Chapter V: Part 5

I plead guilty and cast myself upon the mercy of the court. I sorrowfully admit that my aestheticism is not eighteen karats fine, but mixed with considerable slag. When I should have been acquiring the higher culture, I was either playing hookey or planting hogs. Instead of being fed on the transcendental philosophy of Plato, I was stuffed with mealy Irish spuds and home-grown "punkin" pie. When I should have been learning to relish pate de foie gras and love my neighbor's wife in a purely passionless way, I was following one of McCormick's patents around a forty-acre field or arguing a point of ethics with a contumacious mule. That I am unable to appreciate that Platonic yearning of soul to soul, that deep calling unto deep on which Stella dotes, is my misfortune rather than my fault. It appears to me too much like voting the Prohibition ticket or playing poker with Confederate currency. When I love a woman I love her up one side and down t'other. I may be an uncultured and barbaric noodle, but I want to get hold of her and bite her neck. I want to cuddle her sunny curls on my heaving shirt-front when I talk to her about affinities. I believe with Tennyson in the spirits rushing together at the touching of the lips, and I just let 'em rush. Men may esteem women and enjoy their society with never a thought of sex. I have many female friends, some white-haired gran'dames, some mere girls in short dresses. But for their kindly interest and encouragement I would have cast aside the faber and fled to the desert long ago. The friendship of a noble woman is life's holiest perfume; but that is not the affinity of souls, the supernatural spooning, the Platonic yum-yum for which fair Stella pleads. Love, as I understand the term, is to friendship's non-consuming flame what the fierce glare of the noonday sun is to the mild radiance of the harvest moon. It is something which makes two people of opposite sexes absolutely necessary to each other. It is a glory in which the soul is bathed, an almost savage melody that beats within the blood. It is--O dammed; it's that which transforms a snub-nosed dairy maid into a Grecian goddess, a bench-legged farmer boy into a living Apollo Belvedere. "Love is love forevermore"--differing in degree, but never in kind. The Uranian is but the nobler nature of the Pandemian Venus, not another entity. Love is not altogether of the earth earthy. It is born of the spirit as well as of the flesh, of the perfume as of the beauty of the great red rose. Few of those women who have led captive the souls of the intellectual Titans of the world could boast of wondrous beauty. The moment man passes the pale of savagery he demands something more than mere physical perfection in a companion. Purity, Gentleness, Dignity--such are the three graces of womanhood that ofttimes make Cupid forgive a shapeless bosom and adore a homely face. The love of a parent for a child is the purest affection of which we can conceive; yet is the child the fruition of a love that lies not ever in the clouds. Platonic affection, so-called, is but confluent smallpox masquerading as measles. Those who have it may not know what ails 'em; but they've got a simple case of "spoons" all the same. If Stella were "my dear heart's better part," and tried to convince me that she felt a purely Platonic affection for some other fellow, I'd apply for a writ of injunction or lay for my transcendental rival with a lignumvitae club loaded to scatter. Nobody could convince me that the country was secure. The Platonic racket is being sadly overworked in swell society. Like charity, it covers a multitude of sins. Married women go scouting around at all hours and in all kinds of places with Platonic lovers, until the "old man" feeds a few slugs into a muzzle-loading gun and lets the Platonism leak through artificial holes in the hide of some gay gallant. When madame must have her beaux, and maids receive attention from married men, there's something decayed in the moral Denmarks. Mrs. Tilton thought she felt a Platonic affection for Henry Ward Beecher--was simply worshiping at the shrine of his genius; but she made as bad a mess of it as though she had called her complaint concupiscence. Even here in Texas, where we do preserve a faint adumbration of the simplicity and virtue of ye olden time, it is no uncommon thing to see a chipper married female, who moves in the "best society," flitting about with some fellow who's recognized, as the servants say, as her "steady company." But as we have improved on the Pompeiian "house of joy," so have we added to the French fashion of married flirtation a new and interesting feature. The French allow maids but little liberty so far as male companionship is concerned; but we remove the bridle altogether, and while the matron flirts with the bachelor, the maid appropriates the lonesome benedict. All the old social laws have been laid on the shelf and life rendered a veritable go-as-you-please. In real life there is no "pure Platonic affection," whatever may betide in fiction. No man waits upon another's wife, provides her with carriages and cut flowers, opera tickets and wine suppers with never a suspicion of sex, and no maid who values her virtue will receive marked attentions from a married man. When a virgin finds an "affinity" she should steer it against a marriage contract at the earliest possible moment; when a wife discovers one to whom she is not wedded she should employ a bread and water diet to subdue her "natural super-naturalism"-- and reinforce her religion with a season of penitence and prayer.

* * * TIENS TA FOI.

Though thorny the pathway 'neath our feet, Though nothing in life be left that's sweet; Though friends prove faithless in trial's hours And love a curst and poisonous flower; Though Belial stalk in priestly gown And virtue's reward is fortune's frown; Though true hearts bleed and the coward slave Tramples in dust the fallen brave; Think not the unworthy acts of men Will 'scape the recording angel's pen; The sword of God, in ruin and wraith, Will surely fall! Oh, cling to thy faith!

Though worldly wise say it cannot be That there's a heaven for thee and me; Though logic's banner they have unfurled And by its cold light now view the world, Calling High God to the courts of man To be judged by human reason's span, And failing to grasp the power divine Will blindly assert: "It doth not shine"; Thy mother was wiser far than they In twilight hour when she knelt to pray, A radiant light on her sweet face From Eternal God's high dwelling-place.

Lo here! lo here th' false prophets cry, Pointing out new paths unto the sky, Far pleasanter than our fathers trod With bleeding feet in the fear of God; While Atheists laugh our faith to scorn, And say that no man of woman born Ever pierced the evil or caught a gleam Of the mystic land beyond life's stream; That our fondest hopes, our prayers and sighs For life eternal beyond the skies, Are superstitions conceived in fear And cherished by priest and lying seer.

The martyr's blood, the penitent's tears, The inspired word of Judea's seers, The name of God on the sacred mount, The river that poured from rocky fount In the burning sands beneath the rod, Obedient to the will of God; The prayers and sighs in Gethsemane, The red tide gushing on Calvary, The radiant smile when life is done Of saint that tells that heaven is won-- Shall we say 'tis all a priestly lie And like soulless beasts lie down to die?

Ah, better 'twould be to ride in mail A weary quest for the Holy Grail; Wield Saxon steel 'gainst Saracen sword Around the sepulcher of our Lord; See Cross and Crescent and mailed hand All plashed with blood in that sacred land, Than doubt that heaven e'er shed its light Deep into this world's long troublous night; That God hears our prayers, knows all our pains, That earthly sorrows are heavenly gains, That the grave's the gate to lasting life, Unsullied by sorrow, pain and strife.

Oh, better worship at pagan shrine; Or, prophet of Islam, e'en at thine; To seek Nirvana in Buddhist lore, Or pray to Isis on Afric's shore; Better the dark, mysterious rites Of Ceres on Elusian heights; Better the Gueber's fierce God of fire-- Oh, better to wake the trembling lyre To any Savior than to be hurled Godless and hopeless out of the world; To madly plunge in death's dark river, Lost to life and heaven forever. In dark seas where the whirlpool rages Stands the eternal Rock of Ages; Amid dangers dire, 'mid wreck and wraith God plants the banner of Christian faith. Unworthy the sailor whose heart doth fail When the God of storms rides on the gale; Coward the soldier who shuns the grave, And thrice accursed the trembling slave Who in life's battles, darkest hour Renounces God and denies His power. Then Tiens ta Foi through the bitter strife! O cling to the cross--through death to life!

* * * THOMAS CARLYLE.

Of a recent edition of Carlyle's "Heroes and Hero Worship," it is said that 100,000 copies are already sold. The work has been on the market many years, and this continued popularity is indeed encouraging. It argues that the taste for the legitimate, the sane in literature, has not yet been drowned in the septic sea of fin de siecle slop--that, despite the enervating influence of an all- pervasive sensationalism, or sybaritism, there be still minds capable of relishing the rugged, strong enough to digest the mental pabulum furnished by a really masculine writer. Carlyle ranges like an archangel through the universe of intellect, overturning mountains to see how they are made-- now cleaving the empyrean with strong and steady wing, now shearing clear down to the profoundest depths of Ymir's Well at the foundations of the world. That his followers continue to increase argues well for the age, for he is a man whom weaklings should avoid if they would not be sawed in twain by mountain chains, forever lost in pathless limboes or drowned in the unmeasured deep. Even the strongest must perforce part company with him at times, else follow with the eye of faith, for his path oft leads up into that far region where mortals can scarce breathe, over Walpurgis' peaks, through bottomless chasms and along the filmy edge of clouds.

The admirers of Carlyle--may their tribe increase!--are indignant because one Edmund Gosse, in his introduction to the late edition of "Heroes and Hero Worship," alludes to the lion of modern literature as "an undignified human being, growling like an ill-bred collie dog." They take Mr. Gosse too seriously--dignify him with their displeasure. James Anthony Froude--a literary gun of much heavier caliber than Mr. Gosse appears to us from this passing glimpse--once wrote, if I remember aright, in a similar vein of the grizzled sage; but the unkind critique has been forgotten, and its author is fast following it into oblivion, while the shade of Carlyle looms ever larger, towering already above the Titans of his time, reaching even to the shoulder of Shakespeare! Gosse? Who is this presumptuous fellow who would take Carlyle in tutelage, foist himself upon the attention of the public by making a peep-show of the great essayist's faults? There is, or was, a pugilist named Gesse, or Goss; but as he did not deal foul blows to the dead, this must be a different breed of dogs. Sometime since there lived a little Englishman named William Edmund, or Edmund William Gosse, or Goss; but I had hitherto supposed that, becoming disgusted with himself, he crawled off and died. As I remember him, he was a kind of half-baked poetaster or he-bulbul, a Johannes Factotum in the province of dilettanteism, a universal Smart Alec who knew less about more things than any other animal in England. He was one of those persistently pestiferous insects tersely called by Carlyle "critic flies"--a descendant of that placed by aesop in St. Paul's cupola. They presume to judge all things, great and small, by their "half-inch vision"--take the measure of cathedrals and interpret to the world the meaning of brainy men! Unfortunately, the "critic fly" is confined to no one nation--is what might be called, in vigorous Texanese, an all-pervading dam-nuisance. Mounted upon a mole, pimple or other cutaneous imperfection of an intellectual colossus, it complacently smooths its wings and explains, with a patronizing air, that the big 'un isn't half bad; but sagely adds that had it been consulted, his too visible imperfections would have been eradicated. We dislike to see an insect leave its periods and semi-colons on the immortal marble; but it were idle to grow angry with a Gosse. This must be the English literary exquisite whom Americans have hitherto incidentally heard bellowing before the tent of this or the other giant and taking tickets--I mean the prig, not the pug. He is comparatively youthful yet, and can, on occasion, digest a good dinner. Perchance when he is well past four-score, worn with long years of labor compared with which the slavery of the bagne were a blessing, and half-dead with dyspepsia, he too, will "growl like a collie dog"; but never a copper will the great world care whether he grumbles or grins. Should he even get hydrophobia, that fact would scarce become historic. The public marks and magnifies a great man's foibles, but forgets both the little fellow and his faults. Jeanjean may hide from the battle in a hollow log, and none hear of it; but let a Demosthenes lose his shield and the world cackles over it for two-and-twenty centuries. To digress for a moment, I believe the story of Demosthenes' cowardice as damnable a lie as that relating to Col. Ingersoll's surrender. Even in his day human vermin sought to wreck with falsehood those they feared. The world--unwisely I think--interests itself in the personality of a genius, and somewhat impudently invades his privacy. A young man may muster up sufficient moral courage to lie to his callers, and thus preserve the proprieties; but an aged valetudinarian who wants to get into a quiet nook and nurse himself, may show scant courtesy--even brush the "critic fly" of the genus Gosse out of doors with a hickory broom.

Carlyle belonged to "the irritable race of poets," albeit he seldom imitated Pope's bad example and tortured his rugged ideas into oleaginous rhyme. There is a strange wild melody in all his work--what he would call "harmony in discord" suggesting that super-nervous temperament which is inseparable from the highest genius, and which degenerates so easily into acute neurosis--that "madness" to which wit is popularly supposed to be so "near allied." Such natures are aeolian harps acted upon, not by "the viewless air," but by a subtler, more impalpable power, which comes none know whence, and goes none know whither--one moment yielding soft melodies as of an angel's lute borne across sapphire seas, the next wailing like some lost soul or shrieking like Eumenides. The "self-poised," the "well-balanced" man, of whom you can safely predict what he will do under given conditions; the man who never bitterly disappoints you and makes you weep for very pity of his weakness, will never appall you by exhibitions of his strength. He may possess constructive talent, but never that creative power which we call genius because it suggests the genii. "No man is a hero to his valet," says the adage. Carlyle assumes this to be the fault of the latter--due to sawdust or other cheap filling in the head of the menial. Yet, may not the valet be wiser in this matter than the world? The hero, the greatest genius, is not always aflame with celestial fire, impelled by that mysterious power which comes from "beyond the clouds"-- may be, for most part, the commonest kind of clay, a creature in nowise to be worshiped. The eagle, which soars so proudly at the sun, will return to its eyrie with drooping wing; the condor, whose shadow falls from afar on Chimborazo's alabaster brow, cannot live always in the empyrean, a thing ethereal, and back to earth is no better than a carrion crow. To genius more than to aught else, perhaps, distance lends enchantment. While we see only the bold outline of the Titan, we are content to worship-- nay, insist upon it; but having scrutinized him inch by inch with a microscope, we realize that familiarity breeds contempt. Well does Christ say that a prophet is not without honor save in his own country--which is the origin of the hero and valet adage. I cannot understand why the world insists upon seeing le Grand Monarque in his night- cap and Carlyle in his chimney corner. With the harem of Byron and the drunken orgies of Burns, the poaching of Shakespeare and the vanity of Voltaire it has nothing to do--should content itself with what they have freely given it, the intellectual heritage they have left to humanity, and not pry into those frailties which they fain would hide. If Goldsmith "wrote like an angel and talked like a fool," it was because when he wielded the pen there was only a wise man present, and all are affected more or less by the company they keep. We care not whether the gold in our coffers was mined by saint or sinner, so that it be standard coin; then what boots it what manner of men stole from heaven that Promethean fire which surges in the poet's song, leaps in lightning-flash from the orator's lips, or becomes "dark with excess of bright" in Carlyle's Natural-Supernaturalism? Judge ye the work, and let the workman "growl like a collie dog" if it ease his dyspepsia!

That Carlyle was "an undignified human being," I can well believe; for he was the wisest of his day, and dignity is the distinguishing characteristic of the dodo and the donkey. If Mr. Gosse esteems it so highly, he might procure a pot of glue and adorn his vermiform appendix with a few peacock feathers, else take lessons in posturing from the turkey- gobbler or editor of the Houston Post. Had Carlyle been born a long-eared ass, he might have been fully approved-- if not altogether appreciated--by Gosse, Froude and other "critic flies." When Doctor Samuel Johnson was told that Boswell proposed to write his life, he threatened to prevent it by taking that of his would-be biographer. It were curious to consider what "crabbed old Carlyle" would have done had he suspected the danger of falling into the hands of a literary backstairs Mrs. Grundy like Edmund Gosse! In his "Heroes and Hero Worship" he treated his colossi far otherwise than he in turn has been treated by Gosse and Froude. He first recognized the fact that they were colossi, and no fit subject for the microscope. We hear nothing from him to remind us of Lemuel Gulliver's disgust with the yawning pores and unseemly blotches of the epidermis of that monster Brobdingnagian maid who set him astride her nipple. He reverenced them because they possessed more than the average of that intellectual strength which is not only of God, but is God; then considered their life-work as a whole, its efficient cause and ultimate consequence. He does not appear to have thought to inquire whether they had dyspepsia, and how it affected them, being engrossed in that more important question, viz., what ideas they were possessed withal, how wrought out, and what part these emanant volitions of the lords of intellect played in the mighty drama of Human Life.

It is not my present purpose to review Carlyle's literary labors--that were like crowding the Bard of Avon into a magazine article. For 300 years the world has been studying the latter, and is not yet sure that it understands him; yet Shakespeare is to Carlyle what a graded turnpike is to a tortuous mountain path. The former deals chiefly with the visible; the latter with the intangible. The first tells us what men did; the last seeks to learn why they did it. Carlyle is the prince of critics. He is often lenient to a fault, but seldom deceived--"looks quite through the shows of things into the things themselves." Uriel, keenest of vision 'mid all the host of heaven, is his guardian angel. To follow him into the sanctuaries of great souls and become familiar with all their hopes and fears; to pass the portals of master minds and watch the gradual evolution of great ideas in these cyclopean workshops; to mount the hill of Mirza and from it view the Tide of Time rushing ever into the illimitable Sea of Eternity, and comprehend the meaning of that mighty farce-tragedy enacted on the Bridge of Life, were scarce so easy as listening to the buzzing of the "critic fly" or dawdling over a French novel on a summer's day.

Carlyle is frequently called a "mystic," and mystagogue he certainly is--a man who interprets mysteries. If the average reader urge that his interpretation is too oft an obscurum per obscurius, he might reply, in the language of that other woefully "undignified" and shockingly impolite human being, Dr. Johnson: "I am bound to find you in reasons, Sir, but not in brains." Carlyle was regarded by those writers of his day who clung to and revered the time-worn ruts, as chief of the "Spasmodic School," the members whereof were supposed to be distinguished by "a stained and unnatural style." This "School," which was satirized by Aytoun while editor of Blackwood's Magazine, was thought to include Tennyson, Gilfillan and other popular authors of the time. I incline to the view that no writer of whom we have any knowledge exhibits less affectation in the matter of style than does the subject of this essay. It is rugged and massive; but so is his mind. It were impossible to imagine the author of "Sartor Resartus" and "The French Revolution" expressing himself in the carefully rounded periods of Macaulay, whose prose is half poetry, and whose poetry is all prose. Carlyle seems to care precious little what kind of vehicle he uses for the conveyance of ideas so long as it does not break down. All his labor "smells of the lamp"; but "the midnight oil"--of which our modern "ready writers" evidently use so little--was consumed in considering what to say rather than how to say it. Not even Shakespeare possesses so extensive a vocabulary. The technical terms of every profession and subdivision of science come trippingly to his tongue. But even the dictionary is not large enough for him, and he extends it this way and that, his daring neology creating consternation among the critic flies and other ephemera. He wrote as he thought, hence his style could not be other than natural. That of Aytoun was formed in the schools, principally modeled by masters--made to fit a procrustean bed--and was, therefore, eminently artificial. If we apply the term "unnatural" to the matter instead of the manner of Carlyle and Tennyson, then away with genius, for intellectual originality is tabooed!--no man is privileged to think his own thoughts. That is the law nowadays nowhere except in the sanctum of the Gal-Dal News, where Col. Jenkins takes the editorial eyas and teaches it to soar ln exact imitation of himself.

Whether by the "Spasmodic" method or otherwise, Carlyle dragged more true orients out of the depths than did any of his contemporaries; and that is saying much, for "there were giants in those days," and they were neither few nor far between. The intellectual glory of the first half of the present century was scarce eclipsed by the Elizabethan era. It was in very truth "a feast of reason and a flow of soul." Goethe and "Jean Paul" were putting the finishing touches to their work while Carlyle, then a young man, was striving to interpret these so strange appearances to the English-speaking world, to hammer some small appreciation of German literature into the autotheistic British head. Tom Moore, sweetest of mere singers, and Lord Byron, prince of poets, were but five and seven years respectively his seniors. He saw the beginning and the end of their literary labors, as of those of Macaulay and Mill, Darwin, Disraeli and Dickens. Much of his best work was done ere the death of Walter Scott, and he might have played as a school boy with the ill-fated Shelley. He had just begun his long life-labor when Longfellow and Tennyson, Hugo and Wagner came upon the scene, and together they wrought wisely and well in that mighty seed-field which is the world! What a galaxy of intellectual gods!--now all gone, returned home to High Olympus--the weird land left to the Alfred Austins, the William Dean Howells and the Ian McLarens! Gone, but not forgotten; yet the world will in time forget-- even the amaranthine flowers must fade. Of them all we see but one star that blazes the brighter as the years run on, and that one long mistaken for a mere erratic comet-- sans substance, or unformed nebulae hanging like a splotch of semi-luminous vapor in a great void. Year by year the voice of Carlyle rings clearer and clearer from the "Eternal Silence." And as we listen with rapt attention to the music of the spheres becoming audible, intelligible to our dull ear--the Waterloo and Lisbon earthquakes, the Revolutions and the Warring Religions, all the glory and shame, the wild loves and bitter hatreds of humanity--even Birth and Death--but minor notes in the Grand Symphony, the Harmony of Infinitude, the little man who has undertaken the management of the microphone, without suspecting its significance, distracts us with the unwished for and utterly useless information that the Voice coming from beyond Time and Space, out of the Everlasting Deep, once "growled like a collie dog!"

* * * RESQUIESCAT IN PACE.

The mortal remains of Jefferson Davis, for four eventful years president of the Southern Confederacy, are now en route to their last resting place in Hollywood cemetery in the city of Richmond. New Orleans, the metropolis of the sunny south-land, surrenders, with sighs and tears, the dust of the distinguished dead to the keeping of the old capital of the Confederacy. There, where died the dream of a new nation; there, where the dashing Cavalier made his last desperate stand against the stubborn Puritan; there, where the cause was irretrievably lost,--where the stars and bars made obeisance to the stars and stripes and the "gray gigantic host" faded from the tragic stage of the world, will be laid the dust of our honored dead to await the judgment day.

Near the grave of Davis will spring a massive monument, which will forever remain a landmark in American history,-- aye, in the mighty epic of the world! More imposing cenotaphs have risen, costlier mausoleums have charmed the eye, more gigantic monuments have aspired to kiss the clouds; but to the student of mankind none were more significant, to the historian none more interesting, to the poet none will appeal more powerfully through the long ages yet to be. It will be a new and grander Memnon in masonry, ever sounding celestial music for him that hath ears to hear, when smitten by the golden shafts of Justice's shining orb, when gilded with the celestial radiance of Love and Charity.

To-morrow the Southern people will, with tender hands and loving hearts, finally commit their dead chieftain to the care of the impartial historian. May another Plutarch arise to paint him as he was--nothing extenuating, naught set down in malice. May another Macaulay come forth from the fecund womb of the mighty future to add to the charm of history the music of his voice.

When the generation that knew and loved Davis shall have passed from earth; when those who idealized him shall have crossed the narrow boundaries of Time into Eternity's shoreless sea; when those brave souls who set their breasts against the bayonet shall one and all be gathered into the great hand of God; when those who saw in him the incarnation of a principle in whose defense they had pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor, shall be no longer with us to warp our better judgment, Jefferson Davis will sink to the ordinary level as a statesman and a soldier. It will be seen that his intellect was of the commonplace, his judgment ofttimes faulty,--that he can have no claim on the bays that lie ever green upon the brow of genius; but his dauntless courage, his devotion to his people, his purity of purpose--in a word, his American manhood--may well defy the crucial test of time and the analysis of the most exacting historian.

The honors which the South pays to the memory of Jefferson Davis are as unique as they are pathetic. He stood for the division of the Union, and the South rejoices that we are one nation and one people. He stood for the perpetuation of human slavery, and the South rejoices that the foul curse hath been lifted from her forever. Intensely loyal to the Union to-day, she bedews with her tears and covers with her rarest flowers the bier of him who devoted his best energies to destroy it. The successful revolutionary leader is always lionized; the patriot who strives and fails, remains dear to the people so long as his cause awakes a responsive echo in their hearts; but where hitherto in the great world's history has chieftain been thus honored, when even those who bore the battle's brunt give thanks to God that his flag went down in defeat lo rise no more forever? It is the grandest tribute ever paid to American manhood.

* * * CORONATION OF THE CZAR.

AMERICAN TOADYISM ON TAP.

With more barbaric mummery, flummery and vulgar waste of wealth than characterized even the late Marlborough- Vanderbilt wedding, Nicholas Two-Eyes was crowned Emperor of the rag-tag and bob-tail of creation, officially known as "all the Russias." Nick has a nice easy job at a salary considerably in excess of ye average country editor, and he gets it all in gold roubles instead of post-oak cord-wood and green watermelons, albeit his felicity is slightly marred by an ever-present fear that he may inadvertently swallow a few ounces of arsenic or sit down on an infernal machine.

Nick is emphatically an emperor who emps. He isn't bothered with do-nothing congresses or Populist politicians who want him impeached. When he saith to a man "come," he cometh p. d. q.; to another "go" he getteth a hustle on him that would shame a pneumatic tire. Nick is the greatest monarch "what they is." He is the divinely ordained Chief Gyasticutus of that motley aggregation of tallow-munchers and unwashed ignorami whose very existence is a menace to modern civilization. The Goths and Visigoths were models of cleanliness and avatars of intelligence compared with a majority of the seventy different breeds of bipedal brutes who acknowledge the rule of the Romanoffs. A Russian peasant smells like the Chicago river on a summer's day, or Tolstoi's "Kreutzer Sonata." He's more disagreeable to the olfactories than old John Jacob Astor's hide house, from whose effluvia sprung the master spirits of Gotham's Four Hundred. He will eat what would send a coyote howling out of the country. To him a jug of train-oil were as angel-food, a keg of stale soap-grease a ferial feast. During his entire life he enjoys but two baths--one when he is born, the other when he's buried. A religious fanatic, he obeys but one scriptural injunction--"Be fruitful and multiply." Even the Russian ladies wash only to suit the dresses they wear--high-necked or decollete. The average Slav is as stupidly ignorant as any Agency Indian. He respects no law but that of blind force. His Magna Charta is the dynamite bomb. He is courageous with the bravery of the brute, which has no conception of life's sacredness. Doubtless the rule of the bayonet is the only government possible for such a barbarous people--and the Romanoffs have not allowed it to rust.

The Czar is the immediate ruler of nearly 130,000,000 semi-savages, his lightest word their supreme law, while the chiefs of the robber hordes of Central Asia acknowledge him their official head. Such tremendous power in the hands of a weak-minded, vacillating monarch like Nicholas II--descended from Catherine the Courtesan, and having in his veins the blood of cranks--may well cause western Europe to lie awake. Bonaparte declared that in a hundred years the continent would be all Russian or all Republican--by which he meant that unless this nation of savages in esse and Vandals in posse were stamped out it would imitate the example of Alaric and Attila and precipitate such another intellectual night as that known as the Dark Ages. In western Europe Republicanism is making but slight progress, while in the East the power of the Great White Khan is rapidly increasing. In a struggle between the semi-savagery of the East and the civilization of the West, China and Turkey would be the natural and inevitable allies of the Czar. Small wonder that the Great First Consul trudged home from Moscow with a heavy heart!

Some faint idea of the savage ignorance of Russia may be had from the history of the Siberian exiles and the fiendish persecutions of the Jewish people. Siberia is the Ice Hell of the old Norse mythologists, into which men, women and children have been indiscriminately cast on the bare suspicion of desiring to better the wretched condition of the Russian people. Its horrors, which have long been a hideous nightmare to civilized men, need no description here. The very name of Siberia causes humanity to shudder--it casts a shadow on the sun! The experience of the Jews in Russia was akin to that of the early settlers in America, who were exposed to the unbridled ferocity of the Aborigines; yet the so-called Christian nations dared do no more than petition the Czar that these savage atrocities should cease--futile prayers to the hog-headed god of the Ammonites!

The young man who has just been crowned at Moscow at an expense of some millions, and whose emblem of authority is ornamented with rubies as large as eggs and ablaze with 2,564 costly diamonds--while half his people are feeding on fetid offal--is a weak-faced pigmy who would probably be peddling Russia's favorite drunk promoter over a pine bar had he not chanced to be born in the purple. Having been spawned in a royal bed--perchance the same in which his great gran'dame Catherine was wont to receive her paramours--he becomes the most powerful of princes-- haloed with "that divinity which doth behedge a king"--and all the earth rejoices to do him honor.

For months past wealthy Americans have been hastening to Moscow to enjoy the barbaric fete and perchance pick up a greasy count or scorbutic duke for their daughters. They were not permitted to witness the coronation, but they could look at the Kremlin, stand in the street and watch the Czar and his wooden-faced wife sail by in their chariot of gold, and perhaps be cuffed out of the way by a court chamberlain. Surely that were felicity enough for fools! Our boasted Republican government, whose shibboleth has ever been the equality of all men-- that the harvester of the lowly hoop-pole stands on a parity with a prince swinging a gilded scepter and robbing a poverty-stricken people--considered that its paid representatives in Russia would be unequal to the task of spilling sufficient slobber over the chief representative of "divine right," the great arch-enemy of human liberty, and sent special envoys to assist at the ceremony. These haughty American sovereigns were not permitted, however, to enter the sacred presence of the Czar attired in their regal robes--the dress of American gentlemen; but were required to dike out like English flunkeys at a fancy feed. "Evening coat with plain metal buttons, white vest, knee-breeches, black silk stockings, no ornaments"--such was the ukase issued to the envoys of Uncle Sam by the royal seneschal. They "obeyed with alacrity." Of course they did. Had they been ordered to appear in their shirt- tails, one flap dyed green and the other yellow, their legs painted like barber-poles and wearing asses' ears, they would have "obeyed with alacrity"--without ever a thought of advising the seneschal to go to Siberia. The rear admiral in command of the Mediterranean fleet was ordered to Kronstadt with his flagship; sent to attend the coronation "as the naval envoy of the United States"--a journey of some thousands of miles at a minimum expense of $1,000 a day, to watch a young dude stick a million-dollar dog muzzle on his own foolish pate, while his female running mate cavorted around with a dozen dudines supporting her tail-feathers! And "Jones he pays the freight"--puts up for this egregious folly. It has cost the American tax-payers a quarter of a million dollars to have their mis-representatives prancing around the Kremlin in short-stop pants and silk stockings, bowing and scraping like a Pullman porter who has just received a dollar tip from some reckless Tezsan.

We have nothing in common with Russia. One government is the antithesis of the other. They are "on friendly terms" because they have practically no intercourse. Russia has no American possessions upon which we can pull the foolish manifesto of the erstwhile Monroe. There's no trade between the two countries--hasn't been since Russia unloaded her Alaskan glaciers upon us at a fancy price. It would have been eminently proper had Minister Breckinridge presented himself--togged out in his best Arkansas jeans instead of being attired like a troubadour--to wish Nick exemption from the Nihilists and express the hope that the occasion wouldn't swell his head; but there was absolutely no excuse for sending warships on an expensive cruise, and special envoys 5,000 miles to make unmitigated asses of themselves.

The unpalatable fact is that we are a nation of toad-eaters. President Cleveland is, in this respect at least, eminently representative of the American people. The axiom that "like takes to like" accounts for his popularity. It was that which enabled him to beat Jim Blaine. When the Grand Duke Alexis was in this country, upper-tendom slopped over him so persistently and offensively that the young man incontinently fled. The adulation he received from American belles made him such a misogynist that he never got married. The girl who got an introduction to the Duke was pointed out for years thereafter as an especial favorite of fortune. The obituary of a Louisville lady who died a short time ago contained the startling announcement that she had actually danced with the Duke. Every chappie who was permitted to pay for a mint julep absorbed by this subject of a crack-brained Czar secured a certificate to that effect and had it framed.

In 1892, when more than the usual number of Russians were going hungry to bed, America undertook to abrogate the law of the survival of the fittest by sending the starving wretches a ship-load of provisions. Dr. T. DeWitt Talmage, Dr. Louis Klopsch and other prominent Americans were sent over as commissioners to give out the grub. While in Russia they were permitted, as a special concession, to speak to the Caesarovitch, who afterwards succeeded to the crown. Of course these American Sovereigns were "overcome with such condescension," could "hardly get their breath"--even in short pants. They all wrote it up for the American press, and now Dr. Klopsch is rehearsing every detail of that important event--the crowning felicity of his life. He tells us how the commissioners "received full instructions as to dress"; what a "bountiful repast" they enjoyed with the crown prince's servants--while millions were starving to death; how they cooled their heels in the hall for an hour or two while their invisible host finished his cigar; how their "hearts fluttered" when the seneschal gave them their final instructions in court etiquette--not to expectorate on the carpet or scratch the furniture--then trotted them in; how the crown prince graciously permitted them to stand with uncovered heads for a few moments in his august presence, and then managed to get rid of them without actually kicking them down stairs! He "shook hands" with the party as a signal for them to pull their freight. And to this good day Drs. Talmage and Klopsch will not use toilet paper with the hand that has been pressed by royalty! But the charity commissioners wreaked a terrible revenge on the crown prince--whose starving people they were feeding--for thus insulting American manhood; they sent him a handsomely bound copy of Talmage's book! The fact that he has not broken off diplomatic relations with the United States may be accepted, however, as prima facie evidence that he has not yet read it. Perhaps he added insult to injury by sending it to the Siberian exiles. The Czaritza, or Empress, is a grand-daughter of Queen Victoria. She is rather handsome, but her face, like that of all those born to the house of Hanover is expressionless as a clothing store dummy, hard as a blue-steel hatchet. Princess Alice, as she was known in England, was a very devout Protestant; but she promptly abjured the religion in which she was raised and changed her name to Alexandra Theodorovna for the blessed privilege of sharing an emperor's bed and board. Thrift is a characteristic of Queen Victoria's kids, and their religious scruples count for naught when weighed against a crown.

* * * THROWING STONES AT CHRIST.

Are you throwing stones at Christ and the Christian Cause?

Pause, reflect before you answer. Not all the stones are thrown by the Atheist, the Agnostic, the Infidel. No, the most cruel stones, the ones that wound most deeply, are thrown from the pulpit itself.

The kiss of Judas strikes deeper than the spear of the Roman legionary; the denial of Peter is more cruel than the Crown of Thorns.

Are you Throwing Stones at Christ and the Christian Cause?

You in the Amen Corner stand forth and answer me. Drop that catechism! release that credo! take your lips from that crucifix! Now look me in the eye and speak the words of truth and soberness: Are you a property owner? Have you buildings rented to keepers of dives and bagnios? Do you come here on Sunday and pray the Lord to protect the young from temptation while you are the silent partner of criminals? Have you ever contributed to send missionaries to Madagascar money that was received from people whose business it is to debauch your neighbor's sons and, if possible, degrade his daughters? No? Thank God for that. Do you know of any member of this church who is so guilty? You suspect as much? Then why do you not go on your knees to him and beg him to turn from his evil ways? Do you not know that by keeping silent you tacitly endorse his infamy--that you bring the Christian cause into contempt; that you make it a byword and a reproach--that you are Throwing Stones at Christ?

No; do not sit down yet. What are your worldly possessions? How much did that diamond in your shirt- front cost? What was the expense of that costume worn by the woman who worships at your side? You surprise me! Worth fifty, a thousand dollars!--wearing diamonds, buying $1,000 dresses--for what? To wear to church--in which to worship Him who had not where to lay his head! And a thousand people in this one city alone in abject poverty-- "And the greatest of these is Charity." What a cruel stone is Selfishness to Throw at Christ!

Is that your minister in immaculate broadcloth and shiny boots, turning the leaves of his Bible with lily-fingers? Pardon me that I did not recognize him. You see I have been reading of John the Baptist with his raiment of camel's hair,--of Christ with his single garment, tramping barefoot, unshaven and unshorn over Judea's blazing hills.

Stand up, thou vicegerent of the Hebrew carpenter, and let me question thee: You will not? I have no authority? Yet publicans and sinners questioned thy Master, and He answered freely and with all gentleness. Art thou greater than He?

Are you Throwing Stones at Christ and the Christian Cause?

Be careful,--think well before you answer. In a minister of God a mistake in this matter were little better than a crime. Are you inculcating the spirit of Christ or Belial--of Love or Hate? What do ye when mocked, reviled, your purposes called in question? Do you go to the mocker, extend to him a brother's hand and strive by moral suasion to lead him out of the depths of everlasting darkness into the bright effulgence of heavenly Day? Do you turn the other cheek to the smiter and pray, "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do"? Or do you mount the pulpit with a splenetic heart and, with frantic gestures and a voice hoarse with passion denounce the criticism as "infernal rubbish"?

Are you seeking the salvation of souls or notoriety? Are you striving to foment discord in your community or cast oil upon the troubled waters? Are you striving to establish on earth the universal brotherhood of Man and common fatherhood of God, or Throwing Stones at Christ and the Christian Cause from the cover of a canting hypocrisy?

Do you strive when criticised to transfer the criticism from yourself to the Savior? Do you brand men who dare to differ from you as blasphemers,--as though you were one with God and that to question your superior wisdom and goodness were equal to deny the Almighty? Do you, by presumption where you should be meek, by belligerency where you should act the peacemaker, by dogmatism where you should humbly seek the light, by denunciation where you should propitiate, call down the world's contempt on the cause you profess to serve--Cast Stones at Christ?

It is Written, "Judge not lest ye be judged." Do you Always heed the law?--carefully refrain from resolving yourself into an inquisitorial court,--becoming both prosecutor and judge and condemning those who chance to differ from you?

"Why so hot, little man?" The world rolled on, oh so many weary years before the Fates kindly sent thee to set it right; it will go on much in the same old way after both thee and thy work have been forgotten.

To the stones cast at Christ by professed unbelievers we need give but little heed. They rain harmless as Parthian shafts on the shield of Achilles. Never was atheistical book written, never was infidel argument penned that touched the core of any religion, Christian or Pagan. They but serve as driving sand of the desert to scour the eating rust from the Christian armor. Seldom indeed does the avowed infidel cast a stone at Christ,--he contents himself with holding up to the world's scorn the mummeries in which dogmatizers have invested the teachings of the grandest man that ever died for truth. God created nothing in vain. Even the atheist has his uses; nay, even the splenetic preacher may fill an important niche in the great world's economy--may be a real blessing in disguise.

Very remarkable is it that Christ's holy cause best prospered, was purest, most powerful for good when most persecuted, "The blood of the martyrs was the seed of the church." From the auto da fe arose the anthem that thrilled the Pagan heart. From prison cells poured forth paeans of praise that caused princes to kiss the cross. From the outlawed conventicle went forth a holy zeal that carried millions to the throne of grace,--from the gloomy midnight meeting there burst a light that illumed the world.

The stones cast by avowed enemies were the steps by which the Cause of Christ mounted from poverty and obscurity to thrones and wealth, to name and fame,--the wings with which it encircled the great round globe, the power that enabled it to break down the barriers of the most obdurate hearts.

It is the stones cast by professed friends--the stones of Selfishness and Pride, of Intolerance and Vain-glory,--of Hate and Discord masquerading in the garb of Love and Law--that cause the wounds on Calvary to bleed afresh, the tears in Gethsemane to flow anew, the Crown of Thorns to once more burn the throbbing brow, the scourge to fall across the naked shoulders of the Son of God.

Are you Throwing Stones at Christ and His Cause?

* * * LOOKING BACKWARD.

When it comes to "Looking Backward," Bellamy isn't in it a little bit with Prof. Herman V. Hilprecht. The retrospective glance of the latter covers a period of at least 11,000 years; and what is of infinitely more importance, it is that of a learned paleologist instead of a sensation-mongering empiric. The Professor has succeeded in lifting a corner of that black veil which hangs between the prehistoric and the present, in affording us a fleeting glimpse of our fellow man as he appeared long ages before the birth of Abraham. He has demonstrated that man has been a civilized animal much longer than is popularly supposed--that at least 5,000 years before the supposed advent of Adam he not only lived sociably in cities and had gods and kings, but was able to read and write! For eight years past the Professor and his co-laborers, under the patronage of the University of Pennsylvania, have been carrying on their explorations. The site of Nippur, the ancient capital of Kengi, later known as Babylonia, is the scene of their labors. Hitherto Nippur has been supposed to have been the world's oldest city; but the excavations made not only prove that it rose upon the ruins of others, but affords some knowledge of a long line of kings who lived so long ago that their very names were forgotten before the flight of the Israelites from Egypt, or even the building of the Tower of Babel.

"What is the story of this buried past?
Were all its doors flung wide,
For us to search its rooms?
And we to see the race, from first to last,
And how they lived and died."