 CHEESE by G. K. Chesterton. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Red by Jerome Lawson. CHEESE by G. K. Chesterton. My forthcoming work in five volumes, The Neglective Cheese in European Literature, is a work of such unprecedented and laborious detail that it is doubtful if I shall live to finish it. Some overflowings from such a fountain of information may therefore be permitted to sprinkle these pages. I cannot yet wholly explain the neglect to which I refer. Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese. Virgil, if I remember right, refers to it several times, but with too much Roman restraint. He does not let himself go on cheese. The only other poet I can think of just now, who seems to have had some sensibility on the point, was the nameless author of the nursery rhyme which says, If all the trees were bread and cheese, which is indeed a rich and gigantic vision of the higher gluttony. If all the trees were bread and cheese, there would be considerable deforestation in any part of England where I was living. Wild and wide woodlands would reel and fade before me as rapidly as they ran after Orpheus. Virgil and this anonymous rhymer, I can recall no verse about cheese. Yet it has every quality which we require in exalted poetry. It is a short, strong word. It rhymes to breeze and seize, an essential point, that it is emphatic and sound, as admitted even by the civilization of the modern cities. For the citizens, with no apparent intention except emphasis will often say, cheese it, or even quite the cheese. The substance itself is imaginative. It is ancient, sometimes in the individual case, always in the type and custom. It is simple, being directly derived from milk, which is one of the ancestral drinks, not likely to be corrupted with soda water. You know, I hope, even though I myself have only just thought of it, that the four rivers of Eden were milk, water, wine, and ale. Air-rated waters only appeared after the fall. But cheese has another quality, which is also the very soul of song. Once in endeavoring to lecture in several places at once, I made an eccentric journey across England, a journey of so irregular and even illogical shape, that it necessitated my having lunch on four successive days in four roadside ends in four different countries. In each end they had nothing but bread and cheese. Nor can I imagine why a man should want more than bread and cheese, if he can get enough of it. In each end the cheese was good, and in each end it was different. There was a noble Wensley Dale cheese in Yorkshire, a Cheshire cheese in Cheshire, and so on. Now, it is just here that true poetic civilization differs from that paltry and mechanical civilization which holds us all in bondage. Bad customs are universal and rigid, like modern militarism. Good customs are universal and varied, like native chivalry and self-defense. Both the good and bad civilization cover us as with the canopy, and protect us from all that is outside. But a good civilization spreads over us freely like a tree, varying and yielding because it is alive. A bad civilization stands up and sticks out above us like an umbrella, artificial, mathematical in shape, not merely universal, but uniform. So what is with the contrast between the substances that vary and the substances that are the same wherever they penetrate? By a wise doom of heaven men were commanded to eat cheese, but not the same cheese. Being really universal it varies from valley to valley. But if, let us say, we compare cheese with soap, that vastly inferior substance, we shall see that soap tends more and more to be merely smith soap, or brown soap, sent automatically all over the world. If the red Indians have soap, it is smith soap. If the grand lama has soap, it is brown soap. There is nothing subtly and strangely Buddhist, nothing tenderly Tibetan, about a soap. I fancy the grand lama does not eat cheese, he is not worthy, but if he does it is probably a local cheese, having some real relation to his life and outlook. Safety matches, tinned foods, patent medicines are sent all over the world, but they are not produced all over the world. Before there is in them a mere dead identity, never that soft play of slight variation which exists in things produced everywhere out of the soil, in the milk of the kind, or the fruits of the orchard. You can get a whiskey and soda at every outpost of the empire, that is why so many empire builders go mad. But you are not tasting or touching any environment, as in the cider of Devonshire, or the grapes of the Rhine. You are not approaching nature in one of her myriad tints of mood, as in the holy act of eating cheese. When I had done my pilgrimage in the four wayside public houses, I reached one of the great northern cities, and there I proceeded, with great rapidity and complete inconsistency, to a large and elaborate restaurant, where I knew I could get many other things besides bread and cheese. I could get that also, however, or at least I expected to get it, but I was sharply reminded that I had entered Babylon and left England behind. The waiter brought me cheese, indeed, but cheese cut up into contemptibly small pieces, and it is the awful fact that, instead of Christian bread, he brought me biscuits. Biscuits to one who had eaten the cheese of four great countryside. Biscuits to one who had proved anew for himself, the sanctity of the ancient wedding between cheese and bread. I addressed the waiter in warm and moving terms. I asked him who he was that he should put asunder those whom humanity had joined. I asked him if he did not feel, as an artist, that a solid but yielding substance like cheese went naturally with a solid yielding substance like bread. To eat it off biscuits is like eating it off slates. I asked him if, when he said his prayers, he was so supercilious as to pray for his daily biscuits. He gave me generally to understand that he was only obeying a custom of modern society. I have, therefore, resolved to raise my voice, not against the waiter, but against modern society, for this huge and unparalleled modern wrong. End of Cheese by G.K. Chesterton. Dream Children, a Reverie by Charles Lamb, read by Joyce Berger. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Dream Children, a Reverie. Children love to listen to stories about their elders when they were children, to stretch their imagination to the conception of a traditionary great-uncle or grand-aim whom they never saw. It was in this spirit that my little ones crept about me the other evening to hear about their great-grandmother field, who lived in a great house in Norfolk a hundred times bigger than that in which they in Papa lived, which had been the scene, so at least it was generally believed in that part of the country, of the tragic incidents which they had lately become familiar with from the ballad of the children in the wood. Certain it is that the whole story of the children and their cruel uncle was to be seen fairly carved out in wood upon the chimney piece of the great hall, the whole story down to the robin red breasts, till a foolish rich person pulled it down to set up a marble one of modern invention in its stead with no story upon it. Here Alice put out one of her dear mother's looks too tender to be called up-braiding. Then I went on to say how religious and how good their great-grandmother field was, how beloved and respected by everybody, though she was not indeed the mistress of this great house, but had only the charge of it. And yet in some respects she might be said to be the mistress of it too, committed to her by the owner who preferred living in a newer and more fashionable mansion, which she had purchased somewhere in the adjoining county. But still she lived in it in a manner as if it had been her own, and kept up the dignity of the great house in a sort while she lived, which afterwards came to decay and was nearly pulled down and all its old ornaments stripped and carried away to the owner's other house, where they were set up and looked as awkward as if someone were to carry away the old tombs they had seen lately at the Abbey, and stick them up in Lady C's tawdry guilt drawing room. Here John smiled as much as to say that would be foolish indeed. And then I told how, when she came to die, her funeral was attended by a concourse of all the poor and some of the gentry too, of the neighborhood for many miles round, to show their respect for her memory, because she had been such a good and religious woman, so good indeed that she knew all the sultry by heart, I and a great part of the testament besides. Here little Alice spread her hands. Then I told what a tall upright graceful person their great-grandmother field once was, and how in her youth she was esteemed the best dancer. Here Alice's little foot played an involuntary movement till upon my looking grave it desisted. The best dancer I was saying in the county, till a cruel disease called a cancer came, and bowed her down with pain. But it could never bend her good spirits or make them stoop, but they were still upright, because she was so good and religious. Then I told how she was used to sleep by herself in a lone chamber of the great lone house, and how she believed that an apparition of two infants was to be seen at midnight, gliding up and down the great staircase near where she slept. But she said those innocents would do her no harm, and how frightened I used to be though in those days I had my maid to sleep with me, because I was never half so good or religious as she, and yet I never saw the infants. Here John expanded all his eyebrows and tried to look courageous. Then I told how good she was to all her grandchildren, having us to the great house and the holidays, where I in particular used to spend many hours by myself, engazing upon the old busts of the twelve Caesars that had been emperors of Rome, till the old marble heads would seem to live again, or eye to be turned into marble with them. How I never could be tired with roaming about that huge mansion with its vast empty rooms, with their worn-out hangings, fluttering tapestry, and carved oaken panels, with the gilding almost rubbed out, sometimes in the spacious old-fashioned gardens, which I had almost to myself, unless when now and then a solitary gardening man would cross me. And how the nectarines and peaches hung upon the walls without my ever offering to pluck them, because they were forbidden fruit, unless now and then, and because I had more pleasure in strolling about among the old melancholy-looking yew trees or the firs, and picking up the red berries and the fir apples, which were good for nothing but to look at, or in lying about upon the fresh grass with all the fine garden smells around me, or basking in the orangery, till I could almost fancy myself ripening too along with the oranges and the limes in that grateful warmth, or in watching the dace that darted to and fro in the fish pond at the bottom of the garden, with here and there a great sulky pike hanging midway down the water in silent state, as if it mocked at their impertinent friskings. I had more pleasure in these busy idle diversions than in all the sweet flavors of peaches, nectarines, oranges, and such like common baits of children. Here John slowly deposited back upon the plate a bunch of grapes, which, not unobserved by Alice, he had meditated dividing with her, and both seemed willing to relinquish them for the present as irrelevant. Then, in somewhat a more heightened tone, I told how, though their great-grandmother field loved all her grandchildren, yet in a special manner she might be said to live their uncle, John L, because he was so handsome and spirited of youth, and a king to the rest of us. And instead of moping about in solitary corners like some of us, he would mount the most metalsome horse he could get, when but an imp no bigger than themselves, and make it carry him half over the country in a morning, and join the hunters when there were any out. And yet he loved the old great-house and gardens too, but had too much spirit to be always pent up within their boundaries, and how their uncle grew up to man's estate as brave as he was handsome, to the admiration of everybody, but of their great-grandmother field most especially, and how he used to carry me upon his back when I was a lame-footed boy, for he was a good bit older than me, many a mile when I could not walk for pain, and how in afterlife he became lame-footed too, and I did not always I fear make allowances enough for him when he was impatient and in pain, nor remember sufficiently how considerate he had been to me when I was lame-footed, and how when he died, though he had not been dead an hour, it seemed as if he had died a great while ago, such a distance there is between life and death, and how I bore his death as I thought pretty well at first, but afterwards it haunted and haunted me, and though I did not cry or take it to heart as some do, and as I think he would have done if I had died, yet I missed him all day long, and knew not till then how much I had loved him. I missed his kindness, and I missed his cross-ness, and wished him to be alive again to be quarreling with him, for we quarreled sometimes, rather than not have him again, and was as uneasy without him as he, their poor uncle, must have been when the doctor took off his limb. Here the children fell a-crying and asked if their little mourning, which they had on, was not for Uncle John, and they looked up and prayed me not to go on about their uncle, but to tell them some stories about their pretty dead mother. Then I told how for seven long years, in hope sometimes, sometimes in despair, yet persisting ever, I courted the fair Alice W, and as much as children could understand, I explained to them what coiness and difficulty and denial meant in maidens. When suddenly turning to Alice, the soul of the first Alice looked out at her eyes with such a reality of re-presentment, that I became in doubt which is hamstered there before me, or whose that bright hair was. And while I stood gazing, both the children gradually grew fainter to my view, receding, and still receding, till nothing at last but two mournful features were seen in the uttermost distance, which without speech strangely impressed upon me the effects of the speech. We are not of Alice, nor of thee, nor are we children at all. The children of Alice, called Bartram Father, we are nothing, less than nothing, and dreams. We are only what might have been, and must wait upon the tedious shores of Lethe millions of ages before we have existence and a name. And immediately, awaking, I found myself quietly seated in my back's armchair where I had fallen asleep with a faithful bridget unchanged by my side, but John L. or James Ilye was gone forever, 1822. End of Dream Children, A Reverie by Charles Lamb. The Man Who Thinks Backwards by G. K. Chesterton This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Read by Jerome Lawson. The Man Who Thinks Backwards by G. K. Chesterton The Man Who Thinks Backwards is a very powerful person today. Indeed, if he is not omnipotent, he is at least omnipresent. It is he who writes nearly all the learned books and articles, especially of the scientific or skeptical sort. All the articles on eugenics and social evolution and prison reform and the higher criticism and all the rest of it. But especially it is this strange and tortuous being who does most of the writing about female emancipation and the reconsidering of marriage. For the Man Who Thinks Backwards is very frequently a woman. Thinking backwards is not quite easy to define abstractedly, and perhaps the simplest method is to take some object, as plain as possible, and from it illustrate the two modes of thought. The right mode in which all real results have been rooted. The wrong mode, which is confusing all our current discussions, especially our discussions about the relations of the sexes. Casting my eye around the room, I notice an object which is often mentioned in the higher and subtler of these debates about the sexes. I mean a poker. I will take a poker and think about it. First forwards and then backwards, and so perhaps show what I mean. The sage, desiring to think well and wisely about a poker, will begin somewhat as follows. Among the live creatures that crawl about this star, the queerest is the thing called man. This plucked and plume-less bird, comic and forlorn, is the butt of all the philosophies. He is the only naked animal, and this quality, once it is said his glory, is now his shame. He has to go outside himself for everything that he wants. He might almost be considered as an absent-minded person, who has gone bathing and left his clothes everywhere, so that he is hung his hat upon the beaver, and his coat upon the sheep. The rabbit has white warmth for a waistcoat, and the glowworm has a lantern for a head. But man has no heat in his hide, and the light in his body is darkness. And he must look for light and warmth in the wild, cold universe in which he is cast. This is equally true of his soul and of his body. He is the one creature that has lost his heart as much as he has lost his hide. In a spiritual sense he has taken leave of his senses, and even in a literal sense he has been unable to keep his hair on. And just as this external need of his has lit in his dark brain the dreadful star called religion, so it is lit in his hand the only adequate symbol of it. I mean the red flower called fire. Fire, the most magic and startling of all material things, is a thing known only to man, and the expression of his sublime externalism. It embodies all that is human in his hearths, and all that is divine on his altars. It is the most human thing in the world, singing across wastes of marsh or medleys of forest. It is veritably the purple and golden flag of the sons of Eve. But there is about this generous and rejoicing thing an alien and awful quality, the quality of torture. Its presence is life, its touch is death. Therefore it is always necessary to have an intermediary between ourselves and this dreadful deity, to have a priest to intercede for us with the God of life and death, to send an ambassador to the fire. That priest is the poker. Made of a material more merciless and warlike than the other instruments of domesticity, hammered on the anvil and borne itself in the flame, the poker is strong enough to enter the burning fiery furnace and, like the holy children, not be consumed. In this heroic service it is often battered and twisted, but it is the more honorable for it, like any other soldier who has been under fire. Now all this may sound very fanciful and mystical, but it is the right view of pokers, and no one who takes it will ever go in for any wrong view of pokers, such as using them to beat one's wife or torture one's children, or even, though that is more excusable, to make a policeman jump, as the clown does in the pantomime. He was thus gone back to the beginning and seen everything as quaint and new, while always see things in the right order, the one depending on the other in degree of purpose and importance, the poker for the fire, and the fire for the man, and the man for the glory of God. This is thinking forwards. Now our modern discussions about everything, imperialism, socialism, or votes for women, are all entangled in an opposite train of thought, which runs as follows. A modern intellectual comes in and sees a poker. He is a positivist. He will not begin with any dogmas about the nature of man, or any daydreams about the mystery of fire. He will begin with what he can see, the poker, and the first thing he sees about the poker is that it is crooked. He says, poor poker, it's crooked. Then he asks how it came to be crooked, and is told that there is a thing in the world with which his temperament has hitherto left him unacquainted, a thing called fire. He points out very kindly and clearly how silly it is of people, if they want a straight poker, to put it into a chemical combustion which will very probably heat and warp it. Let us abolish fire, he says, and we shall have perfectly straight pokers. Why should you want a fire at all? They explain to him that a creature called man wants a fire because he has no fur or feathers. He gazes dreamily at the embers for a few seconds and then shakes his head. I doubt if such an animal is worth preserving, he says. He must eventually go under in the cosmic struggle when pitted against well armoured and warmly protected species, who have wings and trunks and spires and scales and horns and chaggy hair. If man cannot live without these luxuries, he would better abolish man. At this point, as a rule, the crowd is convinced it heaves up all its clubs and axes and abolishes him, at least one of them. Before we begin discussing our various new plans for the people's welfare, let us make a kind of agreement that we will argue in a straightforward way, and not in a tale foremost way. The typical modern movements may be right, but let them be defended because they are right, not because they are typical modern movements. Let us begin with the actual woman or man in the street, who is cold, like mankind before the finding of fire. Do not let us begin with the end of the last red-hot discussion, like the end of a red-hot poker. Imperialism may be right, but if it is right, it is right because England has some divine authority like Israel, or some human authority like Rome, not because we have saddled ourselves with South Africa and don't know how to get rid of it. Socialism may be true, but if it is true, it is true because the tribe or the city can really declare all land to be common land, not because herds' stores exist and the commonwealth must copy them. Female suffrage may be just, but if it is just, it is just because women are women, not because women are sweated workers and white slaves and all sorts of things that they ought never to have been. Let not the imperialist accept a colony because it is there, nor the suffragist sees a vote because it is lying about, nor the socialist buy up an industry merely because it is for sale. Let us ask ourselves first what we really do want, not what recent legal decisions have told us to want, or recent logical philosophies prove that we must want, or recent social prophecies predicted that we shall someday want. If there must be a British empire, let it be British, and not in mere panic, American or Prussian. If there ought to be female suffrage, let it be female, and not a mere imitation, as coarse as a male blaggard, or as dull as the male clerk. If there is to be socialism, let it be social, that is, as different as possible from all the big commercial departments of today. The really good journeyman Taylor does not cut his coat according to his cloth. He asks for more cloth. The really practical statesman does not fit himself to existing conditions. He denounces the conditions as unfit. History is like some deeply planted tree, which, though gigantic in girth, tapers away at last into tiny twigs, and we are in the topmost branches. Each of us is trying to bend the tree by a twig, to alter England through a distant colony, or to capture the state through a small state department, or to destroy all voting through a vote. In all such bewilderment he is wise who resists this temptation of trivial triumph or surrender, and happy, in an echo of the Roman poet, who remembers the roots of things, end of the man who thinks backwards. Minorities versus Majorities by Emma Goldman. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Read by Rhonda Fetterman. If I were to give a summary of the tendency of our times, I would say Quantity. The multitude, the mass spirit, dominates everywhere, destroying quality. Our entire life, production, politics, and education, rests on Quantity, on Numbers. The worker who once took pride in the thoroughness and quality of his work has been replaced by brainless, incompetent automatons who turn out enormous quantities of things, valueless to themselves, and generally injurious to the rest of mankind. Thus Quantity, instead of adding to life's comforts and peace, has merely increased man's burden. In politics, not but Quantity counts. In proportion to its increase, however, principles, ideals, justice, and uprightness are completely swamped by the array of Numbers. In the struggle for supremacy, the various political parties outdo each other in the trickery, deceit, cunning, and shady machinations, confident that the one who succeeds is sure to be held by the majority is the victor. That is the only God. Success. As to what expense, what terrible cost to character, is of no moment. We have not far to go in search of proof to verify this sad fact. Never before did the corruption, the complete rottenness of our government, stand so thoroughly exposed. Never before were the American people brought face to face with the Judas nature of that political body. Which has claimed for years to be absolutely beyond reproach, as the mainstay of our institutions, the true protector of the rights and liberties of the people. Yet when the crimes of that party became so brazen that even the blind could see them, it needed but to muster up its minions, and its supremacy was assured. Thus the very victims, duped, betrayed, outraged a hundred times, decided, not against, but in favor of the victor. Bewildered, the few asked how could the majority betray the traditions of American liberty? Where was its judgment, its reasoning capacity? That is just it. The majority cannot reason. It has no judgment. Lacking utterly in originality and moral courage, the majority has always placed its destiny in the hands of others. Incapable of standing responsibilities, it has followed its leaders even unto destruction. Dr. Stockman was right. The most dangerous enemies of truth and justice in our midst are the compact majorities, the damned compact majority. Without ambition or initiative, the compact mass hates nothing so much as innovation. It has always opposed, condemned, and hounded the innovator, the pioneer of a new truth. The oft-repeated slogan of our time is, among all politicians, the socialists included, that ours is an era of individualism, of the minority. Only those who do not probe beneath the surface might be led to entertain this view. Have not the few accumulated the wealth of the world? Are they not the masters, the absolute kings of the situation? Their success, however, is due not to individualism, but to the inertia, the cravenness, the utter submission of the mass. The latter wants to be dominated, to be led, to be coerced. As to individualism? At no time in human history did it have less chance of expression, less opportunity to assert itself in a normal, healthy manner. The individual educator imbued with honesty of purpose, the artist or writer of original ideas, the independent scientist or explorer. The non-compromising pioneers of social change are daily pushed to the wall by men whose learning and creative ability have become decrepit with age. Educators of Ferrer's type are nowhere tolerated, while the dietitians of predigested food, Allah professors Elliot and Butler, are the successful perpetuators of an age of non-entities, of automatons. In the literary and dramatic world, the Humphrey wards and Clyde pitches are the idols of the mass, while but few know or appreciate the beauty and genius of an Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, an Ibsen, a Hopman, a Butler Yates, or Stephen Phillips. They are like solitary stars far beyond the horizon of the multitude. Publishers, theatrical managers and critics ask not for the quality inherent in creative art, but will it meet with a good sale? Will it suit the palette of the people? Alas, this palette is like a dumping ground. It relishes anything that needs no mental mastication. As a result, the mediocre, the ordinary, the common place, represents chief literary output. Need I say that in art we are confronted with the same sad facts? One has but to inspect our parks and thoroughfares to realize the hideousness and vulgarity of the art manufacturer. Certainly none but a majority taste would tolerate such an outrage on art. False in conception and barbarous in execution, the statuary that infests American cities has as much relation to true art as a totem to a Michelangelo. Yet that is the only art that succeeds. The true artistic genius who will not cater to accepted notions, who exercises originality and strives to be true to life, leads an obscure and wretched existence. His work may someday become the fad of the mob, but not until his heart's blood had been exhausted, not until the pathfinder has ceased to be, and a throng of idealist and visionless mob has done to death the heritage of the master. It is said that the artist of today cannot create because Prometheus-like he is bound to the rock of economic necessity. This, however, is true of art in all ages. Michelangelo was dependent on his patron saint, no less than the sculptor or painter of today, except that the art connoisseurs of those days were far away from the maddened crowd. They felt honored to be permitted to worship at the shrine of the master. The art protector of our time knows but one criterion, one value, the dollar. He is not concerned about the quality of any great work, but in the quantity of dollars his purchase implies. Thus the financier in Mirbeau's L'affaire sur l'affaire points to some blurred arrangement in colors, saying, see how great it is? It cost 50,000 francs, just like our own Parvenu. The fabulous figures paid for their great art discoveries must make up for the poverty of their taste. The most unpardonable sin in society is independent of thought, that this should be so terribly apparent in a country whose symbol is democracy is very significant of the tremendous power of the majority. Wendell Phillips said 50 years ago, in our country of absolute democratic equality, public opinion is not only omnipotent, it is omnipresent. There is no refuge from its tyranny, there is no hiding from its reach, and the result is that if you take the old Greek lantern and go about to seek among 100, you will not find a single American who has not, or who does not fancy at least he has, something to gain or lose in his ambition, his social life or business, from the good opinion and the votes of those around him. And the consequence is that instead of being a mass of individuals, each one fearlessly blurting out his own conviction as a nation compared to other nations, we are a mass of cowards. More than any other people, we are afraid of each other. Evidently, we have not advanced very far from the condition that confronted Wendell Phillips. Today, as then, public opinion is the omnipresent tyrant. Today, as then, the majority represents a mass of cowards willing to accept him who mirrors his own soul and mind poverty. That accounts for the unprecedented rise of a man like Roosevelt. He embodies the very worst element of mob psychology. A politician, he knows that the majority cares little for ideals or integrity. What it craves is display. It matters not whether that be a dog show, a prize fight, the lynching of a nigger, the rounding up of some petty offender, the marriage exposition of an heiress. Or the acrobatic stunts of an ex-president. The more hideous the mental contortions, the greater the delight and bravos of the mass. Thus, poor in ideals and vulgar of soul, Roosevelt continues to be the man of the hour. On the other hand, men towering high above such political pygmies, men of refinement, of culture, of ability, are jeered into silence as mollycoddles. It is absurd to claim that ours is the era of individualism. Ours is merely a more poignant repetition of the phenomenon of all history. Every effort for progress, for enlightenment, for science, for religious, political, and economic liberty, emanates from the minority and not from the mass. Today, as ever, the few are misunderstood, hounded, imprisoned, tortured, and killed. The principle of brotherhood, expounded by the agitator of Nazareth, preserved the germ of life, of truth, and justice, so long as it was the beacon of light of the few. The moment the majority seized upon it, that great principle became a shibboleth and harbinger of blood and fire, spreading suffering and disaster. The attack on the omnipotence of Rome was like a sunrise amid the darkness of the night, only so long as it was made by the colossal figures of a hus, a Calvin, or a Luther. Yet when the mass joined in the procession against the Catholic monster, it was no less cruel, no less blood thirsty than its enemy. Woe to the heretics, to the minority, who would not bow to its dicta. After infinite zeal, endurance, and sacrifice, the human mind is at last free from the religious phantom. The minority has gone on in pursuit of new conquests, and the majority is lagging behind, handicapped by truth grown false with age. Politically the human race would still be in the most absolute slavery, were it not for the John Balls, the What-Tilers, the Tells, the innumerable individual giants who fought inch by inch against the power of kings and tyrants. But for the individual pioneers the world would have never been shaken to its very roots by that tremendous wave, the French Revolution. Great events are usually preceded by apparently small things. Thus the eloquence and fire of Camille de Molines was like the trumpet before Jericho, raising to the ground that emblem of torture, of abuse, of horror, the Bastille. Always, at every period, the few were the banner-bearers of a great idea of liberating effort. Not so, the mass, the leaden weight of which does not let it move. The truth of this is borne out in Russia with greater force than elsewhere. Thousands of lives have already been consumed by that bloody regime, yet the monster on the throne is not appeased. How is such a thing possible when ideas, culture, literature, when the deepest and finest emotions groan under the iron yoke? The majority, that compact, immobile, drowsy mass, the Russian peasant, after a century of struggle, of sacrifice, of untold misery, still believes that the rope which strangles the man with the white hands brings luck. The intellectuals. In the American struggle for liberty, the majority was no less of a stumbling block. Until this very day the ideas of Jefferson, of Patrick Henry, of Thomas Paine, are denied and sold by their posterity. The mass wants none of them. The greatness and courage worshiped in Lincoln have been forgotten in the men who created the background for the panorama of that time. The true patron saints of the Black Men were represented in that handful of fighters in Boston. Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, and Theodore Parker, whose great courage and sturdiness culminated in that somber giant, John Brown. Their untiring zeal, their eloquence and perseverance undermined the stronghold of the Southern lords. Lincoln and his minions followed only when abolition had become a practical issue, recognized as such by all. About fifty years ago a meteor-like idea made its appearance on the social horizon of the world. An idea so far-reaching, so revolutionary, so all-embracing as to spread terror in the hearts of tyrants everywhere. On the other hand, that idea was a harbinger of joy, of cheer, of hope to the millions. The pioneers knew the difficulties in their way. They knew the opposition, the persecution, the hardships that would meet them. But proud and unafraid, they started on their march onward, ever onward. Now that idea has become a popular slogan. Almost everyone is a socialist today. The rich man, as well as his poor victim. The upholders of law and authority, as well as their unfortunate culprits. The free thinker, as well as the perpetuator of religious falsehoods. The fashionable lady, as well as the shirt-waste girl. Why not? Now that the truth of fifty years ago has become a lie. Now that it has been clipped by all of its youthful imagination. And has been robbed of its vigor, its strength, its revolutionary ideal. Why not? Now that it is no longer a beautiful vision, but a practical, workable scheme, resting on the will of the majority. Why not? With the same political cunning and trudeness, the mass is petted, pampered, cheated, dally. Its praise is being sung in many keys. The poor majority, the outraged, the abused, the giant majority, if only it would follow us. Who has not heard this litany before? Who does not know this never-varying refrain of all politicians? That the mass bleeds, that it is being robbed and exploited. I know as well as our vote-baters. But I insist that not the handful of parasites, but the mass itself is responsible for this horrible state of affairs. It clings to its masters, loves the whip, and is the first to cry, crucify, the moment a protesting voice is raised against the sacredness of capitalistic authority or any other decayed institution. Yet how long would authority and private property exist if not for the willingness of the mass to become soldiers, policemen, jailers, and hangmen? The socialist demagogues know that as well as I, but they maintain the myth of the virtues of the majority, because their very scheme of life means the perpetuation of power. And how could the latter be acquired without numbers? Yes, power, authority, coercion, and dependence rest on the mass. But never freedom, never the free unfoldment of the individual, never the birth of a free society. Not because I do not feel with the oppressed, the disinherited of the earth. Not because I do not know the shame, the horror, the indignity of the lives the people lead, do I repudiate the majority as a creative force for good. Oh no, no. But because I know so well that as a compact mass, it has never stood for justice or equality. It has suppressed the human voice, subdued the human spirit, chained the human body. As a mass, its aim has always been to make life uniform, gray, and monotonous as the desert. As a mass, it will always be the annihilator of individuality, of free initiative, of originality. I therefore believe with Emerson that the masses are crude, lame, pernicious in their demands and influence, and need not to be flattered, but to be schooled. I wish not to concede anything to them, but to drill, divide, and break them up, and draw individuals out of them. Masses. The calamity are the masses. I do not wish any mass at all, but honest men only, lovely, sweet, accomplished women only. In other words, the living, vital truth of social and economic well-being will become a reality only through the zeal, courage, the non-compromising determination of intelligent minorities, and not through the mass. End of minorities versus majorities by Emma Goldman, read by Rhonda Fetterman. A modest proposal by Donaldson Swift. This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Julie van Wallachem. A modest proposal for preventing the children of poor people in Ireland from being a burden on their parents or country and for making them beneficial to the public. By Donaldson Swift. It is a melancholy object to those who walk through this great town or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads and capitals crowded with baggers of the female sex, followed by three, four or six children all in rags and impotuning every passenger for an arms. These mothers, instead of being able to work for their honest livelihood, are forced to employ all their time installing to back sustenance for their helpless infants, who, as they grow up, either turn thieves for want of work, or leave their dear native country to fight for the pretender in Spain or sell themselves to the Barbados. I think it is agreed by all parties that this prodigious number of children in the arms or on the backs or at the heels of their mothers and frequently of their fathers is in the present deplorable state of the kingdom a very great additional grievance, and therefore whoever could find out a fair, cheap and easy method of making these children sound and useful members of the Commonwealth would deserve so well of the public, as to have a statue set up for a preserver of the nation. But my intention is very far from being confined to provide only for the children of professed baggers. It is of a much greater extent. And shall take in the whole number of infants at a certain age who are born of parents in a fact as little able to support them as those who demand our charity in the streets. As in my own part, having turned my thoughts for many years upon this important subject and maturely weighed the several schemes of our projectors, I have always found them grossly mistaken in their computation. It is true, a child just dropped from its dam may be supported by her milk for a sore year with little author of nourishment, at most not above the value of two shellings, which the mother may certainly get of the value in scraps by her lawful occupation of begging. And it is exactly at one year old that I propose to provide for them in such a manner, as instead of being a charge upon their parents or the parish, or wanting food and raiment for the rest of their lives, they shall, on the contrary, contribute to the feeding and partly to the clothing of many thousands. There is likewise another great advantage in my scheme, that it will prevent those voluntary abortions and that horrid practice of women murdering the bastard children, alas, a frequent among us, sacrificing the poor innocent babes, I doubt, more to avoid the expense than the shame, which would move tears and pity in the most savage and inhuman breast. The number of souls in this kingdom being usually reckoned one million and a half, of these I calculate, there may be about two hundred thousand couple, whose wives are breeders, from which number I subtract thirty thousand couple, who are able to maintain their own children, although I apprehend they cannot be so many under the present distresses of the kingdom, but, this being granted, they will remain a hundred and seventy thousand breeders, I gain subtract fifty thousand, for those women whom is carry, or whose children die by accident or disease within the year, there only remain a hundred and twenty thousand children of poor parents annually born. The question therefore is, how this number shall be reared and provided for, which, as I have already said, and that the present situation of affairs is utterly impossible by all to him methods, hitherto proposed, for we can neither employ them in handicraft or agriculture, we neither build houses, I mean in the country, nor cultivate land, they can very seldom pick up a livelihood by stealing, till they arrive at six years old, except where they are of it awardly parts, although I confess they learn the rudiments much earlier, during which time they can however be properly looked upon only as probationers, as I have been informed by a principal gentleman in the count of Cavern, who protested to me, that he never knew above one or two instances under the age of six, even in a part of the kingdom so renowned for the quickest proficiency in that art. I am assured by our merchants, that a boy or a girl before twelve years old, is no saleable commodity, and even when they come to this age, they will not yield above three pounds, or three pounds and a half a crown at most, on the exchange, which cannot turn to account either to the parents of kingdom, the charge of nutriments and rags having been at least four times that value. I shall now therefore humbly propose my own thoughts, which I hope will not be liable to the least objection. I have been assured, by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child, well-nourished, is at year-old a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled, and I make no doubt that it will equally serve an efficacy or a ragout. I do therefore humbly offer it to public consideration, that of the hundred and twenty thousand children already computed, twenty thousand may be reserved for breed, where of only one fourth part to be males, which is more than we allow to sheep, black cattle, or swine, and my reason is, that these children are seldom the fruit of marriage, a circumstance not much regarded by our savages, therefore one male will be sufficient to serve four females, that the remaining hundred thousand may, at year-old, be offered in sale to the persons of quality and fortune through the kingdom, always advising the mother to let them suck plentifully in the last month, so surrender them plump and fat for a good table. A child will make two dishes at an entertainment for friends, and when the family dines alone, the four or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish and seasoned with a little pepper or salt, will be very good boiled on a fourth day, especially in winter. I have a reckoned upon a medium, that a child just born will weigh twelve pounds, and in a sole year, if tullaby nursed, increases to twenty-eight pounds. I grant this food will be somewhat dear, and therefore very proper for landlords, who, as they have already devoured most of the parents, seem to have the best title to the children. Infant's flesh will be in season throughout the year, but more plentiful in March, and a little before and after, for we are taught by a grave author, an eminent French physician, that fish being a prolific diet, there are more children born in Roman Catholic countries about nine months after land. The markets will be more glutton than usual, because the number of Pope's infants is at least three to one this kingdom, and therefore it will have one other collateral advantage by lessening the number of papers among us. I have already computed the charge of nursing a beggar's child, which lists, I reckon, all cottages, labourers, and four-fifths of the farmers, to be about two shillings per annum, rags included, and I believe no gentleman would repine to give ten shillings for the carcass of good-fat child, which, as I have said, will make four dishes of excellent nutritive meat, when he hath only some particular friend or his own family to dine with him. Thus the squire will learn to be a good landlord, and grow popular among his tenants. The mother will have eight shillings need-profit, and be fit for work till she produces another child. Those who are more thrifty, as I must confess, the times require, may flee the carcass, the skin of which, artificially dressed, will make admirable gloves for ladies and summer boots for fine gentlemen. As your own city of Dublin, shambles may be appointed for this purpose, the most convenient part of it, and butchers, we may be assured, will not be wanting, although I rather recommend buying the children a life and dressing them hot from the knife as we do roasting pigs. A very worthy person, a true lover of this country, and whose virtues I highly esteem, was lately pleased in this courting of this matter, to offer a refinement upon my scheme. He said, that many gentlemen of this kingdom, having of late destroyed their dear, he conceived that a want of venison might be well supplied by the bodies of young lads and maidens, not exceeding fourteen years of age, nor under twelve, so great a number of both sexes in every country being now ready to star for want of work and service, and they used to be disposed of by their parents if alive, or otherwise by their nearest relations. But with due difference to so excellent a friend, and so deserving a patriot, I cannot be altogether in his sentiments. For as to the males, my American acquaintance assured me from frequent experience, that their flesh was generally tough and lean, like that of our schoolboys, by continual exercise, and their taste disagreeable, and to fathom them would not answer the charge. Then as to the females, it would, I think, with humble submission, be lost to the public, because they soon would become readers of themselves, and besides, it is not improbable that some scrupless people might be apt to censure such a practice, although indeed very unjustly, as little bordering upon cruelty, which, I confess, has always been with me the strongest subtraction against any project, how else were ever intended. But in order to justify my friend, he confessed that this expedient was put into his hat by his famous hominazer, a native of the island Famosar, who came from thence to London above twenty years ago, and in conversation taught my friend that in his country, when any young person happened to be put to death, the executioner solved the carcass to persons of quality as a prime dainty, and that in his time, the body of a plumb girl of fifteen, who was crucified for an attempt to poison the emperor, was sold to his Imperial Majesty's Prime Minister of State and other great mandarins of the court, and joints from the gibbet at four hundred crowns, nicer indeed, can I deny, that if the same youths were made of several plumb young girls in this town who, with that one single groat of their fortunes, cannot serve abroad without a chair, and appear at a playhouse and assemblies and foreign fineries which they never will pay for, the kingdom would not be the worse. Some persons of a desponding spirit are in great concern about that vast number of poor people who are aged, deceased or maimed, and I have been desired to employ my thoughts what cause may be taken to ease a nation of so grievous and incumbrance. But I am not in the least pain upon that matter, because it is very well known that they are every day dying and rotting by cold and famine, and filth and vermin, as fast as can be reasonably expected, and as to the young labourers, they are now in almost as hopeful a condition. They cannot get work, and consequently pile away from want of nourishment, to degree that if at any time they are accidentally hired to common labour, they have not strength to perform it, and thus the country and themselves are happily delivered from the evils to come. I have too long digressed, and therefore shall return to my subject. I think the advantages by the proposal which I have made are obvious and many, as well as of the highest importance. For first, as I have already observed, it would greatly lessen the number of papers, with whom we are yearly overrun, being the principal readers of the nation, as well as our most dangerous enemies, and who stay at home on purpose, with the desire to deliver the kingdom to the pretender, hoping to take their advantage by the absence of so many good protestants, who have chosen rather to leave the country, than stay at home and pay tithes against their conscience to an episcopal curate. Secondly, the poorer tenants will have something valuable of their own, which by law may be made liable to a distress, and help to pay the landlord's rent, their corner cattle being already seized, and money, I think, unknown. Thirdly, whereas the maintenance of a hundred thousand children, from two years old and upwards, cannot be computed to less than ten shillings apiece per annum, the nation's stock will be thereby increased fifty thousand pounds per annum, besides the profit of a new dish introduced to the tables of all gentlemen of fortune in the kingdom, who have any refinement and taste, and the money will circulate among ourselves, the goods being entirely of our own growth and manufacture. Fourthly, the constant breeders, besides the gain of eight shilling sterling per annum by the sale of their children, will be rid of the charge of maintaining them after first year. Fifthly, this food would likewise bring great custom to taverns, where the vintners will certainly be so prudent, as to procure the best receipts for dressing into perfection, and consequently have their houses frequented by all the fine gentlemen, who justly valued themselves upon their knowledge in good eating, and a skillful cook, who understands how to bludge his guests, will contrive to make it as expensive as a please. Sixthly, this would be great inducement to marriage, which all wise nations have either encouraged by rewards or enforced by laws and penalties. It would increase the care and tenderness of mothers towards their children, when they were sure of a settlement for life to the poor babes, provided of some sort by the public, to the annual profit instead of expanse. We should soon see, and on the simulation among the married women, which of them could bring the fattest child to the market. Men would become as fond of their wives during the time of their pregnancy, as they are now of their mares of foal, they cows in calf, or so when they are ready to ferro, and are offered to beat or kick them, as is too frequent a practice, for fear of a miscarriage. Many other advantages might be enumerated. For instance, the addition of some thousand carcasses in our expectation of belled beef, the propagation of swine's flesh, and improvements in the art of making good bacon, so much wanted fungus by the great destruction of pigs, too frequent at our tables, which are no way comparable in taste or significance to a well-grown fat yearly child, which, rose at all, will make a considerable figure at the Lord's major's feast, or any other public entertainment. But this, and many others, are amidst being studious of brevity. Supposing that one thousand families in the city would be constant customers for infant's flesh, besides others who might have it at marry meetings, particularly at weddings and gristnings, I compute that Dublin would take off annually about twenty thousand carcasses, and the rest of the kingdom, where probably they will be sold somewhat cheaper, the remaining eighty thousand. I can think of no one objection that will possibly be raised against this proposal, lest it should be urged that a number of people will be thereby much lessened in the kingdom. This I freely own, and was indeed one principal design in offering it to the world. I desire the reader will observe that I calculate my remedy for this one individual kingdom of Ireland, and for no others it ever was, is, or I think, ever can be, upon earth. Therefore let no man talk to me of other expedience, of taxing our raps and teas at five shillings a pound, of using neither clothes nor household furniture, except what is of our own growth and manufacture, of utterly rejecting the materials and instruments that promote foreign luxury, of curing the expansiveness of pride, vanity, idleness and gaming in our women, of introducing a vein of parsimony, prudence and temperance, of learning to love our country, wherein we differ even from landlanders, and the inhabitants of Tepinambu, of quitting our animosities and factions, nor acting any longer like the Jews who were murdering one another at the very moment the city was taken, of being a little cautious not to sell our country and consciousness for nothing, of teaching landlords to have at least one degree of mercy towards their tenants, lastly of putting a spirit of honesty, industry and skill into our shopkeepers, who, if a resolution could now be taken to buy only our native goods, would immediately unite to cheat and exact upon us in the price, the measure and the goodness, nor could I have yet to be brought to make one fair proposal of just dealing, though often and earnestly invited to it. Therefore I repeat that no man talked to me of these and the like expedients, till he hath at least some glimpse of hope that there will ever be some hearty and sincere attempt to put them into practice. But as to myself, having been rared out for many years with offering vain idle visionary thoughts, and at length utterly despairing of success, I fortunately fell upon this proposal, which as it is all in you, so it hath something solid and real of no expense and lesser trouble, full in our own power, and whereby we can incur no danger in disobliging England. This kind of commodity will not bear expectation, and flesh being of too tender a consistency to submit a long continuance and salt, although perhaps I could name a country which would be glad to eat up our whole nation without it. After all, I am not so violently bent upon my own opinion as to reject any offer proposed by wise men, which I'll be found equally innocent, cheap, easy and factual. But before something of that kind shall be advanced in contradiction to my scheme, and offering a better, I desire the author, or authors, will be pleased maturely to consider two points. First, as things now stand, how they will be able to find food and raiment for a hundred thousand useless mouths and backs, and secondly, there being around a million of creatures in the human figure throughout this kingdom, whose subsistence put into a common stock, would lead them in debt at two million of pounds sterling, adding those who are beggars by profession, to the bulk of farmers, cottages, and labourers, with their wives and children who are beggars in effect. I desire those politicians who dislike my overture, and may perhaps be so bold to attempt an answer, that they will first ask the parents of these mortals, whether they would not, at this day, think it a great happiness to have been sought for food at a year old, in the manner I prescribe, and thereby have afforded such a perpetual scene of misfortunes, as if they have since gone through, by the oppression of landlords, the impossibility of paying rent without money or trade, the want of common sustenance, with neither house nor clothes, to cover them from the inclinancies of the weather, and the most inevitable prospect of entailing the like or greater miseries upon their breed forever. I profess in the sincerity of my heart, that I have not the least personal interest in endeavouring to promote this necessary work, having no author motive than the public good of my country by advancing our trade, providing for instance relieving the poor, and giving some pleasure to the rich. I have no children, by which I can propose to get a single penny, the youngest being nine years old, and my wife past childbearing. End of A Middles Proposal by Jonathan Swift NON CENSORSHIP by Hayward Brown A censor is a man who is read about Joshua and forgotten Canute. He believes that he can hold back the mighty traffic of life with a tin whistle and a raised right hand, for after all it is life with which he quarrels. Censorship is seldom greatly concerned with truth, propriety is its worry, and obviously impropriety was allowed to creep into the fundamental scheme of creation. It is perhaps a little unfortunate that no right-minded censor was present during the first week in which the world was made. The plan of sex, for instance, could have been suppressed effectively, then, and Mr. Sumner might have been spared the dreadful and dangerous ordeal of reading, Jurgen, so many centuries later. Indeed, if there had only been right-minded supervision over the modelling of Adam and Eve, the world could worry along nicely without the aid of the society for the suppression of vice. Suppression of those biological facts, which the society includes in its definition of vice, is now impossible. Concealment is really what the good men are after. Somewhat after the manner of the babes in the woods, they would cover us over with leaves. For men and women they have figs, and for babies they have cabbages. It must have been a censor who first hit upon the notion that what you don't know won't hurt you. We doubt whether it is a rule which applies to sex. Eve left Eden and took upon herself a curse for the sake of knowledge. It seems a little heedless of this heroism to advocate that we keep the curse and forget the knowledge. The battle against censorship should have ended at the moment of the eating of the apple. At that moment man committed himself to the decision that he would know all about life even though he died for it. Unfortunately, under the terms of existence of mortals, one decision is not enough. We must keep reaffirming decisions if they are to hold. Even in Eden there was the germ of a new threat to degrade Adam and Eve back to innocence. When they ate the apple, an amoeba in a distant corner of the garden shuddered and began the long and difficult process of evolution. To all practical purposes John S. Sumner was already born. To us the whole theory of censorship is immoral. If its functions were administered by the wisest man in the world it would still be wrong, but of course the wisest man in the world would have too much sense to be a censor. We are not dealing with him. His substitutes are distinctly lesser folk. They are not even trained for their work except in the most haphazard manner. Obviously a censor should be the most profound of psychologists. Instead the important posts and the agencies of suppression go to the boy who can capture the largest number of smutty postcards. After he has confiscated a few gross he is promoted to the task of watching over art. By that time he has been pretty thoroughly blasted for the sins of the people. An extraordinary number of things admit of shameful interpretations in his mind. For instance the sight of a woman making baby clothes is not generally considered a vicious spectacle in many communities, but it may not be shown on the screen in Pennsylvania by order of the State Board of Censors. In New York Kipling's Anne of Austria was not allowed to take the wage of infamy and eat the bread of shame. In a screen version of The Ballad of Fisher's Boarding House thereby a most immoral effect was created Anne was shown wandering about quite casually and drinking in conversation with sailors who were perfect strangers to her, but the censors would not allow any stigma to be placed upon her conduct. Indeed this decision seems to support the rather strange theory that deeds don't matter so long as nothing is said about them. The New York Picture Board is peculiarly sensitive to words. Upon one occasion a picture was submitted with a caption. The air of the sows seas breathes an erotic perfume. Ked out erotic came back the command of the censors. In Illinois Charlie Chaplin was not allowed to have a scene in The Kid in which upon being asked the name of the child he shook his head and rushed into the house returning a moment later to answer, Bill. That particular Board of Censors seemed intent upon keeping secret the fact that there are two sexes. Of course it may be argued that motion pictures are not an art and that it makes little difference what happens to them. We cannot share that indifference. Enough has been done in pictures to convince us that very beautiful things might be achieved if only the censors could be put out of the way. Not all the silliness of the modern American picture is the fault of the producers. Much of the blame must rest with the various boards of censorship. It is difficult to think up many stories in which there is no passion, crime or birth. As a matter of fact we are of the opinion that the entire theory of motion picture censorship is mistaken. The guardians of morals hold that if the spectator sees a picture of a man robbing a safe he will thereby be moved to rob a safe himself. In rebuttal we offer the testimony of a gentleman much wiser in the knowledge of human conduct than any censor. Writing in The New Republic George Bernard Shaw advocated that hereafter public reading rooms supply their patrons only with books about evil characters, for he argued after reading about evil deeds our longings for wickedness are satisfied vicariously. On the other hand there is the danger that the public may read about saints and heroes and drain off its aspirations in such directions without actions. We believe this is true. We once saw a picture about a highwayman. That was in the days before censorship was as strict as it is now, and it convinced us that the profession would not suit us. We had not realized the amount of compulsory writing entailed. The particular highwayman whom we saw dined hurriedly, slept infrequently, and invariably had his boots on. Mostly he was being pursued and hurtling over hedges. It left us sore in every muscle to watch him. At the end of the Eighth Reel every bit of longing in our soul to be a swashbuckler had abated. The man in the picture had done the adventuring for us, and we could return in comfort to a peaceful existence. Fluorid literature is the compensation for hum drummary. If we are ever completely shut off from a chance to see or read about a little evil doing, we shall probably be moved to go out and cut loose on our own. So far we have not felt the necessity. We have been willing to let d'Artagnan do it. Even so arduous an abstinence as prohibition may be made indurable through fictional substitutes, after listening to a drinking chorus in a comic opera and watching the amusing antics of the chief comedian, who is ever so inebriated we are almost persuaded to stay dry. Prohibition is perhaps the climax of censorship. It has the advantage over other forms of suppression, in that at least it represents a sensible point of view. Yet we are not converted. There are things in the world far more important than hard sense. One of the officials of the Anti-Saloon League gave out a statement the other day, in which he endeavored to show all the benefits provided by prohibition. But he did it with figures. There was a column showing the increase of accounts and savings-banks, and another devoted to the decrease of inmates and hospitals, jails, and alms-houses. From a utilitarian point of view, the figures, if correct, could hardly fail to be impressive. But little has been said by either side about the spiritual effects of rum. Unfortunately there are no statistics on that, and yet it is the one phase of the question which interests us. Some weeks ago we happened to observe a letter from a man who wrote to one of the newspapers protesting against the proposed settlement in Ireland on the ground that, it's so damned sensible. We have somewhat the same feeling about prohibition. It is a movement to take the folly out of our national life, and there is no quality which America needs so sorely. If enforcement ever becomes perfect, this will be a nation composed entirely of men who wear rubbers, put money in the bank, and go to bed at ten. That fine old ringing phrase, this is on me, will be gone from the language. Conversation will be wholly instructive, for in fifty years the last generation capable of saying, Do you remember that night? Will have been gathered to its fathers. Of course there is no denying the short-sightedness of the forces of rum. They cannot escape their responsibility for having aided in the advent of prohibition. They were slow to see the necessity of some form of curtailment and limitation of the traffic. Such moves as they did make were entirely wrong-headed. For instance, we had ordinances providing for the early closing of cafes. Instead of that we should have had laws forbidding anybody to sell liquor except between the hours of 8 p.m. and 5 a.m. Daytime drinking was always sodden, but something is necessary to make night worthwhile. Man is more than the beast, and he should not be driven into dull slumber just because the sun has set. The invention of electricity, liquor, cup-glass mirrors, and cards made man the master of his environment rather than its slave. Now that liquor is gone all the other factors are mockery. Card playing has become merely an extension of the cruel and logical process of the survival of the fittest. The fellow with the best hand wins, instead of the one with the best head. Nobody draws four cards any more or stands for a raise on an inside straight. The thing is just cut throat and scientific and holy mercenary. The kitty is gone, nobody cares to come in to a common fund for the purchase of mineral water and cheese sandwiches, and with the passing of the kitty the most promising development of cooperation and communism in America has gone. It was prophetic of a more perfectly organized society. In the days of the kitty the fine socialistic ideal of, from each according to his abilities to each according to his needs, was made specific and workable, and the inspiring romantic tradition of Robin Hood was also carried over into modern life. The kitty robbed only the rich and left the poor alone. But now none of us will contribute unquestionably to the material comfort of others. Each must keep his money for the savings bank. Perhaps something of the old friendly rivalry may be revived. In a hundred years it may be that men will meet around a table, and that one will say to the other, What have you got? I've got $9,876.32 in first mortgages and guilt-edged securities. That's good, you win. But somehow or other we doubt it. Another mistake which was made in the policy of compromising with the drives was the agreement that liquor should not be served to miners. On the contrary, the provision should have been that drink ought not to be permitted to any man more than thirty years of age. Liquor was never meant to be a steady companion. It was the animating influence which made Oates Wilde. Work and responsibility are the portion of the mature man. Rom was designed for youthful days when the reckless avidity for experience is so great that reality must be blurred a little, lest it blind us. We happened to pick up a copy of The Harvard Crimson the other day in red. The first freshman smoker will be held at 7.45 o'clock this evening in the living room of the Union. P. H. Theopold, 25, chairman of the Smoker Committee, will act as chairman, including Clark Hodder, 25, and J. H. Child, 25, the class president and secretary respectively. After the speeches there will be a motion picture and some vaudeville by a magician from Keith's. Ginger ale, crackers, and cigarettes will be served. All freshmen are invited to attend. They used to be called freshman beer nights, and in those days the possibility of friendship at first sight was not fantastic. We feel sure that it cannot be done on ginger ale. The urge for democracy does not dwell in any soft drink. The speeches will be terrible, for there will be no pleasant interruptions of ah, sit down, from the man in the back of the room. If somebody begins to sing, P. H. Theopold is a good old soul, it is not likely to carry conviction. Not once during the evening will any speaker confine himself to saying, to hell with Yale, and falling off the table. Probably the magician will not be able to find anything in the high hat except white rabbits. Although we have seen no first hand report of that freshman smoker we feel sure that it was only a crowded, self-conscious gathering of a number of young men who said little and went home early. Even from the standpoint of the strictest of abstainers there must be some regret for the passing of rum. Which man who lived through the bad old days does not remember the thrill of recitude which came to him the first time he said, make mine a cigar. Though they have taken away our rum from us we have our memories. Not all the days have been dull gray. Back in the early pages of our diary is the entry about the trip which we made to Boston with William F. in the hard winter of 1907. It was agreed that neither of us should drink the same sort of drink twice. Staunch William achieved nineteen varieties, but we topped him with twenty-four. Upon examination we observed that the entry in the memory book was made several days later. The handwriting is a little shaky, but for that adventure we might have lived and died entirely ignorant of the nature of an angel float. In those days human sympathy was wider. F.M.W. seemed in many respects a matter-of-fact man, but it was he who chanced upon the fifty-ninth street circle just before dawn, and paused to call the attention of all the bystanders to the statue of Columbus. Look at him, he said, Christopher Columbus. He discovered America, and then they sent him back to Spain in chains. He wept, and we realized for the first time that under a rough exterior there beat a heart of gold. End of Nonsensehip by Haywood Brown I should say the greatest obstacles that writers today have to get over are the dazzling journalistic successes of twenty years ago, stories that surprised and delighted by their sharp photographic detail, and that were really nothing more than lively pieces of reporting. The whole aim of that school of writing was novelty, never a very important thing in art. They gave us altogether poor standards, taught us to multiply our ideas instead of to condense them. They tried to make a story out of every theme that occurred to them, and to get returns on every situation that suggested itself. They got returns of a kind, but their work when one looks back on it, now that the novelty upon which they counted so much as gone, is journalistic and thin. The especial merit of a good repertorial story is that it shall be intensely interesting and pertinent today, and shall have lost its point by tomorrow. Art, it seems to me, should simplify. That, indeed, is very nearly the whole of the higher artistic process. Finding what conventions of form and what detail one can do without, and yet preserve the spirit of the whole, so that all that one has suppressed and cut away, is there to the reader's consciousness as much as if it were in type on the page. Millet has done hundreds of sketches of peasants sewing grain, some of them very complicated and interesting, but when he came to paint the spirit of them all into one picture, the sower, the composition is so simple that it seems inevitable. All the discarded sketches that went before made the picture what it finally became, and the process was all the time one of simplifying, of sacrificing many conceptions good in themselves for one that was better and more universal. Any first-rate novel or story must have in it the strength of a dozen fairly good stories that have been sacrificed to it. A good workman can't be a cheap workman. He can't be stingy about wasting material and he can't compromise. Writing ought either to be the manufacture of stories for which there is a market demand, a business as safe and commendable as making soap or breakfast foods, or it should be an art, which is always a search for something for which there is no market demand, something new and untried, where the values are intrinsic and have nothing to do with standardized values. The courage to go on without compromise does not come to a writer all at once, nor for that matter does the ability. Both are phases of natural development. In the beginning the artist, like his public, is wedded to old forms, old ideals, and his vision is blurred by the memory of old delights he would like to recapture. From the Bordeaux, 1920. End of On the Art of Fiction by Willa Sebert Cather On the Expunging Resolutions by Henry Clay This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org U.S. Senate January 16, 1837 Mr. President What patriotic purpose is to be accomplished by this expunging resolution? What new honor or fresh laurels will it win for our common country? Is the power of the Senate so vast that it ought to be circumscribed, and that of the President so restricted that it ought to be extended? What power has the Senate? None separately. It can only act jointly with the other house or jointly with the executive. And although the theory of the Constitution opposes, when consulted by him, it may freely give an affirmative or negative response according to the practice, as it now exists, it has lost the faculty of pronouncing the negative monosyllable. When the Senate expresses its deliberate judgment in the form of resolution, that resolution has no compulsory force, but appeals only to the dispassionate intelligence, the calm reason, and sober judgment of the community. The Senate has no army, no navy, no patronage, no lucrative offices, no glittering honors to bestow. Around us, there is no swarm of greedy expectants rendering us homage, anticipating our wishes, and ready to execute our commands. How is it with the President? Is he powerless? He is felt from one extremity to the other of this vast republic, by means of principles which he has introduced, and innovations which he has made in our institutions alas, but too much countenanced by Congress, and a confiding people he exercises uncontrolled the power of the state. In one hand, he holds the purse, and in the other, brandishes the sword of the country. Myriads of dependents and partisans scattered over the land are ever ready to sing hosannas to him, and to laud the skies whatever he does. He has swept over the government during the last eight years like a tropical tornado. Every department exhibits traces of the ravages of the storm. Take as one example the Bank of the United States. No institution could have been more popular with the people, with Congress and with state legislatures, none ever better fulfilled the great purposes of its establishment, but it unfortunately incurred the displeasure of the President. He spoke at the bank lies prostrate, and those who were laudest in its praise are now laudest in its condemnation. What object of his ambition is unsatisfied? When disabled from age any longer to hold the scepter of power, he designates his successor and transmits it to his favorite. What more does he want? Must we blot, deface, and mutilate the records of the country to punish the presumptuousness of expressing an opinion contrary to his own? What patriotic purpose is to be accomplished by this expunging resolution? Can you make that not to be which has been? Can you eradicate from memory and from history the fact that in March 1834 a majority of the Senate of the United States passed the resolution which excites your enmity? Is it your vain and wicked object to aggregate to yourselves that power of annihilating the past which has been denied to omnipotence itself? Do you intend to thrust your hand into our hearts and to pluck out the deeply rooted convictions which are there? Or is it your design merely to stigmatize us? You cannot stigmatize us. Ner yet did base dishonor blur our name. Standing securely upon our conscious rectitude and bearing aloft the shield of the constitution of our country, your puny efforts are impotent and we defy all your power. Put the majority of 1834 in one scale and that by which this expunging resolution is to be carried in the other and let truth and justice in heaven above and on earth below and liberty and patriotism decide the preponderance. What patriotic purpose is to be accomplished by the expunging resolution? Is it to appease the wrath and to heal the wounded pride of the chief magistrate? If he be really the hero that his friends represent him, he must despise all mean condescension, all groveling sycophony, and all self-degradation and self-abasement. He would reject with scorn and contempt as unworthy of his fame your black scratches and your baby lines in the fair records of his country. Black lines! Black lines! Sir, I hope the Secretary of the Senate will preserve the pen with which he may inscribe them and present it to that senator of the majority whom he may select as a proud trophy to be transmitted to his descendants and hereafter when we shall lose the forms of our free institutions all that now remains to us. Some future American monarch gratitude to those by whose means he has been enabled upon the ruins of civil liberty to erect a throne and to commemorate especially this expunging resolution may institute a new order of knighthood and confer on it the appropriate name of the Knights of the Black Lines. But why should I detain the Senate or needlessly waste my breath in fruitless exertions? The decree has gone forth. It is one of urgency too. The deed is to be done. That foul deed which, like the bloodstaining the hands of the guilty Macbeth, all oceans waters will never wash out. Proceed then to the noble work which lies before you and, like other skillful executioners, do it quickly. And when you have perpetrated it, go home to the people and tell them what glorious honors you have achieved for our common country. Tell them that you have extinguished one of the brightest and purest lights that ever burned the altar of civil liberty. Tell them that you have silenced one of the noblest batteries that ever thundered in defense of the Constitution and bravely spiked the canon. Tell them that, henceforward, no matter what daring or outrageous act any president may perform, you have forever hermetically sealed the mouth of the Senate. Tell them that he may fearlessly assume what powers he pleases, snatch from its lawful custody the public purse, command a military detachment to enter the halls of the Capitol, over awe Congress trample down the Constitution and raise every bulwark of freedom. But that the Senate must stand mute in silent submission and not dare to raise its opposing voice. Tell them that it must wait until a House of Representatives, humbled and subdued like itself and a majority of it, composed the partisans of the president, shall refer articles of impeachment. Tell them, finally, that you have restored the glorious doctrine of passive obedience and non-resistance. And if the people do not pour out their indignation and implications, I've yet to learn the character of American Freeman and of on the expunging resolutions by Henry Clay, read by David Federman.