Puslapio vaizdai
PDF
„ePub“

work, with ten in family preferred) quite the hope of the nation. No damn nonsense in them, and the country is perishing of that. They see life in its realities of labor, temperance, simplicity, low-pitched claim. Young ladyhood is killing the one half of us, and young sparkishness the other. Post-office and other clerical varieties of our modern miss, of great promise, but should be warned against being too sweet on themselves, and prayed with, morning and evening, against airs. Compulsory marriage between these and young navvies of good conduct worth considering as an extreme measure. Marriage with the merely muscular heathen in the boating and football line placed in the table of prohibited degrees.

"The absolute necessity of reorganizing our duffers in the interest of the social order. A possible revolt of them how awful! Think of their finding a second Spartacus, these failures in all departments, and rising on their lords and masters, the clever fellows! The feudal system no other than the clever fellows in their setting of age and circumstance. Muttered wrath of the duffers against these for their usurpation of all the best things of life as their fee for leadership. After all, we have our stomachs as well as you; and why make us suffer so fearfully for want of brains?' If they found no Spartacus, the defect might still be made good by mere weight of numbers-as though the sheep turned on the dog, on a deliberate reckoning of the cost in torn fleeces. Defeat in the end, no doubt, but what havoc in the course of it! Perhaps more economic in the long run, in every sense, to admit them to a larger share of the pudding. 'Let us in, or we will spoil your universe' - what a rallying-cry!"

Then Augusta struck in with a stray thought: "Beautiful on the mountains, Scottish or American, the feet of those poor students working as plowmen, stokers, packers, and cabmen in the intervals of their college terms. Surely Oxford might be restored to persons of this stamp without troubling Mr. Rhodes."

And thus the stranger again, still harping on England's daughter across the seas:

"New and serious attempt on the part of our writing clan to rediscover America, following in the wake of our modern Columbus of philosophical literature, E. J.

Payne. More and Montaigne and Shakspere saw that the machinery of feudalism was outworn, and that we must cross the Atlantic for a new start in truth and nature, if not, as now, to re-teach its second crop of aborigines the lesson they are themselves making haste to forget. With all its faults, America still looming large as the land of ideas. We must pass through and beyond it to get to higher things. They beat us by their impertinent curiosity about everything under the sun, including their own souls. They are actually trying to make a new religion, and, though the attempt may not succeed, it must have precious results of the experimental order.

"That Easter-day metaphysic of a worthy bishop-sin and death abashed before a miracle, and utterly overthrown. He owns, to his sorrow, that 'the church is not in possession.' How can it be, good man? It does not meet the facts of modern suffering, modern discontent; and we want a new adjustment. Be not alarmed; there have been hundreds before, each more or less adequate, and therefore true for its hour. There will be thousands again.

"Try brotherhoods of social justice, but brotherhoods of the world instead of the cloister; sisterhoods-and more especially - as well. Anchorites of the warehouse and of the drawing-room, desperately concerned in finding out how a fine life should be led, and in bringing liberty, equality, and fraternity into every-day concerns. Beings pledged one to another by their vows-coöperators of the affections; trusts of the heart; contrivers of corners in magnanimity, self-sacrifice, self-control, leading the world's life, but even that to finer issues, and the soul's life in the temples that are also their homes.

66

'But not overmuch organization. The 'plan of salvation'-ill-omened phrase! It is all so pigeonholed and docketed. nowadays in affairs of the spirit-so far in the fetching, so remote. Rome and Lambeth these bureaus of paradise! Less crimson tape.

And give the men thus bred their chance of the land, and of every other good thing going. The land for the people, without a revolution of blood-unless you insist on it. Break the territorial aristocracy, old and new, and buy them out. Liddicot and his Grace of Allonby quite ready for heaven; Kisbye also ripe for a bit of a

change in another sphere. The state as owner; and, as holder at a fair rent, anybody that can put the brown earth to good use in any quantity. Other ownership, other rent, of it, a crime, as between man and man." Augusta was just getting ready for the antistrophe; and how much longer the silent choral might have gone on between them no man can say. But at this moment the attendant came in, and making a sign to her, held out his hand for the expected shilling, not in vain. It was time to go; the carriage of the Duchess of Allonby stopped the way.

The duke was waiting for her.

"I am in luck," he said. "I was looking for you in the drive, and I met the carriage." He seemed uneasy for all that. "I have asked him for to-day, Augusta, just to get it over. Would you mind? There'll be nobody else."

"And who is the somebody?" "Well-Kisbye, you know!" It was the sign of capitulation. "As you please, Henry, of course," and she turned her head to save him the sight of a wry face.

There was a sense of something impending in the banners, the roll of traffic, the hum of the street. Was it the end of an epoch-the old order that had passed away, the new that had come to take its place? The omens were not all favorable.

The sky became suddenly overcast; there was a threat of storm.

Another vehicle was at the gate, rather to the ducal coachman's disgust. It was a curious structure, mounted on a lorry, as though for repairs, and evidently much the worse for a late mishap.

Augusta at once recognized the yellow van. And, as she did so, the stranger, stalking forth erect, like a soldier taking his place for battle, nodded a marching order to the man at the horse's head.

Old Redmond stood confessed; and the van served as an introduction.

"You have met with an accident?" "Hardly that, duchess." And he touched his cap.

She started.

“A broken head and what not; a house broken over it in a riot raised by the landgrabbers. We shall get both mended, and go on as before. Such things are among our rules of the road."

“Poor man!"

"I need no pity: we 'll have England for the English people yet.”

All moved away-the battered veteran to his line of march, the Duchess of Allonby only to dinner with Mr. Kisbye! She sighed; it was impossible not to feel the difference in the dignity of their fates.

When last seen, the van was in a ray from a sunburst that parted the clouds.

THE END

IT

TOPICS OF THE TIME

WORDS FITLY SPOKEN

T cannot be denied that of late the soberest-minded men among us have been filled with a solicitude amounting to anxiety in noting the momentum of certain dangerous tendencies in American life. The trend toward mob law in various sections of the country; the increased violence of the aggressions upon the right of workingmen to labor unmolested; the revelations of public and private corruption, and especially of the buying and selling of legislation and franchises; the growth of the gambling mania among women as well as men; the vulgar rush for social promi

nence; the wide-spread system of “graft” and blackmail which has grown up in all classes in the haste to be rich-these familiar phenomena are crowding upon our attention, straining our optimism and shaming our national pride at the very time when we are called upon to exult in the commercial greatness of the country and its peculiar qualifications for redeeming the benighted regions of the world. It is indeed a day of humiliation, but it will not be without its uses if it shall become also a day of humility, and if we shall be brought back to the standard of an elder time when justice and private probity were more prized and praised than the agglomer

ation of national or personal wealth. The very excess of the wide-spread debauch of crime and of the vices which follow "the lurch to luxury" is likely to have a reaction which, at least, will be a warning to the coming generation.

In the midst of all this moral confusion there are not wanting sane and courageous utterances to recall men to their better selves, and to keep true and clear the standards of justice and right-a much more important result, by the way, than one's impeccable conformity to these standards. The fanaticism of lynch law alone has revealed a new group of heroes. Among these we count the father of the victim of the Wilmington murder, who, in the spirit of Whittier's "all revenge is crime," rose above the natural personal impulse to the higher plane of the good of all; the brave members of the Evansville militia, who fought the fight of civilization as truly as the men of Lexington and Concord; and the plucky sheriffs-Whitlock of Danville, Illinois, and Summers of Iredell, North Carolina-who have given examples of duty that exalt their office to its best

estate.

Passing from the sphere of action to that of words, what a wholesome tonic to public opinion is found in Justice Brewer's denunciation of lynching as " pure murder," in Governor Yates's characterization of lynchers as "anarchists," and in Governor Durbin's use of the word "treason" in speaking of the action of labor unions in forcing their members to resign from the militia because they may be called upon to fire upon a mob. These epithets are a seasonable recognition of the fact that all government is based upon physical force regulated by law as opposed to physical force regardless of law.

The peonage cases have also given occasion to a Southerner, Judge Jones of Alabama, to make the most downright denunciation of the iniquity of the system, against which the best sentiment of the South is actively arrayed. What has been done in remote districts by a low class of men will now be suppressed by the leading citizens, from the combined motives of humanity and policy, for the South cannot afford to have the race question thus precipitated into public affairs. In this healthy state of opinion Judge Jones's timely words have been a rallying-cry.

Again, the demoralizing scandal of giving railway passes to members of Congress is brought to light by the refusal of a representative to accept one offered by a prominent company. În a well-reasoned letter a Brooklyn congressman speaks of this company as "an instigator of official misconduct." The phrase is an apt one, which ought to shame railway officials to reform altogether this custom of coquetting with legislators.

But in considering these timely words it must not be forgotten that it is both the privilege and the duty of every citizen to contribute in his own community to an honest and healthy sentiment on such questions. Public opinion is but an aggregation of individual ideas, and every citizen has as much responsibility for his influence as the judge on the bench or the governor in the State-house. The ignorant and selfish can only be overcome by the intelligent and patriotic through the active principle of free speech. But it is also well to make sure that one in no way—directly or indirectly-contributes to the malign forces which from many sides threaten the republic as, with one exception, it has never been threatened before.

THE CANT ABOUT "HARD WORK"

F there is one phase of the reigning

IF

question of "commerce" that has had more attention than another, it is perhaps the condition of the laboring classes, men, women, and children, and particularly of those engaged in extra-hazardous employments. In the multitude of investigations of which they have been the subject, nothing was covered that has not been revealed. In consequence many wrongs have been righted and many more are in the way of being righted. The evils of child labor in the cotton-mill, the horrors of the city sweat-shop, and the exactions of the midnight mine have been duly exposed, and the results cannot fail to tell for a more wholesome and humane condition of things.

No one who comes in contact with affairs can fail to notice, however, as a sort of corollary to the enervation which comes to men of wealth through luxury, an increasing laxity of view among workingmen concerning labor, a tendency to regard the daily task as something greatly to be regretted and hastily to be escaped from. In

[ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small]
[merged small][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

A

וויי

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

"

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

s not be reaching of Tam

sir, matter.

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

The nature of God and man and the ini*w* * joke. Sin and pain are not amusing, but if a method of destroying both has been discenje ged which explains their nature as metaph pucally unreal, that is, indeed, a cause for great joy, praise, and thanksgiving, and broke & Verze and gratitude from the thousands Mahalogen af n fant de rad stond in the Mares of Christian Science," in the July CENTURY.

[ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors]

who have been healed, reformed, and blessed by it.

Christian Scientists shrink from criticizing persons, and will be glad to hear from Mr. Wells that his attempted jest was not about God; but as the verses appeared in the department of THE CENTURY entitled "In Lighter Vein," as the verses themselves certainly had a humorous turn, and as the name of God appeared in almost every one of his eleven verses, it must be conceded that the charge was not unfounded.

W. D. McCrackan.

REJOINDER BY MR. WELLS

My verses are not a "jest about God," they are a jest about Christian Science; and the terms are not synonymous, at least in my mind.

To be sure, Mrs. Eddy does say ("Science and Health," page 480, line 19), "Man is not God, and God is not man." One can find in

the book any arrangement of words on those subjects. But this statement is contradicted a thousand times, as I might show by many quotations.

If it is not the absolute and unqualified teaching of Christian Science that there is no matter, no sin, and no pain, but only an empty mirage of these things, Christian Science has no teaching at all. Probably there are not twenty pages out of the "text-book's" seven hundred that do not explicitly deny the real existence of matter, sin, and pain.

It would indeed, as your correspondent says, be a matter for joy, not for jesting, if a sovereign remedy for sin and sickness had been discovered; but when a set of solemn teachers shut their eyes and bid us be at ease regarding these evils because they do not see them, sober and sensible folk are inclined to think that a jest has been perpetrated, and not by themselves. Amos R. Wells.

[graphic][subsumed][merged small]

E had nearly made the round of the tables, when he came in, though of course that was a detail. He owned a large pincushion, a nutcake, a packet of colored tissue shaving-paper, a three-pound box of fudge at a dollar a pound, a hand-painted wall-calendar, a cardboard scrap-basket tied with ribbons, an embroidered tobacco-pouch, and a huge bunch of roses. And he was trying to carry all these things, for they don't "send" at a hospital fair. Her table was nearly the last in the line, and she laughed outright when she saw him. "Hallo!" he said, his eyes brightening as he came up to her. "Where 's your megaphone?"

"Oh, I don't spiel," she laughed. "I leave that for the girls at the other tables."

"They know the art," he said ruefully. "It's done in better form than it is on the Midways, but just as effectively."

"I should judge so," she returned, with a survey of his laden arms.

"May n't I drop this armful behind your table and leave it there?" he pleaded. "You won't have to tell."

She shook her head. "Everything bought has to be carried away. It's the penalty for buying."

"Then there are two penalties! "What's the other?"

[ocr errors]

"The price. And two against one is no fair." She laughed again.

"It 's hospital fair," she retorted. "Hospital fare is n't good."

"It is at our hospital.-A housewife, did you say?" She turned swiftly to a new customer, a portly lady in purple. "Yes, we have them. Here's a pretty one at two dollars and a quarter. Oh, yes, I can make change. Thank you."

"They did n't make change at the other tables," he said, as she returned. "You mean they would n't." "They said they could n't." "They meant they should n't." "Let me put these things down," he begged. "Will you take them up again by and by? "All but the roses. They 're for you." "Oh, thank you. But you 'll take the other things?"

66

"If I don't forget."

"I'll remind you."

[ocr errors]

"Thanks." He deposited his burden behind the table. "What do you sell?"

"Sewing-things. Housewives, for instance." "I thought housewives were out of date." "They 're coming in again."

"Are all these at two dollars and a quar

ter?"

« AnkstesnisTęsti »