I believe in feeding and grooming, whether of a horse or a man. I have
no scientific knowledge, though I spent years in school, and hardly know
what the term means, so I have had to rely on my instinct or common
sense, and I cannot rid myself of the idea that the first thing we need,
whether men or horses, is enough to eat. I have often thought, in my
blind way, that most of the crime of the world is due to poverty,
poverty of work, and poverty of food and clothing. I cannot forget the
remark of Mr. Percy, that if he was poor and in want, as these people
are, he would likely lie and steal as they do. I have often thought that
I would have done the same. When the poor, the abject poor, willing to
labor, but can get nothing to do, see the rich, living in luxury, and
most of them by extortion and tyranny, how can they help being
socialists or nihilists, or anything under heaven that promises them a
chance of relief?
The longer I live, the more charitable I become towards the shortcomings
and sins of the poor.
The rich have no excuse for sinning, while those in want have the best
reasons. I can even think kindly of Judas. He was the treasurer or
financial secretary, and had to provide for the other twelve and
himself. As none of them earned a penny, he must have had a sorry time
of it, to get anything to put in the bag, if the people were not more
generous than they are nowadays. Most of the twelve, I doubt not, were
experts at finding fault, and especially that changeful, fiery-tempered
Peter! Judas often felt the lash of his tongue, when the meals were not
forthcoming, or insufficient. I doubt if Judas had any intention of
betraying his master to death. He probably thought those who made the
request to see him, wished only to talk to him, or may be worry him a
little, and if he could get thirty pieces of silver for such a slight
favor, it would help him in his commissariat department for many days to
come.
His intentions were probably of the best, but the result surprised him,
grieved him to death, and he did what any real man would do, killed
himself. At any rate, the betrayers of virtue, the seducers of ignorant,
innocent girls, the rich tyrants and extortioners, those who oppress and
rob the poor, and lots of people who do abominable things, and all
sinners, for every one is a traitor to goodness, should never take up
even the smallest pebble to hurl at the badgered and bewildered Judas.
Another, and it may be a queer notion I have, and it is this; that about
all the sins we commit are by the body. I doubt if the soul ever sins.
It is the house we live in that is forever decaying and tumbling down
about our ears that brings us into trouble, or as a vehicle in which we
go about, always running us into some scrape or other, yet the soul is
made responsible for it all.
Many become so absorbed in thinking of what they call the sins of the
soul, that they have no time to look after the vices of the body. If our
bodies could be kept in subjection, kept strong, healthy and clean, we
need not worry much about the salvation of ourselves, our souls.
Touching the subject of food again. I was much interested in a book on
Honey Bee Culture loaned me by Mr. Jasper, a subject on which I had
never read.
One particular item of importance was the production of queens. There
are three kinds of bees in a family. The drones are the males, large,
clumsy fellows, whose only use is to furnish a husband to the queen.
They are idle, never do any kind of work, but always great eaters, and
like their types in human society the least useful, they make the most
noise, by the loud hum of their heavy vibrating wings.
The workers, styled “the bees” by Aristotle, are neuters or undeveloped
females, of which there are from fifteen thousand to forty thousand in a
colony or family. They gather the honey, secrete the wax, collect the
pollen, protect the hive from intrusion, and manage the general affairs
of the family, the younger members, before they are strong enough to go
abroad, build the comb, ventilate the hive by flapping their wings, and
thus grow stronger, feed the larvæ and cap the cells until they are able
to make journeys outside.
The queen is a fully developed female, the only one in the family. She
is the mother of all, and only meets her husband once, at the beginning
of her life. Her only work or duty is to lay eggs, which she does at the
rate of two to three thousand a day, and during the extreme limit of her
life of five years, may lay one million three hundred thousand eggs to
keep up the family circle. This is small business compared to that of a
queen of the white ants that lays eighty thousand eggs a day! No wonder
that we have such an infinite multitude of these pests!
The making of a queen is peculiar and interesting. Suppose she dies, or
is unfit for duty. There is then great consternation and excitement, for
without a queen or mother, the bees know that their family would be
extinct in a short time, as the workers only live from one to three
months. If a cell can be found containing a neuter egg they enlarge it
to three or four times its former dimensions to form a regal palace.
After the egg has been hatched, which takes place three days after it
has been laid, the bees fill this large cell with what is called “royal
jelly.” This is a delicate, highly concentrated food of a rich, creamy
color, made by the bees eating honey and ejecting it from their stomachs
after it has been partially digested. Floating in this nectar the larva
lives and thrives until after sixteen days from the laying of the egg,
she appears as a full grown, graceful queen, and in a few days takes her
marriage flight, meets her husband and then begins her work of life.
The point of my story is that it is the “royal jelly” that makes her a
queen, elevating her and making her a mother. Had it not been for this
royal food she received, she would have remained a neuter, a most
honorable and necessary member of the family, but not a mother. This has
given me great proof in favor of my theory of the value of good food in
the making of grander men and women. If regal jelly can change a neuter
worker bee into a queen, why should not good food raise ordinary human
beings into kings and queens of humanity? A starved human animal must
necessarily lack courage, energy, ambition, and most of the traits that
go to make up manhood. Any one who has studied the rearing of domestic
animals knows how almost useless it is to try and make anything of one
that has been starved in its infancy by lack of food. It is often better
to kill it at once than to waste time and money on it. I do not suggest
this treatment in the case of stunted human infants, though the Spartans
pursued this method in making themselves a brave strong race, by
destroying all their puny, crippled children. However, I cannot help
thinking that it were far better if some people had never been born, or
had taken their quietus in infancy, than to live years of suffering,
degradation and misery. When I have looked upon maimed, disgusting
creatures, I have agreed with John Stuart Mill that suicide is
justifiable, and that it would be Godlike to help these unfortunate
spirits to escape from their pest houses. This, however, pertains to
another subject, and I may have shown the perverseness or obliquity of
my nature by alluding to it. What I would urge in all sincerity is, that
humanity should take at least as much care in producing and rearing its
progeny, as it does in rearing its domestic animals.
Another item in regard to the bees struck me. That when the queen has
once received her husband, and there was no further need of the drones,
the bees destroyed all or most of them as useless, idle eaters. It might
be severe, and yet I cannot help thinking that humanity might imitate
the wisdom of the busy bees, and destroy all the drones, the idle eaters
of the world. Let not any one hold up his hands in horror at such a
suggestion, for who but our God made the bees, and gave them this
instinct of righteousness, and showed them how to deal with the
vagabonds in their community? Instead of saying with the wise man, “Go
to the ant thou sluggard,” why not say, “Let us go to the toiling bees,
and learn of them how to deal with the human drones, if not to adopt the
drastic method of the bees, at least make the idlers go to work.”
The zemindars are the drones of India, the dissipated idlers. They
should be exterminated by the workers or by the government, and the
industry and progress of India be rid of its greatest curse.
We might learn many a lesson from the industry of the bees, when we poor
mortals get tired or lazy. To make one pound of clover honey, bees must
deprive sixty thousand clover blossoms of their nectar, and to do this
they have to make three million seven hundred and fifty thousand visits
to the blossoms. That is, if one bee alone collected the pound of honey
it would have to make that many journeys back and forth from the hive to
the flowers. When we consider that the distance traveled is often from
one to three miles in a journey, how can we compute the miles this
little toilsome creature has to make to collect the pound of honey that
we consider of so little worth? Surely there is many an open bible in
nature, from which we could gather many a lesson if we were not so
bigoted, proud and stupid. I am reminded of a remark of Charles
Kingsley’s, “Ere I grow too old, I trust to be able to throw away all
pursuits save natural history, and die with my mind full of God’s facts
instead of men’s lies.”
Another item of interest. There is no king or emperor among the bees, as
Shakespere states in his play of King Henry the Fifth, nor a queen.
Theirs is a democratic government without even a leader, the worker bees
each attending to their own business, all acting together on some
general principle for the common welfare. The queen, so-called by men,
is only such in name, as she does nothing but her duty, as the only
mother, to provide for the increase and continuance of the family. There
is no ruler with a royal squad of idle relatives to live in dissipation
and luxury on the industry of the laborers, no blathering parliament, no
judges, no high or low courts, no big salaries, no legal members to
fleece the innocent, no policemen, for there are no evil-doers, no
annual budgets to provide for from the increased taxation of the poor,
no expense of any kind whatever, as there are no idlers except a few
drones kept in case of a paternal necessity, the most being killed,—no
criminals, no poor, no rich, no castes! What a lesson a nation of bees
can teach the most exalted human nation on earth! And yet humanity in
this nineteenth century boasts itself as being civilized, enlightened
and Christian, and having been created in the image of God!
The old station life again. The blessed books, the gardens and the
duties of each day occupied my attention.
One day I received a note, asking me to meet a committee. A new road was
to be opened, and as it affected my property, I was to be consulted. I
went at the appointed time. A friend introduced me to several I had not
met before, and then “Mr. Smith, this is Mr. Japhet.” “O, yes!” said he,
“I have seen Mr. Japhet, and gad! I never hear that name, but I am
reminded of the story, ‘Japhet in search of his father!’” and he
chuckled at his bright saying. I replied, “Mr. Smith, I have heard you
make that reference several times. Once you asked me if I was in search
of my father, and I told you I was, and wished you to help me find him.
Now I can tell you that I have found him, and perhaps you would like to
see his photograph, here it is.” And I pulled the picture out of my coat
pocket, and held it up for him to see. “I have lately been down to
Jalalpur to see him. He is Mr. H. J. Smith, the commissioner, and may be
some relation of yours?” The fellow turned white, then red. There was a
tableaux, a quiet scene for some moments, when one of the party
blustered out, “Come fellows, let’s get to work, as I have got to go to
Mrs. Tinkle’s to see about some confounded party.”
Our business was soon finished, and as I was going out through the yard
my friend remarked, “I say, Japhet, what was that deuce of a joke you
got off on Smith?” “Joke?” said I, “There was no joke at all.” “Great
Scot!” he exclaimed, “you don’t mean to say that you and Smith are half
brothers?” “I have said nothing of the kind,” I replied, “only I know
this, that H. J. Smith, commissioner at Jalalpur, is my father, and if
he is also this Smith’s father, you can draw your own conclusions, I am
not bound to make any statement.” He fairly shouted, “Great heavens! you
don’t tell me! Well, ta, ta, I must hurry, or the devil will be to pay
with Mrs. Tinkle.”
We had no newspaper in our station. A paper is an expensive luxury to
the publisher, and besides we didn’t need any. Mrs. Tinkle, the wife of
the colonel, was our newspaper and news-carrier all in one, a host in
that direction. If we had anything good, bad or indifferent, that we
wanted to circulate, and there were many things that no living man would
dare to print unless he was prepared for death, we got them all to Mrs.
Tinkle, and they went with the wind, or as fast as her ponies could take
her. When my friend said he was going to Mrs. Tinkle’s, I knew and could
have sworn to it, that before they had closed their eyes in sleep that
night every one in the station would learn that Smith and Japhet were
half brothers! Confound the impudence of the fellow! If he had only
treated me with the least respect I would have never given a hint, but
his continued bullying I could not endure. I felt as badly about the
relationship as he possibly could. It would not be a credit to either of
us. I will say, however, that he never troubled himself about “Japhet in
search of his father” again. Some one told me that Smith had denounced
the story as a red-hot lie, and asked if they would take him to be a
fool. Yet everybody believed the story, for they knew the character of
old Smith too well to doubt it, and probably believed young Smith to be
a fool. About that photograph, how did I happen to have it in my pocket
just at the right time?
I knew that Smith as a magistrate was on that committee, that he
couldn’t well turn his back on me, as he had before done, that if he
noticed me at all he would give me a shot or a thrust of some kind, so
with deliberate forethought, or malice prepense, if that is a better
term, I put the photograph in my pocket, ready for I knew not what,
anything that might come. In time of peace, prepare for war. So did I.
It may be thought that I had some streaks of wickedness in me. I have
often thought that myself. I have gone through enough ill-usage in my
life to make a saint profane and revengeful. As I do not believe in any
erasing or washing away of sins or forgetting them, I try to be as good
as I can be under adverse circumstances, and never sin unless I am
absolutely compelled to. I have ever desired to live a life of peace and
righteousness, if only others would let me do so. If a dog snarls or
bites at me, when I am quietly passing, I feel like striking him, or
when a fellow mortal deliberately hurts me, I am inclined to give him
one in return, treating him as I do the dog. The many kicks and insults
that have come to me along the way have reminded me that Cain and I were
alike in this respect, that we both had a mark put upon us, but with
this difference, that his mark was that any one seeing him should not
kill him, and my mark was to let any one who saw me wipe his feet on me
if he could, or give me some mean thrust. But who is there that has not
a mark of some kind?