Chapter VI: Part 6

The great men of the world do not emerge from poverty, from squalor.

They come from very modest homes, from the log cabin, and from the towpath, as advertised. They come from those whose fathers and mothers and grandfathers and grandmothers had at least enough to eat, and enough fresh air to give them pure blood and proper nourishment for their brains.

Poverty destroys ambition, inventive power and the capacity to struggle.

A starved body produces a starved brain. The greatest genius that ever lived could not think better than a child of ten if you deprived him of food for ten days.

What can you expect of the inferior minds that have been half fed through a lifetime, or through several generations?

Do you know what made the Revolution and changed conditions in France? It was not poverty. Not a single poor man was a leader in that Revolution. Every one of them was well fed, had a well- nourished brain--Danton, Robespierre, Marat, Desmoulins, Mirabeau--every one a well-fed brain in a vigorous body.

The labor unions and the great strikes, although sometimes unwise and unreasonable, are great blessings to the Nation. They compel the worker to get such pay as will feed himself and his children, giving the Nation well-fed brains. The Union is the enemy of poverty, and for that reason especially it is an agent for good. ----

As poverty breeds ignorance, so ignorance breeds poverty. The greatest enemy of poverty is the Public School. Work and vote, therefore, for public school betterment.

Miserable women walk the streets by thousands on cold Winter nights--poverty has put them there.

Hundreds of thousands of children are born only to struggle for a few years through a stunted infancy--poverty digs their graves.

For one genius that has fought and conquered in spite of poverty ten thousand have sunk out of sight in the fight against the worst of enemies.

Don't waste time extolling the blessings of poverty--use your energies to diminish poverty's curse, and to improve humanity by giving it the full efficiency which freedom from worry alone can give.

THE IMPORTANCE OF EDUCATION PROVED IN LINCOLN'S CASE

The very old and very foolish saying, "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing," is disproved every day. Whenever you hear a man talk about "a little knowledge" ask him what he thinks about the danger of a great deal of IGNORANCE. Tell him this:

"THE SCHOOLING OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN, ALL TOLD DID NOT AMOUNT TO AS MUCH AS ONE YEAR."

The teaching was elementary, including reading, writing, ciphering, and very little of each one. It was picked up at odd times, when he could be spared from daily labor. Remember that when he was a lad his father used to hire him out to work on other men's farms for very little money.

With that little learning he built himself up into one of the greatest men in history, saved the nation, ended once and for all civilized recognition of slavery.

A little learning might possibly have been dangerous had he been one of the idiotic kind of men. It might have made him feel dissatisfied with the hard labor for which he was fit, without stimulating him to better things.

But Lincoln's little learning gave him no rest--it kept him constantly adding more learning to his little supply. ----

The self-pitying young man who thinks he has no chance may be interested in Lincoln's methods of getting ahead. He walked about twenty miles through the wilderness to borrow an English grammar. He could get no other books, so he read and re-read the statutes of Indiana. He wanted to teach himself to write well and think closely. He had never heard Bacon's saying: "Writing maketh an exact man," but he felt the truth of the fact for himself, and he was bound to write. He had no paper and could not afford to buy any.

At night, when his work was done, he would bend his huge six-foot-four frame close down by the firelight to write and cipher ON THE BACK OF A WOODEN SHOVEL.

When the back of the shovel was covered with writing he would shave a thin layer from it and begin writing once more. ----

It is a very useful thing for men occasionally to feel ashamed of themselves. If you want to feel ashamed of yourself, if you are complaining and whining, just picture to yourself Abraham Lincoln in his father's little hut, with no windows and no flooring, crouching by the fire and developing his mind by laborious writing on the back of a wooden shovel.

Children of twelve in schools, precocious little girls even of seven or eight, know much more than Abraham Lincoln knew when he was twenty-one years old.

With his "little knowledge" he grew and did the work that was to improve the condition of millions of men.

Don't be ashamed of your "little knowledge."

But do be ashamed if you do not add to it whenever you can, and especially if you fail to make it useful to your fellow-men.

KNOWLEDGE IS GROWTH

Consider to-day the CHEERFUL side of conditions on earth.

Every human being has his troubles and worries. The luckiest of us all yearns for what cannot be had, and sees much to regret.

But one splendid fact should always be borne in mind: THE PROGRESS OF HUMANITY IS INCESSANT. WE ARE INFINITELY BETTER OFF NOW THAN WE HAVE BEEN BEFORE ON THIS EARTH, AND UNLIMITED POSSIBILITIES OF IMPROVEMENT ARE AHEAD OF US.

The progress of humanity has been like that of an individual climbing the paths of a steep mountain. At every turn there are fresh dangers and difficulties to be overcome, fresh complications for which the traveler is prepared only by his courage and determination.

But every step takes the traveler higher up, out of the dark valley, toward the light at the top, and every danger overcome makes it easier to deal with the dangers to follow.

In its long fight the human race has encountered many enemies.

At one time in Europe one single epidemic destroyed half of all the population. But we have struggled on; through science we have almost conquered disease, and the plagues of the past are unknown among us.

In olden times brutal superstition, disguised as religion, dwarfed men's minds, punishing, with atrocious cruelty, the crime of independent thought and apparently making impossible any mental growth in the face of bigotry and monstrous persecutions.

But to-day bigotry begins to give place to true religion; the burning alive and protracted torture which disgraced all the religions of Europe until recently have ceased, probably forever.

Mankind in its travels has progressed as far as the stage of independent thought. If a creature still lives that would take the life of another because that other thinks differently from himself he dares not confess his criminal thought.

A few centuries ago the great majority of all human beings were slaves or serfs. The noblest of human brains, those of the Greek philosophers, wrote and lived in the midst of slavery. Even as great a man as Aristotle could not conceive a society based on a non-slave-holding system.

But except in some African jungle, here and there among savage and semi-savage races, no man is a slave now. And where slavery does exist it exists in stagnant pools of humanity, and it exists side by side with the other monsters, cruel superstition and widespread disease, that progressive humanity has left behind. ----

Every century of which the history has been preserved shows us its horrid side of life, its cruelties, its sufferings without number. But each succeeding century shows also some one point gained, some one hideous feature of life eliminated.

The enemy of the world to-day, the monster in the path of progress, is organized greed, the insane desire of a few men to take from others, and for themselves, what they do not need.

The trust, seeking through capital to reintroduce slavery under another form, and to establish the tyranny of money in place of the tyranny of swords and bullets, represents the present problem.

This problem, like all the others, will be solved in its turn. It will be found that the great danger did good as well as harm, and that, on its overthrow, only good was left behind it.

The diseases that once destroyed men forced them to live a decent life of cleanliness. Those diseases frightened human beings out of filth into respect for themselves as the rulers of the world.

We owe the cleanness and decent temperate living of to-day, as well as our knowledge of medical science, to the diseases that formerly destroyed the people.

The hideous travesties called religion which relied for their power on superstition, fire and sword appeared to block all spiritual development among men. These religions have passed away; only the vital, true religious principle is left--the command laid upon men to feel toward each other as brothers, to worship the ONE and benevolent power that rules the world.

A few years or centuries from now the trust problem will be solved, and that particular monster will lie dead on its ledge of rock back in the pages of history. And men will know that to the great danger and brutality of to-day they owe much of their progress and happiness.

When the trust goes commercial greed will go with it. It will have killed the hideous theory of competition, with its swindling of the public, its cutting of wages, its general mean, petty, treacherous tradesmen's warfare. ----

Every human being should read history intelligently, if only for the encouraging effect on the mind.

In every direction, and in spite of foolish croakers, the human race has improved.

Good men and women deplore the drunkenness of to-day, and they do right. But for their own satisfaction and encouragement they should know that in comparison with former times the drunkenness of to-day amounts to nothing.

Where one man drinks too much in these days, a thousand men and a thousand women were frightfully drunk a few years ago.

Drunkenness, which formerly attacked the most useful of human beings--doctors, statesmen, poets, the best mechanics--is confined now to a feeble fragment of humanity made weak by disease, hereditary influence, discouragement or imperfect organization.

More important than this encouraging development is the changed attitude of the public mind toward the drinking habit. Twenty-five centuries ago a Greek philosopher, to make heaven attractive, described the table at which heroes sat in a never-ending, blissful state of drunkenness.

To-day even the meanest man is ashamed to have it known that he is drunk, and the most hopeless drunkard would ask no greater favor than that some one should make it impossible for him ever to drink again.

There is a criminal conspiracy, called the Beef Trust, which thrives on the needs and privations of the whole people. It is a blot on humanity. Do what you can to destroy this evil. But do not be made bitter by it. Your age is a happier one than others.

In France, not so long ago, human beings were punished for eating the bodies of men that had died of the plague, and strict laws were issued to stop that kind of cannibalism. The Beef Trust age is an improvement on that age, is it not? High prices are bad, but not as bad as hideous, widespread starvation. ----

Human selfishness and heartlessness are criticised to-day, and the criticism is just. Yet, MORALLY, the human race has improved more than in any other way.

We see to-day callous, heartless men spending millions upon their personal pleasures, paving insufficiently the laborers whose work enriches them, and robbing the public whose patience makes the great fortunes possible.

But the worst plutocrat of to-day is an angel compared with the mildly vicious men of olden times.

Your selfish man to-day only asks for a yacht and some race horses, mild forms of dissipation. A thousand years ago the vicious man demanded and exercised the power of life and death over those who surrounded him, and his mildest fit of irritation cost the life of some helpless human being.

Men are ill-paid to-day, but their condition is Paradise compared to the slavery of their predecessors. ----

You should daily criticise yourself and others, and do what you can in your little sphere as preacher, politician, editor or private individual to help along humanity's progress.

But remember always for your encouragement that the world is improving steadily. It never stands still; it never goes backward. And there are no limits to our future improvement, thanks to our inborn love of what is right and to the steady influence of EDUCATION.

A WHISKEY BOTTLE

How should a whiskey drinker talk to his son? If he talked as he feels he would hold up the flat, brown bottle and say:

"My boy, you know that I am a poor man and have nothing to leave to you or your mother.

"The difference between myself and the successful men who have passed me is this:

"I have gone through life with this bottle in my hand or in my pocket. They have not."

A man comes into the world prepared to do his share of the world's work, well or ill, as his brain and his physical strength may decide. Of all his qualities the most important practically is BALANCE.

The whiskey in that bottle destroys balance, mental and physical.

It substitutes dreaming and foolish self-confidence for real effort.

It presents all of life's problems and duties in a false light. It makes those things seem unimportant which are most important.

IT DULLS THE CONSCIENCE, WHICH ALONE CAN MAKE MEN DO THEIR DUTY IN SPITE OF TEMPTATION, AND STRUGGLE ON TO SUCCESS IN SPITE OF EXHAUSTION.

Keep away from this bottle, and keep away from those who praise it. He who hands it to his fellow man is a criminal, and he who hands it to a young man is a worse criminal and a villain. ----

It is a well-established fact that in the usual order of events drunkenness would be handed down from father to son, and hundreds of thousands of families would be ultimately wiped out by whiskey.

It is not true, fortunately, that the son of a drunkard actually inherits drunkenness fully developed. But a drunkard gives to his son weakened nerves and a diminished will power, which tend to make him a drunkard more easily than his father was made a drunkard before him.

The great safeguard of a drunkard's children undoubtedly lies in the warning which they see every day in their home and in the earnest advice which the man who drinks will give to all young people if he have any conscience left.

If the man who drinks would save his own children from the same danger, he can do so better than any other. He need not lose their respect by telling them of his own mistakes, if these mistakes have been hidden from them. Let him simply tell them, without personal reference, what he knows about whiskey, its effects on a man's happiness, success, self-respect and physical comfort.

Whiskey gives a great many things to men. Of these gifts here are a few:

Lack of friends, lack of will, lack of self-respect, lack of nervous force--lack of everything save the hideous craving that can end only with unconsciousness, and that begins again with increased suffering when consciousness is restored. ----

Fathers and mothers blessed with self-control and with good children should use the picture of a drinking man as a useful, moral lesson in talking to boys and girls from seven to twenty years of age.

Children are impressed most easily through their imaginations. An intelligent father or mother can produce upon a child's receptive mind an impression that will last for years.

With the fear of whiskey there should be impressed upon children sympathy and sorrow for the unfortunate drunkard.

One of the ablest men, and one of the most earnest in America, said to his friends very recently:

"I never drink, as you know. But when I see a man lying drunk in the gutter, I know that he has probably made that very day a harder effort at self-control, a nobler struggle to control himself, than I ever made in my life. He has yielded and fallen at last, but only because all of his strength is insufficient to overcome the disease that possesses him."

Teach your children that drunkenness is a horrible disease, as bad as leprosy. Teach them that it can be avoided, that the disease is contracted in youth through carelessness, and that it is spread by those who encourage drinking in others. Tell them that the avoiding of whiskey is not merely a question of morals or obedience to parents, but a question involving mental and physical salvation, success in life, happiness, and the respect of others.

THOSE WHO LAUGH AT A DRUNKEN MAN

How often have you seen a drunken man stagger along the street!

His clothes are soiled from falling, his face is bruised, his eyes are dull. Sometimes he curses the boys that tease him. Sometimes he tries to smile, in a drunken effort to placate pitiless, childish cruelty.

His body, worn out, can stand no more, and he mumbles that he is GOING HOME.

The children persecute him, throw things at him, laugh at him, running ahead of him.

GROWN MEN AND WOMEN, TOO, OFTEN LAUGH WITH THE CHILDREN, nudge each other, and actually find humor in the sight of a human being sunk below the lowest animal.

The sight of a drunken man going home should make every other man and woman sad and sympathetic, and, horrible as the sight is, it should be useful, by inspiring, in those who see it, a determination to avoid and to help others avoid that man's fate. ----

That reeling drunkard is GOING HOME.

He is going home to children who are afraid of him, to a wife whose life he has made miserable.

He is going home, taking with him the worst curse in the world--to suffer bitter remorse himself after having inflicted suffering on those whom he should protect.

AND AS HE GOES HOME MEN AND WOMEN, KNOWING WHAT THE HOME-COMING MEANS, LAUGH AT HIM AND ENJOY THE SIGHT. ----

In the old days in the arena it occasionally happened that brothers were set to fight each other. When they refused to fight they were forced to it by red-hot irons applied to their backs.

We have progressed beyond the moral condition of human beings guilty of such brutality as that. But we cannot call ourselves civilized while our imaginations and sympathies are so dull that the reeling drunkard is thought an amusing spectacle.

LAW CANNOT STOP DRUNKENNESS-- EDUCATION CAN

Everybody knows that until recently the average statesman, the majority of prominent men, in England, drank to excess.

Pitt was a drunkard--and Pitt was the most remarkable statesman in England.

Fox was a drunkard.

In fact, to write a list of England's greatest men, who lived more than a hundred years ago, would be to make a list of famous drunkards.

To-day the drunkard in public life is practically unknown in England, as well as in America. No legal pressure has been brought to bear upon the prosperous drunkard.

He was not badgered by policemen or by blue-laws.

He could get ALL that he wanted to drink WHENEVER he wanted it--yet, OF HIS OWN ACCORD, the prosperous drunkard has reformed and become temperate. ----

Our own great Daniel Webster was a drunkard, as were many other great Americans. No man to-day could be a drunkard and at the same time be respected.

Education, experience and common sense have done their work, and drunkenness is now left to self-indulgent fools, or to those whose lives are made dull by poverty, to whom alcohol affords the only escape from horrible monotony.

It would, perhaps, be worth while for the advocates of temperance to study the causes which have practically eliminated drunkenness from the most intelligent classes of men.

Education undoubtedly is the greatest factor.

In nearly all the public schools now the evil effects of alcohol are taught.

These evil effects are taught, not in a lackadaisical way, with sentiment or religious duty as a basis. They are taught as FACTS.

Facts appeal to the mind, and they persist in their effect in later life, when moral suasion and religious appeals are forgotten.

Teach every child that alcohol destroys his chances of success, impairs his muscular efficiency, inflames the substance of the brain and prevents development--MAKE HIM FEEL THAT A DRINKING MAN IS A SECOND-CLASS MAN, AND YOU WILL HAVE DONE MUCH TO DESTROY THE DRUNKENNESS OF THE FUTURE. ----

As a matter of fact, drunkenness, like dirt, is mainly an accompaniment of poverty and a sad, hopeless life.

For the man or woman given to drinking, when the troubles of life are no longer to be borne, some relief must be had.

Make the lives of human beings more comfortable, make good food more plentiful, spread education--and you will solve the problem of excessive drinking.

THE DRUNKARD'S SIDE OF IT

You lucky, well-balanced ones talk much, and sincerely, of the horrors of drink, and of the drunkard's weakness.

You think the whiskey drinker ought to stop.

Do you ask yourself whether or not he CAN stop?

Let us consider to-day the drunkard's side of the case. ----

Very often physical weakness causes drunkenness. Many a man takes a drink because the task put upon him is heavier than he can bear. The whiskey does not help him--it hurts him. But it cheats him and makes him THINK that he is helped.

You realize that whiskey drinking as a settled habit must be fought with weapons of some kind.

WILL POWER is the great weapon to use in our own behalf. You tell the drunkard to use his will power.

But you forget that the first thing that whiskey attacks is will power.

You remind the drunkard that his weakness brings suffering on others, and you appeal to his conscience. But you forget that whiskey weakens conscience even more than it weakens the nerves. You forget, too, that whiskey makes its victims suffer. If he could free himself he would do so, if only for his own sake.

And you must not forget that whiskey argues ingeniously, in addition to its telling of lies.

A man is overcome with some great grief. Whiskey makes him forget, or at least it makes him not care.

A man is suffering some great humiliation, some sense of personal shortcoming, that is intolerable to him. Whiskey offers to relieve him, and for the moment it does relieve him. ----

YOU who talk nobly of temperance and advocate laws governing other men are apt to be proud of your own self-control.

Perhaps you have been a drinking man and have stopped. But you do not know how much lighter whiskey's hold may have been upon you than upon others.

Suppose you worked hard every day, every week and every year.

Suppose you had no pleasure in life, save the fictitious pleasure and excitement that come from whiskey. Suppose you failed, and failed and failed again--and suppose that whiskey was always ready to praise you, make you feel proud of yourself, make you hold others responsible for your failures--are you sure you could let it alone? ----

In your condemnation of those who persist in whiskey drinking you must remember that what is easy for one man is very hard for another.

Suppose you should urge two animals to go without meat--one of the animals being a tiger and the other a sheep. Would you praise the sheep for its faithful keeping of the promise? Would you blame the tiger for breaking its word, if the temptation to eat meat were offered?

In men's nervous systems, in their craving for alcohol, there is as great a difference between different temperaments as between the appetites of the sheep and the tiger. One man is dragged toward the gulf by whiskey with a force of which you have no conception.

You look with contempt at a hopeless drunkard, shuffling along toward destruction.

THERE ARE THOUSANDS OF SUCH MEN WHO EVERY DAY OF THEIR LIVES MAKE AN EFFORT OF THE WILL OF WHICH YOU WOULD BE INCAPABLE.

But that effort, great as it is, is not great enough to save them--whiskey drags them too hard in the other direction.

Fortunately, we can all congratulate ourselves on the steady falling off in drunkenness. To drink to excess is no longer respectable. Once it was a leading sign of respectability. Doctors in the old days wrote their prescriptions illegibly, because when called late at night they were usually drunk. To-day a drunken doctor cannot possibly survive.

Work as hard as you can against drunkenness, for drunkenness harms every one, even the saloon-keeper himself. The drunkard soon comes to ruin and ceases to be a profitable customer.

Argue with young men, and talk to children ABOUT THEIR OWN WELFARE in the matter.

But remember also that the drunkard often has tried harder than you could try to overcome the enemy that has conquered him. Remember that unless you have lived his life you cannot know his excuse and cannot judge him.

DRINK A SLOW POISON

Often a man talks about like this:

"I am a regular but moderate drinker. No one ever saw me drunk, and yet I drink every day. And what's the harm of it? Can you see anything the matter with me?"

The man would seem to have the advantage of you. You cannot SEE anything wrong with him. So far as outward appearances go the case is squarely against you. The man APPEARS to be all right.

But is he? The effects of drink upon the system do not show themselves to the extent of attracting very marked attention, at least until the conditions are fairly ripe.

In the man who comes out on to the street after a PROTRACTED DEBAUCH the effects of whiskey are visible; even the little children notice him.

He may not be drunk. It may have been hours since he touched a drop. But any one can see that his physical system has received a severe shock.

In the moderate drinker these signs are not visible, but the alcohol which he daily imbibes is doing its work, and slowly but surely his constitution is being undermined.

Now and then we run across some old man who is hale and hearty, notwithstanding the fact that he has been a moderate drinker all his life.

But no one will think of denying the fact that this old man is an exception--a very rare exception.

Many old men who SHOULD be hale and hearty are suffering from ailments born of the drink habit, by which, in their earlier days, they were enslaved.

In the "rheum, the dry serpigo and the gout" which rack their frames, make their bones ache and render miserable and thankless the evening days which should be so full of peace and beauty, they are reaping the fruits of their "harmless" moderate drinking.

Two or three weeks ago we made reference to the report by Mr. Mesureur, Director of the Department of Charities, Paris, upon the results of alcoholism in France.

That report was no sooner made public than the French liquor dealers were up in arms against it. Indignation meetings were held. The mails were flooded with all sorts of protests against the truth of Mesureur's claim that alcoholism was slowly but surely destroying the French people.

The discussion at last became so heated that the government took it upon itself to subject the offensive report to a careful scrutiny, with the result that it was CONFIRMED in every particular.

We quote from a poster, issued by the "Investigation Council for Promoting the Public Welfare," and now displayed all over France:

"Alcoholism is the chronic poisoning resulting from the constant use of alcohol, even if it does not produce drunkenness.

"It is an error to say that alcohol is a necessity to the man who has to do hard work, or that it restores strength.

"The artificial stimulation which it produces soon gives way to exhaustion and nervous depression. Alcohol is good for nobody, but works harm to everybody.

"Alcoholism produces the most varied and fatal diseases of the stomach and liver, paralysis, dropsy and madness. It is one of the most frequent canses of tuberculosis.

"Lastly, it aggravates and enhances all acute diseases, typhus, pneumonia, erysipelas.

"THESE DISEASES ONLY ATTACK A SOBER MAN IN A MILD DEGREE, WHILE THEY QUICKLY DO AWAY WITH THE MAN WHO DRINKS ALCOHOL.

"The sins of the parents against the laws of health visit their offspring. If the children survive the first months of their lives they are threatened with imbecility or epilepsy, or death carries them away a little later by such diseases as meningitis or consumption.

"Alcoholism is one of the most terrible plagues to the individual health, the existence of the home, and the prosperity of the nation."

TO THOSE WHO DRINK HARD-- YOU HAVE SLIPPED THE BELT

Men have explained variously their reasons for drinking to excess.

An able architect drank too much every night. He said that he HAD to drink. If he went to bed perfectly sober his mind went on working and dreaming, after he had gone to sleep, and he woke up fatigued and unable to attend to his work.

"I don't want to drink," said he, "but in order to do my work I must have the sleep that follows what is ordinarily called taking too much."

Other men explained excessive drinking as follows:

"I must have the mental excitement that comes from drinking."

"You can't imagine the delightful agility of the mind under the influence of alcohol."

"The brain works more quickly, more energetically, more freely."

"After drinking a certain amount I can live more in an hour than I could ordinarily in a month," etc. ----

These men who believe that alcohol improves the mind, stimulating it to better effort, constitute a very large class, perhaps the largest class of those who drink to excess.

We wish we could persuade such men that they are mistaken in believing that excessive alcohol feeds the brain.

The man who has drunk too much, and thinks that his mind is working splendidly, might learn something by studying any sort of machinery when the belt slips off the wheel, or the screw of a steamer when the power of the waves throws the screw out of the water.

While the belt is securely attached, doing its works, it turns slowly and monotonously.

While the screw is buried in the water, fighting its way and pushing its load ahead, it turns slowly and laboriously.

When the belt slips off or the screw comes out of the water, the whole thing is changed. The screw whizzes around like lightning.

The belt rattles and dances.

The screw in the water and the machinery doing its work properly are like the sober brain.

The brain that is made abnormal by alcohol is simply the screw out of water, the misplaced machine belt. The brain is no longer connected with the working realities of life. It has lost its balance and its function. It works rapidly and aimlessly. It moves with wonderful swiftness, but it accomplishes nothing.

Let men who drink too much, believing that the action of their minds is improved by drinking, think over this proposition about the machinery and see if there is not something in it to interest them.

How much actual work does this alcoholized brain turn out? What do they actually DO "next day"?

TRY WHISKEY ON YOUR FRIEND'S EYEBALL

Your friend drinks too much, or drinks temperately but unwisely.

You may entreat, or argue, or abuse, or threaten.

You may show your friend the happy home where rum never enters.

You may lead him through the alcoholic ward at Bellevue.

Such sights may produce an impression. But usually they do not.

The man who possesses, indulges and keenly enjoys an overwhelming passion--for drink or any other vice--is rarely moved by your fine talk, for the reason that he believes in his wily soul that you do not know what you are talking about.

Mr. Lecky, in his history of European morals, page 135, volume I., observes:

"That which makes it so difficult for a man of strong, vicious passions to unbosom himself to a naturally virtuous man is not so much the virtue as THE IGNORANCE OF THE LATTER."

You are naturally virtuous. Your drinking friend is naturally and proudly bad. He thinks you do not know what you are talking about when you ask him to give up drink. ----

When you start out to cure a vicious friend by arguing with him, do you ever reflect how little you know what goes on within him? Suppose that in his nerves there is a craving ten thousand times louder and stronger than your most virtuous arguments? What good will those arguments do? No use whispering poetry to a man in a boiler shop. No use humming a love song in a whirlwind.

The poetry, the song, are out of place. Any sort of argument save the most powerful is wasted on a man whose soul is filled with the racket of a dominating passion, such as drink or gambling. ----

Just two things can cure a drunkard--two things, and nothing else on earth.

First, his own cold reason and strength of will.

Second, the growth within him of some passion stronger than his love of drink.

Love of his children, love of a woman, will cure a drunkard (but we earnestly advise any woman to make sure he is cured before trusting her future to him). Ambition--which includes every form of vanity and self-delusion--will cure a drunkard, and has cured many thousands. Even the miser's passion of economy may outweigh love of drink and cure the lesser desire. ----

To cure a drunkard, try to arouse within him some desire stronger than his desire to drink. Any boy will stop smoking to play football or to excel in any sort of athletics. You reach his vanity. What preaching could produce the same effect?

If you feel that you must use argument, try such arguments as will appeal to the man himself, not such as seem sound to you in your fine state of virtue.

The American drunkard is usually manufactured by the vile American habit of drinking pure whiskey or cocktails. No other race, except among the most degraded classes, absorbs crude spirits as stupidly as this race. ----

Suppose you have a young friend whose tendency to drink "straight" whiskey makes you nervous. You see what it is leading to. Instead of trying to make a teetotaler of him, try to transform him into a sensible drinker. ----

When your friend orders his whiskey, start off as follows:

Tell him you take it for granted that he knows all about the mucous membrane. He will say that he does--for it is our American mania to want to appear wise.

Casually state that of course he knows the covering of his eyeball is identical in all important respects--especially as regards sensitiveness--with the lining of his stomach; in fact, of his whole interior from his mouth down.

He will assent and gravely pour out his poison.

Then say to him:

"Just dip the tip of your finger in that whiskey and put the finger to your eye-ball."

If he does so he will feel the eye smart. The eyeball will become inflamed, and sight for a moment will be difficult.

Then let him dilute the whiskey with water--four or five parts water to one of whiskey. That dilution, rubbed into the other eye, instead of irritating it, will act as a gentle stimulant. It will produce an agreeable effect.

When your friend has experimented with the whiskey "straight" and diluted, deliver to him this little lecture:

"One drop of pure whiskey on your eyeball makes it hard to use the eye. That glass of whiskey that you are now pouring into yourself would blind you absolutely, at least for a time. If straight whiskey has such an effect on the covering of the eyeball, must not its effect be equally injurious to the covering of the stomach and intestines, which is the same as that of the eye?

"If diluting your whiskey makes it so much better as an eye-wash, would not diluting it make it better also as a 'stomach-wash'?"

One other thing: When you argue with a drunkard don't tell him that any man can cure himself if he will "only be a man." The drunkard knows that that is not so. Tell him, on the contrary, that not one man in fifty, not one woman in a hundred, can overcome the drink habit.

He will wink his tired eyes at you and say: "I want you distinctly to understand that I'm one in a hundred." Tell him how difficult it is--not how easy--and thus stir up his ambition. ----

Above all, when you start out to admonish or despise the victim of bad habits, just remember that you have no notion whatever of what you criticise. Not one drunkard in a hundred has will power to cure himself. Not one "virtuous" man in a thousand has imagination enough to realize the drunkard's temptation and suffering. We offer to your consideration this other extract from Lecky's book, quoted above:

"The great majority of uncharitable judgments in the world may be traced to a deficiency of imagination. * * * To realize with any adequacy the force of a passion we have never experienced, to conceive a type of character radically different from our own, * * * requires a power of imagination which is among the rarest of human endowments."

WHAT ARE THE TEN BEST BOOKS?

An interesting discussion progresses in Chicago. Mr. Sam T. Clover has asked this startling question:

"If you were bound for a desert island, and could take with you only ten books, which ten books would you select?"

Whoever is refined and well read in Chicago seems to have answered Mr. Clover's question. Mr. Clover introduces each guesser with a graceful speech; then the guesser solemnly names ten books.

The selections are, from the moral viewpoint, admirable. The Bible is omitted rarely, and the Rubaiyat never. It is amazing to see how many inhabitants of Cook County would be unhappy on a desert island without Col. Omar. ----

It may not be permissible for a Yellow Editor to break into a Cook County literary fiesta. We dislike to run the risk--but we shall run it.

First we remark that a man living on a desert island needs no books at all.

Reading books is an idle occupation unless you make your reading profitable to other human beings, and that you cannot do on a desert island.

The trouble with many readers is this: They read as though they WERE on a desert island. They sop up literature or facts as a sponge sops up water; then, like human sponges, do nothing with their wisdom. They read for themselves; they read to increase their egotism and self-approval, and for no other purpose. ----

But, after walking into an intellectual parlor above our station in life, it certainly does not become us to be finicky.

We'll tell as quickly as possible what it is that surprises us:

NOT ONE COOK COUNTY THINKER MENTIONS A BOOK ON ASTRONOMY.

A man on a desert island has a little sand, some goats and a few miles of ocean around him--nothing else in sight.

But above him, and on the low plains of the horizon, the great universe is spread out. Vega flashes overhead, beckoning to this little solar system that is rolling on toward her.

The old, benevolent stars look through cold space at our little sun that was not even hatched in their yesterday.

The Milky Way, that Mississippi of the sky, rolls across the thousands of billions of miles of space.

The messenger-boy comets go on their long, elliptical errands. The colored planets and moons, the nebular masses and the cold, dead worlds lying in the silent morgue of eternity tell the wonderful story of cosmic grandeur.

We should think that a man on a desert island, living constantly in contemplation of God's real work, would want to study that work.

The greatest book ON MEN that ever was written on this earth is but an analysis of the emotions of imperfect human minds. A good ASTRONOMY is a guide book of GOD'S kingdom.

Many Cook County litterateurs select Carlyle for a desert island companion. Have they not observed that Carlyle's mind was fixed on contemplation of the universe?--"the eternal silences" were his friends. And when he seeks monkeyfied human soldiers, booted and spurred, he asks, "What thinks Bootes of them, as he leads his hunting dogs across the zenith in a leash of sidereal fire?"

O, Cook County thinkers, inhabitants of a small corner of this small ant-hill, drop your alcohol-loving tentmaker--Omar--forget your half-hearted fondness for Milton. Buy "Ball's Story of the Heavens," or even some simpler astronomy; spend four dollars and four weeks finding out how grand is our real home, the boundless, beautiful universe.

THE MARVELLOUS BALANCE OF THE UNIVERSE--A LESSON IN THE TEXAS FLOOD

A tidal wave and hurricane combined have destroyed thousands of lives in one small corner of the globe.

After the first excitement and horror, the creditable outpouring of help, there should be thankfulness in the hearts of the many millions who live on safely.

Do you ever think of the wonderful protection, the marvellous precision in celestial mechanics that guard you as you travel through space? ----

The oceans, seas and lakes contain water enough to cover the entire surface of the earth to a depth of six hundred feet, if the earth's surface were actually round.

In huge reservoirs, which we call oceans, the earth's waters are stored for our use. Those vast volumes of water rest on the surface of a whirling sphere travelling through space at fearful speed. The slightest derangement, the slightest lack of balance in our motion round the sun, the slightest shifting of the poles, and mountains of water miles high would sweep over the continents and wipe out--not only one small city--but the entire human race. ----

Our existence here requires a precision so great that our minds can but feebly grasp it. Change the temperature of your body by but a few degrees and you die. But you travel through space safely, with a freezing ocean of ether about you. You travel in company with suns that throw out endless billions of degrees of heat. You are protected in a travelling hothouse, regulated exactly to suit your feeble strength and all your wants. ----

Did you ever see the small, black nose of a pug dog pressed against the window of a flying express train?

Have you ever seen that pug barking at the landscape whirling by?

Have you ever reflected on the utter inability of that pug to realize the marvellous intelligence and power that are whirling him along as he barks and wags his tail and enjoys himself calmly?

Kind reader, you and all of us, whirling along in this magnificently conducted express train called the earth--whirling onward to a destiny worthy of our habitation--are so many poor little pug dogs looking out at nature's marvels and looking out with less than pug-dog appreciation.

THE EARTH IS ONLY A FRONT YARD

The philosophers, political economists, lawmakers, editors, sociologists, and all the other would-be deep thinkers of this earth, are really engaged in a pretty small business.

We are like a swarm of human beings cast away on some desert island. This earth is our island, a little island in space, and it is a desert island and a badly arranged island in more ways than one. Many of us lack good dwellings, some of us lack food, all of us are worried about the future. The island is infested with mosquitoes and with diseases that we have not learned to conquer. There are many criminals on it that prey upon the honest people--criminals at the top and criminals at the bottom of society.

And all of those who think and sympathize with their fellow creatures are busy with the problem of putting things right on this little desert island that carries us along in the wake of the sun.

Most of us imagine that the most important work for men is the organization of life on this little planet. That is a very small and mean idea of man's real destiny.

When a man builds a house, the planning of sanitary arrangements must first be attended to. After that begin the real life and the real interests. That real life and those real interests are not confined to the front yard or the back yard of the man that owns the house. ----

So it will be some day with us who are now engaged in the detailed organization of the little home which we call the earth.

We are fixing up our moral plumbing--fighting poverty, injustice, and, above all, ignorance. We are fighting the meanness that comes of competition and the greater meanness that is based upon the dread of poverty in the future. Some of us are piling up millions that we can never use, while others suffer for lack of that which could be abundantly supplied.

All these little earthly questions that seem so big will be settled in time.

But a few years in the sight of Time--a few hundred centuries, perhaps, as we count them--and our earthly habitation will have been made fit to live in. We shall have eliminated the unfit--not by killing them off, but by educating them. We shall have solved the question of poverty by solving the question of production, and especially of distribution. We shall have developed a citizenship capable of earnest work, of sobriety and of moral decency, without the spur of want, imprisonment or the scaffold as necessary adjuncts.

In time the human race will have solved its little problems here--the problems that seem so vast to-day.

When that time comes we shall be like the man who has put his house in order, and our thoughts will not be confined to this little piece of ground. Then we shall appreciate the cosmic wisdom which has divided our day into darkness and light--the light for the enjoyment of the material beauties of our earthly home; THE NIGHT FOR THE STUDY AND ENJOYMENT OF THE VAST, MYSTERIOUS UNIVERSE SPREAD OUT AROUND US.

Everybody knows that the aged require less sleep than the young. In the future, this will make old age what it ought to be, a blessing, because it will give to the old more hours of the night for contemplation of the Infinite and all its wonders.

Those of us who now think themselves very abstract when they speculate on the North Pole, or when they discuss the possibility of reclaiming the Desert of Sahara, will have their minds many millions of miles away from this earth a great deal of the time.

We shall communicate, perhaps, with our sister-planet, Venus--the planet most like ours in physical arrangement. We shall be intensely interested in that world, where it is always night on one side of the planet, and always day on the other.

We shall realize with deepest envy the fact that the constant, terrific currents of air whirling around Venus, in consequence of the extreme heat and the extreme cold on opposite sides of the planet, have developed a race as far superior to us as the trout in the swift-flowing brook is superior to the heavy-eyed catfish in the bottom of the pond. ----

We shall humbly beg for information from the superior inhabitants of other worlds, and perhaps wait with impatience for release from duty here which shall take us to a higher planetary existence. If we look backward at all, we shall consider our present selves simply as refined cannibals, who lived upon the labor and the suffering of our fellows instead of feeding upon their bodies. ----

It may seem ridiculous to predict that the time will come when the intelligent man's interests will be nearly all outside of the earth on which he lives.

But to the savage of the Congo, squatted beside a decaying hippopotamus, gorging himself with the meat, with not a thought beyond that carcass or beyond the edge of the river, it would seem preposterous to speak of men whose interests range out over the entire world.

We look upon a man as very small to-day unless all knowledge interests him, unless his mind roams daily all over the civilized globe, sharing in the interests of all nations, in the literature, the discoveries and the activities of all nations.

To-day we, with our minds on little, material problems, our thoughts centred on this one little planet, as we lead our selfish lives, are like that Congo savage hacking away at the dead hippopotamus.

When night comes, we shut our eyes like the chickens, waiting for the light that means money-making or pleasure of the senses; or we go to theatres or to balls, or elsewhere, to shut out as far as possible all knowledge of that marvellous, unlimited creation to which we belong, and which it is our greatest privilege feebly to study. ----

The geography class of the future will be a class in astronomy. The real problems of the future will be the problems outside of this earth, and the real interests of the future will be interests connected with the universe at large.

We shall make of this earth a beautiful garden, inhabited by safe, happy human beings. We shall take pride in it, and enjoy it by day. Our intellectual lives will begin with the going down of the sun and the gradual appearance of those mighty neighbors in space that alone will interest the thinking man of future days.

LAST WEEK'S BABY WILL SURELY TALK SOME DAY

It is believed by scientists that the planet Mars may be striving at this moment to communicate with us. Lines of light are seen on her surface--on the border of that part of Mars known as Lake Iscarie--and men of learning believe that the Martians are trying to signal our earth.

Possibly they are trying.

Of this you may be sure: Sooner or later we shall communicate with all the planets, and perhaps through the giant sun receive news of outside solar systems.

We have lived comparatively but a few hours on this earth. The civilization on Mars is millions of years older than our own.

Although we are still primitive savages, we have done wonders already.

We can talk instantaneously with a Chinese sitting cross-legged on the under (or upper) side of our earth. We can send a message around the earth in a few seconds.

Of course we shall talk to Mars as soon as we get out of our cradle down here.

Look into an ordinary cradle where a week-old baby lies nursing his wrath or trying to talk to his toe. There are around him eighty millions of other human beings--fourteen hundred millions if you count all on earth--and he, the baby, cannot say one word to any of them. He does not even know his own mother.

Like humanity on this earth, he is busy growing up. He has not had time to spread out and get an interest in his surroundings.

His liver must get small--at the end of his milk diet. His legs must get straight and strong. He must learn to creep and walk. After a period as extensive in his life as a thousand centuries in the life of the race, he begins to talk to those about him.

We do not believe that the time has yet come for us to talk to the Martians, or to the inhabitants of any other older planet.

They may possibly be signalling to us up there, as a man inexperienced will signal to a new-born baby or even try to make it understand what he says.

It is probable, however, that Mars, far advanced in science, as superior to us as we are to new-born infants, would use the light only to attract our interest and let us know that when the time comes we have an old brother planet anxious to chat with this baby earth.

It will be most interesting when the talking time does come. The men who have lived, studied, experimented millions of years ahead of us will be able to tell us many things that we need to know.

Like the baby in the cradle, we are compelled now to discover everything for ourselves. Our old brother Mars, as soon as we can understand, may help us to take giant steps forward, just as a younger brother, as soon as he can speak, is taught by his elder in one of our families. ----

It will be interesting, also, to observe how we shall probably reject the good advice given us, as the young person here rejects the words of experience.