanded for themselves the cash he had in his bank and thev got the lion's shave of it.
The Duke of Bourbon and the Prince of Conti. members of the royal family, not to mention lesser nobles, amassed hundreds of millions by looting the bank.
This is history, not slander.
John Law was rich when he went to France: he was driven into exile, penniless.
While in France he was a very prince of charity openhanded, affable, good-hearted, honest, sincere. He abolished many useless offices. He used his influence to get taxes lowered and equalized. He abolished feudal exactions in Paris, and reduced the price of wood, coal and fish one-half. He broke down the feudal barriers between the different
provinces and established free trade between the departments, thus greatly encouraging trade and benefiting producers.
He left the public debt less than he found it. He put into

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his enterprises every dollar he possessed he took nothing away but the clothes he stood in.
Surely he was not a common cheat and swindler. Many people ruined themselves speculating in his stock
and many enriched themselves. We have no doubt that more money is lost and won in one day's "operations" on the Exchanges of Paris. London. Berlin. Vienna and New York in this good year of 1912. than was lost and won during the entire course of the "Gambling mania" connected with the despised John Law.
It was mostly by speculation in the stock that any body (except Law himself) lost by Law's companies. The company broke because it had assumed the entire national del>i of France--a debt which represented all the expenditures of the most lavish of French Kings, Louis XIV.. all his wars, all his buildings, all his fancy men and all his fancy women. When Law staggered under this over whelming load the State resumed the debt, and as Law had issued stock to covet the debt, the Government assumed the payment of the stock. There were reductions and scalings, but the Government's design was to ascertain the actual cash investment of each citizen who held Law's stock. When ascertained, the Government assumed payment. Consequently
the holders of the stock lost little or nothing and the Govern ment lost nothinar because it merely reassumed its own debt.

The Dartmouth College Decision.

THE Editor of the paper, from which the following edi torial is taken, is Mr. Chas. H. Hamblin, who seems to have
taken his knowledge of the Dartmouth College case at fourth
or fifth hand. His statement that "The essence of the Dart mouth College decision was that a State Legislature cannot change the obligation of a perpetual contract made by a pre
vious Legislature," is altogether erroneous:

Some corporation lawyers think that Dartmouth College decision

is a part of the Constitution. Probably it has had as much influence

upon the development of industrial civilization of the United States

as any single clause of that document. It is the greatest of many

organic laws written for the nation by the impressive genius of

Chief Justice John Marshall.

The essence of the Dartmouth College decision was that a State

Legislature cannot change the obligation of a perpetual contract

made by a previous legislature. At the beginning this was used

,;

chiefly as an assertion of national power and the rights of the citi

zen against the sovereignty of a State.

Lately it has been regarded more as subjection of the authority of

the State to the new born power of corporations and the Supreme

Court has been working slowly and painfully in the other direction.

For at least a generation danger has been plainly seen in the theory

that a permanent contract, expressed or implied, with an immortal

Corporation, however obtained in the beginning and however con

ditions may have changed, cannot be altered by any successor of the

legislative body that made it.

Certain students of the historical basis of our present industrial

civilization have published a pamphlet on the contemporary history

of the Dartmouth College case. No questions of present-day con

troversy were involved in it, but there was no less bitter contention

among the political and religious factions that desired control of

Dartmouth College.

The pamphlet in question declares that the faction represented

in the case by Daniel Webster won by appeal to the political preju

dices of the Chief Justice and by secret intrigue in the Supreme

;

Court rather than legal argument upon constitutional principles.

;

Contemporary rumor was that the Supreme Court was originally

r

5 to 2 against Mr. Webster, but that the Chief Justice held back the

decision for a year, during which four judges were prevailed upon

to change their opinions.

.,

Whether business corporations understood their new rights under

\'

this decision or not, they soon improved them.

Dartmouth College was a small institution of learning,

!}

whch had been chartered by the King of England. In Great

fj

Britain itself all such charters are regarded as licenses, and

.j,'

not as contracts. They are lacking in the very first element of

i>

a contract, in that they do not bind both parties mutually.

f

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They are what lawyers call "unilateral."' and not "bilateral. 1" In other words, the Crown granted the charter, but the men who were given the license to establish a school were not obliged to do it. The Crown obligates itself to allow the charter-meml>ers to establish a manufacturing corporation, but the Crown did not have the power to compel the corpora tion to do what they are licensed to do: consequently, every lawyer will admit the essential feature of a contract is totally lacking. It is absolutely essential to a legal contract that two parties at least bind themselves, the one to the other, to do or not to do a certain thing, for a valuable consideration. In the case of a charter, there is no compact l>et\veen two persons, and no valuable consideration.
After the Revolutionary War. the State of Xew Hampshire, having taken the place of the King of England, so far as the Dartmouth College and other institutions were concerned, attempted to make a change in the charter of the college.
The truth of the matter is. it was a political fight between the Democrats and the Federalists. The Democrats won n local victory, and the Federalists went into the Court to reverse it. When the case was first argued, no stress was placed upon the point on which Chief Justice John Marshall afterwards rested his opinion. Jeremiah Mason, a greater lawyer than Daniel Webster, had placed in his brief the fact that the charter was a contract which the State was unable to alter. Mason did not dwell upon it in the lower Court, though it remained in his brief.
In Lodge's Life of Webster you will find an interesting story of how the Federalists of Xew England mapped out a regular campaign, whose purpose it was to get the hearing in \~. S. Supreme Court postponed until John Marshall's political prejudice against the Democrats could be aroused to the
highest pitch. After thev had become assured that Chief Justice Marshall had become determined to save that Federal college from the attack of the Xew Hampshire Democrats. Daniel Webster argued the case, and concluded his oration by making a sentimental appeal which went straight to the heart and brain of Marshall. Webster worked himself up to the point of sobbing and shedding tears over the alleged outrage which the Democrats were trying to perpetrate on poor little Dartmouth College.
The partisan Judge, hunting for an excuse to make an out
rageous decision, can always find it. There is no country under the sun that is suffering so greatly today from Judge-made law as our own. Eagerly and carefully going over the briefs
submitted in the case. Marshall's mind rejected everythng else and hit upon the point in which Jeremiah Mason had put no

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307

confidence, the rejected stone was put in the corner. Chief
Justice Marshall decided (and the other Federals on the Bench concurred) that the charter granted by the State was a con tract, binding both parties perpetually and unalterably.
That the decision is absurd on the face of it. you will con vince yourself if you will merely consider the difference
between a contract, as described in all of the law books, and a license, granted by a State or a Municipality, authorizing an individual or corporation to do something.
One may take out a license to run a barber shop: he is not obliged to run it: but if the owner of the shop engages a man to work for him for a valuable consideration, there you have
a contract binding upon both of the parties. A citizen may take out a license to run a butcher business:
the license does not compel him to run it: but should this man come to you and make a contract for beeves, the animals being identified, and the amount of price and the time of payment agreed upon, there is a contract between you two. and either of you could enforce it.
A corporation may be chartered by a State, or by a muni cipality, to establish a manufacturing plant, or to build and operate a railroad. Neither the State nor a City, after having
granted such a charter could compel the corporation to actually do what they have procured a license to do. The license does not compel them to take advantage of the permission granted.
They can establish the manufacturing plant if they choose to
do so. They can construct and operate the Street Railway if they see fit. but they cannot be compelled to do so. If a license were a contract, of course they could be made to do it.
Consequently, when Chief Justice John Marshall allowed his intensely partisan mind to control him in the Dartmouth Col lege case, and to wring from him a decision that a license to
do something is the same as a contract to do it. he committed an awful crime against our people.
A corporation born into the world, through its acceptance of a charter, is nothing more than one more citizen. It is
artificial, in that it was created by law. It should have no greater rights than are acknowledged by those citizens who come into the world in the course of nature. A citizen who is
created by law should be subject to the Legislature and Con gress just as we natural born citizens are. You and I have to take our chances, and abide by such changes as are made
in our condition by the lawmakers and the office holders. We
are deeply affected when our government goes to war. We arcmore or less affected every time our Legislature holds a session.
We are often ruinously affected by the doings of our National
Congress. We are not guaranteed against an increase of taxes;

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we are not insured against an invasion of our personal liber ties: we are not safe-guarded from risks and changes in any manner whatsoever.
On the contrary, the artificial citizen, the corporation, claims that his license to do business is a contract which must never be interfered with. If one legislature was so improvident as to exempt it from taxes, no other legislature should impose taxes upon it. no matter how things had changed and no matter how unjust and burdensome to the other tax-payers might be the change.
The natural consequence is. our Republic is cursed by cor porate greed and corporate dishonesty, and because of the Dartmouth decision, we are helpless.
A half dozen fellows determine to steal from the public. They incorporate themselves under a charter, which possibly they have bought from some corrupt legislature. Either in person or by representatives, these chartered plunderers will control the legislature, both State and National. All along our rivers, they are grabbing power rights which should never go out of the ownership of our State. For miles and miles, they are condemning private property, not for public benefit, but for private gain. In that way. the men who organize under charters influence the legislation which enriches them.
A fine example of this is now under discussion (August 16, 1910) in all the newspapers. Senator Aldrich. the Guggenheims. the Rockefeller group, the Thomas F. Ryan interests all get together, under charters granted under the New Jersey law. or that of some other State, and so prepare to control crude and manufactured rubber. To enable them to more effectively do this. Senator Aldrich. using his official power, raised the duty on manufactured rubber from 30 to 35 per cent, crude rubber being left on the free list. The Senator and his pals control crude rubber. They have a clause in their charters authorizing them to manufacture; therefore, they can fix the price of the raw material, which the manufacturer must use: and therefore by bringing up the price of the crude rubber compel the manufacturer to advance the price of the man ufactured rubber. Thus, by skillfully fixing the laws. Senator Aldrich. and his pals, forced the rubber manufacturers to run up their prices, and to turn over the difference between the old price and the new to those who control crude rubber.
To state it in another way: Aldrich uses his position as Senator to make it necessary for the manufacturer of rubber to demand from the people enormously more money for rub ber goods: which money, after being squeezed out of the poor, mii^ be turned over to Aldrich and his associates. The result has been an increase in the price of every rubber article from

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL. LITERARY, ETC.

30!)

auto tires down to the rubber doll and baby rattler. This 25 per cent, increase in price has not enriched the rubber man ufacturer, for the simple reason that, after taking this 2o per cent, advance from the helpless public, the equally helpless
manufacturer had to turn it over to Aldrich and his gang. . Could not the legislature of Xew Jersey revoke or alter that
terrible charter under which Aldrich and his band are plundering the people? Could not all of these cormorants, who are feeding upon the body politic, be made to turn loose? No! the everlasting Dartmouth College case starts up, gets in the way of precedent-bound Judges, and the old fetters, which
were forged in the partisan passion of Chief Justice Marshall, are riveted upon us harder than ever. I hope devoutly that
we will live to see the day when some Judge will arise in
Israel to show the utter fallacy and terrible consequences of the Dartmouth College decision.

Thos. E. Watson's Tribute to the Late Sam Jones on His Fif tieth Birthday.

(Reprinted by request, having appeared in the Atlanta Georgian of October 26, 1906.)

Ix an issue of the Georgian, the editor contributed an article of appreciation and contrast on Sam Jones and Tom Watson. In it he referred to a beautiful sketch which Mr. Watson wrote of Sam Jones just after the failure of the former's candidacy for the Vice-presidency in 1800. That sketch was not available when Saturday's editorial was written, and the editor expressed the gratification it would give him to reproduce it. In response to that suggestion the article in question has been sent him by J. L. Baskin. of Temple. Georgia, just as it appeared in the old People's; Pfirt;/ Paper, published in Atlanta in 1897. The paper is dated October 22. 1S97. and is already yellow with
age. In offering it. Mr. Baskin writes:

Temple, Ga., October 22, 1906.

Colonel John T. Graves, Editor the Atlanta Georgian.

Dear Sir: I see in the Georgian you would like to have Tom

Watson's letter to Sam Jones on his fiftieth birthday. Here it is.

I have kept it as a souvenir of rare merit. I would love to have it

reproduced.

There are, or have been, three men I have on my list Sam Jones,

Tom Watson and John T. Graves.

Yours in great esteem,

J. L. BASKIX.

P. S. Excuse pencil, as I can't write with pen. I am nearly

eighty years old.

J. L. B.

The article follows in full: Last week Rev. Sam Jones celebrated his 50th birthday. In his palatial home at Cartersville. every dollar of whose value was coined in the golden mint of his genius, warm friends gathered about him to give evidence of their love, and to speak in behalf of all Georgians the words of praise this greatest of Georgians has so well earned. For twenty years Sam Jones has been the wonder of con gregations, the despair of imitators, the puzzle of plodders, the scandal of the "unco guid and rigidly righteous." the way ward son of the big-wig bishops, the delight of the lecture

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311

hall, and the Prince Bountiful of the people giving away the thousands so easily made and so charitably spent.
In the good year 1877, when both of us were not so old. nor so gray, nor so wrinkled, Sam Jones lit down in this veritable town of Thomson, and began to go for the devil and his angels in a manner which was entirely new to said devil; also new to said angels.
We remember that we were then trying to begin to practise law. We walked three miles every morning to the office, toted a tin dinner bucket, like any school boy, took the mid-day meal alone, undisturbed by the rush of clients (who were painfully slow about rushing) and looked out upon the great world in doubt as to our future lot therein.
Some one happened to remark in our hearing that there was a little preacher iip at the Methodist Church who was knocking the crockery around in lively style, and who was dusting the jackets of the amen corner brethren in a way which brought the double grunts out of those fuzzy fossils.
Pacific men love combative men, hence we at once strolled up to see what was going on.
As a rule we are not ravenously fond of sermons. We make the confession with shame and humiliation. When we hive heard the same commonplaces, droned out in the same lifeJess nnu.'ner, about 200.000 times, we require all of our native politeness to keep down yawns, nods and other signs of fatigue and extreme lassitude. We did not yawn the day we went to hear Sam Jones.
There he was. clad in a little black jump-tail coat, and look ing as much like the regulation preacher as we look like the Archbishop of Canterbury.
He was not in the pulpit. He was right next to his crowd, standing within the railing, and almost in touch of the victims.
His head was down, as if he was holding on to his chain of thought by the teeth, but his right hand was going energeti cally up and down, with all the grace of a pump handle.
And. Lord, how he did hammer the brethren. How he did peel the amen corner. How he did smash their solemn selfconceit, their profound self-satisfaction, their peaceful copart nership wth the Almighty, their placid conviction that they were the trustees of the Xew Jerusalem!
We sinners looked on, listened, grinned. It was all we could do to keep from sayinar. "Sick 'em. Sam!:'
We knew some of those men. We sinners knew their fail ing?. We wo^rWpd where Jones had learned it all. We rejoiced exceedingly, and the amen corner brethren sweated in
their great agony. After awhile, with solemn, irresistible force. Jones called

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on these brethren to rise in public, confess their short-comings, and kneel for Divine Grace.
And they knelt. With groans, and sobs, and tears, these old
bell-wethers of the flock fell on their knees, and cried aloud in their distress.
And the little man in the short-tail coat was master of the situation.
Then what ? He turned his guns upon us sinners, and he enfiladed us. He raked us fore and aft. He gave us grape and canister and all the rest. He abused us and ridiculed us; he stormed at us and laughed at us: he called us flop-earned hounds, beer kegs, and whiskey soaks. He plainly said that we were all hypo crites and liars, and he intimated, somewhat broadly, that most of us would steal. Oh. we had a time of it. I assure you. For six weeks the
farms and the stores were neglected and Jones, Jones, JONES, was the whole thing.
And the pleasantest feature of the entire display of human nature was the marked manner in which the amen corner brethren enjoyed Sam's flaying of us sinners.
Before the thing was over those holy men had almost recovered their boisterous humility, which being interpreted means self-righteousness turned wrong side outwards.
And nobody knows this better than Sam Jones. Well, the meeting wound up. the community settled back into its old ways but it has never been exactly the same com
munity since. Gambling disappeared, loud profanity on the streets was
heard no more, and the bar rooms were run out of the county. Seeing the manifestations of power which Mr. Jones made
day after day in these meetings, we have never felt the slightest surprise at his growth as an evangelist. We felt then, and expressed the feeling, that here was one of the men of original genius whom God gives to mankind at very rare
intervals. What is the secret of his power? No one can tell, least of all,
hi nisei f. Who can tell the secret of the laws by which one throat has
the hoarse caw of a crow, and another the gurgling sweetness of Jenny Lind '. Who can tell why one boy can declaim Pat rick Henry and put the audience to sleep, while another boy
will declaim the same speech and break up the same audience
into storms of applause? Nay. who can tell why the same musician or orator, or
painter thrills with the current inspiration at one moment, and
at the next it is all

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL, LITERARY, ETC.

313

Men of talent have their rules, their little adages, their

prim, precise regulations. Give them certain materials and

certain conditions, and they are warranted to turn you out a

certain amount of work. They are valuable men perhaps

the most valuable, for everyday purposes. We need them;

can't get along without them. They build good bridges, make

good roads, open the mines, run the factories, operate the rail

roads, cut our coats, make dresses for our wives, sit in our

courts, draw salaries in our offices, usefully act as governors,

colonels and presidents.

x

But, oh, the men of genius! What would the world be

without them?

They carry the fleeting glories of nature into the imperisha

ble custody of the canvas; they catch the passing dream of

beauty and chain it forever in the marble hands of the statue.

They sing to us, and the world listens, delighted, melted,

inspired. Thev play for us and the light of their thoughts

illuminates the way for all men down the corridors of Time,

till Time shall be no more. The man of talent we must have,

for life has its routine, its drudgery its drays to draw, its

wood to hew, its wheels to turn, its prosaic commonplaces

which must be regarded. But what would life be without its

bugle calls to higher and better things, the sun-bursts of

inspiration which reveal to our delighted vision the high

table-lands of human nobility and human happiness; the

divine unwritten noiseless music within our innermost natures

which only the man of genius can awaken ?

If we were asked to analyze the power of Sam Jones we

would say that the chief elements are clear mental vision,

fearless soul, kind heart, and unbridled, irreverent, witty

tongue. His good eyes enable him to see the world just as it

is its sad things, its funny things, its sham things, its brutal

things, its terrible things, its beautiful things.

His fearless soul leads him to describe what he sees, and

the immense force of Truth and Realism becomes his ally.

His kind heart enables him to denounce, yet not drive away,

to chastise, yet love, to punish, yet win the culprit1.

His want of reverence for other men. their ways of speech

and of life, unchains him from the shackles of cant, custom,

routine, and conventionality. It frees him from imitation.

He thus gets room for his own individuality to grow, his own

fountain to play.

Being freed entirely from the chains which enslave so many

thousands of public men, his genius shines like a star

inexhaustible, radiant.

Put Talmage in one pulpit and Jones in another to deliver

one sermon in the same city, at the same time, and Talmage

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might equal Jones in that one sermon, and might get half the
crowd, for that one time.
But let them start in to preach a series of thirty or sixU
sermons in the same city at the same time, and before a week could elapse Talmage would have nobody in his church but the
salaried choir, the deaf man in the amen corner, and the
janitor. Jones would capture the whole business. His sermons would grow lx?tter day by day. as his genius expanded, his
thoughts intensified, and his heart warmed to the work. You could no more exhaust Jones than you could exhaust
a star: while Talmage. like all speakers of mere talent, is filled for the occasion, like a lamp: and when that particular
supply of oil is burned out. you must wait for light till the
poor thing can be filled again. Here's to you. Sam Jones! Some day we shall meet beyond the evening and the sun-set,
and the Creator of us both know that not one only of us tried to lift humanity and to make it better, wiser, happier.
And localise one. only, succeeded there is no good reason why the failure should not be generous and send greeting to
the success. May twenty other rears come and go. finding you constant
ii. strength, constant in good works, constant in benign
irtuence over the errinff of a fallen world.

Our American Judicial Oligarchy
NOTHING comparable to our Federal Judicial system has ever been known in the history of governments.
The men who framed our Constitution, in 1787. were of the English race, and they are presumed to have been imbued with the English idea of jurisprudence and judicial establishments. They are supposed to have had in their minds the English model when they established our own courts.
Xo one can understand how preposterous has been the arrogance of our Federal judges unless he studies the historic origin and the true meaning of legislative terms.
In England, a law once made by the joint Act of Parliament and the King, is supreme. Judges must obey it. just as other officials of the empire must do. Such a thing as one of the English courts deliberately setting aside an Act of Parliament is unknown. Consequently, it cannot be imagined that our forefathers intended to give to the Judicial branch of the Government of this country a power which it never had had in England, which it does not possess there now. and which is not conceded to it. or claimed by it. in any other nation on earth. There isn't a line or a word of the Constitution of the United States which can be tortured into meaning that the Federal courts, high or low. have authority to set aside Acts of Congress. Yet. when Chief Justice Marshall, an intense partisan of the Hamiltonian school, went upon the Supreme bench, he carried there a determined purpose to exert to the utmost his powerful intellect" and his lofty position to make the Supreme Court the final arbiter in all matters of legisla tion.
Hating Jefferson with great bitterness, he appeared to con sider it a religious duty to extend the jurisdiction of the
Federal courts in every possible direction, so as to make the life-tenure Judges, appointed by an indirectly elected Presi dent, the real ruler of our Republic, thus making it reasonably certain that class-interest would become dominant, and the democracy would be subservient.
The thirteen original States, forming the old Confedera tion, had been separate, sovereign communities. As such, they had fought for independence. As such, they had been acknowledged to be independent. As such, they met in con vention, through their representatives, to form a more perfect union.
A very delicate question arose as to how far these thirteen

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sovereign States, jealous of their State sovereignty, should concede "to the Federal Government the authority to annul State laws, upon the ground that they conflicted with the Con stitution of the United States. The necessity for such a conces sion to the general Government was obvious, but the delegates
were so determined to preserve the dignity and the rights of the States that they very carefully guarded the concession which they proposed should be made to the central Govern ment.
When Oliver EHsworth, of Massachusetts, came to frame the Judiciary Act of 1789. which carried into effect the clauses of the Constitution relating to the Judiciary, he provided the method by which the constitutionality of State laws should be tested. The Judicial Act itself, from which our Federal courts derive their origin, prescribed the form of procedure which
must be followed when a State law is attacked upon the ground that it conflicts with the Federal Constitution. The question must be raised in the State courts and carried to the Supreme Court of the State, from which the appeal lies to the Supreme Court of the United States; thus dignity and uniformity are preserved.
In the Federal courts, as now conducted, we find the fol lowing monstrous inconsistency: the Judges say, with one accord, that the Federal courts are controlled by the construc tion which is placed upon the State law by the State courts, and yet these same Judges claim the right to annul the law. This is absurd on the face of it. The inconsistency is to be explained in only one way. The rule which requires the Federal courts to be bound by the construction placed upon a State law by the State courts, arose during the early period of our Government, when the Judiciary Act of 1789 was still respected. Federal Judges of lower courts not only accepted the construction which State Courts placed upon State laws, but accepted the laws themselves, until they had been declared unconstitutional by the State courts, or by the Supreme Court of the United States.
Never, until the Civil War had ended and the Federal courts began to be filled up with corporation lawyers, did the lower Federal courts arrogate to themselves jurisdiction over
State laws which had never been assailed in the State courts. Not only does this usurpation of power by the lower Federal
courts impair the dignity of the State and frequently paralyze the State in the conduct of its domestic concerns, but the inevitable result is the conflict of decisions throughout the Union. one District Court deciding a question one way, and another District Court deciding the same question another way. an example of which was furnished by the conflicting

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL, LITERARY, ETC.

317

decisions of the lower Federal courts upon the Federal Employees' Liability Act.
An adage as old as government itself declares that, the King shall not be used by the subject without his own consent. The States being sovereign, except to the extent that they have
delegated certain powers to the Federal Government. naturally assumed that they would be protected from the suits of private citizens by virtue of the time-honored principle cited.
In the old Confederation, no person, natural or artificial, could have entered suit against one of the sovereign States.
After the Union was formed, one Chisholm, being a citizen of the United States, but not of the State of Georgia, entered suit against the State. Chief Justice Marshall held that the State was sueable by the private citizen of another State.
This position outraged every member of the Union to such an extent that an amendment to the Constitution was at once
proposed and adopted for the purpose of preventing future infractions of State rights. This is the Eleventh Amendment. During recent years, however, the Federal Judges, high and
low. have nullified the Eleventh Amendment, and have con stantly taken jurisdiction in suits brought by private persons
and corporations against the sovereign States of the Union. Governors, Attorney General, Sheriffs, and other officials of th
State, are sued, enjoined in their official capacities, and thus the entire State administration is brought to a stand-still, and then dragged into court, like an ordinary defendant, to appear
and plead in answer to the suit of a non-resident corporation
or private individual. The Federal courts solemnly declare that a suit which enjoins the State Government and prevents
the State officials from acting in their official capacities is not, a suit against the State.
The historic origin of the legal adage that no citizen shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process
of law, must be understood before one can fully appreciate the startling evolution of that principle which has occurred during recent years.
When William the Norman invaded and conquered Eng land, he set up a government of unlimited royal prerogative.
As against their Norman masters, Englishmen had almost no
rights. In the History of the Middle Ages. Hallam says that
in twenty years after the accession of William the Conquerer, almost the whole soil of England had been taken from the English and divided among the foreigners. The Saxon
chronicle states: "God sees the wretched people most unjustly'
oppressed; first they are despoiled of their possessions, then butchered."

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Aubrey, in his "Rise and Growth of the English People." gives an appalling description of the condition of the common people subject to the m.erciless despotism of the feudal lords. Arbitrary seizures of property: arbitrary fees and fines; arbi trary imprisonment in dungeons, where the victim was left to perish of hunger: arbitrary executions, where the lord gibbeted the vassal on private gallows. made the Xorman regime one of lawlessness and unrestricted oppression of the weak by the strong.
Students of history are familiar with the dissensions which broke out among the conquerors, and with that slow but steady
process by which the common people won back their feudal rights.
In the Great Charter, wrung by the barons from King John,.
is the familiar phrase: '"Xo free man shall be taken or
imprisoned or dis-seized. unless by the lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land."
This meant that absolute monarchy had been brought to an end. and a limited monarchy substituted, in which the royal prerogative was to give way to a government of constitutional limitations.
When the Great Charter declares that no free man shall be thrown into prison without due process of law. nothing more is meant than is said. The evil was the arbitrary seizure of
the weak man by the strong, and the imprisonment and per haps execution of the victim who had been arbitrarily arrested.
When the Great Charter declares that no free man shall be di*-*eizecl unless by due process of law. nothing more is meant than that his cattle or his land shall not be taken away from
him arbitrarily by the exercise of brute force. Here we have the historic origin. It all seems plain and
simple enough, and yet. with endless ingenuity and audacity, the attorneys of corporations have construed this legal precept
to mean that money invested in corporate enterprise has an inviolable right to earn net profits. The Federal Judges have actually sustained this absurd doctrine, and so thoroughly well
have the corporation lawyers done their work that most of the attorneys who represent the States in cases of this sort, con cede that unless the corporation is allowed to earn net profits, the property of the corporation is confiscated within the
meaning of that constitutional clause which comes from Magna Charta.
Of course, it must be clear to anyone who will study the
question impartially, that the law never did intend to guaran
tee anybody the making of net profits. With the earning of
dividends, the law has nothing to do. The plain meaning of

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL, LITERARY, ETC.

319

the constitutional provision which has come down to us from Magna Charta is that a corporation stands upon exactly the
same footing as a natural person, in that it shall not be deprived of its title to its property and the property itself without due process of law. In the case of a railroad, it shall not be deprived of its roadbed, its depots, its locomotives, its box cars, its passenger coaches, etc.. etc.. without legal process
first being had against the company. If the State should pass a law which would make it impossible for the corporation to
earn reasonable profits upon the money invested, such a law would be unjust, and it ought to be repealed: but how can it be said that such a law confiscates the roadbed, the rolling stock, and the various other property of the corporation ?
In New York, it was held, in a certain case, that unless a corporation were allowed to earn C per cent, net profits, the law which lowered the earnings below that standard was con
fiscatory. and. therefore, void. Confiscatory of what? Can it be claimed that such a law confiscated the title and took away the property of the corporation? To support the contention
of such Judges, we must construe Magna Charta. and the Con
stitution which contains the old clause derived from that instrument, to mean that King John and his barons meant to
guarantee net profits to propertyholders. Could anything be more absurd? When a railroad or other corporation sets up a plea of that sort, it takes this position: "We demand that the money invested in corporations be given special privileges not njoyed by money invested in private estates or in non-cor porate business. We demand the right to manage our cor poration affairs to suit ourselves, to pay as much in salaries as
we think fit, to pour as much water into the stock as we think fit. to squander as much on lobbyists, press agents, and special counsel as we think proper: to grant whatever rebates we may
think expedient and to make such traffic arrangements with the Express companies as allow those horse-leeches to absorb the cream of our business. and yet to earn net profits of 6 per cent., else we will block the wheels of State government, tie the hands of State officers, and ignore the laws enacted by State legislatures."
A striking proof of the incapacity of any Judge to pass
upon one of these confiscatory pleas, and to say what will be the effect of any given statute imposing' taxes or reducing rates, was furnished in the Pennsylvania Railroad, and. there fore, null and void. Within twelve months thereafter, this
corporation declared an enormous dividend upon watered stock, as well as actual investment.
Another case was furnished in the 80-cent gas fight in Xew
York. It was held that the property of the Gas Trust would

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be confiscated if they were compelled to furnish New York
with 80-cent gas. It afterwards transpired that the Gas Trust had '"cooked up" a statement to suit itself, to impose on the Judge (as was inevitable), and that the real books of accounts
were never produced at all. These would have shown that the corporation could have made a splendid profit on 65 cent gas.
The point I make, however, is that the old adage which we
derived from Magna Charta. and which, of course, is very much older than that instrument, has been outrageously per verted when it is used by the courts to guarantee to corporate investments net profits, no matter how bad may be the man
agement of such corporations, no matter how much fictitious capitalization may be covered up in their securities, no matter how much of the yearly revenue may be squandered corruptly,
no matter how the business of the corporation may be affected by prevailing conditions from which all business suffers, and no matter how great may be the necessities of the State which seeks to derive some support from those corporations which the State has itself brought into life by its grant of charters.
According to the decisions, a corporation.earning 6 per cent,
is in full enjoyment of its title and in full possession of its property: but if the State enacts legislation which reduces the profits to 5 99-100 per cent., the corporation's title and property
have been confiscated! How can anything be more absurd? The corporation may be earning 3 per cent.. 4 per cent., 5
per cent., or d 3-4 per cent.. but because the law does not allow it to earn C per cent., it has lost its property by con
fiscation. If the Runnymede. barons meant anything like that it is no
wonder King John felt inclined to fight, and only gave up when he had to.

Answer to Booker Washington
The Negro Race Compared to the Latins
WITH statistics one can prove many things the conclusion arrived af depending, in all cases, considerably upon the man behind the figures.
This time the man behind the figures is Doctor Booker Washington may his shadow never grow less!
In the course of a recent lecture, the learned Doctor laid down the proposition that the black man is superior to the white, and he proved it proved it by statistics.
He said that there is 85 per cent, of illiteracy among the Spaniards, while there is only 54 per cent, of illiteracy among the negroes; therefore the negroes are clearly more advanced in civilization than the Spaniards.
Poor old Spain! The learned Doctor further demonstrated that there is 65 per cent, of illiteracy among the Italians; therefore the negroes are far ahead of Italy. Kussian illiteracy being 70 per cent. the black man takes precedence of the land of Peter the Great, Skobeleff, Gorky, Turgenef and Tolstoy. South America having an illiteracy of 80 per cent., falls far to the rear of the negro and Castro must add this additional kick to the many he has already received from North America. Proud of his statistics, Doctor Booker Washington exclaims: "The negro race has developed more rapidly in the thirty years of its freedom than the Latin race has in one thousand years of freedom." That's a bold statement, Doctor. To say nothing of its accuracy, may it not have been an unwise thing for you to claim that the black man has risen during thirty years more rapidly in the scale of civilization than the whites have risen in a thousand ? True, you confine yourself to the Italians, the Spaniards, the Russians and the South Americans, but when you say the darkest of all the colored races is superior to that great section of the white race named by you, does it. not occur to you that you may create a feeling of resentment among all the whites? You have thousands of true friends throughout the entire country white men who have most generously helped you in your work, helped you with money, with moral support and with a certain amount of social recognition. Your admirers refer to you as a great man. They allude to your work as a

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great work. The South helps you with appropriations, just as the North helps yon with donations. We want to see yon suc ceed in building1 up your race.
But have you a sing-le white friend who will endorse your statement that the black race is so superior to the whites that it can do in one generation what it required the whites a thousand years to do ?
Do you imagine that your friends. President Roosevelt. Mr. Carnegie.- Dr. Hart. Bishop Potter, and others, will like you better when they hear you putting forth a claim to race superi ority? Doctor, you have over-shot the mark.
W?t< nci-cr the Xorth rral-es p to the f<n-t that I/OH are teacli-
iufi the Ijlaf-l.-fi that they are superior to the ichites, yon are f/oinf/ to fcf-7 the e*t irhid.
What do you mean by racial development. Doctor? Apparently your standard of measurement is illiteracy. That is to say. if a greater number of negroes than of Spaniards can read, then the negro has achieved a higher plane in civili zation.
Is that your idea ? Dees the ability to read constitute race development '.
According to that, a million negro children attend school twelve months and become "civilized" because they have learned to spell the way to "l^l-c-r" the first two-syllable word in the
old Webster's Spelling book, and read "Mary had a little lamb."
Dres it net strike you. Doctor, that such a measure might be delusive?
In making up your tables of illiteracy, why didn't you include "H ffn- n<-f/i'oc*. as you included all the Italians, all the Spaniards. "11 the Russians?
Why leave out your home folks in Africa. Doctor? Why omit Santo Domingo and Haiti ? If yon will number all the negroes. Doctor, your percentage
of illiteracy a,,,onf/ the l>larl-x may run up among the nineties.
and knock y' *our calc*ulation #into a c*ocked h*at. *
In the West Indies God poured His blessings with lavish
hand upon the island of Haiti. The French went there and built up a civilization. The Revolution of 1789 freed the. negrr.e.s who were held in slavery by the whites, and civil war
soon followed. The b'ack--, outnumlwred the whites and the climate was their
ally. Yellow fever did for them what frost did for the Rus sians when Xapoleon struck at their Czar. They achieved freedom, and they have had it. not for thirty years, but for a
hundred vears.

SKETCHES: HISTORICAL. LITERARY, ETC.

323

Whfit have your people done with their freedom, in Santo Domingo, Doctor? Back, back into barbarism, voodooism. human sacrifice, social and political anarchy they have plunged; and their history is one long blood-stained record of backsliding from the standard which the French had already established. Even now your black brethren in Santo Domingo are beseeching the white man of the United States to do that which they are unable to do administer national affairs. In self-defense this Government may have to treat Santo Domingo as Great Britain treats Jamaica, both governments acting upon the demonstrated fact that the blacks, left to themselves, are incapable of* self-g* overnm* ent an* d race* develo* pment.
But before entering into a comparison of racial progress, Doctor, it is in order to note the fact that yon accredit the negro with only thirty years of freedom. Why. Doctor, the negro race, as f- race, has enjoyed just cts long a period of free dom, as the Celt", the Latins, the Anglo-Saxon and the Slavs.
The black race in Africa was as free as the Indian race in North America.
During the thousand years in which the whites were pain fully creating the civilization which yon now enjoy, your race. in its native home, was doing pretty much the same things which the red race was doing in North America. Your people were running about in the woods, naked, eating raw meat, eternally at war tribe with tribe steeped in ignorance, vice and superstition, with an occasional lapse into human sacrifice and cannibalism.
Yoitr race, as a race, is free now in Africa, as it ha-s been since the dau-n of history--where is the civilization which it worked out for itself? It does not exist; it never did exist.
The negro has been absolutely unable to develop as a race when left to himself. Nowhere, at any time, has he developed a system of agriculture, or commerce, or manufactures, made headway in mining or engineering, or conceived a system of finance. Never has he produced a system of laws, institutions of state, religious organization, or worked out a political ideal. Never has he created a literature, or developed original capacity for the fine arts. His foot has never even crossed the threshold of the world of creative painting, sculpture, music, architect ure. Into the realms of science, in the domain of original thought, in the higher reaches of mental power where the human mind grapples with vast problems, material and spiritual, the problems of time and eternity, the negro has never entered. No word has ever fallen from his lips that was not the echo of what some white man had already said. He

12 Sketches

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SKETCTIES: HISTORICAL. LITERARY, ETC.

has sometimes put his foot in the irlrite man's track, but that is the best lie* has e* ver clo* ne. ***

Compare this imitative race with the great Latin stock a stock from which sprang Rienzi and Garibaldi. Cavern- and
Xapoleon. Da Vinci and Galileo. Snvaronola and Leo the Tenth. Titian and Bellini. Raphael and Michael Angelo.
The Latin race, whether in Spain. Italy or South America, has developed systems of agriculture, finance, commerce, manufactures, education, religion, government has created literature, laws and institutions of state, has evidenced capacity in science and art.
******

The negroes superior to the Latins?

Heavens above'.

During the thousand years which Doctor Washington says

the Latins have done less than the negroes have done in thirty,

Spain rose into world-power, dominated the European Conti

nent, shook England's throne to its base, broke the Turkish

scimitar in the great sea fight of Lepanto. evolved a splendid

literature, reached the highest development in the Fine Arts,

launched Columbus upon his voyage into unknown seas to

test the suggestion of another Latin Toscanelli and thus

took the first daring step in that marvelous chapter of Dis

covery whose sober facts are grander and stranger than

Romance.

Has the learned Doctor ever studied the history of Mexico

the Latin country south of us?

Since a foreign yoke was thrown off and Mexico "found

herself." what country has made nobler progress?

The negro in Santo Domingo has had a hundred years of

freedom: Mexico scarce half so many: yet compare the Mexico

of torjini >r!tli f//<- St/tifo Don)iit(/o of today. Left to them

selves, the Latins of Mexico have built up a magnificent civili

zation.

Left to themselves, the negroes of Santo Domingo have

destroyed what'the French had already built.

I a M<-xt.ro ronrlifio'nfi f/ct better, year after year.

In Sniito iJom'tiiffo conditions f/i-ow worse, year after year.

If the learned Doctor wants to make a studv in contrasts,

let him fir.^t read "Where Black Rules White." by Hesketh

Prichard. and then read ;'The Awakening of a Nation," by

Charles F. Lummis. and I venture to say that some of his

cocky self-complacency as to the superiority of the negroes

over the whites will ooze out of him.

jjc

*

*

*

*

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SKETCHES: HISTORICAL, LITERARY, ETC.

325

As to Italy can it be that Italy has done less in a thousand years than the negroes have clone in thirty.
The greatest man that ever lived was of Italian extraction. Taine says that Napoleon was a true Italian in character and intellect. If that be true, then the two greatest men the world ever saw were Italians. Wherever the civilized man lives today his environments, his thoughts, his ideals, his achievements are more or less influenced by the life and work of Caesar and Napoleon.
If any two men may be said to have created the material modern world those two Latins did it.
If modern Europe is any one man, it is Napoleon. His laws, schools social, political, financial, educational institutions have wrung from rulers ever since, the homage of imitation.
In literature how illustrious is Italy! It was Petrarch who was "the Columbus of a new spiritual atmosphere, the discoverer of modern culture." It was he who broke away from monkish medievalism, created the humanistic impulse, treated "man as a rational being apart from theological determination." modernising literature. The "short story" writers of fiction Edgar Poe. Guy de Maupassant and Kipling had their teacher in Boccaccio and his novella. Modern history traces its methods, its spirit and its form to Villani, Guicciardini, and that wonderful type of Latin genius Machiaevelli. The whole icorld c/oes to school to the Latins! No painter hopes to excell Correggio, Paul Veronese. Anto nio Allegro. Leonardo da Vinci, Tintoretto, Valasquez, Murillo, Raphael. Titian. Giorgione, and Michael Angelo. No sculptor expects to eclipse Niccolo of Pisa. Giovanni, Orcagni, Verocchio, Torrigiano, Luca della Robbia, Michael Angelo. and Canovax. No worker in gold, silver and bronze believes he can surpass Ghiberti, Cellini and Donatello. Architects the world over despair of rivaling Alberti, Bramante, Giulo Romano, Palladio. These masters were masters to their own generation, four and five hundred years ago; they have been masters ever since; they are masters still. Wherever civilization extends its frontiers these deathless Latins are in the van teaching what Truth and Beauty are. refining the thoughts, elevating the ideals, improving the methods, inspiring the efforts of man. The negroes have done more than this, and in thirty years?
Absurd!

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You had forgotten the Renaissance, hadn't you, Doctor? Asia was decaying. Africa was in its normal state of savagery. Europe lay torpid under the weight of ignorance and superstition. Where learning existed at all its spirit was
dull, its form heavy, its progress fettered by ancient canons and cumbrous vestments.
Suddenly the Angel of Light her face a radiance, her presence an inspiration puts a silver trumpet to her lips and
blows, blows, till all the world of white men hears the thrilling notes.
And lo! there is a resurrection! What was best in the learn
ing of the past becomes young again. Literature springs to life, throws off antiquated dress, and
takes its graceful modern form. The fine arts flourish as never
before; the canvas, the marble, the precious metal, feel the subtle touch of the eager artist, and give birth to beauty which
is immortal. The heavy prison-castle of the Frank, the
Goth, the Xorman. the Anglo-Saxon, retires abashed before the elegant, airy, poetic palace of the Renaissance.
Xor does the revival of learning limit itself to literature, architecture: to religion, to education.
Whence came the Renaissance, Doctor Washington? Whence came architecture, painting and sculpture? It extends to law, to commerce, to agriculture, that mighty revival of intellectual splendor which still influences the world. From the Latin
race, which ymt affect to despise. Italy led the modern world in almost everything which we
call civilization she is today one of the world's most inspir ing teachers, nor will her power for good be gone till the
Christian religion is repudiated, the voice of music hushed, the wand of literature broken, the force of law defied, the
witchery of art lost to the minds, the hearts and the souls of men.
And yet Doctor Washington asserts, to one audience after another, that those glorious achievements of a thousand years, are exceeded by what the negroes have done in thirty years!
From the Latin. England took her religious organization,
as Germany and Austria and France had done. Through the Latin, the classic literature of Greece and earlier Rome came into the Modern world an eternal debt which we owe mainly
to Petrarch.
The Bourbon kings imported from Italy the architects, painters, sculptors, landscape gardeners, who laid upon uncouth
feudal France the rich mantle of Italian beauty. It was the Latin who taught modern Europe how to farm,,
how to irrigate, how to engrave, how to make paper from rags,

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how to bridge the rivers, how to pave the streets, how to make canals.
Some of Shakespeare's plays are elaborations and drama tizations of Italian novellas. Chaucer, the father of English poetry, frankly copied from the Italian model.
Milton had Dante for a pioneer, Spencer had Ariosto, and Byron's best work is in the Italian form.
I presume, Doctor, that at this season of the year you are copying the style of the white man, and that you are wearing a straw hat.
Well, the Latins taught us how to make straw hats. I presume that you recognize the value of glass--one of whose hundreds of uses is to show you how you look. Well, the Latin taught us how to make glass. I presume that you realize how much the modern world, during the last thousand years, has been indebted to the modern ship. Well, the Latin taught the Anglo-Saxon how to build modern ships. I presume you appreciate good rice, Doctor.
Well, the seed of the heavy upland rice which we have in this country was brought out of Italy in the pockets of Thomas Jefferson gentleman-smuggler in that instance.
I presume you will wear pink silk undergarments this season as usual, won't you, Doctor ?
Well the Latin taught modern Europe how to make and use silk.
And remember that the Latin took the clumsy musical instruments of the ancient world and fashioned them into the perfect forms of the present time; and that the Italians, whom you scorn, had created the violin while your race was "rattling the bones" and gradually climbing toward the "cake-walk."
I must assume, Doctor, that you recognize the vast benefit to the world of steam, applied to navigation.
Well, had you been in Barcelona, in the year 1543, you might have seen the Spanish Captain, Blasco de Garay, giving to the Emperor, Charles V., and his court the most remarkable exhibition of a ship of 200 tons being driven over the water by steam, power--a boiler and wheels being used for the first time in the histor* y of th* e wor* ld to n* avigate* a ves* sel.
What has the negro in these United States been doing for the last thirtv vears, Doctor?
COPYING THE WHITE MAN. That's all. He has simply been imitating, as best he could, the dress, the talk, the manners, the methods, the work of the whites. The Latin whites originated a civilization; the negroes are

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copying one. Is there no difference between the higher genius which conceives and the lower talent which copies?
It required the genius of Raphael to conceive and paint "The Transfiguration." Any ordinary artist can make a fair copy of it. But does any one compare the copyist with the original artist? It required the genius of Sangallo and Michael Angelo to rear St. Peter's at Rome: any well-educated architect of today might rear its duplicate. But would that make the modern architect equal to the two Italian masters?
Ten thousand negro men and women may be able to sit down at the piano and render Verdi's "II Trovatore," but does that entitle the negroes to class themselves with the Italian com poser?
My thought is this the negro, assisted in every possible way by the whites, is copying the ways and learning the arts of the white man: but the ffts:t that he can learn to read the n:hitc man'* books does not make him the equal of the white rare whir-h proflufed the bool: The fact that he may learn from us how to practice law or medicine, does not make him equal to the white race which created the code of laws and the science of medicine. It may have required a thousand years for i/s to Itfii-n that which we can tench him in one year, but the point is that the negro, in his native home, had just as much time and opportunity to evolve a civilization as we had, . < V7) JJE DID NOT DO IT.
Let me repeat to you. Doctor, the unvarnished truth for it may do you good:
The advance made by your race in America is the reflection of the white man's civilization. Just that and nothing more. The negro lives in the light of the white man's civilization and reflefts ft part of tJait lif/hf.
He imitates an example kept before his eyes; copies models never out of his sight: echoes the words the white man utters; patterns after the manners and the methods of the whites around him. and thus reflects our civilization.
He has originated nothing, and if the copy, the pattern, the example were taken away he would fall back here as he did in Haiti.
He has never either evolved or sustained a civilization of his own.
Fotunately for the Afro-American, he finds himself better situated than his brethren elsewhere. In Africa and in Haiti, they have to scuffle for themselves. Result barbarism .
In America he swells the ranks of civilization's army, and he has to go forward. We not only support him with aid of . all sorts, we not only give him daily precept and example, but we compel him to lead a better life than he would live in

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Africa and Haiti. This compulsion is of two kinds, the fear of punishment and the hope of reward--thus enlisting two of the most powerful passions of the human being.
It should be significant to Dr. Washington that the only portion of his race which has ever made any development is that which has the vast advantage of being sustained, encouraged, taught, led and coerced by the whites among whom they live.
Not long ago a negro preacher whose self-appreciation was as great as that of Dr. Washington, went out to Liberia to subdue the heathen, in the home of the negro race.
The heathen were not subdued, but the preacher was. He threw off his store clothes, gave a whoop, gathered up an arm ful of wives and broke for the woods; the "Call of the Wild'' was too much for his newly soldered civilization.
Now, I don't mean to say that Doctor Washington would relapse, under similar circumstances; but when I hear him call his new race Afro-Americans and listen while he soberly tells them that they are superior to the ^phites, I beg that he will remember his kin across the sea, his brethren in Santo Domingo, the decadents of Liberia, and the tens of thousands of his race here in this country who devoutry believe in witch doctors, in ghosts, in the conjure bag, and in the power of one "nTegrircok."to undo another by the mysterious but invincible
Remember this, Doctor, education is a good thing, but it never did, and never will, alter the essential character of a man or a race.
Of course. Doctor, if yon think your race the equal of ours, you have the right to say it. It's a free country, you know.
But, really, you ought not to "crowd the monkey" by putting in a claim for superiority.
Such a claim does your race no good. It may do them harm. It may cultivate a spirit of truculent self assertion which even your warmest admirers, North and South, might find it hard to tolerate. In the "History of Civilization." Buckle says: "Above all this, there is a far higher movement; and as the tide rolls on, now advancing, now receding, there is, amid endless fluctuations, one thing, and one alone, which endures forever. The actions of bad men produce only temporary evil, the actions of good men only temporary good; and eventually the good and the evil altogether subside, are neutralized by subsequent generations, absorbed by the incessant movement of future ages. But the discoveries of great men never leave us; they are immortal, they contain those eternal truths which survive the shock of empires, outlive the struggle of rival