From Mammon's molten dust,
With reverence conjoined,
Proclaim "In God we trust."
Nor doth the legend lie:
The People, patient, bide,
Trusting the Lord on high,
To thunder on their side.
Earth's races look to thee;
The peoples of the world
Thy risen splendors see,
And thy wide flag unfurled;
Kelt, Slav, and Hun behold
That banner from afar,
They bless each streaming fold,
And cheer its every star.
For liberty is sweet
To every folk and age,--
Armenia, Cuba, Crete,--
Despite war's heathen rage,
Or scheming diplomat
Whose words of peace enslave.
Columbia! Democrat
Of Nations! speak and save!
As mightful Moses led
To Canaan's promised land;
As Christ victorious bled,
Obeying Love's command;
So thou, Right's champion,
God's chosen leader strong,
Gird up thy loins! march on!
Defend mankind from Wrong.
THE EDITOR'S EVENING.
Leaf From My Samoan Notebook. (A. D. 2297.)
In that age (_siècle_ XIX, _ad finem_) great attention was given on
the continent of Am-ri-ka to increased speed in locomotion. Men and
women went darting about like the big yellow gnats that we see at
sundown on the western coast of our island when the bay is hazy. The
whole history of that century in both Am-ri-ka and Yoo-rup might well
be written around the fact of _transit_, for transit was the spinal
cord of the whole social, civil, and political order. Man-life then
seemed to oscillate more rapidly than ever before, as if in sympathy
with the vibration of the universal ether.
The struggle for the increase of speed began in the early part of the
century referred to--about 1822. Scarcely had the wars of Na-Bu-Leon
subsided when the matter of getting over the earth's surface at a
greater velocity was taken up as eagerly as if life consisted in going
quickly to a certain point. Men, it would appear, had not yet learned
that the principal aim of this existence is the _going_, and not the
_getting there_. Then it was that the steam En-jo-in was invented. The
Bah-lune had been frequently tried, but always with ludicrous or fatal
results. A young man by the name of Dee Green once essayed this method
in Am-ri-ka, with a most ridiculous catastrophe. A poem was written
about the affair beginning thus--
An aspiring genius was Dee Green.
For more than half a century locomotion by steam prevailed in
Am-ri-ka, though it did not satisfy the demand for swiftness. When
this method no longer sufficed, several expedients were found to
_avoid_ going anywhere. It was observed that the necessity of going
depended upon the limitation of the human voice; that is, of hearing
vocal utterances. The voices of human beings could not then be heard
beyond a certain limit. To hear the voice of a man from Am-ri-ka to
Ing-land was then thought to be impossible. The possessors of voices,
therefore, had in that age to _get together_ before they could
communicate. True, there were some men upon whom this necessity did
not rest, for they could be heard at a great distance. It might be
noted, however, that this kind, called _Homo politicus_, had so little
sense that nobody cared to hear them, so that their success in
vociferation amounted to nothing.
All the people of Am-ri-ka who were civilized spoke in a low tone, and
any who cared to communicate must seek each other's presence. This had
been the reason for the old invention of E-pistol-ary correspondence.
This method, however, was not satisfactory, since it required much
time to say only a little, and since what was said in this manner was
found so wide of the mark as to produce disastrous results. Society
was, on this account, frequently rent with lawsuits, having no better
foundation than a bundle of Let-yers.
To avoid this trouble another invention, called the Far-talker (or
Tel-ef-oan), was made; and by means of this conceit the people of
Am-ri-ka could speak to one another many miles apart. The Far-talker
was a remarkable sort of invention by which one merchant, by
stretching a copper thread across the country to the ear of another
merchant, could talk to him _through the wire_. The other merchant
could reverse and talk back! Sometimes a young woman would tiptoe up
to the box where the wire ended and say the most absurd things to her
favorite fop down-town; this was often overheard. People had not yet
learned the method of understanding each other's thoughts without the
ridiculous contrivance of speech, written scratches, wires, and
Fo-ny-grafs.
It was at this time that men, in their effort to carry themselves from
place to place, seem to have taken the first hints from nature. It was
remembered that _between_ swimming and flying, and _between_ flying
and walking, certain forms of locomotion, quite rapid withal, are used
by our poor relatives on land and sea. Thus the flying-fish rises from
the water and shoots, quite parabolically, for some distance through
the air. The genus Cheiroptera also gives a hint of progress by means
of wings that are not made of feathers. The flying lemur, nearly akin
to _Homo bifurcans_, shows how one may rise and go by a sort of aërial
progress along the ground.
Out of these hints the men of Am-ri-ka, at the epoch of which we
speak, sought inventions by means of which they might keep close to
the ground for safety, but otherwise fly; for the age was very fast!
Under these conditions some Unknown Man invented what was called the
By-sigh-kel. It was a sort of flat-sided, rotary ground-skimmer, very
thin and notorious. It came coincidently with another invention called
the Trol-lee. The latter was an electrical wagon for general travel in
cities and suburbs, while the By-sigh-kel was a personal carriage for
one or possibly two. The passenger in this case had to start his
machine and then jump on. The propulsion was effected by a pump-like
action of the legs, very tiresome and elegant. The passenger generally
leaned forward in a position strongly suggestive of the favorite
attitude of his arboreal ancestors. It was the peculiarity of the
Trol-lee that it made a sort of humming roar as it went that sounded
like a hundred prisoners groaning in unison; but the By-sigh-kel made
no noise in going except in collisions and wrecks. The latter were so
frequent that a whole cycle of restorative arts had to be undertaken
of which the principal was dentistry. At the close of the century
there were few front teeth remaining--except artificials.
Many accounts of the Age of the By-sigh-kel and Trol-lee have been
preserved among the old records of Am-ri-ka, and traditions of it are
found in the antiquarian papers of other countries. We have seen
pictorial representations made by Fo-to-graf-ure of scenes from the
age referred to. The streets of extinct cities are found pictured in
this way. There was an instrument called the Cow-dack which was used
in taking pictures in an instantaneous manner, so that the scene would
look like life.
A busy street, thus pictured, in that time, shows many Trol-lees
rushing by, filled with merry people. Along the side-ways scores of
passengers are seen, mounted on their 'Sigh-kels, going in divers
directions at full speed. The passengers present many aspects; for
riding the 'Sigh-kel was an art which had to be acquired; and by some
this could not be done--at least not gracefully done. Many tried, but
few were chosen. Two classes of people suffered much in this
particular, namely, the very fat and the very bony. Those whom nature
had favored in form and feature, and who had acquired the art of
sitting upright, look well enough in these old pictures of a past age.
But the clumsy and obese, the slender and angular people may well be
laughed at even through the shadowy retrospect of four centuries.
One of the 'Sigh-kel machines was made _double_; and an old cartoon
which is now before me gives to this kind the name of Tan-doom. On
this men and women frequently rode together, the woman going before,
for that was the age in which the woman, becoming new, showed her
newness by being forward.
Nor may we leave these reminiscences of a bygone age without
reflecting upon the absurdities of our ancestors, who had not yet
imagined the ease and excellence of our own method of locomotion by
skimming at will the surface of the earth. The facile beauty and
natural art with which we now rise from the ground and propel
ourselves by our own thought and wish to any distance--thus
vindicating our superiority to all other creatures in our method of
excursion--are facts so obvious and ever-present that we fail to
reflect upon the impediments and hardships of the people of Am-ri-ka
and indeed of the whole world in the nineteenth century....
Thinking on these things I can but imagine that I have myself seen
them in some previous epoch of my existence. The facts which I have
recorded appear dimly, as if in memory of what I once beheld; but the
vision of it is so obscure that I still doubt whether it be dream or
reality. I have long imagined that we retain from one epoch of our
existence to the next a vague recollection of our experiences in the
remote ages of the past. I sometimes think that it is not impossible
that I myself, in some forgotten avatar, used to sit alone at the
window of my office, looking into the street of one of the old towns
of Am-ri-ka where the Trol-lees were going one way and the
By-sigh-kels the other way, crossing and darting hither and yon,
according to the wills of the riders; but the vision is so dim that it
looks like the fictions of sleep.
Vita Longa.
The question is not how long this bodily life may last, or how long
the mind, so conditioned, can endure. It is not even how long the
mind may continue to produce; for the mind, like a poor,
half-exhausted field, urged with rain and fertilizers, may produce
only potatoes, mullen, and cockle. The real question--the deep-down
essence of it--is how long the mind, or soul, may retain the
enthusiasm and passionate power of _creation_. That is the only true
test of longevity; and when that ceases there is nothing left. The
real duration of man-life is measured only by the persistency of
creative power.
Longfellow, standing in the old pulpit, on the fiftieth anniversary of
his class at Bowdoin, and saying to those who would introduce him, "I
wish the desk were large enough to conceal me all," makes a beautiful
section of this theme by citing some of the most inspiring instances
of the long life of the soul:
Cato learned Greek at eighty; Sophocles
Wrote his grand OEdipus, and Simonides
Bore off the prize of verse from his compeers,
When each had numbered more than fourscore years;
And Theophrastus at fourscore and ten
Had but begun his "Characters of Men;"
Chaucer at Woodstock with his nightingales,
At sixty wrote the Canterbury Tales;
Goethe at Weimar, toiling to the last,
Completed Faust when eighty years were past:
These are indeed exceptions; but they show
How far the Gulf Stream of our youth may flow
Into the arctic regions of our lives,
Where little else than life itself survives.
Measured by this test of creative power and its persistency, how
variable is the duration of human life! Sometimes the creative power
appears in early youth; but when that happens there is generally an
early surcease. Sometimes the power comes late and remains long.
Sometimes it flashes forth in the early morning and remains in the
after twilight. Estimated by years this productive power (which goes
by the name of genius) sometimes reaches only to a few score moons.
Sometimes it reaches to a score of years. Sometimes, though rarely, it
extends to three-score years or more.
Thomas Chatterton went to a suicide's grave in Potter's Field when he
was only seventeen years, nine months, and four days of age. I know of
no other case of so great precocity; it is beyond belief. His mind had
been productive for about three years. Byron's productive period
covered sixteen years--no more. Pope began at twelve and ended at
fifty-six.
In our own age, Tennyson has done well. Making an early effort to
begin, he, like Dryden, did not really reach the creative epoch until
he was fully thirty. His creative period covers about fifty-nine
years. It extends from "A Dream of Fair Women," in 1833, to "Crossing
the Bar," in 1892.
The best example, however, in the history of the human mind, is that
of William Cullen Bryant; that is, Bryant has real creations that lie
further apart in time than can be paralleled, so far as I know, in the
case of any other of the sons of men. The date of "Thanatopsis" is not
precisely known. It belongs, however, to the years 1812-13. Bryant was
then eighteen--in his nineteenth year. Add to 1812 sixty-four years
and we have 1876, the date of the publication of the "Flood of Years."
The two poems in question lie apart in production by the space of
fully three-score and four years. It is a marvel! And why not?
To him who in the love of nature holds
Communion with her visible forms,
why should not life, productive life, enthusiastic fruitful life, be
extended until its last acts of creation, shot through with the
sunshine of experience and wisdom, shall flash in great bars of haze
and glory over the landscape of the twilight days?
Kaboto.
Old John à Venice in his cockleshell
Breasted the salt sea like an Englishman!
He saw the bleak coast of the Tartar Khan
To left-hand in the distance. "All is well!"
He cried to Labrador. The roaring swell
Bore him to shore, whereon his hands upran
The Lion flag and flag republican
Of the old Doges' wave-girt citadel.
Dominion and Democracy are ours!
From the first day unto the last we hold
To Liberty and Empire! We shall be,
Under the Star-flag, for eternal hours,
Even as Cabot's two flags first foretold,
Both free and strong from mountain crag to sea!
A STROKE FOR THE PEOPLE.
Here is a message for all: FROM AND AFTER THE ISSUANCE OF THE NUMBER
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prices of their products, the relentless grip of the mortgages on
their homes,--and the absence of any symptom of present relief from a
Government under the domination and dictation of the money power, have
induced the managers of THE ARENA to bear their part of the common
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One of the immediate causes and suggestions of this course will be
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appeal to the public:
"SYLVAN GROVE, KANSAS, May 22, 1897.
"_To_ THE ARENA.
"GENTLEMEN: I enclose my subscription for THE ARENA for the
current year. The only reason for my tardiness in doing this is
pinching, grinding poverty. If we farmers do not assist the OLD
ARENA, so loyal to our interests, we shall deserve the fate many
of us have already accepted; that is, the doom of serfdom under
the club of plutocracy.
"We, at _our_ home, are straining every nerve and denying
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meeting our mortgage that falls due on the first of July. Our
farmers here in the West are divided into four classes:
"_First._ Those who have failed to meet even the interest on
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the very farms which they once fondly hoped to make their own.
"_Second._ Those who are still paying interest or keeping the
companies at bay in the courts until one more crop may ripen, but
without any well-founded hope of saving their homes.
"_Third._ Those who are skimping, pinching, almost starving to
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"_Fourth._ A very few who wisely have never encumbered their
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"I live in the beautiful little West Twin Creek valley about
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already passed into the hands of mortgagees; many of the
remainder have changed hands, shifted under renewals and various
expedients to avoid the ruination of closing out. This is more
than an average well-to-do community, selected from this or any
other central county of Kansas. We are realizing to the full that
'Beneficent Effect of Falling Prices' which was so ably set forth
(from his standpoint) by Dean Gordon in THE ARENA for March. If
all people were out of debt, falling prices might not work so
great injustice. But when a vast majority of the people are in
debt, and heavily in debt, and when a man talks of the blessings
that fall from falling prices, the conviction is forced upon us
that the killer of fools in his annual round has missed one
conspicuous example. The trouble is, our dollar of debt, instead
of decreasing, has more than doubled in its power as compared
with labor and the products of labor. Meanwhile our Solons talk
glibly of 'vested rights,' 'corporate rights,' etc., strenuously
objecting to squeezing the water out of their stocks, while they
have by legislation for the last thirty-five years remorselessly
squeezed the _value_ out of our property.
"When our debts were contracted the values of everything were
double what they now are. I could then have sold my farm for
three thousand dollars; now, although it has been much improved,
it would go a-begging at one thousand dollars. Perhaps there is
not as much distress in our country as there was three or four
years ago. People have adjusted themselves somewhat to their
straitened circumstances, and a few are becoming actually
reconciled to their condition! I heard one man who had recently
failed in business as a grain-dealer say, 'Well, Cleveland is
right on this money question; we want a money good in Yurrup or
any other part of the world.' As I looked at the battered hat of
this personage, at the split toes of his shoes, the ragged elbows
of his coat, and the rents in his demoralized nether garments, I
could but ejaculate, 'May the Lord have mercy on your ignorant
soul! what does it matter to _you_ what kind of money they use in
Europe?'
"We are now taking the advice of Governor Morrill, who says: 'If
you cannot get seventy-five cents a day, work for fifty cents.'
Our Republican speakers advise us to dress plainly, live the
same, and work still harder. We are told to 'stop running around
to Alliances and picnics.' We have taken this advice. _We had to
take it!_ But we have now reached the bottom. We can curtail our
dress no further without making our garb identical with our
complexion. We cannot further reduce our rations and live. We
cannot extend the hours of labor, for most of us have already
adopted the blessed eight-hour system; that is, we work eight
hours _before_ dinner and eight hours _after_ dinner.
"However, Kansas is coming to the front again. Since the mortgage
companies are willing to do business once more our Governor is no
longer 'ashamed of the State.' Occasionally a Republican
politician squirms and kicks as the pressure is turned on. The
eloquent and volcanic Ingalls breaks out at intervals. In these
eruptions he pours lava upon his party in fine style. But he does
not break out often enough!
"The most serious bar to the progress of reform is that the
people are too poor to pay for reform papers and magazines; out
of these they might get the truth. The publishers of such are
unable to send their periodicals for less than cost. Not so the
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"I have been pleased with THE ARENA, both old and new. I first
subscribed to it in order to get 'The Bond and the Dollar,' which
I consider the most succinct exposition of the American money
question ever written. No publication that I am acquainted with
equals THE ARENA as an educator. I wish you godspeed in your
efforts for the betterment of our people and of humanity in
general. I hope (almost against hope) for the peaceful solution
of the difficulties that now beset our beloved country.
"Sincerely yours,
"A. BIGGS."
Moved by the foregoing communication and scores of others of the same
purport, and knowing the truth of what the honest producers (who are
the very blood and sinew and soul of this Republic) say of their
trials and of the wrongs to which they have been mercilessly subjected
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Address all subscriptions and all other business communications to
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BOOK REVIEWS.
[_In this Department of_ THE ARENA _no book will be reviewed which is
not regarded as a real addition to literature._]
The Emperor.[8]
[8] "Life of Napoleon Bonaparte." By Willian Milligan
Sloane, Ph. D., L. H. D.; Professor of History in Princeton
University. Four volumes, imperial octavo; pp. 1120. New
York: The Century Company. Boston: Balch Brothers, 1896.
At the hour when, on the evening of the first day of this century,
the first asteroid was discovered by Piazzi at Naples, an
olive-complexioned man was sitting smileless in a box in the opera
house in Paris. He sat back where nobody could see him. It was his way
not to be seen--except on business.
The man was thirty-one years, four months, and sixteen days of age. He
had already done something. If he had not equalled the work of
Alexander at the corresponding age, he had at least surpassed Cæsar;
for Cæsar at thirty was still a comparatively unknown roué in Rome.
The figure in the opera box was slender and trim. He who sat there was
only five feet, four and a half inches high; but his head was fine,
heavy, symmetrical. His features twitched when he was disturbed, but
were beautiful when he smiled. To a profound observer he looked
dangerous. He had the faculty of making his face signify nothing at
all. He had been begotten an insular Italian, but was born a
Frenchman. His wife, a Creole, more than six years older than he, was
in the box with him. She sat at the front, and was seen by thousands.
She _wished_ to be seen; and when the pit shouted in the direction of
the box she smiled a little smile, with a puckered mouth--for her
teeth were not good.
The birthplace of this man had been oddly set on the map of the world,
for the meridian of Discovery and the parallel of Conquest intersect
at the birthplace of NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. The birthlines of Cæsar and
Columbus--drawn, the one due west from Rome, the other due south from
Genoa--cross each other within a few miles of Ajaccio! It is a
circumstance that might well incline one to astrology.
About the birth of great men cycles of fiction grow. Friends and
enemies alike invent significant circumstances. The traducers of
Napoleon have said that he was illegitimate--that his father was the
French marshal Marboeuf. They also say, on better grounds, that the
marriage of Letitia Ramolino to Carlo di Buonaparte was not solemnized
until 1767--that the first two children were therefore born out of
wedlock. On the other hand, the idol-worshippers would fain have
Napoleon born as a god or Titan. Premature pangs seize the mother at
church. She hurries home, barely reaching her apartment when the
heroic babe is delivered, without an accoucheur, on a piece of
tapestry inwrought with an effigy of Achilles! This probably occurred.
It was the 15th of August, 1769.