A BIGOTED ARCHBISHOP.

All the fools are not confined to any one political party or

religious cult. As a rule the Catholic clergy, while

ultra-dogmatic, are thoroughly decent. While standing up stiffly

for all the claims of their creed, they treat their Protestant

neighbors with courteous toleration. There are exceptions to most

rules, hence it does not infallibly follow that a man is a

gentleman because he is a priest of the Church of Rome. The

unworthy are usually discovered and weeded out, but their

dismissal does not entirely repair the damage done by criminal or

foolish utterance. It is seldom indeed that the Mother-Church

permits a small-bore bigot or brainless blatherskite to rise to

the dignity of an archbishop, but one such has evidently escaped

her watchful eye. Archbishop Cleary, of Kingston, Can., recently

distinguished himself by an ebullition of unchristian bile that

will long be used as an excuse for the existence of the A.P.A.

His utterances were a disgrace to his office. They were beneath

the dignity of the humblest neophite of the Church of Rome. They

remind one of the old Puritanical tongue-borers and witch-

burners. They suggest the Star Chamber of England and the

Inquisition of Spain. The brutality staggers the brain and chills

the blood. They compel those who have ever felt kindly towards

Catholicism to pause and consider. Although the voice of the

Vatican is strangely at variance with the astounding mandate of

the Archbishop, the latter has been pounced upon and exploited by

the "Apes" as an official utterance of the Pope. It appears that

a Catholic young lady officiated as bridesmaid for a friend who

was married in a Protestant church and according to the rites of

that religion. Therefore his reverence proceeded to have a

cataleptoid convulsion and cut fantastic capers before high

heaven. It was entirely within his sacerdotal province to

administer a reprimand. He could, without transcending the

proprieties have advised the Catholics of his diocese to refrain

from officiating at Protestant marriages in future. He did

neither the one nor the other, but proceeded to issue a mandate

which, reduced to the last analysis, means simply that a marriage

not consummated by the Catholic church is no marriage at all, but

simply concubinage born of lust and wickedly sanctioned by human

law. He forbade Catholics, under pain of his dire displeasure,

even witnessing Protestant marriages or attending as mere

spectators at Protestant funerals. Archbishop Cleary has

flagrantly insulted every non-Catholic wife in the world. He cast

the baleful bar-sinister on the escutcheon of every child born of

non-Catholic parents. With all due respect to his holy office,

Archbishop Cleary is one ass. He is a brute who should be taken

out and bastinadoed. Of course due allowance must be made for the

fact that he is a Canuck. Canada is but half-civilized. It is

still "loil" to old England, the strumpet of nations, the

governmental harlot of history. It continues to take its manners

and customs from the old country. It is to the Queen's apron

strings like an idiot's scalp to the belt of an Apache squaw.

Whenever John Bull whistles it comes a running like a half-grown

spaniel at the call of a stable-boy. It has never mustered up

sufficient sense and sand to set up for itself. It is the red

bandana upon which Britannia blows her protrusive bugle. It is

the cuspidore into which she voids her royal rheum. We could not

expect much even from a Catholic archbishop in such a country. In

fact, the Canadian Catholics, like the Canadian Protestants, are

so narrow between the eyes that they can look through a key-hole

with both eyes at once. Their heads are small and ill-furnished.

The winters are so long that the sap cannot rise to the top--it

stops at the belly-band and there coagulates. Canadians of any

faith are scarce so broad in the religious beam as Texas

Baptists, who believe that unless a man be treated to a

sanctified plunge- bath by some acephalous shouter he is headed

direct for hell. Still it is something of a shock to hear even a

Canadian archbishop branding four-fifths of the people of this

world as bastards. It makes one ashamed of the genus homo to hear

him forbidding Catholics attending the funerals of their

Protestant friends. One cannot help asking, What of marriage and

motherhood during the long ages before St. Peter became Pope? Was

Eve a concubine and Sara a slut? Has Archbishop Cleary an hundred

generations of harlotry behind him? I am seeking no controversy

with Catholicism. With its peculiar ideas of marriage and divorce

I have nothing at present to do. I am simply tying a few

bow-knots in the ears of an ass. I deny, however, that it is

within the power of any church to add to the sanctity of a

marriage ceremony. Marriage is nothing more or less than formal

notification to the world that a man and woman have already

become husband and wife. It matters not how this announcement is

made, so long as due respect is shown the established customs of

the country, so long as it is generally accepted as sufficient.

"What God hath put together, let no man put asunder," cried the

Archbishop as he contemplates the possible annulment of a

non-Catholic marriage contract. What God hath put together no man

CAN put asunder. Even the almighty hand of death cannot break

that sacred bond. But how does God join people together?--how

does he make a man and woman husband and wife? Is it by the

mumbled formula of priests or magistrates? If so, then is a

MARIAGE DE CONVENIANCE AS SACRED as the mating of Cupid and

Psyche. Then is the union of a snub-nosed American parvenu with

an idiotic European "nobleman" whom she has bought with her

daddy's dollars as holy in the sight of heaven as that of old

Isaac's son with Laban's beauteous daughter. God joins man and

woman together only with the golden links of love. When they are

joined thus they are bone of one bone and flesh of one flesh.

Were they alone in the world no marriage ceremony would be

needful; but being a portion of society they must obtain its

sanction. When they are joined together by church or state and

love is lacking the union is not of heaven, but of hell. The

woman is no true wife, but a kept mistress, and every child born

unto her is a bastard. She has sold herself, and the priest or

preacher who knowingly sets the seal of his approval upon her sin

becomes an accomplice in a subterbrutish crime. But neither

church nor state can read a woman's heart--all it can do is to

announce to the world, "This woman elects to be that man's wife."

There's naught more sacrosanct in the act of church or state in

so far as the marriage ceremony is concerned than in the

newspaper notice of its consummation. A few years ago a young and

cultured woman, a woman beautiful as the dawn and with a

suggestion of the Madonna in her fair young face, was persuaded

by an ambitious mother to marry an old Silenus whom the political

ocean in its madness had scooped out of the ooze and thrown among

the stars. Three children have been born to her, and if current

report may be credited, all are semi-idiots. Her gross husband is

so repulsive to her that her babies are conceived as in some

devil's dream and brought forth in despair. Thank heaven this

ill-mated couple are not Catholics. But had they been: does

Archbishop Cleary mean to tell me that all the power of the

Church of Rome could have rendered their union holy? It is quite

likely that Archbishop Cleary will not have to wait very long for

a letter from Rome. When it comes I opine that it will contain a

friendly tip from the Pope not to talk too much. His Holiness is

a man of great good sense, and it will naturally occur to him

that while reasonable church discipline is desirable it may be

enforced without flagrantly insulting the millions of very worthy

people who decline to accept his dogma.

* * *

SALMAGUNDI.

This year's crop of Christmas accidents appears to be up to the

average. As an angel-maker Christmas outclasses St. Patrick's day

and is almost equal to the Fourth of July. The North celebrates

the birth of our dear Lord by stuffing itself to the bursting

point with plum budding, while the South manifests its

appreciation of God's mercy by blowing itself to pieces with

gunpowder. Dozens of people were killed, hundreds lost more or

less important portions of their anatomy while a great army of

new-made dyspeptics goes marching onward to the grave. I cannot

understand what either plumpudding or gunpowder has to do with

saving grace. The man must be very gross who can celebrate with

gluttony and drunkenness the birth of the Redeemer. Why should

anyone desire to transform the world into a murderous pandemonium

because of the arrival of the Prince of Peace? Truth to tell,

Christmas has become a secular holiday rather than a day for

religious rejoicing, and Deists, Atheists and Agnostics take as

much interest in its observation as do those who believe in the

divinity of the Babe of Bethlehem. More people get drunk on

Christmas than on any other day in the year. It is a time of

violence and blood, rather than of "peace on earth, good will to

men." I move that we switch, and instead of celebrating the

nativity of Christ, observe the birth of Bacchus. We will then be

privileged to drink until we are drunken. We can then stuff

ourselves with the good things of earth and be consistent. We can

then explode cannon-crackers, fire anvils and yoop with our

mouths open without being guilty of the slightest disrespect to

our God. But what must Christ Jesus think as he looks over the

jasper walls, of this high revel, supposedly held as a sacrament?

Surely he must be sorry he was ever born of woman. But gluttony,

and drunkenness and fireworks are not the full extent of a

so-called Christian world's offering. We have perverted the

communistic doctrine of Christ in our practice of giving

Christian presents. So long as custom confines gifts to immediate

relatives and dependents it was well enough, for the largesse was

usually selected with discretion and prompted by love; but it has

now become the practice to send gifts to pretty much the entire

circle of one's acquaintances. The result is the expenditure of

tens of millions of money annually in the purchase of useless

plunder. And the worst of it is that presents are usually given

on the reciprocity plan--the custom has well nigh left the realm

of sentiment and degenerated into social tyranny or brute

selfishness. The homes of this land are littered to-day with

trash which the recipients did not want and cannot use. And half

the people who incurred this foolish expense are suffering the

inconvenience of poverty. On the day after Christmas a lady

shoved me her presents. They made a truly imposing pile. "There's

not a solitary thing in the entire load," said she, "for which I

have the slightest use. I cannot retain much of the stuff as

keepsakes because of the bulk, and I am neither privileged to

sell it or to give it away. I would have appreciated a rose or a

ribbon from one I love more than all this trumpery from the

people who are for the most part mere acquaintances. And I? Oh I

adhered to the custom--went broke buying a lot of useless truck

with which to encumber others. And now that Christmas is over and

we contemplate our thin purses and impossible presents, we all

wonder why 'that monster custom' doesn't permit us to exercise a

little common sense. Christmas is becoming ever more and more a

nightmare to me. The dinners are simply dreadful. The housewife

begins a month in advance to plot against the stomachs of her

people. I never ate but one Christmas dinner for which I did not

feel like apologizing to my doctor, and that was not eaten in

strictly religious company. It was a regular Bohemian lunch

partaken of on a Pullman by myself, a newspaper man and two other

sinners. The everlasting roast turkey, the pudding, pies and all

the rest of the greasy, indigestible mass was missing. We had

tongue sandwiches and Budweiser, deviled ham and more beer. I

remarked that we were awfully wicked, but the newspaper man

consoled me by saying the Christ was something of a Bohemian

himself. We take an infinite deal of pains and spend an awful

sight of money just to make ourselves miserable." One great

trouble with the American people is that they do not have nearly

enough holidays. In fact, Christmas is the only one really worthy

of the name, for on New Year's, and July Fourth, we do not cease

business until noon, while on Thanksgiving we forget to chase the

nimble nickel merely long enough to feed. Next to gain-getting,

eating seems to be the important business of the Universe. It is

the manner in which a semi-civilized people express pleasure.

Ouida has called attention to this fact somewhere. If a general

wins an important battle, if a poet writes an immortal epic, if a

Columbus discovers a new world, or if a God becomes incarnate

we--eat! Yet there be sentimentalists who say that soul and

stomach are not synonymous! It appears that the heart cannot

feel, that the brain cannot enjoy unless we're shovelling a

varied assortment of provender into the belly. That humble but

useful organ seems to be the seat of all joy, as it is the source

of most sorrow.

. . .

The American custom of "treating" is receiving some severe

criticism from the European press. It deserves it. It is one of

the most ridiculous and hurtful that ever cursed mankind. It is

responsible for the bulk of the crime and pauperism usually

accredited to John Barleycorn. Where there is no treating there's

usually little intemperance. When a man steps into a "resort" for

a glass of beer he's pretty apt to find a party lined up at the

bar. He wants to pay for his beer, drink it and take his

departure. But this is not permitted. He may have no more than a

passing acquaintance with any of those present, but he must drink

with the crowd, and having done so feels obligated to ask the

crowd to drink with him. It does so, and he's "out" from one to

three dollars. Having drunk with Tom he must drink with Dick and

with Harry, and when he departs he's more than half drunk. The

chances are that he could ill afford the expense incurred--that

if left to himself he would have taken one drink instead of a

dozen. "Treating" is a foolish custom that should be abolished in

the interest of sobriety. It is good neither for the saloon nor

for society. It is not good for the saloon because it occasions

drunkenness and disorder and causes it to be avoided by thousands

of otherwise good paying patrons. It is not good for society

because weak men waste their substance, and a drunken man is an

unsafe citizen. But the treating habit has too strong a grip on

the American people to be eliminated by magazine essays--it must

be made a misdemeanor. I am told that in Germany it matters NOT

how friendly the members of a symposiac may be, everybody is

expected to order and pay for his own booze. The result is that

the German drinking place is respectable as the average

restaurant and is patronized by almost the entire people.

Temperance is the rule--stimulants are freely used but seldom

abused. The treating habit is born of the American desire to

"splurge." It means an enormous waste of money. It likewise means

a sinful waste of good wine, for when a crowd of men belly a bar

and pour stimulants into themselves as swine absorb swill it

really matters little whether they drink Pomeroy See or

barrel-house booze. They do not enjoy their potations--their only

desire is to make drunk come. The treating habit is making of us

a swinish people and strengthening the hands of the

Prohibitionists. . . .

The "Rev." Sam Jones of Jawgy has broken loose again. This time

he sets his cornstalk spear in rest and charges full tilt at the

public school system and pretty much everything else in sight.

His pathway is strewn with a gruesome wreck of the English

grammar. Sam discussing the merits of education suggest a brindle

mule criticising the Venus de Milo or a scavenger expatiating on

the odors of Araby. His reverence (?) has become imbued with the

idea that it spoils a boy to educate him, which goes to prove

that the less a man knows the more he despises knowledge. But we

can scarce blame Sam for railing at education. He is but obeying

the law of self-preservation. When the people learn to

distinguish between a hawk and a heron-saw they will drive this

putrid-mouth little blatherskite from the pulpit. . . .

The New York Press wants all niggers holding federal offices in

the South "armed to the teeth" for their own protection. It has

an idea that the South is peopled only by "white savages" whose

favorite sport is the shooting of nigger officer-holders from

ambush. Like the erstwhile Artemus Ward's monkey, the editor of

the Press is "a most amusin kuss." The South never gets angry at

that kind of an animal. Occasionally a corrupt Republican

administration appoints some ignorant Ethiopian to office who

becomes insufferably insolent to his white neighbors and is

called down with a six-shooter; but for every negro office-holder

"assassinated by Southern savages" at least five white women are

dragged from their homes by Northern white-caps and brutally

abused. Who says so? I do; and I stand ready to prove it by the

files of the leading Republican paper of this nation for ten

years past. I refer, of course, to the St. Louis Globe- Democrat,

the best all-around newspaper in the world. The South has very

little affection for nigger office- holders, but they are full as

safe as any other class of citizens so long as they behave

themselves. The black man is not to blame for accepting an

office, it is the Republican administration that deserves censure

in thus making him the political superior of his white brethern.

It is not the nigger who deserves killing, but the meddlesome

Yankee editors who encourage him to be insolent.

. . .

According to press report a fashionable New York society female

has dismissed her maid and engaged a valet. Well, if the dear

creature enjoys having a man dress and undress her, comb her hair

and lace her corsets why should an envious world stand on its

hinder legs and carp? New York fashionables must have some

antidote for ennui. If it be proper for ladies to have valets I

presume that it is permissible for men to have maids. What is

sauce for the goose should be sauce for the gander. Verily "the

world do move."

. . .

In the morning Mr. Logan wore a doeskin box coat with pearl

buttons nearly as large as alarm clocks in two rows on it. His

spats were old-gold color to match. In the afternoon he wore a

dark plaid coat and trousers and a saffron-colored vest. The vest

was garnished with maroon-colored inch-and-a-quarter checks. He

wore an Ascot scarf, dark blue, with lavender polka dots. His

scarfpin was a gold whip four inches long and set with a

half-inch turqoise in the middle. He wore ox-blood shoes in the

morning and ox-blood gloves and in the afternoon his shoes and

gloves were buff colored. In the evening he wore full

dress.--Chicago Times-Herald.

And still we wonder at the increase of crime! Could any

self-respecting Texan with a six-shooter concealed about his

person be expected to meet such a gorgeous bird o' paradise and

suffer it to escape? I wonder if Mr. Logan scrapes his tongue,

manicures his toes and puts his moustache on curl papers? And I

wonder what the devil old "Black Jack" would say could he wake up

long enough to take survey of his clothes-horn of a son? And I

wonder what the deuce the woman who married it will do with it?

And I wonder why the hades his ma doesn't lead the little man out

into the woodshed, remove his panties, lay him across the

maternal knee and hit him 'steen times across the rear elevation

with a green cypress shingle? Think of a featherless he animal

playing peacock--no mission in God's world but to dress and

undress itself three times a day. . . .

The New York Medical Record says that "a custom prevails in this

country that ministers should be considered as free from

pecuniary obligation to the doctor for service rendered." The

Record then proceeds to file a very vigorous kick because of the

aforesaid custom, broadly intimating that sky-pilots in general

are long on gall and short on gratitude. There is certainly no

reason why the preacher, who usually receives a good salary,

should not pay for his poultices and pills. When he relieves

cases of soul-sickness he does so "for the glory of God" and the

long green. He expects to be paid twice for his services--once

here and again in heaven. The doctor of medicine is not

infrequently poorer in this world's goods than the preacher, and

he looks forward to but one fee. He should not be deprived of

that by men who sweetly sing:

"I would not live always, I ask not to stay."

If the doctors treat the dominies gratis it follows as a matter

of course that they must recoup themselves by adding to the bills

of their lay brethren, just as railway companies which carry

preachers at half-rate must saddle the loss upon their other

patrons.

. . .

Mintonville, Ky., not only sticks to its gods, but insists on

clinging with a death grip to its good old orthodox devil, horns,

hoofs and tail. The Rev. Gilham of the Christian church of that

city, who has doubtless discovered recently that that unimportant

portion of the world which moves and has its being outside of

Mintonville had several centuries back diplomatically dropped the

devil question, undertook to inform his flock that he, too had

arrived at the conclusion that his Satanic Majesty was a myth, a

delusion and a snare, a howling farce. The reverend gentleman's

intentions were good, but he had reckoned without his

congregation. They had always had a devil who was responsible for

their pecadilloes; he was a convenient little institution to have

around when the pecadilloes were a little more numerous than was

compatible with the moral standard of Mintonville, and they

realized that if the devil were removed from the Mintonville

directory they would have to reform or shoulder their own

shortcomings. Either course was quite too sad to contemplate. In

fact the Mintonvillians positively would not contemplate them.

Give them their devil and they could safely straddle between the

horns of their dilemma. Remove their devil and they were undone.

But Parson Gilham asserted that there was no devil. Mintonville

had consequently to choose between their devil and their parson.

The world could furnish more parsons but it couldn't furnish more

devils. It was the parson and the devil for it and the red downed

the black--the parson had to go. The reverend gentleman was

ejected from his sacred office with scorn and contumely and

likewise a number of pistol shots. It is to be supposed that the

devil now reigns triumphant in Mintonville, while Gilham smooths

down his clerical coat-tails from the horizontal to the proper

perpendicular and wonders if he has not, like the proverbial

parrot, talked too damned much.

* * *

THE FOOTLIGHT FAVORITES.

BY ETHELYN LESLIE HUSTON.

In the December ICONOCLAST there appeared a tirade on "The Stage

and Stage Degenerates" that was as sweeping in its assertions as

it was narrow in its views. The writer revels in reminiscences of

his newspaper associations with the cheap beer-drinking,

sand-floor class, swings their vices and vulgarities before the

public, describes them as garbed in "loud patterned" trousers and

snow- white overcoats and epitomizes the whole thing as an Augean

stable, impure, impossible, vile, vulgar and bad. He then tells

us calmly that "these are the representatives of their

profession, so far as America is concerned," and he gives them to

us as the "middle class of the people of the footlights."

If these are the "middle class," what is the next grade below?

Where does he place the dividing line? Does he make no

distinction between the vaudeville, continuous performance

buffoons and the thousands who are "not stars," but working well

and perhaps hoping? Does he call our scullery-maids and

stable-boys "representative American middle class?" Does he call

Mable Strickland and other dainty little hard-workers in minor

parts typical of the hideous coarseness and vice he has

described? Does he bracket THEM with his beer-drunk, easy-virtue

"chorus-girls?" Does he realize all he means when he says of

those he depicts "there were no stars among them, and none of the

lower stratum?" Briefly, did he know what he was writing about?

When a man sits down on a curb stone with his feet in the gutter

to "study life" and imagines himself a philosopher, while he

moralizes on the muddy feet that pass him, he would probably feel

grieved if the strong hand of some clear-headed individual lifted

him up out of the gutter's filth and he was informed that much

depended upon one's view being from a level, not an incline. We

do not Judge our middle-class citizens by our cooks, and it is

apt to suggest unwisdom, to express it very mildly, to gauge the

men and women workers of the stage by beer-hall habitues and

fleshling courtesans.

This an age of work and a generation of workers. The times, the

conditions, the needs of the century are driving women out into

the world as never before in the world's history. They must work

to live and to help others live and in every line of work

possible is woman found. The stage gives employment to thousands

of women eminently fitted to entertain and amuse the public.

Under ordinary conditions the great army of players find its lot

a not unpleasant one. Women bears its harness lightly, to whom

manual labor would be a mental and physical crucifixion. It is a

labor of brain as well as body, of the soul as well as the

senses, of the artistic as well as the prosaic. Its temptations

are many and its pitfalls are many, but they are little, if any,

more than are the temptations in many other fields of

self-support for women. And notwithstanding the gentleman's

profound deductions, there are a number of good women on the

American stage even if they are not "given credit for being so by

their fellow professionals"--and iconoclastic writers. And by

these I do not mean the weary females described by Lizzie

Annandale as reclining on the shoulders of their men companions,

in mal-adorous day coaches on cross-continent "jumps." These

women, if he will pardon the contradiction, are not the

"representative middle class of the American stage." They are

the scullery-maid class, for they are on the lowest rung of the

professional ladder and few ever ascend from that lowest rung. It

is their native element.

But these women who are neither "stars or the lower stratum," who

study and labor, even though the labor be light through being one

of love for their profession, who give a refinement and a

sweetness to the many little dramas that appeal to critique and

common folk alike, who speak to us of wife and sister and mother

and sweetheart, and whose voices are as sweet and gestures as

gentle and personalities as refined as are those of our own home

women nestling safe in the firelight of our ingle-nook--these

women are not immoral in a ratio of "ten to one." And with them,

as with our home women, it is not their sense of morality that is

their greatest safe-guard. It is their sense of refinement. It is

a mistake to think that only Christian and moral women are

virtuous. "Passion leaps o'er cold decree," and Christian

precepts and moral teaching are cold and distant things when the

blood leaps like molton lava through heart and brain. With

Marguerite telling her beads, the prayers become but a babble of

empty sound on her lips when the sweet poison of her lover's

teachings crept through ear and heart and opened to her

wondering, frightened dreams a Paradise of sense and sound and

sweetness and dreamy, swooning loveliness before which her

pictured pearl and golden heaven waxed chill and distant and

austere. Prayers did not save Francesca from the sweet torment of

her Passion and her Purgatory. Prayers save but rarely, for they

are to darkness and to mystery that give back only the awful

weight of silence--silence under which the frantic heart

struggles and stifles as beneath a pall. Prayers reach out to an

infinity that is shrouded always, but the lover's lips are sweet

and the caress is close and the arms are warm and human. What

wonder if the brain forgets when the heart thirsts and pleads?

What wonder if the reason waver and faint when the winged god

nestles close in the breast? What woman if the woman wake and

thrill and "answers to the touch of one musician's hand" as an

instrument that is silent till the master touch sweep the

strings? What wonder if the marble warm and waken and throb to

quick life beneath the passion of Pygmalion's kiss? What wonder

if women love with an answering love if their God have so

created? And what wonder if their prayer to him faint on their

lips beneath the surging diapason of the waking heart beneath? If

he so created, what then? If he "saw them made and said 'twas

good," what then? If he made love chief, to deity and then

destroy, its ecstacy blending with agony "as swells and swoons,

across the wold the tinkling of the camel's bell," what then? If

he made the greatest thing in the world and life speaks to life

as a magnet to the pole, what then? Can you break that strong,

silent current by a breathed invocation? Did not the Man cry from

the cross in his exquisite agony, "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani!"

And if his divine faith fainted on the threshold of his kingdom,

is it strange if human faith sink beneath life's crucifixion and

the babble of priest grow poor and harsh before the sweetness of

"a little laughter and a little love"--the only hyssop in the

sponge of vinegar? And we wander so far to find so little!

In Jean Paul's cry "How lonely is everyone in this wide charnal

of the universe!"--is the explanation of--much.

We are as we are. And Allah is great.

And because we are as we are, it is fallacy to think that the

good women, in the accepted sense of the term, are the only

virtuous ones. Women of the stage and of the world ponder little

on Moses and the prophets. Their lives are too full of grinding

fact to reck much of unsubstantial fancies. And Prayer and Priest

save women from little if Personality be not there. Teachings of

virtue and morality are lip service and things of air. But when a

woman's self rises to defend her honor--an honor that is a sacred

thing in its own worth, not a question that will but win her

reward in other life, then does true morality speak and then does

woman find her greatest safeguard. A woman is but a weak thing

who must cower behind the skirts of her religion to guard her

purity. And these women of the stage who are its "middle class"

are also its gentlewomen. For unfortunately its "stars" many of

them but rival the other "stratum" in lawless infamy. In that,

did the writer in December make his supreme mistake.

Temptation in the footlight world is strong, but a woman's pride

is stronger. Under temptation's test, her religion might was dim,

but her refinement would rise as a battlement in defense. Her

church and creed might waver and sink, but that undefinable

innocence which we call womanhood, would lead her, a Dian,

through the fires of hell. In society and the slums a large

percentage of women are courtesans by choice. The one has a

refinement that is but a veneer, and the other has no refinement

at all. And as with the world, so with the stage. In the middle

class are found the truer gentlewomen. Women of the drama must of

necessity be gentlewomen, the refinement must be innate, or they

would fail utterly. An actress who is a gentlewoman can with her

art stoop to portray sin, but an actress who is a common woman

cannot rise to portray a refinement of which her coarse nature

has no conception. Mrs. Kendal a woman who is as the wife of

Caesar, can become a "Second Mrs. Tanguery" before the

footlights. But Lizzie Annadale's chorus girl could never enact

the role of a Mrs. Kendal on or off the stage. The former is a

comparatively light task. The latter is an impossibility. And

because they are refined women, though not necessarily "good"

women, are they as a class virtuous women. Their instinctive

womanhood would shrink from an impure life as quickly as they

would lift their skirts from the mire of the gutter. The deadly

chill of physical repulsion would be as strong in one case as in

the other. In individual cases they have "sinned" as we term it,

but qui voulez vous! The ratio on the stage is little larger than

that of the world's middle class and not at all larger than that

of the world's society women. I also object to those wild

fanatics who would "elevate the stage," not because it would be

Herculean labor, but because the aforesaid fanatics would find

larger and more fruitful fields for their efforts in the shadow

of their own church spire. Let them leave the women of the

footlights alone and turn their attention to the women in the

boxes. It would give a bored public relief and be distinctly and

beautifully amusing--as an experiment. Waco, Texas, December 11,

1897.

* * *

GINX'S BABY.

BY WILLIAM MARION REEDY.

In an old book store I found the other day, a little book that

should not have been forgotten. It was written almost

twenty-eight years ago by a man named Jenkins, an Englishman,

born in India, and educated in part, in the United States. The

name of the book is "Ginx's Baby; His Birth and Other

Misfortunes."

With the remarkable growth of altruism or humanitarianism in the

last thirty years, with the application of sincere sympathy as

one of the possible solvents of the mystery of misery, it is

strange that this book should have passed from the minds of men.

The book is a true satire. That is to say its irony is excited

for the benefit of mankind. The pessimism of the story, its note

of despair, is in reality, a summons to man to do better by his

brother. Underlying its bitterness there is such a gentleness of

heart as must uplift the reader's own.

The author has the great gift of humor, which all true pessimists

possess, and none more than Schopenhauer. He loves humanity

though he scourges it. He loves, above all, the little children

whom Christ loved, as typifying the heart perfect in innocence.

Somewhat the quality of Dickens is in his method of thought, and

his turns of expression; but he is not the evident artist that

Dickens is. He does not seek opportunity to revel in mere

rhetoric. He goes for the heart of his subject and his literary

charms are displayed quite incidentally to his progress thereto.

His stylism does not clog his story or cumber his argument. The

result is that he produced a tract of the Church of Man which is

a powerful argument for a realization in Man of the Church of

God. His book is superbly human and "Ginx's Baby" deserves

immortality with other dream- children of good men's hearts and

minds in story and in song.

Room for Ginx's Baby in the gallery of undying children; with

Marjorie Fleming, Sir Walter's "Bonnie, Wee Coodlin' Doo," with

Pater's "Child in the House," with Ouida's "Bebe," with Mrs.

Burnett's "Fauntleroy," with Barrie's "Sentimental Tommy," with

all the little ones in the books of Dickens and the poems and

stories of Eugene Field.

The child in literature is something new, comparatively. We need

more of the effort to understand the child mind, the child heart,

the child point of view. It will aid us to develop the child, if

once we can enter his world and come into sympathy with his

impression. It will purify ourselves, this fresh, new, beautiful

world of the child's; its clear, pure air will wash clean our

souls; its innocence of doom will revive our hope. The child is a

soul fresh from God's mint. If only we could study it more we

might re-gain, from the contemplation, some of our own lost

innocence, and, when we come to die, go to our Maker, like

Thackery's immortal Col. Newcombe, with our hearts "as a little

child's."

But "Ginx's Baby" is not an idyl. It is a tragedy. It breathes

the spirit of Malthus, only the spirit is transformed into one of

pity for the victim of life rather than one of preservation of

the nation. We are not, in this book, the victim of the baby. The

baby is our victim. His story will illustrate the philosophy

better than any attempt at interpretation, and the humor of the

telling only intensifies the tragedy. "The name of the father of

Ginx's Baby was Ginx. By a not unexceptional coincidence, its

mother was Mrs. Ginx. The gender of Ginx's Baby was masculine."

That is the first paragraph of the book, and there you have a

hint of the flippant flavor; also a very strong suggestion of Mr.

Charles Dickens. The hero of the book was a thirteenth child.

Ominously humorous! The mother previously had distinguished

herself. On October 25th, one year after marriage, Mrs. Ginx was

safely delivered of a girl. No announcement of this appeared in

the papers. On April 10th, following, "the whole neighborhood,

including Great Smith Street, Marsham Street, Great and Little

Peter Street, Regent Street, Horseferry Road, and Strutton

Ground, was convulsed by the report a woman named Ginx had given

birth to "a triplet, consisting of two girls and a boy." The

Queen heard of it, as this birth got into the papers, and sent

the mother three pounds. Protecting infant industry! And

protection, it seems, resulted in over-production for, in a

twelvemonth, there were triplets again, two sons and a daughter.

Her Majesty sent four pounds. The neighbors protested and began

to manifest their displeasure uncouthly, so the Ginx family

removed into Rosemary Street, where the tale of Mrs. Ginx's

offspring reached one dozen. Then Ginx mildly entered protest. If

there were any more, singles, twins or triplets, he would drown

him, her or them, in the water-butt. This was immediately after

the arrival of Number 12.

Here, under the chapter-heading of "Home, Sweet Home," the

author, still reminiscent of Dickens, but delightfully compact

and laconic, describes the miserable dwelling of the Ginx's with

a bitterness of humor that mocks the sentiment of Howard Payne's

song. As a specimen of clean realism, this description is more

effective than anything of Zola's; for Zola's realism is idealism

gone mad. The squalor of the slum is heightened by the

associations that cling to the name Rosemary. A bit of

sermonizing upon the responsibilities of landlords for the souls

in that slum, and the author reverts to Ginx and his family.

"Ginx had an animal affection for his wife, that preserved her

from unkindness even in his cups." You thank the author for not

succumbing to realism and making Ginx a brute. Ginx worked hard

and gave his wife his earnings, less sixpence, with which sum he

retreated, on Sundays, from his twelve children, to the ale-house

to listen sleepily while ale-house demagogues prescribed remedies

for State abuses. He was ignorant of policies and issues; simply

one of a million victims of the theories upon which statesmen

experiment in legislation and taxation. He was one of the many

dumb and almost unfeeling "chaotic fragments of humanity" to be

hewn into shape in one of two ways; either by "coarse artists

seeking only petty profit, unhandy, immeasurably impudent," or by

instruction to be made "civic corner-stone polished after the

similitude of a palace." He was appalled by the many mouths he

had to feed. He was touched by his wife's continuous heroism of

sacrifice for the children, and he felt, in a dim fashion,

something of an intuition of "her unsatisfied cravings and the

dense motherly horrors that sometimes brooded over her" as she

nursed her infants. She believed that God sends food to fill the

mouths He sends. She had been able to get along. She would be

able to get along.

Ginx, feeling another infant straw would break his back.

determined to drown the straw. Mrs. Ginx, clinging to No. Twelve,

listened aghast. The stream of her affections, though divided

into twelve rills, would not have been exhausted in twenty-four,

and her soul, forecasting its sorrows, yearned after that

nonentity Number Thirteen. Ginx sought to comfort her by the

suggestion that she could not have any more. But she knew better.

After eighteen months the baby was born. Ginx thought it all out

before the event. "He wouldn't go on the parish. He couldn't keep

another youngster to save his life. He would not take charity.

There was nothing to do but drown the baby." He must have talked

his intentions at the ale-house, for the people in the

neighborhood watched her "time" with interest. Going home one

afternoon, he saws signs of excitement around his door. He

entered. He took up the little stranger and bore it from the

room. "His wife would have arisen but a strong power called

weakness held her back." Out on the street, with the crowd

following him, Ginx stopped to consider. "It is all very well to

talk about drowning your baby, but to do it you need two

things--water and opportunity. He turned toward Vauxhall Bridge.

The crowd cried "Murder!"

"Leave me alone nabors," shouted Ginx; "this is my own baby and

I'll do wot I likes with it. I kent keep it an' if I've got

anythin' I can't keep, it's best to get rid of it, ain't it? This

child's goining over Vauxhall Bridge."

The women clung to his arms and coat-tails. A man happened along.

"A foundling? Confound the place, the very stones produce

babies."

"It weren't found at all. It's Ginx's baby," cried the crowd.

"Ginx's baby. Who's Ginx?'

"I am," said Ginx.

"Well?"

"Well!"

"He's going to drown it!" came the chorus.

"Going to drown it? Nonsense!" said the officer.

"I am," said Ginx.

"But, bless my heart, that's murder!"

"No, 'tain't," said Ginx. "I've twelve already at home.

Starvashon's shure to kill this 'un. Best save it the trouble."

The officer declares this is quite contrary to law and he recites

the law, but that doesn't affect Ginx. He fails utterly to see

why, if Parliament will not let him abandon the child, Parliament

does not provide for the child; for all the other twelve. The

officer declares that the parish has enough to do to take care of

foundlings and children of parents who can't or won't work. Says

Ginx: "Jest so. You'll bring up bastards and beggars' pups but

you won't help an honest man keep his head above water. This

child's head is goin' under water anyhow!" and he dashed for the

bridge, with the screaming crowd at his heels.

A philosopher interposes at this stage with a query as to how

Ginx came to have so many children. Of course Ginx had to laugh.

The philosopher urges that Ginx had no right to bring children

into the world unless he could feed, clothe and educate them, and

Ginx replies that he's like to know how he could help it, as a

married man. The philosopher goes over the old, old tale of

rationalism in life. Ginx should not have married a poor woman,

should not have gone on sub-dividing his resources by the

increase of what must be a degenerate offspring, should not have

married at all.

"Ginx's face grew dark. He was thinking of 'all those years' and

the poor creature that, from morning to night and Sunday to

Sunday, in calm and storm, had clung to his rough affections; and

the bright eyes and the winding arms so often trellised over his

tremendous form, and the coy tricks and laughter that had cheered

so many tired hours. He may have been much of a brute, but he

felt that, after all, that sort of thing was denied to dogs and

pigs."

The philosopher could not answer these thoughts nor the rejoinder

question to his own: what is a man or woman to do that doesn't

marry?

And so the argument proceeds, the philosopher losing ground all

the time because his rationality is based upon changing man's

nature, not on making something out of "what's nateral to human

beings." The act of parliament idea of solving the problem is

riddled effectively by a stonemason, who points out that the

head-citizen is not so worthy as the heart-citizen. In brief, the

philosopher is routed by the doctrine that love is better than

law.

Ginx proceeds to the river again, but is stopped by a nun who

asks for the child. She uncovers the queer ruby face and kisses

it. After this Ginx could not have touched a hair of the child's

head. His purpose dies but his perplexity is alive. The nun takes

the child, and Ginx, in gratitude for her assurance that the

child shall not be sent back to him, stands treat for the crowd.

The child's life in the convent is material for some good satiric

writing upon the question of his salvation. The picture is

absurdly over-drawn so far as its effectiveness against

conventional charity is concerned, but it touches the question of

religious bigotry surely and strongly. Indeed the method of

treatment here verges closely upon the Rabelaisian, as where the

sisters want to make the sign of the cross upon Mrs. Ginx's

breasts before allowing the baby to suck. Mrs. Ginx refused "the

Papish idolaters" and the Protestant Detectoral Association is

brought to the rescue of the child from superstition.

A little man with a keen Roman nose--he could scent Jesuits a

mile off--took up the cause of the child and it got into court.

The matter became a cause celebre. London was in a turmoil over

"the Papal abduction." The author sketches it all graphically

with a convincing fidelity of caricature. The "Sisters of Misery"

triumphed. They retained the baby. Then after attempting to

sanctify the baby--a ceremony wholly imaginary and described with

a smutch of revolting coarseness--the sisters send the baby

packing back to the Protestant Detectoral Association.

The Protestants had him, but the Dissenters protested against his

being given to an Anglican refuge. The scene at the mass-meeting

to celebrate young Ginx's rescue from the incubus of a delusive

superstition is described with rare appreciation of the foibles

of character. The bombast, the cant, the flapdoodle and flubdub,

the silly unction of different kinds of preachers are "done to a

hair." Five hours the meeting raged, and at last a resolution

that the Metropolitan pulpit should take up the subject, and the

churches take up a collection for the Baby on the next Sunday

having been passed, the meeting adjourned--forgetting all about

the Baby. A strange woman took the Baby "for the sake of the

cause." He had been provided with a splendid layette by an

enthusiastic Protestant Duchess.

"Some hours later Ginx's Baby, stripped of the Duchess' beautiful

robes was found by a policeman, lying on a door step in one of

the narrow streets not a hundred yards" from the meeting place.

"By an ironical chance he was wrapped in a copy of the largest

daily paper in the world."

"The Baby was recovered, the preachers "praught." The collections

and the donations and subscriptions amounted to thirteen hundred

and sixty pounds, ten shillings, and three and one-half pence.

How the money was spent is shown in a deliciously absurd

balance-sheet. Not quite 100 pounds were spent upon the Baby. The

other money was wasted in various forms and styles of "guff." "In

an age of luxury," says the Baby's biographer, "we are grown so

luxurious as to be content to pay agents to do our good deeds,

but they charge us three hundred per cent. for the privilege."

How the police found and treated the Baby is a chapter full of

subtle sarcasm, leading up to the still more sarcastic portrayal

of the way the Baby fared in the hands of the Committee appointed

to take care of him. He was likely to be torn to pieces between

contending divines. The debates in Committee are illuminating

expositions of different varieties of bigotry. His body was

almost forgotten, while the philanthropists were trying to decide

what to do with his soul. Few of the reverend gentlemen "would be

content unless they could seize him when his young nature was

plastic and try to imprint on immortal clay the trade-mark of

some human invention."

Twenty-three meetings of the Committee were held and unity was as

far of at the last as at the first. The Secretary asked the

Committee to provide money to meet the Baby's liabilities, but

the Committee instantly adjourned and no effort afterwards could

get a quorum together. The persons who had charge of the

foundling began to dun the Secretary and to neglect the child,

now thirteen months old. They sold his clothes and absconded from

the place where they had been "framing him for Protestantism." As

a Protestant question Ginx's Baby vanished from the world.

Wrapped in a potato sack, the baby was found one night, on the

pavement exactly over a line dividing two parishes. The finder

was a business man. He noted the exact spot where the child lay

and took it to--the other parish. He would not be taxed for its

support. The parish guardians would not accept the child. As the

man who found the child was a guardian of the other parish, he

was trying to foist a bastard,--perhaps his own--upon their

parish. A motion was made to "get rid of the brat." "A church

warden, who happened to be a gentleman," suggested the services

of a lawyer. The brutality of the guardians as they examined and

discussed the child is depicted with terrible power. The lawyer

says the Board will have to take the Baby, pro tem, or "create an

unhappy impression on the minds of the public."

"Damn the public!" said Mr. Stink, a dog-breeder member of the

Board, thus antecedently plagiarizing an American millionaire.

The parish accepts the Baby under protest, and a formal written

protest addressed to the Baby, name unknown, is pinned on the

potato sack. The two parishes go to law about the child. Neither

wishes to take care of it. At Saint Bartemeus's workhouse, a

notice was posted forbidding the officials, assistants and

servants to enter the Baby's room, pendente lite, or to render it

any service or assistance on pain of dismissal. The Baby was nigh

starvation. The master of the work-house stealthily fed him on

pap, saying in a loud voice as he did so, "Now youngster, this is

without prejudice, remember! I give you due notice--without

prejudice."

The Baby became ill. A nobleman discovered him and laid his case

before a magistrate. The papers made a sensation on the Baby's

case. There was a terrific hullabaloo. An inquiry was held. The

guardians became furious. "The reports of their proceedings read

like the vagaries of a lunatic asylum or the deliberations of the

American Senate." They discharged the kindly master. The Baby was

locked in a room. Food was passed to him on a stick. The inquiry

was denounced and the bewildered public gnashed its teeth at

everybody who had anything to do with, or say of, Ginx's Baby.

"At last St. Bartemeus' parish had to keep him and the guardians,

keeping carefully within the law, neglected nothing that could

sap little Ginx's vitality, deaden his instincts, derange moral

action, cause hope to die within his infant breast almost as soon

as it was born." Every pauper was to them an obnoxious charge to

be reduced to a MINIMUM or NIL. The Baby's constitution alone

prevented his reduction to NIL.

The bill of costs against St. Bartemeus was 1,600 pounds. Just as

it was taxed, one of the persons who had deserted Ginx's Baby was

arrested for theft. The Baby's clothes, given by the Duchess,

were found in this person's possession. She confessed all about

the Baby, and so the guardians traced the Baby's father and

delivered to Ginx, through an agent, the famous child, with the

benediction--"There he is; damn him!"

Mrs. Ginx couldn't recognize the Baby. His brothers and sisters

would have nothing to do with him. Ginx took the Baby out one

night, left it on the steps of a large building in Pall Mall, and

slunk away out of the pages of "this strange, eventful history."

The Baby piped. The door of the house, a club, opened and the

baby was taken in. It was the Radical Club, but it was as

conservative as it could be in its reception of the waif, and it

was only in perfunctory kindness that the Club gave him shelter.

The Fogey Club heard of the Baby and bethought itself of making

campaign material of him. The Fogies instructed their "organs" to

dilate upon the disgraceful apathy of the Radicals toward the

foundling. The Fogies kidnapped the Baby; the Radicals stole him

back. The Baby was again a great "question." However, other

questions supervened, although it was understood that Sir Charles

Sterling was "to get a night" to bring up the case of Ginx's Baby

in Parliament. Associations were formed in the metropolis for

disposing of Ginx's Baby by expatriation or otherwise. A peer

suddenly sprung the matter by proposing to send the Baby to the

Antipodes at the expense of the nation. The question was debated

with elaborate stilted stultitude and the noble lord withdrew his

motion.

The Baby tired of life at the clubs. He borrowed some clothes,

some forks, some spoons, without leave, and then took his leave.

No attempt was made to recover him. He was fifteen. "He pitted

his wits against starvation." He found the world terribly full

everywhere he went. He went through a career of penury, of honest

and dishonest callings, of 'scapes and captures, imprisonments

and other punishments.

Midnight on Vauxhall Bridge! The form of a man emerged from the

dark and outlined itself against the haze of sky. There was a

dull flash of a face in the gloom. The shadow leaped far out into

the night. Splash! "Society, which, in the sacred names of Law

and Charity, forbade the father to throw his child over Vauxhall

Bridge, at a time when he was alike unconscious of life and

death, has at last driven him over the parapet into the greedy

waters."

The questions of the book I have condensed here are as alive

to-day as are thousands of other Ginx's Babies in all our big

cities. While philanthropists and politicians, priests and

preachers, men and women theorize about the questions, the

questions grow "more insoluble." What is to be done? is the first

question. How is it to be done is a question which is secondary

and its discussion is useless until the first is settled. Too

much State drove Ginx's Baby into the Thames. What's everybody's

business is nobody's business. If the uncountable babies of

innumerable Ginx's are to be aided, some one must aid them for

the mere pleasure there is in loving-kindness.

A baby is a human being, not a problem. A baby can't be explained

away by pure reason, because he didn't come by that route. Love

brought him here and only Love can nourish him to the fullness of

growth in soul and mind. True many come who, seemingly, were

better drowned like surplus puppies or kittens. But who shall

select those to survive? Grecian wisdom once attempted to improve

on "natural selection" and Greece is the ghost of a vanished

glory. Why shouldn't Ginx have drowned his Baby--or himself

before the multiplication in the result of which the Baby was a

unit?

I don't know why, unless because there is, in every life, even

the most successful, apparently, enough of unhappiness and

failure and emptiness to justify, at a given moment, a "leap in

the dark." This logic of suicide would annihilate the race. The

unwelcome Baby may be the best. Life must try us all. Those who

do not stand the test disappear. Their own weakness eliminate

them. Myriads must fail that a few may succeed a very little.

Ginx at least owed his Baby reparation for bringing about the

first misfortune, his birth. Ginx was a sophist. His mercy of

murder for the child was regard for himself. His reasoning was

right. His heart was full of self and, ergo, wrong. Ginx

surrendered before the fight was fought. So did the Baby. There

is nothing for it, my good masters, but a fight to a finish. Yes,

even though Birnam Wood come to Dunsinane, still must we fight,

like Macbeth, and all the more valiantly for that we know our

sins are heavy upon our heads and hearts. "Courage, my comrades,

the devil is dead," said Denys of Burgundy. But there is a

greater courage, my comrades: it is fighting the devil who never

dies until the devil in us all shall die. This is not the courage

of despair, but of hope and faith that by conquest of ourselves

shall Evil be slain, though only in a fair, far time, and by

scores of deaths of us and of our kind. That is why the book

"Ginx's Baby" is false in its demonstration that it had been

better if the "hero" had been thrown off the bridge at first. Its

philosophy is the philosophy of the "quitter." The only courage

is to endure.

And what shall we do for the Ginx's Babies so multitudinous in

their misery? These, too, we must endure. It were well to love

them a little, as babies, and not to discuss them so much as

"questions." It were well if there were a little more individual

charity; a good deal less of the kind described by Boyle O'Reilly

as conducted "in the name of a cautious statistical Christ." If

every one would do a little good for the poor, the unfortunate,

the afflicted, the sum of all our doing would be a great deal of

good. Take a penny from every person in the United States and

give it to one man and he has seven hundred thousand dollars.

Every Ginx's Baby in any land can be helped somewhat, and Ginx

himself must do his share, to the full limit of his capacity for

doing. We cannot save them all; cannot make their lives

successes. Success is the sum of many failures. A million seeds

must die that one rose may bloom. You or I may be the means, in

part, of saving one child from the plunge of Vauxhall Bridge or

through the gallows-trap. And one is worth while. That is the way

to "look out for number one." Individual effort for individuals

is the true humanitarianism. Lift up the person nearest you, who

needs assistance. Bend to him and feel your own statue increase

by so much as you uplift him. Et voila tout. St. Louis, December

16th, 1897.

* * *

WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH MISSOURI?

BY WILLIAM MARION REEDY.

The art of politics in Missouri is not more depraved than in most

other states, I imagine; but it seems that in Missouri the

practitioners of that art are somewhat coarser-grained and

smaller-minded than men in the like charlatanry elsewhere. I

think I may write of them and their methods in the capacity of

critic, without obtruding my prejudices as a gold-bug.

Missouri, like every other Western State, took kindly to the

silver theory; indeed, possessing, as one of its chief citizens,

Mr. Bland, a champion of silver for thirty years, Missouri was as

ready for 16 to 1 as any silver producing State. "Coin's" book

found welcome wide and warm when it appeared among a people who

admired Mr. Bland, and who had equally admired "Farmer" Hatch.

But while the people of Missouri were for silver it was only

partly in deference to popular opinion that the Democratic party

declared for that doctrine.

When Col. Chas. H. Jones became editor of the Republic, coming

from Jacksonville, Florida, he was taken up by the then Governor

David R. Francis, a grain merchant, or speculator, a very rich

man and an aristocrat. The two were fast friends until, Col.

Jones having married, the wife of the governor, for reasons

sufficient to herself, refused to receive Mrs. Jones. Out of this

social episode grew a feud. As the first result of that feud Col.

Jones was forced out of the Republic. He went to the New York

World. Ad interim, however, he managed to defeat the plan of

President Cleveland to name Mr. Francis as a member of his

cabinet in 1893. When Col. Jones fell out with Mr. Francis, the

editor made an alliance with Mr. Joel Stone, who succeeded Mr.

Francis as governor of Missouri.

In course of time Col. Jones was sent West to take charge of the

Post-Dispatch. When he arrived in St. Louis he conferred with

Governor Stone. Col. Jones wanted to destroy Francis, who had

control of the Democratic party machinery. Francis had been

"mentioned" for president. He was the brilliant, if chilly,

leader of the party. He had wealth and he and his friends could

"take care of" the visiting rural committeeman. Col. Jones

scented the silver sentiment in the State. That sentiment

suggested, naturally, antipathy to wealthy bosses and "grain

gamblers." Col. Jones declared that the way to destroy Francis

was by "taking up silver." And Col. Jones "took it up" with a

vengeance. The sentiment had been lurking among the people all

the time. For years the party committees warned the speakers to

"steer clear of the money question." Col. Jones in print and

Governor Stone on the stump, appealed to the people on the very

thing the old rulers of the party had hedged on, and the battle

was on.

Mr. Francis evaded the fight. He wanted harmony. He was suave and

clammy but non-committal. He did not wish to come out for silver.

He did not wish to oppose the silver people. Once or twice he

threatened to fight and then he threw up his hands. Missouri

declared for silver at 16 to 1, without a dissenting voice in the

convention. The State committee was enlarged to render Mr.

Francis' friends innocuous. Col. Jones and Governor Stone voted

to support Bland for President at the Chicago convention and the

National battle was precipitated. When Missouri declared for

silver, with a candidate who represented the silver issue wholly

and whose character endeared him especially to the bucolics

everywhere, the silver sentiment became a political force to

reckon with the stampede that ended with the nomination of Mr.

Bryan was started.

So it seems to me that if Mrs. Francis had swallowed her

prejudices and received Mrs. Jones there might have been a great

deal of different history. Mrs. Jones was the Helen of the Siege

of Wall Street. This incident is important only as showing, once

again, how trifling things affect the destinies of Nations.

Had Mr. Francis and Col. Jones never disagreed, Col. Jones never

would have left the "Republic." Col. Jones would have stood by

Francis' interests as a banker and monied man. Col. Jones never

would have obtained control of the "Post-Dispatch." Silver

sentiment would have been smothered by the politicians of

Missouri and Bland never would have been a candidate. There would

have been no Missouri alliance with Mr. Altgeld and the

combination of peculiar political ability that was attracted to

Stone. Jones and Altgeld never would have dominated the Chicago

convention as wholly as they did. To resent an affront to Mrs.

Jones the Democratic party was rent asunder. Mr. Bland was taken

up to destroy Mr. Francis and was himself destroyed in due time.

The senators from Missouri, Messrs. Vest and Cockrell, were

forced into the anti-Francis movement under threat of defeat by

the men who had identified themselves with the popular feeling

for their own purposes.

The late Mr. McCullagh of the Globe-Democrat, told me, when Vest

became a silver champion that it was because he had to do so to

retain his seat, and that Mr. McCullagh was a friend and

extravagant admirer of Mr. Vest and his abilities.

Whatever one may think of silver he must admit that the turning

down of Mr. Francis was a good thing. Mr. Francis represented the

dodging Democracy. He stood for the evasion of a great issue; for

intellectual and moral cowardice, for nauseous neutralism. Mr.

Francis was the impersonation of political insincerity. He

thought of the party--of keeping the party together, with himself

on top--and his stand for what the opponents of silver call

"sound money" was a very perfunctory performance. He never

declared himself against the Chicago platform until he was

offered the Secretaryship of the Interior, vice Hoke Smith,

resigned.

In this we have a picture of the man whom I saw alluded to the

other day as "the leader of the sound money forces in Missouri."

A leader! Why, he couldn't be induced to come within the borders

of the State, during the fight, nor did he come until he came

home to vote, when, under the inspiration of a stupendous sound

money parade, he declared himself.

When silver was the cry every spoilsman took it up, and the fact

is that some of the loudest shouting was done by men who cared

not at all for the doctrine. All the politicians got on the

popular side. Every fellow that wanted an office became a

shrieker for silver. All the men who had truckled to Francis

while he was in power left him and went with the crowd. The party

in Missouri had been in power for years and the same old gang had

controlled the offices. They stayed together and they still

retained their grip upon the offices. The gang got together on

silver as upon everything else. The elimination of Francis

carried out of the party no politicians of note. They remained.

The corporation "attorneys" or lobbyists stood by the regulars.

The fine workers of the Missouri Pacific, the 'Frisco, the

Burlington roads were hand in glove with the party which was

making war on corporations, with its mouth. Some of the railroads

contributed to the support of the men who were "denouncing them

in unmeasured terms." No one was more regular than "Bill" Phelps,

the Missouri Pacific lobbyist, against whom Governor Stone and

Col. Jones made war in connection with the enactment of a

fellow-servant law. Col. Spencer of the Burlington was with the

regulars too. All the party hacks, the caucus bosses, the

township and country and congressional district leaders who had

made the ticket for years fell in line. There was made no real

change in party management. Mr. Francis and his lieutenant, Mr.

Maffitt, were turned down, but the crowd that had trained with

them went over to the opposition. I am not aspersing the silver

cause. I mean to say only that the gang that ran things joined

the silver cause in order to stay in power. There were no

politicians at all in the ranks of the Missouri Gold Democrats.

The politicians seized upon silver, which represented a general

desire for change, in order to fasten themselves more thoroughly

upon the party.

The result was that the nominations for State offices went to the

same old crowd. Mr. Sesueur was nominated for Secretary of State.

Mr. Siebert, who had been auditor, was nominated again. Frank

Pitts, an ex-Confederate, who had been a candidate for a dozen

things, but who, when defeated, never had done aught but "take

his medicine," was nominated for Treasurer. Mr. Lon V. Stephens,

who had been Treasurer was nominated for Governor and elected. He

had been appointed Treasurer by Francis after the Noland

defalcation, had been elected and had changed his allegiance from

Francis to Stone. Mr. Stone, a man with somewhat of the scholarly

taint to him, inclined to think, but prone to machination,

ambitious, vindictive, able, elusive, made Stephens the nominee,

and has been "sore at himself" ever since.

Stephens is a National banker. His family is wealthy and his

wife's family is said to be the wealthiest in the State. It was

the belief that when he was nominated he would "cough up" large

"chunks of dough." But he didn't. The necessity for "dough" was

evident to the managers of the party. There was no hope for funds

from the interests that feared free silver. They wanted an

"angel" candidate. Stephens failed to contribute. As an "angel"

he was a "frost."

This National banker made a campaign of extreme rabidity. When

Debs was managing the big Chicago strike this man wrote a letter

to the Mirror in which he advocated Gatling guns for the

suppression of Debs and his like. When he wanted to be

Comptroller of the Currency under Cleveland he declared in an

interview that Cleveland was "the greatest man since Jesus

Christ." He denied that he was a National banker with his name on

the bank's stationery. He denounced Cleveland for calling out the

troops to suppress Debs. And while in the country he was posing

as the enemy of the plutocrats, he was "tipping" them the wink in

the cities, that they needn't be afraid he would hurt their

interests. This candidate, who was proclaiming honesty had to

suppress in Col. Jones' paper, a sensation dealing with his own

alleged irregularities in the settlement of his father's estate.

This personal-liberty Democrat had written a letter in favor of

Prohibition. Mr. Stephens proclaimed that he was going to purify

politics. When elected he appointed as Election Commissioner a

man against whom there was a tremendous protest upon the part of

the best element of the party. This man was accused of taking

$1,200 from Ed Butler, the St. Louis "boss," to give to the

members of the St. Louis city committee to boom the charter

amendment providing for capital removal, and of putting the money

in his own pocket. Ed. Butler entered suit for the money against

this man Brady and his friend Higgins, appointed Excise

Commissioner by Stephens. The suit was dismissed at Brady's

expense. Then the capital movers at Sedalia sued for the money on

the ground that the contract was against public polity. In other

words he took the money to do something illegal, and, therefore,

was entitled to keep it after failing to do the wrong. As a

result of my comment upon this, Mr. Brady and I had a passage at

fisticuffs on the street the other day, and the day following the

Circuit Court here decided that the contract was valid and the

suit for $1,200 would have to be tried on the issue of fact.

Mr. Brady was appointed Election Commissioner at the instigation

of Mr. Louis C. Nelson, a St. Louis banker, brother-in-law of

Governor Stephens. Mr. Brady is interested in a wholesale liquor

store. His company rents a building from Mr. Nelson. Mr. Nelson

is said to be interested in the company.

Mr. Higgins, the Excise Commissioner, was appointed at Mr.

Nelson's instigation. The Excise Commissioner has charge of the

issuance of all saloon licenses in St. Louis, Mr. Higgins is a

good friend of Brady's and a protege of Nelson. A whisky drummer

told me, and it is a common report around St. Louis, that the

relationship of the man controlling the saloon licenses to Brady

and Nelson is taken advantage of by the saloon men to ingratiate

themselves by buying supplies at Brady's liquor store. I am not

adding a word of color to the aspect of the case. The saloons are

under tribute to Stephens' brother-in-law and his appointees.

These people may not hold up the saloons, but the saloonists know

that it is good policy to stand in with "the powers that be." A

daily paper, the "Star," asserts that one of the Police

Commissioners, a brewer, uses his position as controller of

the police to protect dive-keepers who sell his beer. The paper

has not been sued for libel. All this has been done in the name

of silver and friendship for the people.

A brother of "Silver Dick" Bland was nominated for Judge of the

Court of Appeals. The Populists had nominated a candidate named

North for the same place. It is in evidence in Mr. Bland's own

letters that he gave $1,000 to the Chairman of the Democratic

State Central Committee to get North of the track. North

withdrew. Afterwards he was reported reporter of the Court of

Judge Bland. He denied that he had received $1,000. The Chairman

of the State Democratic Committee then said he gave the money to

the chairman of the Populist committee. The chairman of the

populist committee denies that he got the $1,000. And so the

matter stands. The Judge bought off the Populist candidate. The

$1,000 is unaccounted for. The $1,000 does not appear in the

Judge's statement of expenses as required by law. This "boodle"

deal evokes the query whether if a candidate for Judge will buy

his election he will not sell his justice. This deal, too, was

consummated in the name of the masses.

I am told that the Governor has given the best places within his

gift to his relatives, or the men selected by his relatives. I

know that he appointed a man manager of the Nevada asylum on

condition that he would vote out the Superintendent. The

Superintendent showed the manager a letter from the Governor in

which he declared that the Superintendent's retention was his

dearest wish. The manager voted for the retention of the

Superintendent and the Governor promptly removed the manager.

This illustrates the gubernatorial character beautifully. The

Governor of Missouri was receiver of the Fifth National Bank of

St. Louis. He gave out that the bank would not pay more than 50

cents on the dollar in all. Therefore, his brother-in-law and

other relatives bought up outstanding claims at that figure and

below it. They bought up at least $30,000 worth. The bank paid 50

per cent. in sixty days. It has paid ninety-six per cent. in ten

years. The question is, how could a receiver say a bank, that was

in position to pay 50 per cent. in sixty days, would only pay

that much in all? The receiver's relatives made 46 per cent. on

their speculation. This is one of the performances characteristic

of this kind of "friends of the people." The popular cause of

silver, with all its generous enthusiasm for the rights of the

poor, all its just resentment against oligarchies, political

bosses, gangs of "grafters," combinations of the few for the

plucking of the many, was taken charge of, in Missouri, by

politicians of the type which can be imagined from what I have

stated here of simple fact and conservative deduction. The cause

of silver may be my "pet aversion" as a political theory, but I

have all respect for the honest multitude who espoused it. I am

convinced that what there is of good in that theory of reform of

our evils is not advanced toward embodiment in our law by the

character of the men who make the Chicago platform an excuse to

get the public confidence and carry out schemes of public

plunder, political corruption and miscellaneous incivism.

A few days ago Judge Klein in our Circuit Court uncovered what we

call "a graft" in the matter of building association

receiverships. It was discovered that politics stepped into these

affairs to get for certain political lawyers, good fees. There

was a ring in the receiverships of these concerns. The

commissioner in one case would be attorney in another. The

attorney in one case would be receiver in another with the

commissioner as attorney and receiver as Commissioner. There were

fees for all. No duty in connection with winding up the

associations, to which there attached any compensation, was ever

given outside the "charmed circle." Political attorneys got large

fees for only going into court and asking that building

associations be wound up. All these fees came out of the money of

the poor people, which happened to be left after the looting or

failure of the concerns. Those whose savings were invested in the

concerns had little coming to them after the failures. The fees

of the ring left little of that. All this "grinding of the faces

of the poor" is being accomplished by those politicians who were

most vocal in proclaiming their allegiance to the Chicago

platform as a new "Magna Charta of Mankind."

These facts have nothing to do with the righteousness or

wrongfulness of the Chicago platform. The suggestion that a good

cause may be advanced by bad men and mean methods, it may be

retorted that such men are calculated rather to injure the cause

by their prominence than to help it by their unique idea of

practical politics. People are apt to believe that the New

Democracy is the outgrowth of such men, or that such men are the

outgrowth of New Democracy, when, in fact, the men have attached

themselves to the movement only for their own selfishness. When

we think that the men who are doing the things I have pictured

are engaged in an effort to make Stephens the next Senator from

Missouri, it is plain that the character of the organization and

its purpose will react dangerously against whatever there may be

of genuine merit in the propositions of the Chicago

platform.

And all this is being done in Missouri and the rural press

connives at it. To criticize the administration is sacrilege. The

papers are slavering over the Governor. They declare that he is

"the champion of the people" next to Bryan. They identify him

with the ideal that Mr. Bryan gave voice for in his Chicago

speech. Nothing is to be said of any administration peccadilloes

or crookedness, for fear of hurting the party and delaying the

triumph of the great cause. All the political corruption of the

party when it was dominated by plutocrats is condoned because its

perpetrators shout "sixteen to one!" The administration, at a

breath of criticism, has its subsidized organs--subsidized by

anything from two to ten dollars--declare that the critic is a

traitor to the cause, that he is a gold-bug or a republican in

disguise. The people seem to respond to all this and the honest

country editor dares not express himself for fear of losing

subscribers or advertisers. The party cry drowns the criticism of

acts that impeach the party. Submission to the party fetich makes

every and any deed acceptable because it is done by the party's

men. Nepotism, falsity to pledges, the plundering of the poor,

the squeezing of the saloon interests, the "skinning" of

depositors in banks, the records of violation of trust,--all

these things are jammed down the throats of the Democracy of

Missouri, and if the faithful dare to gag at the dose they are

told "You traitor, you don't believe in Bryan, or 16 to 1!" And

they swallow it all. The papers are slaves of the administration.

They vie with each other in printing stomach-turning gush about

these leaders. The country editors are forced into a conspiracy

of silence and of support of a "machine" as vile as ever was

worked under plutocratic auspices. The gang cries "silver,

silver, silver," and so their jobs and schemes of personal profit

are allowed to go on uncriticized. They have the faith. Damn the

good works! The "push" in control of things in Missouri are

Silver men, with about the same exalted purpose as Chilo, the

Greek charlatan in "Quo Vadis" had in aligning himself with the

Christians. It is a combination that is ready at any time to

desert the cause of silver. It has been stated in Missouri time

and again that the administration wants to "heal the breach" with

the gold Democrats, that Governor Stephens has made overtures to

ex-Governor Francis who, fortunately, is not much more of a gold

bug than Stephens is a silver Democrat. The new party faith means

nothing to the men in power and warfare upon them is not, in any

sense, a warfare upon the principles they profess to represent,

unless it may happen that the character of the men shall become

confused with the principles. But these men were "in the push"

before the Chicago platform was an issue. They are what they were

before. The new principles have made them no better. They are

worse because they plot their infamy in the name of a political

purification and a humanizing of economy.

In view of the almost unparalleled lack of independence in the

Missouri rural press there does not seem much hope of reaching

the people with a statement of the truth about conditions. The

country editor in Missouri insults his subscribers by taking for

granted that they are so prejudiced they will not take a paper

that criticizes the man who sneaked into power as a bogus silver

man. By keeping their readers in ignorance of the deeds of their

officers and servants, by suppressing all unfavorable comment,

the newspapers block the way to reform. There is no way to reach

the people. They are kept in ignorance. They are fed upon "plate"

fake puffs of the administration prepared by the Governor's

"literary bureau." Whatever he prepares is printed, and nothing

else. The people are stuffed upon "taffy" and the men in power

are thus enabled to deceive the people and strengthen themselves

for the tightening of their grip upon the offices. The

subserviency of the rural press in Missouri is something slavish

beyond imagination heretofore. The papers, in the main, are

edited by the political machine. The press, that engine of

enlightenment, is industriously engaged in clouding the

intelligence of the people and identifying a cause which in its

abstract intention is good, with the selfishness of bad men.

Reform cannot come from the politicians. It cannot come from the

people kept in ignorance of the need of it by prostitutes of the

press.

The matter with Missouri is that there is too much idolization of

the party. There is no partisan independence. There is no courage

in the Democratic press. The truth is suppressed rather than the

evil about which a truth is told. The worship of party goes to

the extreme of worship of all the moral ugliness of partisanism.

The men who know what is wrong, who know that the leaders of the

New Democracy are in harmony with it only for their own ends, who

know that in the name of political purity and economic honesty a

lot of political jobbers and crooks are continuing the evils of

the old political regime, remain silent. The St. Louis Republic

shifts and shuffles and maintains a neutral attitude. It is

suspected of gold bugism and it dares not criticize the Governor

that it scourged in cartoon and comment. The Post-Dispatch, that

was the greatest silver daily and is owned by the millionaire

Pulitzer, is now suspected of gold bugism. It makes war upon the

Governor, but its position robs its criticism of effectiveness.

The Kansas City Times scores the Governor but its opposition is

believed to be based upon the refusal of the Governor to appoint

its owners' candidate to a position of importance. My criticism

is denounced as the criticism of a gold-bug. But I am not

criticizing the party policy s I am writing here about the men.

They would disgrace any principles they might profess. I am not

opposing anyone because he was for Bryan. I am pointing out

conditions and circumstances that are matters of public record,

of common talk among silver men, of wide-open notoriety, that are

flourishing in Missouri, under the cloak of a bogus devotion to

Mr. Bryan and the Chicago platform. These things are true. If the

people knew them, if the fact of the existence of these things

were not suppressed, the fact that the men who are working the

evil are silver shouters would not save them from the popular

wrath.

"O Liberty," said Madam Roland on the steps of the

guillotine,"what crimes are committed in thy name!" In the name

of Silver, too, crimes are committed and the criminals flourish

as prophets of a new and better time. Silver will have a better

chance when the crooks who have identified themselves with it, in

Missouri and other States, are repudiated. If free coinage be a

good thing, it will never be believed while bad men conspicuously

stand for it. If education will develop the mind to the

destruction of our political and economic miseries, a gagged

press is not the means to such education. How can a press be

trusted in its assaults on the old order when it suppresses the

truth that the men and methods of the old regime are flourishing

to the profit of the former under the new? What use is any

platform, however noble in its aspirations or purposes, if the

men who attain to power upon it continue all the meanness and

nefariousness of the men who flourished under the old domination

of the bosses, the corporations and the trusts?

The altruism of the Chicago platform--which I think mistaken--is

admirable in so far as so many millions of people honestly

believe its principles are for the benefit of the oppressed and

unfortunate of the earth. This altruism is knocked and blasphemed

by being made the means to the entrenchment in power in Missouri,

of self- and-pelf seekers. The people are deceived. The press

keeps them deceived. The Chicago principles are betrayed into the

hands of men who have no principle but profit. A reform movement

is turned over to the men against whom the movement is directed.

The cause of free coinage is committed to a national banker. The

cause of honest elections is committed to the care of a

professional ballot- eater. The cause of the people is made the

means to build up a machine. The liberty of the press is

advocated by paper subsidized by political pap. The "friends of

the people" in Missouri, are "grafters." The "foes of the

corporations" are the tools of these institutions. The "enemies

of corruption" are themselves corruptionists. The people are kept

ignorant of all this under a false impression that the

eradication of evil will injure the cause of Silver, under cover

of which these men grasped power.

And that's what's the matter with Missouri. St. Louis, December

16, 1897.