 See Vegetable Dishes from Castle's Vegetarian Cookery by A. G. Payne. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Reading by Bologna Times. See Vegetables from Castle's Vegetarian Cookery. Cabbage soup. Take a white cabbage and slice it up and throw it into some stock or water with some leaks and slices of turnip. Boil the whole till the vegetables are tender, flavor with pepper and salt. This is sometimes called Cornish broth, though in Cornwall a piece of meat or bones are generally boiled with vegetables. As no meat, of course, is used, too much water must not be added, but only sufficient liquor must be served to make the vegetables thoroughly moist. Perhaps the consistency can best be described by saying that there should be equal quantities of vegetables and fluid. Carrot soup. If you wish the soup to be of a good color, you must only use the outside or red part of the carrot, in which case a dozen large carrots will be required. If economy is practiced, half this quantity will be sufficient. Take, say, half a dozen carrots, a small head of celery and one onion and throw them into boiling water for a few minutes in order to preserve the color. Then drain them off and place them in a saucepan with a couple of ounces of butter to prevent them sticking and burning, and place the saucepan on a very slack fire and let them stew so that the steam can escape. But take care they don't burn or get brown. Now add a quart or two quarts of stock or water and boil them till they are tender. Then rub the whole through a wire sieve. Add a little butter, pounded sugar, pepper, and salt. The amount of liquid added must entirely depend upon the size of the carrots. It is better to add too little than too much, but the consistency of the soup should be like ordinary pea soup. It does not do to have the soup watery. If only the outside parts of the carrots are used, and this red part is thrown at starting into boiling water to preserve its color, this soup, when made thick, has a very bright and handsome appearance and is suitable for occasions when a little extra hospitality is exercised. The inside part of the carrot, if not used for making the soup, need not be wasted, but can be used for making stock or served in a dish of mixed vegetables on some other occasion. Cauliflower Soup Take three or four small cauliflower or two large ones, soak them in salt and water, and boil them in some water till they are nearly tender. Take them out and break the cauliflower so that you get two or three dozen little pieces out of the heart of the cauliflower, somewhat resembling miniature bouquets. Put the rest of the cauliflower back into the water in which it was boiled, with the exception of the green part of the leaves, with an onion, and some of the white part of the head of celery. Let all boil till the water has nearly boiled away. Now rub all this through a wire sieve, onions, celery, cauliflower, and all. Add to it sufficient boiling milk to make the whole of the consistency of pea soup. Add a little butter, pepper, and salt. Throw in those little pieces of cauliflower that had been reserved a minute or two before serving the soup. It is an improvement to boil two or three bay leaves with the milk, and also a very great improvement, indeed, to add a little boiling cream. Fried or toasted bread should be served with the soup. Celery Soup Take half a dozen heads of celery, or a smaller quantity, if the heads of celery are very large. Throw away all the green part, and cut up the celery into small pieces with one onion sliced, and place them in a frying pan, or, better still, in an enameled stew pan, and stew them in a little butter, taking great care that the celery does not turn color. Now add sufficient water or stock, and let it all boil till the celery becomes quite tender. Let it boil till it becomes a pulp, and then rub the whole through a wire sieve. Next, boil separately from one to two quarts of milk, according to the quantity of celery pulp, and boil a couple of bay leaves and the milk. As soon as the milk boils, add it to the celery pulp, flavor the soup with pepper and salt, serve fried or toasted bread with the soup. It is needless to say that all these white soups are greatly improved, both in appearance and flavor, by the addition of a little cream. Cabbage, plain, boiled. Ordinary young cabbages should be first trimmed by having the outside leaves removed. The stalks cut off, and then should be cut in halves, and allowed to soak some time in salt and water. They should be thrown into plenty of boiling water. The water should be kept boiling and uncovered. As soon as they are tender, they should be strained off and served immediately. Young summer cabbages will not take longer than a quarter of an hour, or even less. Old cabbages take nearly double that time. It is impossible to lay down any exact rule with regard to time. Savoys generally take about half an hour. The large white cabbages met with in the west of England take longer and require a different treatment. When cabbage is served as a dish by itself, it will be found a great improvement to add either butter or oil to moisten the cabbage after it is thoroughly drained off. In order to ensure the butter not oiling, but adhering to the cabbage, it is best after the butter is added and while you mix it with the cabbage to shake the flour dredger two or three times over the vegetable. In Germany, many add vinegar and sugar to the cabbage. Cabbage, large, white. In the west of England, cabbages grow to an immense size, owing probably to the moist heat, and have been exhibited in agricultural shows over 20 pounds in weight and as big as an 18-gallon cask. These cabbages are best boiled as follows. After being cut up and thoroughly washed, it will be found that the greater part of the cabbage resembles what an ordinary cabbage would be called stock. And of course, the leaves very considerably in thickness from the hard stock end up to the leaf. Have plenty of boiling water, ready salted. Now cut off the stock part where it is thickest and throw this in first. Wait till the water comes to the boil again and let it boil for a few minutes. Then throw in the next thickest part and again wait till the water re-boils and so on, reserving the thin leafy part to be thrown in last of all. By this means, and this only, do we get the cabbage boiled uniformly. Had we thrown it all at once, one of two things would be inevitable. Either the stock would be too hard to be eaten or the leafy part overboiled. A large white cabbage takes about an hour to boil tender and a piece of soda should be added to the water. When the cabbage is well drained, it can be served either plain or moistened and made to look oily by the addition of a piece of butter. As the cabbage is very white, the dish is very much improved by the addition of a little chopped parsley sprinkled over the top, not for the sake of flavor but appearance. Cabbage and cream. Ordinary cabbages are sometimes served stewed with a little cream. They should be first parboiled, then the moisture squeezed from them. And then they must be put in a stew pan with a little butter, pepper, salt, and nutmeg. And a spoonful of flour should be shaken over the cabbage in order to prevent the butter being too oily. When the cabbage is stewed till it is perfectly tender, add a few spoonfuls of cream, stir up, and make the whole thoroughly hot and serve with fried or toasted bread. Cabbage, red. Red cabbages are chiefly used for pickling. They are sometimes served fresh. They should be cut across so that the cabbage shreds boil till they are tender, the moisture thoroughly extracted, and then put into a stew pan with a little butter, pepper, and salt and a few shakes of flour from the flour dredger. After stirring for ten minutes or a quarter of an hour, squeeze the juice of a lemon over them and serve. Carrots, boiled. When carrots are boiled and served as a course by themselves, they ought to be young. This dish is constantly met with abroad in early summer but is rarely seen in England except at the tables of vegetarians. The carrots should be trimmed, thoroughly washed, and if necessary, slightly scraped, and the point at the end, which looks like a piece of string, should be cut off. They should be thrown into fast boiling water, salted, in order to preserve their color. When tender, they can be served with some kind of good white sauce or sauce alemand or Dutch sauce. Perhaps this latter sauce is best of all as it looks like rich custard. Part of the red carrot should show uncovered by any sauce. They are best placed in a circle and the thick sauce poured in the center. A very little chopped, blanched parsley can be sprinkled on the top of the sauce. In making Dutch sauce for carrots, use lemon juice instead of tarragon vinegar. Carrots, fried. Fried carrots can be made from full-grown carrots. They must be first parboiled and then cut in slices. They must then be dipped in well-beaten up egg and then covered with fine, dry breadcrumbs and fried a nice brown and smoking hot oil in a frying basket. The slices of carrots should be peppered and salted before being dipped in the egg. Carrots, mashed. When carrots are very old, they are best mashed. Boil them for some time, then cut them up and rub them through a wire sieve. They can be pressed in a basin and made hot by being steamed. A little butter, pepper and salt should be added to the mixture. A very pretty dish can be made by means of mixing mashed carrots with mashed turnips. They can be shaped in a basin and with a little ingenuity can be put into red and white stripes. The effect is something like the top of a striped tent. Cauliflower au gratin. This is a very nice method of serving cauliflower as a course by itself. The cauliflower or cauliflower should first be boiled till thoroughly tender, very carefully drained and then placed upright in a vegetable dish with the flower part uppermost. The whole of the flower part should then be masked, i.e. covered over, with some thick white sauce. Alamon sauce or Dutch sauce will do. This is then sprinkled over with grated Parmesan cheese and the dish put in the oven for the top to brown. As soon as it begins to brown, take it out of the oven and finish it off neatly with a salamander. A red hot shovel will do. The same way you finished cheesecakes made from curds. Cauliflower and tomato sauce. Boil and place the cauliflower or flowers upright in a dish as in the above recipe. Now mask all the flower part very neatly, commencing round the edges first with some tomato conserve previously made warm and serve immediately. This is a very pretty looking dish. Celery stewed. The secret of having good stewed celery is only to cook the white part. Throw the celery into boiling water with only sufficient water just to cover it. When the celery is tender, use some of the water in which it is stewed to make a sauce to serve with it, or better still, stew the celery and milk. The sauce looks best when it is thickened with the yolks of eggs. A very nice sauce indeed can be made by first thickening the milk or water in which the celery is stewed with a little white roux and then adding a quarter of a pint of cream boiled separately. Stewed celery should be served on toast like asparagus. A little chopped blanched parsley can be sprinkled over the white sauce by way of ornament and fried bread should be placed round the edge of the dish. Stewed celery can also be served with sauce alamond or Dutch sauce. End of See Vegetable Dishes From Castles Vegetarian Cookery by A. G. Payne Father Damien, an open letter to the Reverend Dr. Hyde of Honolulu from Robert Louis Stevenson by Robert Louis Stevenson. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Sydney, February 25, 1890 Sir, it may probably occur to you that we have met and visited and conversed on my side with interest. You may remember that you have done me several courtesies for which I was prepared to be grateful. But there are duties which come before gratitude and offences which justly divide friends far more acquaintances. Your letter to the Reverend H. B. Gage is a document which, in my sight, if you had filled me with bread when I was starving, if you had sat up to nurse my father when he lay a dying, would yet absolve me from the bonds of gratitude. You know enough, doubtless, of the process of canonization to be aware that, a hundred years after the death of Damien, there will appear a man charged with the painful office of the devil's advocate. After that noble brother of mine and of all frail clay shall have lain a century at rest, one shall accuse, one defend him. The circumstance is unusual that the devil's advocate should be a volunteer, should be a member of a sect immediately rival, and should make haste to take upon himself his ugly office ere the bones are cold. Unusual and of a taste which I shall leave my readers free to qualify. Unusual and to me inspiring. If I have at all learned the trade of using words to convey truth and to arouse emotion, you have at last to furnish me with a subject. It is in the interest of all mankind and the cause of public decency in every quarter of the world not only that Damien should be righted, but that you and your letter should be displayed at length in their true colors to the public eye. To do this properly I must begin by quoting you at large. I shall then proceed to criticize your utterance from several points of view, divine and human, in the course of which I shall attempt to draw again, and with more specification, the character of the dead saint whom it has pleased you to vilify. So much being done I shall say farewell to you for ever." Honolulu, August 2, 1889 Reverend H. B. Gage Dear brother, in answer to your inquiries about Father Damien, I can only reply that we who knew the man are surprised at the extravagant newspaper laudations as if he was a most saintly philanthropist. The simple truth is he was a coarse, dirty man, headstrong and bigoted. He was not sent to Malochai, but went there without orders, did not stay at the leper settlement before he came one himself, but circulated freely over the whole island. Less than half the island is devoted to lepers. And he came often to Honolulu. He had no hand in the reforms and improvements inaugurated which were the work of our Board of Health as occasion required and means were provided. He was not a pure man in his relations with women, and the leprosy of which he died should be attributed to his vices and carelessness. Other have done much for the lepers, our own ministers, the government physicians, and so forth, but never with the catholic idea of meriting eternal life, yours, etc. C. M. Hyde Footnote From the Sydney Presbyterian October 26, 1889 End of Footnote To deal fitly with a letter so extraordinary I must draw at the outset on my private knowledge of the signatory and his sect. It may offend others, scarcely you, who have been so busy to collect, so bold to publish, gossip on your rivals. And this is perhaps the moment when I may best explain to you the character of what you are to read. I conceive you as a man quite beyond and below the reticences of civility. With what measure you meet, with that shall it be measured you again. With you at last I rejoice to feel the button off the foil and to plunge home. And if in ought that I shall say I should offend others, your colleagues whom I respect and remember with affection, I can but offer them my regret. I am not free. I am inspired by the consideration of interests far more large, and such pain as can be inflicted by anything from me must be indeed trifling when compared with the pain with which they read your letter. It is not the hangman but the criminal that brings dishonor on the house. You belong, sir, to a sect. I believe my sect and that in which my ancestors labored, which has enjoyed and partly failed to utilize an exceptional advantage in the islands of Hawaii. The first missionaries came. They found the land already self-purged of its old and bloody faith. They were embraced almost upon their arrival with enthusiasm. What troubles they supported came far more from whites than from Hawaiians. And to these last they stood, in a rough figure, in the shoes of God. This is not the place to enter into the degree or causes of their failure such as it is. One element alone is pertinent and must here be plainly dealt with. In the course of their evangelical calling they, or too many of them, grew rich. It may be news to you that the houses of missionaries are a cause of mocking on the streets of Honolulu. It will at least be news to you that when I returned your civil visit, the driver of my cab commented on the size, the taste, and the comfort of your home. It would have been news certainly to myself, had anyone told me that afternoon, that I should live to drag such a matter into print. But you see, sir, how you degrade better men to your own level, and it is needful that those who are to judge betwixt you and me, betwixt Damien and the devil's advocate, should understand your letter to have been penned in a house which could raise, and that very justly, the envy and comments of the passers-by. I thank to employ a phrase of yours which I admire. It should be attributed to you that you have never visited the scene of Damien's life and death. If you had, and had recalled it, and looked about your pleasant rooms, even your pen perhaps would have been stayed. Your sect, and remember, as far as any sect avows me, it is mine, has not done ill in a worldly sense in the Hawaiian kingdom. When calamity befell their innocent parishioners, when leprosy descended and took root in the eight islands, a quid pro quo was to be looked for. To that prosperous mission, and to you as one of its adornments, God had sent at last an opportunity. I know I am touching here upon a nerve acutely sensitive. I know that others of your colleagues look back on the inertia of your church, and the intrusive and decisive heroism of Damien, with something almost to be called remorse. I am sure it is so with yourself. I am persuaded your letter was inspired by a certain envy, not essentially ignoble, and the one human trait to be aspired in that performance. You were thinking of the lost chance, the past day, of that which should have been conceived and was not, of the service due and not rendered. Time was, said the voice in your ear, in your pleasant room, as you sat raging and writing, and if the words written were based beyond parallel, the rage I am happy to repeat, it is the only compliment I shall pay you. The rage was almost virtuous. But, sir, when we have failed and another has succeeded, when we have stood by and another has stepped in, when we sit and grow bulky in our charming mansions, and a plain uncouth peasant steps into the battle, under the eyes of God, and secures the afflicted, and consoles the dying, and is himself afflicted in his turn, and dies upon the field of honor. The battle cannot be retrieved as your unhappy irritation has suggested. It is a lost battle and lost forever. One thing remained to you in your defeat. Some rags of common honor, and these you have made haste to cast away. Common honor. Not the honor of having done anything right, but the honor of not having done ought conspicuously foul. The honor of the inert, that was what remained to you. We are not all expected to be Damians. A man may conceive his duty more narrowly. He may love his comforts better, and none will cast a stone at him for that. But will a gentleman of your reverend profession allow me an example from the fields of gallantry? When two gentlemen compete for the favor of a lady, and the one succeeds, and the other is rejected, and, as will sometimes happen, matter damaging to the successful rival's credit reaches the ear of the defeated, it is held by plain men of no pretensions that his mouth is, in the circumstance, almost necessarily closed. Your church and Damians were in Hawaii upon a rivalry to do well, to help, to edify, to set divine examples. You having, in one huge instance, failed, and Damians succeeded, I marvel it should not have occurred to you that you were doomed to silence, that when you had been outstripped in that high rivalry and sat in glorious in the midst of your well-being, in your pleasant room, and Damians, crowned with glories and horrors, toiled and rotted in that pigsty of his under the cliffs of Kalawayo. You, the elect who would not, were the last man on Earth to collect and propagate gossip on the volunteer who would and did. I think I see you, for I try to see you in the flesh as I write these sentences. I think I see you leap at the word pigsty, a hyperbolic expression at the best. He had no hand in the reforms. He was a coarse, dirty man. Those were your own words, and you may think it possible that I am come to support you with fresh evidence. In a sense it is even so. Damian has been too much depicted with a conventional halo and conventional features, so drawn by men who perhaps had not the eye to remark or the pen to express the individual, or who perhaps were only blinded in silence by generous admiration, such as I partly envy for myself, such as you if your soul were enlightened would envy on your bended knees. It is the least defect of such a method of portraiture that it makes the path easy for the devil's advocate and leaves the misuse of the slanderer a considerable field of truth. For the truth that is suppressed by friends is the readiest weapon of the enemy. The world in your despot may perhaps owe you something if your letter be the means of substituting once for all a credible likeness for a wax abstraction. For if that world at all remember you on the day when Damian of Molokai shall be named a saint it will be in virtue of one work, your letter to the Reverend H. B. Gage. You may ask on what authority I speak. It was my inclement destiny to become acquainted not with Damian, but with Dr. Hyde. When I visited the Lazareto Damian was already in his resting grave. But such information as I have I gathered on the spot in conversation with those who knew him well and long, some indeed who revered his memory, but others who had sparred and wrangled with him, who beheld him with no halo, who perhaps regarded him with small respect, and through whose unprepared and scarcely partial communications the plain human features of the man shone on me convincingly. These gave me what knowledge I possess, and I learned it in that scene where it could be most completely and sensitively understood, Kalawao, which you have never visited, about which you have never so much as endeavored to inform yourself. For, brief as your letter is, you have found the means to stumble into that confession. Less than one half of the island, you say, is devoted to the leopards. Molokai, Molokai Ahina, the gray, lofty, and most desolate island, along all its northern side, plunges a front of precipice into a sea of unusual profundity. This range of cliff is, from east to west, the true end and frontier of the island. Only in one spot there projects into the ocean a certain triangular and rugged down, grassy, stony, windy, and rising in the midst into a hill with a dead crater. The hole bearing to the cliff that overhangs it somewhat the same relation as a bracket to a wall. With this hint you will now be able to pick out the leper station on a map. You will be able to judge how much of Molokai is thus cut off between the surf and precipice, whether less than a half, or less than a quarter, or a fifth, or a tenth, or say a twentieth. And the next time you burst into print you will be in a position to share with us the issue of your calculations. I imagine you to be one of those persons who talk with cheerfulness of that place which oxen and wane ropes could not drag you to behold. You who do not even know its situation on the map probably denounce sensational descriptions stretching your limbs the while in your pleasant parlor on Barotania Street. When I was pulled ashore there one early morning there sat with me in the boat two sisters bidding farewell in the humble imitation of Damien to the lights and joys of human life. One of these wept silently. I could not withhold myself from joining her. Had you been there it is my belief that nature would have triumphed even in you. And as the boat drew but a little nearer and you beheld the stairs crowded with abominable deformations of our common manhood. And saw yourself landing in the midst of such a population as only now and then surrounds us in the horror of a nightmare. What a haggard eye you would have rolled over your reluctant shoulder toward the house on Barotania Street. Had you gone on? Had you found every fourth face a blot upon the landscape? Had you visited the hospital and seen the butt ends of human beings lying there almost unrecognizable. But still breathing, still thinking, still remembering, you would have understood that life in the Lazarato is an ordeal from which the nerves of a man's spirit shrink even as his eye quails under the brightness of the sun. You would have felt it was, even today, a pitiful place to visit and a hell to dwell in. It is not the fear of possible infection. That seems a little thing when compared with the pain, the pity and the disgust of the visitor's surroundings and the atmosphere of affliction, disease and physical disgrace in which he breathes. I do not think I am a man more than usually timid, but I never recall the days and nights I spent upon that island promontory, eight days and seven nights, without heartfelt thankfulness that I am somewhere else. I find in my diary that I speak of my stay as a grinding experience. I have once jotted in the margin, harrowing is the word. And when the Molokai bore me at last toward the outer world, I kept repeating to myself, with a new conception of their pregnancy, those simple words of the song, tis the most distressful country that ever yet was seen. And observe, that which I saw and suffered from was a settlement purged, bettered, beautified. The new village built, the hospital and the bishop-home excellently arranged, the sisters, the doctor and the missionaries, all indefatigable in their noble tasks. It was a different place when Damien came there and made this great renunciation, and slept that first night under a tree amidst his rotting brethren, alone with pestilence and looking forward with what courage, with what pitiful sinkings of dread God only knows, to a lifetime of dressing sores and stumps. You will say, perhaps, I am too sensitive, that sights as painful abound in cancer hospitals and are confronted daily by doctors and nurses. I have long learned to admire and envy the doctors and the nurses, but there is no cancer hospital so large and populous as Callawayo and Cala Upapa. And in such a manner every fresh case, like every inch of length in the pipe of an organ, deepens the note of the impression. For what daunts the onlooker is that monstrous sum of humans suffering by which he stands surrounded? Lastly, no doctor or nurse is called upon to enter once and for all the doors of that Gehenna. They do not say farewell, they need not abandon hope on its sad threshold, but they go for a time to their hike-calling and can look forward as they go to relief, to recreation and to rest. But Damien shut too with his own hand the doors of his own sepulcher. I shall now extract three passages from my diary at Callawayo. A. Damien is dead and already somewhat ungratefully remembered in the field of his labors and sufferings. He was a good man but very officious, says one. Another tells me he had fallen, as other priests so easily do, into something of the ways and habits of thought of a kanaka, but he had the wit to recognize the fact and the good sense to laugh at it. A plain man it seems he was. I cannot find he was a popular. B. After Ragsdale's death Ragsdale was a famous luna or overseer of the unruly settlement. There followed a brief term of office by Father Damien which served only to publish the weakness of that noble man. He was rough in his ways and he had no control. Authority was relaxed. Damien's life was threatened and he was soon eager to resign. C. Of Damien I begin to have an idea. He seems to have been a man of the peasant class, certainly of the peasant type, shrewd, ignorant and bigoted, yet with an open mind and capable of receiving and digesting a reproof if it were bluntly administered, superbly generous in the least thing as well as in the greatest, and as ready to give his last shirt, although not human-grumbling, as he had been to sacrifice his life. Essentially indiscreet and officious which made him a troublesome colleague, domineering in all his ways which made him incurably unpopular with the Canacas, but yet destitute of real authority so that his boys laughed at him and he must carry out his wishes by the means of bribes. He learned to have a mania for doctoring and set up the Canacas against the remedies of his regular rivals. Perhaps, if anything mattered all in the treatment of such a disease, the worst thing that he did and certainly the easiest. The best and worst of the man appear very plainly in his dealing with Mr. Chapman's money. He had originally laid it out, intended to lay it out, entirely for the benefit of Catholics, and even so not wisely. But after a long plain talk he admitted his error fully and revised the list. The sad state of the boy's home is in part the result of his lack of control, in part of his own slovenly ways and false ideas of hygiene. Brother officials used to call it Damien's Chinatown. Well, they would say, your Chinatown keeps growing, and he would laugh with perfect good nature and adhere to his errors with perfect obstinacy. So much have I gathered of truth about this plain, noble human brother and father of ours. His imperfections are the traits of his face, by which we know him for our fellow. His martyrdom and his example, nothing can lessen or annul, and only a person here on the spot can properly appreciate their greatness. I have set down these private passages, as you perceive, without correction. Thanks to you the public has them in their bluntness. They are almost a list of a man's faults. Or it is rather these that I was seeking. With his virtues, with the heroic profile of his life, I and the world were already sufficiently acquainted. I was besides a little suspicious of Catholic testimony, in no ill sense, but merely because Damien's admirers and disciples were the least likely to be critical. I know you will be more suspicious still, and the facts set down above were one and all collected from the lips of Protestants who had opposed the Father in his life. Yet I am strangely deceived, or they build up the image of a man, with all his weakness, essentially heroic, and alive with rugged honesty, generosity, and mirth. Take it for what it is, rough private jottings of the worst sides of Damien's character, collected from the lips of those who had labored with and, in your phrase, knew the man, though I question whether Damien would have said that he knew you. Take it and observe with wonder how well you were served by your gossips, how ill by your intelligence and sympathy, in how many points of fact we are at one, and how widely our appreciations vary. There is something wrong here, either with you or me. It is possible, for instance, that you, who seemed to have so many ears in Caliwale, had heard of the affair of Mr. Chapman's money and were singly struck by Damien's intended wrongdoing. I was struck by that also, and set it fairly down, but I was struck much more by the fact that he had the honesty of mine to be convinced. I may here tell you that it was a long business that one of his colleagues sat with him late into the night, multiplying the arguments and accusations that the father listened as usual with perfect good nature and perfect obstinacy, but at the last, when he was persuaded, yes, said he, I am very much obliged to you. You have done me a service. It would have been a theft. There are many, not Catholics merely, who require their heroes and saints to be infallible. To these the story will be painful, not to the true lovers, patrons, and servants of mankind. And I take it, this is a type of our division, that you are one of those who have an eye for faults and failures, that you take a pleasure to find and publish them, and that, having found them, you make haste to forget the overvailing virtues and the real success which had alone introduced them to your knowledge. It is a dangerous frame of mind, that you may understand how dangerous, and into what a situation it has already brought you, we will, if you please, go hand in hand through the different phases of your letter, and candidly examine each from the point of view of its truth, its appositeness, and its charity. Damien was coarse. It is very possible. You make us sorry for the lepers who had only a coarse old peasant for their friend and father. But you, who were so refined, why were you not there, to cheer them with the lights of culture? Or may I remind you that we have some reasons to doubt if John the Baptist were genteel, and in the case of Peter, on whose career you doubtless dwell approvingly in the pulpit, no doubt at all he was a coarse headstrong fisherman. Yet even in our Protestant Bibles, Peter is called saint. Damien was dirty. He was. Think of the poor lepers annoyed with this dirty comrade. But the clean Dr. Hyde was at his food in a fine house. Damien was headstrong. I believe you are right again, and I thank God for his strong head and heart. Damien was bigoted. I am not fond of bigots myself, because they are not fond of me. But what is meant by bigotry that we should regard it as a blamish and a priest? Damien believed his own religion with a simplicity of a peasant or a child, as I would I could suppose that you do. For this I wonder at him some way off, and had that been his only character should have avoided him in life. But the point of interest in Damien, which has caused him to be so much talked about, and made him at last the subject of your pen and mine, was that in him his bigotry, his intense and narrow faith, wrought potently for good and strengthened him to be one of the world's heroes and exemplars. Damien was not sent to Molokai, but went there without orders. Is this a misreading? Or do you really mean the words for blame? I have heard Christ, in the purpose of our church, held up for imitation on the ground that his sacrifice was voluntary. Does Dr. Hyde think otherwise? Damien did not stay at the settlement, etc. It was true he was allowed many indulgences. Am I to understand that you blame the Father for profiting by these, or the officers for granting them? In either case it is a mighty Spartan standard to issue from the house on Baratania Street, and I am convinced you will find yourself with few supporters. Damien had no hand in the reforms, etc. I think even you will admit that I have already been frank in my description of the man I am defending. But before I take you up upon this head, I will be franker still, and tell you that perhaps nowhere in the world can a man taste a more pleasurable sense of contrast than when he passes from Damien's Chinatown at Callawayo to the beautiful bishop-home at Callaupapa. At this point, in my desire to make all fair for you, I will break my rule and adduce Catholic testimony. Here is a passage from my diary about my visit to the Chinatown, from which you will see how it is even now regarded by its own officials. We went round all the dormitories, refractories, etc., dark and dingy enough with a superficial cleanliness which he, Mr. and the lay brother, did not seek to defend. It is almost decent, said he. The sisters will make that all right when we get them here. And yet I gathered it was already better since Damien was dead and far better than when he was there alone and had his own not always excellent way. I have now come far enough to meet you on a common ground in fact, and I tell you that to a mind not prejudiced by jealousy all the reforms of the Lazareto and even those which he most vigorously opposed are properly the work of Damien. They are the evidence of his success. They are what his heroism provoked from the reluctant and the careless. Many were before him in the field. Mr. Meyer, for instance, of whose faithful work we hear too little. There have been many events, and some had more worldly wisdom, though none had more devotion than our saint. Before his day even you will confess they had affected little. It was his part, by one striking act of martyrdom, to direct all men's eyes on that distressful country. At a blow, and with the price of his life, he made the place illustrious and public, and that, if you will consider largely, was the one reform needful, pregnant of all that should succeed. It brought money, it brought best individual edition of them all, the sisters. It brought supervision, for public opinion and public interest, landed with the man at Calawayo. If ever any man brought reforms and died to bring them, it was he. There is not a clean cup or towel in the bishop home, but dirty Damien washed it. Damien was not a pure man in his relations with women, etc. How do you know that? Is this the nature of conversation in that house on Baratania Street, which the cab man envied driving past, racy details of the misconduct of the poor peasant priest toiling under the cliffs of Malachi? Many have visited the station before me. They seem not to have heard the rumor. When I was there I heard many shocking tales, for my informants were men speaking with the plainness of the laity, and I heard plenty of complaints of Damien. Why was this never mentioned? And how came it to you in the retirement of your clerical parlor? But I must not even seem to deceive you. This scandal, when I read it in your letter, was not new to me. I had heard it once before, and I must tell you how. There came to Samoa a man from Honolulu. He, in a public house on the beach, volunteered the statement that Damien had contracted the disease from connection with the female lepers, and I find a joy in telling you how the report was welcomed in a public house. A man sprang to his feet. I am not at liberty to give his name, but from what I heard I doubt if you would care to have him to dinner in Baratania Street. You miserable little blank. Here is a word I dare not print. It would so shock your ears. You miserable little blank, he cried. If the story were a thousand times true, can't you see you are a million times a lower blank for daring to repeat it? I wish it could be told of you, that when the report reached you in your house, perhaps after family worship, you had found in your soul enough holy anger to receive it with the same expressions. I, even with that one which I dare not print, it would not need to have been blotted away like Uncle Toby's Oath, by the tears of the recording angel. It would have been counted to you for your brightest righteousness. But you have deliberately chosen the part of the man from Honolulu, and you have played it with improvements of your own. The man from Honolulu, miserable leering creature, communicated the tale to a rude knot of beach-combing drinkers in a public house, where, I will so far agree with your temperance opinions, man is not always at his noblest. And the man from Honolulu had himself been drinking. Drinking we may charitably fancy to access. It was to your dear brother, the reverend H.B. Gage, that you chose to communicate the sickening story, and the blue ribbon which adorns your portly bosom forbids me to allow you the extenuating plea that you were drunk when it was done. Your dear brother, a brother indeed, made haste to deliver up your letter, as a means of grace perhaps, to the religious papers where, after many months, I found and read and wondered at it, and whence I have now reproduced it for the wonder of others. And you and your dear brother have, by this cycle of operations, built up a contrast very edifying to examine in detail. The man whom you would not care to have to dinner on the one side, and on the other the reverend Dr. Hyde and the reverend H.B. Gage, the apia bar room, the Honolulu mans. But I fear you scarce appreciate how you appear to your fellow man and to bring it home to you I will suppose your story to be true. I will suppose, and God forgive me for supposing it, that Damien faltered and stumbled in his narrow path at duty. I will suppose that, in the horror of his isolation, perhaps in the fever of incipient disease, he who was doing so much more than he had sworn, failed in the letter of his priestly oath. He who was so much a better man than either you or me, who did what we have never dreamed of daring, he too tasted of our common frailty. O Iago, the pity of it! The least tender should be moved to tears, the most incredulous to prayer, and all that you could do was to pen your letter to the reverend H.B. Gage. Is it growing at all clear to you what a picture you have drawn of your own heart? I will try yet once again to make it clearer. You had a father. Suppose this tale were about him and some informant brought it to you, proof in hand. I am not making too high an estimate of your emotional nature when I suppose you would regret the circumstance, that you would feel the tale of frailty the more keenly since it shamed the author of your days, and that the last thing you would do would be to publish it in the religious press. Well, the man who tried to do what Damien did is my father, and the father of the man in the IPA Bar, and the father of all who loved goodness, and he was your father, too, if God has given you the grace to see it. End of Father Damien, an open letter to the reverend Dr. Hyde of Honolulu from Robert Louis Stevenson. By Robert Louis Stevenson. 111th Congress, first section, House Resolution 3200. To provide affordable quality health care for all Americans, and reduce the growth in health care spending, and for other purposes. In the House of Representatives, July 14, 2009, sections 121 and 122 by the United States House of Representatives. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. House Resolution 3200. Mr. Dingel, for himself, Mr. Randall, Mr. Waxman, Mr. George Miller of California, Mr. Stark, Mr. Palome, and Mr. Andrews, introduced the following bill, which was referred to the Committee on Energy and Commerce, and in addition to the Committees on Ways and Means, Education and Labor, Oversight and Government Reform, and the Budget, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the Committee concerned. A bill to provide affordable quality health care for all Americans, and reduce the growth in health care spending, and for other purposes. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled. Section 121. Coverage of Essential Benefits Package. A. In general, a Qualified Health Benefits Plan shall provide coverage that at least meets the benefit standards adopted under Section 124 for the Essential Benefits Package described in Section 122 for the plan year involved. B. Choice of Coverage. One. Non-exchange participating health benefits plans. In the case of a Qualified Health Benefits Plan that is not in exchange participating health benefits plan, such plan may offer such coverage in addition to the Essential Benefits Package as the QHBP offering entity may specify. Two. Exchange participating health benefits plans. In the case of an exchange participating health benefits plan, such plan is required under Section 203 to provide specified levels of benefits and, in the case of a plan offering a premium plus level of benefits, provide additional benefits. Three. Continuation of offering of separate accepted benefits coverage. Nothing in this division shall be construed as affecting the offering of health benefits in the form of accepted benefits described in Section 102B sub 1B2 if such benefits are offered under a separate policy, contract, or certificate of insurance. C. No restrictions on coverage unrelated to clinical appropriateness. A Qualified Health Benefits Plan may not impose any restriction other than cost sharing unrelated to clinical appropriateness on the coverage of the health care items and services. Section 122. Essential Benefits Package Defined. A. In general, in this division the term Essential Benefits Package means health benefits coverage consistent with standards adopted under Section 124 to ensure the provision of quality health care and financial security that, one, provides payment for the items and services described in subsection B in accordance with generally accepted standards of medical or other appropriate clinical or professional practice. Two. Limits cost sharing for such covered health care items and services in accordance with such benefit standards consistent with subsection C. Three. Does not impose any annual or lifetime limit on the coverage of covered health care items and services. Four. Complies with Section 115A relating to network adequacy and Medicare and Medicaid services to the average prevailing employer sponsored coverage. B. Minimum services to be covered. The items and services described in this subsection are the following. One. Hospitalization. Two. Outpatient hospital and outpatient clinical services including emergency department services. Three. Professional services of physicians and other health professionals. Four. Such services, equipment and supplies incident to the services of a physician or a health professional's delivery of care in institutional settings, physician offices, patients' homes or place of residence or other settings as appropriate. Five. Prescription drugs. Six. Rehabilitative and habilitative services. Seven. Mental health and substance use disorder services. Eight. Preventive services including those services recommended with a grade of A or B by the task force on clinical preventative services and those vaccines recommended for use by the director of the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention. Nine. Maternity care. Ten. Well-baby and well-child care and oral health, vision and hearing services, equipment and supplies at least for children under 21 years of age. C. Requirements relating to cost sharing and minimum actuarial value. One. No cost sharing for preventive services. There shall be no cost sharing under the essential benefits package for preventive items and services as specified under the benefit standards including well-baby and well-child care. Two. Annual limitation. Eight. Annual limitation. The cost sharing incurred under the essential benefits package with respect to an individual or family for a year does not exceed the applicable level specified in subparagraph B. B. Applicable level. The applicable level specified in this subparagraph for year one is $5,000 for an individual and $10,000 for a family. Such levels shall be increased rounded to the nearest $100 for each subsequent year for the annual percentage increase in the Consumer Price Index, United States City average, applicable for such year. C. Use of co-payments. In establishing cost sharing levels for basic enhanced and premium plans under this subsection, the secretary shall to the maximum extent possible. Use only co-payments and not co-insurance. Three. Minimum actuarial value. A. In general, the cost sharing under essential benefits package shall be designed to provide a level of coverage that is designed to provide benefits that are actuarially equivalent to approximately 70% of the full actuarial value of the benefits provided under the reference benefits package described in subparagraph B. B. Reference benefits package described. The reference benefits package described in this subparagraph is the essential benefits package if there were no cost sharing imposed. End of House Resolution 3200 to provide affordable quality health care for all Americans and reduce the growth in health care spending and for other purposes. Read by Craig Campbell in Appleton, Wisconsin in 2009. Introduction to Humorous Ghost Stories. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Humorous Ghost Stories. Selected with an introduction by Dorothy Scarborough. The Humorous Ghost. Introduction. The Humorous Ghost is distinctly a modern character. In early literature, Wraiths took themselves very seriously and insisted on a proper show of respectful fear on the part of those whom they honored by haunting. A mortal was expected to rise when a ghost entered the room. And in case he was slow about it, his spine gave notice of what etiquette demanded. In the event of an outdoor apparition, if a man failed to bear his head in awe, the roots of his hair reminded him of his remissness. Woman has always had the advantage over man in such emergency, in that her locks, being long and pinned up, are less easily moved, which may explain the fact, if it be a fact, that in fiction women have shown themselves more self-possessed and ghostly presence than men. Or possibly a woman knows that a masculine spook is, after all, only a man, and therefore may be charmed into helplessness, while the feminine can be seen through by another woman and thus disarmed. The majority of the comic apparitions, curiously enough, are masculine. You don't often find women wraithed in smiles. Perhaps because they resent being made ridiculous, even after they're dead. Or maybe the reason lies in the fact that men have written most of the comic or satiric ghost stories, have shiverishly spared the gentle shades. And there are very few funny child ghosts. You might almost say none, in comparison with the number of grown-ups. The number of ghost children of any or all types is small proportionately. Perhaps because it seems an unnatural thing for a child to die under any circumstances, while to make him a butt of jokes would be unfeeling. There are a few instances, as in the case of the ghost baby mentioned later, very few. Ancient ghosts were a long face lot. They did not know how to play at all. They had been brought up in stern repression of frivolities as haunters, no matter how sportive they may have been in life. And in turn they cowed mortals into a servile submission. No doubt they thought of men and women as mere youngsters, that must be taught their place, since any living person, however senile, would be thought juvenile compared with a timeless spook. With individualism and radical liberalism, spooks as well as mortals are expanding their personalities and indulging in greater freedom. A ghost can call his shade his own now and exhibit any mood he pleases. Even young female race, demanding latch-keys, refuse to obey their frowning face of the clock and engage in light-hearted ebullience to make the ghost of Mrs. Grundy turn a shade paler in horror. Nowadays haunters have more fun and freedom than the haunted. In fact, it's money in one's pocket these days to be dead. For ghosts have no rent problems and dead men pay no bills. What officer would willingly pursue a ghostly tenant to his last lodging in order to serve a summons on him? And suppose a ghost brought into court demanded trial by jury of his peers? No. Manifestly, death has compensations not connected with the consolations of religion. The marvel is that apparitions were so long utilizing their possibilities in improving their advantages. The specters in classic and medieval literature were malarial, vaporous beings without energy to do anything but threaten, and mortals would never have trembled with fear at their frown if they had known how feeble they were. At best a revenant could only rattle a rusty skeleton or shake a moldy shroud or clank a chain. But as mortals cowered before his demonstrations he didn't worry. He wished to evoke the extreme of anguish from his host, he raised a menacing arm and uttered a windy word or two. Now it takes much more than that to produce a panic. The up-to-date ghost keeps his skeleton in a garage or someplace where it's cleaned and oiled and kept in good working order. The modern great has sold his sheet to the old clothesman and dresses as in life. Now the ghost has learned to have a variety of good times and he can make the living squirm far satisfyingly than in the past. The spook of today enjoys making his haunted laugh even while he groans in terror. He knows that there's no weapon, no threat in horror to be compared with ridicule. Think what a solemn creature the Gothic ghost was. How little originality and initiative he showed and how dependent he was on his own atmosphere for thrills. His sole appeal was to the spinal column. The ghost of today touches the funny bone as well. He adds new horrors to being haunted but new pleasures also. The modern specter can be a joyous creature on occasion as he can be when he wishes, fearsome, beyond the dreams of classic or Gothic revenant. He has a keen sense of humor and loves a good joke on a mortal while he can even enjoy one on himself. Though his fun is of comparatively recent origin it's less than a century since he learned to crack a smile the ghost is very much alive and sportively active. Some of these new spooks are notoriously good company many Americans there are today who would court being haunted by the captain and crew of Richard Middleton's ghost ship that landed in a turnip field and dispensed drink till they demoralized the denizens of village and graveyard alike. After that show of spirits the turnips in that field tasted of rum long after the ghost ship had sailed away into the blue. Spook is possessed not only of humor but of a caustic satire as well. His jest is likely to have more than one point to it and he can haunt so insidiously can make himself so at home in his host's study or bedroom that a man actually welcomes a chat with him only to find out too late that his human foibles have been mercilessly flayed. Pity the poor chap in H.C. Bunner's story the interfering spook for instance who was visited nightly after that repeated to him all the silly and trite things he had said during the day a ghost moreover that towered and swelled at every hackneyed phrase till finally he filled the room and burst after the young man proposed to his admired one and made subsequent remarks. Ghosts not only have appallingly long memories but they possess a mean advantage over the living in that they have once been mortal while the men and women they haunt themselves. Suppose each one of us were to be haunted by his own inane utterances true we're told that we'll have to give account some day for every idle word but recording angels seem more sympathetic than a sneering ghost at one's elbow. Ghosts can satirize more fittingly than anyone else the absurdities of certain psychic claims as witnessed the delightful seriousness of the story that from that born which appeared as a front page of the dark sun years ago I should think that some of the futile laggard messenger boy ghosts that one reads about nowadays would blush with shame before the wholesome railery of the porgy fisherman. The modern humorous ghost satirizes everything from the old fashioned specter he's very fond of taking potshots at him to the latest psychic manifestations he laughs at ghosts that aren't experts in efficiency haunting the narrative specters he loves to shake the lugubrious terrors of the past before you exposing their hollow futility and he contrives to create new fears for you magically while you are laughing at him. The new ghost hates conventionality and uses the old thrills only to show what dead batteries they come from his really electric effects are his own inventions he needs no dungeon keeps and monkey cells to play about in no rag nor bone nor clank of chain of his old equipment to start on his career. He can start up a moving picture show of his own as in Ruth McHennery Stewards The Haunted Photograph and demonstrate a new kind of apparition the ghost story of today gives you spinal sensations with the difference as in the immortal transferred ghost by Frank R Stockton where the suitor on the moonlit porch attempting to tell his fair one that he dotes on her sees the ghost uncle who isn't dead kicking his heels against the railing and here's his admonition that he'd better hurry up as the live uncle is coming in sight. The thrill with which you read of the ghost in Ellis Parker Butler's The Late John Wiggins who deposits his wooden leg with the family he is haunting on the plea that it is too materialistic to be worn with ease and therefore they must take care of it for him doesn't altogether leave you even when you discover that the late John Rod has never been a ghost nor used a wooden leg but a terrifying legacy while you do believe in it the new ghost has a more nimble and versatile tongue as well as wit in the older fiction and drama apparitions seldom spoke and then merely as ghosts not as individuals and ghosts like kings and drama were of a dignity and must preserve it in their speech or perhaps the authors were doubtful as to the dialogue but compared that usage with the rude freedom of some modern spooks as John Kendrick bangs Spectral Cook of Bangletop who lets fall her H's and twist grammar in a rare and diverting manner for myself I'd hate to be an old-fashioned ghost with no chance to keep up with the styles and slang think of having always and always to speak a dead language and I'd like to have a chance to have a chance to have a chance to have a chance to have a chance to speak a dead language the humorous ghost is not only modern but he is distinctively American there are ghosts of all nationalities naturally but the spook that provides a joke on his host or on himself is Yankee in origin and development the dry humor the comic sense of the incongruous the willingness to laugh at himself as at others carry over into immaterialization as characteristic American qualities that are preserved in their true flavor I don't assert, of course that Americans have been the only ones in this field the French and English elections in this volume are sufficient to prove the contrary Gauthiers, the mummy's foot has a humor of a lightness and grace as delicate as the princess's little foot itself there are various English stories of whimsical haunting some of actual spooks and some of the hoax type hoax ghosts are fairly numerous in British as in American literature one of the early specimens of the kind being the specter of Tappington in the Inglesby legends the files of Blackwood's magazine reveal several examples though not of high literary value of the early specimens of the really amusing ghost that is an actual revenant is the ghost baby in Blackwood's which shows originality and humor yet is too diffuse for printing here in that we have a conventional young bachelor engaged to a charming girl who was entangled in social complications and made to suffer mental torment because without his consent he has been chosen as the nurse and guardian of a ghost baby that cradles after him wherever he goes this is a rich story almost spoiled by being poorly told I sigh to think of the laughs that Frank R Stockton or John Kendrick Bangs or Gellert Burgess could have got out of the situation there are other comic British spooks as in Barring Gould's A Happy Release where a widow and a widower in love are haunted by the jealous ghost of their respective spouses till the phantom couple take a liking to each other and decide to let the living bury their dead this is suggestive of Brander Matthews earlier and cleverer story of a spectral courtship in The Rival Ghosts medieval and later literature give us many instances of a love affair or marriage between one spirit and one mortal but it remained for the modern American to celebrate the nuptials of two ghosts think of being married when you know that you and the other party are going to live ever after whether happily or no truly the present terrors are much more fearsome than the old the stories by Eden Philpots and Richard Middleton in this collection show the diversity of the English humor as associated with apparitions and are entertaining in themselves the Cantorville Ghosts by Oscar Wilde is one of his best short stories and is in his happiest vein of laughing satire this travesty on the conventional traditions of the Wraith is preposterously delightful one of the cleverest ghost stories in our language Zanguil has written engagingly of Spooks with a laughable story about Samuel Johnson and there are others but the fact remains that in spite of conceited and admirable examples the humorous ghost story is for the most part American in creation and spirit Washington Irving might be said to have started that fashion in skeletons and shades for he has given us various comic haunters some real and some make believe Frank R Stockton gave his to funny Spooks with a riotous and laughing pen the spirit in his transferred ghost is impudently deathless and has called up a train of subsequent haunters John Kendrick Bangs has made the darker regions seem comfortable and home like for us and has created ghosts so human and so funny that we look forward to being one or more we feel downright neighborly towards such specters as the feudal last ghost Nelson Lloyd evokes for us as we appreciate the satire of Rose O'Neill's sophisticated Wraith the daring concept of Gellert Burgess' ghost extinguisher is altogether American the field is still comparatively limited but a number of Americans have done distinctive work in it the specter now wears motley instead of a shroud and shakes his gesture spells the while he rattles his bones I dare any however grouchy reader to finish the stories in this volume without having a kindlier feeling toward ghosts DS New York March 1921 end of introduction Prohibition by Frank Swinerton this LibriVox recording is in the public domain and is read by Mark Smith of Simpsonville, South Carolina I shall never forget the shock I received when an American woman newly arrived in England gave me her impressions of London she was distinctly pleased with the town and when I rather foolishly asked if she had been terrified by our celebrated policemen she said, why no I was in a basic cab yesterday and the driver went right on past the policeman's hand stealing round where he'd no business to go and the policeman just said here where you going do you want the whole of England why in New York if he'd done that he'd have been in prison inside of five minutes I wonder if it will be understood how terrible disillusion on such a scale can be I have been thinking of the United States for so long as the home of the free it was hard to bring myself to the belief that the police there were both peremptory and severe I had thought them all Irishmen of the humorous or darland type it seems I was mistaken the little I am now afraid misleading paragraphs which from time to time appear in the English papers saying that there has been a hold up on Fifth Avenue or that the chief of police in some great city has been found to be the head of a gang of international assassins the things called tamany and graft and saloons flourish there without lead or hindrance had attracted me to the United States I wanted to live in such a country here I said is a place where every man's hand is for himself where the revolver plays its true part and where were the aid of a humorous Irish policeman who will find me stunned by a sandbag and take me to his little home in 244th street and reveal the fact that he has lived from Couchelin I can be happy at first I thought that my friend must be exaggerating not lightly was I prepared to let my dream go but I am afraid that my confidence in America as the home of freedom needs a tonic she may have been right although it seems unbelievable when I thought the problem out clearly I came to the conclusion that there was a sinister sound about that comment upon our policemen were they losing control of us apparently not I had trouble on the road with the policemen over the rear light of my car there is no doubt that England is efficiently policed and so my mind stole back to America with a new uneasiness I recollected tales which I had heard about sumptuary laws regulating the dress of American women both in and out of the water I saw the police invading restaurants and snatching cigarettes from the mouths of women I began to question whether I should really like to live in the United States after all I asked those of my friends who have been to America they told me that if I visited America I should be regaled privately with champagne from the huge reserves of private wine cellars but that as a resonant I should be forbidden to drink anything that enlivened me it was a great shock I am not yet recovered from it I see that I shall after all have to live quietly in England with my pipe and my abstemious bottle of beer and yet I should like to visit America for it has suddenly become in my imagining an enormous country of don't and I want to know what it is like to have don't said by somebody who is not a woman I have always hated the word don't I hated it as a child and I hate it still it is a nasty word a chilling word associated with feelings of resentment of discipline of prohibition yes that is it of course prohibition I find that it is prohibition which makes my throat so dry I thought it was a human characteristic when anybody said you're not to do that to do it at once in case there should be any misunderstanding I should be frightened to say don't to anybody because I feel sure it would precipitate unpleasantness is America so different from the rest of the world that it likes having don't said to it I cannot think that what occurs to me is that America has not yet worked out of its system the strain that the English Puritan fathers brought with them it is a melancholy thought to me that it is really ancient English repression that is responsible for the present state of affairs I feel very guilty particularly as I have seen an article about myself in an English newspaper headed a modern Puritan it is really I and people like me who have caused the great drink restrictions in the United States I bow my head the truth is I suppose the people in the United States take life more seriously than we do in England if you read any of the books which have been written in this country during the ages to show what sort of community is the ideal I refer to such works as Utopia and News from Nowhere there is never any difference between them on one point all the dwellers in these ideal states appear to be thoroughly idle they have practically no work to do at all all their time is spent in talk and Sylvan wandering with music and dancing round maples there is no mistaking the fact that the Englishman's idea of life is confirmed and justifiable laziness he wants what he calls leisure Charles Lamb a typically English author wrote a poem beginning Who First Invented Work he came to the conclusion that it must have been the devil the inference is clear observation confirms my view it is not to be doubted that the average Englishman spends his life in scheming to make somebody else do the work that lies nearest to his hand Americans must be different I believe they really like work and I will give the prohibitionist this handsome admission I also work much better without stimulants I mean much harder but on the other hand I am less happy does an American feel happy in his work does the act of work give him a satisfaction which is not felt by an Englishman I think that must be the explanation but on the other hand there is this question of Puritanism we tried it in England and we had a severe reaction to Libertinism we maintain Puritanism only in our suburban districts where there is exceedingly close scrutiny of all matters pertaining to conduct and in our theaters in the suburbs it does not much matter whether cramps are suburban style but in the theater it drives some of us to distraction I will explain why supposing a man wants to write a play he at once thinks of getting it produced an unproduced play is like an unpublished novel practically speaking it does not exist the author can read it of course and his wife can assure him that it is a great deal better than anything she has seen or read for years but the author and his wife are both haunted by the fact that there is a master piece which is lying not fallow but unused and sterile they grow dissatisfied the savor of life is lost for them they develop persecution mania grow very conceited and finally come to believe that only they of all the men and women alive truly grasp the essentials of life they say if this were the silly muck that most authors write it would be produced and then we should have our car and diamonds and titles and all the paraphernalia of happiness as it is we are doomed to silence and poverty simply because George is too much of an artist to lower himself by writing what the public wants and what the censor will pass but I have not been outlining the diseased state of mind of the merely incompetent man who writes something that nobody will look at I have been giving details of one of those men who have a moral message and who desire greatly to spread it by means of the stage he is written, let us say a play in which the name of God appears or a play wherein a young woman has a baby and does not wish to have a husband the censor says that there must be no mention of God in plays performed on the public stage and that young women who have babies must either have husbands or come to early graves of their own seeking very well, what happens I have described the state of mind of a husband and wife who have a pet child a play which is lying heavy on their minds and hearts and hands they are ripe for any temptation of the devil and it comes it always comes the devil dresses himself up in the guise of a Sunday play producing society the play is surreptitiously performed in a theatre to which admission can be obtained only by members banded together for just such emergencies it is very badly acted by actors who have not been able to spare sufficient time from their daily work to learn their parts as well as they should have done the audience comes full of a smug self-satisfaction at the thought that it is excessively intellectual and select and that it alone can appreciate blasphemy or the vagaries of neurotic young women it sits intellectually in the theatre and watches the play the author sits intellectually in his box and intellectually accepts the plaudits of the audience he lives thereafter in a highly intellectual atmosphere he is driven to become a member of the secret play producing society and to watch other plays of a character not suited to the requirements of the censorship he is morally a ruined man he will never any more be a decent member of society for he has become an intellectual he has been taught to despise ordinary human beings for they do not want to be wicked or silly except in the normal humdrum way and they have not seen his play and are not members of his play producing society he discovers that the censored is the only good art he is driven to the reading of all sorts of continental drama he is made into an anti-English propagandist he is like the person in the song who praises every sentry but this and every country but his own he has been lost for humankind he is wedded to intellectualism and a sense of superiority to others for the rest of his miserable life he institutes a new system of censorship of his own it takes the form of sneering at and condemning anything that does not conform to his own ideas he sniffs at all sorts of innocently happy people who are inoffensively pursuing their noisy course through life he begins to hate noise he makes a virtue of his abstention from ordinary pleasures dissentingly of the hoi-polloi as I said he is ruined he is no longer a man that one can talk to with any comfort for his sense of superiority is intolerable to me there is nothing more terrible than the sense of superiority to others it arises not from merit or the consciousness of merit but from sheer tin-like flimsiness of character it arises from limited sympathies the really great man and the really sagacious man is one to whom nothing is contemptible to him even the follies of his fellow passengers are manifestations of human nature revelations of the material from which scholars and politicians no less than drunkards and inconstants are gradually in course of time developed somebody described conceit to me the other day as egotism in which contempt for others is involved it was agreed between us that egotism was normal since happiness is not attained without a sense of personal utility to the world and no objection was urged against it vanity was to be tolerated because it was definitely social a recognition of the existence and value of the good opinion of others but never sense of superiority and the sense of rebellion should be added to this other sense as equally to be regretted a young woman whose incredible acts of folly had spoiled half a dozen lives including her own recently encountered a young man whom she had jilted on the eve of her marriage to another whom she had also left the young man still smarting under his ill treatment reproached her he said what you want my dear is discipline poo she answered I'm above discipline the poor young man retired unequal to the conversation but the young woman went on her way defiant and self infatuated believing that she really was superior to the opinions of others the common decencies of conduct the inevitable give and take of ordinary life driven to folly by lack of balance she was learning to justify her folly by the argument for rebellion whether she will ever learn to control her actions I do not know but rebelliousness from a feeling that one is too good to be governed by normal standards is not only arrogant and unsocial it is silly it is to my mind no form of silliness but it is one very widely accepted by the young and the unimaginative it must therefore be recognized and combated it springs perhaps from disordered shame which makes children noisily act in defiance of authority particularly if there are others present to over here no children are worse behaved than those who are over controlled the word don't at the breakfast table produces more acts of violent rebellion than any amount of parental weakness unimaginativeness begets unimaginativeness rigidity in one person creates a counter rigidity in the other there is a thwarting upon both sides a mutual shackle upon sweetness and understanding a wildness of action arises with loss of affection, respect self-respect and the vicious part of it is the children we are all children for we never grow up in human relations we are embarked upon an evil course are driven by vanity to continue upon that course until they are exhausted going from defiance to defiance and ultimately building up a whole sophisticated gospel of axioms whereby rebellion is given warrant and virtue the gospel of rebellion we know to be specious and without justification but it is essential to us as human beings to maintain self-approval for our acts we do this socially by comparative standards we do it un-socially by subversion of those standards rebels are only prigs turned upside down or inside out the great defect of prohibition is that when it can be enforced by law it makes rebels who think there is something inconceivably clever in doing secretly that which the law forbids they learn to think there is some subtle merit in evading the law it requires to break the law and to develop clicks and finally new and silly conventions or prohibition has another effect it makes a whole class who accept its rulings and gradually these people owing to a peculiarity which all gregarious animals seem to have begin to believe that unless all are of their persuasion and of their number the fault lies with the rebels first of all they consider themselves superior then when they find that the rebels think that they are the superior class in defying the law or the convention a new set of notions arises and this set of notions leads to persecution and to war you cannot introduce any restrictive or prohibitive measure without developing fanatical conceit, neuromindedness and intolerance both in those who welcome the measure and in those who seek to ignore and even to defy its rulings the puritanical attitude is almost wholly repressive and naturally invokes force to aid its repressive measures it did so in England centuries ago in the matter of the theater and we are living among all the rotten plays which have been written since and the theater is for the most part a place of ignominious diversion to play producing societies have nothing to produce that is worth producing because the atmosphere which causes such plays as are written to be produced privately is not the healthy atmosphere from which masterpieces arise it is an atmosphere impregnated with priggishness and a sense of superiority it is an atmosphere if there can be such a thing of sterility the same thing happens in other matters and I do not feel at all certain that it may not happen with drink if you say men are not to drink you create two new classes there is of course the existing class that affects to the point of wishing to keep it away from those who do like drink that class already flourishes in most communities and so I do not place it among any two classes which are created by the prohibition the two classes are as follows the class that submits and gradually develops priggishness and self-satisfaction at being in the majority and the class that rebels and gradually develops priggishness and self-satisfaction at being in the minority both classes are objectionable and I do not know which is the worse they are both inevitable in a world of prohibitions and if the United States to which we are all looking as the real hope for intelligent civilization is going to take away our beer and turn us into supporters of play-producing societies I cannot think what will happen to the world better a wicked world than a virtuous one better a world in which we can hope that there are people worse than ourselves than a world where we know that there cannot be any better end of prohibition by Frank Swinerton sail to Key West and back to East Coast of Florida from Florida Days by Vilma M. Goodman this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org reading by Bologna Times sail to Key West and back to East Coast of Florida by Vilma M. Goodman the sail down the Gulf of Mexico lasting a day and night was without any thrills or incidents but the weather was fair and warm and watching the ever-changing shades of blue and green of the Gulf was a beautiful sight to me I thoroughly enjoyed the meals and chats on deck and was quite amused by the persistent attempts of a missionary's wife Seventh Day Adventist to convert me she was a charming person but it wasted too many hours trying to reclaim my lost soul I did not wish to be saved just in her particular way and she realized that last that I was a hopeless case there were several Methodist ministers returning from a conference to Key West and they were exceedingly kind to me without trying to convert me to a very pale gentleman helped me locate my hotel in Key West I trust that he has fully recovered his strength his thin pale face and occasional cough worried me I reached the Key West Hotel late in the afternoon and got quite dizzy when I glanced at the thermometer on December 13 it was broiling hot and the minute I got into my room I then prepared to take a cold bath in order to cool off both internally and externally the instant I opened the faucet the strong odor of the water and the color of it disgusted me I let it run a while and realized I could not bathe in Key West if I never took another bath in my life the sweet perfume of onions, garlic ancient eggs and gas we are all familiar with the delicious extract of strong odors they call water in Key West smells as if all the above named highly scented ingredients were put into a large bin and a tight lid put over it and left to ferment about ten years and only then permitted to be used ye gods, I almost fainted and I quickly turned off and got rid of all the aqua and waited until some of the ice in my picture melted and the colored boy was generous in handing out ice for which may the angels always guard him and I took a sponge bath an hour later I was in a streetcar on a tour of inspection I enjoyed the refreshing breezes on the ocean side and spent so much of my time there that I had no time left to see much of the town and had to hurry back in order to reach the hotel before dark and to see the folks Spanish as well as on the steamer early in the morning I was in the train bound for Miami it was a hot, sultry day but the windows were all open and as we glided up through the keys over the most beautiful body of water I ever saw I was enchanted I shall not attempt to describe the symphony of pastel shades during a thunderstorm lasting about ten minutes blue rainbows added greatly to the beauty of the blending of light greens, blues tans and cream of the water and the sky I gazed until my eyes almost closed and then I began to reflect for a few minutes that after all it's man's genius as well as his great enterprise that made it possible to plan and construct the most wonderful railway in the world on water practically miles and miles at times I worry too much and usually cross a bridge long before I get to it but I never thought it possible that I could safely cross so many and such long ones all in one morning I arrived in Miami extremely tired among my acquaintances in Miami was a gentleman whom I had met on the steamer coming to Jacksonville who did everything in his power in Miami at first sight I saw Miami Beach by moonlight rode across the beautiful bay of Biscayne and over the three and a half mile bridge before I had time to open my suitcase in the clean neatly furnished room of the United States hotel it was sizzling hot there is something about the atmosphere of this beautiful prosperous city and vicinity that I cannot quite describe an air of gaiety and good cheer on everyone's sunburnt space and in the hotels and restaurants the broad manly shoulders of the officers mostly from the aviation camp with their intelligent smiling faces and the attractively gowned women all wore a festive air every tourist drives around the James During estate and I lost no time in seeing this choice garden spot of Florida and the beautiful coconut grove leading to it the natural growth here is luxuriant and the vast amount of wealth scientific knowledge and labor combined, spent to develop it have made this a paradise of beauty it would be useless to mention the various kinds of tropical plants trees and gorgeous flowers and ferns I shall leave all that to the imagination there are so many places of interest to see near Miami that I had little time to rest a few hours spent around the aviation camp alligator farms and Charles During estates were well utilized I was urged to spend the entire winter in this large garden of Eden but firstly Mrs. Stalker expected me in West Palm Beach and secondly I needed rest and quiet diversion much more than gaiety and excitement and so I said goodbye to my kind and hospitable Miami acquaintances and after three days of thorough enjoyment I drove up the Dixie Highway to West Palm Beach on December 18 Mrs. Stalker and her brother waited when the bus arrived and found accommodations for me for the night end of Sail to Key West and back to East Coast of Florida by Vilma M. Goodman Chakris Amida Prayer by Unknown translated by Simeon Singer this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Oh Lord open now my lips and my mouth shall declare thy praise Blessed art thou O Lord our God and God of our fathers God of Abraham God of Isaac and God of Jacob the great, mighty and revered God the Most High God who bestowest loving kindnesses and possesses all things who rememberest the pious deeds of the patriarchs and in love will bring a redeemer to their children's children for thy name's sake Oh King, Helper, Savior and Shield Blessed art thou O Lord the shield of Abraham Thou O Lord art mighty forever, thou quickenest the dead, thou art mighty to save thou sustainest the living with loving kindness quickenest the dead with great mercy supportest the falling healest the sick loosest the bound and keepest thy faith to them that sleep in the dust who is like unto thee Lord of mighty acts and who resembleeth thee O King who killest and quickenest and causest salvation to spring forth who is like unto thee father of mercy who in mercy rememberest thy creatures unto life Yea, faithful art thou to quicken the dead Blessed art thou O Lord who quickenest the dead Thou art holy and thy name is holy and holy beings praise thee daily Selah Blessed art thou O Lord the holy God We will sanctify thy name in the world even as they sanctify it in the highest heavens as it is written by the hand of thy prophet and they called one unto the other and said holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts the whole earth is full of his glory those over against them say blessed, blessed be the glory of the Lord from his place and in thy holy words it is written saying the Lord shall reign forever thy God O Zion unto all generations praise thee the Lord unto all generations we will declare thy greatness and to all eternity we will proclaim thy holiness and thy praise O our God shall not depart from our mouth forever for thou art a great and holy God and King Blessed art thou O Lord the holy God Thou favorest man with knowledge and teachest mortals understanding O favor us with knowledge understanding and discernment from thee blessed art thou O Lord gracious giver of knowledge cause us to return O our Father unto thy law draw us near O our King unto thy service and bring us back in perfect repentance unto thy presence blessed art thou O Lord who delightest in repentance forgive us O our Father for we have sinned pardon us O our King for we have transgressed for thou dost pardon and forgive blessed art thou O Lord who art gracious and dust abundantly forgive look upon our reflection and plead our cause and redeem us speedily for thy name's sake for thou art a mighty redeemer blessed art thou O Lord the redeemer of Israel heal us O Lord and we shall be healed save us and we shall be saved for thou art our praise vouchsafe a perfect healing to all our wounds for thou, almighty King art a faithful and merciful physician blessed art thou O Lord who healest the sick of thy people Israel bless this year unto us O Lord our God together with every kind of the produce thereof for our welfare blessing upon the face of the earth O satisfy us with thy goodness and bless our year like other good years blessed art thou O Lord who blessed the years sound the great horn of our freedom lift up the ensign to gather our exiles and gather us from the four corners of the earth blessed art thou O Lord who gatherest the banished ones of thy people Israel restore our judges as at the first and our counselors as at the beginning remove from us grief and suffering reign thou over us O Lord thou alone in loving kindness and tender mercy and justify us in judgment blessed art thou O Lord the King who lovest righteousness and judgment and for slanderers let there be no hope and let all wickedness perish as in a moment enemies be speedily cut off and the dominion of arrogance do thou uproot and crush cast down and humble speedily in our days blessed art thou O Lord who breakest the enemies and humblest the arrogant towards the righteous and the pious towards the elders of thy people the house of Israel towards the remnant of their scribes towards the proselytes of righteousness and towards us also we tender mercies be stirred O Lord our God grant a good reward unto all who faithfully trust in thy name set our portion with them forever so that we may not be put to shame for we have trusted in thee blessed art thou O Lord the stay and trust of the righteous and to Jerusalem thy city return in mercy and dwell therein as thou hast spoken rebuild it soon in our days as an everlasting building and speedily set up therein the throne of David blessed art thou O Lord who rebuildest Jerusalem speedily cause the offspring of David thy servant to flourish and let his horn be exalted by thy salvation because we wait for thy salvation all the day blessed art thou O Lord who causest the horn of salvation to flourish hear our voice O Lord our God spare us and have mercy upon us and accept our prayer in mercy and favor for thou art a God who harkenest unto prayers and supplications from thy presence O our King turn us not empty away for thou harkenest in mercy to the prayer of thy people Israel blessed art thou O Lord who harkenest unto prayer accept O Lord our God thy people Israel and their prayer restore the service to the oracle of thy house receive in love and favor both the fire offerings of Israel and their prayer and may the service of thy people Israel be ever acceptable unto thee remember us O Lord our God thereon for our well-being be mindful of us for blessing and save us unto life by thy promise of salvation and mercy spare us and be gracious unto us have mercy upon us and save us for our eyes are bent upon thee because thou art a gracious and merciful God and King and let our eyes behold thy return in mercy to Zion blessed art thou O Lord who restorest thy divine presence unto Zion we give thanks unto thee for thou art the Lord our God and the God of our fathers forever and ever thou art the rock of our lives the shield of our salvation through every generation we will give thanks unto thee and declare thy praise for our lives which are committed unto thy hand and for our souls which are in thy charge and for thy miracles which are daily with us and for thy wonders and thy benefits which are wrought at all times evening, morning and noon O thou who art all good whose mercies fail not thou merciful being whose loving kindnesses never cease we have ever hoped in thee for all these things thy name or our King shall be continually blessed and exalted forever and ever and everything that liveth shall give thanks unto thee forever and shall praise thy name and truth O God our salvation and our help blessed art thou O Lord whose name is all good to whom it is becoming to give thanks our God and God of our fathers bless us with the three fold blessing of thy law written by the hand of Moses thy servant which was spoken by Aaron and his sons the priests, thy holy people as it is said the Lord bless thee and keep thee the Lord make his face to shine upon thee and be gracious unto thee the Lord turn his face unto thee and give thee peace grant peace, welfare, blessing grace, loving kindness and mercy unto us and unto all Israel, thy people bless us O our Father even all of us together with the light of thy countenance for by the light of thy countenance thou hast given us O Lord our God the law of life, loving kindness and righteousness blessing, mercy, life and peace and may it be good in thy sight to bless thy people Israel at all times and in every hour with thy peace blessed art thou O Lord who blessed thy people Israel with peace O my God guard my tongue from evil and my lips from speaking guile and to such as curse me let my soul be dumb ye let my soul be unto all as the dust open my heart to thy law and let my soul pursue thy commandments if any design evil against me speedily make their counsel of none effect and frustrate their designs do it for the sake of thy name do it for the sake of thy right hand do it for the sake of thy holiness do it for the sake of thy law in order that thy beloved ones may be delivered O save with thy right hand and answer me let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable before thee O Lord my rock and my redeemer he who makeeth peace in his high places may he make peace for us and for all Israel and say ye amen may it be thy will O Lord our God and God of our fathers that the temple be speedily rebuilt in our days and grant our portion in thy law and there we will serve thee with awe as in the days of old and as in ancient years then shall the offering of Judah and Jerusalem be pleasant unto the Lord as in the days of old and as in ancient years End of Chakris Amida by Unknown translated by Simeon Singer