Chapter II: Christmas

It was Christmas, and the snow was still falling in large, soft flakes. It was about ten inches deep out on the hills, among the trees out along Capilano and Lynn Creeks, but it had been churned into slush on the streets and pavements of Vancouver. The church bells were ringing, and our gaily clad and happy acquaintances of the evening before were again thronging the streets; but to-day they were on their way to church to praise the One whose birthday they were observing. Our friend of the large heart was also there, and so was his wife--two tiny drops in that great bucketful of humanity. The match vendor was also there--another very tiny drop in that great bucketful. "What! Selling matches on Christmas day?" remarked a passer-by. "You should be taken in charge by the Inquisition."

"Matches, sir?" said the tiny voice, and she again touched the hem of our hero's garment. The big-hearted man looked at his tender-hearted wife, and the tender-hearted wife looked at her big-hearted man. "Yes, give me them all," he said again, and he handed her another dollar. He was evidently trying to buy up all the available matches so that he could have a corner on the commodity. "Here," he continued, "take this dollar also. Buy yourself something good for Christmas, and go home and enjoy yourself."

"I have no home, and the shops are all closed," she said, brushing the wet snow from her hair.

"No home!" exclaimed the lady, incredulously, "and the world is overflowing with wealth and has homes innumerable. Is it possible that the world's goods are so unevenly divided?"

The girl began to cry.

"Come and have your Christmas dinner with us," said the lady.

The girl, still weeping, followed in her utter innocence and helplessness.

Ding-dong, went the merry bells. Tramp, tramp, went the feet of the big, voluptuous world. Honk, honk, went the horns of the automobiles; for it was Christmas, and all went merry as a marriage bell.

The fire was burning brightly. The room was warm and cozy. The house was clean, tidy, and cheery. It was a dazzling scene to one who had been accustomed to the cold, bare, concrete pavements only.

"My!" exclaimed the girl as they entered. It was a perfect fairyland to her. It was a story. It was a dream.

"Now, we are going to have the realest, cutest, Christmas dinner you ever saw," said the lady, producing a steaming turkey from the warming oven. The girl danced in her glee and anticipation. "But first you must dress for dinner. We will go and see Santa Claus," smiled the foster-mother. She retired with a waif, and returned with a fairy, and they sat down to a fairy dinner.

"What a spotless tablecloth! What clean cups and saucers, and plates and dishes! What shining knives and forks! What kind friends!" thought the orphan. "I had no idea such things existed outside of Heaven," she exclaimed aloud in her rapture.

"It is all very commonplace, I assure you," said the man, "but it takes money to buy them."

"And yet," philosophized the lady, "if we are dissatisfied in our prosperity, what must a life be that contains nothing?"

Ding-dong, went the bells. Tramp, tramp, went the feet of the big world outside. Honk, honk, went the horn of the automobile; but the happiest heart of them all was the little waif who had been, until now, so lonely, so cold, so hungry, so neglected. They were the happiest moments in her whole life. Her time began from that day. But that is many years ago. The orphan is a lady now in Vancouver; and every Christmas she gives a dinner to some poor people in honor of those who adopted her and saved her from the slums.

Of the Retreat from Moscow

Once upon a time four Ashcroft Napoleons, known locally as "Father," "Deacon," "Cyclone," and "Skookum," invaded Vancouver to demonstrate at an inter-provincial curling bonspiel that was arranged to take place at that city. Their object was to bring home as many prizes and trophies as they could conveniently carry without having to pay "excess baggage," and donate the balance to charity. It was decided later not to take any of the prizes, as it was more blessed to give than to receive, and they did not only give away all the trophies, but they gave away all the games as well--games they had a legitimate mortgage on--and they were glad to see the other fellows happy.

As a man often gets into trouble trying to keep out of it, so the Ashcroft chaps lost by trying to win; and here it is consoling to know that all a man does or says in this world sinks and lies motionless in the silent past, for in this case it will only be a matter of time when people will cease to remember. But to leave all joking aside, we beg to advise that the adventurers were dumped unceremoniously into Moscow by the C.P.R. officials at about three good morning and had not where to lay their heads. You could not see the city for buildings; but even at that embryo hour of the morning the streets were not entirely deserted. Some people seem to toil day and night, for there were dozens of forms moving hither and thither like phantoms in the powerful glare of the electric illuminations. Being Ashcroft people our heroes were accustomed to city life, and the embarrassment of the situation soon evaporated. They bundled themselves into a nocturnal automobile which was no sooner loaded than it "hit" the streets of Vancouver like Halley's comet. It went up and down, out and in, hither and thither. It tried to leap from under the invaders, but they kept up with it. It went north forty chains, east forty chains, south forty chains, and thence west forty chains to point of commencement. It went here, then there, and ultimately arranged to stop on Richards Street (named after our John), at the foot of the elevator of the Hotel Canadian. This was the end of steel for the auto, the rest of the journey had to be made on foot via the elevator. It is a very pleasant sensation to have the floor rise and carry you with it to the third landing, and it only takes three seconds to make a sixty second journey. At the third floor, after having been shown their stalls for the night, the bandits went out on an exploring expedition while the stable man let down some hay.

They located the fire escape, as it is always better to come in by the front door like a millionaire and leave by the fire escape in the dead of the night when the stableman is asleep at his post.

Early next morning, at about ten o'clock, they invaded the dining-room as hungry as hyenas, and had a lovely breakfast of porridge and cream, ham and eggs, toast and butter, tea or coffee. To encourage the coffee somewhat the Deacon "dug" his front foot into the lump-sugar bowl and extracted a couple of aces; and the other mimics followed suit with two, three, and four spots. The breaking of this fast cost forty-five cents for the meal, and fifty-five for the waiter just to make the "eat" come to even money, and they were too large socially to take away small change economically. Every meal they put into their waste baskets necessarily extracted one day from the other end of their excursion via the fire escape, and that is one reason why they returned so soonly. Cyclone, having drawn on his personal account at a Vancouver branch of the Ashcroft bank for enough to pay his next meal and car fare, and Skookum having jotted down the usual morning poetic inspiration on the sublimity of the situation, the army, led by Father, marched full breast upon the curling rink building. There were no knights at the gate to defend the castle, nor did the band meet them at the portal--neither did the Vancouver curling club. Their arrival, strange to say, created no commotion; they did not seem to have been anticipated. Things went along as though nothing extraordinary had taken place.

The appearances at the rink, however, were intoxicating, which largely made up for the invisibility of the receiving committee. The rink was somewhat larger than the town hall at Ashcroft, and the great, high, arched, glass ceiling was studded with electric lights like stars in the heavens. Extensive rows of seats for spectators encircled the entire room, and in the centre, the arena was one clear, smooth sheet of hard, white ice. Several games were in progress, and they saw their old friend "Tam" playing with his usual Scotch luck and winning for all he was worth.

Ashcroft selected the ice upon which the first blood was to be sprinkled. The battle began on schedule time, and as they had anticipated, they won without a single casualty. As a result of this "clean up," a private conference was held that night by the Vancouver and other clubs behind closed doors, at which it was moved, and seconded, and adopted, that Ashcroft was a dangerous element in their midst, and that drastic measures must be set in motion at once to arrest such phenomenal accomplishments or the bonspiel would be lost. All unconscious of the conspiracy against them, Ashcroft spent the afternoon riding up and down the moving stairs at Spencer's, led by the "Deak," who had had previous practice at this amusement. Curling to them was as easy as this stairway, and as simple as eating a meal if you cut out the tipping of the waiter. That night they took in a show which was a "hum dinger," and should have endured a life-time. What a sweet life it was; nothing to do but live, and laugh, and curl, and win; if it would only continue indefinitely without having to worry about the financing of it! Napoleon "had nothing" on Father, and he felt that he could even "put it over" on the local star. But something happened the next day. Whether it was the private conference, or the moving stairs, or the Pantages, or whether it was that Ashcroft became more careless with success, and Vancouver more careful with defeat, will never be known. They pierced no more bull's eyes--and sometimes they missed the entire target. They had every qualification essential to the successful curler but talent. They had the rocks, the brooms, the ribbons, the sweaters--they even had the will. It is strange with all those requisites that they could not win.

The retreat from Moscow took place three days later, and they went straggling over the Alps in one long string. As though the mortification of defeat was not enough, a huge joke was prepared for them by the reception committee of the local curling club, and lemons have been at a premium in Ashcroft ever since.

Of Sicamous

The Okanagan Valley, in the Province of British Columbia, is bounded on the north by the mosquitoes at Sicamous, and on the south by the forty-ninth parallel of north latitude, which is the United States; and to one who is accustomed to the sand and the sage, the general aspect throughout gives a most pleasing rest to the eye. A trip to the Okanagan is like one sweet dream to the inhabitants of the dry belt--a dream that is broken only once by a dreadful nightmare--the mosquito conquest at Sicamous; but you forgive and forget this the moment after you awake. The mosquitoes at Sicamous are as great a menace to that town as the Germans are to Europe.

The train for the valley, when on time, leaves Sicamous, on the main line of the C.P.R., at about ten, good morning, but sometimes she waits for the delayed eastern train. This happens very frequently on Sundays--for who or what was ever on time on a Sunday? Sunday is the lazy man's day--the lazy day of the world--the day on which we creep along out of tune with things.

Now, when you get side-tracked at a C.P.R. station in the Rocky Mountains waiting for a delayed eastern train, you may as well throw all your plans into the lake, because they will be out of fashion when you have an opportunity to use them again, and you will require new ones--the train may come to-day and she may not come till to-morrow. But, if that station chances to be Sicamous, and it is Sunday--and it must be raining heavily, for when it is raining there are no mosquitoes--you will not regret the delay, and you will be very much interested if you have an eye for the unique, or if you have the slightest inclination to be eccentric you will be reminded that--

There are friends we never meet;
There is love we never know.

Here people--strangers and friends--meet and nod, smile, talk and depart ten or twelve times every day. You will wonder how people can talk so much, and what they get to talk about--people who meet accidentally here, only for a moment, and will never meet again, perhaps. Almost hourly, night and day, cosmopolitan little throngs jump from trains, chat a few moments among themselves, or with others who have been waiting, and then allow themselves to be picked up by the next train and rushed off into eternity--that is, so far as you are concerned, for you will never see them again--and some of them were becoming so familiar. They are voices and faces flitting across your past; they are always new, always strange, always interesting; they are laughing, chatting, smiling, scowling, worrying. There are fair faces and dark faces, pleasant faces and angry faces, careless faces and anxious faces, and faces that are thin, fat, long and short. The voices are as varied as the faces. There is the sharp, clear voice and the dull voice, the angry one and the pleasant one. There are young and old, beautiful and ugly, scowls and smiles, the timid and the fearless--the black, the white, and the yellow; and there are faces that look so much like ones you know at home that you are just on the point of asking them how the boys and girls have been since you left. If they had known that they were the actors on a stage, and you were the audience, conditions might have been improved--artificially; they might have acted better, with more "class," but the interest would have been injured; you would have been robbed of a genuine entertainment. Those people went north, south, east and west; they went to the four corners of the earth. The sound of their voices and laughs go up into the tree-tops, up into the hills and down into the lake, and they are echoed back to us; and that is the only record that is ever taken, of this interesting drama; and then the voices fade away east--fade away west.

But you hear the elaborate puffing and snorting of a locomotive as though laboring under its great load of humanity; there is a loud whistle from somewhere, and then another; two engines are speaking to each other; then the bell rings, the engine sweeps by, and the whole earth trembles--it is the delayed eastern train. There is a great scramble for entrance. Chance acquaintances are forgotten in the individual excitement. The steps to one car are blocked by one man who has enough baggage for ten, and one worried-looking young lady with a baby is afraid she will lose her train. The train pulls out with a "swish, swish" of escaping steam under great pressure from the engine, and the station is robbed of half its population. The familiar faces have disappeared, but a new throng has been cast into your midst--new faces, new smiles, new voices, new scowls; and the chatter is renewed with vigor when we have found ourselves, and are located in several little isolated bunches. But the Okanagan local is here waiting for our scalps. There is another scramble of men, women, children, bag and baggage, for seats, and we are off. The little station platform is deserted and silent but for the clatter of the wheels of the baggage truck. The tree tops sigh, the lake murmurs, but they cannot hold us, we must hurry to the great beyond--the whole world depends upon our individual movements.

Of the Ubiquitous Cat

Once upon a time I had a very curious experience which had a very curious ending.

I walked into a strange person's house, uninvited, for some mysterious reason perfectly unknown to myself.

Sitting promiscuously around an old-fashioned fire-place, in which blazed a cheery fire, were a man and woman and four small children; and on a lounge, partly hid under the eiderdown quilt, lay a pure white cat, half asleep and half awake, and at intervals casting sly glances at some of the children. The cat seemed to all intent and purpose one of that human family.

Now, although the cat can be abused like a toy doll by the children without losing his temper, yet he has the most curiously composed disposition of all the domestic animals. Although extravagantly domesticated, and although he shares our beds and tables with impunity, yet he is, to the mouse, as cruel and treacherous as a man-eating tiger.

However, we did not take up our pen to discuss cat psychology. Upon entering the strange person's house so unceremoniously, I sat me down upon a vacant chair, also uninvited, and began to make myself at home.

The strange persons did not seem to take any exception to my strange behavior, but, kept on talking as though nothing extraordinary had taken place in the human social regulations. I was more interested in the cat than I was in the people, and I could not keep my eye from him, he was so much like our "Teddy" at home.

At last I convinced myself that it _was_ Teddy.

"Where did you get that cat?" I asked.

"Why, we have always had him. We raised him. He sleeps with the children every night, and gets up with them in the morning--when he is here," said the mother.

Our Teddy had the same weakness, and I was so positive that this was he that I called him by name.

In a moment he came to me and was on my knee--it was indeed Teddy.

Now, here was one of the most unique situations on record.

"This is my cat," I said demandingly.

"It is ours," said the chorus of children's voices.

It suddenly occurred to me that Teddy was in the habit of leaving home and would be absent for several days at a time. Could it be possible he had two homes? Did this cat actually accept the affections and hospitality of two distinct families, at the same time, without once breathing the truth or giving himself away?

I went home puzzled to my wife and said:

"Do you know, Teddy is not all ours?"

"What do you mean?"

I was just about to tell my strange story when I awoke, and, behold, it was a dream.

BITS OF HISTORY

Of the Foolhardy Expedition

The people who inhabited this globe during the year 1725 undoubtedly obtained a different view of things terrestrial than we do who claim the world's real estate in 1915, because they had no telegraph, no telephone, no electric light, no automobile, and no aeroplane. How they managed to live at all is a mystery to the twentieth century biped. Fancy having to cross the street to your neighbor's house when you wanted to ask him if he was going to the pioneer supper, and just think of having no "hello girl" to flirt with. The condition seems appalling. But what they lacked in knowledge and in indolent conveniences we beg to announce that they made up in foolhardiness which they called bravery. Well, if it can be called brave to make a needless target of oneself to a bunch of savage Indians, why then they had the proper derivation of the term.

From one of Francis Parkman's admirable works we have seized upon the scene of our story, which was acted out at the beginning of the eighteenth century, namely, 1725. The Indians seem to have been very hostile in those early days in the immediate vicinity of the early New England provinces; and we are convinced some of the white men were very hostile as well. Of course we, in our day, cannot blame them--they had no telephones, autos, electricity, "hello girls"--they had to be something, so they were hostile towards the Indians.

Dunstable was a town on the firing line of Massachusetts, and was attacked by Indians in the autumn of 1724, and two men were carried off. Ten others went in pursuit, but fell into an ambush, and nearly all were killed. But now we will follow the words of Francis Parkman, who has a delightful way of relating his stories.

"A company of thirty was soon raised." They were to receive two shillings and sixpence per day each, "out of which he was to maintain himself";--very little to risk one's life for; but in those days it was no concern with a man whether he was killed or not. Besides, it was worth something to get killed and have Francis Parkman write about you more than a century later. Perhaps they anticipated this perpetuation of their names and deeds.

However, "Lovewell was chosen captain; Farwell lieutenant, and Robbins, ensign. They set out towards the end of November, and reappeared at Dunstable early in January, bringing one prisoner and one scalp." It does not seem to us to have paid the interest on the investment of two shillings and sixpence per day, "out of which he was to maintain himself," and, for anything we know to the contrary, perhaps the captain was getting more than this--it has not been recorded. "Towards the end of the month Lovewell set out again, this time with eighty-seven men. They ascended the frozen Merrimac, passed Lake Winnepesaukee, pushed nearly to the White Mountains, and encamped on a branch of the upper Saco. Here they killed a moose--a timely piece of luck, for they were in danger of starvation, and Lovewell had been compelled by want of food to send back a good number of his men. The rest held their way, filing on snowshoes through the deathlike solitude that gave no sign of life except the light track of some squirrel on the snow, and the brisk note of the hardy little chickadee, or black-capped titmouse, so familiar in the winter woods."

Now here is where the foolhardiness of the expedition begins to appeal to us. Supposing just here they had met five hundred crazy Indians with five hundred crazy bows and arrows? And they must have expected it. They were searching for Indians. Perhaps they were seeking martyrdom? But the New Englander of the frontier was nothing if not foolhardy. They mistook it for bravery, and there must have been some bravery amalgamated with it, because a man must have a certain quantity of that rarity before he can lend himself out as a target at two shillings and sixpence a day, "out of which he was to maintain himself."

Now, if you have patience to follow you will learn that they ultimately met the very thing which you expect--which they must have expected.

"Thus far the scouts had seen no human footprints; but on the twentieth of February they found a lately abandoned wigwam, and following the snowshoe tracks that led from it--" Right into the lion's jaw, as it were. Perhaps they were anxious to be shot to get out of their misery--"at length saw smoke rising at a distance out of the gray forest." They saw their finish, and their hearts were filled with joy. "The party lay close till two o'clock in the morning; then, cautiously approaching, found one or more wigwams, surrounded them, and killed all the inmates, ten in number." They were to pay dear for this, as anyone could have told them. "They brought home the scalps in triumph, ... and Lovewell began at once to gather men for another hunt.... At the middle of April he had raised a band of forty-six." One of the number was Seth Wyman, ... a youth of twenty-one, graduated at Harvard College, in 1723, and now a student of theology. Chaplain though he was, he carried a gun, knife and hatchet like the others, and not one of the party was more prompt to use them.... They began their march on April 15th." After leaving several of their number by the way for various causes, we find thirty-seven of them on the night of May 7th near Fryeburg lying in the woods near the northeast end of Lovewell's pond.

"At daybreak the next morning, as they stood bareheaded, listening to a prayer from the young chaplain, they heard the report of a gun, and soon after an Indian.... Lovewell ordered his men to lay down their packs and advance with extreme caution." Why this caution? "They met an Indian coming towards them through the dense trees and bushes. He no sooner saw them than he fired at the leading men." Naturally. We should have said "leading targets." "His gun was charged with beaver shot and he severely wounded Lovewell and young Whiting; on which Seth Wyman shot him dead, and the chaplain and another man scalped him." As yet they had only entered the lion's den. "And now follows one of the most obstinate and deadly bush-fights in the annals of New England.... The Indians howled like wolves, yelled like enraged cougars, and made the forest ring with their whoops.... The slaughter became terrible. Men fell like wheat before the scythe. At one time the Indians ceased firing; ... they seemed to be holding a 'pow-wow'; but the keen and fearless Wyman crept up among the bushes, shot the chief conjurer, and broke up the meeting. About the middle of the afternoon young Fry received a mortal wound. Unable to fight longer, he lay in his blood, praying from time to time for his comrades in a faint but audible voice." One, Keys, received two wounds, "but fought on till a third shot struck him." He declared the Indians would not get his scalp. Creeping along the sandy edge of the pond, he chanced to find a stranded canoe, pushed it afloat, rolled himself into it, and drifted away before the wind. Soon after sunset the Indians drew off.... The surviving white men explored the scene of the fight.... Of the thirty-four men, nine had escaped without serious injury, eleven were badly wounded, and the rest were dead or dying.... Robbins, as he lay helpless, asked one of them to load his gun, saying, 'The Indians will come in the morning to scalp me, and I'll kill another of them if I can.' They loaded the gun and left him." The expected had occurred. Most of them had been killed. Anyone could have told them this before they set out--they could have made the same prophecy for themselves. And after all they had accomplished nothing but their own deaths. The story of their return rivals that of Napoleon's retreat from Moscow. Of the whole number eleven ultimately reached home. We leave it to the reader to determine whether this was an exhibition of bravery or foolhardiness, or a mixture of both.

We congratulate ourselves that we did not live on the frontier of New England in the year 1725.

Of the Laws of Lycurgus

Lycurgus reigned over a place called Lacedæmon, which is a part of Greece, about the year 820 B.C. Now, this is a great many years ago, and is further back into the archives of history than most of us can remember. There is no doubt, however, that this great ruler, Lycurgus, was crazy, or he was one of those persons whose brains cease to develop after they have left their teens. He certainly secures the first prize as a "whim" strategist. In spite of his insane eccentricities, he was allowed the full exercise of his freedom. Had he flourished in 1915 A.D. instead of 820 "B.C." (which does not mean British Columbia), the asylum for the insane at New Westminster would not have been strong enough to retain him. Lycurgus did one redeeming thing--he founded a Senate; "which, sharing,"--we are following Plutarch--"as Plato says, in the power of the kings, too imperious and unrestrained before, and having equal authority with them, was the means of keeping them within bounds of moderation, and highly contributed to the preservation of the State. The establishment of a Senate, an intermediate body, like ballast, kept it in just equilibrium, and put it in a safe posture: the twenty-eight senators adhering to the kings whenever they saw the people too encroaching, and on the other hand, supporting the people, when the kings attempted to make themselves absolute."

Now, what in the world possessed this despotic imbecile to form a senate? His action in this can only be accounted for in the light that it was one of those unpremeditated whims of a narrow-minded faddist. One naturally wonders what the newly created senators were doing while the king was imposing his insane laws. This body was formed for the "preservation of the state." The wonder is that there was any state left, for the king paralyzed commerce, smothered ambition, choked art to death, and placed a ban on modesty. Further than having been "formed," the "Senate" never again appears on the pages of the "Lycurgus" book.

Plutarch, who lived in Greece about the year 100 A.D., nine hundred years after the subject of his biography, relates the forming and imposing of those laws with the utmost faith, and the most implicit innocence; which goes to prove that the Grecian idea of government, with all its knowledge, had not advanced much, at least up to the time of Plutarch.

And now for the laws.

"A second and bolder political enterprise of Lycurgus was a new division of the lands. For he found a prodigious inequality; the city overcharged with many indigent persons, who had no land; and the wealth centred in the hands of the few. Determined, therefore, to root out the evils of insolence, envy, avarice, and luxury, and those distempers of a state still more inveterate than fatal--I mean poverty and riches--he persuaded them to cancel all former divisions of land and to make new ones, in such a manner as they might be perfectly equal in their possessions and way of living.

His proposal was put in practice.

"After this he attempted to divide also the movables, in order to take away all appearance of inequality; but he soon perceived that they could not bear to have their goods taken directly from them, and therefore took another method, counterworking their avarice by a stratagem."

Now, this seems to be the only law to which they made objection; and this proves that the love of personal "icties" has very deep roots. Perhaps the influence of the "senate" sustained them in this, for qualifications for a senator, even in those days, must have called for men of some means, and they, when the shoe began to pinch their own feet, would not care to divide up their sugar and flour with the rank and file. It does not appear, however, that they had any say in the matter, and, beyond the statement that they were formed for a purpose, they seem to have taken no part in the affairs of state; if they had, Lycurgus and his laws would never have been made part of history.

"First he stopped the currency of the gold and silver coin"--thus he paralyzed industry--"and ordered that they should make use of iron money only; then to a great quantity and weight of this he assigned but a small value.... In the next place he excluded unprofitable and superfluous arts.... Their iron coin would not pass in the rest of Greece, but was ridiculed and despised, so that the Spartans had no means of purchasing any foreign or curious wares, nor did any merchant ship unlade in their harbor." Even Plutarch sees nothing suicidal in all this voluntary isolating of themselves from the main arteries of commerce.

"Desirous to complete the conquest of luxury and exterminate the love of riches, he introduced a third institution, which was wisely enough and ingeniously contrived. This was the use of public tables, where all were to eat in common of the same meat, and such kinds of it as were appointed by law. At the same time they were forbidden to eat at home, or on expensive couches and tables.... Another ordinance levelled against magnificence and expense, directed that the ceilings of houses should be wrought with no tool but the axe, and the doors with nothing but the saw. Indeed, no man could be so absurd as to bring into a dwelling so homely and simple, bedsteads with silver feet, purple coverlets, or golden cups." Thus he smothered art and personal ambition, two of the most requisite essentials to a people on their onward and upward trend to civilization and success. "A third ordinance of Lycurgus was, that they should not often make war against the same enemy, lest, by being frequently put upon defending themselves, they too should become able warriors in their turn."

And thus he made them defenceless against their enemies.

"For the same reason he would not permit all that desired to go abroad and see other countries, lest they should contract foreign manners, gain traces of a life of little discipline, and of a different form of government. He forbade strangers, too, to resort to Sparta who could not assign a good reason for their coming!"

Improvement with Lycurgus means retrogression with us. He wished, perhaps ignorantly, to arrest the progress of civilization and substitute a slovenly ideal of his own. His purpose was to cancel the civilization which the race had gained during thousands of years of effort, and bring it back to a semi-savagery. But the world was too big for him. It had things in view which were too great for his small, hampered mind to have any suspicion of. No doubt he was sincere in his little, infinitesimal way; but it is a blessing for the world that his influence was confined to a very small corner of the then civilized world, and that others of broader views succeeded him to manage the affairs of states and nations. With all deference to old Plutarch, the biographer of Lycurgus, we wish to say that however grand the laws of this man may have been as ideals, they were utter failures when brought into practice.

Of Joan of Arc

Some people say the world is getting no better, but if we take a dip into history and consider the conditions which prevailed there from the earliest times up to only a few hundred years ago, we will find a race of human beings which in no wise resemble the present output except in form and stature. And our own forefathers--the people of the British Isles, the Anglo-Saxons who are to-day leading in the social world--were not one iota better throughout those pages than many of the smallest and most unpretentious of obscure tribes living here and there in ignorant, local isolation. One of the strongest points in our argument is the fact that history, as we have it, is composed of the clang of battles and the private lives of kings and despots. The ordinary, everyday life of the peasant people--the working classes--the backbone of the nation, so to speak--was beneath the consideration of the historian throughout all times. The only virtue, in his estimation, was a strong arm--a large army to murder and destroy property. And the life of the historian must needs reflect that of the people. There is no doubt that in a great majority they were of a cruel, murderous nature. We get rare glimpses, however (at intervals of sometimes hundreds of years), of the doings, manners, and customs, likes and dislikes of the common people, that we can rely upon as authentic; the rest is poetry and legend, and, although typical, are relations of incidents that did not really occur.

There is no doubt that, although it has been withheld, there was a great deal of virtue, which blushed and bloomed unseen, amid all this blood and war.

As though by accident the historian who immortalized Joan of Arc has let slip a few words in connection with this heroine's early life that are more valuable to us than page upon page of some of our so-called history. "Jeanne d'Arc was the child of a laborer of Domremy, a little village on the borders of Lorraine and Champagne. Just without the cottage where she was born began the great woods of the Vosges, where the children of Domremy drank in poetry and legend from fairy ring and haunted well, hung their flower garlands on the sacred trees and sang songs to the good people who might not drink of the fountain because of their sins. Jeanne loved the forest; its birds and beasts came lovingly to her at her childish call. But at home men saw nothing in her but 'a good girl,' simple and pleasant in her way, spinning and sewing by her mother's side while the other girls went to the fields--tender to the poor and sick."

This is a little domestic scene of the year A.D. 1425, and how homelike and real and familiar it all is. What a sweet peace spot, among all the bloodshed and horror that was going on throughout France at that time.

Joan of Arc is undoubtedly one of the most remarkable characters in all history. She was born at Domremy, France, in 1412, and was executed in 1431. Before she had reached twenty this girl had practically freed France from the English, or at least put the country upon such a footing that a few years accomplished its freedom.

The superstitions of the times are no doubt responsible to a great extent for the success which was attained by this Maid of Orleans. "The English believed in her supernatural mission as firmly as the French did, but they thought her a sorceress who had come to overthrow them by her enchantments," and so on. The fact remains that this innocent peasant girl of eighteen years of age freed France from the English and accomplished things which no man of France at that time was able to do. Either the French generalship of the times was very incompetent or the army was very much demoralized--at all events they had been awaiting the advent of a leader who was both determined and fearless, for skill does not seem to have been a requisite--and this appeared in the person of Joan of Arc.

It is difficult to believe that an entirely inexperienced person of this kind could take charge of an army of ten thousand men and lead them to victory when the best trained generals of the time could do nothing and suffered defeat at every turn.

With the coronation of the King the Maid felt that her errand was over. "Oh, gentle king, the pleasure of God is done," she cried, as she flung herself at the feet of Charles, and asked leave to go home. "Would it were His good will," she pleaded with the archbishop, as he forced her to remain, "that I might go and keep sheep once more with my sisters and my brothers; they would be glad to see me again."

But the policy of the French court detained her. France was depending on one of its peasant girls for its very national existence. The humiliation of the thing should make all good Frenchmen blush with shame. So she fought on with the conviction that she was superfluous in the army, and a slave to the French court. It does not appear that she was even placed upon the payroll, or that she received reward of any kind for her services--and there were no "Victoria crosses" in those days. She fought on without pay; rendered all her services for nothing--perhaps for the love of the thing. During the defence of Compiegne in May, 1430, she fell into the hands of one Vendome, who sold her to the Duke of Burgundy. Burgundy sold her to the English--her remuneration for her self-sacrificing, voluntarily-given services.

And now comes the tragic part of a most pathetic story enacted out at a time when the name civilization, applied to the French and English, is a mockery. "In December she was carried to Rouen, the headquarters of the English, heavily fettered, and flung into a gloomy prison, and at length, arraigned before the spiritual tribunal of the Bishop of Beauvais, a wretched creature of the English, as a sorceress and a heretic, while the dastard she had crowned king left her to die." She was not even granted a legal, judicial trial.

Some say that her sentence was at one time commuted to perpetual imprisonment, which proves that there was a glimmer of humanity hid away in some corner of the world, knocking hysterically in its imprisonment for admission. "But the English found a pretext to treat her as a criminal and condemned her to be burned." And at this juncture it may be well to say that we have good reason to be proud of ourselves to-day, and ashamed of our ancestors.

"She was brought to the stake on May 30th, 1431. The woman's tears dried upon her cheeks, and she faced her doom with the triumphant courage of the martyr." During her last awful moments, as she left this world with the torture of the flames slowly consuming her body, what were the last impressions of this girl of nineteen who left home and happiness to free a people who allowed her to be thus tormented to death? "A court was constituted by Pope Calixtus III., in 1455, which declared her innocent and pronounced her trial unjust. And through the whole civilized world her memory is fittingly commemorated in statuary and literature." But this is poor consolation and does not undo the mischief. So far as Joan of Arc is concerned, she is still burning, scorching, suffering at that stake, and the world and the English are her torturers, still tormenting her, while the man she made king stands looking on indifferently, heartlessly. All the honor and statuary that ever had creation on this green earth cannot atone for this crime of "civilization" on the innocent. But it is only one blot of many with which the world moves on, branded indelibly to its unknown end; and beneath a pleasant exterior we know, but try to hide, those blots, with apologies for our ancestors. And yet some say the world is getting no better. Out of this chaos of blood, crime and heathendom we sprang with all our pride and greatness, and with such a record it behooves us to be rather humble than high-minded, for crime and disgrace are lying at our very door-step.

"The story of Joan has been a rich motive in the world of art, and painter and sculptor have spent their genius on the theme without as yet adequately realizing its simple grandeur."

Of Voices Long Dead

The following is not history, although we have placed it under this heading. It is the literal translation of a poem by Theocritus, a light in the ancient literature of the Greeks. Although the actual incident never occurred, it is typical of what was going on among that long dead people, and it is of as much importance to us as the most valuable record of history, and is of vital interest when viewed in retrospect from the year 1915, because it gives us a rare glimpse into the domestic manners of a people who lived when all the present civilized world was in the hands of savages--and how modern it all seems. The scene might have been enacted yesterday even to the smallest detail.

Imagine yourself in the city of Alexandria about the year 280 B.C.

"Some Syracusan women staying at Alexandria, agreed, on the occasion of a great religious solemnity--the feast of Adonis--to go together to the palace of King Ptolemy Philadelphus, to see the image of Adonis, which the Queen Arsinoe, Ptolemy's wife, had had decorated with peculiar magnificence. A hymn, by a celebrated performer, was to be recited over the image. The names of the two women are Gorgo and Praxinoe; their maids, who are mentioned in the poem, are called Eunoe and Eutychis. Gorgo comes by appointment to Praxinoe's house to fetch her, and there the dialogue begins."

We are following the translation of William Cleaver Wilkinson.

Gorgo. Is Praxinoe at home?

Praxinoe. My dear Gorgo, at last! Yes, here I am. Eunoe, find a chair--get a cushion for it.

G. It will do beautifully as it is.

P. Do sit down.

G. Oh, this gadabout spirit! I could hardly get to you, Praxinoe, through all the crowd and all the carriages. Nothing but heavy boots, nothing but men in uniform. And what a journey it is! My dear child, you really live too far off.

P. It is all that insane husband of mine. He has chosen to come out here to the end of the world, and take a hole of a place--for a house it is not--on purpose that you and I might not be neighbors. He is always just the same--anything to quarrel with one! anything for spite!

G. My dear, don't talk so of your husband before the little fellow. Just see how astonished he looks at you. Never mind, Zopyrio, my pet, she is not talking about papa.

P. Good heavens! the child does really understand.

G. Pretty papa!

P. That pretty papa of his the other day (though I told him beforehand to mind what he was about), when I sent him to shop to buy soap and rouge, he brought me home salt instead--stupid, great, big, interminable animal.

G. Mine is just the fellow to him.... But never mind; get on your things and let us be off to the palace to see the Adonis. I hear the queen's decorations are something splendid.

P. In grand people's houses everything is grand. What things you have seen in Alexandria! What a deal you will have to tell anybody who has never been here!

G. Come, we ought to be going.

P. Every day is holiday to people who have nothing to do. Eunoe, pick up your work; and take care, lazy girl, how you leave it lying about again; the cats find it just the bed they like. Come, stir yourself; fetch me some water, quick! I wanted the water first, and the girl brings me the soap. Never mind, give it me. Not all that, extravagant! Now pour out the water--stupid! why don't you take care of my dress? That will do. I have got my hands washed as it pleases God. Where is the key of the large wardrobe? Bring it here--quick!

G. Praxinoe, you can't think how well that dress, made full, as you've got it, suits you. Tell me, how much did it cost?--the dress by itself, I mean.

P. Don't talk of it, Gorgo; more than eight guineas of good hard money. And about the work on it I have almost worn my life out.

G. Well, you couldn't have done better.

P. Thank you. Bring me my shawl, and put my hat properly on my head--properly. No, child (to her little boy), I am not going to take you; there is a bogey on horseback, who bites. Cry as much as you like, I'm not going to have you lamed for life. Now we'll start. Nurse, take the little one and amuse him; call the dog in, and shut the street door. (They go out.) Good heavens! what a crowd of people! How on earth are we ever to get through all this? They are like ants--you can't count them. My dearest Gorgo, what will become of us? Here are the Royal Horse Guards. My good man, don't ride over me! Look at that bay horse rearing bolt upright; what a vicious one! Eunoe, you mad girl, do take care!--that horse will certainly be the death of the man on his back. How glad I am now that I left the child at home!

G. All right, Praxinoe, we are safe behind them, and they have gone on to where they are stationed.

P. Well, yes, I begin to revive again. From the time I was a little girl I have had more horror of horses and snakes than of anything in the world. Let us get on; here's a great crowd coming this way upon us.

G. (to an old woman). Mother, are you from the palace?

Old Woman. Yes, my dears.

G. Has one a tolerable chance of getting there?

O.W. My pretty young lady, the Greeks got to Troy by dint of trying hard; trying will do anything in this world.

G. The old creature has delivered herself of an oracle and departed.

P. Women can tell you everything about everything. Jupiter's marriage with Juno not excepted.

G. Look, Praxinoe, what a squeeze at the palace gates!

P. Tremendous! Take hold of me, Gorgo, and you, Eunoe, take hold of Eutychis!--tight hold, or you'll be lost. Here we go in all together. Hold tight to us, Eunoe. Oh, dear! Oh, dear! Oh, dear! Gorgo, there's my scarf torn right in two. For heaven's sake, my good man, as you hope to be saved, take care of my dress!

Stranger. I'll do what I can, but it doesn't depend upon me.

P. What heaps of people! They push like a drove of pigs.

Str. Don't be frightened, ma'am; we are all right.

P. May you be all right, my dear sir, to the last day you live, for the care you have taken of us! What a kind, considerate man! There is Eunoe jammed in a squeeze. Push, you goose, push! Capital! We are all of us the right side of the door, as the bridegroom said when he had locked himself in with the bride.

G. Praxinoe, come this way. Do but look at that work, how delicate it is! how exquisite! Why, they might wear it in heaven!

P. Heavenly patroness of needle-women, what hands we hired to do that work? Who designed those beautiful patterns? They seem to stand up and move about, as if they were real--as if they were living things and not needlework. Well, man is a wonderful creature! And look, look, how charming he lies there on his silver couch, with just a soft down on his cheeks, that beloved Adonis--Adonis, whom one loves, even though he is dead!

Another Stranger. You wretched woman, do stop your incessant chatter. Like turtles, you go on forever. They are enough to kill one with their broad lingo--nothing but a, a, a.

G. Lord, where does the man come from? What is it to you if we are chatterboxes? Order about your own servants. Do you give orders to Syracusan women? If you want to know, we came originally from Corinth, as Bellerophon did; we speak Peloponnesian. I suppose Dorian women may be allowed to have a Dorian accent.

P. Oh, honey-sweet Proserpine, let us have no more masters than the one we've got! We don't the least care for you; pray don't trouble yourself for nothing.

G. Be quiet, Praxinoe! That first-rate singer, the Argive woman's daughter, is going to sing the Adonis hymn. She is the same who was chosen to sing the dirge last year. We are sure to have something first rate from her. She is going through her airs and graces ready to begin.

* * * * *

And here the voices die away in the remote past. How difficult it is to believe that this dialogue took place more than two thousand years ago!

As a last glimpse of such a beautiful, modernly remote gem of conversation, we will give a few more words to show what those ancient gossipy ladies thought of their husbands.

The following are the last surviving words which Gorgo gave to the world:

Gorgo. Praxinoe, certainly women are wonderful things. That lucky woman, to know all that; and luckier still to have such a voice! And now we must see about getting home. My husband has not had his dinner. That man is all vinegar, and nothing else; and if you keep him waiting for his dinner he's dangerous to go near. Adieu! precious Adonis, and may you find us all well when you come next year!

He might have been a husband of yesterday!

For how many years have the husbands been coming home from work daily to partake of a meal which an attentive and tender wife has prepared for him? This was twenty-two hundred years ago.

Of the White Woman Who Became an Indian Squaw

The early history of the northwest frontier of Massachusetts is fraught with blood-curdling tales of savage invasions against the home-builders and empire-makers of that once troubled boundary between the French of Canada and the English of the New England States, but there is not a more pitiful story than that which has been recorded touching the Williams family of Deerfield, who were captured by the Indians during one of their inroads in the year 1704. John Williams was a minister who had come to Deerfield when it was still suffering from the ruinous effects of King Philip's war. His parishioners built him a house, he married, and had eight children. The story of the Indians' invasion, the destruction of the village, and the capture of over one hundred prisoners is admirably told by Francis Parkman in one of those excellent works of his dealing with the old régime of Canada and New England.

"A war party of about fifty Canadians and two hundred Indians left Quebec about mid-winter, and arrived at Deerfield on the 28th of February, 1704. Savage and hungry, they lay shivering under the pines till about two hours before dawn the following morning; then, leaving their packs and their snowshoes behind, they moved cautiously towards their prey. The hideous din startled the minister, Williams, from his sleep. Half naked, he sprang out of bed, and saw, dimly, a crowd of savages bursting through the shattered door. With more valor than discretion he snatched a pistol that hung at the head of the bed, cocked it and snapped it at the breast of the foremost Indian. It missed fire. Amid the screams of his terrified children, three of the party seized him and bound him fast, for they came well provided with cords, as prisoners had a great market value. Nevertheless, in the first fury of their attack, they dragged to the door and murdered two of the children. They kept Williams shivering in his shirt for an hour, while a frightful uproar of yells, shrieks, and gunshots sounded from within. At length they permitted him, his wife, and five remaining children to dress themselves. After the entire village had been destroyed and the inhabitants either murdered or made captive, Williams and his wife and family were led from their burning house across the Connecticut River to the foot of the mountain, and the following day the march north began with the hundred or more prisoners."

The hardships of the prisoners, and the crimes of the victors during that long and arduous march north through snow and ice, forms a chapter of pathos in the early history of those eastern states.

"At the mouth of the White River the party divided, and the Williams family were separated and carried off in various directions. Eunice, the youngest daughter, about eight years old, was handed over by the Indians to the mission at St. Louis on their arrival there, and although many efforts were made on the part of the Governor, who had purchased and befriended Williams, to ransom her, the Jesuits flatly refused to give her up. On one occasion he went himself with the minister to St. Louis. This time the Jesuits, whose authority within their mission seemed almost to override that of the Governor himself, yielded so far as to allow the father to see his daughter, on condition that he spoke to no other English prisoner. He spoke to her for an hour, exhorting her never to forget her catechism, which she had learned by rote. The Governor and his wife afterwards did all in their power to procure her ransom, but of no avail.

"'She is there still,' writes Williams two years later, 'and has forgotten to speak English.' What grieved him still more, Eunice had forgotten her catechism." But now we come to this strange transformation, unprecedented, we think, which made an Indian squaw out of a white woman. "Eunice, reared among Indian children, learned their language and forgot her own; she lived in a wigwam of the Caughnawagas, forgot her catechism, was baptized in the Roman Catholic faith, and in due time married an Indian of the tribe, who henceforth called himself Williams. Thus her hybrid children bore her family name.

"Many years after, in 1740, she came, with her husband, to visit her relatives at Deerfield, dressed as a squaw and wrapped in an Indian blanket. Nothing would induce her to stay, though she was persuaded on one occasion to put on a civilized dress and go to church, after which she impatiently discarded her gown and resumed her blanket."

Could a sadder instance of degeneration be written in the annals of the human family? "She was kindly treated by her relatives, and no effort was made to detain her. She came again the following year, bringing two of her children, and twice afterwards she repeated the visit. She and her husband were offered land if they would remain, but she positively refused, saying it would endanger her soul. She lived to a great age, a squaw to the last. One of her grandsons became a missionary to the Indians of Green Bay, Wisconsin."

This is one of the most drastic instances of a woman's devotion to husband, and mother love for children driving her back to the forest of her ancestors, and making her sacrifice all that her race had gained for her during thousands of years. Thus the most natural and primitive instincts of the human race will prevail against all our arts, science and accomplishments.

THROUGH THE MICROSCOPE

Through the Microscope

Life is full of impossibilities.

After all it is not money we want so much as something to do.

Every man should have an accomplishment of some kind.

Some music is like a jumble of misplaced notes.

If you have reached forty and have done nothing, get busy.

We sometimes lose dollars by being too careful with our cents.

We should try to arrange ourselves so that we will appear as plausible as possible to posterity.

We must have something to worry about or we will become stagnant.

Music should be rendered slowly and softly so that each note may have time to tell its story before the next one comes on the stage.

When we are young our time is all present. When we are old there is no present, but our time becomes the aggregate days and years.

We sometimes get into trouble trying to keep out of it.

It is not what we would _like_ to do, but what we _can_ do.

Let us take our medicine philosophically.

A dollar looks larger going out than it does coming in.

What is that we see falling like grain before the reaper? It is the days, and the weeks, and the months, and the years.

Every dog wonders why the other dog was born.

We are so constituted in temperament that one may love what the other hates.

A face is like a song, it has to be learned to be thoroughly appreciated. You have to acquire a taste for it, and when it is once memorized it is never forgotten.

Most of our best words are derived from dead, heathen languages.

If you have married the wrong man, or the wrong woman, cheer up and be a philosopher over it. Philosophy is a good substitute for love if properly applied.

If you do not go about sniffing the air you will not find so many obnoxious odors.

If you have a mental wound of any kind, do not mind; time, the great healer, will cure it.

We despise the ancient heathen, yet in some cases we have risen from his ashes.

A woman dresses for appearance, not for comfort.

An ounce of domestic harmony is worth a ton of gold.

We should adjust ourselves as much as possible to circumstances.

It is better to be a dummy than to be a gossip.

Every man thinks _his_ dog is an angel.

It is not always the one who can afford it who keeps the hired servant.

Since we can grow a new finger nail, why cannot we grow a new finger?

The mouse is destructive only from man's point of view.

When a man reaches forty he usually settles down to make the best of things.

Sometimes we are called cranks because we will not be sat upon.

The passing of time so quickly would not be so regrettable were life not so short.

A good book has no ending.

It is nothing to win a girl if you do not win her love also.

The passing of time so quickly takes the pleasure out of everything.

If you are popular, anything you say will rise into the air like a Zeppelin. If you are unpopular anything you say or do will sink into the ocean of oblivion like a Titanic.

It is a pity we have to do so much to get so little.

It sometimes pays to accept a few cents on the dollar and let it go at that.

Sometimes men become so parasitical to their occupation that, were they to lose it, they would drown.

"Help ye one another." It pays.

Our mistakes keep us perpetually on the convalescence.

Woman is equal to man--sometimes more than equal.

While the years are with you freeze on to them as tightly as ever you can.

The "Give-in-to-nothing-or-nobody-for-anything" spirit nurses a great deal of evil.

It takes forty years for a man to become a philosopher. Some never graduate.

Our generation is to be pitied. It is living in the most extravagant age the world has ever known.

When the church does not ameliorate the objectionable dispositions of its adherents, it has failed in its mission.

It is diplomacy to be on friendly terms with all men.

Politics are sometimes dangerous things.

Be cheerful under all circumstances.

The human race has mounted a treadmill which it must tread or perish.

The strenuous industries of this world are man's unconscious efforts to preserve his increasing numbers from annihilation.

Courtesy in business is the best policy.

It takes three men's wages to sustain one family in an up-to-date fashion.

Under the circumstances, it is almost necessary to be greedy and grasping.

To be perfectly healthy we should adopt the exercises followed by our ancestors in climbing among the trees.

It is not how much you can do or how quick you get through it, but the care that you take and how well you can do it.

It is not the gift but the giving.

It is quality, not quantity, that counts.

Do not measure a person's length by your personal prejudices.

The man who never had an enemy is too good for this world.

"You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make him drink." You can send a boy to college, but you cannot make him think.

The dog hates the cat, and the cat hates the dog, but when they are friends there are no truer ones.

Just take the world as it is; take things as to be had. Your friends may not be quite so good, your foes not quite so bad.

It is the aggregate that counts.

The almighty dollar is getting smaller every day.

It is fashionable to be lazy.

Money is man's passport through the world.

The one who is most jealous is the one who is least in love.

Poetry is something that was written by someone who is dead.

Life is one thing after another--getting in between man and his money.

Some men are so small that they could easily go through the eye of a needle.

Often the man who is the most mean in buying is the most extortionate in selling.

Some husbands have to prove their love by sending their wives off for a month's holiday every six weeks.

The cat is one of the most cleanly of animals, yet she has never been known to take a bath.

"It is an ill wind," etc. The harder the times become to others, the better they become to the sheriff.

Germany wants to reap where she has not sown.

Misery likes company. It is consolation to know that everybody else is hard up during these hard times.

In our life struggle we are obliged to sacrifice many of our pet ambitions.

If a person is not naturally inclined he cannot be influenced by argument.

When the war is over it will be an easy matter to estimate the German casualties. She had about sixty-five millions.

The present seems to be a thing of the past.

An honorable defeat is more commendable than an empty triumph.

One half of the war in Europe does not know what the other half is doing.

Sometimes finance gets men into positions for which they are not qualified.

We must abandon that ancient superstition that a dollar has any financial value.

Where a cat and a canary are brought up together, the cat ultimately gets the canary.

If a man does not support his country during the war, what can he expect after the war is over?

There is not a misunderstanding but that can be adjusted amicably if it is gone about in the right spirit.

_Your_ business is not the only important one.

It is a pity the cat would not always remain a kitten.

With the bank man it is more a matter of figures than it is of dollars.

To man, money is like a train going into a tunnel. It goes in at one end and out at the other, and leaves nothing.

Never judge a person's way by what the other people say.

There are only two sides to business: what I.O.U. and what U.O.I.

Where there is abundance there is likely to be waste and lack of economy.

A one dollar contra is often used to stave off a hundred dollar account.

"Every crow thinks that _its_ bird is a white one," and every man thinks that _his_ wife is the right one.

The hieroglyphic signature is often taken as a sign of perfect commercial attainment.

Some people give and take; others are all take.

Blessed is the man who has no family, for he shall inherit wealth.

Unlucky is the man who has children, for verily I say unto you, they keep him broke.

The good Samaritan who lends his friend a dollar, sometimes loses both the friend and the dollar.

The poorer a man the greater his misfortunes.

A great many children go to school to learn to read novels.

It takes as long to become a man as it does to become a philosopher.

Life is far too short judging by the time it takes to collect some of our accounts.

First, steel made millionaires, then railways, then oil, then pork; and now it is the automobile.

When two or three women are gathered together no man can tell when the end will be.

The well-fed philosopher is likely to have a well-fed philosophy; the under-fed one an emaciated variety.

Habitual melancholy is not always a mental derangement; it is very often a constitutional weakness.

Live and--let your indorser--learn.

The further you get into the world the less time you have for poetry, philosophy and sentiment.

The doctor is a man whom we don't want to do any business with.

You seldom meet an enthusiast who is not a crank also.

Individually, dimensions are determined by the proportions of the observer.

The modern attitude is a contempt for economy. Conservation is a bugbear.

Your neighbor is not a freak because he does not fall in line with your way of thinking.

When you have gained your equilibrium, you usually find that it was not worth while getting mad after all.

[Transcriber's note: In "Of the Foolhardy Expedition," there is extensive quoting of a text, and the quotes are not always matched. The punctuation was left as printed.]