In putting into permanent form the complete works of
William Cowper Brann, twenty-one years after his death,
the sole purpose of the present publishers is to preserve in
its entirety the genius of a writer whose work, though
produced under the stress of journalism, is destined to
endure as literature.
Upon the issues discussed by Brann, the publishers take no
sides; they do not stand as sponsors for, nor do they desire
to appear in the light of either approving or disapproving his
opinions or methods. They were friends and neighbors of
many years' standing of the men and institutions mentioned
in Brann's writings, but were in no way involved in the bitter
controversies and deplorable events which led to Brann's
untimely and dramatic death.
The plan and arrangement of this twelve-volume set of
Brann is simple. The first volume is composed of articles of
various length gathered from miscellaneous sources, and
includes some of the better known articles from The
ICONOCLAST. Volume II to XI inclusive are the files of
The ICONOCLAST (from February, 1895 to May, 1898,
inclusive), with the matter arranged approximately as it
appeared in the original publication. Volume XII contains
the story of Brann's death and various biographical and
critical articles from the press of the day, together with
those of Brann's speeches and lectures which have been
preserved. At the close of Volume XII you will find a
complete index of subjects and of titled articles for the
entire twelve volumes.
PREFACE
BY MILO HASTINGS
As I read the proofs of the last of these volumes, wherein is
told the story of Brann's death, my cup of the joy of love's
labor is embittered with the gall of an impotent, futile rage
against the Sower that flings with mocking hand the seed of
genius and recks not where it falls. The germ of such a life
as Brann's we can but accept in worshipful, unquestioning
gratitude, for the process of its spawning is too entangled to
unravel. But of the environment of his life we cannot refrain
from rebellious questioning, appreciative though we be of
that which was, and of our heritage of the unquenchable
spirit that is and shall be as long as our language shall last.
Genius he is, this only Brann we have; genius audacious,
defiant, and sublime; whose stature, though his feet be on
the flat of the Brazos bottom, towers effulgent over those
effigies placed on pedestals by orthodox popularity, and
sickly lighted by professorial praise.
Nor is my anger born of the fact that Brann, as warped by
his environment of time and place, wasted thought on free
silver economics, spent passion on prohibition and negro
criminals, lavished wrath on provincial preachers and local
politicians or alloyed his style by the so-called "vulgarities,"
which alone could shock into attention the muddle-headed
who paid his printer's bill for the privilege of seeing
barnyard phrases and dunghill words in type.
All this, I can conceive, may have been the particular
combination of circumstances that were needed to
bring to flower a germ of genius that, had it been planted in
last century's Boston, might have given us but another
Harvard classic--or environed in this century's Greenwich
Village only another free-versifier of souls a-jaunt amid
psycho-analytics and parlor Bolshevism.
The slouch-hatted, gun-toting, beer-drinking, woman-
worshiping, man-baiting Brann of Texas may have been the
particular and only Brann to have developed the colossal
courage and fighting fearlessness that gave his poet's soul
the reach and stature, the strength and vigor to raise
himself above the mere music of his words.
Brann as he was when he heard the shot that killed him, I
can accept and proclaim as beyond the need and reach of
apology or regret. But what of the Brann that would have
written on throughout the twenty-one years that have since
elapsed, and that we would have with us still at the prime
age of sixty-four?
Had Brann lived! We should have had the product of eight
times the period of his writing life that was; and an added
quality born of riper experience, more momentous themes,
more leisure for deliberate composition. We should have
heard the man who against petty politicians and occasional
pugilists, out-thundered Carlyle, turn his roaring guns
against the blood-guilty heads that bade wholesale rape
and gaunt hunger stalk rampant in a gory world.
It is as if Hugo had written "Hans of Iceland" and no "Les
Miserables," as if Napoleon, the Lieutenant of Artillery, had
but stopped the mobs in the streets of Paris, and Austerlitz
and Waterloo had never been.
The world has not always profited by its martyrdoms.
Samson, old and blind, toppled down the temple, and the
Philistines that he slew at his death were more than they
which he slew in his life. Not so Brann. His death was
as tragic and pitiable as the charge of the Light Brigade,
the sacrifice of men at the sunken road of Ohaine.
Waste, futile and planless, mere howling, empty, chaotic
waste, for no purpose under heaven but to serve as food
for idle fancies as to what might have been--such to me is
the death of Brann, and my throat chokes with sorrow and
my soul is sick with vain despair.
Brann's contribution to literature is the product of less than
three years of writing time. There were previous years of
yearning and dreaming while he fretted beneath the yoke of
galling servitude to newspaper editors unworthy to loose the
latchets of Brann's shoes. His own paper, The
Iconoclast, in which he first found freedom for utterance,
and from which ninety-eight per cent. of this present edition
is derived, ran for just forty months, and for six or eight
months of this period Brann was on lecture tours, during
which time his paper was largely filled with outside
contributions.
That a magazine could succeed at all in Waco is one of the
seven wonders of the literary world. That a magazine so
located and written by one man, having but a paltry
advertising patronage, no illustrations, no covers, could in
three years' time rival the circulation of any magazine then
published is as much a miracle as the parting of the Red
Sea waters or the bountiful persistence of the widow's oil.
It is on this three years' work that Brann's fame must rest.
Barring a few poets, the literary colossi have seldom had
less than the work of a score of years on which to base
their claims for greatness. Goethe, Hugo, Tolstoi, Mark
Twain each wrote for more than fifty years. But greater
range of variety and distance as well as span of time
contributed to their product. They traveled up and down
the world of men, mingled with many races, sailed seas,
climbed mountains, lived in metropoles, and dined with
princes.
Brann's most notable personal acquaintances were country-
town editors and provincial politicians, very like the ilk of a
hundred other States and provinces in the raw corners of
the world. He lived and died in that stale, flat, and literarily
unprofitable expanse of prairie between Lake Michigan and
the Rio Grande, where man's most pretentious achievement
was the Ead's Bridge at St. Louis, Nature's most
spectacular effort, the Ozark Mountains, and literature's
most worthy resident representative, William Marion Reedy.
So environed, in a time when the bicycle marked the acme
of progress and Bryan could be a hero, in a flat-roofed
Texas town, whose intellectual glory was a Baptist college
and whose answer to arguments, "ropes and revolvers,"
Brann wrote for only three years, and wrote as
Shakespeare wrote, unmindful alike of critics, binders and
bookworms. Only by the doubtful faith that men are made
by their adversity can we reconcile our charge against the
Sower who cast the seed of genius to fall on such barren
ground, amid the stones of a sterile time and the briars of
bullet-answering bigotry.
But vain are the might-have-beens; and fortunate are we to
have as we have the stuff out of which far-ringing fame
resounds unto generations when teeth are no longer set on
edge--when men will have forgotten the taboos of a little
day and the dust of our Mrs. Grundys will be weeds to
choke the freedom of the grass.
The copies of The Iconoclast, read in their day till worn
to tatters, were ill adapted to preservation. It were futile to
look for them in libraries, for Brann was about as welcome
in those formal repositories of the proper in literature as
matches in a powder mill. So far as they are aware the file
of The Iconoclast possessed by the present publishers,
and from which this edition is reproduced, is the only
complete file in existence.
For twenty years this priceless literary heritage has been
waiting, precariously subjected to the vicissitudes of earthly
circumstance. Like a lone great manuscript within the
cloister of a mediaeval monk, Brann's work might have
perished utterly soon after its creation, like a song of magic
music held but fleetingly within the heart that heard it.
But the blood of ink now flows again through the multiplying
presses and the flaming phrases of The Iconoclast, shot
like shafts of gold from over the mountains of El d'Orado by
the sun of genius, still live and will endure. Again the
million words leap from the yellowed pages like tongues of
fire and beauty; and ten thousand voices will cry and sing
again before the hearths of those who once knew and
loved the Waco Iconoclast, and will sing and cry in the
homes of their children and their children's children who will
read and acclaim Brann as a God whose name is writ
forever in the stars.
These facts are here set down that they who read in days
to come may marvel as I do now that two score issues of a
provincial paper should consistently contain such a freight
of imperishable literature, revealing a learning positively
prodigious, a style that flows with a sonorous majesty and
crashes with a vitriolic and destroying power, a lavish
richness in figurative language, a beauty of Aeolian harps,
of sapphire seas, of the flushed and ardent splendor of
poetic nights.
Whence came the towering intellect, the wealth of
knowledge, the mastery of words, the music of style, the
diapason of feeling? It could only come from the sources
that are available to any American who can read. The
most formal aid that could have contributed is the free
shelves of the St. Louis public library.
The miracle of Brann's growth and flowering is more
marvelous than that of Poe, less explainable than that of
Shakespeare. That Brann knew the literary classics of the
world is obvious from his every line. But, unless we invent
some theory of universal telepathy to have wafted
inspiration to Waco from all the canonized dead from
Homer to Carlyle, we can only conceive that Brann derived
his knowledge and his power, without encouragement and
without guidance, by poring over the printed page in lonely
hours bitterly wrested from the wolf of poverty that for forty
years held mortgage on his time.
What he possessed, however got, was a combination of all
those recognized elements of literary greatness--except one
thing; he heeded not the warning of cultured mediocrity that
commands most writers what to leave unsaid. Brann left
nothing unsaid, and because of that fact was locked out of
colleges, libraries, encyclopaedias and halls of fame.
Where other writers waste half their energies in deciding
what may be written, Brann gave his full energy to writing
what he thought. Whereas in all things else he matched
and equaled others, in this one fact of absolute audacity
and complete freedom from fear, he outmatched all and so
closed the pedants' mouths of praise. Colossal, crude,
terrible and sublime, Brann opened the ears of the people
by the mighty power of his untamed language, by the
smashing fury of his wrath of words.
From the point of disadvantage of the little country town lost
in the immensity of the Texas prairie, Brann saw the world,
and saw it with the blazing eye of righteous wrath. He saw
the sins of high society in New York and London, the
rottenness of autocracy in Russia, the world war boiling
beneath the surface in the cauldron of Europe's misery.
But he saw also, with mingled humor and anger, the trivial
passing events of his own state and nation and the local
affairs of his home town. Of all these things, great and
small, he wrote with equal fervor, equal venom and equal
power.
To-day the war is fought, the Czar is dead, free silver is
forgotten and the local animosities that Brann brewed in his
own State live only in the memories of a few old men.
With the roll of the years, the perspective of time, like a low
swung sun, casts the mountain's shadow ever farther
across the valley; and Brann the Waco journalist has
become Brann the American genius. No matter how dead
the issues, how local to time and place the characters of
which he wrote, his writing is literature and the imperishable
legacy of the world.
The Biblical story of Joseph would be equally great if his
name had been Fu Chow, and Pharaoh had been the
Emperor Wu Wong Wang. Hamlet would be immortal if his
name were L. Percy Smith and his uncle a pork packer in
Omaha. The prodigal son has no name, the swine he fed
knew no country. Particular names, local places, and
passing forms and institutions are not the essence of
literature. For those who formerly read Brann in The
Iconoclast he was a Texas journalist in the free silver
days; but for those who shall read his work in these days
after the world war, New York might as well be Babylon,
Mark Hanna, Haman, and the files of The Iconoclast,
clay tablets dug from the ruins of some long-buried Waco of
the Euphrates Valley.
It is only the transcendent genius who can afford to be
careless of the preservation of his product. Socrates
merely talked to chance disciples in the Groves of
Athens; other men wrote and preserved his words.
Shakespeare wrote plays for his current theatrical business;
others gathered and printed his manuscripts. While he
lived, Brann's writing never saw the dignity of a clothbound
book. They were not written for carefully edited, thrice-
proofread, leather-bound volumes, but ground out for the
unwashed hand of a Waco printer's devil, done into hastily
set type and jammed between badly set beer ads and
patent medicine testimonials, on a thin, little job-press sheet
that could be rolled up and stuck through a wedding ring.
Brann's range of literary form was limited by his single
avenue of publication through the columns of a one-man
paper, and varied from the ten-word epigrams of
Salmagundi to the ten-thousand word article or published
lecture. Within this range is evidenced at least three
distinct types of literary composition.
First and foremost in volume and effect is the Philippic or
iconoclastic article, mingling in varying proportions the
resounding musical cadences of Ingersollian oratory and
the pungent, audacious epigrammatic twists on which
Hubbard, with cleverer salesmanship, built a more
profitable, if not more noble, fame.
It was as the destroyer, the iconoclast, that Brann best saw
himself, and to this role he devoted a great preponderance
of his time and talent. But there is another Brann, unknown
to many who have conceived him only as an idolsmasher,
an "apostle of the devil," an angry Christ driving out the
defilers of the temple with a lash of scorpion's tails.
Brann, the poet, the lover of beauty, speaks even amidst
the ruins of the houses of hypocrisy and shame which he
has wrecked. There is scarce a page in all his writings in
which sheer beauty does not stand out amid the
ugliness of carnage and destruction--in which the strains of
celestial music are not heard above the roar of earthly
battle.
But more than this there are many articles that are wholly
cut from a cloth of gold. Many of the finest of these gems
of pure literature were omitted from the early and
incomplete book-publication of Brann, for the compilers who
made that hasty and inadequate selection were too close to
the bitterness of his death to see this other Brann.
To cite from the first volume only:
Where have you heard a more beautiful sermon from a
Christian pulpit than "Charity" or "Throwing Stones at
Christ"?
Can you find in prose or poetry more melody of language
than in "Life and Death"?
In all our countless volumes of fiction, have you ever read a
more wondrous tale than "There Comes One After," or "A
Story of the Sea"?
To read only such as these is to know a very different
Brann from the author of "The Bradley-Martin Bal Masque"
or "Garters and Amen Groans." The Brann who wrote
"Life and Death," by that work alone, wins to undying fame
as surely as does Grey by his "Elegy Written in a Country
Churchyard." I have combed my memory in vain to match
it from an American pen. A few paragraphs from Ingersoll,
a few pages from Poe, a few stanzas from Whitman--but
make your own search and your own comparisons; and if,
in your final ranking, Brann stands not among the Titans
who number less than the fingers on God's hand, it will be
because you cannot divorce the sublime beauty of "Life
and Death" from the coyotes and the jackals that run
rampant through the pages of Brann the shocker of the thin
of skin.
Lastly, consider Brann the teller of stories--for laughter and
for tears. Some of these tales are allegories as universal to
the life of man as "Pilgrim's Progress." Elsewhere, as in
the fictional essay on the "The Cow" and in the delightful
lies that Brann in rollicking mischief attributed to his fellow
Texas journalists, we find the humorous tale enriched with
the bizarre and scintillating figure. Nor was Brann
unconscious of his fictional gift, for he was working on a
novel at the time of his death. That O. Henry's ambition to
write may be accredited to the influence of Brann seems
more than probable. Brann's first attempt to start The
Iconoclast was made in Austin, Texas, but this first paper
survived for only a few issues.
O. Henry, then a drug clerk in Austin, being filled with
literary aspiration, bought the press and the name of The
Iconoclast for $250; but O. Henry's Iconoclast after two
issues also ceased to flutter. Later, when Brann again
accumulated the necessary funds to permit him to throw off
the hireling's yoke, he asked for and received back from O.
Henry the legal right to the title of his own paper.
I relate this incident not to cast discredit upon O. Henry's
originality. His unique mastery of story structure was all his
own, but that richness of figurative speech, particularly
those exaggerated humorous metaphors which make his
every paragraph so delightful, we may well believe to be an
Elijah's mantle fallen from the shoulders of Brann, and worn
over a new tunic.
Should any man create more than a rare few of the words
he uses his speech would be as meaningless as a doctor of
theology explaining the trinity. Likewise that subtle thing
called "style," that revivifying of the dead ashes of
dictionary words, though more peculiar to the man, is most
potent when it borrows freely but wisely from all that has
gone before.
Stevenson read, and confessed to deliberate practice work
in imitation of, the masters that preceded him. So we know
that Brann read, absorbed, transmuted, and transfigured
the style of the classic writers, and added a daring measure
of reckless originality. As Brann read his Homer and his
Carlyle, his Shakespeare and his Ingersoll, so Hubbard and
O. Henry read their Brann; and Hubbard specifically
commends him to the would-be writer as Johnson commended Addison.
There is no ore that will assay more literary metal to the
page than Brann. As a writer's writer no man of our time
surpasses him. His vocabulary is conceded, even by his
most envious critics, to outrange that of any other
American. His gift of figurative speech--that essential that
distinguishes literature from mere correct writing--rivals that
of any writer in any country, language or time. Brann's
compass of words, idioms and phrases harks back to the
archaic and reaches forward to the futuristic.
If you wish merely to learn to appreciate literature so that
you may nod approval in polite society when an accredited
writer's name is mentioned, go to college and listen to the
lectures of literary Ph. D.'s. But if you want to learn to
write, take your Bible, your Shakespeare and your Brann
and hie you to your garret, there to read, reread, study,
memorize, and imitate if you can. And God be praised if
you can steal the best and to it add somewhat of your own.
Brann offends, shocks and outrages, is suppressed,
damned, forcibly ignored and laboriously forgotten, because
though the lark sings in his words, "the buzzard is on the
wing." But Brann did not make the stench that offends the
nostrils of the nice; he only stirred up the cesspools to let
us know that they were there, and so enlist volunteers for
their abatement. That riles the kept keepers of lesser
fames because they have agreed that the fine art of letters
should be to spray the attar of posies to counteract the
noisome smells of that which is rotten in the state of the
world, where the many reek and sweat in filth and poverty
that the few may live in perfumed palaces.
Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin, shouted Brann and died
shouting, while the well-fed and fatted sat on the lid to keep
it down. But we who have lived to see the lid blown off
Russia and feel the growl and grumble of the bowels of all
the earth need not overstrain our ears to hear Brann
laughing now in that good Baptist Hell to which a bullet in
the back gave him the passport.
POTIPHAR'S WIFE.
STORY OF JOSEPH
REVISITED
For more than six-and-thirty centuries the brand of the
courtesan has rested on the brow of Potiphar's wife. The
religious world persists in regarding her as an abandoned
woman who wickedly strove to lead an immaculate he-virgin
astray. The crime of which she stands accused is so unspeakably
awful that even after the lapse of ages we cannot refer to the
miserable creature without a moan. Compared with her infamous
conduct old Lot's dalliance with his young daughters and David's
ravishment of Uriah's wife appear but venial faults, or even
shine as spotless virtues.
The story of Mrs. Potiphar's unrequited passion may be
strictly true; but if so the world has changed most
wondrously. It transcends the probable and rests upon
such doubtful ex parte evidence that a modern court
would give her a certificate of good character. It is not in
accord with our criminal code to damn a woman on the
unsupported deposition of a young dude whom she has had
arrested for attempted ravishment. Had Joseph simply filed
a general denial and proven previous good character we
might suspect the madame of malicious prosecution; but he
doth protest too much.
Mrs. Potiphar was doubtless a young and pretty woman.
She was the wife of a wealthy and prominent official of
Pharaoh's court, and those old fellows were a trifle exacting
in their tastes. They sought out the handsomest
women of the world to grace their homes, for sensuous
love was then the supreme law of wedded life. Joseph was
a young Hebrew slave belonging to Mrs. Potiphar's
husband, who treated him with exceptional consideration
because of his business ability. One day the lad found
himself alone with the lady. The latter suddenly turned in a
fire alarm, and Jacob's favorite son jogged along Josie in
such hot haste that he left his garment behind. Mrs.
Potiphar informed those who responded to her signal of
distress that the slave had attempted a criminal assault.
She is supposed to have repeated the story to her husband
when he came home, and the chronicler adds, in a tone of
pained surprise, that the old captain's "anger was kindled."
Neither Mrs. Potiphar's husband nor her dearest female
friends appear to have doubted her version of the affair,
which argues that, for a woman who moved in the highest
social circles, she enjoyed a reasonably good reputation.
But Joseph had a different tale to tell. He said that the
poor lady became desperately enamored of his beauty and
day by day assailed his continence, but that he was as deaf
to her amorous entreaties as Adonis to the dear
blandishments of Venus Pandemos. Finally she became so
importunate that he was compelled to seek safety in flight.
He saved his virtue but lost his vestments. It was a narrow
escape, and the poor fellow must have been dreadfully
frightened. Suppose that the she-Tarquin had
accomplished her hellish design, and that her victim had
died of shame? She would have changed the whole
current of the world's history! Old Jacob and his other
interesting if less virtuous sons, would have starved to
death, and there would have been neither Miracles nor
Mosaic Law, Ten Commandments nor Vicarious
Atonement. Talmage and other industrious exploiters of
intellectual tommyrot, now ladling out saving grace for
fat salaries, might be as unctuously mouthing for Mumbo
Jumbo, fanning the flies off some sacred bull or bowing the
knee to Baal. The Potiphar-Joseph episode deserves the
profoundest study. It was an awful crisis in the history of
the human race! How thankful we, who live in these latter
days, should be that the female rape fiend has passed into
the unreturning erstwhile with the horned unicorn and
dreadful hippogriff, the minotaur and other monsters that
once affrighted the fearful souls of men--that sensuous
sirens do not so assail us and rip our coat-tails off in a foul
attempt to wreck our virtue and fill our lives with fierce
regret. True, the Rev. Parkhurst doth protest that he was
hard beset by beer and beauty unadorned; but he seems to
have been seeking the loaded "schooner" and listening for
the siren's dizzy song. Had Joseph lived in Texas he could
never have persuaded Judge Lynch that the lady and not
he should be hanged. The youngster dreamed himself into
slavery, and I opine that he dreamed himself into jail. With
the internal evidence of the story for guide, I herewith
present, on behalf of Mrs. Potiphar, a revised and
reasonable version of the affaire d'amour.
Joseph was, the chronicler informs us, young "a goodly
person and well favored." His Hebraic type of manly
beauty and mercurial temperament must have contrasted
strangely with Mrs. Potiphar's dark and stolid countrymen.
Mistress and slave were much together, the master's duties
requiring his presence near his prince. Time hung heavily
on the lady's hands and, as an ennui antidote, she
embarked in a desperate flirtation with the handsome
fellow, for Egypt's dark-eyed daughters dearly love to play
fast and loose with the hearts of men. Of course it was
very wrong; but youth and beauty will not be strictly bound,
the opportunity seemed made for mischief, and Mrs. Potiphar cared
little for her lord--a grizzly old warrior who
treated her as a pretty toy his wealth had purchased, to be
petted or put aside at pleasure.
A neglected wife whose charms attract the admiring eyes of
men may not depart one step from the straight and narrow
path, but her husband's honor stands ever within the pale
of danger. Let that husband whose courtship ceased at
Hymen's shrine, who is a gallant abroad and a boor at
home, keep watch and ward, for homage is sweet even to
wedded women.
While Potiphar played the petty tyrant and exacted of his
wife a blind obedience, Joseph sang to her songs she
loved--plaintive tales of tender passion, of enchanted
monarchs and maids of matchless beauty. He culled the
fairest flowers from the great garden and wove them into
garlands to deck her hair, dark as that lingering night which
Moses laid upon the Valley of the Nile. He gave her a
thousand little attentions so grateful to womankind, and
worshiped her, not presumptuously, but with the sacred
awe of a simple desert child turning his face to greet the
rising sun. They were of the same age,--that age when the
heart beats in passionate rebellion against cold precepts,
the blood riots in the veins like molten rubies and all life
seems made for love, for day dreams golden as the dawn,
for sighs and sweet companionship. What wonder that she
sometimes into the cool left her lord to his heavy slumbers
and crept into the cool gardens with the handsome Hebrew
boy; that they walked, hand clasped in hand, beneath the
tall palms that nodded knowingly, and whispered sweet
nothings while the mellow moonlight quivered on the Nile
and sad Philomela poured forth her plaintive song like a
flood of lover's tears? All day long they were alone
together,--those children of the world's youth, when life was
strong and moral law was weak. When the summer sun
rode high in heaven and sent his burnished shafts
straight down into the white streets and swooning gardens;
when the great house was closed to shut out the blinding
glare and in the court cool fountains cast their grateful
spray, what wonder that she bade him sit at her feet and
sing the love songs of his native land, wild prototypes of
those which Solomon poured from the depths of his
sensuous soul to his sweet Rose of Sharon?
"Behold thou art fair, my love, behold thou art fair;
Thou hast dove's eyes, thy lips are like a thread of scarlet,
Thy breast like young roes that feed among the lilies.
Set me as a seal upon thy heart, a seal upon thy arm,
For love is strong as death, jealousy is cruel as the grave."
The song dies out and the languorous stillness is broken
only by the splashing of the fountains in the great marble
basins and the drowsy hum of a bee among the blossoms.
The lad's head has sunk down upon the lady's knee and
she is watching the tears trembling on his drooping lashes
and wondering, with a little thrill of pain, if he has a
sweetheart in his own land, of whom he is so sadly
dreaming. She thanks him for the song in a voice low and
sweet as the musical ripple of the sacred river among the
reeds--she dazzles him with her great Egyptian eyes, those
ebon orbs in which ever lurks the sensuous splendor of a
summer night's high moon. Her hand strays carelessly
among his curls as she punctuates with sighs and tears his
oft-told tale of unkind brethren, the gloomy cave, the coat of
many colors dipped in blood of the slaughtered kid, the
cruel goad of godless Midianite, driving him on and on
through burning sands and 'neath a blazing sun, far from
his tearful mother and mourning sire. How cruel the fates
to consign to slavery one born to be a king! His master
is a hard man and covetous, but her pleadings shall yet
purchase sweet liberty for old Jacob's son, that he may
fulfill the high dreams of which he has told her--may answer
the midnight messages of Israel's God and triumph over
those wicked brethren. Perhaps--who knows?--in his own
land he will become a mighty prince and treat with proud
Pharaoh on equal terms. Will he remember her, his only
friend in a land of foes? Will he think of her when Ammon
is o'erthrown and proud Moab pays his tribute? Ah, no!
When a crown of jewels blazes on his brow and the sack-
cloth of the slave is exchanged for imperial purple, he'll
think no more of the lonely little woman by Nilus bank, who
prays that Isis will magnify his power, that Osiris will shield
him when the Hebrew sword rings on the Hivite spear. He
will take to wife some fair cousin of Esau's house, a maid
more beauteous far than those who drink the sweet waters
of the south. Old Abram's daughters are fair and have
dove's eyes; their lips are as threads of scarlet and their
breasts like young roes that feed among the lilies. Does
not the song say so? But those of Egypt--oh, unhappy
Egypt!
"Love is strong as death, jealousy is cruel as the grave."
She bends low and whispers the line upon his lips, while
her fragrant breath, beating upon his cheek, sinks into his
blood like the jasmines' perfume,--more dangerous to the
soul than Aphrodite's kisses or Anacreon's drunken song.
By such arts did Cleopatra win the master spirit of the world
and make the mailed warrior her doting slave, indifferent
alike to honor and to duty, content but to live and love.
What wonder that the callow shepherd lad, unskilled in
woman's wile, believed that his mistress loved him?--
that his heart went out to the handsome coquette in a
wild, passionate throb in which all Heaven's angels sang
and Hell's demons shrieked!
A beautiful woman! Not the beauty of Greece, on which we
gaze as upon some wondrous flower wafted from Elysian
Fields, and too ethereal for this gross world; nor that of
Rome, with Pallas' snow-clad bosom and retrospective eye;
but the sensuous beauty of the far south, that casts a
Circean spell upon the souls of men. Her eyes are not
dove's eyes that softly shine along the path to Heaven, but
wandering fires that light the way to Hell. Her lips are not a
thread of scarlet, chaste as childhood and dewy as the
dawn, but the deep sullen red of a city swept with flames.
Her breasts are not like young roes that feed among the
lilies, but ivory hemispheres threaded with purple fire and
tinged with sunset's tawny gold. Reverently as though
touching divinity's robe, Joseph caresses the wanton curls
that stream like an inky storm-cloud over the shapely
shoulders--he puts the little hands, heavy with costly gems,
back from the tearful face and holds them with a grasp so
fierce that the massy rings of beaten gold bruise the tender
flesh. Mrs. Potiphar starts up, alarmed by his unwonted
boldness--she reads his face with a swift glance that tells
her he is no longer a lad, a pretty boy to be trifled with for
the amusement of an idle hour. The Cupid's bow had
faded forever from his lip and childhood's innocence from
his eye; he has crossed life's Rubicon, has passed at one
stride from the Vale of Youth with its trifles and its idle
tears, its ignorance of sex and stainless love, to Manhood's
rugged mountains, where blazes Ambition's baleful star and
the fires of passion ever beat, fiercer than those that sweep
Gehenna's sulphurous hills.
Even while her cheek crimsons with anger and her heart
flutters with fear, the woman glories in Joseph's guilty
love, sweet incense to her vanity, evidence of her
peerless beauty's infernal power. She retreats a step as
from the brink of an abyss, but farther she cannot fly, for
there is a charm in her companion's voice, potent as old
Merlin's mystic chant--tones low and sweet as music in
dreams by maids who sleep in Dian's bosom, yet wilder,
fiercer than trumpets blown for war. As a sailor drawn to
his doom by siren song, or a bird spellbound by some
noxious serpent, she advances fearfully and slow until she
is swept into his strong arms and held quivering there like a
splotch of foam in a swift eddy of the upper Nile. The room
swims before her eyes and fills with mocking demons
that welcome her to the realm of darkness; the fountains'
ripple sounds like roaring thunder, in which she reads the
angry warning of Egypt's gods, while beneath the accursed
magic of the kisses that burn upon her lips, her blood
becomes boiling wine and rushes hissing through a heart of
ice. The mocking demons turn to angels with Joseph's
handsome face and crown her with fragrant flowers: the
threat'ning thunders to music sweet as Memmon's matin
hymn or accepted lover's sighs, heard 'neath the harvest
moon,--she is afloat upon a sapphire sea beneath a sunset
sky, the West Wind's musky wing wafting her, whither she
neither knows nor cares.
But the angels and the fragrant flowers, the music sweet as
lover's sighs and the sapphire sea, the sunset sky and
Zephyrus' musky wing are dreams; the blistered lips and
poor bruised bosom, the womanly pride humbled in the
dust and wifely honor wounded unto death--these alone are
real! With an involuntary cry of rage and shame, a cry that
is half a prayer and half a curse--a cry that rings and
reverberates through the great sleepy house like a maniac's
shriek heard at midnight among the tombs--she flings
herself sobbing and moaning upon the marble floor.
The drowsy slave starts up as from a dream, quivering in
every limb like a coward looking upon his death. He tries to
raise the groveling victim of his unbridled lust, but she
beats him back; he pleads for mercy, but she calls him
ungrateful slave, base Hebrew dog and prays all Egypt's
gods to curse her conqueror. There's a rush of feet along
the hall, there's a clash of weapons in the court, and here
and there and everywhere tearful maids are calling to their
mistress, the Sweet One and Beautiful, dear Daughter of
the Dawn, Lily of the Nile, while brawny eunuchs,
barelimbed and black as Hell's own brood, are vowing dire
vengeance even upon the King himself if he has dared to
harm her. The culprit glances with haggard face and wildly
pleading eyes at the woman, once so imperial in her pride,
now cowering a thing accursed, clothed only with her
shame and flood of ebon hair. The great sun, that hung in
mid-heaven like a disk of burnished brass when she first
forgot her duty, descends like a monstrous wheel of blood
upon the western desert and through the casement pours a
ruddy glow over the prostrate figure a marble Venus
blushing rosy red. Joseph casts his coarse garment over
his companion as one might clothe the beauteous dead,
and turns away, the picture of Despair, the avatar of guilty
Fear.
. . .
Love is a dangerous game to play, and oft begun in wanton
mischief ends in woeful madness. In the first flush of
shame and rage Mrs. Potiphar was eager to punish the
slave's presumption, even though herself o'erwhelmed in
his ruin; but hate, though fierce, is a fickle flame in the
female heart, and seldom survives a single flood of tears.
Already Joseph's handsome face is haunting her--already
she is dreaming o'er the happy hours by Nilus' bank, where
first he praised her wondrous beauty--beneath the
nodding palms when the fireflies blazed and the bulbul
poured its song. The love that has lain latent within her
bosom, or burned with friendship's unconsuming flame,
awakes like smoldering embers fanned by desert winds and
fed with camphor wood, enveloping all her world. She
longs to leave the loveless life with her sullen lord; to cast
from her as things accursed the gaudy robes and glittering
gems; to fly with the shepherd lad to the deep cool forests
of the far east and dream her life away in some black tent
or vine-embowered cot--to take his hand in hers and
wander on to the world's extreme verge, listening to the
music of his voice. The great house, once her pride, has
become a grewsome prison, the jailer a grizzly gorgon who
conjured her with the baleful gleam of gold to cast her
beauty on Mammon's brutish shrine. She hardens her
heart against him and pities herself, as wives are wont to
do who have dragged the dear honor of their husbands in
the dust--she persuades herself that love has cast radiant
glory about her guilt and sanctified her shame. Oh woman,
what a paradox thou art! When the descending sun
touched the horizon's rim Mrs. Potiphar could have plunged
a poisoned dagger through the heart of her paramour and
mocked his dying moan; the great globe of fire has not bid
the world good night, yet she is weeping because of the
bitter words with which she drove him forth.
"Love is strong as death."
She repeats the line again and again. Oh my Israel, is the
grave the limit of thy love? Wert thou dead, fair boy, Egypt
would inclose thy sacred ashes in a golden urn and wear it
ever between her breasts--would make for thee a living
sepulcher and thou shouldst sleep in the vale of Love,
between the rosy mountains of Desire. Wert thou dead--
The slaves! They will tell their master the wild words
she spoke against her love--against his life. She must
seal their lips, must command their silence. Too late!
Even as she lays her hand on the silver bell the heavy
tread of her husband's brass-shod feet is heard in the long
hall, ringing upon the bare stone floor in rapid, nervous
rhythm, so different from the usual majestic tread of
Pharaoh's chief slaughterman. The slaves have already
spoken! A faintness as of death falls upon her; but she is a
true daughter of false Egypt, and a wiser than Potiphar
would find in her face no shadow of the fear that lies heavy
on her heart. The game is called and she must play not for
name and fame, but for love and life. Her husband
confronts her, ferocity incarnate,--the great cord-like veins
of the broad, low brow and massive neck knotted and
black, his eyes blazing like the orbs of an angry lion seen
by the flickering light of a shepherd's fire. He essays to
speak, but his tongue is thick, his lips parched as one
stricken with the plague, and instead of words there comes
through his set teeth a hoarse, hissing sound as of the
great rock serpent in its wrath. His glance falls upon
Joseph's garment, the gleaming sword leaps from its
sheath and he turns to seek the slave. She lays her hand
lightly upon his arm, great Egypt's shield, a pillar of living
brass; she nestles in the grizzly beard like some bright
flower in a weird forest; she kisses the bronzed cheek as
Judas did that of our dear Lord and soothes him with pretty
truths that are wholly lies.
Joseph is a good boy, but sometimes overbold. Poor child!
Perhaps her beauty charmed away his senses and made
him forget his duty. She bade him sing to beguile a tedious
hour, and he sang of love and looked at her with such a
world of worship in his eyes that she grew angry and
upbraided him. Let it pass; for, by the mystic mark of Apis,
she frightened the boy out of his foolish fever.
She laughs gleefully, and the gruff old soldier suffers her to
take his sword, growling meanwhile that he likes not these
alarms--that she has marshaled Egypt's powers to battle
with a mirage. The game is won; but guilt will never rest
content, and oft reveals itself by much concealment. It is
passing strange, she tells him tearfully, that every male who
looks upon her, whether gray-headed grand-sire or
beardless boy, seems smitten with love's madness. She
knows not why 'tis so. If there is in her conduct aught to
challenge controversy she prays that he will tell her. The
old captain's brow again grows black. He leads her where
the fading light falls upon her face, and, looking down into
her eyes as tho' searching out the secrets of her soul, bids
her mark well his words. The wife who bears herself
becomingly never hears the tempter's tone or knows aught
of any love but that of her rightful lord. Pure womanhood is
a wondrous shield, more potent far than swords. If she has
been approached by lawless libertine, he bids her, for the
honor of his house, to set a seal upon her lips, instead of
bruiting her shame abroad as women are wont to do whose
vanity outruns their judgment.
. . .
Potiphar determines to watch his wife. It had never
occurred to him that she could possibly go astray; but he
has learned from her own confession that she is a flirt, and
he knows full well that a married coquette is half a
courtesan. Suspecting that Joseph's offense is graver than
his wife set forth, he casts him into prison. The
inexperienced youth, believing the full extent of his guilt has
been blazoned to the world, and frightened beyond his wits
by armed men and clank of chains, protests with tears and
sighs that he is more sinned against than sinning. It is
the old story of Adam improved upon--he not only damns
the woman, but denies the apple.
Joseph's posterity, hating Egypt with their whole heart and
intent on glorifying Israel and Israel's God, became the only
historians of this original scandal in high life; and thus was
a youth, probably neither better nor worse than his
brethren, raised to the dignity of a demi-god, while a vain
young wife is condemned through all the ages to wear a
wanton's name. The story probably contains a moral--
which wives may look for if they will.
. . .
Of course this account of Mrs. Potiphar's seduction is a
fancy sketch; but it is a true pen-picture of what too often
happens in this fair land of ours, and may be perused with
profit by many a Benedict. The number of unfaithful wives
whose sin becomes the public shame is simply appalling;
yet no criminal was ever so cautious, so adept in the art of
concealment as the woman who values her reputation
above her honor. There is no secret a man will guard with
such vigilance as his amours, no copartner in iniquity he
will shield with such fidelity as a paramour. The bandit may
turn state's evidence, and the assassin confess beneath the
noose; but the roue will die protesting that his mistress is
pure as the driven snow.
And yet woman is by nature as true to her rightful lord as
the needle to the magnetic north,--as faithful to her
marriage vows as the stars to their appointed courses.
When a wife "goes astray" the chances are as one to
infinity that the misstep is her husband's fault. Love is the
very life of woman. She can no more exist without it than
the vine can climb heavenward without support,--than it can
blossom and bear fruit without the warm kiss of the summer
sun. Woman's life is a flame that must find an altar upon
which to blaze, a god to glorify; but that sacred fire will
not forever burn 'mid fields of snow nor send up incense
sweet to an unresponsive idol, even though it bears the
name of husband. The man who courts the wife as
assiduously as he did his sweetheart, makes the same
sacrifice to serve her, shows the same appreciation of her
efforts to please him, need never fear a rival. He is lord
paramount of her heart, and, forsaking all others, she will
cleave unto him thro' good and thro' evil, thro' weal and
thro' woe, thro' life unto death. But the man who imagines
his duty done when he provides food, shelter and fine
raiment for the woman he has won; who treats her as if she
were a slave who should feel honored in serving him; who
vents upon her hapless head the ill-nature he would like to
pour into the faces of his fellow-men, but dares not, were
wise to heed the advice which Iago gave to the Moor.
Woman is more subtle than her ancient enemy, the
serpent, and woe to the man who attempts to tread her
beneath his feet! True it is that all women who find the
hymeneal rites but an unreading of that enchanted spell in
which they worshiped devils as demi-gods; between whose
eager lips the golden apples of Hesperides prove but Dead
Sea fruit; for whom the promised Elysium looms but a
parched Sahara, do not seek in forbidden fields to feed
their famished hearts; but it is well for the peace of mind of
many a husband who neither dotes nor doubts, that black
dishonor oft goes hand in hand with blissful ignorance.
The philosophic world rejects the story of Joseph, having
long ago learned that he-Dians live only in childish legend
and Della-Cruscan poetry. As an ideal it reverses the
natural relation of the sexes; as an example it is worse than
worthless, for instead of inspiring emulation the young
Hebrew's heroic continence only provokes contempt.
Men worship at the shrine of Solomon's wisdom, of
Moses' perseverance, of David's dauntless courage, but
crown the altar of Joseph with asses' ears. Such foolish
Munchausenisms give to young girls a false idea of the
opposite sex, relax their vigilance and imperil their virtue.
From such ridiculous romances, solemnly approved by an
owl-like priesthood, sprung that false code--so insulting to
womankind--that a wife's honor is not committed to her own
keeping, but to the tender care of every man with whom
she comes in contact. When a wife goes wrong a
hypocritical world rises in well-simulated wrath--which is too
often envy--and hurls its anathema maranatha at the head
of the "designing villain," as tho' his companion in crime
were born without brains and reared without instruction!
The "injured husband"--who probably drove his wife to the
devil by studied neglect that starved her heart and wounded
her vanity--is regarded with contempt if he does not "make
a killing" for a crime against the social code which he would
himself commit.
I paint man as I find him, not as I would have him. I did not
create him, or did his Architect ask my advice; hence it is
no fault of mine that his virtue's frail as ocean foam--not
mine the blame that while half a god he's all a beast.
Mentally and sexually man is a polygamist, and, whatever
its moral value may be, monogamy does violence to the
law of his being. It is a barrier against which he ever beats
like some wild beast of prey against restraining bars. Give
him Psyche to wife and Sappho for mistress and he were
not content--would swim a river to make mad love to some
freckled maid. It is likely that Leander had at home a wife
he dearly loved when he lost his life trying to reach fair
Hero's bower. That the Lord expects little even of the best
of men when subjected to beauty's blandishments is proven
by his partiality to various princes and patriarchs who,
in matters of gallantry, may be regarded as pace-setters.
I am not the apologist of the godless rake, the defender of
the roue; but I have small patience with those mawkish
purists who persist in measuring men and women by the
same standard of morals. We might as well apply the
same code to the fierce Malay who runs amuck and to
McAllister's fashionable pismires. We might as wisely bring
to the same judgment bar Bengal's royal beast, crazed with
lust for blood, and Jaques' wounded deer, weeping in the
purling brook. Each sex and genus must be considered by
itself, for each possesses its peculiar virtues and inherent
vices. In all nature God intended the male to seek, the
female to be sought. These he drives with passion's fiery
scourge, those he gently leads by maternal longings, and
thus is the Law of Life fulfilled,--the living tide runs ever on
from age to age, while divine Modesty preserves her name
and habitation in the earth. A man's crown of glory is his
courage, a woman's her chastity . While these remain the
incense rises ever from Earth's altar to Heaven's eternal
throne; but it matters not how pure the man if he be a
cringing coward, how brave the woman if she be a brazen
bawd. Lucrece as Caesar were infamous, and Caesar as
Lucrece were a howling farce.
* * *
CHARITY.
St. Paul SAYS: "Though I speak with the tongues of
men and angels and have not charity, I am become as
sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. And tho' I have the
gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all
knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could
remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing."
So it appears that chin-music without charity is not
calculated to pay very large dividends in the interesting
ultimate; that a man may be full of faith, and pregnant with
prophecy, and chock-a-block with knowledge and redolent
of religious mystery,--that he may leak sanctification in the
musical accents of an angel and still be "nothing"--a pitiful
hole in the atmosphere, a chimera circulating in a vacuum
and foolishly imagining itself a man.
But what is charity? You people who have prayers and
Bible readings before breakfast, while your hearts vibrate
between holiness and hash--between Christ and the cook--
should know; but it's dollars to doughnuts you don't. You
probably imagine that when you present your out-of-fashion
finery to your poor relations, then wait for a vote of thanks
or a resolution of respect; that when you permit a tramp to
fill a long-felt want with the cold victuals in your cupboard,
which even your pug dog disdains, that the Recording
Angel wipes the tears of joy from his eyes with his wing-
feathers and gives you a page, while all Heaven gets gay
because of your excessive goodness. That's because your
religious education has been sadly neglected. If you would
read the Bible--and the ICONOCLAST--with more care you
couldn't make such mistakes. St. Paul says (and, as the
country preacher remarked, I fully agree with him):
"And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and
though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it
profiteth me nothing."
In other words, a man can't draw on his bank account for
the price of a corner lot in the New Jerusalem. He cannot
acquire so much as a souphouse ticket in that city not
made with hands by dying for the faith in the auto-da-fe.
Almsgiving and charity may have no more affinity than the
philosophy of Plato and the political conversation of a
poll parrot! Had you ever made the acquaintance of that
idea? If not, I advise you to exchange visiting cards with it
before you forget its address. It is not a "Brannism," I beg
to state! it is part of the Pauline theology--is strictly
orthodox. There's not a single heretical sign warning you to
keep off the grass. Almsgiving, and even the martyr's fiery
death, may be animated solely by hope of heavenly reward
or terrestrial fame,--by unadulterated selfishness--may be
regarded as a good investment. Too many people give to
the poor only because it's "lending to the Lord"--and they
expect Standard Oil stock dividends. They drop a plugged
nickel in the slot expecting to pull out a priceless crown of
gold,--they expect the Lord to present them with a full suit
of heavenly raiment in exchange for a cold potato or a pair
of frazzled pantaloons. I want no partnership with a man
who tries to beat the God of the Jews in a trade.
Some of you wealthy men who, like Dives, fare
sumptuously every day, may donate a hundred dollars to
relieve the distress of the people of Starr county. I hope
you will. If given unostentatiously--and not for advertising
purposes or in hope of a heavenly reward--it will constitute
an act of charity; but not of the highest, noblest type, for it
will cost you no great sacrifice. It is just as well, however,
to have a receipt for such a gift to show St. Peter. If it
does not enable you to divide Abraham's bosom with
Lazarus the beggar, it may save you from the post-mortem
discomforts of Dives.
The two mites cast into the treasury by the poor widow
o'erbalanced all the gifts of those who gave of their
abundance; and a cup of cold water may carry with it more
of true charity, more of the spirit of the Prince of Peace,
than the largesse of the proudest plutocrat.
During the Civil War a grizzly old Yankee sergeant and
a young Confederate soldier, both badly wounded, lay
near each other between the lines, while above their
prostrate forms the fierce flood of metal swept back and
forth, a whistling, screaming hurricane of death. The
sergeant had lain long unconscious, and he awoke racked
with fever and perishing with thirst. Do any of you know
the horror of that thirst which gunshot wounds, abetted by a
blazing summer sun and the stifling fumes of powder-
smoke, produce? It is the concentrated agony of hell.
Thirst will break the courage of the bravest. Even great
Caesar, upon whose imperial brow fear was afraid to sit,
cried for drink "like a sick girl." The sergeant found his
canteen almost empty,--just a few spoonfuls left,--drops
more precious to him than all the gold of Ophir, than all the
pearls of Ind. He was lifting the canteen to his parched lips
when his neighbor begged to share it. He glanced at the
gray uniform and hesitated. The Confederate was but a
boy and in his breast there stood a broken bayonet. The
sergeant crawled over to him amid the plunging shot and
shell.
"'Tain't much, Johnny, an' I'm dry as a mackerel; but I'll
whack up."
He divided the precious drops with rigid impartiality and
gave the young Confederate his portion. Then he raised
the canteen to his own lips, but again he hesitated. The
landscape swam before his eyes, the pounding of the great
guns fell but faintly upon his ear, the Angel of Death had
set his seal upon the bronzed brow. He handed the
canteen to his companion untasted.
"Take the rest of it, Johnny; I kinder guess I won't miss it
long."
Yet we imagine we are wonderfully charitable if we give a
few dollars from our abundance to feed the starving, or
send our cast clothing to the Relief Society! Charity is
not a virtue you can measure in money. Its abiding
place is not in the vest pocket. Its home is the heart, and
not the little 2 X 4 dog-kennel heart either. It only takes up
its abode where there is a mighty temple in which to
circulate itself and make grand music that rolls and
reverberates through all eternity--a temple flooded with
God's own sunshine and peopled with beautiful thoughts
and noble aspirations--a temple whose spires pierce the
highest Heaven and whose foundations are broad and deep
as humanity. Such is the home of Charity, queen of all the
virtues. Hear St. Paul:
"Charity suffereth long and is kind; charity envieth not;
charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up; rejoiceth not in
iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth." Now do you comprehend
what charity really is? It is toleration, it is kindness, it is
humanity, it is truth, it is the spirit of God made manifest in
man. He that gives liberally to the poor, to the church, to
education, to the campaign fund, yet says to his brother,
"Thou fool," because he's followed off after a different
political folly, or differs from him on the doctrine of
transubstantiation, is not staggering about under a load of
charity calculated to give him flat feet. The supreme test of
a charitable mind is toleration for the opinions of others,--an
admission that perchance we do not know it quite all. It is
much easier to give a $5 bill to a beggar than to forgive a
brother who rides his pitiless logic over our prejudices. The
religious world has contributed countless millions to feed
the hungry and clothe the naked, but has never forgiven
Tom Paine for brushing the Bible contemptuously aside and
looking
"Through nature up to nature's God."
Perhaps some future age will do justice to the memory of
the man to whose daring pen we are so largely indebted
for those dearly-prized privileges of free government,
to the ablest advocate of human liberty the world has
known, and whose piety was deep and fervent as that of
St. Paul himself. But that cannot be until the freedom for
which he toiled and prayed extends to the mind as well as
the body; until the shackles are stricken from the brain as
well as the hand,--until the sun of Knowledge dispels the
empoisoned mists of Ignorance and divine Charity
dethrones unreasoning Hate. Then will the infidel freely
concede that Servetus' murder was rather the fault of his
age than Calvin's crime, and the Christian will find in Paine,
if not a guide, at least a learned philosopher and a loyal
friend.
Charity assumes as many shapes as Prospero's busy
sprite. I was once waiting for a train in a small Missouri
town, where everybody turns out to "see the keers come
in." A big, blustering fellow, well filled with booze, was
making himself generally obnoxious, and the village
constable approached him kindly and tried to quiet him.
Instead of subsiding, the boozer whipped out a big six-
shooter and began blazing away at the representative of
the peace and dignity of the state. The constable threw his
hand to his hip, but instead of pulling his gun sprang
forward, disarmed the hoodlum, cracked him over the head
with his own battery and sent him about his business. The
officer looked as shamed after the melee as though he had
stolen a sheep or scratched the Democratic ticket. I
remarked that he'd taken unnecessary chances.
"What would you have done, mister?" he inquired. I
replied that I would have filled that fellow's hide so full of
holes that it couldn't be stuffed with straw.
"Well," said he slowly, "I kum purty nigh doin' it. But I jes'
thought as how 'twan't Jim a shootin', but his jag, an' then I
seemed ter see his kids a hangin' on th' gate a waitin'
fer him t, come home, an' his wife a worritin' about him, an'
I jis couldn,t do it. I took chances fer them."
Involuntarily I removed my hat. I felt that I was in the
presence of a God-created king. "You're a philanthropist,"
I said.
"I dunno what them ar' maybe, mister," said he; "but I'm
glad Jim's gone home alive,--d--d glad!"
That was charity of the broadest, deepest kind that ever
held its godlike sway in the human soul,--a charity that will
brave death itself rather than wring the heart of helpless
woman or cloud the sunny face of childhood with the
orphan's tears.
"Charity never faileth; but whether there be prophecies
they shall fail; whether there be tongues they shall cease;
whether there be knowledge it shall vanish away."
"Charity never faileth." The real article will stand the most
crucial test,--is never weighed and found wanting. It never
persecutes because of honest difference of opinion. It
never back-caps or boycotts. It turns a deaf ear to the
tongue of scandal and heals the hurts made by the
poisoned arrows of hate. "Charity suffereth long and is
kind." Its supreme example was given us from the cross:
"Father, forgive them; they know not what they do."
Prophecies fail; tongues are forgotten, and knowledge
fades like the evening sunlight before the dusky wing of
night; but Charity endureth forever. "And now abideth
Faith, Hope and Charity, and the greatest of these is
Charity."
Faith is founded upon fallible human judgment. A man
believes thus and so, not necessarily because it is so, but
because his head is built on a particular pattern or has had
a peculiar class of phenomena filtered through it. The
average human head, like an egg, or a crock of clabber,
absorbs the flavor of its surroundings. It is chiefly a
question of environment whether we grow up Democrats or
Republicans, Protestants or Catholics, Mormons or religious
mugwumps. As a man's faith is inherited, or formed for him
by circumstances, he deserves little more credit or blame
therefor than for the color of his hair or the size of his ears.
Hope is Fancy's child; oft branded as an illegitimate, yet
esteemed above and beyond all the royal progeny of the
proudest intellect, enshrined in the sanctum sanctorum,
the veritable holy-of-holies of the human heart. Hope is not
a virtue; it is but a rainbow with which Fancy paints the
black o'erhanging firmament, a golden shaft of sunlight with
which she gilds Life's rugged mountain peaks,--a melody
most divinely sweet with which she cheers the fainting soul
of man.
But greater than Faith, grander than Knowledge, brighter
than the star of Hope which gilds the cradle and illumes the
grave, is Charity, for 'tis the incarnation of heavenly Law,
the bright essence increate of eternal Love.
* * *
THE SEVEN VIALS OF WRATH.