Chapter V: Part 5

Go back a few years previous to the abolition of human slavery and notice how the advanced thinkers were treated. History tells how Thompson narrowly escaped the mob at Concord, for teaching that human slavery is a crime against God and man. Whittier was pelted with mud and stones, and Garrison was often mobbed in Boston.

At one time a subscription to a fund was asked of the Norfolk people to pay for the heads of Thompson, Garrison and Zappan, and many Southern cities threatened to boycott all cities in the North that allowed men to teach the abolition of slavery. And the plodding mob who were little better than slaves themselves were ready to cast the first stone or brickbat at the advanced thinkers who could see human slavery from the human side.

I know a woman in Colorado who had once been a Mormon. She had been born and reared in Mormondom. But she began to doubt the whole institution when asked to become the fourth wife of a wealthy Mormon elder. Her ideas had advanced beyond the pagan idea of such gross immorality. It was lucky for this woman that just outside of Utah there were thousands of people advanced beyond pagan morals. She fled from home one night in a covered wagon, and outside the city she met her lover, the young Gentile who had taught her the sham and pretentions of her father’s religion.

In Colorado they found safety and happiness. She was an old woman when I met her, but she said she still trembled when she looked back to her early experience. Had all the world believed in Mormonism she could not have escaped the lust of the Mormon elder and a life of misery.

HISSED AND HOOTED

I saw him when he first came out of the Sisters’ hospital. He had been with the Sells Brothers’ Circus, but was taken with mountain fever while the show was in Grand Junction, Colorado. His wife was a tight rope dancer and trapeze performer, and went on with the show. She may have regretted to go, and she may not have cared at all. She had never written to him after she went away. He told me confidentially that he suspected her of being infatuated with one of the acrobats, but hoped to win her back when he got on his feet again.

Somehow or other, every man with a pain at his heart came to me in that faraway town. Was it because I was homesick and kept longing, longing for the valleys of old Pennsylvania, and the unfortunate could read something in my face that encouraged them to unburden their souls to me? Even my wife was drawn into some of the unfortunate love affairs of the young men and women, and we listened to the tales of woe, like martyrs, and gave advice which we knew would never be followed; for who can advise a young man or woman in love?

One poor fellow had been jilted by a young woman who visited at our home very often, and he came around almost every evening to try and have a last interview with her. But she never came back after treating the young man so badly, for she knew our feelings in the matter. The man she jilted was a handsome boy—a young French Canadian, and the man she intended to marry was a boasting Yankee from Michigan.

Finally we persuaded George to go over into Wyoming, as he intended to do if the girl married him; where he fell in love with a Western girl and was happily married in less than a year. Emma married young Lane, and deserted him in less than two years, and we never saw her again.

And the poor showman came likewise to me and told his tale of sorrow and financial troubles. A relative of mine was organizing a little circus in the town, and proposed going on the road after the summer fair. I secured a situation for my new friend, but when the opening day came the poor fellow had not gained sufficient strength to perform on the bars, or ride bareback, as he had been doing before he was taken down with fever.

But he could sing a song, so on the first night he came out before an unappreciative and unsympathetic audience and tried to sing. He did not know that weakness of the body interfered with the voice. The audience laughed at first, for they thought he was imitating an old man; but when they discovered that the poor emaciated fellow was giving them the best he had, they hooted him and hissed him, and called to him to take the frog out of his throat, and to get more wind, and to go and hire out as a nurse and sing to the baby.

Oh, how I pitied the poor fellow. The refrain of his song was: “But I will say nothing, not I!” I went around to the dressing room to console the poor man, for there was a look on his face when he left the ring which I did not like to see. He had been despondent and dejected before, but when he left the ring there was a look of desperation on his thin face. I found him sitting on a trunk taking a fond look at the photo of his absent wife. I tried to start a conversation with him, but he only looked at me and asked: “Did you catch the refrain of the song I tried to sing? Well ‘I will say nothing—not I’ tonight. You have been kind to me, and some day it will come back to you, like bread cast upon the waters, but nothing will ever come back to me. My heart is broken—I am no good. I am deserted and alone. The woman I loved has left me, and my luck will go with her—good bye—I’m going out.”

He shook hands and I said, “Wayne, I will see you in the morning.”

“Yes, in the morning,” he replied, as he lifted the flap of the tent and passed out into the night, while I returned to the big tent and tried to become interested in the performance.

Next morning the body of my despondent friend was found in the Grand river, just below the bridge, lodged on the middle island.

When the ringmaster announced to the audience that the man who had been hissed from the ring on the previous night had drowned himself, there were a few “Oh’s!” from the women, but the men who hissed him were not there. One man said if they had known the real facts, they would not have hissed; but when people do not know the real facts, is when they should be merciful—always.

THE WAR WITH SELF

If all wars were once abolished, and universal peace established, don’t think for a moment that the age of conquests and triumphs would be absolutely past forever. Those who argue that war and conquest bring out man’s best energy and build up strong manhood, can turn their guns against themselves and find all they care to fight. A man at war with his appetite and passions and human frailties and weakness finds his match. The man will not always be on top. At some careless hour a man will forget his vigilance and watchfulness and will fall before the onslaught of his passion or appetite, and it will require many days for him to regain his former position and place human weakness under his feet.

I have seen strong men bowed down to the lowest notch of humiliation, with all their courage and hope gone, yet no one did them a wrong. It was only their own appetite and passion that dealt them the crushing blow. No use to sit down and grieve over the fall. Grieving only adds to the first defeat. A man’s own appetite and passion and lust and hate and fear and weakness are his worst enemies, if once they get the upper hand. And in our youth we are apt to receive our first defeat; before we know the subtle strength of our weakness, we often become its victim.

Ninety per cent. of all the suicides come through man’s battle with self, and his defeat. After a man has become a slave to appetite and passion there isn’t much in life worth living for, and he falls a victim to the worst of all weaknesses—the fear to go on with life to its natural end. And how often the criminal, against whom every hand is raised in condemnation, is only the victim of his own weakness.

Theodore Radden became the victim of self before he was sixteen years old. His appetite began to rule him before he was twenty, and passion began to ruin him at the same time. He found congenial company in the lowest dives of his native town, where the fallen men and women collected, like buzzards, to feast on each other’s fallen condition. Several times he fought successfully with himself and broke away from his evil associates, only to fall back again when temptation laid her snares to catch his uncertain feet.

Once he held out for two years, and during that time he met and loved and married a beautiful girl. In her eyes he found a new world, and for over a year he lived in the only earthly paradise known to man—the world of love.

How proud his wife was when she contemplated his physical strength and manly beauty, never dreaming that the moral man within had been many times conquered by temptation, and was absolutely unqualified to conquer himself. She was but a weak and frail body, but morally she was a giant of strength, while he was but a pigmy in the grasp of former defeats. She was a country girl, and in marrying her he, too, lived out in God’s beautiful country and far away from the influence of old associates.

But one unfortunate day he was obliged to go to the city. By chance he met an old associate and was invited to take a social glass. And while in the saloon he met a bad woman who had much influence over him in past days. She knew that he had married and left the gang, and she set about to bring him back. It was her weakness to lead men astray. She was not all bad, nor had she always been bad. Once she had been a good girl, full of hope and happy dreams; but her own weakness gained a victory over her, and she fell. Even then she was not all bad. Many the poor woman and half starved hobo had eaten at her expense, and on many occasions she stooped and kissed a weeping child on the street and tried to soothe its sorrowing heart.

Did she love Theodore Radden? No one will ever know, but many thought she did, and that her love knew no moral code of honor, nor cared anything for public opinion. She already knew what opinion the world entertained for her—what need she care for public opinion?

And Theodore Radden fell a victim to his own weakness. He blamed the woman for it all, just the same as Adam did; but nobody took Adam seriously, nor will they take Theodore Radden’s word for it. A week later the woman crawled to the street from a tenement house, bleeding from several ugly wounds in her breast. Before she died she told them that Theodore Radden had shot her in a drunken brawl, accusing her of parting him from his wife; to which accusation she confessed her guilt, and said she deserved to die at his hands.

Inside the house the police found Theodore Radden—dead. He had shot himself through the head, after shooting the woman who tempted him from the paradise where now only a brokenhearted woman was leaving to go out into the shadows of sorrow and live her lonely life to the end. She had never fallen, and she knew not how to forgive the woman who had led her husband to his death.

CRIPPLE JOE AND THE SHOWMAN

Returning home from Reading on a Sunday not long ago, I was forced to lie over at Pottsville for three long hours. I was angry with myself for leaving Reading on Sunday, for the trains are so infernally chaotic and uncertain on this day of mental distress. I must reach Williamsport in time to catch the evening train on the Pennsy at 7.10, or be obliged to lie over until Monday morning. Everybody in the station was feeling about as blue as I was, for we were all travelers, and opposed to three hours of monotonous delay. I walked the station outside and inside for about an hour, and once as I passed the door leading into the toilet room I heard a plaintive voice at my feet. I looked down and beheld a small body—a wee boy sitting flat on the floor. He was looking up to me and speaking, but I could not distinguish the words. I stooped down and asked the boy to repeat his words: “Won’t you help a poor cripple?”

“Sure!” I exclaimed, as I caught sight of the poor twisted legs doubled up under his body, and I reached into my pocket and handed him a couple of coins. He reached out his hand and took my donation, and while he was looking at them I sat down in a nearby seat. He then looked up into my face with gratitude in his eyes and exclaimed: “Oh, thank you!” Then he caught the arms of the seat and pulled himself into the adjoining seat with his stout arms, looked into my face again and repeated: “Oh thank you.”

I was interested in the boy, so I asked: “How did you become so helplessly crippled?” “Born that way,” he replied carelessly, and then whistled to a boy across the station room. The boy shouted back: “Hello Joe, what luck today?” “Good!” the cripple replied, jingling several coins in his pocket. Just then a red faced man came in through the south door and Joe caught sight of him and called: “Hello, Charley!” Charley didn’t turn his face our way, so the boy gave a shrill little whistle, and the man turned toward us. “Hello, Charley! Come over here.”

The red faced man crossed the room hurriedly and Joe held out his hand, pulled it back and removed his soiled glove, then extended the hand again, saying: “It’s awfully muddy, and I get my gloves soiled crawling around on the floor.”

The red faced man took Joe’s hand in his and greeted the cripple warmly, but was called away before he could say more. While the red faced man was talking to the man who called him away from us, I turned to Joe and inquired: “Is he your brother?” The boy laughed and replied: “Oh, no; he’s a showman—gave a show here last night—a good one, too—I met him up at the opera—”

He stopped talking and whistled in a high key, like steam escaping under high pressure. The red faced man came back to us again and the boy said, in accusing tones: “Say, Charley, you went back on me—you weren’t as good as your word. You promised to pass me into the show, and you didn’t show up, so I had to cough up fifteen cents of my money.”

“Well, that’s too bad!” the man said. “I’ll just pay you back right here.”

He began to search through his pockets carefully, and finally exclaimed: “I haven’t got a cent of change in my pockets now, but you wait here until I buy my ticket, and I’ll have some change then. I’m going away on the 1.50 train.”

“You’re foolin’, ain’t you, Charley? You’re goin’ away without livin’ up to your promise, ain’t you, Charley?”

“Bet your life I ain’t Joe! I’m going to get change when the ticket window opens and then——”

He went off to talk to his friend again at the opposite end of the room, but every five minutes lame Joe would just whistle to him and say, “You won’t forget, Charley!”

I became interested. Would the showman prove true to his promise? He surely would. No man who could deliberately deceive a poor little cripple like Joe could possibly possess enough sentiment in his soul to please an audience. Once when Joe wasn’t looking, Charley winked at me and smiled. What did he mean? Was he amused at Joe’s doubts, or was he tasting the joke he was going to play on the poor boy later on? So certain was I of this that I began to look at the man more closely. His face was a puzzle. Not a bad face, but no doubt a lover of a practical joke. Maybe he thought it a great joke that any one should expect to have his entrance money refunded after the show was over.

I began to hate the man for what he intended to do, and pitied the boy more and more, as so many people passed by unheeding his petition, “Won’t you help a poor cripple?” They couldn’t help but hear, but so many people have grown calloused to the appeals of the unfortunate that they can pass through a shower of appeals without even putting up an umbrella.

One man even declared to me, on the side, that Joe’s begging should be prohibited. He said it encouraged begging in other boys who were not cripples. He said the town of Pottsville should support the boy in comfort, and not drive him to begging for a living. In his own city he paid an annual poor tax for the support of the indigent people, and stopped at this. He was opposed to begging.

I suggested that maybe the sound of a beggar’s voice kept our hearts mellow and our charity warm toward the world and God’s miserable poor. He gave me a look of contempt and passed on. I do not know his profession. He might have been a lawyer or a minister or a doctor. Anyhow, he was no worse than the showman who was going to fool poor Joe.

Then the ticket window went up and there was a rush of people. I heard Joe’s voice above the noise of tramping feet: “Don’t forget, Charley!”

I felt like crying. Poor crippled Joe! The crowd was rushing for the train. I saw Charley stop and drop several coins into Joe’s outstretched hand, and heard his “Oh, thank you, Charley! I’ll go to your show every time you come back to Pottsville.”

RACE SUICIDE

During the last ten years race suicide has been one of the leading problems of life, and on several occasions I have written my views on this subject. I have not changed my views at all after hearing the many arguments of the old conservative “stand patters” who try to imitate Solomon and the other prolific polygamists of long ago. There is no such a thing as race suicide. When big families are necessary, the big family will be fashionable. There is an ebb and flow to everything. Just now the pendulum of progress is swinging out toward the small, healthy, educated family of two to six children.

In pioneer days in this country, when it was desirable to have many children born to the new soil, and thus populate the wild country with people who knew of no other land, and would more likely live contented in the American wilderness than in the over-populated, lord-laden countries beyond the seas, the big family was a safeguard against the encroachments of the Indian and was desirable.

So, too, when Mormonism was a weak doctrine, and grown men would not accept it as a religion, the pioneers of that faith removed to Utah and built a city on the parched desert by the inland sea known as Salt Lake. From here they sent out missionaries to foreign countries, making converts among the women and families that were prolific in bearing children. It shows the wisdom of Brigham Young.

He preached to the women that every child born to them added a new star to their crown of glory. Those who believed the doctrine were anxious to add to the population of Utah and add a few stars to their future crown. This is one reason why the unmarried women accepted polygamy. The one great desire, fired by religious enthusiasm, was to bear children who would fight for the new doctrine.

It was a matter of wisdom on one side and sheer deception on the other. It was cheaper to rear Mormon recruits than to secure them full grown. And the child Mormon would never renounce the faith imbibed at the mother’s knee.

And thus you will find the situation in all cases where the race was made to believe that God loved the prolific woman better than the barren maid. Women will submit to anything, if made to believe it is their religious duty to do so. But men now realize that there is a psychological problem connected with the rearing of children, and the question is asked: Is it the wisest thing to bring into the world many children who cannot obtain a practical education, and therefore over-populate the nation with ignorant and dependent creatures? Do we not need quality rather than quantity?

Is Germany any better off with its prolific families than France with reduced numbers? Or take your own village or town—who is the best prepared for the battles of life, the child belonging to a family of fifteen members, or the child who is one of three or four offsprings?

In my own neighborhood the small families are the best educated or at least have the best opportunities to educate the children. I know of two families within a day’s travel of my home that have fifteen children each. Thirty children in two poor families! And not a single child obtained a common school education. They were obliged to go out to service before they were fifteen years old, and many at even a younger age. They are good citizens for the single reason that they were raised in the country, where few temptations are found. Had they been born in the city slums, what could have saved them from a life of crime? As it is, not a single child will stand any chance to make the world better for their having lived in it; for they belong to parents who came from prolific families, and where education was only a luxury to be handed over to the wealthy.

If Nature intended men and women to be as helpless in the reproduction of their kind as the fruit tree or the wild animals, the knowledge of reducing the crop would have been withheld from them. And until men gained this knowledge Nature was obliged to step in and reduce the population by famine, disease or earthquake and flood. It was an object lesson against over-population, and to show men that there was no hurry about God’s work. If God is love, he certainly does not desire the job of removing an over-population through the means of some awful calamity or a visitation of disease.

Don’t you suppose the God of nature loves to see men live in comfort and plenty? The Meat Trust and the Kaiser want large families, but the Meat Trust and the Kaiser have motives far removed from bringing happiness into the world. The one wants children to consume more benzoated meat, and the other wants to turn children into soldiers and human butchers.

The man who cries for overgrown families of children, to be brought up in rags and ignorance and slavery, has not the happiness of the race in his heart. He wants them for a selfish, barbarous purpose—for profit and for plunder.

FOR A STAGE CAREER

She was a beautiful woman and her costumes were magnificent, but there seemed to be a lack of soul in her acting. There was applause from the house every time she came on the stage, and seldom she escaped after singing a song in her entrancing voice without returning and singing to an encore. There was the sweetness of despair in her voice, but made a trifle harsh by a spirit of defiance. A trained ear could distinguish the lack of harmony in her soul. The man at my side turned to me as she left the stage and said:

“That poor girl has a history, and a sad one. It is one thing to have a sorrow or an adventure that is absolutely located in the past, but still another thing to have a sorrow and a regret that follows one through life like a shadow.”

I looked at him in wonderment and he continued: “I have met her and she told me of her mistaken life. She was so full of her sorrow and regret that she simply had to talk of it to some one, and I am always a willing listener when a troubled soul opens the secret door and invites me to walk in and sit in the shadow.

“She told me that from the time she first took a leading part in a school entertainment she had a desire for a stage career. She grew up with this desire burning in her soul, at which fire she toasted her mental shins every night before going to sleep. She never missed an opportunity to take part in any entertainment given by the local talent of her village. At seventeen she fell deeply in love with a young carpenter and they became engaged to marry. Of course, the wedding was not to take place for several years, since her young man was poor and must first set aside a few hundred dollars to start with.

“After this engagement she went to attend school in the city, where she met the son of a very wealthy business man. He fell desperately in love with her, though many years older. One evening while out riding he proposed to her, and she told him of her ambition. ‘Promise me a stage career, and I will marry you,’ she told him. He readily agreed to this, and the engagement and contract was entered into at that hour. He sent her to a training school immediately, from where she wrote to her village lover that their engagement must be declared a thing of the past, since she had resolved to go on the stage, and give up the old life and the old friends.

“The year following her debut on the professional stage she married the man who made a stage career possible, but the face of the young carpenter looked out of the shadows and reproached her as the train that took her on her wedding tour went flying through the night. Only then it dawned on her that she did not love the man who was to give her a stage career—did not love him enough to become his bride, because her heart was still back in the village with the broken-hearted carpenter to whom she gave her most sincere and innocent love.

“And ever since this ambitious marriage there is the ghost of a wrong follows her and looks with reproachful eyes from the dark corners of every opera house. Her husband is kind to her, and follows her wherever she goes, and is proud of her success; but always this truth is before her—she sold her body to secure a stage career, but her heart was never a partner in the deal. How much happier she could be in the humble home of the poor carpenter, had not ambition so blinded her unsophisticated soul.

“What is life and success and the applause of the world when love’s first and only idol lies broken at one’s feet? Happiness must be shared with those we love best, and when we are obliged to share everything the heart holds sacred with some one we can never love, the pleasures of life crumble in our hands like an image that has been reduced to ashes. And the ashes are always being blown into our eyes, and into our mouth, and the taste is bitter, bitter; and the unloved lips that touch ours are tainted with the bitterness of all life’s regrets and mistakes, though we are tied to them with pledges and promises that must never, never be broken.”

THE DEAD OF THE LAND AND SEA

Below I publish some verses I wrote thirty years ago, and while I worked as a common laborer in the lumber woods of Tioga County, Pennsylvania. In a religious discussion with a pious comrade he quoted Scripture to prove that the earth and sea shall ultimately give up their dead, and each individual shall be punished, or blest, according to the deeds committed while they lived. The more I thought over this horrible picture, the more I doubted that a God of Love would be so revengeful toward any of his poor creatures, who are born into ignorance and superstition, and must go mentally creeping through a life of hunger and pain.

OH, LET THEM SLEEP!

They tell me that the earth and sea
Will some day give up all their dead.
Oh, what a strange day that will be
To happen thus, as has been said:
Clothed in power a God will stand—
With outstretched hands this God will be—
With one foot on the sea-washed sand,
The other buried in the sea,
And loudly call: “Come forth, ye dead,
No matter where in death you fell;
Come with a sentence on your head—
You’ll make good fodder for my hell!

Come with the heartaches that died with you,
With ashes of hope within your hand:
You died as all earth’s creatures do—
Foreclosure, at Death’s demand.
Come before me for sentence now—
Come ev’ry one—I know you all:
A few shall wear the glory brow,
But many, many must go to hell!”
“Oh, stay your hand, revengeful God,
And let us all sleep where we lie!
You know that man is but a clod—
Was born to suffer and to die:
And life is but chaotic dreams;
With human love our one reward;
We drifted down life’s midnight streams
To stem the tide we found too hard.

“Oh, let us sleep, revengeful God,
Oblivion seems to fit us well;
Here, mingled with the friendly clod,
Is better far than pagan hell.”
But this strange God will pay no heed
To all the bitter cries that well—
Cold as a rock, with savage greed,
He’ll cast them into scorching hell!

* * * * *

A savage giant captured men,
And took their wives and children, too,
And put them in a dismal pen,
And asked himself what he must do.
He ne’er had eaten human flesh—
His soul revolted at the thought;
The clothes they wore were only trash,
By their own hands they had been wrought.

“I’ll torture them,” the giant said,
“To see them writhe and twist with pain;
I’ll watch them in their torture bed,
And hear them weep and wail in vain.”
And, while he planned, the pris’ners slept.
A mother drew close to her breast
The babe that had so loudly wept,
And soon they both had sunk to rest.

And now the giant loudly called;
“Come forth, ye creatures of the damn’d
And in this pit, so strangely walled,
I’ll torture you, as I have planned,
Forever you shall weep and cry—
’Twill be sweet music in my ears—
For you shall never, never die
While eternity winds up the years!”

* * * * *

I made this giant—who made this God,
To do the work my giant schemed?
For spirit ne’er this cold world trod
With such a heart as brute man dreamed.
The God who loves the blooming flower,
Who tuned the voice of child and bird,
Would never use his God-like power
To conjure tortures so absurd.

No! No! and when the earth and sea
Give up the dead they’re holding fast,
A God of love and life there’ll be
Forgiving man his painful past;
For, would a God who can forgive,
Call back the dead from where they sleep,
And take delight to have them live,
Where they eternally must weep?
If this be true, then keep your dead,
Oh, tear-washed earth and troubled sea!
And let them sleep within their bed
To rest throughout eternity.

WHERE DREAMS COME TRUE

Are dreams but idle things, or is there a land where all our happy dreams come true? Dreams are queer freaks of the intellect. We dream of the dead whom we have not seen for so long, that we can scarcely recall the picture of their face in our wakeful hours, but in our dreams we walk with them and talk with them and see them just as they were while living. The picture printed on our brain cells never fades away, and when the brain is held under the proper light, the old picture comes to view. Do these pictures fade away absolutely at death, or is there a land where all these brain pictures are stored away, to be given to us when we are called back?

I do not know; but it is a pleasant dream to half-believe that this is true; for without these memory pictures being restored to us, how shall we know our loved ones in the beyond when we meet them again? If the grave swallows all our happy visions and dreams, the new life will find us as babes, beginning to learn the very things we forgot at death. Then all our present individuality would be lost, and the immortal part of us would be a stranger to the mortal creature that died. God might as well call new beings into existence, as an unknown and unknowable part of the original creature. Without a memory we would not be able to recognize our own soul, should we meet him in the spirit world.

Hence a recollection of our dreams and our visions must go with us into the spirit world, or we must go as strangers without knowledge or a consciousness of the past. No use to be of immortal material, if the changes squeeze out memory pictures, for they are the tender chords that bind the two conditions together. Heaven must be a land where our dreams come true, or it would have no connection with this earth and this life.

I once wrote a few verses on this subject, that have never yet been published. They fit in here very nicely:

Is there a land where our dreams come true,
The dreams that we dream when asleep;
A land of love that is always new,
Where the joyous never weep?
And the dreams that we dream when wide awake,
When the silence is on our soul,
When we look far out where the shadows break,
And the Dead sea billows roll.

Oh, is there a land where we shall awake,
From a dream that is full of sighs,
In a land where the boughs of the green trees shake
In the breezes that sweep the skies;
And behold the faces we loved so dear—
Who bade us the long adieu—
And see them smile without sigh or tear,
Oh, will ever our dreams come true?

I dreamed last night my mother came
And sang with the old-time charms,
And called me “darling” just the same
As when I slumbered in her arms.
The vision changed; I was a man,
A baby’s hand was on my face,
Its warm breath on my cheek, and then
I felt the baby’s warm embrace.

It was my baby, long since dead,
Her dreamy eyes were good to see;
Its baby tongue moved, and it said:
“Oh, isn’t it sweet to dream of me!
Oh, papa dear, your cheeks are wet,
Just like the flowers are wet with dew,
But soon you’ll wake, and you’ll forget
The land where all our dreams come true!”

Oh, is there a land where our dreams come true—
The dreams we are dreaming all day long?
And do they almost come into our view
When our souls are carried away with song?
Will all our visions and day-dreams return
The same as the seasons and song birds do?
Will we meet the dear ones for whom we yearn
In the land of immortals, where dreams come true?

IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN

“No,” said my companion, as the train dashed on, “it is not true that men love but once. I believe that a man loves more sensibly and truly after he has had two or three infatuations and suffered as many disappointments. I believe, too, it is the same with the sensible woman, only she sometimes does not have the opportunity to love so often as a man.

“The other day I met an old sweetheart on the train in company with her mother. Once I would have married the woman, for I thought she was the only one in the world, but her mother objected to the match. My blood wasn’t blue enough. She was a good, warm-hearted girl, but she lacked courage. Had she been a girl of spirit, she would have married me in spite of all opposition. But she gave me up and broke her own heart over the affair.

“I’ll admit that I was pretty well broken up at first, but my pride came to my rescue. I made up my mind that I needed a wife of more individuality and character, and I soon found her. In a little while I was deeper in love than ever before. She was brighter, deeper and more resolute. Her parents objected at first to her choice, but she told them it was not they who were making the match. She said if a girl had no choice in selecting a husband, the natural selection of sex was ignored, and love was seen only from a financial view.

“Honest and true, I believe now it would have been very unfortunate had the first sweetheart married me, though I believe I could have loved her always, had her mother not broken up the match. Truly, I believe her life has been blighted by that disappointment. She never married. Perhaps she never had another chance. I do not know. They are poor now, and her mother has lost much of her pride. She has confessed lately that she made a mistake when she broke up Mary’s love affair.

“The day I met them on the train they were going to ignore my presence, but I would not have it that way. I respect them too much to drop absolutely out of their world. I simply took a seat behind them and called their attention to my presence. It was the first time in twenty years we had met. The mother was greatly confused at first, and Mary blushed like a school girl; but after the ice was broken, we had a very pleasant two hours’ ride. Mary asked all about my wife and children, and expressed a desire to see them.

“I pitied the woman I once loved, for she looked very unhappy and discontented with life. Her mother is growing quite feeble and she is devoting her life to her parents. I pitied her. This was all there was left of my love. As I looked at the disappointed woman, I thought of how I once held her in my arms and we both swore eternal loyalty to each other. How we had lied to each other. She cast me off as a duty and I forgot her in retaliation. How foolish it would be then to cork ourselves up and never love another.

“Once she was the idol of all my youthful dreams, the queen of my children. Now I love another woman more fondly than I ever loved before, because she is worthy of it. She gave up home and friends for me, and proved her great love for me, and, after all, this is the true test of our love. A man can’t long love a woman who has not the courage to love him in spite of the oppositions of friends. She sinks out of sight and some one else is sure to take her place, if he only waits. There is no occasion to commit suicide if jilted by one woman. She never was worthy of the fellow’s love, or she would not have jilted him. She never loved him. The woman who loves a man truly will give up all the world for him.

“Still, I pity Mary. I would feel just a little more happy if she were married to a good man. A man can’t help but pity any woman he once loved, if he thinks her unhappy. His mind will insist on going back occasionally to the days when that woman was the only woman in the world to him; when it might have ended just as he had dreamed. It might have been otherwise than it has turned out to be. His present love is a flower of a later growth, even though of sweeter odor.”

A MISGUIDED MOTHER

It was no fault of his own that caused a separation between Walter Clark and his young wife. She took a dislike to him after a short matrimonial voyage, simply because she had never sincerely and truly loved him. She was one of those impulsive girls who are determined to have their own way in everything, and when they can’t have things just as they want them, they become unreasonable. They never admit that they are in the wrong. They are always right, and all the world is wrong. Walter Clark’s demonstrations of love and affection became disagreeable to his cold and frivolous wife. She preferred to sit down and pout rather than go with her husband to the theatre, or on an excursion. Perhaps there had been a previous lover whom she lost, and no man could fill his place in her heart.

When Walter discovered that his wife was determined to disagree with him in everything, and to grow more disagreeable every day, he let her pass the time as best she could without his presence, which had become so annoying to her. One day she bundled up her belongings and went home to her mother. Maybe she thought Walter would come after her and plead with her to go back to the old life. But, God knows, Walter had enough of the old life and felt relieved when the change came into his life. Every tender feeling he had once felt toward his wife had been destroyed, and by her own disagreeable conduct. In his heart he had deified the girl he married, but she proved to be an idol of miserable clay. Three years after the separation he went on a visit to the Middle West. He met a beautiful young woman and felt himself drawn toward her by her loveliness and most charming manner. He was hungry for the love of a good and true woman, and in his heart he believed he had found her at last. His attentions were encouraged, and he felt love growing deeper and fonder every day.

He despised traveling under false colors, and frankly went to the girl’s mother and told her that he was a married man, but hoped to be freed from his wife before long. He told of everything that led up to the separation, and confessed that he loved her daughter fondly and truly, and would try to make her a good husband.

The mother was shocked. A married man making love to her daughter! All her orthodox prejudice and provincial suspicion rebelled against Walter, and she turned him out of the house, as though he were a criminal of the lowest type. She could not see that he had played fair—that he sailed under his true colors and could give her references as to his good character from the people of his own home city. No, she didn’t want references—a married man was an outlaw in the realms of love and courtship. In her eyes Walter was forever damned.

The honorable, but heart-broken young man left the town, and the incident was closed. He would not tread on that mother’s rights, even though he realized that she was playing tyrant, and wrecking her daughter’s happiness.

Dazed and unhappy, the young girl could not realize whether she had been wronged by the mother’s decision, or by the presumption of Walter Clark, who won her love while he was married to another. The whole world seemed to be deceptive and false.

She was aroused from this condition of despair a few months later when a young “unmarried” traveling man came to town. He had all the dash and brilliancy of the gay world, and the disappointed girl, and her misguided, ambitious and unsuspecting mother were captivated. He spent many of his evenings at the girl’s home, and the mother was pleased to see her daughter sitting in the parlor with such a promising young man. The daughter had been in disgrace since her love affair with a horrid married man, but now the mother was pleased.

Soon after captivating the mother the young man persuaded the girl to elope with him. Having lost the love of one man she was willing to listen to any proposal the lover might make, so she consented. There could be nothing wrong about the elopement, for her mother believed the young man was perfect. It was only a bit of romance, and every girl is romantic when in love.

Six months later the agonized mother received a tear-stained letter from her daughter, written in the city of San Francisco. The daughter was deserted, penniless and without a friend, and must end it all in suicide unless her mother forgave her and took her back home.

Reluctantly the disillusioned mother sent money to bring her daughter back to the old home, but she did not know all until the daughter’s return in charge of a trained nurse. She was suffering from a loathsome disease contracted from the libertine who had dragged her from her home; and is today a miserable invalid in her mother’s house, scolded and abused daily for her miserable condition. The misguided mother will not confess that she ruined her daughter’s life when she turned the honorable lover away, and took the human vampire into her parlor. No, she blames everything on the poor, ruined girl. Poor, blind mother—your prejudice drove the honorable lover away.

THE WORLD IS BLIND

So many of the world’s inhabitants are going through life mentally blind. The greatest education does not always guarantee mental sight. It takes real wisdom to open the human intellect, and education is not always wisdom. A man may be able to solve great mathematical problems, diagram an intricate sentence in grammatical form, name all the capitals and great cities of the big world geographically and historically—but still be blind to human justice.

Without geological knowledge a man goes blindly through the world, stepping on valuable specimens of minerals and precious stones without realizing their value or worth.

And just so, in like manner, do men who are blind to the justice that belong to their neighbors, go tramping on human hearts and human principles without knowing the real value and worth of the objects on which they tread.

It is painful to see a blind man go feeling his way with a cane, but he never creates the sorrows that are created by the man who is blind to human justice and the rights of the people below his station.

I know a man who loves a beautiful woman. He was once engaged to marry her, but friends who are blind to the rights of humanity, no odds how poor or rich the individuals may be, interfered and separated the loving couple. They trampled on their young hearts and crushed them until they bled from the bruises, and made love appear as a criminal and outlaw.

They love each other still, though both are married to another. There is a pain in each heart that will never cease aching, but the wealthy friends who separated them are blind to the wrong they perpetrated against these disappointed souls. They crushed two ideals in the soul of two loving people, but the ideals will never die in their souls. That first dream of love will ever remain the sweetest, dearest dream that ever took possession of their young souls—a dream that died and was buried there and left a grave that is always bleeding.

And yet the blind friends do not realize that the ghost of a great wrong stalks through their hearts during the silent hours of the night, when the world imagines they are sleeping without a shadow to obscure the sunlight of human happiness and hope.

And this is only one case out of a million. And through the blindness of friends and relatives our divorce courts do a big business. Young people who are denied the companionship of the one they love best, and are induced to marry some one else for convenience sake, soon find the matrimonial bands galling, and a separation is inevitable. This is the main cause of so many divorces amongst the rich. They marry for convenience when they find it impossible to marry the one they love.

How unfortunate for parents who no longer care for each other to bring unwelcome children into a loveless world. The children find their environment one of cold speculation and fashionable hypocrisy, and they grow up believing that all the world is like their own domestic relations. Where there is no display of affection between the parents, the child grows up believing that love and affection are unnecessary, and passion is cultivated as a substitute. These are the sons who make the white slave business prosperous. They come from loveless homes, and do not realize that there is any such thing as genuine companionship love. Father and mother lived so independently of each other, spending most of their time at their clubs and at card parties, or visiting abroad with strangers, that the name of wife does not suggest a companion, nor does the name mother suggest the dearest friend on earth to the child.

And thus the fashionable world goes staggering blindly on, grasping at wealth and power and notoriety as the only prizes worth winning.

WRONG ON THE THRONE

As far back as the mind of man can trace the history of the race we see bleeding Right on the scaffold and triumphant Wrong sitting on the throne. If this is contrary to God’s plan, he is slow to correct error. Cain slew his brother Abel because he was the stronger and most brutal. The meek and humble Abel gave up his life to the violence of wrong, and Cain’s punishment was rather mild. He was allowed to hunt a wife and marry her and raise a family, while the name of his victim was wiped from the face of nature.

Again, was it right that Jesus Christ should be crucified on a cross? This is the most horrible death any living animal can die—nailed alive to a cross of wood with cruel nails driven through feet and hands, and left to die of terrible pain and anguish of soul. The good book says God planned it. If so, then God himself indorses the rule of wrong and the sufferings of right.

Socrates was forced to drink the deadly hemlock, for the crime of teaching men the right. Socrates knew that the system taught by the ruling spirits of his country was a wrong theory. It kept the people in darkest ignorance and darkest slavery. He strove to lift them up and free them from their mental and physical slavery. The men who fattened on the spoils of the wrong system realized that Socrates would ultimately rob them of their slaves and half-fed servants, by teaching them the truth, and their natural rights, so they put Socrates to death. God did not interfere or intervene; so he must surely indorse the violent rule of wrong.

Almost every one knows of King Leopold’s cruelty to the natives of the Congo Free State. It is said of him that he had instructed his agents to inflict terrible punishment on the natives if they failed to bring in the required quantity of rubber. Many of the poor, god-forsaken creatures have had a hand cut off, or a foot removed, for failing to bring in wealth to the agents of this monstrosity of a ruler. If I stood on the banks of the crater known as the bottomless pit and saw such deeds of brutality inacted in hell, I could not believe my own eyes; and to hear of such things being done on top of ground, makes one’s soul groan in utter despair of Right ever being able to dethrone Wrong and usher in the rule of peace and love.