Chapter III: Part 3

A long and very carefully written letter from an unknown gentleman who signs himself “Retired Professor” has recently reached me. ¶ The Great Obscure favor me quite often with anonymous epistles, but life being short and the wastebasket wide, I seldom reply. Yet now an exception must be made, and I answer “Retired Professor” for the sole and simple reason that he has “retired,” and in retiring has made the world his debtor. Probably no one act of this man’s entire life has been so potent for good as this. He has set all Professors without humor a most precious precedent. ¶ In gratitude, hoping that his example will bear fruit, I reply. ¶ Did space permit I should be glad to print my correspondent’s letter entire, but the gist of his scholarly argument is that the Society of the Philistines is endeavoring to make free-thought universal and paganism popular. He stoutly avers that the ancient Philistines were the enemies of Jehovah, that they worshiped strange gods, and that they were the sworn foes of the Chosen People. ¶ Now this is the sad part: he proves his case. The gentleman explains that he would not have seen _The Philistine_ Magazine had not his daughter, “an unmarried lady of thirty-two,” purchased several copies; but from this on, with his permission, no more numbers of this “infidelic infernal machine” shall enter his house ❦ My heart goes out to all unmarried ladies of thirty-two. Especially so when they have fathers who are irascible; only one worse fate can befall a woman of thirty-two than to have an irascible father, and that is to have a lover who is irate. Still I doubt me not that the daughter of “Retired Professor” will find a way to read _The Philistine_, for booklets laugh at locksmiths! ¶ Yet, ignorance prevails, for is not “Retired Professor” living proof? And so I will say: There lived in the Far East about three thousand years ago a tribe of people known as Philistines ❦ It is a hotly mooted question among the theologians whether they were so called because they lived in Philistia or whether Philistia took its name on account of being peopled by Philistines. I will not take sides on this issue, but hedge closely and simply stand firm on the fact that a tribe called the Philistines existed ❦ Near them lived the Hivites, the Moabites, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Jebusites, the Perizzites, the Ammonites and the Gothamites ❦ Now, among these tribes none was so strong, none so intelligent, none so handsome, none so virtuous as the Philistines. And it came to pass that the superior quality of moral fiber in the Philistines caused the entire country to be known as Philistia; it was the general name given to the whole valley of the Jordan. And the name endures even unto this day. ¶ Palestine means the land of the Philistines. And it seems that among them there was a rude sense of right and wrong. For if a man owned a piece of ground and planted a vine on it, and then watered and tended the vine, the grapes that grew on this vine were his, and all of the people agreed to this, and the man and his neighbors knew all this without a Dispensation ❦ These people planted vineyards, and had gardens, and fields of wheat and barley. They had barns with threshing-floors; and they had carts, plows and other implements. They builded houses and owned their homes; and the men loved their wives and their children; and the women were the comrades of the men—all taking part in the sports as well as in the work, for they were a merry, happy people ❦ Now, about thirteen centuries before the Christian Era, while they were living in peace and prosperity, there swooped down upon them a horde of escaped slaves, called Israelites ❦ These slaves had broken away from their masters in Egypt. The country to which they traveled was only about three hundred miles from Egypt; but as their average speed was less than a mile a week, it took them forty years to make the journey. ¶ The man who led these slaves in their flight was one Moses, who in a righteous cause had killed a man in Egypt and fled. After many years of exile, during which time he had been in Philistia and liked it, he returned and led the exodus. When the Israelites left, they took all the gold and silver ornaments and utensils they could “borrow,” and melted them up. And they were not ashamed of this act, for they have written it down in the third chapter of a book called Exodus. ¶ The ancient Israelites never had any clear ideas as to the rights of property. When they found grapes growing on a vine, they helped themselves and swore that the fruit was theirs by Divine right. In order to impress this ignorant, barbaric horde with the sense of authority, Moses, who was diplomatic as well as good, told the people that God directed him and that Deity told him what to do and say. Moses used to go up on a mountain, clear above the clouds, beyond where the mists hover, and when he came down the people asked him what he had been up there for, and he told them he went up there to see God. ¶ In no other way could Moses control this restless mob except by saying, God says so and so. And the fact that their leader was on such good terms with Elohim or Yahveh inflated these people so that they always spoke of themselves as “the Chosen People of God.” In fact, they took it all in and were so vain and boastful that Moses was often ashamed of them ❦ The Jebusites, the Hittites and the Moabites never referred to the Israelites as the Chosen People of God. No one called them the Chosen People of God—only they themselves. And I wish to say right here that the individual who does a great and magnificent work is on close and friendly terms with God. He is the Son of God, and it is necessary that he should feel this kinship in order to do his work. From Moses, the called of God, on up to Socrates, who listened to the Demon, to George Fox, who harkened to the Voice, to the prophets of our own time, all lie low in the Lord’s hand and listen closely ere they act. A man is strong only when he feels that he is backed by a Power, not his own, that makes for Righteousness. So Moses was not guilty of falsehood; but the people who took him literally put him in a wrong light. ¶ When I think of those brave souls, the Saviors of the World, who have sought to lead men out of the captivity of evil—feeling and knowing that they were the Sons of God—I stand uncovered ❦ But a mass of people—a crowd, a mob—that claims to be a “Chosen People” is a sight to make angels weep. “You can not indict a class,” said Macaulay; corporations have no souls, and a horde that claims to be inspired is only a howling, cowardly Thing ❦ Great men are ever lonely and live apart, but birds of a feather flock together because they are afraid to flock alone. They want warmth and protection—they are afraid. A mob is the quintessence of cowardice—a dirty, mad, hydra-headed monster, that one good valiant Saint George can thrust to the heart. When a mob speaks I say, Vox populi, vox devil! ¶ At the time the Israelites tumbled pellmell upon the Philistines, Moses had long been dead. The mob was without a leader, and quarrel was rife amid its broken ranks. In a mad rush they stampeded the herds of the Philistines, scattered their flocks, destroyed their gardens, and as excuse they shouted, We are the Chosen People of God! And one of their Poets sang a song, which runs thus: “Moab is my washpot; over Philistia will I cast my shoe.” This only made the Philistines laugh, and although the Israelites outnumbered them, they went at it and scattered them. Finally, after long years of warfare, the fight was called a draw, and the Jews settled down and following the good example of the Philistines made themselves homes. ¶ Of course, as sane men and women, we of today do not suppose that the great Universal Intelligence that holds the world in the hollow of His hand had much interest in the fight. If this intelligence were a Being, I can imagine Him looking over the battlement of Heaven and turning with a weary smile to Gabriel, saying: “Let ’em fight—what boots it! They will all be dead tomorrow, anyway.” ¶ It is a noteworthy fact that in the first chapter of the Gospel of Saint Matthew the Inspired Writer traces the genealogy of Jesus direct to the Philistines. In the sixth verse we find “David begat Solomon of her who had been the wife of Uriah.” Back of this is Ruth the Moabitess, who was the grandmother of David. There is no such thing as tracing a pure Jewish lineage back to the time of Moses ❦ The Jews went a-courting as soon as they arrived on the borders of Canaan; and the heathen quite fancied the Israelitish women from the first. ¶ In the Book of Ruth, first chapter and fourth verse, I see, “And they took them wives out of the country of Moab.” The houses of Capulet and Montague have ever intermarried—it seems a quiet way Nature has of playing a little joke. And after a painstaking study of the matter I am fully convinced that the many sterling qualities in the Jew are derived from his Philistine ancestry. No one doubts that Solomon was the wisest man that ever lived. His mother was a Philistine. Now, no man is ever greater than his mother, and it is very plain that the great wisdom of Solomon was derived from this pagan woman whose body and spirit nourished him, in whose loving arms he was cradled, and whose intellect first fired his aspiration. ¶ This is all made plainer yet when we remember that David had many sons by Jewish women, and that all of these sons were positively no good—and some of them very, very bad ❦ The facts are found in the Second Book of Samuel—a book, by the way, which no respectable girl should allow her mother to read. But if any captious critic arises and denies the Law of Heredity, for argument’s sake I’ll waive this matter of maternal transmission of excellence and rest my case as to Solomon’s wisdom on the fact that he married over four hundred Philistine women ❦ And, as stated by Sir Walter Besant in a recent story, “a newly married woman always tells her husband everything she knows,” I feel safe in saying that Solomon’s transcendent wisdom was derived from Philistinic sources. ¶ Only one incident in the history of this people do I wish to set straight before the world at this writing—that is the story of Goliath ❦ According to recently discovered cuneiform inscriptions, it is found that the giant lived long enough to attend the funeral of David, so it is hardly likely that David slew him. That David threw pebbles at the warrior is doubtless true, but the giant of course paid no attention to the boys that followed him—going along about his business just as any other dignified giant would have done ❦ But David went home and told that he had killed the man—and the Israelites wishing to leave a proud record wrote the tale down as history ❦ We have reason to believe that this story was interpolated into the Bible during the first of the Third Century. In David’s case, summer and autumn quite fulfilled the promise of spring ❦ That eleventh chapter of Second Samuel, showing how he stole Bathsheba and then killed Uriah, her husband, reveals the quality of the man. But it was left for his dying act to crown a craven career ❦ With his last lingering breath—with the rattle of death in his throat—he gasped to his son, referring to a man who had never wronged him, “Let not his hoar head go down to Sheol in peace!” With the utterance of these frightful words his soul passed out into the Unknown ❦ In all that David wrote, not a word can I find that hints at his belief in a future life—he simply never thought of it—and dying as a dog dies, he gnashed at Shimei, whose offense was that thirty-five years before he had told David a little wholesome truth ❦ Shimei was a brave fellow and David dare not fight him, so he made a truce with him and swore an oath that he would never molest him, but dying he charged Solomon to search him out with a sword ❦ This is recorded by the Inspired Writer in the ninth verse of the second chapter of First Kings. With forty-one distinct crimes to David’s charge, the killing of nine hundred thousand men and two hundred thousand women and children, the houghing of thousands of horses, all of which is set down in infallible Holy Writ, his record is very bluggy. In fact, his whole life’s pathway is streaked with infamy ❦ David being a literary man of acknowledged merit, I have given him more attention than I would a plain, every-day king. And I now brand him as an all-round rogue. I do this calmly, holding myself personally responsible, and fully prepared to plead justification and prove my case should the heirs or next-of-kin consider my language libelous. ¶ And while I do not know anything about it for certain, it is my opinion that at the Last Great Day the folks who stayed around home and pruned their vines and tended their flocks and loved their wives and babies will fare a deal better than those other men who made war on an innocent people and tried to render them homeless ❦ Of course, I may be wrong about this, but I can not help having an opinion. Altogether, my sympathies are with the Philistines—who were so strong in personality that they gave their name to the Holy Land—Pelishton, Pelesheth, Philistia, Palestina, Palestine. ¶ Long years ago Professor Jowett called attention to the fact that the word Philistia literally meant Land of Friendship; the term having the same root as the Greek word _Philos_—Love. Max Muller has said, “The dwellers in the Valley of the Jordan, in the fifteenth century before Christ, recognizing the idea of Oneness or Fraternity, gave a name that signified Love-Land to their country: thus embodying the modern thought of the Brotherhood of Man.” ❦ In view of these things it was rather a strange move—a man so scholarly as Matthew Arnold applying the word “Philistine” as a term of reproach toward those who did not think as he did! I can see, though, that he shaped his language to fit the ears of his clientele. He sought to make clever copy—and he did. The opinion being abroad that the Philistines were the enemies of Light—how very funny to throw the word like a mud ball at any and all who chanced to smile at his theories! Having small wit of their own, the scribbling rabble took it up. ¶ On reading certain books by a Late Critic, who now wears prison garb and is doing the first honest work that ever his hands found to do, I see that he is very fond of calling people who are outside of his particular cult, “Philistines.” But look you! Brave Taurus at the bullfight is a deal more worthy of respect than the picadores who for a price harrow him without ruth to his death ❦ And as his virtue surpasses that of any in the silken, belaced and perfumed throng, who sit safe and with lily fingers applaud, so do we accept your banderilla, recognizing from whence it comes, and wear it jauntily as a badge of honor. ¶ As the Cross for eighteen hundred years has been a sacred emblem, and the gallows since John Brown glorious; and as the word Quaker, flung in impudent and impotent wrath, now stands for gentleness, peace and truth, so has the word Philistine become a synonym for manly independence. ¶ In Literature he is a Philistine who seeks to express his personality in his own way ❦ A true Philistine is one who brooks no let or hindrance from the tipstaffs of letters, who are only intent on crystallizing a life and language that are as yet very imperfect ❦ These men strive hard to reduce all life to a geometrical theorem and its manifestations to an algebraic formula. But Fate is greater than a college professor, and so far its mysteries, having given the slip to all the creeds, are still at large. My individual hazard at truth is as legitimate as yours. The self-appointed beadles of letters demand that we shall neither smile nor sleep while their Presiding Elders drone, but we plead in the World’s Assize for the privilege of doing both. So in Art we ask for the widest, freest and fullest liberty for Individuality—that’s all! ❦

Oral Righteousness

In days agone, if things tasted good we called them “toothsome.” We did not work the subject out according to the Herbert Spencer Law of Synthesis, but we dimly felt that teeth and taste were closely akin. And therein were we quite correct ❦ The widow who declined to marry the man, and on being discreetly pressed for a reason, abruptly declared with a Marie Corelli defiance that it was because he did not have the Dental-Floss Habit, was right in her instincts. She would rid her of the reek before she took it on as a life lease. For it is just such little things that make or mar, when we have sworn to love, honor and humor, and face the party over the coffee-urn every morning for ninety-nine years. The gentleman was not personally pleasant, and although he may have had a college degree, social position and spondulex, yet a breath that would stop a watch put him to the bad, and rightly so. ¶ To such a one she could never murmur soft and low the word “Mizpah!” Nor could he salvo his kismet magnum and get it back again according to the Aristotelian laws of action and reaction. For gentlemen who are not toothsome are never socially gladsome. If my years were not as those of the pterodactyl, and I wanted to win the love of a woman, I would look well to my molars. ¶ Brain, brawn, and the graceful two-step are as naught when toothsomeness is actively absent. Shakespeare had these two things in mind when he referred to a “barber’s breath,” and “the breath of an unfee’d attorney,” which items do not come to us as the breath of Spring. Abjure the weed and rice-paper, eliminate the elevated spheroid, and look you to your teeth, Cecil, to your teeth, I say. And the rest follows. We all have our opinions in matters of medicine, but no one knocks on the dentist. Is love then a matter of toothsomeness? ❦ I do not speak by the card, for my knowledge along this line is merely academic, yet a woman I know says, “Yes.” ¶ But seemingly, decayed teeth would give Cupid a pain in his wee tummy small. Decayed politics are bad; decayed literature is worse; and to love a person with decayed molars would be like loving a mummy with tainted morals. The increase in divorce, and the much marital woe of which we hear, are doubtless due to lack of toothsomeness ❦ The parties grin and bear it as long as they can—some declining to grin—and then strike for freedom, fresh air and the open road. ¶ Aside from the esthetics of bad teeth, there is the esoterics, and worse than that, is the hypersthenia which leads to language non-ethical, offensive, irrelevant and uncalled for. ¶ A very slight irritation in the teeth throws the soul on the horn of the saddle. To be sane and serene you have to be sound and salient. We do business on a mighty small spiritual bank-balance. To carry no reserve is like firing a boiler in which the gauges show no water. In fact, it means a very great danger of an explosion—and the grave necessity of being sent to the hospital and having the stub-end of your self-respect removed. An aching tooth or a tooth of which you are conscious draws mightily on your mental reserve. Morphine, or a dab of cotton soaked in chloroform, will help you forget it, but these things are drafts on the bank of futurity and the loan must be met with usurious interest. ¶ I once knew a playwright who started in to write a great historical drama; but he got a toothache, and decided to make it a farce-comedy; but all he produced was a fizzle ❦ Seldom does a man with the toothache make good; and to have cavities in your teeth and not know it is worse than to have the toothache, since pain is Nature’s beneficent warning ❦ So, to have decayed teeth and never have a toothache would mean lack of sensibility, which is lack of life. Such a one hasn’t enough nerves to make him irritable, much less to give him artistic grouch ❦ And grouch is unused or misused energy—and have I not said that all energy is divine? You write your poem, your essay, your play—just as you paint your picture, carve your statue, or give your oration—out of your surplus, and never out of your capital ❦ Should you begin to draw on your capital you get nerv. pros. or fatty degeneration of the cerebrum, and are a candidate for Billy Muldoon’s. ¶ Is oratory a matter of toothsomeness? Most certainly, yes ❦ The greatest orator that New York ever produced was thrown from his artistic hobbyhorse once and forever, when his store-teeth, in an impassioned moment, shot over the footlights and fell with a sickening thud into the orchestra. “Say, mister, are these your teeth?” asked a man in a front seat, as he solemnly arose and handed up the grinders. And that broke up the meeting ❦ I once saw a man, singing the part of Tannhauser, do a similar stunt. And we all declared that he could go down to Venusburg and stay there, for all of us—he ceased to be interesting. ¶ Get this down as an axiom: To speak well, or sing well, you must have good teeth ❦ The teeth are organs of speech—auxiliary organs at least. When your voice whistles through your teeth, and the tones come wheezy and with a sort of sad surprise, there are soon bubbles in your think-tank, and you travel home on your rim. It is then time to sing Tosti’s _Good-by_, and retire from the stage, thereafter warbling only to the gallery of your psychic self ❦

The Health Habit

There are three serious objections to my health prescriptions ❦ First, I make no charge for them. Second, they are written in plain English, without myth, miracle or mystery, and can be understood even by the mediocre mind. Third, you have to fill the prescription yourself, and this costs effort. Sickness is a selfish thing. If you are well you are expected to work, and give your time and talent to helping other people. If you are sick you are supposed to be immune from many unpleasant tasks and duties. Mark Twain said he was never really happy except on two occasions. One was when he was given that Oxford degree and wore a marvelous red cloak and a mortar-board hat; and the other was when he had the measles and expected to die. The joy of holding the center of the stage and having the whole family in tears, just on his own account, was worth all the pangs ❦ But, indeed, there were no pangs. Mark was a humorist, and a humorist is a man who has the sense of values, and to have the sense of values is wisdom. Mark was a great philosopher as well as a humorist ❦ Not only did he testify that pangs and pains are the attributes of life, not death, and that there is no pain in death, but he also gave testimony that sickness is an acute form of selfishness. The sick man disarranges the entire scheme of house-keeping wherever he is, unless he be in a hospital. To have his meals served to him in bed he regards as natural and right ❦ For once he holds the center of the stage—all dance attendance. Doctors come, nurses run for this and that, neighbors call and inquire. He is It. ¶ The paranoiac is a person who craves attention, and rather than go unnoticed, commits crime. Just observe how most sick people obtrude their maladies upon their friends, and then tell me whether sickness is not usually a form of paranoia! Doctor Johnson said the sick man is a rascal ❦ Not only is the remark true, but Doctor Johnson might have gone further and stated that a long period of rascality is required to produce most cases of sickness. Hate, prejudice, revenge, jealousy, wrath, are all disturbers of the circulation, and producers of toxins. These toxins poison the entire system, and continued, may produce rheumatism, dyspepsia, Bright’s disease, or various other pleasant things for which we look to the doctor for relief. ¶ Most people go through life on a short allowance of ozone, and a surfeit of food. We eat too much and breathe too little ❦ Life is combustion—the digestive tract is a boiler. And as oxygen is necessary to fire, so it is to life. The value of exercise in the open air lies in the fact that it is getting a goodly draft of oxygen through your system, and this forced draft is both eliminating refuse and burning up slag ❦ These things are all so trite and true that it seems silly to write this for cultured people, and yet cultured and educated people are sick quite as much as the other kind. In fact, more so, since necessity is often removed and the person has the privilege of going to bed in the morning, getting up when he pleases, eating a multiplicity of dishes that set up an internecine war, giving the saw-buck absent treatment, and forcing or bribing other folks to wait on him. ¶ It is a curious comment on our civilization to find our great sanitariums and health-resorts full of college graduates. Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, Vassar and Wellesley are all represented constantly at Battle Creek, Dansville, Mount Clemens, Hot Springs, Richfield and Alma ❦ Imagine an LL. D. being given vicarious exercise by a healthy colored man who can neither read nor write; a Ph. D. looked after by a saucy slip of a nurse, in becoming cap and apron, fresh from the farm or paper-box factory; an M. D. vigorously Muldooned by a man who knows nothing of medicine, but something of health! ¶ A great surgeon tells me that he has never yet seen a case of appendicitis where the patient has not been addicted to the Beecham Habit. That is to say, this disease is the result of medicine, just as are many others. ¶ So here is the prescription: Get the Health Habit—by throwing physic to the dogs, because it will not hurt the dogs, since they know better than to swallow it; drink plenty of pure water; eat what you like, but do not overeat; have a regular daily occupation; breathe much and deeply in the open air; have a veranda bedroom, open if possible on two sides, or at least sleep in a room with windows run up wide, even if the water-pitcher freezes; think well of everybody, especially doctors, for good doctors everywhere are practising a Science of Prevention, and will corroborate these suggestions ❦ They are doing the best they can, considering the ignorance, superstition and inertia which they have to combat—often in their own minds, and those of others.

The Elks’ Creed

Here is a story told me the other day by a drummer traveling for the Solvay Process Company. We were on the New York Central, riding from Syracuse to Albany ❦ The incident has a fromage flavor that makes it look like lallapaloosala persiflage. However, it may be true, for no one is in such danger of the Ananias Club as he who has the courage to give the plain, unvarnished facts ❦ I am unable to recall his exact words, and so I use my own language. ¶ So say we, tell we the tale: My friend, the drummer, took the Owl, a midnight train from Chicago to Des Moines ❦ The section just across from his berth was occupied by a Vision in Gray. ¶ The chromatic ensemble was that known at Wanamaker’s as “elephant’s breath.” From the tip of her toe to the proudly defiant Henry of Navarre ostrich-plume, she was an ecstacy in silvery gray. The Chiaroscuro was as lissome, billowy, willowy, pearly, evasive and impressionistic as the fog that hangs low on the October corn, when the rising sun is a great, round, red ball on the rim of the dreamy and effete East ❦ From Land’s End to John O’Groat’s the symphony was satisfying and complete. Her hat was a milliner’s creation; her dress an architect’s dream, devised by Kirk Cutter in an artistic seizure; her hair was done up as provided by the Interstate Commerce Commission. Yet the woman was modest, refined, lady-like. Her high-sign only referred to the duds and haberdashery ❦ She was neither fly nor flip—merely bouffant, that’s all. She was as tall as the Solvay Process man, for he had observed it, being from Syracuse. ¶ The Pullman-car conductor came through and took up the tickets. The Vision in Gray had the whole section—she said so—she needed the upper berth for her clothes, and cautioned the porter that the space was hers. “Yassum! Comin’ up!” said George in reassuring tones that cost a quarter. He had no tissue envelope big enough for the hat, so it was covered with two copies of the Chicago _News_. ¶ The train started. Soon the curtains were drawn and the lights turned low; nothing was heard save the rumble and roar of the onward rush of the train, and the snores of an obese attorney, traveling for pleasure. Morning came. It often does. It came dim and foggy. Lights blinked, six o’clock whistles blew, calling workmen from their beds to toil ❦ The man from Syracuse was awakened by words of tumult and sounds of entreaty. The porter was swearing an alibi in a tearful Scipio Africanus voice: “Ah nevah saw dem close, Missus! Ah hope to die—Fo’ Gawd, I hope to die! I’se a Baptis’ an’ nevah done nothin’ bad in my life!” And from out the berth filled by the Vision came subdued feminine threats, which died away in half-sobs of anguish that shook the soul of the Solvay Process party, strong man though he was. ¶ The Pullman Conductor came. The train conductor was summoned ❦ The flagman who guards the rear end forgot his duties, as he stood in the aisle with his red flag, and attached to it two cartridges and a red light, ready to fire on a second’s notice of danger. The train conductor was trying to make a list of the things lost ❦ The upper berth was absolutely empty. The hat was gone; the dress, a tailor-made fabric, which the unseen said between sobs was worth two hundred dollars, was swallowed by oblivion. All the fluffy ruffles had disappeared. “Haven’t you a kimono?” asked the Pullman Conductor, not so much for information as to reveal his knowledge of technique. ¶ “I did have, but that has gone too,” was the anguish-laden response ❦ Alas! All she had was the suit of pajamas that she wore which clung close in this time of need. Even the gray chamois-shoes were gone. Two women had left the train at four o’clock in the morning at the Junction, but they carried nothing save hand-bags. “They could have put my clothes on over theirs,” murmured the lady from out the dismal depths of Lower Number Nine ❦ The train-hands retired to the smoking-room to consult. It was no joke to them—they were all under suspicion. ¶ Suddenly, the man from Syracuse had an Idea. He had with him an extra pair of trousers, and of course the regular business-suit he wore. Hastily he groped beneath his berth for his suitcase. With trembling hands he pulled forth the pants. He reached over and pushed them into the berth, saying: “Here, Miss, I am an Elk ❦ Don’t be afraid, I’m an Elk, and the first prong of my creed is to do good ❦ I am a respectable married man from Syracuse. I’ll help you out of this fix—put on these.” And then, his generosity increasing as the Good Samaritan instincts in his cosmos began to find expression, he handed over his coat and vest. “Then here is my raincoat, which will come to your feet!” “Oh, thanks, kind sir,” she said; “but I can not take your clothes—for what will you do?” The voice was flute-like, and modulated like an aeolian. “Oh, I don’t need any clothes,” said the liar from Onondaga County; “besides, I have another suit.” ¶ “But my hat! my hat!” moaned the lady. “Take this,” said the disciple of Chancellor Day. “Take this. I have my traveling-cap,” and he pushed the hat into the unseen depths ❦ It was a big, light-colored Roycroft Stetson. “Do your hair up on top of your head, and pull the hat well down—it will be all right—don’t cry!” ¶ “But I have no shoes!” “Wear mine—I have a pair of slippers.” ❦ And he pushed his shoes through the curtain, and looked the other way. Only the onward roar of the train was heard as the conductors came back. “You are sure you had the clothes on when you boarded the train?” asked one conductor in a voice ill-concealing his resentment. “Never mind—I’ll get along—go away—I will make my claim on the road direct. Go away, please!” They were glad enough to get away. ¶ As the gloaming began to gloam, the porter turned up the lights. Now and then the electric bell buzzed. The obese party was calling for his shoes. A man had lost an umbrella. He got it. A lady in an upper berth wanted a stepladder. The porter was working like mad making up berths so as to brush his passengers and receive the offertory before they got to Des Moines. A party wearing a long raincoat and a big, light-colored Roycroft Stetson emerged cautiously from a berth, and hurried toward the ladies’ dressing-room ❦ “Hi, Kuhnel, t’other end of the kyar, if you don’ min’, please,” called the porter ❦ The berths were all made up. The porter had brushed everybody except the party wearing the big Stetson, drawn low, who occupied Number Nine. The porter had now concluded that the unpleasantness of the early morning was the result of a hoodoo—the failure to carry his rabbit’s foot. It was all a bad dream! “Brush!” he said, with a flourish, approaching the party in the long raincoat. The Stetson shook, and two sad, gray eyes looked straight at the colored brother ❦ He fled in dismay. George was out a quarter that he had counted on. The drummer from Syracuse, wearing his ulster buttoned to the chin, helped the soft-hatted party out of the car, through the station into the Hotel Savery bus. “I’ll send your clothes back as soon as I can buy more,” said the lady in her low, musical voice ❦ “Oh, don’t bother!” said Dionysius of Syracuse, blushing brick-dust. ¶ The drummer forgot to give her his address, and to take hers. He felt sort of guilty, being a respectable married man, and from Syracuse, as before stated. He did not go to the Hotel Savery, as usual. ¶ He bought a pair of shoes, a smart Stein-Bloch Company suit, saw his trade, and left for Omaha on the Two-ten.

Remember the Weekday

Did it ever strike you that it is a most absurd and semi-barbaric thing to set one day apart as holy? If you are a writer and a beautiful thought comes to you, you never hesitate to write it down because it is Sunday ❦ If you are a painter, and the picture appears before you, vivid and clear, you make haste to materialize it before the vision fades. If you are a musician, you sing a song or play it on the piano, that it may be etched upon your memory—and for the joy of it. ¶ But if you are a cabinetmaker you may make a design, but you will have to halt before you make the table, if the day happens to be the “Lord’s Day”; and if you are a blacksmith, you will not dare to lift a hammer for fear of conscience or the police. All of which is an admission that we regard manual labor as a sort of necessary evil, which must be done only at certain times and places. ¶ The orthodox reason for abstinence from all manual labor on Sunday is that “God made the heavens and the earth in six days and rested the seventh day”; therefore, man, created in the image of his Maker, should hold this day sacred. How it can be possible for a supreme, omnipotent and all-powerful being, without “body, parts or passions,” to become wearied through physical exertion, is a question that is yet unanswered. ¶ The idea of serving God on Sunday and then forgetting Him all the rest of the week is a fallacy. Sunday with its immunity from work was devised for slaves who got out of all the work they could during the week. No man can violate the Sabbath; he can, however, violate his own nature, and this he is more apt to do through enforced idleness than through either work or play. Only running water is pure; stagnant nature of any sort is dangerous, and a breeding-place for disease. ¶ Change of occupation is necessary to mental and physical health. As it is, most people get too much of one kind of work. All the week they are chained to one task, a repugnant task because the dose is too big. They have to do this particular job or starve. This is slavery, quite as much as when man was bought and sold as a chattel. ¶ Will there not come a time when all men and women will work because it is a blessed gift—a privilege? Then, if all worked, wasteful consuming as a business would cease ❦ As it is, there are many people who do not work at all, and these pride themselves upon it and uphold the Sunday laws. If the idler would work, no one would be over-worked. If this time ever comes, shall we not cease to regard it as wicked to work at certain times, just as much as we should count it absurd to pass a law making it illegal for us to be happy on Wednesday? Isn’t good work an effort to produce a useful, necessary or beautiful thing? If so, good work is a prayer, prompted by a loving heart—a prayer to benefit and bless. If prayer is not a desire, backed up by a right human effort to bring about its efficacy, then what is it? ¶ Work is a service performed for ourselves and others. If I love you I will surely work for you—in this way I reveal my love. And to manifest my love in this manner is a joy and a gratification to me. Thus, work is for the worker alone, and labor is its own reward. These things being so, if it is wrong to work on Sunday, then it is wrong to love on Sunday; every smile is a sin, every caress is a curse, and all tenderness a crime. ¶ Must there not come a time when we shall cease to differentiate and quit calling some work secular and some sacred? Isn’t it as necessary for me to hoe corn and feed my loved ones (and also the priest) as for the priest to preach and pray? ¶ Would any priest ever preach and pray if somebody did not hoe? If life is from God, then all useful effort is divine; and to work is the highest form of religion ❦ If God made us, surely He is pleased to see that His work is a success. If we are miserable, willing to liberate life with a bare bodkin, we certainly do not compliment our Maker in thus proclaiming His work a failure. But if our lives are full of gladness and we are grateful for feeling that we are one with Deity—helping God do His work—then, and only then, do we truly serve Him. ¶ Isn’t it strange that men should have made laws declaring that it is wicked for us to work?

Reciprocity

The first requisite in life is that we shall be able to earn a living. For our own good we must be able to produce as much or more than we consume, and to make two grins grow where there was only a grouch before. And we can help ourselves only by helping others. A transaction where only one side makes money is immoral. ¶ Reciprocity, Co-operation, Mutuality, are the three big words. To be of genuine advantage, all human effort must be reciprocal. The worker who works merely with his own benefit in mind doesn’t get much benefit ❦ Personal good comes incidentally, and to go after a gain direct is to have it elude you. The very effort you put forth to secure the thing sets in motion an opposition that makes it slip away beyond your reach. The man who seizes culture by the cosmic scruff will never secure her tender confidences. ¶ If you want to study the birds you do not go in wild search for them; you simply seat yourself on a log in the woods and, lo! soon the branches are vibrant with song. To clutch for love and demand it makes you both unlovely and unlovable. If you would have friends, be one. ¶ This great spiritual law which provides that we lose the thing for which we selfishly strive has seemingly been overlooked in our universities and institutions that foster the so-called Higher Culture. Fond parents send their sons to college for but one reason—not to earn a living, not to render the world a service, not to perform some necessary task—they send them to college in order to absorb and appropriate a certain imaginary good. The idea of reciprocity in a college is a barren ideality. The “work” is non-productive, futile, fictive, fallacious and imaginary. In all Nature there is no analogy to this thing of making an animal as big as his father exempt from securing his own living ❦ The birds in the nest are fed, and the young are suckled; but a weaning-time that does not take place until long after adolescence is fraught with danger. The plan is medieval and dates to a time when conspicuous waste and conspicuous leisure were the badge of respectability. The college is really a mendicant institution: its teachers and students belong to the parasitic class. ¶ The fact that a thing has to be endowed proves there is something wrong with it. It is not self-sufficient and in itself supplies no excuse for being. It requires an explanation. No explanation ever explains the necessity of making one. ¶ Our system of teaching will never approximate the perfect until we devise an Industrial College where the students will produce as well as consume. The school then will not be an imitation of life—it will be life ❦ The fact that many college graduates are highly successful men does not answer the argument—that very many college graduates are wholly incompetent is the thing that forms the damning count. The man who gets his education out of his work, at his work, is the type that has always ruled and yet rules the world. We are safe only as we move with Nature; and any system of teaching that seeks to improve on Nature is founded on fallacy. ¶ There is only one valid reason for sending a boy to college, and that is, so he can discover for himself that there is nothing in it. A college degree, as matters now stand, is like a certificate of character—useful only to those who need it. However, there must surely come a time when degrees will be given only to those who can earn a living—and this degree will be signed by the young man’s employer. ¶ All this for the simple reason that no man is a safe person whose time is not employed in some useful daily occupation where others as well as himself are the gainers. Time and energy not used, or misused, form a dangerous dynamite; while time and human effort fused with reciprocity produce radium. Can you earn a living? Also, do you? ❦

Vaccination

A short time ago I spent a week in Saint Louis ❦ During that week there were three deaths of children from tetanus (lock-jaw), all the direct result of vaccination. The Board of Health had been very busy, and all children that could not show a scar were vaccinated, this without consent of the parents or of the child. For each vaccination the city paid the kind doctors delegated to do the work, the sum of fifty cents. That is to say, these physicians operated on healthy children, introducing a poison into their systems, thus giving them a disease, in order to prevent them from having one—all for half a dollar per child ❦ The three children that died netted the doctors a dollar and a half. ¶ As before stated, these children died, and scores of others were made seriously ill. How many were poisoned for life no one knows. Children know all that the parents know, and the report that vaccination had killed several struck panic to the hearts of those not yet vaccinated ❦ Many children refused to go to school for fear of the doctors. And such was the alarm through non-attendance that the School Board called a meeting and passed a resolution asking the Board of Health to desist from these fifty-cent operations until the question of the quality of the virus used could be passed upon. ¶ Now, there is no such thing as a “pure virus.” Vaccine virus is a poison in itself. And vaccination, if it “takes,” always reduces the resiliency or resisting-power of the patient, laying him open to any germ that may be flying around that way. ¶ The President of the Board of Health took refuge behind the law, which required him to vaccinate the school-children ❦ But personally he said he thought the whole system was founded on a superstition, and on a very barren assumption. Said the physician: “Many people who are vaccinated never have smallpox. A few who are vaccinated have smallpox. To assume that those who are vaccinated would have smallpox if they were not vaccinated is childish reasoning, fit only for those who are willing to accept a tainted plea, because they are already convinced ❦ I must admit that the logic of vaccination is no reason at all, and could only appeal to prejudiced, ignorant and unthinking people ❦ I wish we were rid of the whole thing, but I am not strong enough to stem the tide. Doctors get paid for vaccination, the books and colleges uphold it, and this thing will go on until the people revolt, which I hope they will do soon.” ¶ Here we get the expression of an honest man—an Allopath physician—caught in the toils of Custom ❦ Physicians are instructed from books, in colleges, and by professors who were taught from books in colleges. This is not knowledge: it is the memorizing of things evolved many years ago by men who knew much less than we do ❦ Very few physicians know how to live. Everywhere you find doctors who are soaked in tobacco, booze and dope, breathing foul air, thinking vile thoughts, resorting to stimulants as a pick-me-up ❦ These are the men that uphold vaccination—these are the men who assaulted the school-children of Saint Louis, and forced a poison into their healthy bodies for fifty cents a body. Oh, the shame of it! ¶ Immunity from disease comes from fresh air, pure water, clean surroundings, an active, useful life, and kind thoughts ❦ The fear wrought in a school by one of these bewhiskered rogues, with his outfit of scalpels, scarifiers and poison, is a cause of disease in itself. The plan of vaccinating the mind with the virus of fear is in itself a crime, and a most common cause of disease. ¶ Doctor J. H. Tilden says that the fear of disease spread abroad by doctors is the cause of more deaths than the White Plague ❦ People who live rightly are well. It is right living and sanitary surroundings that have banished smallpox. Just good sanitation has banished the “plague,” that mysterious disease which swept Europe again and again, and which killed one-third of the inhabitants of London in Sixteen Hundred Sixty-five ❦ I believe, with Tilden, that the so-called Science of Medicine has been a positive curse to mankind, just as Christianity has, with its bogus “Plan of Salvation.” ¶ Salvation lies in work, play, study, right living and right thinking, and not in belief in the death of a good man in Asia two thousand years ago. As a cure for our physical pains we have looked to a poison doctor, instead of studying the case ourselves and ascertaining why we suffered ❦ We must learn to rely on ourselves, and not put either our souls or our bodies in jeopardy by turning them over to a “cure of souls” with collar buttoned behind, or to a hirsute gent who will give you a disease for fifty cents, in the interest of happiness, health and long life.

Equal Suffrage