_Question_. With all your experiences, the trials, the responsibilities,
the disappointments, the heartburnings, Colonel, is life worth
living?
_Answer_. Well, I can only answer for myself. I like to be alive,
to breathe the air, to look at the landscape, the clouds and stars,
to repeat old poems, to look at pictures and statues, to hear music,
the voices of the ones I love. I like to talk with my wife, my
girls, my grandchildren. I like to sleep and to dream. Yes, you
can say that life, to me, is worth living.
_Question_. Colonel, did you ever kill any game?
_Answer_. When I was a boy I killed two ducks, and it hurt me as
much as anything I ever did. No, I would not kill any living
creature. I am sometimes tempted to kill a mosquito on my hand,
but I stop and think what a wonderful construction it has, and shoo
it away.
_Question_. What do you think of political parties, Colonel?
_Answer_. In a country where the sovereignty is divided among the
people, that is to say, among the men, in order to accomplish
anything, many must unite, and I believe in joining the party that
is going the nearest your way. I do not believe in being the slave
or serf or servant of a party. Go with it if it is going your
road, and when the road forks, take the one that leads to the place
you wish to visit, no matter whether the party goes that way or
not. I do not believe in belonging to a party or being the property
of any organization. I do not believe in giving a mortgage on
yourself or a deed of trust for any purpose whatever. It is better
to be free and vote wrong than to be a slave and vote right. I
believe in taking the chances. At the same time, as long as a
party is going my way, I believe in placing that party above
particular persons, and if that party nominates a man that I despise,
I will vote for him if he is going my way. I would rather have a
bad man belonging to my party in place, than a good man belonging
to the other, provided my man believes in my principles, and to
that extent I believe in party loyalty.
Neither do I join in the general hue and cry against bosses. There
has always got to be a leader, even in a flock of wild geese. If
anything is to be accomplished, no matter what, somebody takes the
lead and the others allow him to go on. In that way political
bosses are made, and when you hear a man howling against bosses at
the top of his lungs, distending his cheeks to the bursting point,
you may know that he has ambition to become a boss.
I do not belong to the Republican party, but I have been going with
it, and when it goes wrong I shall quit, unless the other is worse.
There is no office, no place, that I want, and as it does not cost
anything to be right, I think it better to be that way.
_Question_. What is your idea of Christian Science?
_Answer_. I think it is superstition, pure and unadulterated. I
think that soda will cure a sour stomach better than thinking. In
my judgment, quinine is a better tonic than meditation. Of course
cheerfulness is good and depression bad, but if you can absolutely
control the body and all its functions by thought, what is the use
of buying coal? Let the mercury go down and keep yourself hot by
thinking. What is the use of wasting money for food? Fill your
stomach with think. According to these Christian Science people
all that really exists is an illusion, and the only realities are
the things that do not exist. They are like the old fellow in
India who said that all things were illusions. One day he was
speaking to a crowd on his favorite hobby. Just as he said "all
is illusion" a fellow on an elephant rode toward him. The elephant
raised his trunk as though to strike, thereupon the speaker ran
away. Then the crowd laughed. In a few moments the speaker
returned. The people shouted: "If all is illusion, what made you
run away?" The speaker replied: "My poor friends, I said all is
illusion. I say so still. There was no elephant. I did not run
away. You did not laugh, and I am not explaining now. All is
illusion."
That man must have been a Christian Scientist.
--_The Inter-Ocean_, Chicago, November, 1897.