for the permanent establishment of its central efficiencies, with
adequate provision for its maintenance, at some suitable point yet to
be selected. The suggestion has been made by some of the most
distinguished of its councillors, that the descendants of American
patriots cannot more worthily honor the memory of their sires, or
more effectively promote the safety and perpetuity of the institutions
for which they battled, than by making it their mission to maintain
the American Institute of Civics. The fact that it was conceived,
established, and has been conducted in the spirit of truest
patriotism, and the results which it has already accomplished through
services rendered wholly in the spirit of the words upon its corporate
seal, "Ducit Amor Patriæ," would seem to prove its title to the
confidence and support of all who are proud of the fact that their
forbears have been among the founders and defenders of our American
institutions. It may not be a vain hope that this thought will, in
some manner and at some time, take definite shape, perhaps in the form
of a national memorial building at the capital, devoted to the
collection and preservation of material illustrative of the nation's
history and progress, and to memorials of its illustrious dead. As has
been said elsewhere,
Such a building, dedicated by enfranchised manhood to the cause
of human freedom, may include a Hall of History and Civics, for
the collection of appropriate relics, manuscripts, and books of
colonial, continental, revolutionary, and subsequent periods; an
Army and Navy Hall, devoted to exhibits illustrative of military
and naval affairs, including battle-flags, arms, accoutrements,
and similar material; a Memorial Hall, where the memory of
illustrious Americans, statesmen, soldiers, philanthropists, and
other great leaders, may be honored, and their memory perpetuated
in statuary, paintings, mural tablets, and other appropriate
ways, and which shall be to the people of America what
Westminster Abbey is to the people of England--a place where the
great exemplars of virtue, wisdom, and patriotism, the noblest
citizens of the passing years, though dead, shall yet speak and
have salutary influence, through successive generations; and a
Hall of Instruction, which shall be the centre of the nation-wide
activities of this noble American institution, and also of a
school of civics to which American youth may come from every part
of the land to avail themselves of exceptional opportunities for
studies and investigations which shall qualify them for highest
usefulness in the public service and in all the walks of
citizenship.
However this may be, the Institute, by its many years of patient,
persistent, and, in view of the circumstances, remarkably successful
activities, has established a claim upon the confidence and support of
good citizens which must in due time receive suitable recognition.
Further than this, these activities may be regarded as a necessary and
fitting preparation for labors which shall be more fruitful in
results, and in the hope of which those who have hitherto directed its
affairs have found inspiration and encouragement.
It has been truly said that,
If any honor attaches to the citizenship in which intelligent,
loyal, and unselfish devotion to the highest interests of country
are made paramount, the names of those who have united in efforts
for the establishment of this Institute of Patriotism constitute
a roll of honor. Its ability to fully realize its objects is
dependent upon the number and the efforts of those whose names
are upon this roll.
Here is an opportunity for, and an appeal to, citizens of wealth.
Money cannot be more worthily or wisely bestowed than in feeding
the streams in whose life-giving power is the strength of the
republic. Honorable names may find their noblest memorials by the
gifts and endowments which shall forever connect them with this
National School of Patriotism.
AN INDUSTRIAL FABLE.
BY HAMILTON S. WICKS.
The King of a certain country, whose power was absolute and whose will
was despotic, issued an edict that all the laborers of his dominion
who were engaged in honorable toil should exchange places with those
persons who did no work or were engaged in dishonorable or merely
speculative avocations, so that the laboring man should fare
sumptuously and the non-laborer poorly. Those who worked up in the
sunlight on the tall buildings should sit down in the evening to
bountiful banquets and should sleep in fine linen on luxurious
couches; while those who crawled below in the bleak valleys between
the beetling cliffs of architecture should go to frugal meals and
sleep amid the rough surroundings of the abodes of the poor. The
monarch reasoned that those who did the world's work were more
deserving of the good things of the world than were the idle or the
vicious, however wealthy. He imagined that the world was turned upside
down socially and economically, and he proposed to turn it back again
by his royal fiat.
Backed by his sword, "which is the badge of temporal power wherein
doth sit the dread and fear of kings," he apprehended no failure in
his plans, which had been worked out in their minutest detail. His
army was the largest of any nation, and was to a man devoted to its
King. His genius had won many victories and extended the borders of
glory. Through his impartial system of promotion men from the ranks
had risen to be commanders. The soldiery were well fed, well housed,
and well paid. A word, a nod, from their King would set in motion this
mighty machine to crush out all opposition. Supplementing the military
arm of his government the King had organized the most elaborate system
of _espionage_, so that all secrets were open to him, and no
whisperings in the street or the club but were conveyed distinctly to
his royal ear by the microphone of his spy system. The press was
gagged or inspired; the legislature was composed of fawning
sycophants; his judiciary was merely a reflection of the royal will;
and Holy Church itself displayed its purple robe and golden bowl but
to ornament his processions or to hallow his feasts.
Thus matters stood on the evening of the day this great social
revolution was inaugurated. It fell out that a group of honest
laborers were descending the elevator that carried the brick and
mortar to the twentieth story of a certain downtown sky-scraper. While
all of them knew of the edict of their King, none had taken it
seriously or imagined for a moment that it would be carried into
effect literally. On their arrival at the ground floor, a policeman
stationed there stopped them and, motioning to an elegant equipage
standing across the way, informed them that it was the King's command
that they should enter it and be driven to one of the avenue clubs
which had been assigned for their accommodation. Into it they were
thrust, dinner-pails and all. They had scarcely time to recover their
equanimity, as they were rapidly whirled through one thoroughfare
after another, till the avenue in question was reached and they were
deposited in front of a stately brownstone mansion. Their coming had
been expected, and the great doors swung open as they alighted, whilst
a uniformed lackey motioned them to enter. Their astonishment was
redoubled at the splendor of the interior furnishings. Each was
assigned a room, where they were bathed and groomed and dressed in
garments suitable for their surroundings. Dinner was served by the
time they were ready, and into the glittering _salle à manger_ they
were duly ushered. A fashionable _table d'hôte_ was a new sensation to
every man of them, and they certainly astonished the _table d'hôte_.
It (the _table d'hôte_) never realized before what it was to be fully
appreciated. An evening of cigars, wine, and billiards followed; and
then they stretched their tough and sinewy workmen's legs between the
whitest of silken sheets, spread over the springiest of hair
mattresses, on the brightest of brass bedsteads. There we leave them
to such dreams as their surroundings invited, to turn our attention to
four bachelor brokers on the stock exchange, whose apartments at the
club our bachelor workingmen were inhabiting.
With as little thought of the reality of the great King's edict as the
workingmen themselves, they were sauntering forth from the exchange
at the hour of 3 P. M., when they were pounced upon by a quarter score
of stalwart policemen and landed inside a rough luggage conveyance.
Baxter Street was a Garden of Eden compared to the slums to which they
were driven, and they were finally sheltered in a dirty tenement that
arose in a series of rickety stories to a dizzy height. Their
fastidious taste would not permit them to indulge in sleep amid such
commonplace surroundings, where the only furniture of their room
consisted of two dirty beds and a filthy sink. So they sat up all
night smoking the cigars they happened to have in their clothes when
captured, and muttering deep curses against their eccentric ruler.
The following morning the awakening of the laborers resembled that of
Christopher Sly in "The Taming of the Shrew." They were bewildered
with astonishment at the appointments of their surroundings and the
service of their attendants. A champagne headache was a natural
accompaniment to the previous night's drinking and gorging; so that
fashionable "coffee and rolls," though served in the most delicate of
faïence, seemed but meagre fare upon which to commence the arduous
labors of the day. At precisely 5:30 A. M. the same carriage they had
occupied the previous evening, with its crested panels, its liveried
coachman, and its spanking span of bays, was at the door to convey
them back to work.
The same routine was substantially carried into effect each day, a
natural consequence of which was that they became weary of their
enforced luxury, and their hearts yearned for the humble living of
their tenement, with its rough and hearty jollity, and its freedom
from constraint and the supervision of lackeys, however well dressed
or polite. In the case of the fastidious brokers kept under
surveillance, tired nature at last, reluctant, yielded. There came a
day, or rather a night, when even they were able to sleep--an uneasy,
troubled sleep, it is true--amid the mean surroundings of the
tenement.
The determined will of the monarch so ordered affairs that the
conditions under his edict were kept in force for many days. He
proposed to give a thorough test to his quixotic ideas. The portion of
the workmen was hard manual labor by day in the upper regions of air
and light, and by night the relaxation of enervating luxury; and the
portion of the brokers was deep dejection, deep curses, and haggard
sleeplessness.
The culmination of this condition of unrest occurred at a great ball
which another royal edict had blazoned forth to be given as a tribute
to the laboring masses, and at which the non-producers would be
compelled to assist, not indeed as menials, but as experienced
advisers. Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars at least would be
expended on the pomp and glory of the occasion. The sage counsellors
of state, men deeply versed in the lore of the past, were called
together to devise costumes for the crude working people and to frame
rules of etiquette for their behavior. The most elaborate descriptions
appeared in the daily press of what was proposed. For weeks the vast
preparations went steadily forward. Everything of luxury and ornament
that the commerce of the empire sucked up from the farthest confines
of the earth was made to minister to the great event.
At last the auspicious day arrived. One of the grandest palaces of the
King himself was the scene of the festivity. The costumes worn
represented many of the great names of history, from Julius Cæsar to
Napoleon Bonaparte, and from Cleopatra to Marie Antoinette. The height
of the great occasion was reached somewhat after midnight when the
_quadrille d'honneur_ was announced. The great King sat upon a raised
dais, or throne, the better to view the gorgeous pageant. A mighty
fanfare of trumpets, which seemed to whirl the feelings for a moment
into the forces beyond mortality, invited to the initial movements of
the quadrille. It was as though an army with banners was about to
launch its squadrons upon the foe in some majestic Friedland or
Gettysburg. As the sound died away, there was a pause. The great King
looked up in amazement, and stamping that foot whose heel had rested
upon the necks of mighty potentates, now his willing vassals, he arose
with frown black as midnight.
Suffer me, O reader, to recall the elements of this unparalleled
occasion: On the one hand, almost omnipotent power, backed by
transcendent though wayward genius, a will that hitherto had never
been balked, an unsullied prestige, a front of Jove to threaten and
command, upon which great thought registered every varying
expression, one of the least of which would have endowed an ordinary
prince with lasting renown. On the other hand, "fantastic compliment
strutting up and down tricked in outlandish feather." A motion from
the hand of majesty, now fully erect, sent another mighty wave of
martial music flying on invisible wings, in thousand forms, throughout
every corridor. As this second summons for the masterpiece to be set
in motion died away in turn, two bands of men detached themselves from
the distant throng massed in the farthest background, and came slowly
forward with bowed heads and deferential tread. At the same instant a
hundred brilliant officers of the household stepped out of the
corridors behind the King with drawn swords, and other hundreds
crowded behind them prepared to do their master's instant service.
The Great Strategist comprehended the situation with a single sweeping
glance of his eagle eye, and drawing himself up full height motioned
his servitors with his left hand back into their concealment, while
with his extended right hand he encouraged with benignant gesture the
approach of the representatives of the people, who had shrunk back in
dismay when the King's guard sprang forth so abruptly. It was now seen
that the approaching bands were composed in equal parts of the gaudily
caparisoned workmen and their plainly dressed advisers. Each party
bore in its midst an enormous roll, whose weight impeded anything like
rapid progress. On arriving at the front of the throne, they deposited
their burdens and then prostrated themselves before the King. When
bidden to arise and state their purpose, a stalwart son of toil
stepped forward in front of his comrades. He was attired in a $10,000
costume, representing Henry of Navarre. This costume sat upon his
rugged limbs as though they had been melted into it. The King gazed
complacently upon his manufactured nobleman and bade him proceed.
"August and Sovereign King!" thus began the blacksmith, for such he
was when not intoxicated or attending a costume ball--"August and
Sovereign King, I have been pushed forward by my fellows who have
joined in this petition, with a vast multitude of their co-workers,
similarly gorged with hateful luxury. They ask me to state plainly to
your Majesty that they now know from actual experience how hollow and
worthless are all the glories of the merely rich, whose time is
devoted to vain shows and in devising new delicacies for the palate.
They beseech your Majesty that you, in accordance with your gracious
pleasure, should restore them to their simple and humble paths of
life, wherein they will dwell in reasonable contentment hereafter."
The workman ceased, and the spokesman for wealth and idleness stepped
forward and pleaded his case very eloquently. He showed, in the
petition which many thousands of his class had signed, that through
their recent experience they all had been made to feel the weight of
life as it rests upon those under them. He averred that he and his
fellows were heartily sick of their lives thus ordered, and that they
petitioned the King to send them beyond his confines, or place them in
his army, or, better still, allow them to seek honorable employment in
vocations more in accord with their taste and inclination.
The King, esteeming that he had sufficiently disciplined the wealthy
and had measurably cast out the "daimon of unrest" from the mind of
labor, while at the same time he had given a notable illustration to
all his people of the folly of outrunning too far the sentiments of
your age, and the arrant rot of placing edicts upon the statute books
that at once become a dead letter unless backed by despotic force, and
feeling the security of his position, stood before his petitioners,
lightly leaning on his left foot, with his right hand in the breast of
his coat, and thus addressed them:
"My people, the results flowing from my edict are not otherwise
than I fully believed would result; I am satisfied at the real
good that has been accomplished. Many there are who would like to
see human nature changed by an equally absurd upheaval of the
social fabric, which would instantly place the limbs of labor
between cambric sheets and line their stomachs with sweetmeats.
The truly wise base their expectations for the race upon no such
sudden revolution, but rather see salvation for their fellows in
a gradual and natural betterment of conditions, a growth upwards
that can be maintained through all the spasms of reform, a
lifting of the whole fabric of society by the great forces of
education, faith, and persistency, which are and have ever been
the architects of the race."
PLAZA OF THE POETS.
REPLY TO "LOCKSLEY HALL SIXTY YEARS AFTER."
BY BARTON LOMAX PITTMAN.
Nay, my grandsire, though you leave me latest lord of Locksley Hall,
Speak of Amy's heavenly graces and the frailty of her fall,
Point me to the shield of Locksley, hanging in this mansion lone,
I must turn from such sad splendor ere my heart be changed to stone.
While you prate of pride ancestral and the dead dreams of your youth,
I, despite my birth and lineage, am a battler for the truth.
To the work-worn, half-starved peasants of this realm my heart goes
out--
Those who, plundered and forgotten, find this life a ruthless rout.
In the rustling robes of Amy bloomed the roses that had fled
From the cheeks of pauper maidens forced into the brothel-bed;
In her saintly smiles and glances flashed the sunlight that was shut
By the iron-hand injustice from the cotter's humble hut.
Nay, 'tis wrong that we should range with science glorying in the
time,
While we force our brother mortals into squalor, need, and crime;
Wicked we should pose as Christians singing songs to God on high,
Heedless of his tortured creatures who in pauper prisons lie.
Christless is the crime of turning creed-stopped ears to teardrops
shed
By the women whom oppression robs of virtue for their bread.
Satan's blush would mantle crimson could he see the stunted child
Slaving in our marts and markets, helpless, hopeless, and reviled--
See its pallid face uplifted from the whirling factory wheels,
Tear-stained with the grief and anguish of a baby brain that reels,
Tortured in life's budding springtime, toiling on with stifled cries,
Seeing, through its tears refracted, rippling cascades, azure skies;
Skies and birds and flowery meadows made for children wealthy-born,
While God's outcasts, with their parents, robbed and drudging, live
forlorn,
Men in whom the fires of hope have sunk into a sordid spark,
Mothers rearing helpless infants for the brothel's dawnless dark.
While this world seems far too crowded to provide us work for all,
Acres spread their untilled bosoms, while the nations rise and fall.
Nature's storehouse, made for all men, is monopolized by some,
Robbing labor of its produce, making almshouse, jail, and slum.
Side by side with art and progress creeps the haggard spectre,
Want--
Creeps the frightful phantom, Hunger, with its bloodless body gaunt.
Wider, wider spreads the chasm 'twixt the wealthy and the poor,
Social discontent declaring that such wrongs cannot endure.
And this yawning of the chasm is the curse of every race,
As it saps and kills its manhood ere it reach the zenith-place;
Spartan valor, Grecian learning, Roman honor had their day,
But land plunder rose among them, dooming death by slow decay.
Shall we wait for evolution, let it right these monstrous wrongs,
While the helpless, young, and tender writhe and groan 'neath social
thongs?
Nay, 'tis better all should perish in a battle for the right,
Than let philosophic cowards keep us in this stygian night.
Locksley Hall has now a master who would claim the earth for all,
Who would make the titled idler cease to rob his tenant-thrall;
Wreck the Church and State if need be (better such in time will
rise),
But who from this glorious purpose nevermore will turn his eyes--
Never, till the arms of nature clasp in joy her outcast child,
Long since driven from the meadow and the dell and woodland wild,
Till to each belongs the produce of his hand and heart and brain,
And glad heralds of millennium thrill along our path of pain.
Though the world has piled its fagots round the great and good and
brave;
Thrust its Socrates the hemlock, scourged its Jesus to the grave;
Though its sneer has chilled the tender, and its frown has cursed
the good,
While its Nero sways the sceptre and its Emmett dies in blood;
Yet in Truth there is a power that through ceaseless cycles slow
Will inscribe the doom of Error in an ever-fadeless glow,
That will trample on oppression, burst the chains and crush the
throne,
Rearing on the blood and ruin justice-reign from zone to zone.
Idealistic dreamer, say you? In your youth you once felt so?
Well, I only pray life's sunset, bowing down my head with snow,
Shall not swerve me from my purpose, though the victor-laurels twine
In my reach, and if forsaking my convictions they are mine.
Do not so condemn the realists, rhymesters, authors, and their way,
Just because they point about us to the errors of to-day;
Spare them, though they gaze not upward from our self-wrought
piteous plight,
For, though blinded and despairing, they are struggling toward the
light.
Let the realist dip his falcon in the boiling blood of life,
Tracing in heartrending horror all the hoary wrongs and strife,
Till the world shall sick and sadden of its folly and its sin,
Hearkening through the roar of traffic to the still small voice
within--
Voice which murmurs Christ's own message as we circle round the sun:
That, though greed and creed divide us, still humanity is one--
One in all its godlike longing, one in all its hopes and fears,
With its calvaries, scaffolds, hemlocks, and its seas of unshed
tears.
Then this star of sorrow swinging through the vast immortal void
Shall, regenerated, slumber while man's heart is overjoyed,
Thrilled with yearnings altruistic, triumphing o'er clods of clay,
As we march into the love-light of the grand Millennial day.
JOHN BROWN.
BY COATES KINNEY.
The Great Republic bred her free-born sons
To smother conscience in the coward's hush,
And had to have a freedom-champion's
Blood sprinkled in her face to make her blush.
One Will became a passion to avenge
Her shame--a fury consecrate and weird,
As if the old religion of Stonehenge
Amid our weakling worships reappeared.
It was a drawn sword of Jehovah's wrath,
Two-edged and flaming, waved back to a host
Of mighty shadows gathering on its path,
Soon to emerge as soldiers, when the ghost
Of John Brown should the lines of battle form.
When John Brown crossed the Nation's Rubicon,
Him Freedom followed in the battle-storm,
And John Brown's soul in song went marching on.
Though John Brown's body lay beneath the sod,
His soul released the winds and loosed the flood:
The Nation wrought his will as hest of God,
And her bloodguiltiness atoned with blood.
The world may censure and the world regret:
The present wrath becomes the future ruth;
For stern old History does not forget
The man who flings his life away for truth.
In the far time to come, when it shall irk
The schoolboy to recite our Presidents'
Dull line of memorabilia, John Brown's work
Shall thrill him through from all the elements.
DEMOS.
BY W. H. VENABLE, LL. D.
America, my own!
Thy spacious grandeurs rise
Faming the proudest zone
Pavilioned by the skies;
Day's flying glory breaks
Thy vales and mountains o'er,
And gilds thy streams and lakes
From ocean shore to shore.
Praised be thy wood and wold,
Thy corn and wine and flocks,
The yellow blood of gold
Drained from thy cañon rocks;
Thy trains that shake the land,
Thy ships that plough the main!
Triumphant cities grand
Roaring with noise of gain!
Yet not the things of sense,
By nature wrought, or art,
Prove soul's preëminence,
Or swell the patriot heart;
Our country we revere
For that from sea to sea
Her vast-domed atmosphere
Is life-breath of the free.
Brown Labor, gazing up,
Takes hope, and Hunger stands
Holding her empty cup
In pale, expectant hands.
Brave young Ambition waits
Thy just law's clarion call,
That power unbar the gates
Of privilege to all.