Refreshments had been served, the last ear of corn was husked and thrown
into the barn, and they had all risen to depart, when Hillhouse came down
the path from the cottage. He was panting audibly, and had evidently been
walking fast. He shook hands hurriedly with Pole and his wife, and then
turned to Cynthia.
“I’m just from your house,” he said, “and I promised your mother to come
over after you. I was afraid I’d be late. The distance never seemed so
long before.”
“I’m afraid you _are_ too late,” said Floyd, with a cold smile. “I was
lucky enough to find the first red ear of corn, and the reward was that I
might take home anyone I asked. I assure you I’ll see that Miss Cynthia
is well taken care of.”
“Oh! I—I see.” The preacher seemed stunned by the disappointment. “I
didn’t know; I thought——”
“Yes, Floyd has won fast enough,” said Pole, “an’ he’s acted the part
of the gentleman all through.” Pole explained what Floyd had done in
excusing Cynthia from the principal forfeit he had won.
Hillhouse seemed unable to reply. The young people were moving toward the
house, and he fell behind Floyd and his partner, walking along with the
others and saying nothing.
It was a lonely, shaded road which Floyd and Cynthia traversed to reach
her house.
“My luck turned just in the nick of time,” Floyd said exultantly. “I went
there, little girl, especially to talk with you, and I was mad enough to
fight when I saw how Pole had arranged everything. Then by good fortune
and cheating I found that red ear; and—well, here we are. I never wanted
to see anyone so badly in my life. Really, I——”
“Stop, don’t begin that!” Cynthia suddenly commanded, and she turned her
eyes upon him steadily.
“Stop? Why do you say that?”
“Because,” retorted she, “you talk that way to all the girls, and I don’t
want to hear it.”
Floyd laughed. “You know I mean what I say,” he replied. “You know it;
you are just talking to hear your sweet, musical voice. Keep on; I could
listen all night.”
“Well, I’m sure I don’t like you when you speak that way,” the girl said
seriously. “It sounds insincere—it makes me doubt you more than anything
else.”
“Then some things about me don’t make you doubt me,” he said, with
tentative eagerness.
She was silent for a moment, then she nodded her head. “I’ll admit that
some things I hear of you make me admire you—that is, in a way.”
“Please tell me what they are,” he said, with a laugh.
“I’ve heard, for one thing, of your being very good and kind to poor
people—people that Mr. Mayhew would have turned out of their homes for
debt if you hadn’t interfered.”
“Oh, that was only business, little girl,” Floyd laughed. “I can simply
see farther than the old man can. He thought they never would be able to
pay, but I knew they would some day, and, also, that they would come up
with the back interest.”
“I don’t believe it!” the girl said firmly. “Those things make me rather
like you, while the others make me—they make me—afraid.”
“Afraid? Oh, how absurd—how very absurd!” They had reached a spring which
flowed from a great bed of rocks in the side of a rugged hill. He pointed
to a flat stone quite near it. “Do you remember the first time I ever had
a talk with you? It was while we were seated on this rock.”
She recalled it, but only nodded her head.
“It was a year ago,” he went on. “You had on a pink dress and wore your
hair like a little girl, in a plait down your back. Cynthia, you were
the prettiest creature I had ever seen. I could hardly talk to you for
wondering over your dazzling beauty. You are even more beautiful now; you
have ripened physically and mentally—grown to be a wonderful woman.”
He sat down on the stone, still holding to her hand, and drawing her
toward him.
She hesitated, looking back toward Baker’s cottage.
“Sit down, little girl,” he entreated her. “I’m tired. I’ve worked hard
all day at the store, and that corn-shucking wasn’t the best thing to
taper off on.”
She hesitated an instant longer, and then allowed him to draw her down
beside him.
“There, now,” he said, “that’s more like it.” He still held her hand; it
lay warm, pulsating and helpless in his strong grasp.
“Do you know why I did not kiss you back there?” he asked suddenly.
“I don’t know why you didn’t, but it was good of you,” she answered.
“No, it wasn’t,” he laughed. “I don’t want credit for what I don’t
deserve. I simply put it off, little girl—I put it off. I knew we would
be alone on our way home, and that you would not refuse me.”
“But I shall!” she said. “I’m not going to let you kiss me here
in—in—this way.”
“Then you’ll not be keeping your part of the contract,” he said,
tightening his grasp on her hand. “I’ve always considered you so fair in
everything; and, Cynthia, you don’t know how much I want to kiss you.
No, you won’t refuse me—you can’t!” His left arm was behind her, and it
encircled her waist. She made an effort to draw herself erect, but he
drew her closer to him. Her head sank upon his shoulder and lay there
while he pressed his lips to hers.
Then she sat up, and firmly pushed his arm down from her waist.
“I’m sorry I let you do it,” she said, under her breath.
“But why, darling?”
“Because I’ve said a thousand times that I would not; but I have—I
_have_, and I shall hate myself always.”
“When you have made me the happiest fellow in the state?” Floyd said.
“Don’t go!” he urged.
She had risen and turned toward her home. He walked beside her, suiting
his step to hers.
“Do you remember the night we sat and talked in the grape-arbor at your
house?” he asked. “Well, you never knew it, but I’ve been there three
nights within the last month, hoping that I’d get to see you by some
chance or other. I always work late on my accounts, and when I am through
and the weather is fine, I walk to your house, climb over the fence,
slip through the orchard, and sit in that arbor, trying to imagine you
are there with me. I often see a light in your room, and the last time
I became so desperate that I actually whistled for you. This way.” He
put his thumb and little finger between his lips and made an imitation
of a whippoorwill’s call. “You see, no one could tell that from the real
thing. If you ever hear that sound from the grape-arbor, you’ll know I
need you, little girl, and you must not disappoint me.”
“I’d never respond to it,” Cynthia said firmly. “The idea of such a
thing!”
“But you know I can’t go to your house often, with your mother opposing
my visits as she does, and when I’m there she never leaves us alone. No,
I must have you to myself once in awhile, little woman, and you must help
me. Remember, if I call you, I’ll want you badly.”
He whistled again, and the echo came back on the still air from a nearby
hillside. They were passing a log cabin which stood a few yards from the
roadside.
“Budd Crow moved there today,” Cynthia said, as if desirous of changing
the subject. “He rented twenty acres from my father. The White Caps
whipped him a week ago, for being lazy and not working for his family.
His wife came over and told me all about it. She said it really had
brought him to his senses, but that it had broken her heart. She cried
while she was talking to me. Why does God afflict some women with men of
that kind, and make others the wives of governors and Presidents?”
“Ah, there you are beyond my philosophic depth, Cynthia! You mustn’t
bother your pretty head about those things. I sometimes rail against
my fate for giving me the ambition of a king, while I do not even know
who—But I think you know what I mean!”
“Yes, I think I do,” said the girl sympathetically, “and some day I
believe all that will be cleared up. Some coarse natures wouldn’t care a
straw about it, but you _do_ care, and it is the things we want and can’t
get that count.”
“It is strange,” he said thoughtfully, “but of late I always think of
my mother as being young and beautiful. I think of her, too, as being
well-bred and educated. I think all those things without any proof even
as to what her maiden name was or where she came from—Are you still
unhappy at home, Cynthia?”
“Nearly all the time,” the girl sighed. “As she grows older my mother
seems more faultfinding and suspicious than ever. Then she has set her
mind on my marrying Mr. Hillhouse. They seem to be working together to
that end, and it is very tiresome to me.”
“I’m glad you don’t love him,” Floyd said. “I don’t think he could make
anyone of your nature happy.”
The girl stared into his eyes. They had reached the gate of the
farmhouse, and he opened it for her.
“Now, good night,” he said, pressing her hand. “Remember, if you ever
hear a lonely whippoorwill calling, that he is longing for companionship.”
She leaned over the gate, drawing it toward her till the latch clicked in
its catch. She was thinking of the hot kiss he had pressed upon her lips,
and what he might later think about it.
“I’ll never meet you there at night,” she said firmly. “My mother does
not treat me right, but I shall not do that when she is asleep. You may
come to see me here once in awhile if you wish.”
“Well, I shall sit alone in the arbor,” he returned, with a low laugh,
“and I hope your hard heart will keep you awake.”
She opened the front door, which was never locked, and went into her room
on the right of the little hall. The night was very still, and down the
road she heard Floyd’s whippoorwill call growing fainter and fainter as
he strode away. She found a match and lighted the lamp on her bureau, and
looked at her reflection in the little oval-shaped mirror. Instinctively
she shuddered and brushed her lips with her hand as she remembered his
embrace.
“He’ll despise me,” she muttered. “He’ll think I am weak like all the
rest, but I am not. _I am not!_ I’ll show him that he can’t—and yet”—her
head sank to her hands, which were folded on the top of the bureau—“I
couldn’t help it. My God, I couldn’t help it! I must have wanted—no, I
didn’t. I didn’t!”
There was a soft step in the hall. The door of her room creaked like the
low scream of a cat. A figure in white stood on the threshold. It was
Mrs. Porter in her nightdress, her feet bare, her iron-gray half-twisted
hair hanging upon her shoulders.
“I couldn’t go to sleep, Cynthia,” she said, “till I knew you were safe
at home.”
“Well, I’m here all right, mother; so go back to bed, and don’t catch
your death of cold.”
The old woman moved across the room to Cynthia’s bed and sat down on it.
“I heard you coming down the road and went to the front window. I had
sent Brother Hillhouse for you, but it was Nelson Floyd who brought you
home. Didn’t Brother Hillhouse get there before you left?”
“Yes, but I had already promised Mr. Floyd.”
The old woman met her daughter’s glance steadily. “I suppose all I’ll do
or say won’t amount to anything. Cynthia, you know what I’m afraid of.”
Cynthia stood straight, her face set and white, her great dreamy eyes
flashing.
“Yes, and that’s the insult of it, mother. I tell you, you will drive me
too far. A girl at a certain time of her life wants a mother’s love and
sympathy; she doesn’t want threats, fears and disgraceful suspicions.”
Mrs. Porter covered her face with her bony hands and groaned aloud.
“You are confessing,” she said, “that you are tied an’ bound to him by
the heart, and that there isn’t anything left for you but the crumbs he
lets fall from his profligate table.”
“Stop!” Cynthia sprang to her mother and laid her small hand heavily on
the thin shoulder. “Stop! You know you are telling a deliberate—” She
paused, turned and went slowly back to the bureau. “God forgive me! God
help me remember my duty to you as my mother. You’re old; you’re out of
your head!”
“There, you said something.” The old woman had drawn herself erect and
sat staring at her daughter, her hands on her sharp knees. “You know my
sister Martha got to worryin’ when she was along about my age over her
lawsuit matters, and kept it up till her brain gave way. Folks always
said she and I were alike. Dr. Strong has told me time after time to
guard against worry, or I’d go out and kill myself as she did. I haven’t
mentioned this before, but I will now. I can’t keep down my fears and
suspicions while the very air is full of that man’s doings. He’s a devil.
Your pretty face has caught his fancy, and your holding him off, so far,
has made him determined to crush you like a plucked flower. Why don’t he
go to the Duncans, and the Prices, and lay his plans? Because the men
of those families shoot at the drop of the hat. He knows your pa is not
of that stamp, and that you haven’t any men kin to defend our honor. He
hasn’t any of his own; nobody knows who or what he is.”
“Mother!” Cynthia’s tone had softened. Her face was filling with sudden
pity for the quivering creature on the bed. “Mother, will you not have
confidence in me? If I promise you faithfully to take care of myself
with him, and make him understand what and who I am, won’t that satisfy
you? Even men with bad reputations have a good side to their natures,
and they often reach a point at which they reform. I well know there are
strong women and weak women. Mother, I’m not a weak woman. As God is my
judge, I’m able to take care of myself. It pains me to say this, for you
ought to know it; you ought to feel it, see it in my eye and hear it in
my voice. Now, go to bed and sleep. I’m really afraid you may lose your
mind, since you told me about Aunt Martha.”
The face of the old woman changed; it lighted up with hope.
“Somehow, I believe what you say,” she said, with a faint smile. “Anyway,
I’ll try not to worry any more.” She rose and went to the door. “Yes,
I’ll try not to worry any more,” she repeated. “It may all come out
right.”
When she found herself alone Cynthia turned and looked at her reflection
in the glass.
“He didn’t once tell me in so many words that he loved me,” she said. “He
has never used that word. He has never said that he wanted to mar—” She
broke off, staring into the depths of her own great, troubled eyes. “And
yet I let him kiss me—_me_!” A hot flush filled her neck and face and
spread to the roots of her hair. Then suddenly she blew out the light and
crept to her bed.
(_To be continued._)
_The Conservative of Today_
BY JOHN H. GIRDNER, M.D.
Ever since we have had a record of the human race it has been divided
into two parties, the _conservative_ and the _radical_. These two parties
have ever battled with each other for possession of the world. Strictly
speaking, all history—sacred and profane—is nothing else than a record of
this world-old struggle.
“That which _is_, was made by God,” cries the conservative.
“God is leaving _that_ and is entering _this other_,” replies the radical.
These have been the battle-cries of mankind all down the ages. The
conservative has always been the stand-patter. He has been always on the
defensive, explaining, apologizing, opposing and pleading that change
would result in deterioration. The conservative must bear the vice, the
sins and crimes of the society of his time, and, bending under the load,
piteously pleads for delay, for compromise. He preaches the pusillanimous
doctrine of “let us bear the evils we already have rather than fly to
those we know not of.” Conservatism never made an invention, wrote a
poem, painted a picture nor breathed a prayer that rose above the roof.
Pharaoh, King of Egypt, was a conservative. He stood pat on keeping the
Hebrew nation in slavery, against the radicalism of Moses. The Roman
empire was conservative. It stood pat on its pagan worship, against the
radicalism of the new religion. The scientific world stood pat on the
then accepted doctrine that the “sun do move,” against the radicalism
of Galileo that it is the earth that does the moving. King George was
a conservative. He stood pat on America’s remaining a British colony,
against the radicalism of Washington and the Continental Congress. The
French King, Louis XVI, was a conservative, and stood pat against the
radicalism of the people of France when they demanded liberty and bread.
The Czar of Russia and his titled aristocracy are conservatives. They are
standing pat against progress, enlightenment and justice among the masses
of the people of that unhappy country. But it is about the conservatives
of our own country that I want to write. I want to say a word about our
own stand-patters.
Webster’s Dictionary says that a _conservative_ is, “One who desires
to maintain existing institutions and customs.” A conservative in the
United States today, then, is a man who wants the Beef Trust to continue
to force the farmer to accept its price for his cattle, and the consumer
to pay its price for dressed beef. A conservative is a man who wants
the railroads to continue giving rebates to favored shippers, and to
hold them from unfavored shippers. A conservative is a man who wants
the United States Senate to continue to be composed of men who do not
represent the masses of the people of their respective states, but
who represent the corporations. For instance, a conservative in New
York State is a man who wants Chauncey M. Depew and Thomas C. Platt to
continue in the United States Senate.
Depew represents the Vanderbilt system of railroads, while Platt
represents the United States Express Company. The two will oppose any
legislation which interferes with the income of their corporations, never
mind what the people of the state or nation want. The people have for
years wanted a parcels post in this country. England and other countries
have it, but we cannot. Why? Because Platt is in the Senate, and also
in the parcel-carrying business. You, Mr. Conservative, put him in the
Senate and you keep him there.
We have what is called a protective tariff in this country. It is a
law which, in the name of _protecting_ the workingman, _robs_ him and
every other consumer. If you are a conservative, you are in favor of
maintaining this law.
The tariff schedule was drawn up by a committee of Congress _behind
closed doors_. That is, the doors were closed on those who have to _pay_
the tariff, but open to those who were to be _benefited_ by it. The
committee sent for the manufacturers of the various necessary articles
which people use, and asked _them_ how much of a tax _they wanted_ on
similar articles made abroad. And the manufacturers wrote these schedules
for the committee, and they were adopted. Notice, the consumers, the
people who have to pay the tariff, were not invited to appear before this
committee. Only the manufacturers, who are the beneficiaries, were taken
into counsel.
If you are a conservative—that is, if you are a stand-patter, you are in
favor of continuing and “maintaining” this “mother of trusts.”
Sometimes laboring-men become dissatisfied with their wages, or the
number of hours they are made to work, and they exercise their God-given
right to cease work, or go on strike. Then the corporations rush to the
courts and secure injunctions, restraining the strikers from doing all
sorts of things. In some instances these injunctions are obtained and
served on the strikers before any of the acts from which the injunctions
restrain them have been committed or attempted. Special deputy sheriffs
and Pinkerton men are hurried to the scene of the strike. The state
militia is ordered out, and in one instance Federal troops were sent
to Chicago. At Homestead the hired deputy-sheriff-Cossacks shot down
peaceable workmen, just as real Cossacks shot down the peaceable
workmen who marched with Father Gapon in the streets of St. Petersburg
recently—and for no better reason. Martial law has been declared,
court-martial has been substituted for trial by jury. The right of
habeas corpus has been suspended. Members of labor unions have been
thrown into prison without trial; others have been torn from their homes
and deported to other states without process of law, and bull pens
established for guarding prisoners. These things have been happening in
the United States for years. In each instance it was claimed that such
arbitrary measures were necessary to preserve order, keep the peace,
protect the property of the corporations, and to enforce the injunctions
issued by the courts—_when these injunctions were directed against the
laboring or producing class_. Now see how differently things work when a
corporation is at the dangerous end of an injunction gun.
The United States Federal Court, through Judge Grosscup, of Chicago,
issued on February 18, 1903, an injunction restraining the Beef Trust
from continuing to do certain things. The Beef Trust paid _no_ attention
to this injunction. It went right on doing these same things, just as if
Judge Grosscup had not issued his injunction. It went right on despoiling
the bank accounts of the consumers of beef and the raisers of cattle.
No special deputy sheriffs were sworn in, no state militia was ordered
out, no Federal troops were sent to Chicago or anywhere else to enforce
obedience to _this_ injunction. Armour, Swift and Morris, the men said
to be at the head of the Beef Trust, were not arrested. No bull pen was
established. Nobody was deported.
This is the existing custom of enforcing and _not_ enforcing Federal
Court injunctions. Now if you are a conservative, you are, according to
Webster, one who desires to “maintain” this custom.
At the present time the lighting corporation, the railroad corporation,
the telephone corporation and the city or municipal corporation are all
exploiting the people of New York City as they have never been exploited
before.
Never in the history of New York have its public servants been
so absolutely and completely _owned_ by so-called public service
corporations as at present. These corporations have literally taken
over the people’s municipal corporation, merged it with their own and
impressed their management upon it. For instance, Dr. Darlington,
President of the Health Department, goes to Washington to urge Congress
to pass a law to destroy dirty money, because it is a means of
conveying disease germs. But he does not destroy or clean the filthy
disease-bearing car straps in New York. Why? Because August Belmont
and H. H. Vreeland won’t let him. Darlington is in the position of the
Irishman who would free Ireland but for the police. The people want the
signs, slot machines, etc., put out of their Subway stations, but they
can’t get it done. Why? Because the Interborough Corporation is stronger
than the municipal corporation. The people’s public servants in New York
City have become the servants of the public service corporations.
It does seem that even men who call themselves conservatives in New York
would rise up next fall and stamp the life out of this condition.
_Casus Belli_
“Now, the trusts—” began the patent-churn man, addressing the
washing-machine agent. “The trusts, let me tell you, are——”
“Here, now, gentlemen!” remonstrated the landlord of the tavern at
Polkville, Ark. “That’s what the fight here yesterday started about; and
it’s goin’ to cost me three or four dollars for new window glass, alone!”
_A Character Study of Byron and Burns_
BY ELIZABETH BAILEY TRAYLOR
These names are live wires in the lands of the Scotch heather and the
English rose, and equally so here by the red hearts of the watermelons
and the snow showers of the cotton-fields of the Southern States. One
often hears it said of those devoted brotherhoods—the Burns Clubs and the
Scotch Societies—“Their Bible is Robbie Burns.” Frank Stanton has a large
hearing when he sings:
We’ll slip away from our today
Of wonder and of worry,
To where, in meadows of the may,
He whistled “Annie Laurie.”
To meet him in some gabled inn,
And pass the rare decanter,
Or in some ingle nook begin
A race with “Tam o’Shanter.”
To a large coterie of kindred spirits the name of Byron evokes a pageant
of ideas pulsating with life’s strongest emotions. It is told of a
pleasure club that they recently abandoned the books of the day and read
the poet exhaustively and with great enthusiasm—no slight tribute to his
genius in a time of unremitting demand for that which is palpitant with
the breath of today’s life. A learned minister from his pulpit says:
“‘The Destruction of Sennacherib’ is a marvel of diction and technique,
and no divine has approached the narrative in its exact correspondence to
Holy Writ.”
A bare sketch of these two philosophers may suggest to book-lovers in
general the particular period of the culture-epochs dominating each
career, and discover some of the forces of heredity and environment which
produced these characters, vibrant with full, fresh, free life, or reveal
to readers equipped by psychical research for judgment how it was that
these natures furnished the battleground for so fierce a conflict of
good and evil forces.
According to Carlyle, the father of Burns was a “man of thoughtful,
intense character, possessing some knowledge and open-minded for more,
of keen insight and devout heart, friendly and fearless; a fully
unfolded man seldom found in any rank of society.” Of his ancestry we
know nothing. The father of Byron was an Englishman, from a line of
illustrious ancestors reaching back to the days of William the Conqueror.
The mother of Burns, devout of heart and calm of mind, brightened the
lives of her children with the ballads of her beloved Scotland. The
mother of Byron would smother him with kisses one moment, and the next
call him a lame brat.
Both poets spent their early youth in Scotland, where the record of
their school days is still preserved in their respective parishes. Burns
read with equal avidity Taylor’s devotional works, Locke, Pope, Milton,
Thomson and Young. He never minded work, if knowledge was the reward.
Byron was devoted to the reading of history and poetry, and was at the
head of many college rows. When, in conformity to the custom of the
school, the order was so inverted as to make the boy of highest rank
change places with the lowest, the teacher would call out to Byron: “Now,
George, let us see how quick you will be foot again.”
Each had a favorite family servant. Byron wrote often to his old nurse
of his triumphs in London. Burns says many of his songs were inspired
by an old servant, Jenny Wilson, as she repeated her endless collection
of songs and stories of devils, ghosts, fairies, witches, warlocks,
kelpies, elf-candles and enchanted dragons.
Lady Blessington wrote of Byron’s appearance: “He is not tall, as I had
fancied him. His appearance is, however, highly prepossessing; his head
is finely shaped and the forehead open, high and noble, his eyes are
gray and full of expression, his mouth is the most remarkable feature,
the upper lip of Grecian shortness and the corners descending, the lips
full and finely cut. In speaking, he shows his teeth very much, and they
are white and even, but I observed that even in his smile—he smiles
frequently—there is something of a scornful expression that is evidently
natural. His countenance is full of expression and changes with the
subject of conversation; it gains on the beholder the more it is seen,
and leaves an agreeable impression. His voice and accent are peculiarly
agreeable, clear, harmonious and so distinct that, though his general
tone in speaking is rather low than high, not a word is lost.”
Burns, tall, well formed and graceful, was always a charming presence.
The beautiful and all-accomplished Duchess of Gordon said that Burns was
the most fascinating guest she ever saw entertained.
Speaking of the portrait by Alexander Nasmyth, Sir Walter Scott says:
“This is the best likeness of Burns, but his features, as I remember
them, were still more massive and imposing than they are represented
in this picture. There was a strong expression of shrewdness in
his lineaments, the eyes alone indicating the poetic character and
temperament. They were large and dark and literally glowed when he spoke
with feeling or interest. I never saw such eyes in any other head.”
Attired always in the tip of the fashion, Byron was a drawing-room dude
in the smart set of London. The dress of Burns was coarse and homely,
made from his own sheep, carded by his own fire. His plaid was red and
white, woven with great pride by his mother and sister. His home and the
homes of his friends, were low-thatched cottages, consisting of kitchen
and bedrooms, with floors of kneaded clay.
If the former set a fashion for collars which lasts to this good day, the
latter has left us the Tam-o’-Shanter hat.
Burns was essentially musical, having begun his career by setting music
to the verses of another.
Byron, in a luxurious salon, wooed and won a woman of fashion. Burns
gives this account of his courtship with Highland Mary,
Who was snatched away in beauty’s bloom:
“We plighted our troth on the Sabbath to make it more sacred, seated by
a running brook, that Nature might be a witness, over an open Bible, to
show we remembered God in the compact.”
After a second edition of “Poems by an Ayrshire Plowman,” Burns spent the
winter in Edinburgh, where he was the lion of the elegant coteries of the
city.
Lords, ladies, men of letters, all with manners highly polished by
attrition, found in him a barbarian who was not barbarous. As the poet
met in at least one lord feelings as natural as those of a plowman, so
they met in a plowman manners worthy of a lord.
Dugald Stewart writes: “His manner was easy and unperplexed; his address
was perfectly well-bred and elegant in its simplicity; he felt neither
eclipsed by the titled nor embarrassed before the learned and eloquent,
but took his station with the ease of one born to it.”
Each poet had a brief political career. As exciseman for several years
it was necessary for Burns to ride over two hundred miles per week, thus
coming constantly in contact with the people. In this public service he
made a record for being thorough, correct and at the same time humane.
Byron made as serious an effort in politics as was possible to his
impetuous and headlong nature. After many hindrances he was granted a
seat in the House of Lords. He traveled awhile, and, returning, made two
or three speeches before the House. Between times he would correct the
proof-sheets of “Childe Harold.” The publication of this poem put an end
to his parliamentary ambitions. “When ‘Childe Harold’ was published,”
he says, “no one ever afterward thought of my prose, nor indeed did I.”
However, he also says, “I would not for the world be like my hero.”
Each spent much time alone with Nature, drinking from the exhaustless
fountain of her varied life. Each loved her most in her wildest,
fiercest moods. Power—they loved it, worshiped it; they felt it in them
and all around them. It was the necessary food for their strenuous,
tempest-tossed souls. Burns loved to walk on the sheltered side of a
forest and listen to a storm rave among the trees. Better still, he loved
to ascend some eminence and stride along its summit amid the flashes of
the lightning and howls of the tempest: “Rapt in enthusiasm, I seemed to
ascend to Him who walks on the wings of the wind.” Byron
Made him friends of mountains, stars;
But the Quick Spirit of the universe
spoke to him best through Nature’s most stupendous form, the turbulent,
merciless ocean.
Byron reveled in the glories of more climes; Burns saw the marvels of
more kingdoms, for he understood the language of the daisy and the mouse.
The self-negating love, the exultant pride the Peasant Poet felt for his
own bonnie Scotland, the English Peer lavished upon a foreign land. Burns
said if he ever reached heaven, he would ask nothing better than just a
Highland welcome.
Burns, in his innate appreciation of the dignity of humanity, is
something of a Siegfried, with the fearless spirit of the forest vocal
with the song of birds, the aroma of blossoming shrubs, the play of the
waterfall and the restful stretch of meadows with their daisies and
heather.
Byron, in the desolation of his youth, in his extremes of laughter and
tears, in his yearning for sympathy, in his broodings over the mysteries
of life, played the character of Hamlet with the world for a stage,
leaving a kindred problem for the wonder of mankind.
Many of Byron’s shorter poems are from Bible stories and characters,
and it is wonderful how his brilliant genius caught and reproduced both
spirit and story. Burns gives us his thought of a religious life in that
sweetest pastoral poem in all literature, “The Cotter’s Saturday Night.”
In the last few months of his life he did much to reproduce it in his own
life, holding family prayer with such earnestness as to bring his hearers
to tears over the penitence for sins and hope in the mercy of God.
In these poets the perceptive faculties roamed at will over a wide
field of human activities, and voiced their impressions with a witchery
of language which has hardly a parallel. The work of both men was
revolutionizing in its effects. Burns found his countrymen in bondage to
the fear of wraiths, hobgoblins and kindred spirits, and he was a mighty
power in their deliverance. Taine estimates that he was as great a force
in Scotland as the Revolution in France.
Byron is believed largely to have influenced the revolutionary movement
in Germany. He gave a direct stimulus to the liberators of Italy, and
ended his life in a heroic struggle for the liberties of Greece.
If Byron’s literary work is more resplendent and daring, Burns’s seems
fresher from the varied living forces about us. If Byron’s is a circlet
of sapphires, Burns’s is that same circlet transmuted by the alchemy of
human sympathy to a wreath of never-fading violets.
When we remember that these colossal figures passed off the stage of life
after thirty-seven short years, when we get a suggestion of the difficult
circumstances and terrible temptations that encompassed their stormy
young lives, we may well leave their failings to God, who alone is their
moral Judge. It may be His compassion for them is commensurate with the
powers with which He endowed them.
_The Man With White Nails_
BY CAPTAIN W. E. P. FRENCH, U.S.A.
My wife brought me the case and the client, and, strict candor compels
me to say, I was not particularly grateful for either. The case was a
curiously involved combination of an over-indulgent, invalid mother;
a shrewd, selfish and unscrupulous son; a trained nurse, rather
worse than she should have been; a cleverly drawn but very unjust
will; an exceedingly large estate mostly in investment securities; a
husband-deserted daughter with two small children and “an annual income
of nothing to keep ’em on”; a witness who would undoubtedly be “agin the
government,” and one other person whose testimony might, or might not, be
favorable to the prosecution, but who had apparently vanished bodily from
the face of the earth. The client was a pretty, gentle little creature,
crushed under a load of trouble much too big for her, quite pathetic in
her helplessness, and shrinking and rather indifferent about her own
claims, but with an almost fierce mother-instinct over the rights of her
babies.
How the partner of my joys and sorrows discovered these wronged mites of
humanity is immaterial—she has a keen scent for injustice or oppression
of any kind—but she rounded them up, brought them to my office, and said
I was to take the case. I never appeal from the decision of my supreme
court, so I said, “Certainly.”
First she took me aside and gave me an _ex parte_ and rather highly
colored statement of the facts in the affair, explaining that her
protégée was diffident and reticent, unless stirred up about the
children, and perorating with the remark, “You will find, John, that my
meek-looking lamb is quite a ferocious animal when roused.” Then she went
over to the other woman, kissed her, gave the boy a pile of my cherished
law-books to use as building-blocks, took the tiny girl on her lap,
hitched her chair a bit closer to the mother and said, “Now, my dear, you
tell John everything, just as you told it to me, and he will fix it all
up for you.”
A tolerable portion of my fairly large practice has consisted, and, I
fancy, will continue to consist, of charity cases brought to me by my
wife. They have, of course, seldom or never been profitable; they have
cost time, work, worry and money, have occasionally been paid in the base
coin of ingratitude, and without them we should have had a much larger
bank account. But the warmest-hearted and most generous woman I have ever
known likes me to help those she thinks are wronged, and it is little
enough for me to do for her dear sake.
My small, scared client attracted me from the first, and my dusty legal
heart ached over her sad story. Her mother had never cared much for
her and had lavished love and money on her brother. She had married
unfortunately, while scarcely more than a child. The estrangement with
her mother had increased, and her brother had craftily widened the
breach. This last fact I had much trouble to elicit, and wormed it out of
her piecemeal.
After three years of neglect and ill-treatment, her husband had deserted
her and run away with another woman—incidentally, her best friend—leaving
her almost destitute. When she recovered from an attack of brain fever
she found a letter from her brother awaiting her, in which he announced
the death of their mother, his marriage to the trained nurse who had
taken care of the mother in her last illness, and their exodus to Europe.
He inclosed a copy of the will, which left everything unreservedly
to him, and said that his attorney would communicate with her. The
man-of-the-law came in person, and stated that he was empowered to pay
her a hundred dollars a month, so long as she did not attempt litigation.
The will was witnessed by the doctor and the trained nurse, and the
doctor was, to all intents, beyond discovery.
It was, on its face, a probable case of undue influence and, perhaps,
mental aberration. But how prove either, without the doubly expert
testimony of the missing physician, who, it appeared, was the only
person, except the son and the nurse, that had seen the invalid during
the last year of her life?
It was a significant fact that the daughter’s name was not mentioned in
the instrument; and I suspected collusion on the part of the medical
gentleman with the beneficiary and the woman who would share the profits
of the criminal enterprise. My poor little client had seen the doctor
once only when she was vainly endeavoring to gain access to her mother,
and described him as a very fine-looking man on the sunny slope of forty,
with wavy blond hair and pointed beard, a suave and kindly manner, a
charming voice and singularly handsome hands.
The bill of items would have fitted tolerably a dozen men of my
acquaintance, and I said as much, asking her, as an afterthought, how she
came to notice his hands. Someone has said that the gist of a woman’s
letter is in the postscript, and the large majority of women that have
employed me as counsel have invariably reserved the leading and important
facts of their cases until the last. This client was no exception to the
rule; but when the dramatic little body had finished personating the
missing man, I would have known him as far as I could see him among ten
thousand, unless he were asleep or quite still; for she had cleverly
imitated a man whose restless hands were ever in motion as he talked,
and who glanced at them with covert satisfaction every few seconds. This
singular trick, the descriptive factors in his personal equation, and
the name he had signed—which, she assured me, was undoubtedly his own—as
witness to the signature of the testatrix were about all the additional
information I could extract from her, except that she had refused her
brother’s proposition and was ready to fight to the bitter end for her
children’s rights, though she had to beg or steal the money to pay court
and counsel.
I waived retainer and took the case on contingent fee, which, after
the little grass widow had left, I told my wife, in gentle irony, I
would divide with her; but that she must not squander it on yachts and
four-in-hands, because these big paying cases are pretty rare—fortunately.
That good woman received my ironic suggestion with her usual placidity,
and said: “Very well, my dear; I shall certainly hold you to your promise
of division, and I have a premonition that we shall win the suit. Mark
my words! I don’t want a yacht, but I shall buy that lovely Goldsborough
place and spend my declining years looking at the river-view from that
glorious, wide piazza.”
I had not the slightest hope of success, for even if the witness could be
found, I had no doubt that he was a scamp and in the brother’s pay.
A letter to a friend and fellow-attorney in the city where the mother
had died brought this reply: The man I wanted to find had been a general
practitioner there for some years; he had had a very large practice
and the liking and respect of the community; but both had fallen away
from him from two very odd causes; one, that he had suddenly become
exceedingly untrustworthy and unreliable, in fact, a phenomenal and
outrageous liar; and the other, that he had unaccountably taken to the
habitual wearing on every possible or impossible occasion, professional
or social, of white kid gloves or long white gauntlets, bringing these
ghostly hands to the bedside of patients, or hovering with them over the
operating-table. It began to be noised abroad that Dr. Bently, which was
his name, was unsound in his mind, was suffering from some dreadful,
contagious disease which had broken out in his hands, and that the truth
was not in him. My informant added that shortly after the death of Mrs.
Johnstone, my small client’s mother, the doctor had taken himself, his
gauntlets and his marvelous mendacity to New York, but that his present
whereabouts were unknown to the writer.
The detective agency in New York, of which I next inquired, sent me word
that there was no such name as Bernard Brice Bently in the directory or
in any way on record as a physician or surgeon in that city. All this
took time, and, meanwhile, I had advertised vainly in prominent papers
all over the country and had had an agent interview many of the doctor’s
old acquaintances. The man had disappeared, and within a very narrow
limit of time the will would be admitted to probate.
Just at this time another legal matter required my presence in New York,
and, when I reached there, the engrossing nature of my business drove
most other matters out of my head. After several days of close and
confining work, I finished taking the depositions I needed, and purposed
to return home that evening. It occurred to me that a pleasant way of
spending my remaining hours in town would be to take a stroll through
Central Park, which I had not seen in years—not, in fact, since I had
been a student in Columbia Law School.
I walked from the Fifty-ninth Street entrance as far as the Museum, which
is about opposite Eighty-second Street, and had sat down to rest near the
obelisk. It was a magnificent late spring day, and I was lazily enjoying
the beauty of the place and watching the passing show, when a man on the
next bench attracted my attention by springing to his feet and gazing
eagerly and fiercely beyond me and up the drive. If ever ferocious desire
and intent to kill were written on a human face it was on his.
Instinctively I glanced in the direction he was looking and saw a
steam runabout, with one man in it, approaching smoothly and not very
rapidly. I turned back instantly and sprang at the would-be assassin,
whose pistol was out and pointed, but I was too late. There was a flash
and a report, and I could see the hammer of the self-cocker rising for
a second shot, when I struck him a left-hander. I do not often have
occasion to hit a man, but when I do he usually falls. As he went down
the weapon spoke again, but I knew that that bullet went wide. The fellow
was game, though, and determined, for his back had scarcely touched the
ground before he rolled on his side and fired twice at the man in the
locomobile. The fifth chamber of the revolver he let me have, as I flung
myself down on him, and the subsequent proceedings were blank, the ball
having grazed my temple and stunned me.
When I came to I was lying on a leather couch in a very handsomely
appointed doctor’s office. My head was bound up, and I was a bit sick
and dizzy. I suppose I had half swooned again, when I was roused by a
soft touch on my wrist, and looking down I saw the most beautiful and
the whitest man’s hand I have ever seen. But, white as it was, the fine,
filbert-shaped nails were whiter still. They were absolutely milky, and
the half-moons had the ghostly whiteness and lustre of pearls. I was both
startled and fascinated. Surely no living flesh was ever that color, and
no human being with blood in him ever had such nails. Was it the hand of
a corpse? No, it was warm, and, as I looked, the fingers bent and sought
my pulse. A deep, musical voice broke the silence:
“Ah, we are all right now, thank God! How do you feel, friend? Drink
this.” The speaker, holding a tumbler, came in front of me, and I saw a
handsome man with clean-shaven face, black, wavy hair and beautiful but
rather wild-looking eyes.
“Thank you,” I said as I took the glass and obediently drained it; “I
feel somewhat as though I had been trifling with a steam-hammer. But I
shall be all right presently.”
“Of course you will,” he assured me heartily. “You were struck a glancing
blow on the head by the bullet of that poor, half-crazed Pole, who, the
police say, thought I was a Russian duke. The only ill consequence of
your noble act will be an honorable scar, to remind you how gallantly you
risked your life to save a total stranger’s. My dear friend—if you will
allow a friendless man to call you so”—here the charming voice grew as
sweet and vibrant as an organ note—“it was the bravest and most generous
act I ever knew. I cannot thank you adequately, but I hope it may be
given me to serve you some time, and should you ever need a friend’s
purse, his hand or his life, mine are yours.”
I endeavored to deprecate the value of my interference and to moderate
his expressions of gratitude; but he would have none of it, and,
leaping to his feet, began to pace to and fro, expatiating upon what he
extravagantly termed my bravery and unselfishness, and insisting upon his
tremendous obligation to me. He was manifestly in earnest; but all at
once habit asserted itself, the ruling passion came to the fore, and a
trifle “light as air” made “confirmation strong as proof of Holy Writ.”
When he first began to move a memory flashed over me, but, as those
beautiful, restless white hands added their evidence, assurance became
doubly sure. I could see my demure, pretty little client impersonating
this man, and I knew, despite the dyed hair and the shaven beard, that
I had found the missing witness. But I had found something else. I had
found a man suffering from a chronic dementia. Whether his derangement
was general or merely monomania, I was at a loss to determine. If the
former, he was not competent as a witness for either side. If the latter,
the special form and degree of alienation might or might not militate
against his testimony.
I was impelled to take him unawares, and so I said suddenly: “Dr. Bently,
do you remember Mrs. Abbott, the daughter of your former patient, Mrs.
Johnstone, of Laneville?”
If he started or showed surprise or annoyance, it was imperceptible; but
he glanced with smiling complaisance at his nails as he came over to
me, and, touching my forehead, remarked, with most irritating suavity:
“My dear fellow, I fear you are feverish. My name is Charles Chester
Chickering. I never was in Laneville, I never had a patient named
Johnstone, and I have no recollection whatever of anyone by the name of
Abbott.”
He looked straight at me as he uttered these falsehoods, and his tone was
like velvet. There was the flicker of an amused smile on his mouth, but
his eyes were hard and cold as blued steel, the contracted pupils shining
like black pinheads. I stared back at him, and presently he shifted his
gaze from my face to his own right hand, which he was holding out in
front of him, and again that abominable, self-satisfied smirk appeared.
I was filled with boundless contempt for this man I had almost begun to
pity, and as I rose from the couch and began to speak I could fairly
taste the bitterness of the words I flung at him:
“Dr. or Mr. Bernard Brice Bently, Charles Chester Chickering—or whatever
your infernal, alliterative _alias_ may be—I deeply regret that I should
have saved you from the death I have no doubt you richly deserved, and I
earnestly hope that you may be punished for your crime of helping to ruin
a poor little woman and two innocent children. And, by the living God! I
will do all in my power to bring you to——”
He interrupted me eagerly, wonderingly, protestingly. “What is that you
say? Mrs. Abbott and her children living? Why, that scoundrel Johnstone
and that she-devil of a nurse swore to Mrs. Johnstone and me that all
three of them were dead and buried!”
Hope came to life again in my heart. It was a mistake, after all, and
this man could and would rectify it. He had been deceived and had
witnessed the document in good faith. I had commenced an apology when he
uttered a violent exclamation, and, holding the backs of his hands in
front of his face, scrutinized his nails with rapt intensity.
His very lips grew livid, the eyes he turned on me were those of a
madman, and, snarling like a wolf, he screamed: “See what you have
done! Look at my nails!” and thrust his pallid fingers forward for my
inspection.
On the polished, snowy surface of every nail was a bright pink fleck
or spot of about the bigness and shape of a ladybug; but I was barely
conscious of these rosy marks on the intense whiteness of the uncanny
things, for I suppose the smart rap of that pistol bullet and this man’s
extraordinary sayings and doings had upset my fairly choleric temper, and
I was literally beside myself with uncontrollable rage and indignation.
“Damn you and your dead nails!” I shouted back at him. “You cowardly liar
and thief, you are Johnstone’s accomplice, and I will tear the truth out
of you if I have to kill you to do it.”
We were glaring at each other like wild beasts, and, before the words
were fairly out of my mouth, we sprang forward, our hands clutching
hungrily at each other’s throats in the fierce desire to strangle which
comes to men and the other brutes that slay when anger and hate have
reached the last and deadly stage. An undercut would have driven him
back, but I wanted his windpipe and he wanted mine, and each of us was
sick to have the other at close quarters, so a blow would not have been
fair play. We were well matched. I was sure of that as we grappled. We
swayed and strained, and I could feel the blood running down my face
when my wound reopened; but the end came quickly, and, as we crashed to
the floor, he was underneath, and my hands flew up eagerly and clenched
under his chin. Ah! the savage joy of it!
But why did he not struggle? What trick was this? Good God, had the fall
killed him? How white he was! And he had been crimson a second ago.
The revulsion of feeling turned me sick. Was I a murderer? I let go my
hold, leaped to my feet and threw a pitcher of ice water on his head and
face. He gasped, opened his eyes and regarded me calmly and quietly. Was
it only a moment ago that those calm, sad eyes had been narrow rims of
blue around intensely black, distended pupils that had in them the dull
red glare of blood-lust? Now they were soft and human, and the light of
sanity was in them.
“My friend,” he said gently—what a superb voice he had, and how the deep,
rich, mellow tones brushed away anger, hatred and fear—“my friend, I owe
you my life twice. First, you saved it; now, you spare it. And I owe you
more than life. I owe you my restoration to reason, to perfect sanity.
For I have been bitten by a mania so wild, so strange, so improbable
that no man save you who have seen it would believe in its existence.
‘Like cures like.’ It came through a fall and a shock. It has been cured
through a fall and a shock. You were right. I _was_ a liar. The greatest
on earth, I believe, and I gloried in it, and hated to tell a truth lest
it should bring a pink spot on my nails. No, don’t lift me up.”
I had attempted to raise him and had blurted out a word or two of shame,
sympathy and pity.
“I prefer to lie here while I tell you the story,” he went on. “You
have no cause to be ashamed; it was simple self-defense on your part,
for I should probably have killed you in my paroxysm. Besides, you do
not realize what you have done for me. But I thank you for your kindly
sympathy; it is not wasted, believe me. Now, if you will do me a favor,
watch my nails, and, if they become normal, tell me. But, first, put one
of those wet compresses on your wound and slip the bandage over it. You
will forgive me by and bye for fighting with a guest to whom I owed so
much. I was not responsible.”
I hastened to reassure him, and he resumed:
“Before I begin my own weird tale, let me relieve your mind about that
poor, wronged, sensitive child, Mrs. Abbott. I will go back with you
to Laneville, and we will break that will wide open. There will be no
trouble about it. Johnstone is a whelp, his wife is a criminal, and I
can put them both behind the bars. That little woman shall be righted,
if it takes my entire fortune to do it. Now, listen. A trifle over a
year ago, getting out of my phaeton, I fell, struck my head and was out
of my mind for some weeks. When I regained health and strength I found
that my injury had left me with the most unthinkable hallucination that
ever crept into a human brain. Subconsciously, I knew it was a vicious
delusion, but I took the same delight in it that a patient partly in the
control of delirium sometimes takes in the absurdities he utters.
“You know the little white marks on the nails which, as children, we used
to say came from telling lies? Well, my mania was that if I told nothing
_but_ lies, lied constantly and consistently, I could turn mine entirely
white. I tried and I succeeded. The will, obeying a diseased mind, plays
queer pranks. I was partly proud of the result of my experiment, partly
ashamed of it. So I took to wearing gloves and gauntlets most of the
time. I began to get a reputation as a phenomenal liar. Once I overheard
a man say, ‘Dr. Bently says it is so? Then that settles it; it’s a lie
that would turn Beelzebub green with envy. Why, I wouldn’t believe the
doctor if he swore to anything on seventeen cubic miles of Bibles in the
original Hebrew.’
“I could have hugged him with grateful delight. But friends and
practice dropped away. People began to look at me askance, and before
Mrs. Johnstone died she was about the only patient of our class I had
left. The street urchins used to yell at me, ‘Hallo, Ananias! where’s
Sapphira?’ and ‘Berny Bently; or, The Hidden Hand.’ So I came here and
hid myself in this great city, where no one cares for anything but money
and would make much of a rich man if he had claws, hoofs, horns and a
tail all white as snow or black as ink.”
While he spoke I had watched his nails closely and curiously, and the
pink spots had spread and spread, slowly but surely, until the normal,
healthy color had come back to them. I told him, but he never looked at
them. Instead, he got up, came over to me, took my two hands in his and
said slowly and reverently: “Thank God and you, dear friend, I am cured!”
His splendid eyes were filled with tears, and his exquisite voice was
solemn and broken with emotion. My own eyes were rather misty, but then
they were never much good; and, for a lawyer, I was quite moved. I gave
him my friendship then and there, and I have never regretted it.
* * * * *
Two weeks later, starting from my own home, where Mrs. Abbott and Bently
had been our most welcome guests, we all went to Laneville, where we met
Mr. and Mrs. Johnstone, whom we had summoned back by cable. They made us
but little trouble, being cowards as well as scoundrels. Mrs. Abbott,
however—good, kindly, generous little soul—was so unfeignedly sorry for
her unworthy brother that she wished to let him have the lion’s share of
the big property; but we overruled the soft-hearted child-woman and made
her take her full share. I had the pleasure, subsequently, of expressing
to Mr. Johnstone exactly what I thought of him, and I had considerable
difficulty in restraining the doctor from giving him a beating.
Not long after I began divorce proceedings for Mrs. Abbott, but her
rascally husband saved her and me the annoyance of going into court by
opportunely and thoughtfully dying.
My fee was the largest I have ever received from an individual client,
and, in some extenuation for accepting such a small fortune, I would like
to say that it was fairly forced on me by the grateful little creature I
love as though she were my own child.
My wife promptly demanded, and got, her little commission of one-half,
and said she was the best drummer of practice and big-paying clients that
any lawyer ever had. She is, God bless her! And, by the way, we live in
the Goldsborough house, and my dear lady spends a good part of her time
on the piazza she bought with her half of my fee.
Oh, yes! I forgot to mention that Mrs. Abbott’s name is now Bently. They
call her husband “the good physician” in our town, and his word is as
good as any man’s bond. The doctor has lost interest in his hands, but
his sweet and devoted little wife admires them extravagantly. They are
still very handsome, but brown as berries, and his nails are as pink as
yours or mine.
_Organization and Education_
BY WHARTON BARKER
The cardinal tenets of the People’s Party were declared by the
founders of the Republic, established by the War of the Revolution and
guaranteed to our people by the Constitution of the United States. So,
by proclaiming for rule of justice, liberty and equality of opportunity,
not of greed, man was made the master and money the servant. Those who
believe in government of, by and for the people, who believe that the
people are fitted to govern themselves, capable of discerning that which
is good for them and that which is not, must approve the contention the
People’s Party makes; must oppose the aggression of concentrated capital;
must see the need of immediate independent political action outside and
apart from both Republican and Democratic Parties, both dominated by the
money cliques.
The money oligarchy, now in control of all lines of finance,
transportation, distribution and of most lines of production, works
for the profit of the few to the great detriment of the many. These
plutocrats control a slavish metropolitan press, in order that the masses
of our people may be governed for the benefit of the few.
If this control is to stand, if millions of people are to slave for a
few thousand, it is necessary that the many have no direct hand in their
own government, that the many delegate to representatives their power,
and that such representatives should be influenced so as to become the
representatives of the few. The people must have only the semblance of
power, the representatives the real power, in order that governing may be
carried on for the advantage of the rulers, not of the ruled.
So we have nominating conventions run by political bosses, legislative
bodies taking orders from agents of the money cliques, who purchase
franchises for railway lines and for other public utilities; election
laws that make independent voting almost impossible.
Until we have direct nominations the people will be the willing or
unwilling tools of the men who dictate nominations, and they must make
choice between the candidates set up for them. For years the Republican
and Democratic politicians who run conventions have been the agents of
the money oligarchy that deals in and fattens upon all kinds of public
franchises. So the plutocrats make of our Government an instrument for
the oppression of the many and the enrichment of the few. In order to
promote the governing of our people by the few and for the few, promote
legislation that will impoverish and weaken the many but aggrandize
the few in riches and power, it is necessary that law-making should be
intrusted to representatives; that these representatives should be put
more and more out of touch with the people and more in touch with the
few; that these representatives should be removed further and further
from responsibility to the people; that their doings should be hidden and
not subject to review.
So we have demands for extended terms of office; we have opposition
to the election of President and senators by popular vote; we have
opposition to the selection of Federal judges other than by appointment
of the President and Senate; we have, above all, opposition to direct
popular voting upon questions of public policy, upon granting public
franchises.
The referendum is opposed because it would make all laws passed by
legislative bodies subject to review and reversal by a high court, the
court of the whole people entering verdict through the ballot-box. There
is little outward opposition to the principle of direct legislation.
There is much covert opposition from the money oligarchy and much plainer
opposition born of ignorance from the body of the people.
Those who oppose direct legislation hold that the people are not fitted
to govern themselves, that the few are fitted by divine law to rule, that
the many are condemned to be ruled for the benefit of the few by a law
equally divine. This is the law of kings; it is not the law of democracy.
He who holds it is false to our theory of government, is no better than a
monarchist.
Give us direct legislation, such as the initiative and referendum
would establish, and there will be an end to sale of franchises by
representatives and no laws will be enacted to rob the people of their
rights and property. The place to begin with direct voting is in
nomination of all candidates for public office—a People’s Party must
abolish all delegate conventions for making nominations and platforms;
must adopt direct voting for candidates and for declarations of
principles; must have voting precinct clubs for party management. The
district and subdivision plan of organization adopted by the Cincinnati
convention of 1900 is the best plan of organization heretofore proposed,
and it should be put into immediate operation unless a better plan can be
proposed without delay, for it will insure rule of the people in party
management and destroy the power of the political boss who goes into
politics for profit.
If the People’s Party will at once declare for a rank-and-file plan of
organization and management we will see a rush to arms in all states,
for in all the rule of the boss, serving the money oligarchy, is most
offensive. The time has come for such a People’s Party; there is no place
for a People’s Party run on the lines of the Republican and Democratic
Parties.
The day of the hero-led party has passed. The great majority Mr.
Roosevelt received is no evidence to the contrary, for more than three
million citizens out of seventeen million abstained from voting at the
last election. Organization and education of the body of the people
must come through voting precinct organizers and educators—of course
the printed matter must for economy be prepared and sent out from
central offices, from national headquarters, but no proper, no effective
distribution of it can be made except by the precinct organizers.
If the people are to win a national victory there must be from three to
five honest, able, aggressive, patriotic men in each of the one hundred
thousand voting districts of the country working by day and by night.
These men must awaken their immediate neighbors to a lively appreciation
of the wrongs they suffer and point out the way to re-establishment of
their rights, the way to restoration of justice, liberty and equality of
opportunity. When such an army is in the field the people will defeat the
money oligarchy, but not before.
At the election of 1904, I repeat, three million citizens refused to
vote because they would not stultify themselves by voting for either
Roosevelt or Parker, both candidates of the plutocrats. At least two
million citizens voted for Roosevelt because they wished to destroy
the Democratic Party, a party for years without fixed principles.
These five million citizens, together with the eight hundred thousand
citizens who voted for Debs, Watson and Swallow, represented the reform
and dissatisfied vote of the country—five months since. The action of
the Beef Trust, of the Railroad Combination and of allied interests,
all in control of twenty men, and the now openly declared purpose of
President Roosevelt and Secretary Hay to establish in foreign affairs an
American-British alliance, alarm many millions of our citizens as they
have not been alarmed before.
A new epoch in our country opens now, for people and plutocrats are in
a death struggle. The principle the People’s Party stands for is that
man is the master, money the servant. The question—is the People’s Party
equal to the duty of the time?—must be answered at once. If it goes into
the campaign immediately with a voting precinct organization such as was
declared for by the Cincinnati convention of 1900, the answer will be
affirmative.
The cardinal tenets of the party of the people are:
1. Brotherhood of man, love, justice, liberty and equality of opportunity.
2. Government by the people—the recognition of the right of the people to
rule themselves by establishment of direct legislation, the initiative
and the referendum.
3. Honest money—national money, not bank money—that will serve creditor
and debtor alike; that will insure stability of prices, thus be an honest
measure of value, and thereby encourage honest industry and discourage
speculation.
4. Nationalization of railroads and other monopolies that must be public
rather than private monopolies.