 Section 33 of the Complete Works of Brand the Iconoclast Volume 12. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by William Jones. The Complete Works of Brand the Iconoclast Volume 12. Section 33 Humbugs and Humbuggery Part 1 The Great American Product Satan is supposed to have been the original humbug, but he's a back number now, must feel dreadfully antiquated and useless among so many modern improvements, that the American people love to be humbugged long since passed into proverb. Humbuggery may be called our national vice, our besetting sin. Like liberty, it appears to be in the very air we breathe, and we take to it as naturally as we go into politics. Our entire social system has become saturated with it. It is the mainspring of many acts we loudly praise, the lodestar of men we apotheosize. These off-times the warp and woof even of the mantle of charity, which like a well-filled purse or a tariff compromise, covers a multitude of sins. There are various kinds in classes of humbugs, but reduced to the last analysis stripped of the sugarcoating by which they impose on the public, they are one and all simply professors of falsehood. I am sometimes inclined to the view that humbuggery is a disease and that some doctor will yet discover a gold cure for it. We'll demonstrate that the bad habit is due to microbes that get into a man's mind and make trouble trying to turn around or to the silly that bore holes in his moral character and let his honesty leak out. For the medical fraternity has gravely informed us that kleptomania, sneak-theory by immanately respectable people, and dipsomia, satishness by the social salt of the earth, are simply diseases that should be treated with pills and powders instead of with penitentiaries and whipping posts. Now if a man will steal a sawmill and go back after the site simply because his pericardium is out of plum or his liver has gone into politics, will nurse a juicy old jag until it develops into a combined museum and menagerie because his circulation has slipped an eccentric or his stomach has got out of his natural orbit? I submit in all seriousness that he might be physically incapacitated for telling the truth by an insidious attack on his veracity by the dreadful falsehood fungi and that the best way to restore his moral equilibrium to remove him from the category of chronic humbugs would be to fumigate him. The Lord was attempted to check the humbug habit by striking liars dead but soon saw that such a plan would prove more fatal than a second flood that there wouldn't be even a noise arctic picnic of us left and reluctantly relinquished it. Science has not yet succeeded in mastering the disease but just give it time and it will save the world yet. We'll find a medical name for every human frailty. We'll be able to tell by looking at a man's tongue whether he's coming down with a magua malaria or the office-holding hysteria and do something for him before it's everlastingly too late. The very best people have a touch of the complaint. The trail of the serpent is over us all. Even our young ladies are said to be, to a certain extent, humbugs. I have been told that many of them wear patent complexions, bought in bangs, and pad out scrawny forms until they appear voluptuous junos and thereby deceive, ensnare, bedazzle, and beguile the unsuspecting sons of men. I have been told that many of them who are soft-forged angels before marriage can give a rusty buzz saw cards and spades and beat it blind after they succeeded in landing the confiding sucker. But perhaps such tales are only the bitter complainings of miserable Benedicts who have been soundly beaten at their own game of humbuggery. Marriage is, perhaps, the only game of chance ever invented at which it is possible for both players to lose. Too often, after much sugar-coated deception and many premeditated misdeals on both sides, one draws a blank and the other a booby. After patient angling in the matrimonial pool, one lands a stingery and the other a bull head. One expects to capture a demigod who hits the earth only in high places. The other to wed a wingless angel who will make his edinic bower one long-drawn sigh of ecstatic bliss. The result is that one is tied up to a slattern who slouses around the house with her hair on tins in a dirty collar and with a dime-novel, a temper like aquafortis and a voice like a cat-fight. The other a hoodlum who comes home from the lodge at 2 a.m. whoops and howls for her to come down and help him hunt for the keyhole and is then snail-in by a policeman before she can frame a curtain lecture or find a rolling pin. False pride is the father of humbuggery, the parent of fraud. We are humbugs because we desire that our fellows think us better, braver, brighter and perhaps richer than we really are. We practice humbuggery to attain social position, to which we are entitled by neither birth nor brains, to acquire wealth for which we render no equivalent to procure power we cannot wisely employ. While proclaiming love of democracy, we purchase peers for our daughters. While boasting liberty of speech, we assail like demons, who presume to dissent from our opinions in either religion or politics. History is full of humbugs and liberty itself off times but a gilded lie. No man is really free who is dependent upon the goodwill of others for employment. There can be no true liberty where prejudice usurps the throne of reason. Men are slaves instead of sovereign. When they suffer themselves to be held in iron thrall by a political dogma or religious creed, blindly accepting the ipsidixie of things instead of exercising to the utmost the intelligence which God has given them. I have said the charity itself is off times a humbug. It is so when it becomes the handmade of ostentation instead of the true almoner of the heart, or when men give to the poor only because it is lending to the Lord and then expect compound interest. That philanthropist is a fraud who, after piling up a colossal fortune at the expense of common people, leaves it to found an educational or a limousinary institute when death calls him across the dark river. Knowing that Charon's boat is purely a passenger packet that carries no freight, however precious, he drops his dollars with a sigh. But determined to reap some benefit from his bootle his itching hand can no longer hold. There is no increase that it is to be used to found some charitable fake to prevent himself being forgotten. Some pitiful institute where a few of the wretched victims of his rapacious greed may get a plate of starvation soup or a prayer book and bless their benefactor's name. The very monument erected over bones of the sanctimonious old skinflint is a fraud. A string of colossal falsehoods in the face of the world piously points to heaven, perhaps to indicate that Satan refused to receive him and sent him back to St. Peter with a request that he make other arrangements. Many of the murders whose memory we revere of the saints we apotheosize, of the heroes we enshrine in history are one third fraud and two thirds fake. The man who can grow in grace while his pet corns in chancery or lose an election without spilling his moral character, who can wait an hour for his dinner without walking all over the nerves of his wife or crawl out of bed in the middle of his first nap and rustle till the cold grey dawn with a brace of collicky kids without broadly insinuating that he was a copper riveted, nickel-plated automatic double cylinder idiot to ever get married is a greater hero than he that taketh the city. The place to take the true measure of a man is not the marketplace or the amen corner, not the forum or the field, but at his fireside. There he lays aside his mask, and you may learn whether he's ip or angel, king or ker, hero or humbug. I care not what the world says of him, whether it crown him with bays or pelt him with bad eggs. I care never a copper what his reputation or religion may be. If his babes dread his homecoming and his better half swallows her heart every time she has to ask him for a five-dollar bill, he's a fraud of the first water, even though he prays night and morn till he's black in the face and howls hallelujah till he shakes the eternal hills. But if his children rush to the front gate to meet him, and love's on sunshine looms the face of his wife when she hears his footfall, you can take it for granted that he's true gold for his homes to heaven and the humbug never gets that near to the great white throne of God. He may be a rank atheist and a red flag anarchist, a Mormon or a mugwump. He may buy votes in blocks of five and bet on the election. He may deal him from the bottom of the deck and drink beer till he can't tell a silver dollar from a circuitous hall and still be an infinitely better man than the cowardly little humbug whose all suavity and society. But who makes his home a hell? Who vents upon the hapless heads of wife and children, the ill nature he would like to inflict on his fellow man but dares not? I can forgive much in that fellow mortal. Who would rather make men swear than women weep? Who would rather have the hate of the whole he-world than the contempt of his wife? Who would rather call anger to the eyes of a king than fear to the face of a child? The hero is not he that strives with the world for witness? Who seeks the bubble fame at the cannon's brazen lip and risk his life that he may live forever? Think not that helm and harness are signs of valor through. Peace hath higher tests of manhood than battles ever knew. To bear with becoming grace the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, to find our heaven in others' happiness and for their sake to sacrifice and suffer wrongs that might be righted with a thread of steel? To live an honest life in a land where truth doth feed on crusts while falsehood fattens on Luke-Holland Feast requires more true manhood, more moral stamina, more unadulterated sand than to follow a flag into the very jaws of hell or die for the faith in the autodefe? Heroes? Why unearn the ashes of the half-forgotten dead and poor or the musty pages of the past for names to glorify? If you would find heroes, grander, martyrs more noble and saints of more sanctity than Rubens ever painted or immortal homers sang who without Achilles armor have slain and a hundred hectares without Samsonian locks have torn the lion. Without the sort of Michael have thrown down the gauge to all the embattled host of hell seek not the musty tomes of history but in the hearts and homes of the self-sacrificing wives and mothers of this great world. God could not be everywhere, says the proverb, therefore he made mothers. Let the heroes of history have their due. Still I imagine the world would have been much the same had Alexander died of cholera infantum or grown up a harmless dude. I don't think the earth unbalanced would from its orbit fly had Caesar been drowned in the Rubicon or Cleveland never born. I imagine that Greece would have humbled the Persian pride and there been no thermopylae that Rome would have ruled the world had Scevelled his good right hand, not hissed in the Tuscan fire. It is even possible the civilization would have stood the shocks had Lanky Bob and gentlemen Jim met on Texas soil. Let the second boom of our heroic young Christian governor would have lost no gas. One catfish does not make a creek nor one hero a nation. The waves do not make the sea but the sea furnishes forth the waves. Leonidas were lost to history but for the three hundred nameless braves who backed his bluff had there been but one Cromwell Charles I would have kept his head. In Washington's deathless splendor gleams the glory of forgotten millions and the history of Bonaparte is written with blood of the unknown brave. Humbuggery, fraud, deception everywhere. All the world's a stage and all the men and women merely players. Momas, the major domo, the millions unmask, even friendship is becoming a screaming farce intended to promote the social fortune or fill the purse. We fawn that thrift may follow, our prodigal of sweet words because they cost nothing and swell the sales of many a rich argosy. But we every penny we put forth and carefully calculate the chance of gain our loss. Its head I win, tails you lose and whom we cannot play it on that principle we promptly jump the game. Who steals my purse steals trash. That's Shakespeare. He that filters from me my good name makes me poor indeed. That's nonsense. Reputation is but the ephemeral do on characters everlasting gold. But he that steals a human heart and tramples it beneath his brutal heel. He that feigns a friendship he does not feel, he that fawns upon his fellows and hugs them hard and after scandals them is the foulest fraud in all this land of fakes, the most hideous humbug in all hell's unclean hierarchy. I am sometimes tempted to believe that the only friendship that will stand fire is that of a yellow dog for a popper negro. Strike a friend for a small loan and his affection grows suddenly cold. Lose your fortune and your sweetheart should send you word that she will be a sister to you. Your brother will betray you for bootle, your father fights you for a foolish flag and your heirs in law will dance when they hear of your death. But the devotion of a yellow dog for a worthless negro has all seasons for its own. But the humbug for whom I have the least use is the man who assiduously damns the rum demon, makes terrible temperance talks, ostentatiously votes the prohibition ticket, groans like a sick calf hit by a battering ram whenever he sees a young man come out of a bar room, then sneaks up a dirty alley, crawls through the side door of a second-class saloon, calls for the cheapest whiskey in the shop, runs the glass over trying to get the worth of his money, pours it down ethical and scoots in a hurry lest somebody ask him to treat. Who has a chronic toothache in the stomach which nothing but drugstore whiskey can relieve? Who keeps a jug of dollar a gallon bug juice hit under his bed and sneaks to it like a thieving hyena digging up a dead nigger? Rents his property for saloon purposes, then piously prays to the Lord to protect the young from temptation. But perhaps the prince of humbugs, the incarnation of fraud, the apotheosis of audacity, is the street corner politician. He towers above his fellow fakes like Saul above his brethren. I have been time and again instructed in the most intricate problems of public polity questions that have perplexed the wisest statesmen of the world by men who had never read a single standard work on political economy, and who could not tell to save their souls granting that they possess such a perishable property whether Adam Smith wrote the wealth of nations or the Lord's prayer, or the failure with the constitution of their own state or the face of a receded washbill. Who could scarce tell a sloop from a ship, billow lading from a slight draft, a hydraulic ram from a he goat unless they were properly labeled? Yet no question can arise in metaphysics or morals, government, or generalship upon which these great little men speak with the authoritative assurance of a Lord Chief Justice or a six-foot woman addressing a four-foot husband. They invariably know it all. They could teach Solomon and the seven wise men wisdom, and had they been on earth when Almighty God wrote the ten commandments, they would have moved an amendment or drafted a minority report. These are the fellows who frame our political platforms and dominate our election. Whose boundless cupidity, colossal ignorance, and supernal gull bring about starvation in a land of plenty, defy the most industrious and progressive people that ever graced the footsdew of Almighty God into bloated billionaires and groveling mendicants. Even patriotism has become a humbug, has been supplanted by partisanship and now all are for party and none are for the state. On July 4th we shout for the old flag and all the rest of the year we clamor for an appropriation. The man who is kicked by a nightmare while dreaming of the draft demands a pension every burning patriot wants an office. Twice, yea thrice within the memory of men now living, America has been on the very verge of an industrial revolution, a reign of terror. Yet we continue to hang our second providence on a job lot of political jacksnipes who carry their patriotism in their pockets and their sense under their sursingles. While we who feed three times a day who have a cocktail every morning and a clean shirt occasionally are boasting of our allegiance to the grand old party or prading of the principles of Jeffersonian democracy are blindly trailing in the wake of some partisan bandwagon like a brindle calf behind a Kansas hay cart. This nation born of our father's blood and sanctified by our mother's tears is dominated by political self seekers who have taken for their motto after us the deluge. Once after holding forth at some length on humbugs a physician said to me, ah, you didn't mention the medical profession. No, I replied the power of language hath its limits. The medical, Mark Hew, is the noblest of all professions. It contains many learned and able men who devote their lives unselfishly to the amelioration of human misery. But I much doubt whether one half of the M.D.'s now sending people to the drug stores with cipher dispatches could tell what was the matter with a suffering mortal where he transparent as glass and lit up by electricity. There are doctors doping people with powerful drugs who couldn't tell whether a patient had a case of cholera morbus or was afflicted with an incurable itch for office who would have acquired their medical information from the almanacs and could not distinguish between a bunion and a stone bruise and find the joints and a string of sausage with a search warrant. I have noticed that when the doctors looked to writing their prescriptions in Latin it quickly became a dead language that when I take the poet's advice and throw physics to the dogs their numbers rapidly decrease but the doctors are jolly good fellows let it be recorded to their eternal credit whatever may be their faults precious few of them will practice in their own families I have often wished that I was a doctor of medicine instead of a doctor of divinity there are several fellows from whom I'd like to prescribe there's a strong affinity between the two professions the D.D.'s deal in faith and prayer the M.D.'s in faith and pills I have been frequently asked why in lecturing on humbugs I skipped the lawyers there are some subjects to which a lecture must lead up gradually so I discuss the doctors in my discourse on humbugs and save the attorneys for my talk on gall even our boasted educational system is half a humbug too many of our professors fondly imagine that when they have crammed the dry formulas of half a dozen scientists into a small head perhaps designed by the D.D. to furnish the directive wisdom for a scavenger car when they have taught a two-legged moon calf to glibly read in certain dead languages things it can in no wise comprehend patiently puffed into it whole congaries of things that defy its middle digestive apparatus that it is actually educated if not enlightened and perhaps it is after the manner of the trick mule or the pig that plays cards the attempt of Gulliver scientists to calcine ice into gunpowder were not more ridiculous than trying to transform a fool into a philosopher by the alchemy of education if it be a waste of lather to shave an ass what must it be to educate an idiot true education consists in a requirement of useful information yet I have seen college graduates even men sporting professional sheepskins who couldn't tell whether Gladstone's an English statesman or an Irish policeman could tell about Greek roots but couldn't tell a carrot from a parsnip they could decipher a cuneiform inscription perhaps and state whether a pebble belonged to the paleozoic or some other period but couldn't tell a subpoena from a search warrant a box of vermicelli from a bundle of fishworms we pour over books too much and reflect too little on ourselves make of our heads cold storage warehouses for other people's ideas instead of standing up in our own independent god-like individuality Bacon says that reading makes a fool man perhaps so but it makes a great deal of difference what a fellow's full of too many who fondly imagine themselves educated much resemble Mark Twain's frog with a stomach full of shot they are crushed to earth by the things they have swallowed neither the public nor any other school system has ever produced one really great man those who occupy their dais thrown among the immortals contended single-handedly with the darkness of ignorance and the devil of dogmatism Columbus scorned the schools and discovered a world Napoleon revolutionized the science of war and himself master of Europe Bismarck mocked at precedent and united Germany stood forth a giant Jesus of Nethers ignored the learning of the Levites and around the world arose the fanes of a new faith reading is the nurse of culture reflection the mother of genius our great religions were born in the desert our grandest philosophers budded and burgeoned in the wilderness the noblest posly that ever swept the human harpsichord was born in the brains of a beggar come bubbling from the heart of the blind the magi of the Medes and all the great philosophers of Greece had failed to furnish forth a jurisprudence just to all semi-barbarous Rome laid down those laws by which even from the grave of her glory she still rules the majestic world I have been accused of being the enemy of education but then I have been accused of almost everything so one count more or less in the indictment does it matter I'm not opposed to education that is useful but why should we pay people to fill the empty heads of fools with soap and sawdust I've also said perhaps the most aggressive fraud that infects the earth is the professional atheist the man whose chief in trade consists of doubt and denial of revealed religion so-called about the time a youngster first feels an irresistible impulse to make a fool of himself wherever a female smiles on him when he's reached that critical stage in life's journey when he imagined that he knows much more than his father he began to doubt the religion of his mother shrewdly asked his Sunday school teacher who made God demonstrates by the age of natural history diagrams that a large whale could in no way swallow a small prophet that if he did succeed in relegating him to its internal economy it were impossible for him to slosh around for three days and nights in the gastric juices becoming much the worst for where he attempts to rip religion up by the roots and reform the world while you wait but soon learns that he's got a government contract on his hands that the man who can drive the deity out of the hearts and homes of this land can make a fortune turning artesian wells inside out and peddling them for telegraph poles do it son religion is the backbone of the body social sometimes it's unbending as a boarding house biscuit and sometimes it's a bad quality of guto perica but we couldn't get far without it most youths have to pass through a period of doubt and denial catch the infidel humor just as they do the measles and the mumps the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom there was never an atheistic book written there was never an infidel argument pin that touched the core of any religion Christian or pagan Bibles, Korans, Zandervestas all sacred books are but the feeble efforts of finite man to interpret the infinite to speak forth unspeakable to reduce to intelligible human characters the flame written hieroglyphs of the sky who made God suppose Mr. Atheist that I find the answer who will furnish thee with an intellect to understand it how will you comprehend the genesis of a God when the wisest man for whom Christ died can tell why water runs downhill instead of up cannot understand the basic principle of the law of gravitation cannot even guess why Governor Colberson encouraged the managers of Corbett and Fitzsimmons to bring the mill to Texas then knocked it out at a special session the legislature at the expense of the general public an atheist once suddenly assured me that he couldn't possibly believe anything which he couldn't prove but when I asked him what led him to make such a lively interest in the welfare of his wife's children he became almost as angry as a Calvinist whose confession of faith had been called into question figure up how many things you can prove of those you believe and you will find you have got to do a credit business or go into intellectual bankruptcy but the man who denies the existence of the deity because he cannot comprehend his origin is even less a humbug than the one who knows all about him the pitiful dogmatizer who devotes his life to the defense of some poor little guesswork interpretation of the mysterious plans of him who brings forth Maseroth in his season and guides Arcturus with his sons dogmatism is the second mother of doubt a manacle on the human mind a break on the golden wheel of Christian progress and every dogmatizer whether in science, politics or religion is consciously or unconsciously a humbug you know do you? you know what? and who told you? why the man in whose mighty intellect was stored the world's wisdom whose words have come down to us from the distant past his oracles or shadowing even Solomon and Shakespeare wasn't quite sure of his own existence men frequently tell me that what they see they know well they've got to drink mighty little prohibition whiskey if they do otherwise they're liable to see things they'll need an introduction to the wisest is he who knows only that he knows nothing omniscient God only knows we, you and I, are only troubled with morbid little ideas sired by circumstance and damned by folly we don't even know how the democracy stands on the silver question or what caused the slump in the late election end of section 33 section 34 of the complete works of brand the iconoclast volume 12 this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by William Jones the complete works of brand the iconoclast volume 12 section 34 humbugs and humbuggery part 2 the average human head like an egg or a crock of clover absorbs the flavor of its surroundings it is deeply a question of environment whether we grow up to be Catholics or Protestants or Democrats populist or political non-descripts and yet we adhere to opinions we have inherited with all the tenacity of a dog to a bone or an American miser to a ten dollar bill we assume that our faith political and our creed religious are founded upon our reason when they were really made for us by social conditions over which we had little control we even succeeded in humbugging ourselves into the belief that we are the people and that wisdom will die with us when the fact is that our head is loaded without a date lumber our every idea molded or modified by barbarians who were in the boneyard before Methuselah was born society is a vast organism in which the individual is but an atom it is a monstrous tree a veritable igdrasil penetrating both the region of darkness and the realm of light whatever its peculiarities whether monarchical or republican, Christian or pagan it is a goodly tree when it brings forth good fruit when its bowels bend with apples of hisperides and in its grateful shade is reared the shrine of God be of what shape it may it is an evil tree when its fruits is apples of Sodom and it casts an upost shadow upon the earth if we cannot gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles how can he society it is essentially false foster that which is literally true the body social of which we proudly boast is producing doodles instead of King David's peanut politicians instead of heaven inspired poets, cranks instead of crusaders humbugs rather than heroes instead of exercising in the campus marches our sons cultivate the English hawk scent and the London lope in the golden days the glory of the young man was his strength now it is his chrysanthemum and his collar and it is going from bad to worse in a ratio of geometrical progression for how can effeminate men a cane-sucking, crimping, mincing affected conglomeration of masculine inanity and asininity beget world compelers how can women who care much what is on the outside and little on the inside of their heads and whom a box of lily-white, a French novel, a poodle dog and another dude will make superlatively happy, suckle-ought, but fops in fools yet we boast of progress progress wither from the savage who knew nothing to the dude who knows less from the barbarian who's plundered your baggage to the civilized Shylock who'd steal the very earth from under your feet from that state where an American sovereign's however poor consider themselves the equals of kings and the superiors of princes to that moral degradation and national decay in which they purchased the scurvy spawn of petty dukes' husbands for our daughters by the splendor of God I'd rather be a naked Fiji allender dancing about a broiled missionary with a bull ring in my nose than a simpering society simpleton wearing my little intellectual apparatus to a frazzle with a study of neckties some of my critics have kindly suggested that the Lord made a great mistake in not consulting me when he made the world thereby ascertaining just how I would like to have it I was not consulted and at the creation of the cosmos and perhaps it is just as well for them that I wasn't they might not be here too many forget that while the Lord made the world the devil has been busy ever since putting on the finishing touches why he began on the first woman before she was a weak old and he has been playing schoolmaster to her son ever since I confess to a sneaking respect for Satan for he is preeminently a success in his chosen profession he's playing a desperate game against omnipotent power and is more than holding his own he's set into the game with a cash capital of one snake now he's got half the globe grabbed and an option on the other half I have been called a defender of the devil but I hope that won't prejudice the ladies against me as it was a woman that discovered him I confess to the belief that Satan is a gentleman compared with some of his very humble servants we are told that he is a fallen angel who found pride a stumbling block that he tripped over it and plunged down to infinite despair but though he fell farther than a pigeon could fly in a week the world is full of frauds who could not climb up to his level in a month who can no more claim kinship with him in their cussedness than a thieving hyena can say to the royal beast of binkle thou art my brother they are not fallen angels they are risen vermin they didn't come down from thrones in heaven like falling stars they crawl up from holes in the earth like vicious little pismires what can proud Lucifer have in common with the craven hypocrite who prays with his lips while plotting petty larceny in his heart imagine the lord of the lord world seeking the microscopic souls of men who badger browbeat and bully rag their better halves for spending a dollar for a new calico dress then blow in a dozen times much with a dice-box and a bar room trying to beat some other long-eared burl out of a thimble-full of bug juice or a schooner of bearer I don't believe Satan warns him I think if they dodged the quarantine officers and got in amongst those first-while angels now peopling the dark regions of the damned the doctors of that black abode would decide that they were cholera microbes itch my silly and order the place fumigated in the section 34 section 35 of the complete works of brandy iconoclast volume 12 this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by William Jones Benita Springs, Florida the complete works of brandy iconoclast volume 12, section 35 humbugs and humbuggery part 3 but speaking of the devil were any of you ever in love? I'm talking about the sure enough old-fashioned complaint that makes a man miss meals and lose sleep, write spring poetry and misplace his appetite for plugged tobacco not of the new fangled varioloid that yields to matrimonial treatment there's a great deal of sugar-coated humbuggery about this thing we call love it reminds me of the sulfur and molasses my careful presbyterian parents used to pour into me in the gentle springtime I don't remember why they gave it to me but it was probably because they didn't want it themselves perhaps they thought four ordination hadn't done much for me and they had best get me used to sulfur or graduate I remember, however, that like the average case of matrimony it usually contained a good deal more of sulfur than syrup matches, we are told, or made in heaven and I think it likely for Satan himself is said to have originated there I'll tell you how matches are usually made by some horrible accident John Henry and Sarah Jane become acquainted they have no more affinity than a practical politician and pure spring water but they dance and flirt fool around the front gate in the dark of the moon sigh and talk nonsense John Henry begins to take things for his breath and Sarah Jane for her complexion the young gozlings get wanted to each other and first thing you know they're tied up until death or divorce don't them part and had they missed each other altogether they would have been just as well perhaps better content with other mates and made as enthusiastic of failure of married life most people marry without really knowing whether they're in love or not mistake the gregarious habit for the mystic fire of Hyman's torch the pangs of a bad digestion for the barbed arrows of the love-god's bowl but when a couple's really got what ill Romeo and Juliet there is no more doubt about it than was the man after he sat down to the circular saw to see if it was running and founded the sole proprietor of a South American revolution they don't have to send their feelings to a chemist for analysis and classification nor take an invoice of their affections to see if any have got away love is really a very serious thing like sea sickness everybody laughs at it but those who have got it when Cupid lets slip a shern of shaft it goes through a fellow's heart like a Kansas cyclone through a colored camp meeting and all the powers of Hades can never head it off love is the most sacred word ever framed by celestial lips it's the law of life the harmony of heaven the breath of which the universe was born the divine essence increate of the ever living God but love is like all other sweet things unless you get the very best brand it sours awful easy of all the pitiful humbugs beneath high heaven commend me to those intellectual doodle bugs who have become dame fashions devotees and devote all their intellectuality to the science of dress to the art of being miserable a la mode thousands are today sailing about in silk hats who are guiltless of undershirts bedecked with diamonds while in debt to the butcher for the meat on their bones families they can stares afford Calico flaunt Parisian finery keep costly carriages while there's a chronic hiatus in their cupboard go hungry to bed six nights a week that on the seventh they may spread a brave feast for fashionable fools God have mercy on all such mutton heads they are the natural breeders of good-for-nots for in such an atmosphere children grew up mentally dwarfed and morally debased fashionable mothers commit their children to the care of serving maids while they sail out to soirees and receptions put their babes on a bottle while they swing around the social circle no wonder their sons grew up sap heads as destitute of backbone as a banana as deficient in moral force as a fyrkin of fish think of an infant Napoleon nursing a rubber nozzle of rearing a brutus on patent baby food of bringing a Hannibal up my hand and he can't do it why if I had a woman of that kind to wife a fashionable butterfly whose heart was in her finery and her feathers who neglected her home to train with a lot of intellectual tom tits whose glory was small talk who saved her sweetest smiles for society and her ill temper for the family altar I say were I tied to that kind of female do you know what I do huh you don't well neither do I there are some humbugs however who merit our respect if not our reverence men who are infinitely better than they would have the world believe as the purest pearl is encased in an unseemly shell so too is many a godlike soul enshrined in a breast of seeming adamant many a man swears because he's too proud to weep hides a querying soul behind the cynic sneer fronts the world like a savage beast at bay whilst his heart's a fathomless lake of tears Tennyson tells us of a monstrous figure of complete steel and armed kappa pie that guarded a castle gate and by its awful name and warlike mane affrighted the fearful souls of men but one day a dauntless night unhorsted and clove through the messy helm when forth from the record came not a demon armed with the scythe of death but a beardless boy scarce old enough to break a pointless lance upon the village green so too with a sort of Excalibur of human sympathy you shear down through the helm and harness of some rough-spoken man who seems to hate all humankind you find a soul of a woman in the heart of a little child even our religion is off times a humbug else why is it not the good Christian woman who says her prayer as regularly as she looks under the bed for breakfast says to the caller from whom she cordially detests I am delighted to see you when she's wondering why the meddlesome old getabout don't stay at home when she's not wanted elsewhere why is it that when a good brother puts a five dollar bill in the contribution box slashes it up so all may see the figures but when he drops a nickel in the slot to get a little grace he lets not his right hand know what his left hand doeth why is it that when you strike a devout deacon for the loan of ten dollars you'll swear by all the gods he hasn't got it when his pockets are fairly bursting with bills if his religion is not hypocrisy if he is not a humbug why doesn't he tell you in plain United States that he would rather have Uncle Sam's promise to pay than yours oh people are becoming such incorrigible liars that I've about quit trying to borrow money too many people presume that they are full of the grace of God when they're only bilious and that they are pious because they dislike to see other people enjoy themselves they're Christians because they conform to certain creeds just as many men imagine themselves honest because they obey the laws of the land for the purpose of keeping out of the penitentiary they put up long prayers on Sunday that's piety they bamboozle a green gosling out of his birthright on Monday that's business they have one face with which you confront the Lord and another with which to be guile their brethren they even acquire two voices a brisk business accent and a Sunday wine that would make a cub wolf climb a tree I am always suspicious of a man's piety when it makes him look as though he had cut a throat or scuttled a ship and was praying for a commutation of the death sentence I would never understand why a man who can read his title clear to mansions in the skies who holds the lean on a quarter lot in the New Jerusalem should allow that fact to hurt him I have great respect for true religion but for the brand of holiness that's put on with the Sunday shirt that makes a man cry amen with unction but doesn't prevent him selling five and ten cent cigars out of the same box olio margin and creamery butter out of the same bucket benzine and bourbon whiskey out of the same barrel which makes long prayers on Sunday and gives short waits on Monday which worries over the welfare of good-looking young women but gives the old grand arms that go by which fathers the orphan only if he's rich and husbands the widow only if she is handsome for that kind of Christianity I have no more use than for a mugwump governor who settles his state with the expense of a legislative session to gratify a private grudge against a brother gambler that religion which sits up at night to agonize because a few naked niggers in equatorial Africa never heard Eve's snake story how Job scratched himself with a broken pie plate or the hog happened to be so full of the spirit of Hades that robs childhood of its pennies to send prayer books to people whose redemption should begin with a bath while in our own country every town from Caterrages to Kalamazoo every city from the Arctic Ocean to the Australsea is over one with heathen who know not of the grace of God or the mystery of a square meal who proud in the very shadow of our temples of justice build their layers in proximity to our public schools and within sound of the collect of our churches is an arrogant humbug a crime against man an offense to God a curse to the world End of Section 35 Section 36 of the Complete Works of Brand the Iconoclast Volume 12 This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information nor to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by William Jones, Benita Springs, Florida The Complete Works of Brand the Iconoclast Volume 12, Section 36 Humbugs and Humbuggery Part 4 of 4 People frequently say to me quote Brian, your attacks are too harsh you should use more persuasion and less pison close quote Perhaps so but I have not yet mastered the esoteric of choking a bad dog to death with good butter persuasion is well enough if you're a courton or in the hands of the vigilantes but turning that loose on the average fraud wear too much like a tender foot trying to move a string of freight steers with moral persuasion he ticks up his whip gently snaps it as though he feared it were loaded and talks to his cattle like a Boston Philanthropist to poor relation the steers look round at him under in a vague way if he's worth eating and stand at ease an old freighter who's been over the divide and got his profanity down to a fine art grabs that goat cracks up like a rifle cannon reaching for a raw recoup and spells a string of cuss words calculated to precipitate the final conflagration you expect to see him struck dead but those steers don't they're firmly persuaded that he's going to outlive him if they don't get down and Paul gravel and they get a Nancy Hanks hustle on him never attempt to move an ox team with moral persuasion or to drown the cohorts of the devil in the milk of human kindness it won't work oh it's possible that you may disagree with me on some minor points of doctrine that's your blessed privilege to deprive you of it if I had the power a pompous old fellow once called at the office of my religious monthly to inform me that I was radically wrong on every possible public question he seemed to think that I had committed an unpardonable crime and daring to differ from him I asked him to be seated and whistled for the devil the printer's devil the only kind we keep in the office I told him to procure for me a six-shooter, a sledgehammer, and a boat my visitor became greatly alarmed what are you going to do? do I reply? I'm going to shoot the printers last the press and throw the type into the river what the name of the great Sir Hadron is the use of me printing a paper if I can't please you Mr. Pomposity subsided somewhat and I proceeded to talk to the United States to him you say I'm wrong? perhaps I am but how in Halifax I think I said Halifax anyhow, we'll let it go with that how in Halifax did you find out who instilled you as infallible pope in the realm of intellect and declared it rank folly to run counter as it roost in your nice fat head he was one of those egotistical mental microbes are intellectual and immalculi who imagined that a man must be in the wrong if he disagrees with him and the woods are so full of that class of fellows that the fool killer has become discouraged and jumped his job those who chance to think alike get together and form a political party a society or a sect then take it for granted that they've got all the wisdom of the world grabbed that beyond their little Rhode Island of intellect are only gibbering idiots and plotting naives when a man fears to subject his faith to the crucible of controversy when he declines to submit his ideas to the ballastai and battering rams of cold logic you can safely set it down that he's either a hopeless cabbage head or a hypercritical humbug that he's a fool or a fraud he's full of buncombe or bile it is difference of opinion that keeps the world from going to the dogs independence of thought, doubt of accepted dogmas the spirit of inquiry the desire to know is a mighty lever that has lifted man so far above the brute level that he has begun to claim kinship as a creator yet we say to our brother thou fool because he takes issues with us on the tariff for the proper time in the moon to plant post holes even insist on sending people to perdition who cannot see the plan of salvation through our little sectarian telescope men of a mine flock together just like so many gabbling geese each fowl of a feather each group waddling in the wake of some fat-headed old gander squawking when he squawks and fluttering when he flies because I decline to get in among the gozzlings and be piloted about the intellectual goose pond I'm told that I have no policy well, I hope I haven't if I thought I had, I'd take something for it don't you know when I cannot live among my fellows without surrendering my independence for swearing freedom of speech and liberty of thought without having to play the cant in hypocrite or go hungry to fawn like a flea-bitten feist to win public favor I'll make me a suit of leather take to the woods and chop bee-trees I'd rather my babies were born in a cane-break and reared on bark and wild berries with the blood of independence burning in their veins then spawned in a palace and brought up bootlicks and policy-players I am sometimes inclined to believe that life itself is a humbug that the man who makes the best of it is the one who escaped being born we know not once we came or what for whether we go or what we'll do when we get there true it is that life is not altogether labor and lease there's some skittles and beer but the most of us get more shadow than sunshine more cholera-morbus than cream man born of woman is a few days and full of politics the moment he hits the globe he starts for the grave and his only visible reward for the long days of labor and nights of pain is an epitaph he can't read and a tombstone he don't want in the first of the seven ages of man he's licked in the last he's neglected and in all the others he's a fair mark for the shafts of falsehood if he don't marry his first love he's forever miserable and he does he wishes he were dead by the time he has learned wisdom he leaves the world he's hustled into a hell of fire or an orthodox heaven and for forty years I've been trying to figure out which of these appalling evils to avoid in one place the climate is hot and unhealthy in the other the inhabitants never entertain an original idea believed everything they were told think of having to live through all eternity with a strictly orthodox people who regard freedom of thought as foul blasphemy millions of immaculate bricks cast in the same mold no wonder there's neither marrying nor giving in marriage in heaven just imagine a couple of lovesick loons having nothing to do but spoon from everlasting to everlasting to talk tooty-footy through all eternity never a break or breathing spell in the lingering sweetness long drawn out Amelia Ryves Chandler or Ella Wheeler Wilcox couldn't stand it nor could I by the time I had lived ten thousand years with a female who could fly and had nothing in God's world to do but watch me I'd either raise a revolution or ascend in my resignation it is said that Satan had an affair of D'Amour while he was playing Seraph if the object of his affection were feathers I don't much wonder that he went over the garden wall I suspect that the orthodox heaven and hell of which we hear so much are humbugs I should know something of these interesting ultimates be qualified to speak ex-cathedral for a doctor of divinity recently denounced me as a child of the devil in that case you behold in me a prince imperial heir apparent to the throne of Pluto the potential master of more than a moiety of mankind but don't tell anybody that I've got a title that I belong to the oldest nobility where all the gold rebuilds will be trying to buy me I promise you that when I come into my kingdom I'll devise a worse punishment than physical pain a soul is an immaterial thing you cannot flay it with aspic fangs nor kerosene it and set it on fire a material hell for immaterial mind were too ridiculous for a progressive devil but it is not necessary to be a son of Satan to build a hell in which demons dance and sulfur fumes asphyxiate the soul you may transform your own home into a valley of Hinnom a veritable Gehenna or you may make of the humblest cot a heaven illumined by love and gilded with God's own glory a Bula land where flowers were ever bloom where perfumed sensors swing and music throbs and thrills sweeter far than the Orphian lyre or song of Israel the Orthodox heaven is a pageant of barbaric splendor of gaudy tinsel and flaming gold to dazzle the eyes of infants it is a land of lotus-eaters where ambition star is blotted from the firmament and the wild ecstasy of passion beats no longer in the blood an Oriental heaven a paradise for tired people eternal dolce for Niente for niggers and yellow dogs no kelp or Saxon with aspiring mine with swollen muscles and heart that flames with the first joy of strong endeavor the thrills with the sweetness of sacrifice for others' sake that swells with the mad glory of triumph in the forum or the field could have conceived such a futile farce give me a land whose skies are lead and soil is sand yet everlasting life with those I love give me a lodge in some vast wilderness hollowed by children's laughter give me a cave in the mountain craig to house those dearest to my heart give me a tent on the far frontier where by the lambiant light of their mother's eyes I may watch my children grow in grace and the truth of God and I'll build a heaven grander nobler, sweeter than was ever dreamed of by the gross materialists of bygone days life is a humbug only because we make it so we are frauds because we are fools this is a beautiful a glorious world fifth habitation for sons of the most high God it is a fruitful mother at whose fair breast all her children may be filled there should be never a humbug nor a hypocrite never a millionaire nor a mendicant on the great round globe labor should be but helpful exercise to develop the physical man to furnish forth a fitting casket for the God-like mind appropriate setting for the immortal soul the curse of life arises from a misconception of its significance we delve into the mind for paltry gems explore old oceans deep for pearls we toil and strive for gold until the hands are worn and the heart is cold we attire ourselves in Tyrian purples and silks of end and stretch forth in our gilded frippery on the narrow bridge of time between two eternities we disboil the thin purse of the poor to erect brazen altars and priceless feigns when the whole earth's a sacred shrine the universe the temple through which rings the voice of God and rolls the eternal melody of the spheres perhaps it is unnecessary to state that I'm not posing as a saint I may eventually become an angel of some sort but I'll wear no wings we are accustomed to think of seraphs flying from heaven to earth flitting from star to star irrespective of the fact that feathers are useless where there's no atmosphere an angel working his wings to propel himself through a vacuum were as ridiculous as a disembodied spirit riding a bike down a rainbow I do not expect to reform all humbugs to banish all fakes to exterminate all folly if the world should get too good I might have to hunt some other home I can understand every crime in the calendar but the crime of greed every lust of the flesh but for the lust of gain every sin that ever damned a soul but the sin of selfishness by all the sacred bugs and beasts of ancient Egypt I'd rather be a witch's cat or even a politician and howl in sympathy with my tribe I'd rather be a tramp and divide my handouts with one more hungry I'd rather be a mangy yellow dog without a master and keep the company of my kind than to be a multimillionaire with the blood of a snake the heart of a beast and carry my soul like Pedro Garcia in my purse when I think of the three thousand children in a single city of Chicago without rags to shield their nakedness from the keen north wind of the ten thousand innocents such as Christ blessed who died in New York every year of the world for lack of food of the millions in every country whose cries go up night and day to God's great throne not for salvation but for soup not for the robe of righteousness but for a second hand pair of pants and then contemplate those beside whose hoarded wealth of the riches of Lydia's ancient kings were but a beggar's patrimony praying to him we reverse the law of nature to feed the poor I long for the mystic power to coin sentences that sear like sulfur flames come hot from hell and weaves of words from a group of scorpions to lash the rascals naked through the world we humbug our parents the public and then as far as possible our wives though the latter are seldom so blind as they seem the wife who cannot tell when her lord and master is lying whether he's been sitting up with a sick friend or nursing a Robert tail flush well she must be the newest kind of new woman with a brain built for bloomers and bike the new woman is she is all right just the old woman in disguise a paradox and a coat of paint whenever I tackle this subject I'm reminded of a broth of a boy who in days ago and drove the team afield on my father's farm one rare June day when the son was slowly sinking in the west as a novelist say and I believe that's where old Saul usually sinks he got mixed up with a bevy of industrious bumblebees who were no respecters of person what's staying in honest delver as quickly is that put the gaffles to a score-beauty duke in about two minutes Mike came over the hill whooping like a segment of a southern confederacy reaching for a nigger regiment his head the size and shape of a red peck that had been kicked by a ron mule sure now they didn't do a thing to me he said and old bumblebug came abusing and abusing looking for all the world like an orange man met wings so I up and hit him a biff and all the rest of the haven took up his fight and I came home hit one humbug and every fraud and fake and Christendom is ready for the fray they attempt to crush their critic with columny and defeat him with falsehood when you hear a fellow railing at the iconoclast just look through its stock of caps and you'll find one that will fit the knot at the end of his neck truth and only truth is eternal it was not born and it cannot die it may be obscured by the clouds but falsehood or buried in the debris of brutish ignorance but it can never be destroyed it exists in every atom lives in every flower and flames in every star when the heavens and the earth shall pass away and the universe return to cosmic dust divine truth will stand unscathed among the crash of matter and the wreck of worlds falsehood is an amorphous monster conceived in the brain of naves and brought forth by the breath of fools it's a mortal pestilence a miasmic vapor that passes like a blast from hell over the face of the world and has gone forever it may leave death in its wake and disaster dire it may place on the brow of purity the brand of the courtesan and cover the hero with the stigma of the coward it may rake hopes and ruin homes and cause blood to flow and hearts to break it may pollute the altar and disgrace the throne corrupt the courts and curse the land but the lie cannot live forever and when it's dead and damned there's none so poor as to do it reverence the following remarks apropos local politics were included in Mr. Brand's lecture on humbugs as delivered at the Dallas, Texas opera house October 17th, 1895 A discourse on political humbugs were incomplete without some reference to the young men whom Texas in a moment of mental aberration raised to the chief magistracy I learned from a sermon recently inflicted on the long-suffering inhabitants of this city son Charles is our quote heroic young Christian governor close quote how he must have changed during the last few months Shakespeare was probably viewing the Texas politician with prophetic eye when he declared that in the great drama of life a man plays many parts Coeberson is the only one however who has yet succeeded in playing them all at one time a man who can run with the hair politically while holding with the hounds personally is almost too versatile to be virtuous quote our heroic young Christian governor close quote that preacher evidently doesn't know Charles or if he does his idea of Christianity is not so altitude in us that he can stand on its apex and keep the flies off the man on the moon Coeberson is a politician who enjoyed excellent health before he entered the public service he is all things to all men and nothing to nobody he's so slippery that he couldn't stand on the partisan platform to which he owes his political elevation in the last gubernatorial election pretty much every man who voted Coeberson felt that he had a lead pipe cinch on a fat office and the remainder was certain he would work four and twenty hours a day to put in effect air pet reforms they are wiser now in 1890 Charlie sailed into the attorney general ship on the apple coattails of one J.S. Hogg and in less than thirty days he was conspiring to retire his chief after one term and to slip into his official shoes the trouble appears to be that the youngster was pulled before he was ripe before his political integrity had time to harden or his crop of wild oats was well in the ground now I want it distinctly understood that I am not the apologist of feudalism I am the apostle of the white weaned goddess of peace I always carry a cruise of oil in my hip pocket to cast upon the troubled waters I have a pacific effect on all with whom I come in contact children quit crying when they see me coming women speak well of their neighbors men respect each other's political opinions preachers engage in silent prayer and the lion and the lamb lie down together and that's no lie but as between feudalism and hypocrisy I prefer the former I would rather see men pound each other for a fat purse than play the canting Pharisee to promote their political fortunes let us look to the record of our heroic young Christian governor during the four years he officiated as attorney general he made no determined effort to enforce the law than in effect prohibiting feudalism prize fights were pulled off at Galveston, San Antonio, El Paso and other Texas points after having been duly advertised in the daily press he was elevated to the chief magistracy of the state and the slugging matches continued mills between brawny but unskilled boxers proved relied upon brute strength to honor each other to a promise to make a Hulam holiday some of these meetings were especially brutal as matches between amateur athletes are likely to be but our heroic young Christian governor saw no occasion to get his Ebenezer up he simply saw it would didn't care a continental whether there was a law prohibiting bruising bouts or not and the ministerial associations were too busy taking up collections to send bibles and blankets salvation and missionary soup to the pagans of the antipodes to pay much attention to these small fry pugs they let our blessed Texas civilization take care of itself while they agonized over a job lot of lazy negroes whose souls ain't worth a Sue Markey in blocks of five we wouldn't walk into heaven if the gates were wide open but once inside would steal eternal throne if it wasn't spiked down no eporth leaguers or Christian endeavors were asked or resoluted or prerorated until the tongues were worn to a frazzle trying to preserve the honor of our great and galoreous state by suppressing feather pillow pugilism why? I don't know, do you? of course some carpent critics declare it was because the world was not watching these brutal slugging matches between youths to pugilistic fortune and fame unknown that it was because the professionally pious had no opportunity to make a grand stand to play and get their names in print no chance to pose in the eye of the universe and the conservators of our fin de siècle civilization but then these dotting tomases are ever ready to make a mock of the righteous and put couple birds in the back hair of the godly I dislike to criticize the cloth I am prone to believe that the preachers always do the best they know how still I must confess that I am unable to muster up much admiration for the vast band variety of religion or the tutti-futti trademark of respectability had the belief not been bred into my bones that there is a god in Israel these little two by four preachers with their great moral hippodrome their purblind blinking at mountains and much ado about molehills would drive me to infidelity by their egregious folly their fiery denunciation of all men who dare disagree with them their attempt to make the states subservient to the church to establish an imperium in imperial by their mischievous meddling in matters that in no wise concern them they are bringing the beautiful religion of Christ into contempt and are doing more to foster doubt than did all the hymns and vultures and pains that ever wielded pin now don't get the idea that I am antagonistic to the preachers far from it I am something of a minister myself and we who have been called to labor in the Lord's vineyard at so much per annum must stand together I admire the ministers in a general way and whom the Lord loveth he chaseneth I feel that it is my duty to pull them tenderly but firmly back by the little alpaca coattails whenever they have made mistakes to approve them in all gentleness when I find them fanning themselves with their ears for the amusement of the mob but to return to our heroic young christian governor when it was first proposed to being the great fistic carnival and a million dollars to Dallas Alberson had nothing to say it was popularly supposed that he understood the law and would respect it the impression got abroad that he felt rather friendly to the enterprise because it would put 500 Scoody in the depleted culprits of the public and turn a great deal of ready money loose within the confines of Texas he may not have been directly responsible for this popular idea but he certainly did nothing to discourage it arrangements were perfected important contracts entered into a vast amount of money invested that would prove a complete loss if the enterprise collapsed then Culberson began to complain he suddenly discovered that feudalism was a brutal sport which should be suppressed his conversion was as instantaneous as that of Saul of Tarsus it were an insult to the intelligence of a hopeless idiot to say he did not know the Corbett Fitzsimmons affair would prove far less brutal than a hundred fistic encounters which he, as attorney general and governor, had tacitly encouraged but his jewel of consistency had evidently gone to join his diamond stud Colonel Dan Stewart didn't appear inclined to do anything to tease the young man's agony and it rapidly went from bad to worse the hurt decision was rendered and the moral volcano of our heroic young Christian governor began to erupt in earnest he declared that he would override the court of criminal appeals if many enough can be found in Texas to do it gave excellent imitation of an anarchist who is hungry for canned gore after this blood to horses bridles bluff he grew quiescent waited for something to turn up and still Dan Stewart didn't say a word then our heroic young Christian governor broke out in a new place the legislature was convened in extraordinary session to prevent a brace of pugilists smashing the immortal Icarre out of modern civilization it was a great moral aggregation almost equal to Artemis Ward's wax works I am convinced of this for it employed two doctors of divinity at public cost of course to pray over it a minute each morning for five dollars per diem each everyone expected the president of the Florida athletic club to go to Austin and make an earnest silver speech even though lawmakers were looking for him but he didn't go and the result was what might have been expected the law builders with the worst private records had the most to say about public morality men whose IOUs are not good at any game of mediante whose faces are familiar to the inmates of every disreputable dive between the Sabine and the Rio Bravo who go to the legislative duties from the gambling room and with six shooters in the bust of the breaches grew tearful over the prospective disgrace of Texas by a manly boxing bout he'll have no fury like a legislative humbug scorned while he's holding his hand behind him but the wrath of our Hebrew young Christian governor did not abate with the enactment of a law forbidding price fights such a law as he had favorably failed to enforce the promoters of what the court of criminal appeals declared a lawful enterprise were arrested and dragged before the grand jury of Travis County which appears to have taken the entire earth under his protector failing an opportunity to prosecute them for an offense against the laws of the land the powers of Austin proceeded to prosecute them on the hypothesis that they were conspiring to wreck the universe and what was their offense they had conspired to pay five hundred dollars into the public treasury and bring a million more to Dallas they had conspired to bring several thousand respectable businessmen to Texas from all parts of the union and furnished employment at good wages for hundreds of hungry men while I do not much in maritalism as a profession I must say that the promoters of the enterprise conducted themselves much better than did our heroic young Christian governor and those alleged saints who proposed to shoulder their little shotguns and help him override the courts to butcher their brethren in cold blood to prevent an encounter between brawny athletes armed with pillows to sustain modern civilization by transforming the metropolis of Texas into a charnel house to prevent by brutal homicide in the name of Christ their neighbors exercising those liberties accorded them by the laws of the land curious this modern civilization of which we hear so much during the palmy days of Greece and glory their athletes fought with terrible cestas to win a crown of oak or laurel but then Rome never produced a reverent seashore nor Greece a senator bowser the imperial city did manage to breed a Brutus and a Cato but never proved equal to a Culberson think of it Texas legislature composed chiefly of illiterate Jabrawax who string out the session interminably for the sake of the $2 a day imagine these fellows each with a large pendulous ear to the earth listening for the approach of some pegasus to carry him to congress teaching the aesthetics of civilization to the divine philosophers of Greece and the godlike senators of Rome think of Perry J. Lewis pulling the conscript fathers over the coals of senator Bowser pointing out civic duties to Socrates of attorney general Crane giving Julius Caesar a piece of his mind of Charlie Culberson turning up his little two for a nickel nose at the Olympian Games but perhaps that is not the game our heroic young Christian governor is most addicted to prize fighting even with pills for points is bad enough no doubt but there are worse things making the Texas people pay for an abortive little second term gubernatorial boom is one of them and canteen hypocrisy by sensation seeking preachers is another can the church and state find no grander work than camping on the trail of a couple of pugilists our gentlemen Jim and kangaroo bob the upper and nether mill stones between which humanity is being crowned are these the only obstacles to the inauguration of the golden age that era of peace on earth and good will to men the world is honeycombed with crime brother Seychelles says there are eight hundred fallen women in this city alone and I presume he knows that if there may have so many what a terrible story of human degradation more appalling even than soft-glove pugilism our streets warm with able-bodied beggars young men most of them whom want may drive into wickedness human life is cheap men are slain in this alleged Christian land for less silver than led Judas to betray us young girls are sold to shame and from squalid addicts come the cry of starving babies the Goths and Visigoths are once more gathering imperiling civilization itself and believe in God is fading slowly but surely from the earth want and wretchedness to skulk in the shadows of our temples ignorance and crime stalk abroad at high noon the legions of Lucifer are over running the land transforming God's beautiful world into a veritable Gehenna the field of blood is filling the prisons and poor houses are overflowing crowded with wretched creatures who dare dream of fame and fortune the great sea of life is thick strewn with wrecks millions more drifting helpless and hopeless upon the rocks out the darkness there come cries for aid men pleading for employment women shrieking in agony of soul little children wailing with hunger and cold and the winds wax ever stronger the waves run higher and higher the wreck and wraith girl ever more pitiful more appalling and church and state pause in this made vortex of chaos to pray the ills of pugilism to legislate and prorate a net bloodless boxing bouts to prosecute a brace of harmless plugs the people ask bread of the church and it gives them a stone they ask of the state protection of the lives and liberties and it gives them a special session of the legislature shoots doodle bugs with a gatling gun and sends them the bill but to recur for a moment to the fistic carnival have any of you been able to determine how the Dallas news stood in regard to that great enterprise sometimes when I want to go on an intellectual debauch I read the news or airs almanac it appears to entertain but two opinions mainly the Uncle Sam should black the boots of John Bull and that Grover Cleveland carries the brains of the world and he has begun this brace of abortive ideas constitutes its confession of faith the only things of which it feels absolutely certain when it tackles anything else it wobbles in and it wobbles out like an unhappy married man trying to find his way home at five o'clock in the morning a great diplomat once declared was made to conceal thought but the Dallas news employs it to disguise an intellectual vacuum it can use more language to say less than any other publication on earth in this particular it is like Napoleon it stands wrapped in the solitude of its own originality the eating of 30 quail in 30 days was once a popular test of endurance but I can propose a more crucial one one that will attract more people to Dallas than would even the Corbett Fitzsimmons fight that the people of the city offer a fat purse for the man who can read the editorial page of the Dallas news 30 days in succession without degenerating into a dribbling idiot it is a mental impossibility of course but perhaps my good friend Dory can be persuaded to attempt it to hoist himself with his own petard no man born of woman will ever accomplish it Masilon would become a mental bankrupt within the month and socrates have to be tapped for the symbols before reaching the halfway house the news is troubled with a chronic case of anglomania Columbia has a controversy of any kind with Britannia the news hastens to ally itself with the Britisher but in matters concerning the welfare of the city of Dallas it has little to say it did manifest a slight inclination to take up for the fistic enterprise fearfully slid one foot to terra firma but when the success of the carnival became doubtful the news happened to resume its time honored position astride the fence and it has somewhere ever since like a foul dish rag across a wire clothes line it's the greatest journalistic fraud on the face of the earth it doesn't dare to risk the opinion that water is wet but probably it isn't sure of it it is tested well however for if it did know it couldn't leak the information in less than a column the editorial page of the Dallas news reminds me of the desert of Sahara after a Simone it is such an awful waste of space if I had a five-year-old boy who could say more in 15 minutes than the Dallas news has said in the last dozen years I refuse to follow him one of the greatest frauds of modern times is the policy playing newspaper the Archimedean lever as applied to daily journalism is a fake of the first magnitude there is not a morning newspaper in Texas possessing sufficient political influence to elect a pound master in fact their support will damn any politician eternally for the people want to conclude that what the alleged great dailies support is a pretty good thing for them to oppose Hogue would not have reached the governorship but for the blatant opposition of the morning press his friendship for George Clark was the upas shadow in which he perished politically there hasn't been an important law enacted in Texas during the last ten years that it didn't oppose and yet men actually imagine they cannot succeed in politics business or letters without the assistance of that great moulder of public opinion let me tell you that every success in this country has witnessed during the past three decades was achieved despite the morning press to paraphrase Owen Meredith let a man once show the press that he feels afraid of its mark and will fly at his heels let him fearlessly face to leave him alone but to a phone at his feet if he flings it a bone end of section 36