Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 9 of 14, Elbert Hubbard

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LITTLE JOURNEYS TO THE HOMES OF THE GREAT, VOLUME 9

Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers

by

ELBERT HUBBARD

CONTENTS

JOHN WESLEY HENRY GEORGE GARIBALDI RICHARD COBDEN THOMAS PAINE JOHN KNOX JOHN BRIGHT BRADLAUGH THEODORE PARKER OLIVER CROMWELL ANNE HUTCHINSON JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU

JOHN WESLEY

  My horse was very lame, and my head did ache exceedingly. Now what
  occurred I here avow is truth—let each man account for it as he
  will. Suddenly I thought, "Can not God heal man or beast as He
  will?" Immediately my weariness and headache ceased; and my horse
  was no longer lame.
  —Wesley's Journal

Once in a speech on "The Increase of Population," Edmund Burke intimated his sympathy with Malthus, and among other interesting data made note that Susanna Wesley was the twenty-fourth child of her parents. Burke, however, neglected to state how many sisters and brothers Susanna had who were younger than herself, and also what would have been the result on church history had the parents of Susanna named their twenty-third child Omega.

John Wesley was the fifteenth child in a family of nineteen. And yet the mother did her own work, thus eliminating the servant-girl problem, and found time to preach better sermons to larger congregations than did her husband. Four of Susanna's children became famous—John, Charles, Samuel and Martha.

John rebuked and challenged the smug, self-satisfied and formal religion of the time; had every church-door locked against him; sympathized with the American Colonies in their struggle for freedom; and founded a denomination which today is second in wealth and numbers to one alone.

John Wesley left no children after the flesh, but his influence has colored the entire fabric of Christianity. There is no denomination but that has been benefited and bettered by his beautiful spirit.

Charles Wesley was the greatest producer of hymns the world has ever seen, having written over six thousand songs, and rewritten most of the Bible in lyric form. He was "the brother of John Wesley," and delighted all his life in being so called. No one ever called John Wesley the brother of Charles. John had a will like a rope of silk—it slackened, but never broke. He was resourceful, purposeful, courageous, direct, healthy, handsome, wise, witty, happy; and he rode on horseback, blazing the way for many from darkness into light. Charles followed.

Three of the children of Charles Wesley became great musicians, and one of them was the best organist of his time in England.

The third noted brother in this remarkable family was Samuel, who was thirteen years older than John, and exercised his prerogative to pooh- pooh him all his life. Samuel was an educated High Churchman, a Latin scholar, and a poet of quality. Samuel always had his dignity with him. He wrote and published essays, epics, and histories of nobodies; but of all his writings, the only thing from his pen that is now read and enjoyed is a letter of remonstrance to his mother because he hears that she has joined "Jack's congregation of Methodists, and is a renegade from the true religion." Needless to say the "true religion" to Samuel was the religion in which he believed—all others were false. Samuel being an educated Churchman did not know that all religions are true to the people who believe in them.

The fourth Wesley of note was Martha, who looked so much like her brother John that occasionally, in merry mood, she dressed herself in his cassock and surplice, and suddenly appearing before the family deceived them all until she spoke. Martha was the only girl in the brood who was heir to her mother's mind. Had she lived in this age she would have made for herself a career. A contemporary says, "She could preach like a man," a remark, I suppose, meant to be complimentary. In one respect she excelled any of the Wesleys—she had a sense of humor that never forsook her. John usually was able to laugh; Charles smiled at rare intervals; and Samuel never. As it was, Martha married and was swallowed by the conventions, for the times subdue us, and society takes individuality captive and binds it hand and foot with green withes.

But the times did not subdue John Wesley: he was the original circuit- rider, and his steed was a Pegasus that took the fences of orthodoxy at a bound, often to the great consternation and grief of theological squatters. He was regarded as peculiar, eccentric, strange, extravagant, just as any man ever has been and would be today who attempted to pattern his life after that of the Christ. Perhaps it is needless to say that the followers of John Wesley do not much resemble him, indeed not more so than they resemble Jesus of Nazareth.

John Wesley and Jesus had very much in common. But should a man of the John Wesley pattern appear, say, in one of the fashionable Methodist churches of Chicago, the organist would drown him out on request of the pastor; and the janitor, with three fingers under his elbow, would lead him to the door while the congregation sang "Pull for the Shore."

* * * * *

Julia Wedgwood, daughter of Josiah and Sarah Wedgwood, and sister to the mother of Darwin, wrote a life of John Wesley. In this book Miss Wedgwood says, "The followers of a leader are always totally different from the leader." The difference between a leader and a follower is this: a leader leads and a follower follows. The shepherd is a man, but sheep are sheep. As a rule followers follow as far as the path is good, but at the first bog they balk. Betrayers, doubters and those who deny with an oath are always recruited from the ranks of the followers. In a sermon John Wesley once said: "To adopt and live a life of simplicity and service for mankind is difficult; but to follow the love of luxury, making a clutch for place, pelf and power, labeling Paganism Christianity, and imagining you are a follower of Christ, this is easy. Yet all through life we see that the reward is paid for the difficult task. And now I summon you to a life of difficulty, not merely for the sake of the reward, but because the life of service is the righteous life—the right life—the life that leads to increased life and increased light."

A most remarkable woman was Susanna Wesley. The way she wound her mind into the minds of her sons, John and Charles, was as beautiful as it was extraordinary. Very few parents ever really get acquainted with their offspring. Parents who fail to keep their promises with their children, and who prevaricate to them, have children that are secretive and sly. But often no one person is to blame, for children do not necessarily have any spiritual or mental relationship to their parents: their minds are not attuned to the same key—they are not on the same wire.

Indeed, even with the great Susanna Wesley, there was a close and confiding intimacy with only two of her brood. John Wesley has written, "I can not remember ever having kept back a doubt from my mother—she was the one heart to whom I went in absolute confidence, from my babyhood until the day of her death."

The Epworth Parsonage, where John Wesley was born, was both a house and a school. Probably the mother centered her life on John and Charles because they responded to her love in a way the others did not. In the year Seventeen Hundred Nine, the parsonage burned, with a very close call for little John, who was asleep in one of the upper chambers. The home being destroyed, the family was farmed out among the neighbors until the house could be rebuilt. John was sent to the home of a neighboring clergyman, ten miles away. After a week we find him writing to his mother asking her if she has lost a little boy, because if so he is the boy—a most gentle way of reminding her that she had not written to him. At this time he was but six years old, yet we see his ability to write a letter. This peculiar letter is the earliest in a long correspondence between mother and son. Mrs. Wesley preserved these letters, just as the mother of Whitman treasured the letters of Walt with a solicitude that seems tinged with the romantic. Much of the correspondence between John Wesley and his mother has been published, and in it we see the intimate touch of absolute mental undress where heart speaks to heart in abandon and self-forgetfulness. The person who reaches this stage in correspondence has passed beyond the commonplace. This formulation of thought for another is the one exercise that gives mental evolution or education.

John Wesley was sent to Charterhouse School when he was eleven years old, and he remained there for six years, when he went to Oxford. After his twelfth year he was denied the personal companionship of his mother, but every day he wrote to her—sometimes just a line or two, and then at the end of the week the letter was forwarded.

In his later years Wesley did not think that either the "Charity School" or Oxford, where he went on a scholarship, had benefited him except by way of antithesis: but the correspondence with his mother was the one sweet influence of his life that could not be omitted. Their separation only increased the bond. We grow by giving; we make things our own by reciting them; thought comes through action and reaction; and happy is the man who has a sympathetic soul to whom he can outpour his own. When Charles Kingsley was asked to name the secret of his insight and power, he paused, and then answered, "I had a friend!"

John Wesley had a friend; incidentally, that friend was his mother. She died when he was thirty-nine years of age, after he had learned to wing his way on steady pinions. And in the flight she was not left behind.

We are familiar with the lives of many great men, but where among them all can you name a genius whose mother's mind matched his, even in his maturity?

* * * * *

The primitive Christian is a reactionary product of his time. Humanity continuing in one direction acquires success, and finally through an overweening pride in its own powers, relaxation enters, and self- indulgence takes the place of effort. No religion is pure except in its inception and in its state of persecution.

A religion grown great and rich and powerful becomes sloth and swag, its piety being performed perfunk; and then ceases to be a religion at all. It is merely an institution.

Religions multiply by the budding process. Every new denomination is an offshoot from a parent stem. "A new religion" is a contradiction in terms—there is only one religion in the world. A brand-new religion would wither and die as soon as the sun came out.

New denominations begin with a protest against the lapses and grossness of the established one, and the baby religion feeds and lives on the other until it has grown strong enough to break off and live a life of its own. Buds are being broken off all the time, but only a few live; the rest die because they lack vitality. That is why all things die—I trust no one will dispute the fact.

Christian Science, for instance, appropriated two great things from the parent stock: the word "Christian," and the Oxford binding, which made "Science and Health" look just like the Bible. One could carry it on the street as he went to church without fear of accusation that he was on the way to the circulating-library. It fulfilled the psychological requirements.

John Wesley retained the word "Episcopal" for the new denomination, and he also retained the gown and tippet. And it was near a hundred years before the denomination had grown to a point where it could afford to omit the gown—and possibly its omission was an error then.

* * * * *

Of university education at this time let Miss Wedgwood speak:

We can hardly wonder that the time spent at Oxford was, to a man like Gibbon, "the most idle and unprofitable period of his life," to use his own words. Even under the very different system which prevailed in the early portion of the present century, one of the most fertile thinkers of our day has been heard to speak of his university career as the only completely idle interval of his life. How often it may have proved not a mere episode, but the foundation of a life of idleness, no human being can tell. Nor was the evil merely negative. While the student lounged away his time in the coffeehouse and the tavern, whilst the dice-box supplied him with a serious pursuit, and the bottle a relaxation, he was called upon at every successive step to his degree to take a solemn oath of observance to the academical statutes which his behavior infringed in every particular. While the public professors received a thousand pounds a year for giving no lectures, the candidates for degrees were obliged to ask and pay for a dispensation for not having attended the lectures that never were given.

The system in every public declaration solemnly recognized and accepted was in every private action utterly defied. Whatever the Oxford graduate omitted to learn, he would not fail to acquire a ready facility in subscribing, with solemn attestations, professions which he violated without hesitation or regret. The Thirty-nine Articles were signed on matriculation, without any attempt to understand them. "Our venerable mother," says the great historian from whom we have already quoted, "had contrived to unite the opposite extremes of bigotry and indifference"; and these blended influences, which led Gibbon first to Rome, and then to skepticism, proved no doubt to the average mind a mere narcotic to all spiritual life. Gibbon is not the only great writer who has recorded his testimony against Hanoverian Oxford. Adam Smith in that work which has been called, with pardonable exaggeration, "the most important book that ever was written," the "Wealth of Nations," has, in the following remarks on universities, evidently incorporated his anything but loving recollections of the seven years which he spent at Baliol College. "In the University of Oxford the greater part of the professors have for these many years given up even the pretense of teaching. The discipline is in general contrived not for the benefit of students, but for the interest, or, more properly speaking, for the ease of the masters. In England the public schools are less corrupted than the universities; the youth there are, or at least may be, taught Greek and Latin, which is everything the masters pretend to teach. In the university the youth neither are, nor can be, taught the sciences which it is the business of those incorporated bodies to teach." It is the last statement to which attention is here directed. It is not that the university drew up a bad program, nor even that this scheme was badly carried out. That might be the case also; but the radical vice of the system was not that it was essentially incomplete in theory or faulty in practise, but that it was false. Its worst result was not poor scholars, but insincere and venal men.

I believe Europe can not produce parallels to Oxford and Cambridge in opulence, buildings, libraries, professorships, scholarships, and all the external dignity and mechanical apparatus of learning. If there is an inferiority, it is in the persons, not in the places or their constitution. And here I can not help confessing that a desire to please the great, and bring them to the universities, causes a compliance with fashionable manners, a relaxation of discipline, and a connivance at ignorance and folly, which errors he confesses occasioned the English universities to be in less repute than they were formerly. The fashion of sending young men thither was even in some degree abated among that class who at the present day would be the most reluctant to omit it—the nobility. The useless and frivolous exercises required for the attainment of academic honors, and the relaxation of discipline, had by this time created a widespread and deeply felt contempt for the whole system of which they formed a part; and the indulgent but candid observer, who tries to dilute his censure with the truism that he could not have been placed anywhere in this sublunary world without discovering many evils, informs us that in his seven years' residence at the university he saw immorality, habitual drunkenness, idleness, ignorance and vanity openly and boastfully obtruding themselves on public view, and triumphing without control over the timidity of modest merit.

It is under such conditions that the strong man of right intent rebukes the sloth and hypocrisy of his time. Very seldom, if ever, does he faintly guess the result of his protest. Jesus rebuked the iniquities and follies of Jerusalem, pleading for simple honesty, directness of speech and love of neighbors. In wrath the Pharisees made the usual double charge against Him—heresy and treason—and He was crucified.

Heresy and treason are invoked together; one is an offense against the Church, the other against the State. "The man is a traitor to God and a traitor to his country," that settles it—off with his head! The offenses of Socrates, Jesus, Savonarola, Huss, Wyclif, Tyndale, Luther and John Wesley were all identical. Reformers are always guilty— guilty of telling unpleasant truths. The difference in treatment of the man is merely the result of a difference in time and local environment. Oxford was professedly a religious institution; it was a part of the State. John Wesley, the undergraduate, perceived it was in great degree a place of idleness and dissipation. John wrote to his mother describing the conditions. She wrote back, pleading that he keep his life free from the follies that surrounded him, and band those who felt as he did into a company, and meet together for prayer and meditation in order that they might mutually sustain one another.

Susanna Wesley was the true founder of Methodism, a fact stated by
John Wesley many a time.

As early as Seventeen Hundred Nine, she wrote to her son Samuel, who was then at Oxford, and who was never converted from Oxford influences: "My son, you must remember that life is our divine gift— it is the talent given us by Our Father in Heaven. I request that you throw the business of your life into a certain method, and thus save the friction of making each day anew. Arise early, go to bed at a certain hour, eat at stated times, pray, read and study by a method, and so get the most out of the moments as they swiftly pass, never to return. Allow yourself so much time for sleep, so much for private devotion, so much for recreation. Above all, my son, act on principle, and do not live like the rest of mankind, who float through the world like straws upon a river."

In hundreds of her letters to John and Charles at Oxford, their mother repeats this advice in varying phrase: "We are creatures of habit; we must cultivate good habits, for they soon master us, and we must be controlled by that which is good. Life is very precious—we must give it back to God some day, so let us get the most from it. Let us methodize the hours, so we may best improve them."

John Wesley was a leader by nature, and before he was twenty he had gathered about him at Oxford a little group of young men, poor in purse, but intent in purpose, who held themselves aloof from the foibles and follies of the place, and planned their lives after that of the Christ. In ridicule they were called Methodists. The name stuck.

In this Year of Grace, Nineteen Hundred Seven, there are more than thirty million Methodists, and about seven million in America, The denomination owns property to the value of more than three hundred million dollars in the United States, and has more than one hundred thousand paid preachers.

* * * * *

After Wesley's graduation he was importuned by the authorities to remain and act as tutor and teacher at Christchurch College. He was a diligent student, and his example was needed to hold in check the hilarious propensities of the sons of the nobility.

In due time John was ordained to preach, and often he would read prayers at neighboring chapels. His brother Charles was his devoted echo and shadow. Then there was an enthusiastic youth by the name of George Whitefield, and a sober, serious young man, James Hervey, who stood by the Oxford Methodists and endured without resentment the sarcastic smiles of the many.

These young men organized committees to visit the sick; to search out poor and despondent students and give them aid and encouragement; to visit the jails and workhouses. The intent was to pattern their lives after that of the Apostles. They were all very poor, but their wants were few, and when John Wesley's income was thirty pounds a year he gave two pounds for charity. When it was sixty pounds a year he gave away thirty pounds; and here seems a good place to say that, although he made more than a hundred thousand pounds during his life from his books, he died penniless, just as he had wished and intended.

Thus matters stood in the year Seventeen Hundred Thirty-five, when James Oglethorpe was attracted to that Oxford group of ascetic enthusiasts. The life of Oglethorpe reads like a novel by James Fenimore Cooper. He was of aristocratic birth, born of an Irish mother, with a small bar sinister on his scutcheon that pushed him out and set him apart. He was a graduate of Oxford, and it was on a visit to his Alma Mater that he heard some sarcastic remarks flung off about the Wesleys that seemed to commend them. People hotly denounced usually have a deal of good in them. Oglethorpe was an officer in the army, a philanthropist, a patron of art, and a soldier of fortune. He had been a Member of Parliament, and at this particular time was Colonial Governor of Georgia, home on a visit.

He had investigated Newgate and other prisons and had brought charges against the keepers and succeeded in bringing their inhumanities before the public. Hogarth has a picture of Oglethorpe visiting a prison, with the poor wretches flocking around him telling their woes. In a good many instances prisoners were given their liberty on the promise of Oglethorpe that he would take them to his colony. The heart of Oglethorpe was with the troubled and distressed; and while his philanthropy was more on the order of that of Jack Cade than it was Christian, yet he at once saw the excellence in the Wesleys, and strong man that he was, wished to make their virtue his own. He proposed that the Wesleys should go back with him to America and evolve an ideal commonwealth.

Oglethorpe had with him several Indians that he had brought over from
America. They were proud, silent, and had the reserve of their kind.
Moreover, they were six feet high, and when presented at court wore no
clothes to speak of.

King George the Second, when these sons of the forest were presented to him, appeared like a pigmy. Oglethorpe knew how to march his forces on an angle. London society went mad trying to get a glimpse of his savages. He declared that the North American Indians were the finest specimens—intellectually, physically and morally—of any people the world had ever seen. They needed but one thing to make them perfect— Christianity.

The Wesleys, discouraged by the small impress they had made on Oxford, listened to Oglethorpe's arguments and accepted his terms. Charles was engaged as Secretary to the Governor, and John Wesley was to go as a missionary.

And so they sailed away to America. On board ship they methodized the day—had prayers, sang hymns and studied, read, exhorted and wrote as if it were their last day on earth. This method excited the mirth of several scions of nobility who were on board, and Oglethorpe opened out on the scoffers thus: "Here, you damned pirates, you do not know these people. They forget more in an hour than you ever knew. You take them for tithe-pig parsons, when they are gentlemen of learning, and, like myself, graduates of Oxford. I am one of them, I would have you know. I am a religious man and a Methodist, too, and I'll knock hell out of anybody who, after this, smiles at either my friends or my religion!"

Long years after, Wesley told this story to illustrate the fact that a man might give an intellectual assent to a religion and yet not have much of it in his heart. Oglethorpe looked upon Methodism as a good thing—cheaper than a police system—and sure to bring good results. If John Wesley and George Whitefield could convert his colony and all the Indians round about, his work of governing would be much reduced. Oglethorpe was a very practical man.

* * * * *

John Wesley did not convert the Indians, because he could not find them, they being away on wars with the other tribes. Besides that, he could not speak their language and was wholly unused to their ways. The Indian does not unbosom himself to those who do not know him, and the few Indians Wesley saw were stubbornly set in the idea that they had quite as good a religion as his. And Wesley was persuaded that probably they had.

In the city of Savannah, there were just five hundred eighteen people when John Wesley was there. About half of these were degenerate sons of aristocrats, ex-convicts, soldiers of fortune, and religious enthusiasts—the rest were plain, every-day folk.

Pioneer people are too intent on maintaining life to go into the abstrusities of either ethics or theology. Wesley soon saw that his powers demanded a wider field. The experience, though, had done him much good, especially in two ways. He had gotten a glimpse of chattel slavery and made a remark about it that is forever fixed in literature, "Human slavery is the sum of all villainies." Then he had met on shipboard a party of Moravians, and was so impressed by them that he straightway began to study German. In six weeks' time he could carry on an acceptable conversation in that language. At the end of the two years which he spent in Georgia, through attending the services of the Moravians, he could read, write and preach in the German language.

The Moravians seemed to him the only genuine Christians he had ever seen, and their example of simple faith, industry, directness of speech, and purity of life made such an impress upon him that thereafter Methodism and Moravianism were closely akin.

At Savannah there were some people too poor to afford shoes, and when these people appeared at church in bare feet they were smiled at by the alleged nobility. Seeing this, on the following Sunday, John Wesley appeared barefoot in the pulpit, and this was his habit as long as he was in Georgia. This gave much offense to the aristocrats; and Wesley also made himself obnoxious by preaching salvation to the slaves. Indeed, this was the main cause of his misunderstanding with the Governor. Oglethorpe considered any discussion or criticism of slavery "an interference with property-rights."

And so Wesley sailed back to England, sobered by a sense of failure, but encouraged by the example of the Moravians, who accepted whatever Providence sent, and counted it gain.

The overseers of Oxford, like Oglethorpe, had no special personal sympathy with the peculiar ideas of Wesley; but as a matter of policy they recognized that his influence in the great educational center was needed for moral ballast. And so his services were secured as Greek Professor and occasional preacher.

Concerning the moral status of Oxford at this time, Miss Wedgwood further says:

The condition of Oxford at the time of the rise of Methodism has been too little noted among those who have studied the great Evangelical Revival. Contemplating this important movement in its latter stage, they have forgotten that it took its rise in the attempt made by an Oxford tutor to bring back to the national institution for education something of that method which was at this time so disgracefully neglected. To surround a young man with illustrations of one kind of error is the inevitable preparation for making him a vehement partisan of its opposite, and in education the influence on which we can reckon most certainly is that of reaction. The hard external code and needless restrictions of Methodism should be regarded with reference to what Wesley saw in the years he spent in that abode of talent undirected and folly unrestrained.

It was to the Oxford here described—the Oxford where Gibbon and Adam Smith wasted the best years of their lives, and many of their unremembered contemporaries followed in their steps with issues not less disastrous to themselves, however unimportant to others—to the Oxford where young men swore to observe laws which they never read, and renewed a solemn promise when they had discovered the impossibility of keeping it—that Wesley, about a score of years after his entrance to the University, poured forth from the pulpit of Saint Mary's such burning words as must have reached many a conscience in the congregation.

"Let me ask you," he said in his university sermon for Seventeen Hundred Forty-four, "in tender love and in the spirit of meekness, is this a Christian city? Are we, considered as a community of men, so filled with the Holy Ghost as to enjoy in our hearts, and show forth in our lives, the genuine fruits of that Spirit? I entreat you to observe that here are no peculiar notions now under consideration: that the question is not concerning doubtful opinions, but concerning the undoubted fundamental branches (if there be any such) of our common Christianity. And for the decision thereof I appeal unto your own consciences. In the presence of the great God, before whom both you and I shall shortly appear, I pray you that are in authority over us, whom I reverence for the sake of your office, to consider (and that not after the manner of dissemblers with God), are you living portraitures of Him whom ye are appointed to represent among men? Do you put forth all your strength in the vast work you have undertaken? Let it not be said that I speak here as if all under your care were intended to be clergymen. Not so: I speak only as if they were intended to be Christians. But what example is set us by those who enjoy the beneficence of our forefathers, by Fellows, Students, Scholars, and more especially those who are of some rank and eminence? Do ye, who are of some rank and eminence—do ye, brethren, abound in the fruits of the Spirit, in holiness of mind, in self-denial and mortification, in seriousness and composure of spirit, in patience, meekness, sobriety, temperance; and in unwearied, restless endeavors to do good to all men? Is this the general character of Fellows of Colleges? I fear it is not. Rather, have not pride and haughtiness, impatience and peevishness, sloth and indolence, gluttony and sensuality been objected to us, perhaps not always by our enemies, nor wholly without ground? Many of us are more immediately consecrated to God, called to minister in holy things. Are we then patterns to the rest in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity? Did we indeed enter on this office with a single eye to serve God, trusting that we were inwardly moved by the Holy Ghost to take upon us this ministration, for the promoting of His glory, and the edifying of His people? Where are the seals of our apostleship? Who that were dead in trespasses and sins have been quickened by our word? Have we a burning zeal to save souls from death? Are we dead to the world and the things of the world? When we are smitten on one cheek, do we not resent it, or do we turn the other also, not resisting evil, but overcoming evil with good? Have we a bitter zeal, inciting us to strive sharply and passionately with those that are out of the way? Or is our zeal the flame of love, so as to direct all our words with sweetness, lowliness and meekness of wisdom?

"Once more: what shall we say of the youth of this place? Have you either the form or the power of Christian godliness? Are you diligent in your business, pursuing your studies with all your strength? Do you redeem the time, crowding as much work into every day as it can contain? Rather, are ye not conscious that you waste day after day either in reading that which has no tendency to Christianity, or in gaming, or in—you know not what? Are you better managers of your fortune than of your time? Do you take care to owe no man anything? Do you know how to possess your bodies in sanctification and honor? Are no drunkenness and uncleanness found among you? Yea, are there not many of you who glory in your shame? Are there not a multitude of you that are forsworn? I fear, a swiftly increasing multitude. Be not surprised, brethren—before God and this congregation I own myself to have been of the number solemnly swearing to observe all those customs which I then knew nothing of, and all those statutes which I did not so much as read over, either then, or for a long time afterwards. What is perjury, if this is not? But if it be, oh, what a weight of sin— yea, sin of no common dye—lieth upon us! And doth not the Most High regard it?

"May it not be a consequence of this that so many of you are a generation of triflers with God, with one another, and your own souls? Who of you is, in any degree, acquainted with the work of the Spirit, His supernatural work in the souls of men? Can you bear, unless now and then in a church, any talk of the Holy Ghost? Would you not take it for granted, if any one began such a conversation, that it was hypocrisy or enthusiasm? In the name of the Lord God Almighty I ask, What religion are ye of?"

We may hope that, even in that cold and worldly age, there was more than one in Saint Mary's church whose conscience was awakened so to re-echo that question that he joined with his whole soul in the prayer with which the sermon concluded: "Lord, save or we perish! Take us out of the mire that we sink not. Unto Thee all things are possible. According to the greatness of Thy power, preserve Thou them that are appointed to die!"

* * * * *

The fervor of Wesley's zeal gave offense to the prim and precise parsons who recited their prayers with the aid of a T-square.

To them religion was a matter of form, but to Wesley it was an experience of the heart. From the Moravians he had acquired the habit of interjecting prayers into his sermons—from speaking to the people, he would suddenly change, raise his eyes aloft, and speak directly to Deity. This to many devout Churchmen was blasphemous. Of course the trouble was that it was simply new—we always resent an innovation. "Did you ever see anything like that?" And the fact that we have not is proof that it is absurd, preposterous, bad.

Wesley went one day to hold evening prayers at a village church near Oxford. His fame had preceded him: the worthy warden securely locked the doors and deposited the key in the capacious depths of his breeches-pocket and went a-fishing. Several old women were waiting to attend the service, and rather than send them away, Wesley, standing on the church-steps, read prayers and spoke. It was rather an unusual scene, and the unusual attracts. Loafers from the tavern across the way came over, children gathered in little groups, people who had never entered a place of worship stopped and listened. Some laughed, others looked serious, and most of them remained to the close of the meeting.

Thus does everything work together for good for everybody. The warden and his astute vestrymen thought to block the work of Wesley, and Wesley did the only thing he could: spoke outside of the church, and thus did he speak to the hearts of people who had never been inside the church and who would not go inside the building. Street preaching was not the invention of John Wesley, but up to his time no clergyman in the Church of England had attempted so undignified a thing.

Wesley was doing what his mother had done the very year he was born. She had preached to the people of the village of Epworth in the churchyard, because, forsooth, the chancel was a sacred place and would suffer if any one but a man, duly anointed, spoke there. The woman had a message and did the only thing she could: spoke outside, and spoke to two hundred fifty people, while the regular attendance to hear her husband was twenty-five.

And so John Wesley had made a discovery, and that was that to reach the submerged three-quarters, you must make your appeal to them on the street, in the marketplaces—from church-steps. His experience on shipboard and in America had done him good. They had taught him that form and ritual, set time and place, were things not necessary-that whenever two or three were gathered together in His name, He was in their midst.

And it was in preaching to the outcasts that Wesley found himself, and was "converted." He says, "My work in America failed because I had not then given my heart to my Savior."

Now he got the "power," and whether this word means to his followers what it meant to him is a question we need not analyze. Power comes by abandonment: the orator who flings convention to the winds and gives himself to the theme finds power.

The opposition and the ridicule were all very necessary factors in allowing Wesley to find his true self.

He wrote to his mother telling what he was doing, and she wrote back giving him her blessing, writing words of encouragement. "Son John must speak the words of love on any and every occasion when the spirit moves," she said.

John Wesley was attracting too much attention to himself at Oxford: there came words of warning from those in authority. To these admonitions he replied that he was a duly ordained clergyman of the Church of England, and there was nothing in the canons that forbade his holding services when and where he desired. And then he adds: "To show simple men and women the way of life, and tell them of Him who died that we might live, surely can not be regarded as an offense. I must continue in my course." That settled it—Oxford the cultured was not for him. He was a preacher without a pulpit—a teacher without a school.

He saddled his horse and with all his earthly possessions in his saddlebags traveled toward London—following that storied road which almost every great and powerful man of England had traversed. He was penniless, but he owned his horse. He was a horse-lover: he delighted in the companionship of a horse, and where the way was rough he would walk and lead the patient animal. It comes to us with a slight shock that the Reverend John Wesley anticipated Colonel Budd Doble by saying, "God's best gift to man—a horse!"

So John Wesley rode, not knowing where he was going or why—only that Oxford no longer needed him. When he started he was depressed, but after passing the confines of the town, and once out upon the highway with the green fields on either side, he lifted up his voice and sang one of his brother's hymns. Exile from Oxford meant liberty.

Arriving at a village he would stand on the church-steps, on a street- corner, often from a tavern-veranda, and speak. In his saddlebags he carried his black robe and white tippet. He could put these on over his travel-stained clothes and look presentable. His hair was worn long and parted in the middle; his face was cleanly shaved, and revealed comely features of remarkable strength.

The man was a commanding figure. People felt the honesty of his presence. The crowd might cat-call, and jeer, but those who stood near offered no violence. Indeed, more than once the roughs protected him. He preached of righteousness and judgment to come. He pleaded for a better life—here and now. And so he traveled, preaching three or four times a day, and riding from twenty to fifty miles. At London he preached on the "heaths," and thousands upon thousands who never entered a church heard him. That phrase, "They came to scoff and remained to pray," is his.

Wesley's oratory was not what is known to us as "the Methodist style." He was quiet, moderate, conversational, but so earnest that his words carried conviction. The man was honest—he wanted nothing—he gave himself.

Such a man today, preaching in the same way, would command marked attention and achieve success. The impassioned preaching of Whitefield was what gave the "Methodist color." Charles Wesley was much like Whitefield, and was regarded as a greater preacher than his brother because he indulged in more gymnastics—but John was far the greater man. And so the Great Awakening began; other preachers followed the example of the Wesleys, and were preaching in the fields and by the roadside and were organizing "Methodist Societies." But John Wesley was their leader and exemplar.

Neither of the Wesleys nor did Whitefield have any idea at this time of organizing a separate denomination or of running opposition to the Established Church.

They belonged to the Church, and these "Societies" were merely for keeping alive the spiritual flame which had been kindled.

The distinguishing feature of John Wesley's work seemed to be the "class" which he organized wherever possible. This was a schoolteacher's idea. There was a leader appointed, and this class of not more than ten persons was to meet at least once a week for prayer and praise and to study the Scriptures. Each person present was to take part—to stand on his feet and say something.

In this Wesley was certainly practical: "All must take part, for by so doing the individual grows to feel he is a necessary part of the whole. Even the humblest must read or pray or sing, or give testimony to the goodness of God."

And so we get the circuit-rider and see the evolution of the itinerancy. And then comes the "local preacher," who was simply a "class leader" who had gotten "the power."

Wesley saw with a clear and steady vision that the paid preacher, the priest with the "living" was an anomaly. To make a business of religion was to miss its essence, just as to make a business of love evolves a degenerate. Our religion should be a part of our daily lives. The circuit-rider was an apostle: he had no home, drew no salary, owned no property; but gave his life without stint to the cause of humanity. It was Wesley's habit to enter a house—any house— and say, "Peace be unto this house." He would hold then and there a short religious service. People were always honored by his presence: even the great and purse-proud, as well as the lowly, welcomed him. All he wanted was accommodations for himself and his horse, and these were freely given. He looked after the care of his horse himself, and always the last thing at night he would see that his horse was properly fed and bedded.

One horse he rode for ten years; and when it grew old and lame, his grief at having to leave it behind found vent in a flood of tears as he stood with his arms about its neck. Was ever mortal horse so honored? To have carried an honest man a hundred thousand miles, and been an important factor in the Great Awakening! Is there a Horse Heaven? In the State of Washington they say, "Yes." Perhaps they are right. Often before break of day, before the family was astir, Wesley would be on his way.

* * * * *

As an argument against absolute innocency in matters of love, the unfortunate marriage of Wesley, at the discreet age of forty-eight, has been expressed at length by Bernard Shaw. If Wesley had roamed the world seeking for a vixen for a wife, he could not have chosen better. Mrs. Vazeille was a widow of about Wesley's age—rich, comely, well upholstered. In London he had accepted her offers of hospitality, and for ten years had occasionally stopped at her house, so haste can not be offered as an excuse. The fatal rock was propinquity, and this was evidently not on the good man's chart; neither did he realize the ease and joy with which certain bereaved ladies can operate their lacrimal glands. On the way down "The Foundry" steps at night, Wesley slipped and sprained his ankle. He hobbled to the near-by residence of Mrs. Vazeille. On sight of him, the lady burst into tears, and then for the next week proceeded to nurse him.

He was due on the circuit and anxious to get away; he could not ride on horseback, and therefore if he went at all, he must go in a carriage. Mrs. Vazeille had a carriage, but she could not go with him, of course, unless they were married.

So they were married, and were miserable ever afterward.

Mrs. Wesley was glib, shallow, fussy, and never knew that her husband belonged to the world, and to her only incidentally. She took sole charge of him and his affairs; ordered people away who wanted to see him if she did not like their looks; opened his mail; rifled his pockets; insisted that he should not go to the homes of poor people; timed his hours of work; and religiously read his private journal and demanded that it should be explained. This woman should have married a man who kept no journal, and one for whom no one cared. As it was, no doubt she suffered up to her capacity, which perhaps was not great, for God puts a quick limit on the sensibilities of the stupid.

She even pulled him about by the hair before they had been married a year; and made faces at him as he preached, saying sotto voce, "I've heard that so often that I'm sick of it." In company, she would sometimes explain to the assembled guests what a great and splendid man her first husband was.

But worst of all, she took Wesley's faithful saddle-horse "Timothy," and hitched him alongside of a horse of her own to a chaise, with a postboy in a red suit on his back, tooting a horn.

Poor Wesley groaned, and inwardly said, "It is a trial sent by God—I must bear it all."

Finally the woman renounced him and left for Scotland. He then stole his own horse from her stable, and rode away as in the good old days. But alas! in a month she was on his trail. She caught up with him at Birmingham and fell on his neck, after the service, explaining that she was Mrs. John Wesley. The poor man could neither deny it nor run away, without making a scene, and so she accompanied him to his lodgings.

Her protests of reformation vanished in a week, and the marks of her nails were again on his fine face. This program was kept up for thirty-one years, with all the variations possible to a jealous woman, who had an income sufficient to allow her to indulge her vagaries and still move in good society. On October Fourteenth, Seventeen Hundred Eighty-one, Wesley wrote in his Journal, "I am told my wife died Monday and was buried on this evening."

Wesley once wrote to Asbury, "She has cut short my life full twenty years." If this were true, one can see how Wesley would otherwise have made the century run. However, Wesley was right: it was not all bad; the Law of Compensation never sleeps, and as a result of his unfortunate marriage, Wesley knew things which men happily married never know.

John Wesley did not blame anybody for anything. Once when he saw a drunken man reeling through the street, he turned to a friend and said, "But for the grace of God, there goes John Wesley!" All his biographies agree that after his fiftieth year his power as a preacher increased constantly until he was seventy-five. He grew more gentle, more tender, and there was about him an aura of love and veneration, so that even his enemies removed their hats and stood silent in his presence. And we might here paraphrase his own words and truly say of him, as he said of Josiah Wedgwood, "He loved flowers and horses and children—and his soul was near to God!"

The actual reason for breaking away or "coming out" is a personal antipathy for the leader. Like children playing a game, theologians reach a point where they say, "I'll not play in your back yard." And not liking a man, we dislike his music, his art, his creed. So they divide on free grace, foreordination, baptism, regeneration, freedom of the will, endless punishment, endless consequences, conversion, transubstantiation, sanctification, infant baptism, or any one of a dozen reasons which do not represent truth, but are all merely a point of view, and can honestly be believed before breakfast and rejected afterward.

However, the protest of Wesley had a basic reason, for at his time the State Religion was a galvanized and gilded thing, possessing everything but the breath of life.

* * * * *

And so John Wesley went riding the circuit from Land's End to John O'Groat's, from Cork to Londonderry, eight thousand miles, and eight hundred sermons every year. In London he spoke to the limit of his voice—ten thousand people. Yet when chance sent him but fifty auditors he spoke with just as much feeling. His sermons were full of wit, often homely but never coarse. He knew how to interest tired men; how to keep the children awake. He interspersed anecdote with injunction, and precept with homely happenings. He yearned to better this life, and to evolve souls that were worth saving.

Wesley grew with the years, and fully realized that preaching is for the preacher. "Always in my saddlebags beside my Bible and hymnal I carried one good book." He knew history, science as far as it had been carried, and all philosophy was to him familiar. The itineracy he believed was a necessity for the preacher as well as for the people. A preacher should not remain so long in a place as to become cheap or commonplace. New faces keep one alive and alert. And the circuit-rider can give the same address over and over and perfect it by repetition until it is most effective.

The circuit-rider, the local preacher or class-leader, the classes, the "love-feast," or general meeting—these were quite enough in the way of religious machinery.

Finally, however, Wesley became convinced that in large cities an indoor meeting-place was necessary in order to keep the people banded together. Often the weather was bad, and then it was too much to expect women and children to stand in the rain and cold to hear the circuit-rider.

So London supplied an abandoned warehouse called "The Foundry," and here the Wesleys met in a vast body for a service of song and praise. Methodism is largely a matter of temperament—it fits the needs of a certain type. The growing mind is not content to have everything done for it. The Catholics and Episcopalians were doing too much for their people, and not letting the people do enough for themselves. The Methodist class-meeting allowed the lowliest member to lift up his voice and make his own appeal to the Throne of Grace. Prayer is for the person who prays, and only very dull people doubt its efficacy. The God in your own heart always harkens to your prayer, and if it is reasonable and right, always answers it.

"Methodism raised the standard of intellect in England to a degree no man can compute," says Lecky the freethinking historian. Drunkenness, gambling, dog-fighting, bear-baiting in whole communities were replaced by the singing of hymns, prayers and "testimonies," in which every one had a part. Wesley loved flowers and often carried garden- seeds to give away, and then on his next trip would remember to ask about results. He encouraged his people to be tidy in their dress and housekeeping, and gentle in their manners.

Thousands learned to read that they might read the Bible; thousands sang who had never tried to sing before; and although the singing may have been of a very crude quality and the public speaking below par, yet it was human expression and therefore education, evolution, growth. That Wesley thought Methodism a finality need not be allowed to score against him. His faith and zeal had to be more or less blind, otherwise he would not have been John Wesley; philosophers with the brain of Newton, Spencer, Hegel, Schopenhauer, could never have done the work of Wesley. Had Wesley known more, he would have done less. He was a God-intoxicated man—his heart was aflame with divine love.

He carried the standard far to the front, and planted the flowing pennant on rocky ramparts where all the world could see. To carry the flag further was the work of others yet to come.

It was only in the year Seventeen Hundred Eighty-four, when Wesley was eighty-one years old, that he formally broke loose from the mother- church and Methodism was given a charter from the State. At this time John Wesley announced himself as a "Scriptural Episcopus," or a bishop by divine right, greatly to the consternation of his brother Charles. But the morning stars still sang together, even after he had ordained his comrade, Asbury, "Bishop of America" and conferred the title of bishop on a dozen others. It was always, however, carefully explained that they were merely Methodist-Episcopal bishops and not Episcopal bishops. A year before his death Wesley issued an order that no Methodist services should be held at the hours of the regular church service, and that no Methodist bishop should wear a peculiar robe, have either a fixed salary, residence or estate, nor should he on any account allow any one to address him as "My Lord."

It was a very happy life he led—so full of work that there was no time for complaint. The constant horseback riding kept his system in perfect health. At eighty-five he said: "I never have had more than a half-hour's depression in my life. My controlling mood has been one of happiness, thankfulness and joy." Wesley endeavored not to make direct war upon the Established Church—he hoped it would reform itself. He did not know that men with fixed and fat incomes seldom die and never resign; and his innocence in thinking he could continue on his course of organizing "Methodist Societies," and still keep his place within the Church, reveals his lack of logic. Moreover, he never had enough imagination to see that the Methodist Church would itself become great and strong and powerful and rich, and be an institution very much like the one from which in his eighty-first year he at last broke away. Charles Wesley and Whitefield died members of the Church of England, and were buried in consecrated ground; but John Wesley passed peacefully out in his eighty-eighth year, requesting that his body be buried in City Road Chapel, in the plot of ground that he by his life, love and work had consecrated. And it was so done.

HENRY GEORGE

  The more you study this question, the more you will see that the
  true law of social life is the law of love, and law of liberty, the
  law of each for all and all for each; that the golden rule of morals
  is also the golden rule of the science of wealth; that the highest
  expressions of religious truth include the widest generalizations of
  political economy.
  —Henry George

[Illustration: HENRY GEORGE]

Henry George died in Eighteen Hundred Ninety-seven. Nearly twenty years have passed since men heard his voice, looked on his strong, lithe, active form, saw the gleam of his honest eyes, and felt the presence of a man—a man who wanted nothing and gave everything—a man who gave himself. Twenty years!

And in those years the world has experienced, and is now passing through, a peaceful revolution such as men have never before seen. Those years have given us a new science of religion; a new education; a new penology; a new healing art; a new method in commerce.

The wisdom of honesty as a business asset is nowhere questioned, and the clergy has ceased to call upon men to prepare for death. We are preparing to live, and the way we are preparing to live is by living.

The remedy Henry George prescribed for economic ills was as simple as it was new, and new things and simple things are ever looked on as objectionable. The universality of conservatism proves that it must have its use and purpose in the eternal order. It keeps us from going too fast; it prevents us from bringing about changes for which mankind is not prepared. Nature's methods are evolutionary, not revolutionary.

Slaves can not be made free by edict. Moses led his people out of only one kind of captivity, and in the wilderness they wandered in bondage still. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation did not free the colored race, because it is the law of God that he who would be free must free himself. A servile people are slaves by habit, and habit is the only fetter. Freedom, like happiness, is a condition of mind. A whining, complaining, pinching, pilfering class that listens for the whistle, watches the clock, that works only when under the menacing eye of the boss, and stands in eternal fear of the blue envelope here, and perdition hereafter, can never be made free by legislative enactment. Freedom can not be granted, any more than education can be imparted: both must be achieved, or we yammer forever without the pale. A simple, strong and honest people is free. People enslaved by superstition and ruled by the dead have work at filing fetters ahead of them, which only they themselves can do. Henry George did not realize this, and his strength lay in the fact that he did not. He did not know when men get the crook out of their backs, the hinges out of their knees, and the cringe out of their souls, that then they are free. Slaves place in the hands of tyrants all the power that tyrants possess. Fortunate it was for Henry George, and for the world, that he did not know that any man who labors to help the workingman will be mobbed by the proletariat for his pains a little later on. Monarchies maybe ungrateful, but their attitude is a sweet perfume compared to the ingratitude of the laborer. He can be helped only by stealth, and his freedom must come from within. The moral weakness of man is the one thing that makes tyranny possible.

Tyranny is a condition in the heart of serfs. Tyrants tyrannize only over people of a certain cast of mind. Tyrants are men who have stolen power—convicts who have wrested guns from their guards. Watch them, and in a little while they will again shift places. Henry George was a very great man: great in his economic, prophetic insight; great in his faith, his hope, his love. He gave his message to the world, and passed on, scourged, depressed, undone, because the world did not accept the truths he voiced. Yet all for which he strived and struggled will yet come true—his prayer will be answered. And the political parties and the men who in his life opposed him are now adopting his opinions, quoting his reasons, and in time will bring about the changes he advocated. Of all modern prophets and reformers, Henry George is the only one whose arguments are absolutely unanswerable and whose forecast was sure.

* * * * *

Henry George was that rare, peculiar and strange thing—an honest man. Whether he had genius or not we can not say, since genius has never been defined twice alike, nor put in the alembic and resolved into its constituent parts. All accounts go to show that from very childhood Henry George was singularly direct and true. His ancestry was Welsh, Scotch and English in about equal proportions, and the traits of the middle class were his, even to a theological sturdiness that robbed his mind of most of its humor. Reformers must needs be color-blind, otherwise they would never get their work done—they see red or purple and nothing else. Born in Philadelphia in Eighteen Hundred Thirty- nine, on Tenth Street, below Pine, in a house still standing, and which should be marked with a bronze plate, but is not, Henry George took on a good many of the moral traits of his Quaker neighbors. His father was a clerk in the Custom-House, having graduated from a position as sea-captain on account of an excess of caution and a taste for penmanship. Later the good man went into the publishing business, backed by the Episcopal Church, and issued Sunday-School leaflets, sermons and prayer-books. In fact, he became the official printer of the denomination. With him was a man named Appleton, who finally went over to New York and started in on his own account, founding the firm of D. Appleton and Company, which forty years thereafter was to publish to the world a book called, "Progress and Poverty."

The worthy father of Henry George was a good Churchman, but not a businessman. He bought the things he ought not, and left unsold the things he should have worked off. He didn't know the value of time. Other people did things while he was getting ready to commence to begin.

And so the whirligig of time sent him back to his desk at the Custom- House, on a salary so modest that it meant poverty, and progress crab- fashion.

The children old enough to work got jobs, and Henry of the red hair and freckles found a place as printer's devil at two dollars a week. College was out of the question, and Girard Institute was regarded as infidelic. However, episcopacy did not have quite so strong a hold on this household as it once had. The Georges believed in freedom and took William Lloyd Garrison's paper, "The Liberator," and the mother read it aloud by the light of a penny dip. Next came "Uncle Tom's Cabin," and when, in Eighteen Hundred Fifty-six, the Republican Party was born, the George family, father, mother and children, all had pronounced views on the subject of human rights—very different views from those held by the royal Georges of England. When Henry George was sixteen, the restlessness of coming manhood found expression, and he shipped before the mast and sailed away to the Antipodes. The boy had the small, compact form, the physical activity and the daring which make a first-class sailor, but happily his brain was too full of ideas to transform him into a dog of the sea.

A trip to Australia, with salt pork all the time, sea-biscuit every day, lobscouse on Sundays, plum-duff once a month, and a total absence of mental stimulus, cured him of the idea that freedom was to be found on the bounding wave and the rolling deep.

At seventeen he was back at the case, setting type and getting a man's pay because he was able to "rastle the dic.," which means that he was on familiar terms with the dictionary and could correct proof.

Education is a matter of desire, and the printer's case with bad copy to revise is better than "English Twenty-two" at Harvard. Henry George moused nights at the Quaker Apprentices' Library, and he also read Franklin's "Autobiography"; his mind was full of Poor Richard maxims, which he sprinkled through his diary; but best of all, with seven other printers he formed another "Junta," and they met twice a week to discuss "poetry, economics and Mormonism." It was very sophomoric, of course, but boys of eighteen who study anything and defend it in essays and orations are right out on the highway which leads to superiority. The trouble with the 'prentice is that he does not know how to spend his evenings; the love of leisure and the wish for a good time cause the moments to slip past him, out of his reach forever, out into the great ocean of time.

Life is a sequence—the logical, farseeing mind is a cumulative consequence. Men who are wise at forty were not idle at twenty. "Read anything half an hour a day, and in ten years you will be learned," says Emerson.

Henry George worked and read, and the "Junta" gave him the first taste of that intoxicating thing, thinking on one's feet. We grow by expression, and never really know a thing until we tell it to somebody else. Henry George was getting an education, getting it in the only way any one ever can, or has, or does—getting it by doing.

But the wanderlust was again at work; California was calling—the land of miracle—and printer's ink began to pall. Henry George was a sailor; every part of a sailing ship was to him familiar—from bilge- water to pennant, from bowsprit to sternpost. He could swab the mainmast, reef the topsail in a squall, preside in the cook's-galley, or if the mate were drunk and the captain ashore he could take charge of the ship, put for open sea and ride out the storm by scudding before the wind.

Ships in need of sailors were lying in the offing. When young Henry George took a walk it was always along the docks. He knew every ship there in the Delaware, and visited with the sailormen, who told of the happenings in far-off climes. News from California much interested him; California was another America, hopelessly separated from us by an impassable range of forbidding mountains, reinforced with desert plains, peopled only by hostile savages. But the sea was an open highway to this land of enchantment. California called! And finally Henry George overcame temptation by succumbing to it, and sailed away southward in the staunch little ship "Shubrick," bound for the modern Eldorado by way of Cape Horn. It was a six months' passage, with many stops and much trading, and time that seem lifted out of the calendar and thrown away. Henry George arrived in California penniless. But he had health and a willingness to work. He became a farmhand, a tramp pedler, a laborer shoveling gravel into a sluice-way and standing all day knee-deep in water. It was all good, for it taught the youth that life was life; and wherever you go you carry your mental and spiritual assets, as well as your cares, on the crupper. Then there came a job in the composing-room of a newspaper, and the life-work of Henry George was really begun, for his employers had discovered that he could "rastle the dic.," and if copy were scarce he could create it.

* * * * *

The gold-fever got into the blood of Henry George, and his savings became a shining mark for the mining-shark. A thousand men lose money at mining where one strikes pay-gravel. Henry George was one of the thousand.

He got good wages and boarded at the best hotel in San Francisco, the "What Cheer House." This storied hostelry was owned by a man named Woodward, who had a few ideas of his own. Woodward not only hated Rum, Romanism and Rebellion, but also women. Woodward was a confirmed bachelor, having been confirmed by a lady bachelor in some dark, mysterious way, years before. So no woman was allowed either to stop at the hotel or to work in it. The labor was done by Chinese, and Henry George wrote home to his sisters, describing the place as an immaculate conception.

Next to the fact that no women were allowed in the "What Cheer House," was the further more astounding proposition that the place was run on absolutely temperance principles, thus, for the time at least, silencing that hoary adage of the genus wiseacre that no hotel can succeed without a bar. Woodward became rich, and from the proceeds of his temperance hotel founded Woodward Gardens—a park beloved by all who know their San Francisco.

The third peculiar thing about this hotel was that it had a library of a thousand volumes.

It was the only public library in San Francisco at that time, and it was the books that led Henry George to spend twice as much for board as he otherwise would have done.

While Henry George was at the "What Cheer House," an English traveler added a volume to the little library, Buckle's "History of Civilization." Woodward tried to read the book, but failing to become interested in it, between serving the soup and the fish, handed it to a waiter saying, "Here, give it to that red-headed printer; he can get something out of it if anybody can." Henry George took the book to his room, and that night sat reading it until two o'clock in the morning. That statement of Buckle's, "Adam Smith's 'Wealth of Nations' has influenced civilization more profoundly than any other book ever written, save none," caught the young printer's attention.

The next day he looked in the library for the "Wealth of Nations," and sure enough, it was there! He began to read. He read and reread. And whether Buckle's statement is correct or not, this holds: Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations" influenced Henry George more profoundly than any other book he had ever read.

Henry George was not yet immune from the gold-fever microbe, and several times was lured away into the mountains, "grubstaking" a man with hope plus and secrets as to gold-bearing quartz that would paralyze the world.

When twenty-one we find our young man one of six printers who bought out the "Evening Journal." Henry George was foreman of the composing- room, but took a hand anywhere and everywhere. A curious comment on the business acumen of the "Journal" men lies in their agreement that all should have an equal voice in the policy of the paper. Hence we infer that all were equally ignorant of the stern fact that in business nothing succeeds but one-man power. So the "Journal" went drifting on the rocks in financial foggy weather and the hungry waves devoured her.

When Fate desires a great success she sends her chosen one failure. Henry George at twenty-two was ragged, in debt—and also in love. The "What Cheer House" was all right for a man getting good wages, but when you go into business for yourself it is different, and George found board with a private family.

The lady in the case was Miss Fox, ward and niece of the landlord with whom the impecunious printer boarded.

Annie Fox and our printer read Dana's "Household Book of Poetry," with heads close together.

The inevitable happened—they decided to pool their poverty in the interests of progress. To ask the landlord for his blessing seemed out of the question, in view of the fact that the printer was two weeks behind in his board. The girl had the proverbial clothes on her back.

Matthew McClosky, the uncle, was a good deal of a man. He showed his shrewdness and appreciation of the present order by buying a large tract of land near the city, and grew rich on the unearned increment. Had his niece and the printer confided in him they might have shared in his prosperity, in which case "Progress and Poverty" would never have been written.

It was the memorable year of Eighteen Hundred Sixty-one. The heart of Henry George was with the Union—he had decided to enlist. He told the girl so behind the kitchen-door. Her answer was a flood of tears, and a call to arms. The result was that the next night the couple stole out, and made their way to a Methodist parsonage, where they were married.

Henry George was nominally a member of the Methodist Church, but the creed of Thomas Paine was more to his liking—"The world is my country; mankind are my friends; to do good is my religion." The young lady was a Catholic, and so the preacher compromised by reading the Episcopal service. The only witnesses were the minister's wife and Henry George's chum, Isaac Trump. "I didn't catch your friend's name," said the minister in filling out the marriage-certificate.

"I. Trump," was the reply.

"I observe you do," was the answer; "but oblige me with the gentleman's name."

There are three great epochs in life—birth, death, marriage. The first two named you can not avoid. Since life is a sequence, no one can say what would have happened had not this or that occurred. Mrs. George proved an honest, earnest, helpful wife. Her conservatism curbed the restless spirit of her husband and gave his mind time to ripen, for until his marriage the ideals of the French Revolution were strong in his heart. He saw the evils of life and was intent on changing them. The Catholic faith is an elastic one, both esoteric and exoteric, and those who are able can take the poetic view of dogma instead of the literal, if they prefer. Henry George and his wife took the spiritual or symbolic view, and moved steadily forward in the middle of the road. He was too gentle and considerate to quote Voltaire and Rousseau at inopportune times, and she sustained and encouraged his mental independence. All of which is here voiced with one foot on the soft pedal, and with no thought of putting forth an argument to the effect that young gentlemen with liberal views should marry ladies who belong to the Catholic persuasion.

The day after his marriage the bridegroom found work in a printery at twelve dollars a week, and thus was the pivotal point safely rounded.

* * * * *

Here was a man absolutely honest, with no bad habits, industrious and economical, but lacking in that peculiar something which spells success. The type is not rare. One trouble was that our Henry George stuck to no one place long enough to make himself a necessity. Men of half his ability made twice as much money.

The days went by, and Henry George wrote to Trump, "I am advance-agent for the stork." Now storks bring love and hope—and care, and anxious days and sleepless nights. Henry George's domestic affairs had steadied his bark, and while his relatives in Philadelphia thought he carried an excess of Romish ballast, it was all for the best. He read, studied, thought, and wanting little his mind did not list either to port or to starboard.

Henry George had graduated from the case into the editorial room. He worked on all the newspapers, by turn, in San Francisco and Sacramento, and had come to be regarded as one of the strongest editorial writers on the Coast. The business office was beyond his province, and as a newspaper was a business venture, and is run neither to educate the public nor for the proprietor's health, the manager did not look upon Henry George as exactly "safe." And hence the reason is plain why George was regarded as a sectional bookcase and not as a fixture.

At thirty he had evolved to a point where the New York "Tribune" asked him to write a signed editorial for them on the Chinese question. Then he wrote for the "Overland Monthly"; and when a great literary light came to San Francisco to appear on the lyceum stage, Henry George was asked to introduce him to the audience, especially if the man was believed to have heresy secreted on his person, in which case of course the local clergy took no risks of contamination, not being immune.

On the occasion of the death of a certain tramp printer, whose name is now lost to us in the hell-box of time, no clergyman being found to perform the service, Henry George officiated, and preached a sermon which rang through the city like a trumpet-call, extolling not what the man was, but what he might have been.

This custom of the laity taking charge of funerals still exists in the West, to a degree not known, say, in New England, where in certain localities people are not considered legally dead unless both an orthodox doctor and an orthodox preacher officiate.

The very poor, and the outcasts of society, in San Francisco began to look upon Henry George as the Bishop of Outsiders. Often he was called upon to go and visit the stricken, the sick and the dying. And there was a kind of poetic fitness in all this, for the man possessed that superior type of moral and intellectual fiber which makes a great physician or an excellent priest—he could "minister." And it was only division of labor that separated the offices of doctor and priest, and actually they are and should be one.

In Sacramento now lives a successful merchant, a Jew by birth, and a man of great grace of spirit, who has this superior, spiritual quality which makes his services sought after, and in response to demand he goes all over the State saying the last words over the dust of those who in their lives had lost faith in the established order, or had too much faith in God.

After his thirty-sixth year Henry George slipped by natural process into this semi-religious order—a priest after the order of Melchizedek. He was spokesman for those who had no social standing, a voice for the voiceless, a friend to the friendless, even those who were not friends to themselves.

But at thirty-seven he was up on the mountain-side where he saw to a distance that very few men could. He felt his own dignity and knew his worth. The president of the University of California, recognizing his ability as a thinker and speaker, asked him to give a course of lectures on economics.

He gave one—this was all they could digest.

California colleges have had a lot of trouble with economics—it has been a theme more fraught for them with danger than theology. How Californians make their money and how they spend it is a topic which in handling requires great subtlety of intellect, a fine delicacy of expression and much diplomacy, otherwise twenty-three petards!

Here is a passage from Henry George's lecture before the University of
California:

For the study of political economy you need no special knowledge, no extensive library, no costly laboratory. You do not even need textbooks or teachers if you will but think for yourselves. All that you need is care in reducing complex phenomena to their elements, in distinguishing the essential from the accidental, and in applying the simple laws of human action with which you are familiar. Take nobody's opinion for granted; "try all things; hold fast to that which is good." In this way, the opinions of others will help you by their suggestions, elucidations and corrections; otherwise they will be to you as words to a parrot.

All this array of professors, all this paraphernalia of learning, can not educate a man. They can but help him educate himself. Here you may obtain the tools; but they will be useful to him only who can use them. A monkey with a microscope, a mule packing a library, are fit emblems of the men—and unfortunately, they are plenty—who pass through the whole educational machinery, and come out but learned fools, crammed with knowledge which they can not use—all the more pitiable, all the more contemptible, all the more in the way of real progress, because they pass, with themselves and others, as educated men.

California is a land of extremes—everything grows big and fast, especially ideas. No country ever saw such wealth and such poverty side by side. The mansions on Nob Hill were so grand that their magnificence discouraged the owners and abashed visitors; at receptions, a keg of beer on a sawbuck in the kitchen and champagne in a washtub, with ham sandwiches in a bushel basket, were all that could be assimilated. And yet past the high iron gates of these palaces prowled want—gaunt, hungry and menacing.

Land was never so cheap nor so dear as it has been in California. We gave a railroad-company twenty-five thousand acres of land for every mile of track it built, and for years a dollar an acre was the ruling price at which you could buy to your limit. And yet there were at the same time little half-acres for which men pushed a hundred thousand dollars in gold-dust over the counter and then crowed about their bargain.

Henry George studied economics at first hand. The dignified frappe which he received in way of honorarium for his university lecture had its advantages. People in San Francisco wanted to hear what the editor had to say as well as to read his utterances. He was invited to give the Fourth of July oration at the Grand Opera House—a very great compliment.

Henry George was a reformer, and reformers have but one theme, and that theme is Liberty. We grow by expression. There is no doubt that the university lecture and the Fourth of July oration added cubits to the stature of Henry George. In these two addresses we find the kernel of his philosophy—a kernel that was to germinate into a mighty tree which would extend its welcoming shade to travelers for many a decade yet to come.

* * * * *

Like every other great book (or great man), "Progress and Poverty" was an accident—a providential accident. The book was ten years in the incubation. It began with a newspaper editorial in Eighteen Hundred Sixty-nine, and found form in a volume of five hundred pages in Eighteen Hundred Seventy-nine.

The editorial merely called attention to the fact that California, in spite of her vast wealth, was peopled, for the most part, with people desperately poor; and that ground in the vicinity of any city, town or place of enterprise was held at so exorbitant a figure that the poor were actually enslaved by the men who owned the land. That is to say, the men who owned the land controlled the people who had to live on it, for man is a land animal, and can not live apart from land, any more than fishes can live at a distance from water. And moreover we tax for the improvements on land, thus really placing a penalty on enterprise.

The article attracted attention, and opened the eyes of one man at least—and that was the man who wrote it. He had written better than he knew; and any writer who does not occasionally surprise himself does not write well.

Henry George had surprised himself, and he wrote another editorial to explain the first. These editorials extended themselves into a series, and hand-polished and sandpapered, were reprinted in pamphlet form in Eighteen Hundred Seventy-one, under the title of "Our Land Policy." The temerity which prompted the printing of this pamphlet was evolved through a letter from John Stuart Mill. Henry George knew he was right in his conclusions, but he felt that he needed the corroboration of a great mind that had grappled with abstruse problems; so he sent one of his editorials to Mill, the greatest living intellect of his time.

Mill showed his interest by replying in a long letter, wherein he addressed George as a man with a mind equal to his own, not as a sophomore trying his wings.

The letter from Mill was to him a white milepost. The corroboration gave him courage, confidence, poise.

The thousand copies of the pamphlet cost Henry George seventy-five dollars. The retail price was twenty-five cents each. Twenty-one copies were sold. The rest were given away to good people who promised to read them. Pamphlets are for the pamphleteer, but let the fact here be recorded that new ideas have always been issued at the author's expense—and also risk. Martin Luther, Dean Swift, John Milton, Paine, Voltaire, Sam Adams were all pamphleteers. The early Colonial "broadsides" were pamphlets issued by men with thoughts plus, and all of the men just named fired inky volleys which proved to be shots heard 'round the world.

As the years passed, Henry George was gathering gear; he was getting an education. Providence was preparing him for his work. All he expressed by tongue or pen had land, labor, production and distribution in mind. He was getting acquainted with every phase of the subject—anticipating the objections, meeting the objectors, opening up side-paths.

And so, in Eighteen Hundred Seventy-eight, when he sat down to write a magazine article on "Our Government Land Policy," the air was full of reasons. Soon the article stretched itself beyond magazine length, and in order to cover the theme he set down headings:

1 Wages 2 Capital 3 Division of Labor 4 Population 5 Subsistence 6 Rent 7 Interest 8 The Remedy for Unequal Distribution

He wrote all one night—wrote in a fever. The next day his pulse got back to normal, and on talking the matter over with his wife he decided to begin it all over and work his philosophy up into a book, writing as he could, only one or two hours a day.

He was absolutely without capital, dependent on his income from space- writing in the daily newspapers, but he began and the work grew.

It was all done on "stolen time," to use the phrase of Macaulay, and therefore vital, for things done because you have to do them—done to get rid of them—contain the red corpuscle.

On March Twenty-second, Eighteen Hundred Seventy-nine, the precious bundle of manuscript was shipped to D. Appleton and Company, New York, with instructions that if the work was not accepted, to hold subject to the author's order.

In six weeks came a letter from the Appletons, gracious, complimentary, "but"—in fact, no work on political economy had ever sold sufficiently either to make money for the author or to pay the bare cost of the book to the publisher.

Here was a dampener, and if Henry George had been a trifle more astute in the laws of literary supply and demand, he could and would have anticipated the result, even in spite of the natural prejudice which an author always feels for the offspring of his brain.

A letter was now sent Thomas George, the author's brother, in Philadelphia, requesting him to go over to New York and find a market for the wares.

Thomas had the work passed on by the Harpers, by Scribner, and all "much regretted."

The next thing was to interest Professor Swinton and several New York friends, and have them go in a body and storm the castle of Barabbas. The committee called on D. Appleton and Company, and again laid the case before them.

Finally the publishers agreed that if the author would advance money for the electrotype-plates, they would undertake the publication.

But alas, the author was in the proverbial author's condition. On the offer being laid before Henry George by mail, he replied that he could make the electrotype-plates himself. He was a typesetter and he had friends who would give him the use of their printing-outfits. The offer was satisfactory to the Appletons, provided Professor Swinton would agree to take on his own account a hundred copies of the work on suspicion.

The Professor agreed. And the manuscript was sent back to San
Francisco, a trifle dog-eared and the worse for five months' wear.

The author began his typesetting with the same diligence that he had brought to bear in the writing. This was stolen time, too. He worked an hour in the morning and two hours at night. Other printers offered to help, and a genial, bum electrotyper, damnably cheerful, offered to come in and lend a hand, provided Henry George would agree to give a funeral oration over the derelict one's grave at the proper time. Henry George gleefully agreed.

So the work of making the electrotype-plates moved on apace. In the meantime some of Henry George's political friends had interviewed the Governor and Henry George was made inspector of gas-meters, at fifteen hundred dollars a year.

It was four months' work to make the plates, but early in the year Eighteen Hundred Eighty they were shipped to New York, a few proofs of the book being taken, stitched up and sent out for review.

So far as we know, there was no one in California able to read the book and intelligently review it. Leastwise they never did.

The Appletons, however, gradually awoke to the fact that they had a prize, and they made efforts to get the work into right reviewing hands. Better still, they began to inquire about what manner of man Henry George was.

Next they wrote to the author suggesting that, if he would come to New York and personally present his views, it would help in the sale of the books.

Fortunately Henry George was not hampered by the ownership of real estate, nor an excess of personal property, so he hastily packed up, transportation having been secured by John Russell Young, a capitalist who had faith in his genius from the first.

Henry George arrived in New York penniless, but Professor Swinton, E.
L. Youmans (that excellent blind man of great insight), John Russell
Young and the Appletons gave him a rich reception.

The tide had turned.

* * * * *

Henry George received all the recognition that any thinker and writer could desire, from August, Eighteen Hundred Eighty, to the day of his death, October Twenty-eighth, Eighteen Hundred Ninety-seven. Men might not agree with him in his conclusions, but few indeed dare meet him in a duel of argument, either by pen or upon the public platform.

He spoke in churches, halls and private parlors. His newspaper and magazine articles commanded a price. He met the greatest minds of America and of Europe on an equal footing.

In England his book was having a sale far beyond what it had met with at home.

And when he spoke in London and the chief cities of Great Britain, the halls were packed to suffocation. He appealed to the Messianic instinct of English workingmen, and they hailed him as the coming man —their deliverer. They stripped doors from their hinges and carried him aloft upon the improvised platform. They unhitched the horses from his carriage and drew him through the streets in triumphal state. This all meant little—it was only campaign exuberance—the glare and flare of smoky kerosene-torches, and the blare of brass.

Henry George was right in the same class with Spencer, Huxley, Tyndall and John Stuart Mills, none of whom, happily, was a college man, and therefore all were free from the handicap of dead learning and ossified opinion, and saw things as if they were new. Ignorance is a very necessary equipment in doing a great and sublime work that is to eclipse anything heretofore performed.

The mind of Henry George was a flower of slow growth. At thirty-seven he was just reaching mental manhood. According to all reasonable tables of expectancy, he should have rivaled Humboldt and been in his prime at eighty. His brain was the brain of Ricardo; but instead of sticking to his boos, he got caught in the swirl of politics, and was matched up with the cheap, the selfish, the grasping. The people who snatched Henry George out of his proper sphere as a thinker, writer and lecturer, and flung him into the turmoil of practical politics, were of exactly the class who would, if they could, have a little later ridden him on a rail.

It was all a little like that speech of a man in Indianapolis who nominated James Whitcomb Riley for the Presidency of the United States. The mob diluted the thought of Henry George and trod his proud and honest heart into the mire.

Had he been elected mayor of New York, he could have done little or nothing for reform, for a mayor has only the power delegated to him by the ward boss and the genus heeler. Beyond this he can merely apply the emergency-brake by the use of the veto.

Henry George was a racehorse hitched by spoilsmen to an overloaded jaunting-car with a drunken driver, bound for Donnybrook Fair.

And soon men said he was dead.

* * * * *

The logic of Henry George's book and its literary style are so insistent that it has been studied closely by economists of note in every country on the globe. Its argument has never been answered, and those who have sought to combat it have rested their case on the assertion that Henry George was a theorist and a dreamer, and so far as practical affairs were concerned was a failure. With equal logic we might brand the Christian religion as a failure because its founder was not a personal success, either in his social status or as a political leader.

Gradually the thinking men of the world, the statesmen and the doers, are beholding the fact that mankind is an organism, and that a country is only as rich as its poorest citizen; that an athlete with Bright's disease is not worth as much to humanity as a small, lively and healthy boy of ten with cheek of tan and freckles to spare. Health comes from right living, and living without useful effort is only existence.

People living on the pavement or in sky-scrapers soon degenerate.

Man can not thrive apart from land. Abject poverty is found only in great cities, where population is huddled like worms in a knot.

The highest average of intelligence, happiness and prosperity is found in villages, where each family owns its home, and the renter is the rare exception.

The word "renter" we used Out West as a term of contempt. The ownership of an acre of land gives a sense of security which religion can not bestow. God's acre, with vegetables, fruits, flowers, a cow and poultry, places a family beyond the reach of famine, even if not of avarice. Moreover, this single acre means sound sleep, good digestion and resultant good thoughts, all from digging in the dirt and mixing with the elements. "All wealth comes from the soil," says Adam Smith, and he might have added, man himself comes from the soil and is brother to the trees and the flowers. Men can no more live apart from land than can the grass. The ownership of a very small plot of ground steadies life, lends ballast to existence, and is a bond given to society for good behavior.

"I am no longer an anarchist—I have bought a lot and am building a house," a Russian refugee advised his restless colleagues at home, when they wrote, asking him for quotations on dynamite.

It is obvious and easy to say that the people who make city slums possible do not want to own houses and would not live upon land and improve it, if they could.

The worst about this statement is that it is true. They are so sunken in fear, superstition and indifference that they lack the squirrel's thrift in providing a home and laying in a stock of provisions; they are even without the ground-hog's ambition to burrow. They are too sodden to know what they are missing, and are lacking in the imagination which pictures a better condition.

They are like those pigmy bondsmen who work in the cotton-mills of the South—yellow, gaunt, too dead to weep, too hopeless to laugh, too pained to feel.

From these creatures and creators of slums it is absurd to talk of gratitude for the offer of betterment. People who expect gratitude do not deserve it. Neither can the slumsters by force be placed on land and be expected to till it. A generation, at least, will be required to work a change, and this change will come through educating the children—through the kindergarten and the kindergarten methods—and most of all through school-gardens. The so-called "back districts" are fast being annihilated, for quick transportation is bringing city and country close together. The time is coming, and shortly, too, when a fare of one cent a mile will be the universal rule, and a mile a minute will not be regarded as an unusual speed.

Now here is something which Henry George did not say, and if he knew was too diplomatic to mention: The reason the people have not had possession of the land is because they did not want it. The ownership of the land you need to use comes in answer to prayer—and prayer is the soul's desire, uttered or unexpressed. The will of the people is supreme. If fraud and rascality exist in high places, it is because we elect rascals to office.

The will of the people is supreme. When we cease toadying to brainless nabobs, and quit imitating them as soon as we get the money, we will be on the road to reformation. As it is, most poor people are just itching to live as the rich do. The average servant-girl who gets married quits work then and there, and is quite content to live the rest of her life as a slave, asking her husband for a quarter at a time and cajoling the money out of him by hook or crook, or else explorating his trousers for free coinage when opportunity offers. Fresh air is free, but the average individual does not know it; and neither would this same person use land if it were given him. Freedom is a condition of mind.

Yet apart from the "submerged tenth" is a very large class of people to whom land and a home would be a positive paradise, and who are simply forced into flats and tenements on account of present economic conditions: the land is monopolized, and held by men who neither improve it themselves nor will they allow others to. Then hold it awaiting a rise in value.

This increase in value is not on account of anything the owner may do —in fact, he is usually an absentee and does nothing. The increase comes from the enterprise and thrift of people for whom the owner has no interest, beyond contempt.

If these enterprising people who do the work of the world—making the things the world needs—want more land for their business or for homes, they have to pay the absentee for the increased value which they themselves have brought about. When you beautify and enrich the value of your own lot by improving it, you are making it impossible to buy the vacant lot next to you without bankruptcy.

Moreover, you are taxed by the State for any improvement you make on your land, and this taxation on improvements must of necessity tend toward discouragement of improvement. It is really a surer way to make money, to hang on to land and do nothing, than to improve it.

The remedy proposed by Henry George is simply the Single Tax, and this tax to be on land values and not on improvements.

That is to say, with the Single Tax, the man who owns the vacant lot covered with briars and brambles would pay the same tax that you pay on your lot next door upon which you have built a house, barn and conservatory and planted trees and flowers.

The immediate tendency of this policy would be to cause the gentleman who owned the vacant lot devoted to cockleburs to put up on it a sign, "For Sale Cheap."

Even the opponents of the Single Tax agree that its inauguration would at once throw on the market a vast acreage of unimproved land, and that is just the one reason why they oppose it. All those thousands of acres held by estates, trustees and idle heirs, in the vicinity of Boston, Philadelphia and up the Hudson, would be for sale.

The single tax would give the land back to the people, or at least make it possible for people who want it to get what they could use. Those who have the desire to improve land, and improve themselves by improving it, would no longer be blocked.

The fresh blood of the country which makes the enterprise of cities possible comes from the boys and the girls who warmed their feet on October mornings where the cows lay down; who have been brought up to work on land, to plant and hoe and harvest and look after livestock. This is all education, and very necessary education. "A sand-pile and dirt in which to dig is the divine right of every child," says Judge Lindsey.

And if it is the divine right of a child to dig in the dirt, why isn't it the divine right of the grown-up? It is, and would be so recognized were it not for the fact that we have been obsessed by a fallacy called "the divine right of property." This idea has come down to us from the Reign of the Barons, when a dozen men owned all of England, and plain and unlettered people could not legally own a foot of land. All paid tribute to the Barons, who were actually and literally robbers.

We will grant of course that what a man produces and creates is his, but the land to which he may be legal heir and which probably he has never seen, and which certainly he does not use or improve, is his only through a legal fiction. When the matter of legal fiction was explained to Colonel Bumble and he was told that legally a husband knew the whereabouts of his wife, because the law regarded a man and wife as one, Colonel Bumble replied with acerbity, "The law is a hass."

Comparatively few people have the courage of Colonel Bumble, so they do not express themselves; but the commonsense of the world is now coming to believe that the law was made for man, and not man for the law.

The only people who oppose the single tax are the holders of land who are hanging on to it expecting to grow rich through inertia.

The problem of civilization is to eliminate the parasite. The idle person is no better than a dead one and takes up more room. The man who lives on the labor of others is a menace to himself and to society.

The taxes necessary to support the government should be paid by those who have the funds wherewith to be idle; no longer should the chief burden fall on the home-maker.

Tax the land, and the man who owns it will have to make it productive by labor, or else get out and allow some one else to have a chance.

Do not drive the landlords out—tax them out.

Let the land gravitate to the people who have the disposition and the ability to improve it—and that is just what the Single Tax will do. So this, then, is the philosophy of Henry George.

GARIBALDI

  Priests look backward, not forward. They think that there were once
  men better and wiser than those who now live, therefore priests
  distrust the living and insist that we shall be governed by the dead.
  I believe this is an error, and hence I set myself against the Church
  and insist that men shall have the right to work out their lives in
  their own way, always allowing to others the right to work out their
  lives in their own way, too.
  —Garibaldi

[Illustration: Garibaldi]

The writer who tells the simple facts in the life of Garibaldi lays himself open to the charge of evolving melodrama, wild and riotous.

Garibaldi's personal friends and admirers always referred to him in such words as these: patriot, savior, father-noble, generous, pure- hearted, unselfish, devoted, philanthropic.

They transferred the infallibility of Pope Pius the Ninth to his enemy, Garibaldi.

The Pope was not much given to rhetorical lyddite, so when the name of Garibaldi was mentioned he simply stopped his ears and hissed. He acknowledged that in all the bright lexicon of words there was not a symbol strong enough to express his contempt for Joseph Garibaldi.

The actual fact was that Pio Nono, for whom Garibaldi named his favorite donkey, had very much in common with Garibaldi. Had they met as strangers on sea or plain, they would have delighted in each other's society. They were both kind, courteous, considerate, highly intelligent men. They were lovers of their kind.

Garibaldi's passion was to benefit men by giving them freedom. The
Pope's prayer was to benefit men by giving them religion.

But freedom without responsibility leads to license, and license unrestrained means slavery, and religion not safeguarded by freedom is superstition; and what is superstition but slavery?

Before Garibaldi was twenty he began to read Mazzini, whom Margaret
Fuller called the Emerson of Italy—and Margaret Fuller knew both
Emerson and Mazzini intimately and well. She lived for one and died
for the other.

Mazzini, the delicate, the esthetic, the spiritual, the subtle, was a candle whose beams burned bright for all Italy. His dream of a free and united Italy caught Garibaldi, the rugged, daring son of the sea, and fired his heart. Mazzini was a thinker; Garibaldi a fighter.

Italy had twice been queen of the world: first, when Julius Caesar ushered in an age of light; and second, when Columbus, child of Genoa, the same city that mothered Mazzini, sailed the seas. The first Italian Renaissance we call the Age of Augustus; the second, the Age of Michelangelo.

The third great tidal wave of reason, Garibaldi said, would live as the Age of Mazzini.

But there be those in Italy now, wise and influential, who call it the
Age of Garibaldi.

Without Mazzini, there would have been no Garibaldi. Italy would today probably be where she was when these young men conceived their patriotic dream: the Pope supreme temporal ruler of Rome, and the rest of Italy divided up into a dozen cringing provinces, each presided over by a princeling, who, on favor of some patron, Austria, Germany or France, the favor duly viseed by the Pope, was allowed to call himself king. The final authority of the Pope was undisputed in things both temporal and spiritual, and he who questioned or expressed his doubts was guilty of two crimes: heresy and treason, the two artificial papier-mache offenses which made the Dark Ages very dark.

The hope of Mazzini was to make Italy a republic. But the time was not yet ripe. They ousted the Pope, but Fate compromised with Destiny, and Victor Emmanuel, a republican monarchist from Sicily, was made king in name, but with a safety-brake in way of a ministry that could annul his edicts.

And so Mazzini and Garibaldi, each individually a failure, won— although success came not in the way they expected, nor was it their heart's desire.

That bold and magnificent equestrian statue of Garibaldi crowns the heights of Rome, looking down upon the Eternal City; the dust of Mazzini rests in a village churchyard; but both live in the hearts of humanity as men who gave their lives to make men free.

* * * * *

Garibaldi was born in the city of Nice in Eighteen Hundred Seven, being one of the advance-guard of a brigade of genius, for great men come in groups. His parents were poor, and being well under the heel of the priest, were only fairly honest. The father was a waterman who plied the Riviera in a leaky schooner—poling, rowing, or sailing, as Providence provided. Once the good man was returning home after a cruise where ill luck was at the helm. The priest had blessed him when he started, and would be on hand when he came back to receive his share of the loot, for business was then, and is yet, in Italy, a kind of legalized freebooting. Then it was that the honest fisherman lapsed and lifted the nets of another between the dawn and the day.

The son, then only twelve years of age, scorned the act and declared he would steal a ship or nothing. The boy was duly punished in the interests of piety and also to relieve the pent-up emotions of the parents.

The heroic spirit of Garibaldi was not a legacy from either his father or his mother. However, they dowered him with health and great bodily strength, and this physical superiority had much, no doubt, to do in shaping his life's course.

Men fall victims to their facility. Musicians, for instance, often become intoxicated by their own sweet sounds, and are lured on to unseemliness, making much discord in life's symphony.

The late-lamented Brann had a felicity and a facility in the use of words that finally cost him his life. Men with pistol facility and word felicity die by the pistol. The brain of the prizefighter does not convolve: he relies more on his "jabs" than on thoughts that burn —and those who live by the hammer die by the hammer.

There is no doubt that Garibaldi's romantic career in a lifelong fight for freedom was born of a liking for the fray, to express it bluntly, with freedom as a convenient excuse. This sounds unkind, but it is not. Garibaldi loved peace so much that he was willing to fight for it any day.

While yet a youth he became captain of his father's craft, and
Garibaldi Senior took the wheel and obeyed orders.

Then we hear that Garibaldi was an expert swimmer, a rather unusual accomplishment for a sailor. He was always on the lookout for an opportunity to dive overboard, disrobing in the air, and rescuing the perishing. There is even a legend of his having saved a washer-woman from drowning when he was but eight years old. A captious critic has remarked that probably the old lady fell into her washtub. Thereupon, a kinsman of the great man comes forward to give the facts, which are that the woman was doing laundry-work by the riverside, and stooping over, fell into the damp and was rescued by the boy. But it also seems on the word of Garibaldi himself that the woman would not have fallen in had not the boy suddenly appeared behind her playing bear, thus bringing about the catastrophe which he averted.

When Garibaldi was twenty-one he was in command of a small schooner bound for the Black Sea on a trading expedition. The intent of the expedition was twofold: to sell the merchandise which the ship carried, and also if possible to capture certain bands of pirates that were infesting the dank, dark waters. It is perhaps quite needless to say that pirates are often men who are engaged in the laudable undertaking of protecting the shipping from pirates, just as admission to the bar is a sort of commercial letter of marque and reprisal.

That Garibaldi was a pirate, only his enemies said. But anyway, Garibaldi and a band of twenty boys, all younger than himself, sailed away to victory or to death.

It proved to be neither; for they were captured by pirates, who took their arms, provisions, merchandise, and even their compasses and clothing, leaving only their ship and the sky overhead and the water beneath.

Garibaldi took the capture as coolly as did Caesar under similar conditions, and talked poetry and philosophy with the pirates, and the gentlemen gave back a few provisions, with apologies and regrets for having troubled so fine a gentleman.

The next day, our friends, innocent of clothing, fell in with an English ship that ministered to their wants. Captain Taylor of the English ship was so impressed with the young captain that he wrote home about him, describing his courtesy, intelligence, and poetic fervor, all made manifest as Garibaldi stood on the deck of his schooner clad only in a doormat.

At this time Garibaldi had read the history of his country; in imagination he saw the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome. And better still, he had figured out in his own mind why sleep and death, and moth and dust, and rust and ruin had settled down upon the race, and mankind had endured a thousand years of theological nightmare.

He knew that save in freedom alone does the intellect flower and blossom; that joy is the legal tender of the soul; that only through liberty can men progress and grow; and that great and beautiful work can be done only by a free and happy people.

The torch that fired his intellect was Mazzini, who was publishing a little periodical of protest that voiced what its editor felt, who wrote right out of his heart, and whose cry was, "Freedom and United Italy—an Italy free from the rule of the Pope."

Mazzini, the son of a doctor, expressed what many thought and felt, but dare not say. He had stated in no mincing phrase that the rule of the priest meant mental subjugation and a gradual, creeping, insidious return of the Dark Ages. He printed it on slips of paper and passed them out upon the street when but a youth in the High School.

Thereupon, Mazzini had been duly cautioned, and on repeating his offense his little folder of ideas was suppressed, and the precious fonts and presses thrown into the sea with the street-sweepings of the town.

The next month Mazzini's magazine appeared just the same, printed by night at the office of a friend, and then its author was safely placed behind prison-bars. The authorities dare not kill him—besides, what is the use?—but they proposed to teach him a wholesome lesson and break his fiery spirit if possible, this being the policy that had continued from the time of Socrates. To hold truth secure by putting down the man of initiation—the man of insight who could see a better condition—all who were filled with a discontent that challenged the perfection of the present order—this to the many meant safety; the men in power simply taking their cue from the rabble—"Away with him!"

And Garibaldi hearing of the trouble that had come to Mazzini, whom he admired but had not yet met, hastened home and threw himself into the cause. He got together a little band of foolish youths, and planned a revolution.

He enlisted as a sailor on board the "Eurydice," a government craft, intending to revolt, steal the ship and go to the rescue of Mazzini. But about this time Mazzini was released with a warning, it being thought that a dreamy, penniless lawyer's clerk could not make much trouble anyway.

Mazzini and Garibaldi were totally different in their methods and habits of thought. Garibaldi reverenced Mazzini and called him master, and Mazzini admired the daring of Garibaldi, and no doubt was influenced and encouraged by him to continue sending out his little leaflets of liberty, which were secretly printed and circulated, read and reread, and passed along. Examined by us now, they seem innocent indeed, as harmless as pages lifted from Emerson's essay on "Nature," but actually they were the dynamite that was to rend the rocks of Italy's Gibraltar of orthodoxy.

Matters were now culminating fast. Mazzini and Garibaldi were organizing secret bands of "Young Italy." The arrangement was to secure and hold a certain point on the Swiss frontier as headquarters, and from there make open war upon Austria and the Pope. Like John Brown, these zealous revolutionaries felt sure that, at the call to arms, the subjugated provinces would cast off their shackles and join hands with the liberators. They did not realize that slavery is a condition of mind, and that as a class slaves are quite happy in their serfdom, being as unaware of their true condition as are those caught in the coils of superstition. No one sees the coils but the free man on the outside. The beauty of freedom's fight is that it frees the fighter.

The secret societies known as "Young Italy" failed in their secrecy. No secrets can be kept except for a day. Spies were duly initiated, and the report of the daily doings was handed in to the Pope and his council. To capture Garibaldi and Mazzini and hang them would have been easy; but to do this might bring about the very storm so much feared. So the word was passed that the conspirators were to be arrested; a price was placed upon their heads, and an opportunity was given them to escape.

Mazzini traveled leisurely through France, which offered him safe passage to London. Garibaldi remained on the border, and with a little band engaged in joyous guerrilla warfare, hoping for a general revolt. The time was not yet ripe, and nothing he could then do would gather up the scattered forces of freedom and crystallize them.

Fighting was then going on in South America—when are they not fighting in South America?—and Garibaldi thought he saw an opportunity to strike a blow for freedom, and so he sailed away for the equator, filled with a passion for freedom, desiring only to give himself for the benefit of humanity. Yet his heart was with "Young Italy," and that the time would come when he would return and break the fetters that the Pope had forged for the minds of men, he always knew and prophesied. Such was the firm purpose and unwavering faith of Joseph Garibaldi.

* * * * *

Arriving in South America, Garibaldi took time to investigate conditions. Then he offered his services to Don Gonzales, who had set up a republic on a side street, and was fighting the power of the Emperor of Brazil.

Don Gonzales was delighted with Garibaldi—Garibaldi won every one he desired to win. He had the rare quality which we call "personal charm."

Garibaldi was fitted out with a ship which he manned with sixteen of his countrymen—fighters of his own selection, men of his own intrepid spirit. This crew constituted the navy of the new republic, and Garibaldi was given the title, "Secretary of the Navy." He called his ship the "Mazzini," writing to the prophet and patriot in London for his blessing; but without waiting for it sailed away to victory. The first bout with the enemy secured them a prize in the way of a ship four times the size of their own, well provisioned and carrying one hundred men. Garibaldi at once scuttled his own craft, ran up his flag on board the prize, and calling all hands on deck solemnly christened her the "Mazzini," in loving token of the ship just sent to Davy Jones' locker. Then the question arose, What should be done with the prisoners?

Garibaldi gave them their choice of being sent ashore in safety, with a week's provisions and their side-arms, or re-enlisting under his own glorious banner. The men without parley, one and all cried, "We are yours to do with as you will!" Emerson says, "The work of eloquence is to change the opinions of a lifetime in twenty minutes." This being true, Garibaldi must have been eloquent, and eloquence is personality. The Corsican, in his Little Corporal's uniform, walked out before the legions sent to capture him, and before he had uttered a word, they cried, "Command us!" and threw down their arms.

The power of Garibaldi over men was superb. He won through the devotion of his soldiers. When he struck he hit quick and hard, and then he made his victory secure by magnanimity toward the defeated. It was his policy never to put prisoners in irons, or disgrace or humiliate them. He banished hate from their hearts by saying: "You are brave fighters! You are after my own heart. I need you!"

Julius Caesar had a deal of this same temperament, and if the sober, serious, spiritual and priestly quality of Mazzini could have been fused with the fighting spirit of Garibaldi we would have had the Julian soul once more with us. Possibly Rome is not yet dead, Shakespeare to the contrary notwithstanding.

* * * * *

Garibaldi and his gallant crew on board the "Mazzini" kept the enemy speculating. On one occasion when pursued, Garibaldi ran his ship up a narrow bay, one of the winding mouths of the Amazon. The two ships in pursuit were sure they had him in a trap and followed fast, intending to drive him so far inland that when the tide turned he would be held fast on the rocks, and then they could land a force, as they had five times as many men as he, and shoot his ship full of holes at their leisure from the shore. But Garibaldi was a sailor, and he had the true pilot's intuition for finding the channel. Suddenly, as the pursuing ships rounded a bend, from the height of a commanding precipice a deadly stream of shot and shell was poured down through the defenseless decks. And the gunners on the ships could not elevate their cannon to get the range. Garibaldi had taken his best cannon from his ship and masked this battery on shore. For two months he had worked to lure the enemy to their ruin. The scheme worked.

On shore he was equally fertile in resource, and his plan of getting his troops in the neighborhood of the enemy, and lighting long lines of campfires so as to mislead as to the number of his troops, was with him a common form of strategy. Then lo! as his campfires burned brightly, he would circle the foe and stampede them by simultaneous attacks on both flanks, making a mob of what twenty minutes before was an army.

He also had a way of retreating before the enemy, and at last making a seemingly stubborn resistance on some friendly ridge or hilltop. The enemy would then pause, re-form and charge. But a thousand yards before the hilltop would be reached, Garibaldi's men, secreted in sunken roadways or the dry beds of waterways, would rise like sprouting dragons' teeth and scatter their rain of death. His men wore bright red shirts so as to protect themselves from the danger of being shot by their own comrades. Later, the appearance of the red shirt struck terror to the foe. In Italy now, when you see a red-shirted brigade, do not imagine it is a volunteer fire-company out for a holiday—it is merely a company of militia called "The Garibaldians."

Garibaldi became a sort of superstition in South America. His appearance on land or sea, at seemingly the same time, his sudden sallies and miraculous disappearances, carried out the idea that he was the Devil incarnate. The armies sent to capture him came home with the report, "We would have killed or captured him, but alas, God ordained that he should not be found!"

Fighting along the shore with simply a few ships, by co-operating with the land forces, and having that scouted and maligned thing, "horse marines," at his quick command, he wore the enemy to a frazzle. His tactics were those of Quintus Fabius, who supplied us our word "Fabian"—opportunist. Fabius fought the combined hosts of Hannibal for ten years, as one to five, and was never captured and never defeated. When peace was declared he dictated his own terms, and was given royal honors when he rode through the streets of Rome at the head of his tattered troops, just as Christian DeWet, the valiant Boer, was tendered an ovation when he visited London, which he had first festooned with crape.

* * * * *

Garibaldi was operating in a horse country, a country, by the way, in physical features, not unlike that over which DeWet occasionally rode at the rate of one hundred miles from sunset to day-dawn. Garibaldi, although a sailor born, did not ride a horse with face toward the horse's tail, as sailormen are said to do in one of Kipling's merry tales. However, he might have done so, for he was a most daring rider, and in South America filled in the time with many excursions ashore, where he chose his companions from the ship by lot, there always being a great desire among the men to follow close to their beloved leader. He insisted that all of his men should be horsemen as well as soldiers, for no one could tell when they might have to abandon their ships and take to the land.

These wild, free excursions into the sparsely settled interior were not fraught with much danger, for the plainsmen were mostly with the republic, and Garibaldi took great pains to treat with the citizen's family. For instance, although cattle were plentiful and of little value, when he wanted fresh meat he always asked for it. The same with horses. "Treat citizens as friends, informing them that you come to protect, not to destroy," was his injunction.

One valuable possession Garibaldi secured in Brazil, however, was taken without legal permission. It seems Garibaldi on one of his journeys inland had halted with six of his band for dinner at the house of a planter and ranchman. The place was fair to look upon, the house situated in a clump of trees that lined the bank of a stream. Near at hand were orange-groves and great banks of azaleas in full bloom. On the hillside were grapes that grew in purple clusters, which made poor Garibaldi think of his far-off Italy, the home from which he was exiled, and to which return meant death.

Garibaldi reined into the yard and sat hatless on his horse, looking at this scene of peace, prosperity, and gentle, smiling beauty. A sense of loneliness swept over him. He thought of himself as a homeless outcast, without love, friendless, fighting an eternal fight for people whom he did not know, and very few of whom indeed knew him even by name.

A barking of the dogs brought several servants to the door. On seeing the red-shirted soldiers, their rifles across the pommels of their saddles, the servants hastily ran back and proceeded to bar the doors and windows. Garibaldi smiled wearily and was inwardly debating whether he would try to show the inmates of the house that he was a friend or ride away.

Just then the door opened and a woman came out on the veranda. She was a young woman, not over twenty—dark, slight, handsome and intelligent. She looked at Garibaldi, and her self-possession made the invincible fighter blush to the roots of his long yellow hair and tawny beard. She was not afraid. She walked down the steps, and in a pleasant voice said, "You are Garibaldi." And Garibaldi was on the point of denying it, for he had not heard a woman's voice in four months, and was all unnerved. His tongue refused to do its bidding, and he only bowed, and then tried to apologize for his intrusion.

"You are Garibaldi, and if you insist on remaining to dinner, I will prepare the meal for you—I can do nothing else."

She spoke in Spanish, and as Garibaldi replied, he was mindful that his Castilian was terribly broken. Then he spoke in Italian, and when she answered in very broken Latin, they both smiled. They were even. When he learned that her husband was not at home, he refused to enter the house, but sat on the veranda, and there the lady served him and his companions with her own fair hands, as the servants stood by and looked on perplexed. Garibaldi did not eat much—his appetite had vanished. He followed the frail and beautiful young woman furtively with his eyes as she moved back and forth heaping the plates of his hungry troopers. He thought she looked sad and preoccupied.

Garibaldi tried to speak, but his Spanish had suddenly taken wing. But when the lady entered the house and returned with one of Mazzini's little pamphlets on liberty, he started and then almost sobbed as he read the well-remembered words, "Do that which is right, and fear no man, for man was made to be free."

He saw that the pamphlet was one of the master's earliest productions, and how it should have preceded him four thousand miles he could only guess, and the lady's command of Italian was not sufficient to explain. But in his joy he held out his hand to her, and she responded to his grasp. There was an understanding. They were both lovers of liberty.

Garibaldi felt that he must not remain—he must hasten away ere he said or did something foolish. "You must not come back, my husband is a royalist," said the lady, "and he will be greatly displeased when he knows you have been here. But you were hungry and I have fed you—now good-by." She held out her hand and then hastily broke away before the soldier could take it. Garibaldi mounted his horse, and followed by the troopers rode slowly down the bed of the stream, and as they disappeared into the thicket of azaleas, Garibaldi looked back. The lady was standing on the veranda leaning against a pillar. She held up the Mazzini pamphlet. Garibaldi removed his hat.

* * * * *

Garibaldi was on a tour of inspection, getting a good idea of the coast-line, and patriotism and duty should have kept him steadily on the march.

But something else was tugging at his heart. He rode ten miles, halted and pitched camp. Early the next morning he rode back alone, leaving his rifle behind, but keeping his pistols in his belt. He wanted to see the husband of the beautiful young lady. The man must be a pretty good kind of man—a royalist by birth probably, but if he could be rightly informed might become a friend of the cause.

When Garibaldi reached the house, the lady was on the veranda—she seemed to be expecting him. She was sad, pale, serious, and dressed in blue. She called her husband out and introduced him, and he and Garibaldi shook hands. Garibaldi tried to talk with him about Mazzini, but as near as Garibaldi could guess the rancher had never heard the name.

The man was fully twenty years older than his wife, and Garibaldi guessed, from his looks, that his wealth was an inheritance, not an accumulation. A little further talk and the facts developed as Garibaldi had suspected—the man was a degenerate scion of Spanish aristocracy. He seemed too stupid or too indifferent to know who his visitor was, or what he stood for. He brought out strong drink and then suggested cards as a diversion.

Garibaldi did not like the looks of the man, and courteously declined his pasteboard suggestions. All the time the young woman stood a little way off and looked wistfully at the red-shirted soldier. Her lips moved in pantomime—she was trying to say something to him. Garibaldi talked about nothing, laughed aloud, and requested his host to mix him a drink. While the man was busy at the sideboard, Garibaldi moved carelessly toward the woman and caught her whispered words, "Do not drink—go at once—he has sent for help—the place will be surrounded in half an hour—go, I implore you!"

And all the time Garibaldi talked garrulously and sauntered around the room. He took up the glass the man handed him, and raising it to his lips, did not drink—but tossed the contents full into the face of the person who had prepared the mixture. The man coughed, sputtered, swore and Garibaldi backed to the door, one hand on a pistol at his belt. He reached the veranda and looked for his horse. The horse was gone! Garibaldi sprang back into the house, covering the royalist with his pistol. "My horse, or you die—order my horse brought to the door!" The man protested, begged, swore he knew nothing about the horse. "I'll fetch your horse!" called the woman, and running around the house brought the horse from a thicket, where it had evidently been led by some servant. Again Garibaldi backed out of the house, requesting the man to follow, which he obediently did at a distance of five paces, his hands high in the air, as if in blessing. With pistol still in hand Garibaldi mounted the horse, and as he did so the little lady moaned, "He may kill me for this, but I would do it again—for you!" Garibaldi kicked his right foot out of the stirrup, and held out his hand. The lady without the slightest hesitation placed her foot in the empty stirrup and leaped lightly up behind. As she did so Garibaldi fired two shots well over the head of the paralyzed husband of his late wife, and gave his horse the spurs. In a minute horse and riders, two, were more than a quarter of a mile away over the plain, the lady seated safely behind, her arms gently but surely enfolding the red shirt. As they passed over a ridge they looked back, and there stood the degenerate scion of royalty, his hands high above his head. He had forgotten to take them down.

* * * * *

But should any prosaic reader imagine that this little story is too melodramatic to be true, I refer him to the monograph, "Garibaldi the Patriot," by Alexandre Dumas, who got his data from the record written by Garibaldi, himself. Moreover, Anita, for it was she, told the tale to Madame Brabante, who in turn gave the facts to Margaret Fuller Ossoli.

We do not know Anita's last name. When she placed her foot in the stirrup of Garibaldi's saddle, she gave herself to him, body, mind and spirit, for better, for worse, in sickness and in health, through evil and good report, forever. By that act she left the past behind: even the name "Anita" was a name that Garibaldi gave her, and if he ever knew the story of her life before they met, he never thought it worth while to mention it. Probably he did not care—life for both of them really dated from the day they met. He was thirty-one, she was twenty- two.

When Garibaldi rode into camp, with the lady on the crupper, the six red-shirted ones in waiting were not surprised. They were never surprised at anything their master did. They believed in him as they believed in God—only more so. And so they asked no questions—for Garibaldi was one of the men that common men never interrogated.

"Break camp!" was the order, and in ten minutes they were on the march, two men trailing a mile behind as a rear-guard. At midnight they were safely aboard the good ship "Mazzini."

Anita proved herself a worthy mate for Garibaldi. She was the first woman to wear a Garibaldi waist, although for the most part she wore men's clothes, with two pistols in her belt and a rifle in her hands, and wherever Joseph went, there went Anita. She was his servant, his slave, his comrade, his wife. Read his autobiography and you will find how lasting, loyal and tender his devotion was toward her. He was a fatalist—a man without fear—and many times when surrounded by an overwhelming foe, he simply bided his time and fought his way through to safety. "When other men are ready to surrender, I hold fast," he said. When once cut off by four soldiers of the enemy, and they approached with loaded rifles and bayonets fixed, he drew his sword and shouted, "I am Garibaldi—you are my prisoners!" and down went the rifles.

At another time he and Anita were caught by a band of forty troopers in a log cabin in a clearing. They flung open the door, and standing, one on each side, showed only the long glittering point of a spear across the doorway. The enemy demanded a parley, but finally, not knowing the number of persons inside, and realizing that a charge meant death for two of the company, they withdrew. Silence and the unknown are the only things really terrible.

And so Joseph and Anita lived and loved and fought, and incidentally studied the few books which they possessed, and at odd times wrote poetry. A year after that first ride on the back of the horse that carried double, a son was born to them. A contemporary tells of seeing Anita riding horseback, the chubby babe carried like a papoose, looking out wonderingly at the world, which for him was just six months old. In three years this baby boy was riding behind his mother on the crupper, and another baby had come to do the papoose act.

So passed eight years of adventure by land and sea, in wood and vale, on mountain and plain. Garibaldi had given Brazil all the freedom she deserved—all she knew how to use. He was crowned as "The Hero of Montevideo," and could have taken a place high in the councils of the State. But across the sea he heard the rumble of battle going on in his beloved fatherland, and the dream of a United Italy was still vivid in his mind, and of course, vivid, too, in the mind of Anita. So they sailed away, taking with them a hundred of their loyal, loving men in the red shirts, who refused to be left behind. Arriving in Italy, Garibaldi went at once to the home of his mother, who had mourned him as lost and now received him as one risen from the dead. Anita and the children appealed to the good woman, and her heart went out to them, as if, indeed, they were all her own, loved into life.

When all at once, remembering her son's indifference for the Church, she asked when and where they were married, Joseph looked at Anita, and Anita looked at Joseph, and then they acknowledged that they had only been married by a sailor, who had said the ceremony as he remembered it, adding, "And may God have mercy on your souls." Hastily the mother packed them off to a priest, who administered the right of extreme marital unction, and charged them double fee on account of their carelessness. They paid the fee, laughing inwardly, but glad to relieve the mother of her qualms.

The children were left in the care of the grandmother, and Joseph and
Anita went forth to enlist under the banner of Charles Albert of
Piedmont and make war on superstition and the Pope.

* * * * *

Charles Albert had been a staunch supporter of the very conditions against which the striplings, Joseph Mazzini and Joseph Garibaldi, had made war twenty years previous. But nations, like men, sometimes have experiences that make them grow by throes and throbs, by leaps and bounds. The writings of Mazzini had been constantly distributed and circulated, and the fact that they were tabued by the government added to the joys of the illicit. A well-defined wave of republicanism swept the land. Those sensitive to ideas awoke, like lilacs sensitive to the breath of May.

King Charles Albert, of all the Italian kinglets, alone guessed the temper of his people, and issued to them a constitution with the right of franchise. This meant war upon the Austrian protectorate and the Pope.

Volunteers from the other provinces flocked to the standard of Piedmont. And about this time it was that Garibaldi and Anita offered their services to the insurgent army. Charles Albert feared his old- time foe, for Garibaldi was of a nature that detested compromise, and the Piedmontese could not understand how he was willing to fight under the banner of a king, even a king who had forsworn tyranny and reform. But other provinces were seceding, and erelong Joseph Garibaldi found himself at the head of a thousand Neapolitans, all clad in red shirts, well armed, carrying banners upon which were sentiments like these: "Man was made to be free!" "Down with priest and Pope!" and "Let us own ourselves!"

The reformer paints things with a broom: exaggeration indeed is a necessary part of his equipment. Garibaldi could not understand that Italy was not ripe for a simple religion of love for wife, child and neighbor, paying one's debts, and earning one's daily bread by honest toil. He could not appreciate that the many really did not care for either political or mental freedom, much preferring mendicancy to work, and quite willing to delegate their thinking to a college of cardinals. And so he waged his earnest fight, with a faith as full and complete as the faith that actuated Old John Brown, whose soul goes marching on.

In Eighteen Hundred Forty-nine, some of the provinces had capitulated and joined forces with France and Austria, the insurgent leaders having been promised places in the excise—the compromise hastened no doubt by cold and hunger. Garibaldi's own force was much reduced and he took to the mountains, abandoning his cavalry equipment. Orders were out that he, or any of his band, caught should be shot, without trial, by fours in presence of their companions and the army. Thirty of his men and four of his best officers had been so executed.

He and Anita were surrounded and had taken refuge in a cornfield. Anita was wounded and delirious with thirst and fever. A Garibaldian had volunteered to go for water across an open field. Garibaldi watched the man and saw him shot down by French soldiers in ambush. He remained, knowing the enemy would soon come out of hiding to rob the dead. Garibaldi waited close beside the body of his dead companion, and killed with his own hands the man who had done the deed.

He got the water and carried it back to Anita in the cornfield. But she now had no need of it—she was dead. Garibaldi remained by the body until nightfall, and then carried it to the house of a peasant nearby. He made the peasant woman understand that the dead was a woman, a mother, like herself, and must be given decent burial—the woman understood.

The torches of the enemy could be seen near at hand, trailing Garibaldi from the cornfield to the house. He covered the beloved form with his scarf, and giving the peasant woman his purse, hurried forth barely in time to elude the pursuers. He made his way alone to the seashore and found refuge in Venice.

There was a price upon his head, but still there were many throughout
Italy from Milan to Sicily who spoke of him as patriot and savior.

As a diplomatic move Rome relented, and Garibaldi was allowed to move to Caprera, a rocky island ten miles from the coast. Here he lived with his mother and children, writing, studying, farming; lived as Victor Hugo lived at Guernsey, only without the wealth, but in touch with Mazzini, exiled in London.

In Eighteen Hundred Fifty-three, Garibaldi came to New York and remained nearly two years. He went into business under an assumed name and accumulated two thousand dollars, so the little business must have prospered.

In Eighteen Hundred Fifty-four Naples was again in revolt, and Garibaldi heard the trumpets of battle from afar. He returned to Italy, and with his two thousand dollars bought the Island of Caprera, that his children might be insured a home, and also, possibly, to convince the government at Rome that he had come to stay.

Twice he left his beloved Caprera to work out his great dream of a United Italy. He fought with troops that had no commissary; battled with superstition; and saw his name belittled by those he sought to serve. Finally he entered Naples at the head of an army and was proclaimed Dictator. But statesmanship is business; and business is to organize and discipline, and use the forces of monotonous peace. Garibaldi expected too much: he wanted to see the Church uprooted, the princes sent on their way, and the people supreme. This was not to be. He did, however, live to see the Pope relinquish his temporal power, and a United Italy, but with Victor Emmanuel, son of Charles Albert, as king. The people still wanted a king, and they wanted their Church, even though an emasculated one.

In Eighteen Hundred Seventy, Garibaldi and his son, the firstborn of Anita, offered their services to Gambetta and enlisted with France to fight against Germany. And yet Garibaldi had nothing against Germany, and had fought France in many a tedious campaign, but he thought that France now stood opposed to papal power, while Germany sympathized with it.

After the war Garibaldi was elected to the Italian Parliament, and performed, at least, one good piece of work: he succeeded in getting an appropriation to erect a statue of Bruno upon the exact spot where this lover of truth and right was burned alive, by order of the Pope, for teaching that the earth revolved.

In September, Nineteen Hundred Four, the World's Free-Thought Convention was held in Rome, and a committee was appointed to decorate the statue of Bruno and hold at its base a memorial meeting. The principal address was by Ernst Haeckel. In the course of his remarks Haeckel said:

We meet in the Eternal City in the cause of liberty and the cause of truth. We need to express, each in his own way, unfettered and unvexed by coercion and fear of suppression, the things we believe are right and just and beautiful, and should be said. We know but little, but in this we are agreed—that there is no final, arbitrary and dogmatic truth. Truth is a point of view; as we know more and comprehend more, we will express more. Man has today freedom to breathe, freedom to study, freedom to grow, such as he never before had since time began. Man has today more faith than he ever had before—more faith in himself, more faith in his fellows. Thinking, like the physical act of walking, is a matter of faith. For the privilege of being here today, in this place, expressing what we think, we are under special obligations to one man, and the entire world of progress is under obligation to this man—and that man is Garibaldi.

Garibaldi passed peacefully away at his beloved Caprera in Eighteen Hundred Eighty-two, aged seventy-five, gently ministered to by his children and grandchildren. The insurance-company that might have insured his life when he was twenty would have made money on the transaction regardless of rate. Yet he was the hero of sixty-seven battles on land and sea, and engaged in more than two hundred personal encounters, where rifles, pistols, stilettos, swords or cudgels played their part. Behold the irony of Fate!

No man was ever more detested, hated, feared—no man was ever better loved. That he was a sternly honest, sincere man, singularly pure in motive and abstemious in habit, even his bitterest enemies do not dispute. If Savonarola was God-intoxicated, Garibaldi was freedom- mad.

He refused bribes, declined honors, put aside titles, and died as penniless as he was born, and as he had lived. His life was consecrated to one thing—Liberty.

RICHARD COBDEN

  What I contend is that England is today so situated in every
  particular of her domestic and foreign circumstances that, by
  leaving other governments to settle their own business and fight out
  their own quarrels, and by attending to the vast and difficult
  affairs of her own enormous realm, and the condition of her people,
  she will not only be setting the world an example of noble morality,
  which no other nation is so happily free to set, but she will be
  following the very course which the maintenance of her own greatness
  most imperatively demands. It is precisely because Great Britain is
  so strong in resources, in courage, in institutions, in geographical
  position, that she can, before all other European powers, afford to
  be moral, and to set the example of a mighty nation walking in the
  paths of justice and peace.
  —Cobden

[Illustration: Richard Cobden]

Richard Cobden never had any chance in life. He was born in an obscure hamlet of West Sussex, England, in Eighteen Hundred Four. His father was a poor farmer, who lost his freehold and died at the top, whipped out, discouraged, when the lad was ten years old. Richard Cobden became a porter, a clerk, a traveling salesman, a mill-owner, a member of parliament, an economist, a humanitarian, a statesman, a reformer. Up to his thirteenth year he was chiefly interested in the laudable task of making a living—getting on in the world. During that year, and seemingly all at once and nothing first, just as bubbles do when they burst, he beheld the problem of business from the broad vantage- ground of humanitarianism. But he did not burst, for his dreams were spun out of life's realities, and today are coming true; in fact, many of them came true in his own time. Richard Cobden ceased to be provincial and became universal.

He saw that commerce, instead of being merely a clutch for personal gain, was the chief factor in civilization. He realized that we are educated through our efforts to get food and clothing; and therefore the man who ministers to the material wants of humanity is really the true priest. The development of every animal has come about through its love-emotions and its struggle to exist.

A factory in a town changes every person in the town, mentally and physically. This being true, does not the management of this factory call for men of heart and soul—broad-minded, generous, firm in the right? Then every factory is influenced by the laws of the land, and each country is influenced by the laws of other countries, since most countries that are engaged in manufacturing find a market abroad.

Cobden set himself to inquire into the causes of discontent and failure, of progress and prosperity. And not content merely to philosophize, he carried his theories into his own enterprises.

Many of our modern business betterments seem to have had their rise in the restless, prophetic brain of Richard Cobden. He of all men sought to make commerce a science, and business a fine art. The world moves slowly.

It is only a few years ago that we in America thought to have in our
President's Cabinet a Secretary of Commerce and Labor.

Listen to what Cobden wrote in Eighteen Hundred Forty-three:

In the close council of every king, or president, or prince, should be a man of affairs whose life is devoted to commerce and labor, and the needs and requirements of peace. His work is of far greater moment than that of men-of-war. Battleships ever form a suggestion for their use, and as long as we have armies, men will kill, fight and destroy. Soldiers who do not want to fight are not of this earth. Prepare for war and war will come. When government gives to the arts of peace the same thought and attention that it gives to the arts of war, we will have peace on earth and good-will among men. But so long as the soldier takes precedence of the businessman in the political courts of the world, famine, death, disease and want will crouch at our doors. Commerce is production, war is destruction. The laws of production and distribution must and will be made a science; and then and not until then will happiness come to mankind and this earth serve as a pattern for the paradise of another life, instead of being a pandemonium.

* * * * *

Emerson defines commerce as carrying things from where they are plentiful to where they are needed. Business is that field of human endeavor which undertakes to supply the materials to humanity that life demands.

The clergy are our spiritual advisers, preparing us for a pleasant and easy place in another world. The lawyers advise us on legal themes— showing us how to obey the law, or else evade it, and they protect us from lawyers. The doctors look after us when disease attacks our bodies—or when we think it does.

We used to talk about "The Three Learned Professions"; if we use the phrase now, it is only in a Pickwickian sense, for we realize that there are at present fifty-seven varieties of learned men.

The greatest and most important of all the professions is that of Commerce, or Business. Medicine and law have their specialties—a dozen each—but business has ten thousand specialties, or divisions.

So important do we now recognize business, or this ministering to the material wants of humanity, that theology has shifted its ground, and within a few years has declared that to eat rightly, dress rightly, and work rightly are the fittest preparation for a life to come.

The best lawyers now are businessmen, and their work is to keep the commercial craft in a safe channel, where it will not split on the rocks of litigation nor founder in the shallows of misunderstanding. Every lawyer will tell you this, "To make money you must satisfy your customers."

The greatest change in business came with the one-price system.

The old idea was for the seller to get as much as he possibly could for everything he sold. Short weight, short count, and inferiority in quality were considered quite proper and right, and when you bought a dressed turkey from a farmer, if you did not discover the stone inside the turkey when you weighed it and paid for it, there was no redress. The laugh was on you. And moreover a legal maxim—caveat emptor, "Let the buyer beware"—made cheating legally safe.

Dealers in clothing guaranteed neither fit nor quality, and anything you paid for, once wrapped up and in your hands, was yours beyond recall—"Business is business," was a maxim that covered many sins.

A few hundred years ago business was transacted mostly through fairs and ships, and by pedlers. Your merchant of that time was a peripatetic rogue who reduced prevarication to a system.

The booth gradually evolved into a store, with the methods and customs of the irresponsible keeper intact: the men cheated their neighbors and chuckled in glee until their neighbors cheated them, which, of course, they did. Then they cursed each other, began again, and did it all over. John Quincy Adams tells of a certain deacon who kept a store near Boston, who always added in the year 1775, at the top of the column, as seventeen dollars and seventy-five cents.

The amount of misery, grief, disappointment, shame, distress, woe, suspicion and hate caused by a system which wrapped up one thing when the buyer expected another, and took advantage of his innocence and ignorance as to quality and value, can not be computed in figures. Suffice it to say that duplicity in trade has had to go. The self- preservation of the race demanded honesty, square dealing, one price to all. The change came only after a struggle, and we are not quite sure of the one-price deal yet.

But we have gotten thus far: that the man who cheats in trade is tabu. Honesty as a business asset is fully recognized. If you would succeed in business you can not afford to sell a man something he does not want; neither can you afford to disappoint him in quality, any more than in count. Other things being equal, the merchant who has the most friends will make the most money. Our enemies will not deal with us. To make a sale and acquire an enemy is poor policy. To a pedler or a man who ran a booth at a bazaar or fair, it was "get your money now or never." Buyer and seller were at war. One transaction and they never met again. The air was full of hate and suspicion, and the savage propensity of physical destruction was refined to a point where hypocrisy and untruth took the place of violence—the buyer was as bad as the seller: if he could buy below cost he boasted of it. To catch a merchant who had to have money was glorious—we smote him hip and thigh! Later, we discovered that being strangers he took us in.

The one-price system has come as a necessity, since it reduces the friction of life, and protects the child or simple person in the selection of things needed, just the same as if the buyer were an expert in values and a person who could strike back if imposed upon. Safety, peace and decency demanded the one-price system. And so we have it—with possibly a discount to the clergy, to schoolteachers, and relatives as close as second cousins. But when we reach the point where we see that all men are brothers, we will have absolute honesty and one price to all.

And this change in business methods, in our mental attitude towards trade, has all grown out of a dimly perceived but deeply felt belief in the brotherhood of man, of the solidarity of the race—also, in the further belief that life in all of its manifestations is Divine.

Therefore, he who ministers to the happiness and well-being of the life of another is a priest and is doing God's work. Men must eat, they must be clothed, they must be housed. It is quite as necessary that you should eat good food as that you should read good books, hear good music, hear good sermons, or look upon beautiful pictures. The necessary is the sacred.

There are no menial tasks. "He that is greatest among you shall be your servant." The physical reacts on the spiritual and the spiritual on the physical, and, rightly understood, are one and the same thing. We live in a world of spirit and our bodies are the physical manifestation of a spiritual thing, which for lack of a better word we call "God." We change men by changing their environment. Commerce changes the environment and gives us a better society. To supply good water, better sanitary appliances, better heating apparatus, better food, served in a more dainty way—these are all tasks worthy of the highest intelligence and devotion that can be brought to bear upon them, and every Christian preacher in the world today so recognizes, believes and preaches. We have ceased to separate the secular from the sacred. That is sacred which serves.

Once, a businessman was a person who not only thrived by taking advantage of the necessities of people, but who also banked on their ignorance of values. But all wise men now know that the way to help yourself is to help humanity. We benefit ourselves only as we benefit others. And the recognition of these truths is what has today placed the businessman at the head of the learned professions—he ministers to the necessities of humanity.

Out of blunder and bitterness comes wisdom. Men are taught through reaction, and all experience that does not kill you is good.

When the father of Richard Cobden gave up hope and acknowledged defeat, the family of a full dozen were farmed out among relatives. The kind kinsmen who volunteered to look after the frail and sensitive Richard evaded responsibility by placing the lad in a boys' boarding- school. Here he remained from his tenth until his sixteenth year. Once a year he was allowed to write a letter home to his mother, but during the five years he saw her but once.

Hunger and heartache have their uses. Richard Cobden lived to strike the boarding-school fallacy many a jolting blow; but it required Charles Dickens to complete the work by ridicule, just as Robert Ingersoll laughed the Devil out of church. We fight for everything until the world regards it as ridiculous, then we abandon it. So long as war is regarded as heroic, we will fight for it; when it becomes absurd it will die.

Said Richard Cobden in a speech in the House of Commons: "Of all the pathetic fallacies perpetuated, none seems to me more cruelly absurd than the English Boarding-School for boys. The plan of taking the child of seven, eight or ten years away from his parents, and giving him into the keeping of persons who have only a commercial interest in him, and compelling him to fight for his life among little savages as unhappy as himself, or sink into miserable submission, seems too horrible to contemplate." Yet this plan of so-called education continued up to about fifty years ago, and was upheld and supported by the best society of England, including the clergy, who were usually directly "particeps criminis" in the business.

Logic and reason failed to dislodge the folly, and finally it was left to a stripling reporter, turned novelist, to give us Squeers and Dotheboys Hall. This fierce ridicule was the thing which finally punctured the rhinoceros hide of the pedagogic blunder.

There is one test for all of our educational experiments—will it bring increased love? That which breeds hate and fosters misery is bad in every star. Compare the boarding-school idea with the gentle philosophy of Friedrich Froebel, and note how Froebel always insists that the education of the mother and her child should go forward hand in hand. Motherhood is for the mother, and she who shifts the care of her growing child to a Squeers, not only immerses her child in misery but loses the opportunity of her life.

When Richard was sixteen he was transferred from the boarding-school to his uncle's warehouse in London. His position was that of a poor relation, and his work in the warehouse was to carry bundles and manipulate a broom. His shy and sensitive ways caught the attention of a burly and gruff superintendent, whose gruffness was only on the outside. This man said to the boy, before he had been sweeping a week: "Young 'un, I obsarve with my hown hies that you sweeps in the corners. For this I raises your pay a shilling a week, and makes you monkey to the shipping-clerk."

In a year the shipping-clerk was needed as a salesman, and Richard took his place. In another year Richard was a salesman, and canvassing London for orders. Very shortly after he became convinced that to work for relations was a mistake. Twenty years later the thought crystallized in his mind thus: Young man, you had better neither hire relatives nor work for them. It means servility or tyranny or both. You do not want to be patronized nor placed under obligations, nor have other helpers imagine you are a favorite. To grow you must be free—let merit count and nothing else. Probably this was what caused a wise man to say, "The Devil sent us our relatives, but thank Heaven we can choose our friends for ourselves."

Relatives often assume a fussy patronizing management which outsiders never do. And so at twenty we find Cobden cutting loose from relatives. He went to work as a commercial traveler selling cotton prints. That English custom of the "commercial dinner," where all the "bagmen" that happened to be in the hotel dine at a common table, as a family, and take up a penny collection for the waiter, had its rise in the brain of Cobden. He thought the traveling salesman should have friendly companionship, and the commercial dinner with its frank discussions and good-fellowship would in degree compensate for the lack of home. This idea of brotherhood was very strong in Richard Cobden's heart. And always at these dinners he turned the conversation into high and worthy channels, bringing up questions of interest to the "boys," and trying to show them that the more they studied the laws of travel, the more they knew about commerce, the greater their power as salesmen. His journal about this time shows, "Expense five shillings for Benjamin Franklin's 'Essays,'" and the same for "'Plutarch's Lives.'" And from these books he read aloud at the bagmen's dinners.

Cobden anticipated in many ways that excellent man, Arthur F. Sheldon, and endeavored to make salesmanship a fine art.

From a salesman on a salary, he evolved into a salesman on a salary and commission. Next he made a bold stand with two fellow-travelers and asked for the exclusive London agency of a Manchester print-mill. A year later he was carrying a line of goods worth forty thousand pounds on unsecured credit. "Why do you entrust me with all these goods when you know I am not worth a thousand pounds in my own name?"

And the senior member of the great house of Fort, Sons and Company answered: "Mr. Cobden, we consider the moral risk more than we do the financial one. Our business has been built up by trusting young, active men of good habits. With us character counts." And Cobden went up to London and ordered the words, "Character Counts!" cut deep in a two-inch oak plank which he fastened to the wall in his office.

At twenty-seven his London brokerage business was netting him an income of twelve hundred pounds a year. It seems at this time that Fort and Sons had a mill at Sabden, which on account of mismanagement on the part of superintendants had fallen into decay. The company was thinking of abandoning the property, and the matter was under actual discussion when in walked Cobden.

"Sell it to Cobden," said one of the directors, smiling.

"For how much?" asked Cobden.

"A hundred thousand pounds," was the answer.

"I'll take it," said Cobden, "on twenty years' time with the privelege of paying for it sooner if I can." Cobden had three valuable assets in his composition—health, enthusiasm and right intent. Let a banker once feel that the man knows what he is doing, and is honest, and money is always forthcoming.

And so Cobden took possession of the mill at Sabden. Six hundred workers were employed, and there was not a school nor a church in the village. The workers worked when they wanted, and when they did not they quit. Every pay-day they tramped off to neighboring towns, and did not come back until they had spent their last penny. In an endeavor to discipline them, the former manager had gotten their ill- will, and they had mobbed the mill and broken every window. Cobden's task was not commercial: it was a problem in diplomacy and education. To tell of how he introduced schools, stopped child labor, planted flowerbeds and vegetable-gardens, built houses and model tenements, and disciplined the workers without their knowing it, would require a book. Let the simple fact stand that he made the mill pay by manufacturing a better grade of goods than had been made, and he also raised the social status of the people. In three years his income had increased to ten thousand pounds a year.

"At thirty," says John Morley, "Cobden passed at a single step from the natural egotism of youth to the broad and generous public spirit of a great citizen." Very early in his manhood Cobden discovered that he who would do an extraordinary work must throw details on others, and scheme for leisure. Cobden never did anything he could hire any one else to do. He saved himself to do work that to others was impossible. That is to say, he picked his men, and he chose men of his own type—healthy, restless, eager, enthusiastic, honest men. The criticism of Disraeli that "Cobden succeeded in business simply because he got other people to do his work," is sternly true. It proves the greatness of Cobden.

* * * * *

And so we find Richard Cobden, the man who had never had any chance in life, thirty years old, with an income equal to thirty-five thousand dollars a year, and at the head of a constantly growing business. He had acquired the study habit ten years before, so really we need shed no tears on account of his lack of college training. He knew political history—knew humanity—and he knew his Adam Smith. And lo! cosmic consciousness came to him in a day. His personal business took second place, and world problems filled his waking dreams.

These second births in men can usually be traced to a book, a death, a person, a catastrophe—a woman. If there was any great love in the life of Cobden I would make no effort to conceal it—goodness me!

But the sublime passion was never his, otherwise there would have been more art and less economics in his nature. Yet for women he always had a high and chivalrous regard, and his strong sense of justice caused him to speak out plainly on the subject of equal rights at a time when to do so was to invite laughter.

And so let x—Miss X—symbol the cause of Richard Cobden's rebirth. He placed his business in charge of picked men, and began his world career by going across to Paris and spending three months in studying the language and the political situation. He then moved on to Belgium and Holland, passed down through Germany to Switzerland, across to Italy, up to Russia, back to Rome, and finally took ship at Naples for England by way of Gibraltar. On arriving at Sabden he found that, while the business was going fairly well, it had failed to keep the pace that his personality had set. When the man is away the mice will play—a little. Things drop down. Eternal vigilance is not only the price of liberty, but of everything else, and success in business most of all.

Cobden knew the truth—that by applying himself to business he could become immensely rich. But if he left things to others, he could at the best expect only a moderate income on the capital he had already acquired. Everything is bought with a price—make your choice! Richard Cobden chose knowledge, service to mankind, and an all-round education, rather than money. He spent six months at his print-mill, and again fared forth upon his journeyings.

He visited Spain, Turkey, Greece and Egypt, spending several months in each country, studying the history of the place on the spot. What interested him most was the economic reasons which led to advance and fall of nations. In Eighteen Hundred Thirty-five he started for America on a sailing-vessel, making the passage in just five weeks. One letter to his brother from America contains the following:

I am thus far on my way back again to New York, which city I expect to reach on the Eighth instant, after completing a tour through Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Pittsburgh, Lake Erie to Buffalo, Niagara Falls, Albany (via Auburn, Utica, Schenectady), and the Connecticut Valley to Boston and Lowell. On my return to New York, I propose giving two days to the Hudson River, going up to Albany one day, and returning the next; after which I shall have two or three days for the purpose of taking leave of my good friends in New York, previous to going on board the "Britannia" on the Sixteenth. My journey may be called a pleasure-trip, for without an exception or interruption of any kind I have enjoyed every minute of the too short time allowed me for seeing this truly magnificent country. No writer has yet done justice to America. Her lakes, rivers, forests and cataracts are peculiarly her own, and when I think of their superiority to all that we have in the Old World, and still more, when I recollect that by a mysterious ordinance of their Creator, these were hid from "learned ken" till modern times, I fell into the fanciful belief that the Western continent was brought forth at a second birth, and intended by Nature as a more perfect specimen of her handiwork. But how in the name of breeding must we account for the degeneracy of the human form in this otherwise mammoth-producing soil? The men are but sorry descendants from the noble race that begot their ancestors. And as for the women—my eyes have not found one that deserves to be called a wholesome, blooming, pretty woman since I have been here! One-fourth part of the women look as if they had just recovered from a fit of jaundice; another quarter would in England be termed in a state of decided consumption; and the remainder are fitly likened to our fashionable women, haggard and jaded with the dissipation of a London season. There, now, haven't I out-Trolloped Mrs. Trollope! But leaving the physical for the moral, my estimate of American character has improved, contrary to my expectations, by this visit. Great as was my previous esteem for the qualities of this people, I find myself in love with their intelligence, their sincerity, and the decorous self-respect that actuates all classes. The very genius of activity seems to have found its fit abode in the souls of this restless and energetic race.

Among other interesting items which Cobden made note of in America was that everywhere wood was used for fuel, "excepting at Brownsville, Virginia, where beds of coal jut out of the hillside, and all the people have to do is to help themselves." Pittsburgh interested him, and he spent a week there: went to a theater and heard England hissed and Columbia exalted. Pittsburgh burned only wood for fuel, the wood being brought down on flatboats. At Youngstown, Ohio, were three hundred horses used on the many stagecoaches that centered there. There was a steamboat that ran from Cleveland to Buffalo in two days and a night, stopping seven times on the way to take on passengers and goods and wood for fuel. At Buffalo you could hear the roar of Niagara Falls and see the mist. Arriving at the Canada side of the Falls he was shaved by a negro who was a runaway slave, all negroes in Canada being free.

Cobden says: "The States are not especially adapted for agricultural products, the land being hilly and heavily wooded. American exports are cotton, wool, hides and lumber." It will thus be seen that in Eighteen Hundred Thirty-six America had not been discovered.

Arriving in England, Cobden began to write out his ideas and issue them in pamphlet form at his own expense. For literature, as such, he seemed to have had little thought, literature being purely a secondary love-product.

* * * * *

Cobden's work was statistical, economic, political and philosophic. From writing he read his pamphlets before various societies and lyceums. Debates naturally followed, and soon Cobden was forced to defend his theories.

He was nominated for a seat in Parliament and was defeated. Next year he ran again and was elected. The political canvass had given freedom to his wings; he had learned to think on his feet, to meet interruption, to parry in debate. The air became luminous with reasons.

England then had a tax on everything, including bread. On grains and meat brought into England there was an import tax which was positively prohibitive. This tax was for the dual purpose of raising revenue for the Government, and to protect the English farmer. Of course, the farmer believed in this tax which prevented any other country from coming into competition with himself.

Cobden thought that food-products should pass unobstructed to where they were needed, and that any other plan was mistaken and vicious. The question came up in the House of Commons, and Cobden arose to speak. Anyone who then spoke of "free trade" was considered disloyal to his country. Cobden used the word and was hissed. He waited and continued to speak. "Famine is possible only where trade is restricted," and he proved his proposition by appeals to history, and a wealth of economic information that hushed the House into respectful silence. As an economist he showed he was the peer of any man present. The majority disagreed with him, but his courteous manner won respect, and his resourceful knowledge made the opposition cautious.

Soon after he brought up a public-school measure, and this was voted down on the assumption that education was a luxury, and parents who wanted their children educated should look after it themselves, just as they did the clothing and food of the child. At best, education should be left to the local parish, village or city government.

Cobden was in the minority; but he went back to Manchester and formed the Anti-Corn-Law League, demanding that wheat and maize should be admitted to the United Kingdom free of duty, and that no tax of any kind should be placed on breadstuffs. The farmers raised a howl— incited by politicians—and Cobden was challenged to go into farming communities and debate the question. The enemy hoped, and sincerely believed, he would be mobbed. But he accepted the challenge, and the debate took place, with the result that he was for the most part treated with respect, since he convinced his hearers that agriculture was something he knew more about than did the landlords. He showed farmers how to diversify crops and raise vegetables and fruits, and if grains would flow in cheaper than they could raise them, why then take the money they received from vegetables and buy grain! It was an uphill fight, but Cobden threw his soul into it, and knew that some day it would win.

Cobden's contention was that all money necessary to run the Government should be raised by direct taxation on land, property and incomes, and not on food any more than on air, since both are necessary to actual existence. To place a tariff on necessities, keeping these things out of the country and out of the reach of the plain and poor people who needed them, was an inhumanity. A tariff should be placed on nothing but articles of actual luxury—things people can do without—but all necessities of life should flow by natural channels, unobstructed. An indirect tax is always an invitation to extravagance on the part of Government, and also, it is a temptation to favor certain lines of trade at the expense of others, and so is class legislation. Government must exist for all the people, never for the few, and the strong and powerful must consider the lowly and weak.

The landed gentry upheld the Corn Laws and used the word "commercial" as an epithet. Very naturally they made their tenants believe that if free trade were allowed, the farmers would be worse than bankrupt, and commercialism rampant. Cobden stood for the manufacturing public and the cities. The landlords tried to disparage Cobden by declaring that smoky, dirty Birmingham was his ideal. Cobden's task was to make England see that the less men tampered with the natural laws of trade the better, and that no special class of citizens should suffer that others might be prosperous, and that business and manufacturing must and could be rescued from their low estate and be made honorable. And so the fight went on. From a curiosity to hear what Cobden might say, interest in the theme subsided, and the opposition adopted the cheerful habit of trooping out to the cloakroom whenever Cobden arose to speak.

Cobden had at least one very great quality which few reformers have: he was patient with the fools. Against stupidity he never burst forth in wrath. Impatience with stupidity is a fine mark of stupidity. He knew the righteousness of his cause, and repeated and kept repeating his arguments in varied form. His platform manner was conversational and friendly. He often would use the phrase, "Come, let us just talk this matter over together." And so he quickly established close, friendly terms with his hearers, which, while lacking the thrill of oratory, made its impress upon a few who grew to love the man. John Bright tells of "the mild, honest look of love and genuineness that beamed from his eyes," and which told the story even better than his words.

* * * * *

And so the Anti-Corn-Law agitation continued. Sir Robert Peel, as head of the Ministry, sought in every possible way to silence Cobden and bring him into contempt, even to denouncing him as "a dangerous agitator who would, if he could, do for London what Robespierre did for Paris." But time went on as time does, and Cobden had been before the country as the upholder of unpopular causes for more than ten years. There was famine in Ireland. By the roadside famishing mothers held to their withered breasts dying children, and called for help upon the passers-by. Cobden described the situation in a way that pierced the rhinoceros hides of the landlords, and they offered concessions of this and that. Cobden said, "Future generations will stand aghast with amazement when they look back upon this year and see children starving for bread in Ireland, and we forbidding the entry of corn into the country with a prohibitive tariff, backing up this law with armed guns."

The common people began to awake. If famine could occur in Cork and Dublin, why not in Manchester and London? The question came close, now. The Anti-Corn-Law League saw its opportunity. Mass meetings were held in all cities and towns. In Manchester, Cobden asked for funds to carry on the agitation. He himself headed the list with a thousand pounds. Twenty-three manufacturers followed his lead in three minutes. Windsor and Westminster now sat up and rubbed their sleepy eyes, and Sir Robert Peel sent word to Cobden asking for a conference. Cobden replied, "All we desire is an immediate repeal of the Corn Laws—no conference is necessary."

Sir Robert Peel sent in his resignation as Prime Minister, saying he could not in conscience comply with the demands of the mob, and while compliance seemed necessary to avoid revolution, others must make the compromise. The Queen then appointed Lord John Russell as Prime Minister and ordered him to form a new Cabinet and give an office to Cobden. Lord Russell tried for four days to meet the issue, and endeavored to placate the people with platitude and promise. Cobden refused all office, and informed Lord Russell that he preferred to help the Crown by remaining an outside advocate.

Every Government, at the last, is of the people, by the people, but whether for the people depends upon whether the people are awake. And now England did not care for a radical change of rulers; all the citizens wanted was that those in power recede from their position and grant the relief demanded. The Queen now reconsidered the resignation of Sir Robert Peel and refused to accept it, and he again assumed the reins. An extraordinary session of the House of Commons was called and the Corn Laws were repealed. The House of Lords concurred. The nobility was absolutely routed, and Cobden, "the sooty manufacturer," had won.

Strangely enough, panic did not follow, nor did the yeomanry go into bankruptcy. The breadstuffs flowed in, and the manufacturing population being better fed at a less outlay than formerly, had more money to spend. Great general prosperity followed, and the gentry, who had threatened to abandon their estates if the Corn Laws were repealed, simply raised their rents a trifle and increased the gaming limit.

Sir Robert Peel publicly acknowledged his obligation to Cobden, and Lord Palmerston, who had fought him tooth and nail, did the same, explaining, "A new epoch has arisen, and England is a manufacturing country, and as such the repeal of the Corn Laws became desirable." As though he would say, "To have had free trade before this new epoch arose, would have been a calamity." A large sum had been subscribed but not used in the agitation. And now by popular acclaim it was decided that this money should go to Cobden personally as a thank- offering. When the proposition was made, new subscriptions began to flow in, until the sum of eighty thousand pounds was realized. Cobden's business had been neglected. In his fight for the good of the nation his own fortune had taken wing. He announced his intention of retiring from politics and devoting himself to trade, and this was that which, probably, caused the tide to turn his way. He hesitated about accepting the gift, which amounted to nearly half a million dollars, but finally concluded that only by accepting could he be free to serve the State, and so he acceded to the wishes of his friends. Some years later, Lord Palmerston offered him a baronetcy and a seat in the cabinet, but he preferred still to help the State as an outside advocate.

John Morley, the strongest and sanest of modern English statesmen, says:

"Cobden had an intrepid faith in the perfectibility of man. His doctrine was one of non-intervention; that the powerful can afford to be lenient; that mankind continually moves toward the light if not too much interfered with. By his influence the darker shapes of repression were banished from the education of the young; the insane were treated with a consideration before unknown; the criminal was regarded as a brother who deserved our gentlest consideration and patience; the time-honored and ineffective processes of violence and coercion fell into abeyance, and a rational moderation and enlightenment appeared on the horizon. He elevated and refined the world of business, just as he benefited everything he touched. His early death at the age of sixty-one seemed a calamity for England, for we so needed the help of his generous, gentle and unresentful spirit. He lived not in vain; yet years must pass before the full and sublime truths for which he stood are realized."

THOMAS PAINE

  These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the
  sunshine patriot will in this crisis shrink from the service of
  his country; but he that stands it NOW, deserves the love and
  thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily
  conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the
  conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap,
  we esteem too lightly; 't is dearness only that gives everything its
  value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and
  it would be strange indeed, if so celestial an article as FREEDOM
  should not be highly rated.
  —Paine, in "The Crisis"

[Illustration: THOMAS PAINE]

Thomas Paine was an English mechanic, of Quaker origin, born in the year Seventeen Hundred Thirty-seven. He was the author of four books that have influenced mankind profoundly. These books are, "Common Sense," "The Age of Reason," "The Crisis," and "The Rights of Man."

In Seventeen Hundred Seventy-four, when he was thirty-seven years old, he came to America bearing letters of introduction from Benjamin Franklin.

On arriving at Philadelphia he soon found work as editor of "The
Pennsylvania Magazine."

In Seventeen Hundred Seventy-five, in the magazine just named, he openly advocated and prophesied a speedy separation of the American Colonies from England. He also threw a purple shadow over his popularity by declaring his abhorrence of chattel slavery.

His writings, from the first, commanded profound attention, and on the advice and suggestion of Doctor Benjamin Rush, an eminent citizen of Philadelphia, the scattered editorials and paragraphs on human rights, covering a year, were gathered, condensed, revised, made into a book.

This "pamphlet," or paper-bound book, was called "Common Sense."

In France, John Adams was accused of writing "Common Sense." He stoutly denied it, there being several allusions in it stronger than he cared to stand sponsor for.

In England, Franklin was accused of being the author, and he neither denied nor admitted it. But when a lady reproached him for having used the fine alliterative phrase, applied to the king, "The Royal British Brute," he smiled and said blandly, "Madame, I would never have been so disrespectful to the brute creation as that."

"Common Sense" struck the keynote of popular feeling, and the accusation of "treason," hurled at it from many sources, only served to advertise it. It supplied the common people with reasons, and gave statesmen arguments. The Legislature of Pennsylvania voted Paine a honorarium of five hundred pounds, and the University of Pennsylvania awarded him the degree of "Master of Arts," in recognition of eminent services to literature and human rights. John Quincy Adams said, "Paine's pamphlet, 'Common Sense,' crystallized public opinion and was the first factor in bringing about the Revolution."

The Reverend Theodore Parker once said: "Every living man in America in Seventeen Hundred Seventy-six, who could read, read 'Common Sense,' by Thomas Paine. If he was a Tory, he read it, at least a little, just to find out for himself how atrocious it was; and if he was a Whig, he read it all to find the reasons why he was one. This book was the arsenal to which the Colonists went for their mental weapons."

As "Common Sense" was published anonymously and without copyright, and was circulated at bare cost, Paine never received anything for the work, save the twenty-five hundred dollars voted to him by the Legislature.

When independence was declared, Paine enlisted as a private, but was soon made aide-de-camp to General Greene. He was an intrepid and effective soldier and took an active part in various battles.

In December, Seventeen Hundred Seventy-six, he published his second book, "The Crisis," the first words of which have gone into the electrotype of human speech, "These are the times that try men's souls." The intent of the letters which make up "The Crisis" was to infuse courage into the sinking spirits of the soldiers. Washington ordered the letters to be read at the head of every regiment, and it was so done.

In Seventeen Hundred Eighty-one, Paine was sent to France with Colonel Laurens to negotiate a loan. The errand was successful, and Paine then made influential acquaintances, which were later to be renewed. He organized the Bank of North America to raise money to feed and clothe the army, and performed sundry and various services for the Colonies.

In Seventeen Hundred Ninety-one he published his third book, "The Rights of Man," with a complimentary preface by Thomas Jefferson. The book had an immense circulation in America and England. By way of left-handed recognition of the work, the author was indicted by the British Government for "sedition." A day was set for the trial, but as Paine did not appear—those were hanging days—and could not be found, he was outlawed and "banished forever."

He became a member of the French Assembly, or "Chamber of Deputies," and for voting against the death of the king came under suspicion, and was cast into prison, where he was held for one year, lacking a few weeks. His life was saved by James Monroe, America's Minister to France, and for eighteen months he was a member of Monroe's household.

In Seventeen Hundred Ninety-four, while in France, there was published simultaneously in England, America and France, Paine's fourth book, "The Age of Reason."

In Eighteen Hundred Two, Thomas Jefferson, then President of the United States, offered Paine passage to America on board the man-of- war "Maryland," in order that he might be safe from capture by the English, who had him under constant surveillance and were intent on his arrest, regarding him as the chief instigator in the American Rebellion. Arriving in America, Paine was the guest for several months of the President at Monticello. His admirers in Baltimore, Washington, Philadelphia and New York gave banquets in his honor, and he was tendered grateful recognition on account of his services to humanity and his varied talents. He was presented by the State of New York, "in token of heroic work for the Union," a farm at New Rochelle, eighteen miles from New York, and here he lived in comparative ease, writing and farming.

He passed peacefully away, aged seventy-two, in Eighteen Hundred Nine, and his body was buried on his farm, near the house where he lived, and a modest monument erected marking the spot. He had no Christian burial, although, unlike Mr. Zangwill, he had a Christian name. Nine years after the death of Paine, William Cobbett, the eminent English reformer, stung by the obloquy visited upon the memory of Paine in America, had the grave opened and the bones of the man who wrote the first draft of our Declaration of Independence were removed to England, and buried near the spot where he was born. Death having silenced both the tongue and the pen of the Thetford weaver, no violent interference was offered by the British Government. So now the dead man slept where the presence of the living one was barred and forbidden. A modest monument marks the spot. Beneath the name are these words, "The world is my country, mankind are my friends, to do good is my religion."

In Eighteen Hundred Thirty-nine, a monument was erected at New Rochelle, New York, on the site of the empty grave where the body of Paine was first buried, by the lovers and admirers of the man. And while only one land claims his birthplace, three countries now dispute for the privilege of honoring his dust, for it so happened that in France a strong movement was on foot demanding that the remains of Thomas Paine be removed from England to France, and be placed in the Pantheon, that resting-place of so many of the illustrious dead who gave their lives to the cause of Freedom, close by the graves of Voltaire, Rousseau and Victor Hugo. And the reason the bones were not removed to Paris was because only an empty coffin rests in the grave at Thetford, as at New Rochelle. Rumor says that Paine's skull is in a London museum, but if so, the head that produced "The Age of Reason" can not be identified. And the end is not yet!

* * * * *

The genius of Paine was a flower that blossomed slowly. But life is a sequence, and the man who does great work has been in training for it. There is nothing like keeping in condition—one does not know when he is going to be called on. Prepared people do not have to hunt for a position—the position hunts for them. Paine knew no more about what he was getting ready for than did Benjamin Franklin, when at twenty he studied French, evenings, and dived deep into history.

The humble origin of Paine and his Quaker ancestry were most helpful factors in his career. Only a working-man who had tasted hardship could sympathize with the overtaxed and oppressed. And Quakerdom made him a rebel by prenatal tendency. Paine's schooling was slight, but his parents, though poor, were thinking people, for nothing sharpens the wits of men, preventing fatty degeneration of the cerebrum, like persecution. In this respect, the Jews and Quakers have been greatly blessed and benefited—let us congratulate them. Very early in life Paine acquired the study habit. And for the youth who has the study habit no pedagogic tears need be shed. There were debating-clubs at coffeehouses, where great themes were discussed; and our young weaver began his career by defending the Quakers. He acquired considerable local reputation as a weaver of thoughts upon the warp and woof of words. Occasionally he occupied the pulpit in dissenting chapels.

These were great times in England—the air was all athrob with thought and feeling. A great tidal wave of unrest swept the land. It was an epoch of growth, second only in history to the Italian Renaissance. The two Wesleys were attacking the Church, and calling upon men to methodize their lives and eliminate folly; Gibbon was writing his "Decline and Fall"; Burke, in the House of Commons, was polishing his brogue; Boswell was busy blithering about a book concerning a man; Captain Cook was sailing the seas finding continents; the two Pitts and Charles Fox were giving the king unpalatable advice; Horace Walpole was setting up his private press at Strawberry Hill; the Herschels—brother and sister—were sweeping the heavens for comets; Reynolds, West, Lawrence, Romney and Gainsborough were founding the first school of British Art; and David Hume, the Scotchman, was putting forth arguments irrefutable. And into this seething discontent came Thomas Paine, the weaver, reading, studying, thinking, talking, with nothing to lose but his reputation. He was twenty-seven years of age when he met Ben Franklin at a coffeehouse in London. Paine got his first real mental impetus from Franklin. Both were workingmen. Paine listened to Franklin one whole evening, and the said, "What he is I can at least in part become." Paine thought Franklin quite the greatest man of his time, an opinion which, among others held by him, the world now fully accepts.

* * * * *

Paine at twenty-four, from a simple weaver, had been called into the office of his employer to help straighten out the accounts. He tried storekeeping, but with indifferent success. Then it seems he was employed by the Board of Excise on a similar task. Finally he was given a position in the Excise. This position he might have held indefinitely, and been promoted in the work, for he had clerical talents which made his services valuable. But there was another theme that interested him quite as much as collecting taxes for the Government, and that was the philosophy of taxation. This was very foolish in Thomas Paine—a tax-collector should collect taxes, and not concern himself with the righteousness of the business, nor about what becomes of the money.

Paine had made note of the fact that England collected taxes from Jews, but that Jews were not allowed to vote because they were not "Christians," it being assumed that Jews were not as fit, either intellectually or morally, to pass on questions of state as members of the "Church." In Seventeen Hundred Seventy-one, in a letter to a local paper, he used the phrase, "The iniquity of taxation without representation," referring to England's treatment of the Quakers. About the same time he called attention to the fact that the Christian religion was built on the Judaic, and that the reputed founder of the established religion was a Jew and his mother a Jewess, and to deprive Jews of the right of full citizenship, simply because they did not take the same view of Jesus that others did, was a perversion of the natural rights of man. This expression, "the natural rights of man," gave offense to a certain clergyman of Thetford, who replied that man had no natural rights, only privileges—all the rights he had were those granted by the Crown. Then followed a debate at the coffeehouse, followed by a rebuke from Paine's superior officer in the Excise, ordering him to cease all political and religious controversy on penalty.

Paine felt the smart of the rebuke; he thought it was unjustifiable, in view of the fact that the excellence of his work for the Government had never been questioned. So he made a speech in a dissenting chapel explaining the situation. But explanations never explain, and his assertion that the honesty of his service had never been questioned was put out of commission the following week by the charge of smuggling. His name was dropped from the official payroll until his case could be tried, and a little later he was peremptorily discharged. The charge against him was not pressed—he was simply not wanted—and the statement by the head exciseman that a man working for the Government should not criticize the Government was pretty good logic, anyway. Paine, however, contended that all governments exist for the governed, and with the consent of the governed, and it is the duty of all good citizens to take an interest in their government, and if possible show where it can be strengthened and bettered.

It will thus be seen that Paine was forging reasons—his active brain was at work, and his sensitive spirit was writhing under a sense of personal injustice.

One of his critics—a clergyman—said that if Thomas Paine wished to preach sedition, there was plenty of room to do it outside of England. Paine followed the suggestion, and straightway sought out Franklin to ask him about going to America.

Every idea that Paine had expressed was held by Franklin and had been thought out at length. Franklin was thirty-one years older than Paine, and time had tempered his zeal, and beside that, his tongue was always well under control, and when he expressed heresy he seasoned it with a smile and a dash of wit that took the bitterness out of it. Not so Paine—he was an earnest soul, a little lacking in humor, without the adipose which is required for a diplomat.

Franklin's letters of introduction show how he admired the man—what faith he had in him—and it is now believed that Franklin advanced him money, that he might come to America.

William Cobbett says:

As my Lord Grenville has introduced the name of Edmund Burke, suffer me, my Lord, to introduce the name of a man who put this Burke to shame, who drove him off the public stage to seek shelter in the pension-list, and who is now named fifty million times where the name of the pensioned Burke is mentioned once. The cause of the American Colonies was the cause of the English Constitution, which says that no man shall be taxed without his own consent. A little cause sometimes produces a great effect; an insult offered to a man of great talent and unconquerable perseverance has in many instances produced, in the long run, most tremendous effects; and it appears to me very clear that the inexcusable insults offered to Mr. Paine while he was in the Excise in England was the real cause of the Revolution in America; for, though the nature of the cause of America was such as I have before described it, though the principles were firm in the minds of the people of that country, still it was Mr. Paine, and Mr. Paine alone, who brought those principles into action.

Paine's part in the Revolutionary War was most worthy and honorable. He shouldered a musket with the men at Valley Forge, carried messages by night through the enemy's country, acted as rear-guard for Washington's retreating army, and helped at break of day to capture Trenton, and proved his courage in various ways. As clerk, secretary, accountant and financier he did excellent service.

Of course, there had been the usual harmonious discord that will occur among men hard-pressed and over-worked, where nerve-tension finds vent at times in acrimony. But through all the nine long, weary years before the British had had enough, Paine was never censured with the same bitterness which fell upon the heads of Washington and Jefferson. Even Franklin came in for his share of blame, and it was shown that he had expended an even hundred thousand pounds in Europe, with no explanation of what he had done with the money. When called upon to give an accounting for the "yellow-dog fund," Franklin simply wrote back, "Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn." And on the suggestion of Thomas Paine, the matter was officially dropped.

Paine was a writing man—the very first American writing man—and I am humiliated when I have to acknowledge that we had to get him from England. He was the first man who ever used these words, "The American Nation," and also these, "The United States of America." Paine is the first American writer who had a literary style, and we have not had so many since but that you may count them on the fingers of one hand. Note this sample of antithesis: "There are but two natural sources of wealth—the earth and the ocean—and to lose the right to either, in our situation, is to put the other up for sale."

Here is a little tribute from Paine's pen to America which some of our boomers of boom towns might do well to use:

America has now outgrown the state of infancy. Her strength and commerce make large advances to manhood; and science in all its branches has not only blossomed, but even ripened upon the soil. The cottages as it were of yesterday have grown into villages, and the villages to cities; and while proud antiquity, like a skeleton in rags, parades the streets of other nations, their genius, as if sickened and disgusted with the phantom, comes hither for recovery. America yet inherits a large portion of her first-imported virtue. Degeneracy is here almost a useless word. Those who are conversant with Europe would be tempted to believe that even the air of the Atlantic disagrees with the constitution of foreign vices; if they survive the voyage they either expire on their arrival, or linger away with an incurable consumption. There is a happy something in the climate of America which disarms them of all their power both of infection and attraction.

Ease, fluidity, grace, imagination, energy, earnestness, mark his work. No wonder is it that Franklin said, "Others can rule, many can fight, but only Paine can write for us the English tongue." And Jefferson, himself a great writer, was constantly, for many years, sending to Paine manuscript for criticism and correction. In one letter to Paine, Jefferson adds this postscript, "You must not be too much elated and set up when I tell you my belief that you are the only writer in America who can write better than your obliged and obedient servant—Thomas Jefferson."

Paine was living in peace at Bordentown in the year Seventeen Hundred Eighty-seven. The war was ended, the last hostile Britisher had departed, and the country was awakening to prosperity. Paine rode his mettlesome old war-horse "Button," back and forth from Philadelphia, often stopping and seating himself by the roadway to write out a thought while the horse that had known the smell of powder quietly nibbled the grass. The success of Benjamin Franklin as an inventor had fired the heart of Paine. He devised a plan to utilize small explosions of gunpowder to run an engine, thus anticipating our gas and gasoline engines by nearly a hundred years. He had also planned a bridge to span the Schuylkill. Capitalists were ready to build the bridge, provided Paine could get French engineers, then the greatest in the world, to endorse his plans. So he sailed away to France, intending also to visit his parents in England, instructing his friends in Bordentown with whom he boarded, to take care of his horse, his rooms and books with all his papers, for he would be back in less than a year. He was fifty years old. It was thirteen years since he had left England, and he felt that his transplantation to a new soil had not been in vain. England had practically exiled him, but still the land of his birth called, and unseen tendrils tugged at his heart. He must again see England, even for a brief visit, and then back to America, the land that he loved and which he had helped to free.

And destiny devised that it was to be fifteen years before he was again to see his beloved "United States of America."

Arriving in France, Paine was received with honours. There was much political unrest, and the fuse was then being lighted that was to cause the explosion of Seventeen Hundred Eighty-Nine. However, of all this Paine knew little.

He met Danton, a freemason, like himself, and various other radicals. "Common Sense" and "The Crisis" had been translated into French, printed and widely distributed, and inasmuch as Paine had been a party in bringing about one revolution, and had helped carry it through to success, his counsel and advice were sought. A few short weeks in France, and Paine having secured the endorsement of the Academy for his bridge, went over to England preparatory to sailing for America.

Arriving in England, Paine found that his father had died but a short time before. His mother was living, aged ninety-one, and in full possession of her faculties. The meeting of mother and son was full of tender memories. And the mother, while not being able to follow her gifted son in all of his reasoning, yet fully sympathized with him in his efforts to increase human rights. The Quakers, while in favor of peace, are yet revolutionaries, for their policy is one of protest.

Paine visited the old Quaker church at Thetford, and there seated in the silence, wrote these words:

When we consider, for the feelings of Nature can not be dismissed, the calamities of war and the miseries it inflicts upon the human species, the thousands and tens of thousands of every age and sex who are rendered wretched by the event, surely there is something in the heart of man that calls upon him to think! Surely there is some tender chord, tuned by the hand of the Creator, that still struggles to emit in the hearing of the soul a note of sorrowing sympathy. Let it then be heard, and let man learn to feel that the true greatness of a nation is founded on principles of humanity, and not on conquest. War involves in its progress such a train of unforeseen and unsupposed circumstances, such a combination of foreign matters, that no human wisdom can calculate the end. It has but one thing certain, and that is to increase taxes. I defend the cause of the poor, of the manufacturer, of the tradesman, of the farmer, and of all those on whom the real burden of taxes fall—but above all, I defend the cause of women and children—of all humanity.

Edmund Burke, hearing of Paine's presence in England, sent for him to come to his house. Paine accepted the invitation, and Burke doubtless got a few interesting chapters of history at first hand. "It was equal to meeting Washington, and perhaps better, for Paine is more of a philosopher than his chief," wrote Burke to the elder Pitt.

Paine saw that political unrest was not confined to France—that England was in a state of evolution, and was making painful efforts to adapt herself to the progress of the times. Paine could remember a time when in England women and children were hanged for poaching; when the insane were publicly whipped, and when, if publicly expressed, a doubt concerning the truth of Scripture meant exile or to have your ears cut off.

Now he saw the old custom reversed and the nobles were bowing to the will of the people. It came to him that if the many in England could be educated, the Crown having so recently received its rebuke at the hands of the American Colonies, a great stride to the front could be made. Englishmen were talking about their rights. What are the natural rights of a man? He began to set down his thoughts on the subject. These soon extended themselves into chapters. The chapters grew into a book—a book which he hoped would peacefully do for England what "Common Sense" had done for America. This book, "The Rights of Man," was written at the same time that Mary Wollstonecraft was writing her book, "The Rights of Women."

In London, Paine made his home at the house of Thomas Rickman, a publisher. Rickman has given us an intimate glimpse into the life of the patriot, and told us among other things that Paine was five feet ten inches high, of an athletic build, and very fond of taking long walks. Among the visitors at Rickman's house who came to see Paine were Doctor Priestly, Home Tooke, Romney, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, the Duke of Portland and Mary Wollstonecraft. It seems very probable that Mrs. Wollstonecraft, as she styled herself, read to Paine parts of her book, for very much in his volume parallels hers, not only in the thought, but in actual wording. Whether he got more ideas from her than she got from him will have to be left to the higher critics. Certain it is that they were in mutual accord, and that Mrs. Wollstonecraft had read "Common Sense" and "The Rights of Man" to a purpose.

It was too much to expect that a native-born Englishman could go across the sea to British Colonies and rebel against British rule and then come back to England and escape censure. The very popularity of Paine in certain high circles centered attention on him. And Pitt, who certainly admired Paine's talents, referred to his stay in England as "indelicate."

England is the freest country on earth. It is her rule to let her orators unmuzzle their ignorance and find relief in venting grievances upon the empty air. In Hyde Park any Sunday one can hear the same sentiments for the suppression of which Chicago paid in her Haymarket massacre. Grievances expressed are half-cured, but England did not think so then. The change came about through thirty years' fight, which Paine precipitated.

The patience of England in dealing with Paine was extraordinary. Paine was right, but at the same time he was as guilty as Theodore Parker was when indicted by the State of Virginia along with Ol' John Brown.

"The Rights of Man" sold from the very start, and in a year fifty thousand copies had been called for.

Unlike his other books, this one was bringing Paine a financial return. Newspaper controversies followed, and Burke, the radical, found himself unable to go the lengths to which Paine was logically trying to force him.

Paine was in Paris, on a visit, on that memorable day which saw the fall of the Bastile. Jefferson and Adams had left France, and Paine was regarded as the authorized representative of America; in fact, he had been doing business in France for Washington. Lafayette in a moment of exultant enthusiasm gave the key of the Bastile to Paine to present to Washington, and as every American schoolboy knows, this famous key to a sad situation now hangs on its carefully guarded peg at Mount Vernon. Lafayette thought that, without the example of America, France would never have found strength to throw off the rule of kings, and so America must have the key to the detested door that was now unhinged forever.

"And to me," said Lafayette, "America without her Thomas Paine is unthinkable." The words were carried to England and there did Paine no especial good. But England was now giving Paine a living—there was a market for the product of his pen—and he was being advertised both by his loving friends and his rabid enemies.

Paine had many admirers in France, and in some ways he felt more at home there than in England. He spoke and wrote French. However, no man ever wrote well in more than one language, although he might speak intelligently in several; and the orator using a foreign tongue never reaches fluidity. "Where liberty is, there is my home," said Franklin. And Paine answered, "Where liberty is not, there is my home." The newspaper attacks had shown Paine that he had not made himself clear on all points, and like every worthy orator who considers, when too late, all the great things he intended to say, he was stung with the thought of all the brilliant things he might have said, but had not.

And so straightway he began to prepare Part Two of "The Rights of Man." The book was printed in cheap form similar to "Common Sense," and was beginning to be widely read by workingmen.

"Philosophy is all right," said Pitt, "but it should be taught to philosophical people. If this thing is kept up London will re-enact the scenes of Paris."

Many Englishmen thought the same. The official order was given, and all of Paine's books that could be found were seized and publicly used for a bonfire by the official hangman. Paine was burned in effigy in many cities, the charge being made that he was one of the men who had brought about the French Revolution. With better truth it could have been stated that he was the man, with the help of George the Third, who had brought about the American Revolution. The terms of peace made between England and the Colonies granted amnesty to Paine and his colleagues in rebellion, but his acts could not be forgotten, even though they were nominally forgiven. This new firebrand of a book was really too much, and the author got a left-handed compliment from the Premier on his literary style—books to burn!

Three French provinces nominated him to represent them in the Chamber of Deputies. He accepted the solicitations of Calais, and took his seat for that province.

He knew Danton, Mirabeau, Marat and Robespierre. Danton and Robespierre respected him, and often advised with him. Mirabeau and Marat were in turn suspicious and afraid of him. The times were feverish, and Paine, a radical at heart, here was regarded as a conservative. In America, the enemy stood out to be counted: the division was clear and sharp; but here the danger was in the hearts of the French themselves.

Paine argued that we must conquer our own spirits, and in this new birth of freedom not imitate the cruelty and harshness of royalty against which we protest. "We will kill the king, but not the man," were his words. But with all of his tact and logic he could not make his colleagues see that to abolish the kingly office, not to kill the individual, was the thing desired.

So Louis, who helped free the American Colonies, went to the block, and his enemy, Danton, a little later, did the same; Mirabeau, the boaster, had died peacefully in his bed; Robespierre, who signed the death-warrant of Paine, "to save his own head," died the death he had reserved for Paine; Marat, "the terrible dwarf," horribly honest, fearfully sincere, jealous and afraid of Paine, hinting that he was the secret emissary of England, was stabbed to his death by a woman's hand.

And amid the din, escape being impossible, and also undesirable,
Thomas Paine wrote the first part of "The Age of Reason."

The second part was written in the Luxembourg prison, under the shadow of the guillotine. But life is only a sentence of death, with an indefinite reprieve. Prison, to Paine, was not all gloom.

The jailer, Benoit, was good-natured and cherished his unwilling guests as his children. When they left for freedom or for death, he kissed them, and gave each a little ring in which was engraved the single word, "Mizpah." But finally Benoit, himself, was led away, and there was none to kiss his cheek, nor to give him a ring and cry cheerily, "Good luck, Citizen Comrade! Until we meet again!"

* * * * *

A great deal has been said by the admirers of Thomas Paine about the abuse and injustice heaped upon his name, and the prevarications concerning his life, by press and pulpit and those who profess a life of love, meekness and humility. But we should remember that all this vilification was really the tribute that mediocrity pays genius. To escape censure, one only has to move with the mob, think with the mob, do nothing that the mob does not do—then you are safe. The saviors of the world have usually been crucified between thieves, despised, forsaken, spit upon, rejected of men. In their lives they seldom had a place where they could safely lay their weary heads, and dying their bodies were either hidden in another man's tomb or else subjected to the indignities which the living man failed to survive: torn limb from limb, eyeless, headless, armless, burned and the ashes scattered or sunk in the sea.

And the peculiar thing is that most of this frightful inhumanity was the work of so-called good men, the pillars of society, the respectable element, what we are pleased to call "our first citizens," instigated by the Church that happened to be in power. Socrates poisoned; Aristides ostracized; Aristotle fleeing for his life; Jesus crucified; Paul beheaded; Peter crucified head downward; Savonarola martyred; Spinoza hunted, tracked and cursed, and an order issued that no man should speak to him nor supply him food or shelter; Bruno burned; Galileo imprisoned; Huss, Wyclif, Latimer and Tyndale used for kindling—all this in the name of religion, institutional religion, the one thing that has caused more misery, heartaches, bloodshed, war, than all other causes combined. Leo Tolstoy says, "Love, truth, compassion, service, sympathy, tenderness, exist in the hearts of men, and are the essence of religion, but try to encompass these things in an institution and you get a church—and the Church stands for and has always stood for coercion, intolerance, injustice and cruelty."

No man ever lifted up his voice or pen in a criticism against love, truth, compassion, service, sympathy and tenderness. And if he had, do you think that love, truth, compassion, service, sympathy, tenderness, would feel it necessary to go after him with stocks, chains, thumbscrews and torches?

You can not imagine it.

Then what is it goes after men who criticize the prevailing religion and shows where it can be improved upon? Why, it is hate, malice, vengeance, jealousy, injustice, intolerance, cruelty, fear.

The reason the Church does not visit upon its critics today the same cruelties that it did three hundred years ago is simply because it has not the power. Incorporate a beautiful sentiment and hire a man to preach and defend it, and then buy property and build costly buildings in which to preach your beautiful sentiment, and if the gentleman who preaches your beautiful sentiment is criticized he will fight and suppress his critics if he can. And the reason he fights his critics is not because he believes the beautiful sentiment will suffer, but because he fears losing his position, which carries with it ease, honors and food, and a parsonage and a church, tax-free.

Just as soon as the gentleman employed to defend and preach the beautiful sentiment grows fearful about the permanency of his position, and begins to have goose-flesh when a critic's name is mentioned, the beautiful sentiment evaporates out of the window, and exists only in that place forever as a name. The Church is ever a menace to all beautiful sentiments, because it is an economic institution, and the chief distributor of degrees, titles and honors.

Anything that threatens to curtail its power it is bound to oppose and suppress, if it can. Men who cease useful work, in order to devote themselves to religion, are right in the same class with women who quit work to make a business of love. Men who know history and humanity and have reasonably open minds are not surprised at the treatment visited upon Paine by the country he had so much benefited. Superstition and hallucination are really one thing, and fanaticism, which is mental obsession, easily becomes acute, and the whirling dervish runs amuck at sight of a man whose religious opinions are different from his own.

Paine got off very easy; he lived his life, and expressed himself freely to the last. Men who discover continents are destined to die in chains. That is the price they pay for the privilege of sailing on, and on, and on, and on.

Said Paine:

The moral duty of a man consists in imitating the moral goodness and beneficence of God manifested in the creation towards all creatures. That seeing as we daily do, the goodness of God to all men, it is an example calling upon all men to practise towards each other, and consequently that everything of persecution and revenge between man and man, and everything of cruelty to animals, is a violation of moral duty.

* * * * *

The pen of Paine made the sword of Washington possible. And as Paine's book, "Common Sense," broke the power of Great Britain in America, and "The Rights of Man" gave free speech and a free press to England, so did "The Age of Reason" give pause to the juggernaut of orthodoxy. Thomas Paine was the legitimate ancestor of Hosea Ballou, who founded the Universalist Church, and also of Theodore Parker, who made Unitarianism in America an intellectual torch.

Channing, Ripley, Bartol, Martineau, Frothingham, Hale, Curtis, Collyer, Swing, Thomas, Conway, Leonard, Savage—yes, even Emerson and Thoreau—were spiritual children, all, of Thomas Paine. He blazed the way and made it possible for men to preach the sweet reasonableness of reason. He was the pioneer in a jungle of superstition. Thomas Paine was the real founder of the so-called Liberal Denominations, and the business of the liberal denominations has not been to become great, powerful and popular, but to make all other denominations more liberal. So today in all so-called orthodox pulpits one can hear the ideas of Paine, Henry Frank and B. Fay Mills expounded.

JOHN KNOX

The repentance of England requireth two things: First, the expulsion of all dregs of popery and the treading under foot of all glistering beauty of vain ceremonies. Next, no power or liberty must be permitted to any, of what estate, degree or authority they be, either to live without the yoke of discipline by God's word commanded, or to alter one jot in religion which from God's mouth thou hast received. If prince, king or emperor would enterprise to change or disannul the same, that he be the reputed enemy to God, while a prince who erects idolatry must be adjudged to death. —John Knox

[Illustration: John Knox]

John Knox the Scotchman, Martin Luther the German, and John Calvin the Frenchman, were contemporaries. They constitute a trinity of strong men who profoundly influenced their times; and the epoch they made was so important that we call it "The Reformation." They form the undertow of that great tidal wave of reason and commonsense called the Italian Renaissance. And as the chief business of the Hahnemannian school of medicine was to dilute the dose of the Allopaths, and the Christian Scientists confirmed the homeopaths in a belief concerning the beauties of the blank tablet, so did Luther, Calvin and Knox neutralize the arrogance of Rome, and dilute the dose of despotism.

Knox, Luther, and Calvin were hunted men. They lived stormy, tumultuous lives, torn by plot and counterplot. Very naturally, their religion is filled with fever and fear, and their God is jealous, revengeful, harsh, arbitrary, savage—a God of wrath.

Only a bold man, rough and coarse, could have defied the reigning powers and done the work which Destiny had cut out for John Knox to do. His power lay in the hallucination that his utterances were the final expressions of truth. Had he known more he would have done less.

Life is a sequence, and we are what we are because this man lived. To the memory of John Knox we acknowledge our obligation; but we realize that for us to accept and adopt the conclusions and ideals of one who lived in such tempestuous times is no honor to ourselves, nor to him.

The Christian Church has preached five special phases of belief, as
follows: First, Religion by Definition; Second, Religion by
Submission; Third, Religion by Substitution; Fourth, Religion by
Culture; Fifth, Religion by Service.

All of these phases overlap, more or less, and the difference in sects consists simply in the amount of emphasis which is placed upon each or any particular phase. And this is largely a matter of temperament.

The Catholic Church emphasizes definition above all things. You are told the nature of evil; the Godhead, the trinity, the sacraments, the "elements" are explained, and the syllabus and catechism play most important parts. Before you are confirmed you have to memorize many definitions: little girls of ten glibly explain the difference between a mortal and a venal sin, and boys in knee-breeches discourse upon the geography of other worlds, and the state of sinners after death.

Next to Religion by Definition is Religion by Submission, and usually they go together. Persons too stupid to define can still submit. Service is not an essential, and in fact service without definition is usually regarded as hideous, "the righteousness of an unbeliever being as filthy rags." However, if it were not for the service rendered by the monks, priests and nuns, the Catholic Church could never have retained its hold upon humanity. Its schools, asylums, hospitals and houses of refuge have been its excuse for existence, and the undoing of the infidel. But service with the Catholic Church is emphasized only for the priesthood—the laity being simply asked to define, submit and pay. Culture and character are left to natural selection, and the thought that any person but a priest could have either is a very modern hypothesis. In way of Religion by Definition, Saint Paul was the great modern exponent. That the Theological Quibblers' Club existed long before his time we know full well. In fact, the chief invective of Jesus against Judaism was that it had degenerated into a mere matter of dispute concerning intricate nothings.

When Paul was brought before Gallio, the brother of Seneca, Gallio paid his respects to the same quibbling propensities against which Jesus had inveighed, by saying, "If it were a matter of wrong or of wicked villainy. O ye Jews, reason would that I should bear with you: but if they are questions about words and names and your own law, look to it yourselves; I am not minded to be a judge of these matters."

Pity and piety have nothing necessarily to do with Religion by Definition. We can all recall men of acute minds who thought themselves pious, who had bartered their souls away in order to become senior wranglers. Intellect lured them on into wordy unseemliness; their skill in forensics became a passion, and to embarrass and defeat the antagonist became the thing desired, not the pursuit of truth. They fell victims to their facility in syntax and prosody—semi- Solomons in Scriptural explanations, waxing wise in defining the difference 'twixt hyssop and myrrh.

Forty years ago no town in America was free from joint debates where the disputants would argue six nights and days together concerning vicarious salvation, baptism, regeneration, justification and the condition of unbaptized infants after death. Debates of this kind set the entire populace by the ears, and at post-office, tavern, grocery, family table, and even after the disputants had gone to bed, reasons nice, and subtleties hairsplitting were passed back and forth, until finally the party getting worsted fell back on maternal pedigrees, and epithet took the place of logic.

If the matter ended merely with the weapons of wordy warfare, it was fortunate and well, for these eyes have seen a camp-meeting where singletrees, neck-yokes, harness-tugs and scalding water augmented arguments concerning foreordination as taught by John Calvin and freewill as defined by John Knox.

Theological wrangles belong essentially to a pioneer people: an earnest, stubbornly honest people, whose lives are given over to a battle with the elements and the brute forces of Nature, always argufy.

Submission is not recognized in their formula except as a word, and their abnegation takes the form of a persistent pursuit of the thing desired, by following another trail. Such persons are always very proud, and the thing upon which they most pride themselves is their humility, and absence of pride.

"Morality comes only after physical self-preservation is secure," says Herbert Spencer, and with culture it is the same, and so the word is not in the bright lexicon of pioneers. All of their service is of the Connecticut variety—if you need things, they have them for sale. And so we get the wooden-nutmeg enterprise, and the peculiar incident of the New Haven man at the Pan-American Fair, who sold wooden nutmegs for charms and bangles. But one day, running out of wooden nutmegs, he went to a wholesale grocer and bought a bushel of the genuine ones, and these he palmed off upon the innocent and unsuspecting, until he was brought to book on the charge of false pretenses. Human service, as taught by Jesus of Nazareth, has only been tried in a very spasmodic way, except for advertising purposes. The world has now, for the first time in history, reached a point where as a vital problem the production of wealth is secondary to the question of how we shall distribute it. And so the Religion of Service is being seriously considered, and perhaps will soon be given a trial. The man who said that the number of marriages was in exact ratio to the price of corn spoke wisely. What he meant was that physical well-being directly affects all of our social relations. It is exactly the same with our religion. Economics and religion are very closely related. People in a certain physical environment have a certain religion. A tired and overworked people, enslaved as chattels or by the spirit of the times, find solace in a mournful religion, and a haven of rest hereafter— also, in the contemplation of a Hell for those who believe differently from what they do. They sing, "All Days Will Be Sunday By and By," or "Sweet Rest in Heaven." If they are oppressed by debt and mortgages that gnaw, they sing, "Jesus paid it all, yes, all the debt I owe." A warlike people whose wealth has come from conquest will shout the English National Hymn and take joy in such lines as "Confound their knavish tricks," expressed as a prayer.

The Religion of Culture flowers best in those with seven generations of New England clerical ancestry, or a carefully pruned F. F. V. family-tree. It goes with just a little and not too much C. B. & Q. and Old Colony eight per cent guaranteed, or wide ancestral acres. Most Unitarians and Episcopalians hold a caveat on culture and have character by the scruff. The Religion of Culture has a flavor of thyme and mignonette, and a gleam of old silver plate handed down as heirlooms. It means leisure, books on the shelf, well-filled woodsheds, and cellars stocked with vegetables.

It is leisurely, kindly, intelligent, gentle beautiful. The Religion of Culture is exclusive, and slips easily into social caste, which is spiritual and mental ankylosis. Its disadvantages are that to pursue culture is to frighten her far afield, and have her elude you. To strive for character is to lose it.

People who strive for health are headed for the sanatorium, for vitality plus comes only to those who do not think much about it; and likewise character is evolved best by those who forget character and lose their lives in service. Dyspeptics are people who have no faith in their digestive apparatus.

The Reformation revolved around Definition and Substitution. We escape the doom we deserve through the death of some one else. This belief in Substitution goes with an age that never doubted the beauty of capital punishment, and was worked out by men familiar with block, broadax and basket. Luther, Calvin and Knox possessed the elements of Submission, Character and Service only in rudimentary form. Substitution and Definition were their cornerstones.

* * * * *

That sturdy reformer, Martin Luther, was born in Fourteen Hundred Eighty-three. He was nine years old when Columbus turned the prow of his caravel to the West and persistently sailed on.

Luther's father was a miner—a day laborer—and the lad's childhood was grim and cheerless. He sang on the streets, and held out a ragged cap for pennies. His fine, sweet voice caught the ear of a priest, and the boy's services were used at the altar. The lad was alert, active, intelligent, ambitious. Very naturally he was educated for the priesthood. He became a monk, and evolved into a preacher of worth and power.

A prosperous and successful church always produces a class of dignitaries given over to sloth and sensuality. From a sublime idea, with a desire to benefit and to bless, the church degenerates into an institution for the distribution of honors, and an engine for punishment for all who oppose it. To Martin Luther religion was a matter of the heart, and his soul was filled with the thought of service. At the same time he had ability in the matter of definition. He began calling upon the Church to reform, and demanding that priests repent. Very naturally the priests thought it absurd for Luther to try to bring the righteous to repentance. They laughed. Later they scowled. Then they called on Doctor Luther to mend his manners, and not make the Church and himself ridiculous in the eyes of the world.

Had Luther had an eye on the main chance he would at this time have pulled in his horns, and chosen other texts, and been promoted in due course to a bishopric; for although the man was small in stature, yet he carried the crown of his head high and his chin in. What he had before simply stated he now began to prove. The small hand of authority, gloved in imitation velvet, here lifted Luther out of a position of power and honor as "District Vicar," a place that spelled promotion, and put him back as a grade school-teacher. Had the Pope been really infallible and the church authorities all-wise, they would have killed Luther, and that would 'a' been an end on 't. Leniency just then was an error in judgment. Luther set about bolstering his mental position. The more he thought about it, the more firmly convinced was he that his cause was just.

Where thinkers are, there is thought. Thinkers think anywhere, in country, village, town—in prison. Wittenberg was obscure, more than half of the students were charity boys, the professors were thin, dyseptic and glum, or fat and opinionated—all repeated the things they had been taught, save Martin Luther alone.

And on the thirty-first day of October, Fifteen Hundred Seventeen, Luther tacked upon the church-door his ninety-five theses, and offered to debate them 'gainst all the Church Fathers that could be mustered.

Trite, indeed, are the propositions now. Rome has really accepted them all, even to that one which hints that we, too, are divine in degree, just like our Elder Brother. Challenges on the church-doors of colleges were common, but coming from a semi-silenced priest, and directed at the Pope's emissary, ah! that was different. Even at that, the whole affair would have been lost in local oblivion, had not the few zealous boys who loved Luther started their two printing-presses in the cellar of the church, and worked night and day pulling proofs. The printing-presses did it! Without the typesetter, the make-ready man, and the sturdy lads who pulled the lever, Luther's voice would not have reached across the campus.

But lo! Luther was talking to the world, not to sleepy Wittenberg! Luther was requested to appear at the Vatican—more properly, the Castle Angelo. He ignored the invitation. Another summons followed. Luther went into hiding. He was arrested, tried and condemned, and sentence suspended. He was again tried, this time by the Emperor and the Electors, and again condemned. The formal sentence of death only awaited, and then for him the fagots would flare and the flames crackle.

His friends captured him, they of the printing-presses, helped by others, and bore him away to a prison where his enemies could not follow. Many a man has been thrown into prison by his enemies, but who besides Luther was so treated by his friends! Public sentiment was with him—Germany stood by him—but best of all the printers pulled the proofs, and four-page folders edited by Martin Luther went fluttering all over the world, protesting man's right to think.

So he lived out his days, did Martin Luther, on parole, under sentence of death, working, thinking, writing, printing. And over in France a serious, sober young man, keen, mentally hungry, translated one of Luther's pamphlets into French, and printed it for his school-fellows. Having printed it, he had to explain it, and next to defend it—and also his action in having printed it. The young man's name was Jean Chauvain. He spelled it "Caulvain" or "Calvain." The world knows him as John Calvin.

* * * * *

John Calvin was a Frenchman, but it is well to remember that the typical Frenchman, like the typical Irishman and his brother the Jew, exists only in the comic papers, and on the vaudeville stage. The frivolous and the mercurial were not in Calvin's make-up.

The parents of Calvin were of that same sturdy, seafaring type which produced Millet, Auguste Rodin, Jules Breton, and other simple, earnest and great souls who have done great deeds. Calvin was the true Huguenot type.

Peasant ancestry and a nearness to the soil are necessary conditions in the formation of characters who are to re-map continents, artistic or theological. The Puritan is a necessary product of his time.

However, Calvin had the advantage of one remove from actual hardship, and this evidently refined his intellect, and relieved him of world stage-fright. His father was a notary or steward in the employ of the De Mommor family. Very naturally, the boy mixed with the scions of royalty on an equal footing, for pom-pom-pull-away knows no caste, and a boy's a boy for a' that. At twelve years of age, he felt himself quite as noble as those of noble blood, and so expressed himself to his playmates. Probably they found it convenient to agree with him. Their nickname for him was, "The Accusative."

The world accepts a man at the estimate he places upon himself. There was a De Mommor lad the same age of John Calvin, and one three years older. In his studies he set them both a pace, and so correct and diligent was he that when the De Mommor lads were sent down to Paris, the tutor insisted that John Calvin should go, too, and a benefice was at once made out for him providing that he should be educated for the priesthood. Legend has it that at this time, being then fifteen years old, he admonished his parents in the way of life, and instructed them how to conduct themselves during his absence.

At eighteen he was preaching, and soon after was given a living and placed in charge of a country parish. It was about this time, when he was between nineteen and twenty years of age, that a copy of one of Luther's pamphlets fell into his hands. It was a pivotal point. Thrones were to totter, families be rent in twain, millions of minds receive a bias! This serious, sober young priest, freshly tonsured, took the pamphlet to his garret and read it. Then he set about to refute it. Luther's arguments did not so much interest Calvin as did the man himself, the man who had defied authority.

And really Calvin did not like the man: Luther's rollicking, coarse and blunt ways repelled this studious and ascetic youth. The one thing that Calvin admired in Luther was his self-reliance. Suddenly it came over Calvin that life should be religion and religion should be life, and that in the claims of the priesthood there was a deal of pretense.

In refuting Luther he grew to admire him. He resolved to eliminate the tonsure and dress in citizens' clothes. His resolution stuck, and as soon as his hair had grown out, he went home and told his father and patron that he had abandoned theology and wished to study law. And so he was sent to Orleans and placed in the office of the eminent judge, Peter de Stella.

But theology is a matter of temperament, and instead of writing briefs, Calvin began translating Luther's Bible into French. He was requested to relinquish this pastime long enough to draw up a legal opinion concerning the divorce of our old friend Henry the Eighth.

Calvin was never wrung by days of doubt nor by nights of pain. He parted from the Church without a struggle, and adopted as his motto, "If God be for us, who can be against us?"

He again began to preach. He was a duly ordained priest in good standing—technically, at least—in the Catholic Church. He had all the confidence of a sophomore—age did not wither him, nor could custom stale his infinite variety. He questioned and contradicted everybody, young or old, regardless of position. But so cleanly was the man's mode of life, so intellectual, so personally unselfish and sincere was he, that although heretics were being burned in France by twos and sevens, yet for several years no hand was laid upon him.

Finally, in spite of the De Mommors, a legal notice was served upon Calvin, signed by King Francis in person, asking him to desist, and giving him three months to get back in the theological traces, making peace with his superiors.

Calvin always had a taste for printing, and now at his own expense he translated the "De Clementia" of Seneca into French and had the book printed, dedicating it to the king. This was his brief for clemency and at the same time an argument for free speech. Seneca's father had a college of oratory, and Seneca said: "Let the people talk. If they be right the king can not be harmed; but if they be wrong they will merely hurt themselves: kings can afford to exercise clemency."

The book was really an insult to the king, since it assumed that Francis had never read Seneca. This doubtless was a fact; but Francis, instead of studying up on the old Roman, simply issued an order for the arrest of Calvin. Calvin quit Paris in hot haste, and no doubt thereby saved his head.

Doctor Servetus, a physician and learned monk from Spain, was then in Paris giving popular lectures "against Lutherism and such other similar forms of grievous error." Servetus was a "Papal Delegate"— what we would call "a revivalist." Calvin thought Servetus had him especially in mind. So he issued a challenge at long distance to debate the issues publicly. Servetus accepted the challenge, but the arrangements fell through. Calvin found refuge in Strassburg, then at Basle, being politely sent along from each place, finally reaching Geneva. He was then twenty-four years old.

At Geneva he at once made his presence felt by attempting to organize a reformed or independent Catholic Church. For this he was asked to leave, and then was expelled, living in retirement in the mountains. Two of the syndics who had brought about his expulsion died, as even syndics do, and Calvin returned, informing the populace that the death of the syndics was a punishment upon them for their lack of welcome to a good man and true.

From this time Calvin turned Geneva into a theocracy, and the city was sacred to prayer, praise and Bible study. Students flocked from all over Christendom to hear the new gospel expounded. They came from Germany, France, England and Scotland. The air was full of unrest. And among others who came out of curiosity, to study, or perhaps because they were not needed at home, was a man from Edinburgh. He was six years younger than Calvin, but very much like him in temperament.

His name was John Knox. Servetus was a rhetorician, controversialist and diplomat—gentle, considerate, gracious. He belonged to that suave and cultured type of Catholic that wins to the Church princes and people to education and wealth. He has been likened by John Morley to Cardinal Newman.

After Calvin reached Geneva he entered into a long correspondence with Doctor Servetus, and the debate which had been planned was carried on by correspondence. Servetus proposed to Calvin that the postponed debate should take place in Geneva. Calvin replied that if Servetus came to Geneva he would burn him alive.

Now, there were really many more Catholics in Switzerland than dissenters, or "Protestants," and Servetus, knowing Calvin's weakness for exaggeration, did not take his threat seriously. So Servetus journeyed by leisurely stages southward, on his way to Naples, but he never reached there. He stopped at Geneva, like other pilgrims, "to study the new religion."

Geneva was the home of free speech, and this being so, Servetus had just as good a right there as Calvin. But Calvin looked upon the coming of Servetus as a menace, and honestly thought, no doubt, that Servetus was in the personal employ of the Vatican, with intent to collect evidence against "the new faith." Calvin aroused the community into a belief that their rights were being jeopardized.

Servetus was arrested and thrown into prison. The charge was heresy—a charge that at this safe distance makes us smile. But the humor of heretics charging heretics with heresy, and demanding that they should be punished, did not dawn upon John Calvin.

Heresy is a matter of longitude and time.

The trial lasted from August until September. Calvin supplied the proof of guilt by bringing forward the many letters written him by Servetus. The prisoner did not deny the proof, but instead sought to defend his position. Calvin replied at length, and thus did the long- postponed debate take place.

The judges decided in favor of Calvin.

The next day Servetus was burned alive in the public square.

"I interceded for him," said John Calvin; "I interceded for him—I wanted him beheaded, not burned."

* * * * *

The encyclopedia records that John Knox was born at Haddington, Scotland, in the year Fifteen Hundred Five. As to the place, there is no doubt; but as for the time, Andrew Lang, after much research, places the date as Fifteen Hundred Fifteen.

Usually men, eke women, bring the date of their birth forward, but Knox with much care set his back. He justified himself in this because, when he was twenty, he was explaining the difference between truth and error with great precision, and to give the words weight he added ten years to his age, explaining to a finikin friend that at twenty he knew more than any man of thirty that could be produced. And this was doubtless true.

John Knox came of a respectable family of the middle class. He was independent, blunt, bold, coarse, with an underground village vocabulary acquired in his childhood that he never quite forgot.

At the grammar-school he was the star scholar, and at Saint Andrews quickly took front rank and set his teachers prophesying. And the peculiar part is that all of their prophecies came true, which proves for us that infant prodigies sometimes train on.

John Knox became a priest and a preacher of power before he was twenty-five. In temperament he was very much such a man as Luther, save that Luther was considerable of a joker. Luther had more common- sense than Knox, but what Knox lacked in humor he made up in learning. In fact, his love of learning was his chief weakness. He was as self-reliant as a black Angus. At twenty-six Knox made a vow that he would no longer kneel. This led to a rebuke from Cardinal Beaton, followed by the retort courteous.

About this time he met George Wishart, and the men became fast friends. Four years passed and a chapter in history was played that wrenched the stern nature of John Knox, and for once broke up the icy fastness of his heart and caused his tears to flow. That was the burning at the stake of Wishart on the campus in front of Saint Andrews.

That his Alma Mater should lend itself to such a horrible crime in the name of justice caused Knox to break forth in curses that reached the ears of those in power, and had he not fled, the Fate that overtook Wishart would have been his.

George Wishart was of Scottish birth, but had spent some time in Germany, and had caught the spirit of Luther. All accounts agree that he was a gentle and worthy character, and very moderate in his expressions. He was a teacher at Cambridge, and his first offense seems to have been that he translated the New Testament from Greek into English, without permission.

He came to Saint Andrews and gave a course of lectures, it being the custom then for colleges to "exchange pulpits." Knox attended these lectures and heard Wishart for the first time. The Catholics making a demonstration against Wishart, Knox became one of a volunteer bodyguard.

Being on familiar terms with the great men of Edinburgh, Wishart was chosen by Henry the Eighth for the very delicate errand of going to Scotland and interceding for the hand in marriage of Mary Stuart, the infant "Queen of Scots," with Edward, the infant son of our old friend. Wishart seems to have been an unwilling tool in this matter, and his action set Catholic Scotland violently against him.

Persecution pushed him on into unseemly speech, and Cardinal Beaton set the sure machinery in motion that ended in the death of this strong, earnest and simple man who had not yet reached the height of his powers.

The fires that consumed the body of George Wishart fired the heart of
John Knox, and from that hour he was the avowed foe of the papacy.

Two years later, Cardinal Beaton was assassinated by "parties unknown." But Knox, having often cheerfully referred to Beaton as "a son of Beelzebub," was accused of hatching the plot, even though he did not personally take a hand in executing it.

Shortly after the death of Beaton, Knox, believing the atmosphere had cleared, came back to Edinburgh and preached at the Castle. Soon he had quite a following, but of people who he himself says, in his "History of the Reformation," were "gluttons, wantons and licentious revelers, but who yet regularly and meekly partook of the sacrament." Knox saw plainly this peculiar paradox, that every reformer is followed and professed by lawbreakers who consider themselves just like him. These rogues who took the sacrament regularly were the cause of much annoyance to Knox, and gave excuse for many accusations against him.

Knox preached a sermon entitled, "Killing No Murder," attempting to show how, when men used their power to subjugate other men, their death becomes a blessing to every one.

The Castle was stormed by Catholics, in which a brigade of French took part. Knox and various others were taken to France, and there set to work as galley-slaves. Escaping through connivance he made his way to Geneva, attracted by the fame of Calvin.

But his heart was in Scotland, and in a year he was back once more on the heather calling upon the papal heathen to repent.

John Knox was in Geneva three different times. He was a heretic, too, and his heresy was of the same kind as that of Calvin. And as two negatives make an affirmative, so do two heretics, if they are strong enough, transform heresy into orthodoxy. To be a heretic you have to be in the minority and stand alone.

Calvin had a high regard for Knox, but they were too much alike to work together in peace. Calvin was never in England, and in fact never learned to speak English; but Knox spoke French like a native, having improved the time while in prison in France by studying the language. There were several hundred English refugees in Geneva, and Calvin appointed Knox pastor of the English church. This was in Fifteen Hundred Fifty-four, the year following the death of Servetus. Knox deprecated the death of the Papal Delegate, but looked upon it lightly, a mere necessity of the times, and "a due and just warning to the Pope and the followers of the Babylonish harlot."

When Luther was forty-two he married "Catherine the Nun," a most noble and excellent woman of about his own age, who encouraged him in his very trying position and sustained him in time of peril.

Calvin married Idalette de Bures, the widow of an Anabaptist whom he converted.

Calvin was not a lover by nature, and explained to the world that his marriage was simply a harmless necessary defi to Rome. Happily the venture proved a better scheme than he wist, and after some years, he wrote, "I would have died without the helpmeet God sent me—my wife, who never opposed me in anything." John Knox was married when thirty- eight to the winsome Marjorie Bowes, aged seventeen, the fifth child of Mary Bowes, whom he had ardently wooed in his youth. His boast to the mother that "Providence planned that you should reject me in order that I might do better," was an indelicate slant by the right oblique.

Marjorie withered in the cold, keen atmosphere of theological definition, and died in a few years.

And then Fate sent a close call for the Reformer in the daring, dashing person of Mary, Queen of Scots. Mary's mother was Mary of Guise, a French woman discreetly married to King James of Scotland. Knox always bore a terrible hatred toward Mary of Guise, and all French people for that matter, for his little term in the galleys. Hisbook, "The Monstrous Regiment of Women," had Mary Tudor, Mary of Guise, and Mary, Queen of Scots, in mind. Queen Elizabeth paid a compliment to the worth of the author by outlawing him for "his insult to virtuous womanhood."

Men who hate women are simply suffering from an overdose. Knox was a woman-hater who always had one especially attractive woman upon his list, with intent to make of her a Presbyterian. In this he was as steadfast as the leader of a colored camp-meeting.

Mary, Queen of Scots, had no more landed on Scottish soil from Catholic France than Knox fled, fearing for his head. Ere long he came back and sought a personal interview with the young queen, just turned twenty, "with intent to bring her heart to Jesus." They seemed to have talked of other themes, for "she was exceeding French and frivolous and stroked my beard when I sought to explain to her the wickedness of profane dancing."

Then Mary tried her hand at converting Knox to the "Mother Church." And as a last inducement legend has it that she offered to marry him if he would become a Catholic. Here John Knox coughed and hesitated— she was getting near his price. He was he saw the devil's tail behind her chair. He rushed from her presence, quaking with fear.

Stormy interviews followed, back up by handy epithets in which they
both proved expert. It was a pivotal point. Had John Knox married
Mary, Queen of Scots, there would have been no Presbyterian Church, no
Princeton, no Doctor McCosh, no Grover Cleveland.

On March Twentieth, Fifteen Hundred Sixty-three, the banns were read between John Knox and Margaret "Stewart," or Stuart, daughter of Lord Ochiltree, and a forebear of our own Tom Ochiltree. The young lady was two months past sixteen years old. The Queen was furious, for the girl, being of Royal blood, "should really have consulted me before renouncing her religion for this praying and braying man with long whiskers."

There was full and just cause for indignation, for although Mary was then safely wedded to Darnley, preparing to have him assassinated (and later to lose her own head), she yet regarded John Knox as her private property.

Marriage merely added another trouble to the stormy and burdened life of our great reformer. He had successfully fought the powers of Rome; the queenly daughter of Henry the Eighth, and Anne Boleyn had found him incorrigible and given him up as a hopeless case; Calvin could not tame him; but now a chit of a girl with retrousse nose, who should have been at work in a paper-box factory, led him a merry dance, and the voice that had thundered threat and defiance piped in forced assent. December strawberries, I am told, lack the expected flavor.

When Knox died, he left a widow aged twenty-five, come Michaelmas. She wore deep mourning, and so did Mary, Queen of Scots, but Mary explained that her deep veil was merely to hide her smiles.

In two years the widow married Andrew Ker, notorious for having once leveled a pistol at the Queen. The widow survived Knox just sixty-two years, and died undeceived, not realizing that she had once been wedded to a man who had shaped a great religion—one whom Carlyle, his countryman, calls the master mind of his day.

JOHN BRIGHT

I have often tried to picture to myself what famine is, but the human mind is not capable of drawing any form, any scene, that will realize the horrors of starvation. The men who made the Corn Laws are totally ignorant of what it means. The agricultural laborers know something of it in some counties, and there are some hand-loom weavers in Lancashire who know what it is. I saw the other night, late at night, a light in a cottage-window, and heard the loom busily at work, the shuttle flying rapidly. It ought to have a cheerful sound, but when it is at work near midnight, when there is care upon the brow of the workman—lest he should not be able to secure that which will maintain his wife and children—then there is a foretaste of what is meant by the word "famine."

  Oh, if these men who made the Corn Laws, if these men who step in
  between the Creator and His creatures, could for only one short
  twelvemonth—I would inflict upon them no harder punishment for
  their guilt—if they for one single twelvemonth might sit at the
  loom and throw the shuttle! I will not ask that they should have the
  rest of the evils; I will not ask that they shall be torn by the
  harrowing feelings which must exist when a beloved wife and helpless
  children are suffering the horrors which these Corn Laws have
  inflicted upon millions.
  —John Bright

[Illustration: John Bright.]

The Society of Friends—I like the phrase, don't you? The thought of having friends, and of being a friend, comes to us like a benison and a benediction. Friendship is almost a religion: the recognition in your life of the fact that to have friends you must be one is religion.

The Quakers did not educate men to preach: they simply educated them to be Friends—and live. Those who "heard the Voice" preached. Most modern preachers do not follow a Voice—they only harken to an echo. The practical test with the Quakers was whether the man heard the "Voice" or not—if so, he could preach. Men were not licensed to preach—that is quite superfluous and absurd. Those who have to listen are the only ones to decide concerning whether the speaker has heard the "Voice" or not. As it is now, we often license men to preach who can not. The ability should be the license.

For, certain it is that men who can command attention need no testimonial from a commission in lunacy. People who have lived and are living are the only ones who have a message for living men and women.

George Fox plainly saw that a paid priesthood—specialists in divinity—created a caste, a superior class that exalted the pulpit at the expense of the pew. The plan tended to suppress the pew, for all the talking was strictly ex parte. It also tended to self-deception among the clergy, for they seldom heard the other side, and in time came to believe their own statements, no matter how extravagant.

People learn to think by thinking, and to talk by talking. In explaining a theme to another, it becomes luminous to ourselves.

And so Fox foresaw, with a vision that was as beautiful as it was rare, that to educate an entire congregation you must make them all potential preachers. Then any man who rises to speak is aware that a reply may follow from his mother, his wife, his sister or his neighbor.

And so the listeners not only listened to the person speaking, but they also always harkened for the "Inner Voice" and watched for the "Light Within." In all of which method and plan dwells much plain commonsense to which the world, of necessity, will yet return.

George Fox was the son of a Leicestershire weaver, and he was himself a weaver by trade. He had thoughts and he could express them. And so he traveled and preached in the marketplaces, at crossroads, on church-steps—just the religion of friendship: simplicity, industry, directness, truth.

No priests, no liturgy, no creed, no sacraments, no titles nor degrees—a religion of friendship! You should not kill your enemy, because he is your friend who does not yet understand you. To make war on others is to make war on yourself. Do as you would be done by.

Fox had no intention of founding an organization, nor was he in competition with any other religion. Such a movement, of course, depends entirely upon the quality of the man who advocates it. George Fox had personality—character—and so people flocked to hear him speak. His plea was so earnest, so direct, so vivid, so irrefutable, that as the listeners listened, some trembled with emotion. "Quakers," a scoffer called them, and this word, flung by an unknown hoodlum, stuck like a mud-ball. The name of the particular hoodlum, like the man who fired the Alexandrian Library, still lies mired in the mud from which he formed the ball that stuck. That ball escaped the fate of the mass because it hit a great man; had the thrower thought only to have attached his name, it might have gone down the ages linked with that of greatness.

In a short time Fox found himself in troubled waters. He had offended the Catholics, Episcopalians, Presbyterians and Baptists, and to save himself and his people he finally banded them into an organization. About this time William Penn appeared (with his hat firmly on his head) and organized colonies of Quakers to go to New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The Quakers refused to accept the sacrament, claiming that no one part of life was any more holy than the rest, and that no one man was any more worthy of performing a rite than another.

Parliament then stepped in and made church attendance compulsory, the sacrament obligatory, and the protest against war and advocacy of universal peace a misdemeanor.

Those early Quakers were really people who had graduated from the Church. When the scholar graduates from school the teacher is proud, and friends send flowers and kindly congratulations. When you graduate from Church the preacher declares you are lost, and the congregation calls you bad names. Up to Sixteen Hundred Eighty-nine, things were not allowed to rest even there, for you were considered by the law to be the enemy of the State. In Sixteen Hundred Fifty-six, a thousand Quakers were in prison in England on account of their religious belief, several hundred had been hanged, a few were burned at the stake, many had their ears cut off, others were branded, and many others had their tongues bored through. But strangely enough, the number of Quakers increased. A king can't kill all his people, even if they are all wrong, and so in fear the government changed its tactics.

In Sixteen Hundred Eighty-nine came the Toleration Act, which put a stop to violent persecution, retaining merely the passive sort. The Quakers were excluded from all schools, colleges and universities, and from all right of franchise and the holding of political office; like unto the fond mother who orders her child to come into the house, and then when the child does not obey, says, "Well, stay out then!"

So the Quakers stayed out, not wishing to come in, but they had to pay tithes for support of the Established Church, whether they attended services or not. This arrangement still exists in America, only it has to be worked by indirection: instead of compelling everybody to pay for the support of the clergy, we reach the same point by allowing church property to be exempt from taxation.

Persecution having ceased, the Quakers quit proselyting and therefore ceased to grow. But the traditions remained and the sentiment of friendship of man for man remained to fertilize that wonderful year, Seventeen Hundred Seventy-six, the year that man was really discovered.

George Fox prepared the way for Susanna Wesley and her two great sons,
John and Charles.

George Fox believed and taught the equality of the sexes. He said that God's spirit might voice itself through a woman quite as readily as through a man; and it was with this thought in mind, and the example of the Quakers before her, that Susanna Wesley harkened to the Voice and spoke to the multitude. Later came little Elizabeth Fry, with a message for those in bonds, and also for those who had a fine faith in fetters, and a belief in chains and bars and gyves and the gentle ministry of the lash.

The wisdom of the paid priesthood lies in the fact that it renders a large number of men useless for anything else. Seven years in college emasculates the man. His very helplessness then makes him clutch the Church with a death-grip. He is a sailor who can not swim.

And these advocates, incapacitated by miscalled seminaries for alluseful endeavor, become defenders of the faith and prosecutors of all and each and any who fix their hearts on such simple and Godlike things as friendship and equality. Indeed, many of these advocates abjure the relationship of the sexes, tolerating woman only as a necessity, and as for themselves personally eschew her—or say they do.

The Society of Friends being essentially a Religion of Humanity, and therefore divine, regards man as the equal of woman. John Bright was always a bit boastful that one of his maternal grandparents was a Jewess who forfeited the friendship of her family by eloping with a Quaker—there is a cross for you! Joseph Bright, the father of John Bright, never voluntarily paid church-tithes. Every year the bailiff came, demanded money, was courteously refused, and proceeded to levy on goods which were carried away, duly advertised and sold at auction.

John Bright very early in life was delegated by his father to go and bid on the chattels levied upon, and this was his first introduction into business. For a time he himself paid church-tithes, but never without the protest, "I hereby pay this tax because I am obliged to; but entering my protest because I believe that this money is not to be used for either the glory of God or the benefit of man." Later, he went back to his father's plan and let the State levy.

His religion was one of friendship for humanity, and to him man was the highest expression of divinity. Also, he believed that the love of God could never even have been imagined were it not for the loves of men and women.

* * * * *

John Bright was born in Eighteen Hundred Eleven. He was the culminating flower of seven generations of Quaker ancestry. His father was a rich manufacturer at Rochdale, and being a Quaker, did not try the dubious experiment of making his children exempt from useful work in the name of education.

Be it known that John Bright had no part in that aristocratic and somewhat costly invention known as Bright's disease. This was the work of Doctor Richard Bright, a distant kinsman.

The parents of John Bright were both public speakers, and little John was an orator through prenatal tendency. A good plan for parents, or possible parents, to follow is to educate themselves in the interests of posterity, and this without asking that foolish question propounded by an Irish Member of Parliament, "What has posterity ever done for us?"

So this, then, is the recipe for educating your children: Educate yourself.

Beyond this, man inherits himself; he is both ancestor and posterity. I am today what I am because I was what I was last year; and next year I will be what I will be, because I am now what I ata. These were truths which were, very early in life, familiar to John Bright. Before he could speak without a childish lisp, his mother taught him to decide on his own actions. "I don't want to study; can't I go and wade in the brook?" once asked little John of his mother.

"Thee better go into the next room and listen for the Voice, then do as it says," answered the mother.

The boy went into the next room and soon returned, saying, "The Voice says I must study hard for half an hour and then I can go and wade in the brook."

"Very well," was the reply; "we must always obey the Voice."

At this time there was a wave of Socialism sweeping over England, originated largely by Robert Owen, a Welshman, who at the age of nineteen became manager, by divine right, of a Manchester cotton-mill. He was a man of splendid initiative, noble resources, generous impulses.

Robert Owen caught it from Josiah Wedgwood, and set out to make his cotton-mill a school as well as a factory. Among the good men he discovered and hired to teach his people was John Tyndall, one of the world's great scientists. Owen seized upon Fourier's plan of the "phalanstery"—five hundred or a thousand people living in one great palace, built in the form of a hollow square. Each family was to have separate apartments, but there would be common dining-rooms and one great laundry; certain people would be set apart to care for the children; there would be art-galleries, libraries, swimming-pools; and all these working people would have the benefits and advantages that now accrue only to the fortunate few. It was a scheme of co-operation, but Owen's people refused to co-operate—the world was not ready for it. Then Owen tried the plan in America, and founded the town of New Harmony, Indiana, which had the second public library in America, Benjamin Franklin having founded the first in Philadelphia.

Robert Owen thought he had failed, but he had not, for his ideas have enriched the world, and when we are worthy of Utopia it will be here.

John Bright's father caught it from Robert Owen, just as Owen had been exposed to Josiah Wedgwood. Great hearts never fail, no matter what occurs; even though they die, they yet live again in minds made better.

Joseph Bright had an auditorium attached to his mill, and often invited speakers to come from Liverpool or Manchester and give lectures to his people on science, travel or literature. By the time John Bright was twenty-one he was usually chosen to preside at these lectures. This, because he had learned to speak in Quaker meetings by speaking. He was quiet, simple, forceful, direct. In size he was small, but what he lacked in inches he made up in brain.

The grandfather of John Bright's mother was John Grattan, a Quaker preacher who spent five years in prison because he refused to take the oath of allegiance to the English Church. The life of Grattan descended as a precious legacy from mother to son, and all history was early made familiar to him through the teaching of this mother who passed away when the boy was eighteen. So she did not live to know the greatness of her son, but before her passing he had developed far enough so she prophesied that if ever a Friend were admitted to the Cabinet, John Bright would be that one. This prophecy, unlike so many born of the loving mother heart, came true, and this in spite of the fact that the Quakers up to this time had never had anything to do with politics.

Once John Bright was asked how he had been educated, and he replied,
"By my mother, with the help of the Rochdale Literary Society."

And it was a fact that this society, founded by Joseph and Martha Bright, that met weekly for more than thirty years, was almost a university, and served to set Rochdale apart as a city set upon a hill. This society discussed every topic of human interest, save politics and religion, boxing the compass of human knowledge. The wisdom, excellence, worth and benefit of such a society in a town is of an importance absolutely beyond compute. No religious institution can compare with it in beneficent results, carried on, as it was, by a businessman, his wife and their children, all quite incidentally! Were they not Friends, indeed?

By the process of natural selection, John Bright slipped into the place of superintendent of his father's mill, and before he was twenty-five was the actual manager. As such he had traveled considerably, making various trips to London, and also to the various cities of the Continent.

But now in his twenty-seventh year there had been a marked increase in Church-Rates, and the Church people were jubilant over the fact that the Quaker mill-owners, who never went to Church, were obliged to pay more to the support of the Church than any one else in the town. John Bright called a meeting of the Literary Society and invited all clergymen in the town to be present, and for once there was a breaking over the rules and both religion and politics were discussed. From that time to his death John Bright was a-sail upon a sea of politics. Here is a portion of that first political speech:

The vicar has published a handbill, a copy of which I hold in my hands; he quotes Scripture in favor of a rate, and a greater piece of hardihood can not be imagined, "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's," leaving out the latter part of the sentence.

I hold that to quote Scripture in defense of church-rate is the very height of presumption. The New Testament teems with passages inculcating peace, brotherly love, mutual forbearance, charity, disregard of filthy lucre, and devotedness to the welfare of our fellowmen. In the exaction of church-rates, in the seizure of the goods of the members of his flock, in the imprisonment of those who refuse to pay, in the harassing process of law and injustice in the Church courts, in the stirring-up of strife and bitterness among the parishioners—in all this a clergyman violates the precepts he is paid to preach, and affords a mournful proof of the infirmity or wickedness of human nature. Fellow townsmen, I look on an old church building—that venerable building yonder, for its antiquity gives it a venerable air—with a feeling of pain. I behold it as a witness of ages gone by, as a connecting link between this and former ages. I could look on it with a feeling of affection, did I not know that it forms the center of that source of discord with which our neighborhood has for years been afflicted, and did it not seem that genial bed wherein strife and bitter jarring were perpetually produced to spread their baneful influence over this densely peopled parish. I would that that venerable fabric were the representative of a really reformed Church—of a Church separated from the foul connection with the State—of a Church depending upon her own resources, upon the zeal of her people, upon the truthfulness of her principles, and upon the blessings of her spiritual head! Then would the Church be really free from her old vices: then would she run a career of brighter and still brightening glory: then would she unite heart and hand with her sister churches in this kingdom, in the great and glorious work of evangelizing the people of this great empire, and of every clime throughout the world. My friends, the time is coming when a State Church will be unknown in England, and it rests with you to accelerate or retard that happy consummation. I call upon you to gird yourselves for the contest which is impending, for the hour of conflict is approaching when the people of England will be arbiters of their own fate—when they will have to choose between civil and religious liberty, or the iron hoof, the mental thralldom of a hireling State priesthood. Men of Rochdale, do your duty! You know what becomes you. Maintain the great principles you profess to hold dear: unite with me in a firm resolve and under no possible circumstances will you ever again pay a tax to support a church: and whatever may await you, prove that good and bold principles can nerve the heart: and ultimately our cause, your cause, the world's cause, shall triumph gloriously.

* * * * *

Great men make room for great men. John Bright first met Richard Cobden in Eighteen Hundred Thirty-four. Bright was then twenty-three years old, while Cobden had reached the mature age of thirty. Bright regarded him as a patriarch, and called at his office in Manchester with thumping heart. Cobden looked at young Bright with his intuitive glance and concluded he wanted work. Cobden saw by his caller's clothes that he was a Quaker, and in an instant had decided to employ him.

In relating the incident, years after, Cobden said: "I was wrong in my conclusions—I thought he had come to me for work; instead, he had come to hire me. He wanted me to go over to Rochdale and lecture for his Literary Society."

When you go to a businessman and ask him to lecture, you catch him with his guard down. Cobden was complimented—he asked questions about the Bright Mill at Rochdale, and was ashamed to note that, although it was only a few miles away, he did not know of the spirit of humanity that dwelt in that particular commercial venture. The Brights were doing the very things which he was advocating—making business both a religion and an art. "My love went out to the gentle-voiced stranger," said Cobden, "and I was ashamed at my ignorance concerning the fine souls at my very door, who were actually carrying into execution the things which I had prided myself on having originated."

So Cobden went over to Rochdale to lecture, and there began that friendship between two strong men which only death could sever, and possibly even death did not—I really cannot say. But for many years Cobden was to speak at Rochdale—several times a year. Whenever he heard the Voice he went over to Rochdale and told his friends, the millworkers, what had come to him.

"When I had a big speech to make in London I always visited Rochdale and gave my message first, for the Brights had trained their audiences to think, and if they understood, I felt I could take my chances in the House of Commons."

So Bright helped to evolve Cobden, and Cobden was a prime factor in the evolution of Bright. As the years went by, these men grew to look alike, and the term "David and Jonathan" seemed a fitting phrase for them, only no one could really say which was David and which Jonathan.

* * * * *

When John Bright was twenty-eight years old he married Elizabeth Priestman, a woman near his own age, and a person, like himself, of power. It seemed an ideal mating—they loved the same things. Many plans were made, for lovers are always given to planning. There was to be a cottage in the hills, where they were to live like peasants, without servants or equipage, and there John was to write a wonderful history of civilization, and make a forecast of the future, showing how the regeneration of the world was to come by wedding ethics to business.

The plan never materialized. John and Elizabeth journeyed together for two years, and then she died and was buried in her wedding-dress, holding a spray of syringa in her stiff, blue-veined hands.

John Bright had arranged to have the funeral very simple in all its arrangements—all quite Quaker-like. He himself was going to make a little speech, telling how the Voice had said to him that death was as natural as life, and perhaps just as good, and that she who was dead had no fear of death, but greeted it as an imitation, her only care being for the living.

But John Bright did not make the speech. He held in his arms his motherless baby girl, a little over a year old, and the baby laughed and pulled his hair in childish glee, and John Bright, groping for words, found them not. He took his seat, dumb. A Quakeress arose, a worker in the mills, and made the speech which he had intended to give—perhaps she made a better one.

John Bright had only turned thirty, but he thought that life for him was then and thereafter but a blank. He did not realize that whether death is an initiation for the dead or not, it surely is for the living. To stand by an open grave and behold the sky shut down on less worth in the world is a milestone—an epoch.

A month of dumb, dragging, bitter grief followed, and Richard Cobden came up from Manchester to visit his friend. Cobden had a message for Bright. It was this: "Grief hugged to the heart is a kind of selfish joy. To live is to think, to work, to act. At this moment thousands of women and children are starving in England—absolutely perishing for lack of bread. Come with me and help remove the tax that places food out of the reach of many. Transmute grief for the dead into love for the living. Let us never rest until the Corn Laws are abolished— Come!" To dedicate himself to humanity now seemed easy for John Bright. This he did, and life took on a great, quiet sanctity, purified and refined by death.

The baby girl grew into beautiful womanhood. She is now a grandmother with children grown, and true to tradition, as became the daughter of her father, she made herself notorious for the many and famous for the few, by heading an appeal to Parliament in favor of woman suffrage. For the same cause comes Mrs. Cobden-Sanderson, daughter of Richard Cobden, and spends four months in jail for insisting that her political preferences shall be officially recorded. We do move that precious slow!

* * * * *

Bright now took up the big business of the Anti-Corn-Law League, and devoted himself to the issue, even to neglecting his private affairs. The "League" had headquarters in Manchester, and Bright was its practical head. Cobden was then making a tour of the provinces, speaking in schoolhouses, townhalls and marketplaces, endeavoring to show the folly of maintaining a tax on food. The idea was then conceived of Cobden and Bright traveling together, going into the enemy's country, and offering to debate the issue with all comers. The challenge aroused the people, and wherever the orators went, they spoke to the capacity of the hall. Cobden opened the debate, started the question in a half-hour speech, and then the meeting was thrown open for the opposition. Occasionally a man replied, often a clergyman of local oratorical reputation being put forward by the landlords.

Bright then finished him and polished him off in a way that made any further opposition impossible. Bright had certain well-defined ideas about the clergy that took with the people, and a braver man never stood on a platform. Here is a taste of his quality:

The declaration of the Church as by law established, makes me say that I believe that the Establishment has been the means of increasing individual piety and national prosperity. But individually I would ask, how comes it that England is now, as regards a vast proportion of her population, ignorant and irreligious—how is it that while the Church has had the King for its head and governor, the two Houses of Parliament to support it, and the whole influence of the aristocracy and landed gentry of the country to boot (with the advantage of being educated at Oxford and Cambridge, from which Dissenters have been shut out)—that while the Church has had millions upon millions to work upon, drawn not only from her own party, but from the property of Dissenters-I ask how comes it that England is neither a sober nor a moral country, and that vice in every shape rears its horrid front? Does it not prove that there is a radical error in the system? By the union of the people of England advantages of no trifling amount have lately been gained: the barrier of the Test Acts has been broken down; the system of parliamentary corruption has been stormed with success; and I trust the time is not far distant when the consciences of men will be no longer shackled by the restrictions of the civil power, when religious liberty will take the place of toleration, and when men will wonder that a monopoly ever existed which ordained State priests sole venders of the lore that works salvation.

The farmers were in opposition to the League, being told by the landlords that if breadstuffs were allowed to come into the United Kingdom free, the tillers of the soil would be made bankrupt.

Cobden was a ready speaker, and his knowledge of history and economics commanded respect, but Bright's oratory went to their hearts. Bright had a touch of the true Methodist fervor which won the hearer without making too much of a demand on his intellect.

Shortly after Cobden and Bright made their alliance, Cobden ran for Parliament and was elected. "The one thing that formed the pivotal point, and won the farmers, as well as the men of Manchester, was the oratory of John Bright," said Gladstone. The term "Manchester men" was flung at Cobden and Bright, and stuck. It meant that they were merely manufacturers, neither scholars nor gentlemen. Bright had modified the severity of the Quaker costume, but wore the soft, gray colors with hat to match, "because," said his enemies, "it is so effective."

Cobden being now in the House of Commons, Bright called himself "Secretary of the Exterior," and often fought the good fight alone, speaking on an average three nights a week, and the rest of the time attending to his business.

Two years after Cobden's election, Bright was obliged to purchase a suit of solemn black and a chimney-pot hat, for he, too, had been chosen a member of the House of Commons.

"Another Manchester man—I do declare, you know, it will be a convention of bagmen, yet!" remarked Sir Robert Peel, as he adjusted his monocle. Peel, however, grew to have a very wholesome respect for the Manchester men. They could neither be bribed, bought nor bullied. They had money enough to free them from temptation, and they could think on their feet. They were in the minority, but it was a minority that could not be snubbed nor subdued.

The total repeal of the Corn Laws came in Eighteen Hundred Forty-nine, but not until both Cobden and Bright had been threatened with criminal proceedings for inciting revolution. However, the ministry backed down, the new era came, and proved to be one of peace and great prosperity.

John Bright worked for humanity. To his voice, more than to any other,
Ireland owes her freedom from the "Establishment."

He struggled to free England from the clutch of the Established Church, but admitted at last that it would require time to unloose the grip of the clergy from their perquisites. Always and forever he argued and voted against war, or any increase of armament, even when he stood alone. And once he forfeited his seat for a term by going against the popular cry for blood. John Bright is a good example of a man with the study habit. Not only did he carry on a great private business, and at the same time bear heavy burdens in the management of his country's affairs, but he was always a student, always a learner, and also always a teacher. Neither he nor Richard Cobden ever divorced ethics from business, religion from work, nor life from education.

John Bright possessed a sterling honesty, a perennial good-cheer, and always and forever a tender, sympathetic heart. These things seemed to spring naturally, easily and gently from his nature; they were the habits of his life. And having acquired good habits his judgment was almost uniformly correct; his actions manly; his temper considerate; his opinion right. Private business was to John Bright a public trust. He, of all men, knew that the only way to help one's self is to help others.

During our Civil War, John Bright sided with the North, and fired his broadsides of scorn at the many in the House of Commons who hoped and prayed that the United States would no longer be united.

In Eighteen Hundred Sixty-eight, under Gladstone as Premier, Bright was chosen President of the Board of Trade, being the first Quaker to hold a Cabinet office.

John Bright was a rich man, and his life proves what riches can do when rightly used. That his example of absolute honesty and adherence to principle sets him apart as a character luminous and unique is and indictment of the times in which we live.

John Bright's energy, eloquence, purity of conduct, sincerity of purpose, his freedom from petty quarrels, his unselfishness, his lofty ideals, his noble discontent and prophetic outlook, have tinted the entire zeitgeist, and are discovering for us that Utopia is here now, if we will but have it so.

BRADLAUGH

  The Right Honorable Baronet has said there has been no word of
  recantation. The Right Honorable Baronet speaks truth. There has
  been no recantation, neither will there be. You have no right to ask
  me for any recantation. You have no right to ask me for anything. If
  I am legally disqualified, lay the case before the courts. When you
  ask me to make a statement, you are guilty of impertinence to me, of
  treason to the traditions of this House, and of impeachment of the
  liberties of the people. I beg you now, do not plunge me into a
  struggle I would shun. The law gives me no remedy if the House
  decides against me. Do not mock at the constituencies. If you place
  yourself above the law, you leave me no course save lawless
  agitation, instead of reasonable pleading. It is easy to begin such
  a strife, but none knows how it would end. You think I am an
  obnoxious man, and that I have no one on my side. If that be so,
  then the more reason that this House, grand in the strength of its
  centuries of liberty, should have now that generosity in dealing
  with one who tomorrow may be forced into a struggle for public
  opinion against it.
  —Bradlaugh to the House of Commons

[Illustration: Bradlaugh]

Thomas Paine, Robert Ingersoll and Charles Bradlaugh form a trinity of names inseparably linked. The memory of Paine was for many years covered beneath the garbage of prevarication. In order to find the man, we had to excavate for him. Happily, with the help of the Reverend Moncure D. Conway, we found him.

Ingersoll's life lies open to us, and the honest, loving, and gentle nature of the man is beyond dispute. The pious pedants who tried to traduce him were self-indicted. No one now even thinks to answer them. The man who said, "In a world where death is, there is no time to hate," needs no defense. We smile. With Bradlaugh it is the same. His biography in two volumes, by his daughter, is a very human document. The work is worthy of comparison with that most excellent book, the life of Huxley by his son.

The essence of good biography lies largely in indiscretion. This loving daughter's tribute to her father tells things which some might say do no honor to anybody. Quite true, but these are the corroborating things which inform us that the book is truth.

Charles Bradlaugh performed for England the same service that Robert Ingersoll did for America. Both presented the minority report. Through their influence the Church was able to renounce the devil and all his works.

These men were both born in the year Eighteen Hundred Thirty-three, about a month apart. In many ways they were very much alike. In physique they were heroic; both were lawyers; both were natural orators.

Bradlaugh, however, began his radical career before he was of age, while Ingersoll was nearly forty before he set aside diplomacy and ceased wooing bronchitis.

Charles Bradlaugh was the first child of a worthy clerk married to a housemaid. His father never earned more than two guineas a week. All these parents ever did for their son was to supply him with physical life, and teach him by antithesis. No trace can be found that he in any mental characteristic resembled either. Parents are evidently people who are used for a purpose by a Something.

Bradlaugh's parents were wedded to the established order, and never doubted the literal inspiration of the Scriptures. They also believed in the divine origin of the prayer-book, a measure of credulity which, although commendable, is, I believe, not required. These parents were severe, exacting, imperious—not bad nor exactly cruel—simply "consistent." They believed that man was a worm of the dust, and stood by the traditions. They believed in the dogma of total depravity and lived up to it.

A bundle of old clothes sent yearly from a rich cousin in Kent was an epoch. Sugar in the house was out of the question, and once when the rich cousin in Kent, who was an omnibus-inspector, sent a pound of brown sugar in the pocket of an old coat, the sweets suddenly vanished. Charles was accused and stubbornly denied the theft. He was then punished with the handy strap for both the denial and the larceny. Later, it turned out that a little girl next door stole the sugar, and when Charles refused to inform on her, she informed on herself. Then the boy was again whipped because he had not informed on the girl. Charles got all of the disgrace and none of the sugar.

Charles was sent to a "ragged school," and became, at the mature age of ten, so exact a penman that he almost rivaled his father, who could write the Lord's Prayer on the back of a postage-stamp. At this school, beside getting an education, Charles got pedagogic scars on his body which ten years later, when he enlisted in the army, were noted in the physical description.

The daughter of Bradlaugh has in her possession a beautiful motto from Scripture done into antique text by the lad for his mother when the boy was nine years old. All around the motto are flying birds penned in pure Spencerian. The motto is this: "Then said Joab, I may not tarry long with thee. And he took three darts in his hand and thrust them through the heart of Absalom while he was yet alive in the midst of the oak. And ten young men of Joab's smote Absalom and slew him." This was before the art of working mottoes with worsted in perforated cardboard had been perfected.

When ten years of age Charles was taken from school and hired out as an office-boy at five shillings a week, the money being paid to the father and duly used for the support of the family. It is good to see, though, that at that early day the expense-account was made to serve its legitimate use. When the boy had bundles to deliver and was given money for 'bus-fare, he walked and kept the fare. The bridge-toll was a half-penny, and by climbing aboard of a wagon this was saved. To be back on time he would run. He became an expert in catching on 'buses and riding on the axle of cabs, well out of reach of the driver's whip. With the money so saved he bought penny tracts on politics, history and religion. One day he was sent to deliver a bundle to Mark Marsden, a writer and publisher. Charles did not know the man, but in his hand, all unconsciously, he carried a tract written by Marsden. Nothing interests an author like a copy of his own amusing works. Marsden gave the boy two pats on the head, a bun, a half-crown and three penny pamphlets on political economy.

Charles went away stepping high, but his tongue was so paralyzed with surprise and joy that he forgot to thank the man. Twenty years after he remembered the transaction vividly—it was the first real human kindness that had ever come his way. He told of it, standing on the same platform with Marsden and speaking to two thousand people. Marsden had forgotten the incident—happy Marsden, who gave out love and joy as he journeyed and made no notes. This little story proves two things: That authors are not wholly bad, and that kindness to a boy is a good investment. Boys grow to be men—at least some do, and I trust it will not be denied that all men were once boys. Bradlaugh, to the day of his death, was always kind to boys. He realized that with them he was dealing with soul-stuff, and that Destiny awaited just around the corner.

When Charles was fourteen years old he had gravitated to the cashier's desk, and his pay was twelve shillings a week.

He was large for his age, and the life of the streets had sharpened his wits, so he was old for his years. He was studious and very religious, as children struggling with adolescence often are. Sundays were sacred to church, morning and evening, and the spare hours were given over to reading the lives of the martyrs. Only on weekdays did he read history or political tracts. In Sunday School he was a very promising teacher.

Then comes in one, the Reverend J. G. Packer, incumbent of Saint Peter's, who lives in history only because he entered into a quarrel with this boy.

Young Bradlaugh was preparing for confirmation; he could say the catechism backward and forward, and he also knew Bible history from Genesis to Revelation. But he could not reconcile certain portions of Bible history with our belief in an all-loving, all-wise and ever-just God. So he wrote to his pastor a long and respectful letter in precise and exact Spencerian, asking for light.

Now, the Reverend J. G. Packer regarded interrogation as proof of depravity, and straightway sent the letter to the boy's father. At the same time he suspended the youth for three months from Sunday School, denouncing him before the school as atheistical, all this in the interests of discipline. These tactics of coercion were the rule a hundred years ago, and the Reverend J. G. Packer had simply lost his reckoning as to longitude and time. There was a violent scene between father and son, and the boy being too big to chastise was simply handed a few pages of Billingsgate.

At this time Bonner's Fields was a great place for open-air meetings. The custom of public speaking in London parks still continues, and on any pleasant Sunday afternoon one can hear all kinds of orthodox and heretical vagaries defended on the turf. Young Bradlaugh took to the open-air meetings, and lifted up his voice in praise, feeling the usual stimulus and joyous uplift that goes with martyrdom. After his own orthodox service was over, he sought out the opposition and tried to silence the infidels in debate. One of these infidels, in pity for the boy's innocence and ignorance, loaned him a copy of Paine's "Age of Reason." Up to this time he had never heard of Paine. Now he began to study him, and he began by reading his life. From this he gleaned the fact that Paine had suffered for conscience sake and had been driven out of England, just as he, himself, had been driven out of the church.

The three months' suspension having expired, young Bradlaugh was invited to come back into the fold. But he did not come. He had been learning things. Paine and persecution had sharpened his mind. I do not believe that Packer drove Bradlaugh into atheism, but I do believe that he hastened the process by about twenty years. Bradlaugh did not have the quality of mind that could ever have been encysted by orthodoxy.

Boyhood was being left behind. He had joined a Free-thinkers' Club, which met at a coffeehouse kept by Mrs. Richard Carlile, who had come up to London, alone, from the country, and published a little magazine devoted to the rights of woman. She had kept up the fight for freedom for a score of years. Poverty and calumny could not subdue her. She was bordering on fifty, and spoke in the parks, to all and any who would listen, scorning to take up a collection. Her private character was beyond reproach. Indeed, her namesake, Tammas the Titan, who spelled his name in a different way, speaks of her as one "insultingly virtuous." And so the Reverend J.G. Packer discovered that young Bradlaugh was "loitering at the coffeehouse of that Jezebel, the Carlile woman." Straightway he wrote a letter to young Bradlaugh, giving him three days in which to return to the church, renouncing all infidel beliefs, or his employers would be informed of his habits, in which case his cashiership would be taken from him.

This letter was evidently the joint work of the boy's parents and the busy and unctuous clergyman. The only trouble was that their plan worked too well. The boy, believing that it meant the loss of his position, was desperate. He waited until two days had expired, and then on the morning of the third boldly resigned his position, and taking his scanty effects left home forever. Thus began that lifelong fight for freedom which ended only with his death.

* * * * *

And so we find Charles Bradlaugh absolutely severed from his parents. He used to walk up and down past the home that was once his, but his sisters were forbidden, on pain of being turned into the streets, to speak to him.

That he suffered terribly, there is no doubt; but that a fine, sustaining pride was his, is equally true. Sorrow is never quite all sorrow, and most funerals carry with them a dash of consoling satisfaction for the mourners.

Young Bradlaugh now began to concentrate on his books—he felt sure that he had a mission. He became a waiter at a coffeehouse, then a clerk, next a salesman; but the reputation of being an infidel follow him, and he could not disprove the charge. In fact, I do not think he tried to, for on Sundays he was at Hyde Park lecturing on temperance and saying unsavory things about the clergy on account of their indifference concerning the real needs of the people.

A teetotaler in England then was almost as much of a curiosity as in the days of Franklin. Young Bradlaugh seemed to possess all the heresies. He became a vegetarian, rented a room for three shillings a week, and boarded himself on sixpence a day. Cooking is a matter of approbation and emulation, and he who cooketh unto himself alone is on the road to dyspepsia.

This long, lanky youth, intent on reforming the world in the matter of food, drink and theological diet, was six feet two, and weighed exactly ninety-nine pounds in the shade. He wore a chimney-pot hat, a tight-fitting, long, black coat, and lavender spats. Fasting and study had given him a visage like the ghost in "Hamlet," and gotten him where no man would hire him.

Then it was that hunger forced him into a recruiting-office, no doubt aided by the specious argument that he wanted to teach temperance to Tommy Atkins. The recruiting-officer gazed at the apparition and sent for a surgeon. This surgeon sent for another, and both went over the skeleton, tapping, listening, prodding and counting. "All he needs is food and work," said surgeon Number One, giving the subject a final poke with his pudgy forefinger.

So Private Bradlaugh was sworn in, and that night shipped to Dublin, where uniforms were to be provided. Very naturally, the chimney-pot hat did not survive the voyage, the rim being smashed down around his neck for a 'kerchief. The clerical coat also soon looked the worse for wear; and a copy of Euclid as well as books by David Hume served for footballs.

It was hard, but all a part of life, and young Bradlaugh took his lesson. We know this because in just six months his regiment was stationed near the storied village of Donnybrook, and Bradlaugh was one of sixteen selected to attend the Fair. This committee did not got to the Fair armed with feather dusters.

Bradlaugh now weighed one hundred sixty, and had proved his prowess with the shillalah. It was the unwritten law at Donnybrook that no soldiers should be allowed to attend the Fair. The managers, however, still continued to sell tickets to soldiers, yet to keep the enterprise from being wiped out of existence, only sixteen soldiers from each regiment were allowed to attend on any single day.

Bradlaugh's reach and height saved him, and the motto, "Wherever you see a head, hit it," did not disturb him, since his headpiece was well above high-water mark.

Regular food, regular work and regular sleep did Bradlaugh a world of good. He never much believed in war, but the idea of the Government giving her male citizens a little compulsory physical training always appealed to him.

Three years of soldier life did not supply Bradlaugh any bad habits, and whether he influenced Tommy Atkins in following the straight and narrow path is still a problem.

On pleasant Sundays it was the rule that the regiment should be marched to church. On one occasion a certain clergyman had excused himself from explaining a passage of Scripture on the ground that soldiers could not understand it, anyway. This brought a letter from Private Bradlaugh, wherein he explained that particular passage to the pastor, and also revealed the fact that a soldier might know quite as much as a preacher.

The next Sunday, when the clergyman referred to the letter and in scathing tones rebuked the sender, three hundred soldiers unhooked their sabers and dropped them on the stone floor. The din broke up the service. Very shortly after, as punishment, the regiment was sent to a barracks in a region that lacked religious advantages.

In the absence of a chaplain Private Bradlaugh was allowed each Sunday to address the men "on some moral theme."

This continued until complaint was made to the home office, when there came a curt order forbidding "any public talk by Private Bradlaugh or others on the subject of politics or religion."

Bradlaugh's three years of army life held back his mental processes and allowed his body to develop. On the other hand, he had been exiled from society, so he idealized things, seeing them with the eye of imagination rather than beholding them as they actually were.

Sometimes this is well, and sometimes not. When Charles Bradlaugh, aged twenty, married Susannah Hooper, some people said it was a "lovely wedding." Miss Hooper had social station, while Bradlaugh only had prospects. The bride was handsome, vivacious, witty, pink and twenty-one.

Never was a man more beset by unkind Fate than Bradlaugh. His wife's intellect was merely a surface indication; she cared nothing for his ideals, and all of his love for truth was for her a mockery. She sought to lead him into conventional lines, to have him renounce his peculiar views and join the church. His fond dreams of educating her slid into disarrangement, and inside of a year he found himself mentally absolutely alone. Five years went by and three children had been born to them.

Bradlaugh was still preaching temperance in the parks; and as if to defy his precepts, his wife took to strong drink, so that when he returned home he often found her cared for by the neighbors, who in pity had come in to protect the children.

That peculiar English custom of women drinking at public bars helped along the work of undoing. It is a sorry tale, save for the devotion of the two girls and their brother for their father and his love for them. The mother was only a mother in name. She became a confirmed and helpless victim of alcoholism, and lingered on for some years, existing in a sanitarium or cared for by a special attendant.

* * * * *

After his marriage Bradlaugh entered a lawyer's office. He soon became head clerk to the firm. His natural ability for public speaking made him a good trial advocate, and then he had a physical ability that rendered him especially valuable where seizures were to be made or evictions effected.

The practise of law then, it seems, was not at a very high mark. Wise men nowadays try to keep out of court. They know that in a lawsuit both sides lose, also that a bad compromise is better than a good lawsuit. But forty years ago, to "have the law on him" was quite the common way of dealing with your enemy, instead of forgetting the wrong that had been done you, and leaving the man to Nemesis.

We hear of a certain case where one of Bradlaugh's clients had built a brick house on rented ground, without the legal precaution of taking a ninety-nine-year lease. Naturally, the rapacious landlord—for all landlords are rapacious, I am told—ordered the renter out at the end of the year.

The renter then demanded that the landlord should pay him for his building. This was very foolish on the part of the renter, and revealed a woeful ignorance of common law. Bradlaugh was retained and interviewed the obdurate landlord—for all landlords, I am told, are obdurate as well as rapacious. But all was in vain.

That night Bradlaugh and his client got together a hundred good men and true and carried the house away from chimney to cornerstone, leaving nothing but the cellar.

This legal move was very much like that of Robert Ingersoll, who had a railroad company lay half a mile of track through one of the streets of Peoria, between midnight and sun-up, and then let the opposing party carry the case to the courts.

Ingersoll's interest in the world of thought cost him the Governorship of the State of Illinois. Bradlaugh's interest along similar lines cost him the foremost position at the English bar. The man had presence, persistence, courage, and that rapid, ready intellect which commands respect with judge, jury and opposition. Before he was twenty-five he knew history, mythology, poetry, economics and theology in a way that few men do who spend a lifetime in research.

Public speaking opens up the mental pores as no other form of intellectual exercise does. It inspires, stimulates, and calls out the reserves. Perhaps the best result of oratory is in that it reveals a man's ignorance to himself and shows him how little he knows, thus urging him to reinforce his stores and prepare for a siege.

All this, of course, does not apply to clergymen whose efforts are purely "ex parte," and where a reply on the part of the pew is considered an offense.

Wendell Phillips advised the young oratorical aspirant to take "a course of mobs." Most certainly Bradlaugh did, and then he continued to take post-graduate courses. His Donnybrook experiences were simply prophetic.

The crowds at Hyde Park who came to hear him speak were not actuated wholly by a desire to hear the answer to Pilate's question.

Bradlaugh had his own corner in the Park where he spoke on Sunday mornings, when the weather was pleasant. At this meeting he invited replies, so the proceeding usually took the form of a debate. And he had a way of enlivening in a similar manner the service of his friends the enemy. Often the audience, for pure love of mischief, would start pushing, and two hundred hoodlums would overrun the meeting. There was no special violence about it—it is very English, you know. Occasionally it happens yet in Hyde Park, and the true London Bobby, who never sees anything he does not want to see, allows the beefeaters to crowd, jostle, and push themselves tired. It was really all very funny unless you were caught in the pushing crowd, then all you could do was to keep on your feet and go with the merry mass. But the attendance at Hyde Park meetings was increasing, and in the rough- house, at times, some one would fall and be trampled upon.

So an order was issued from Scotland Yard that all public speaking in the parks should cease between ten o'clock in the morning and two in the afternoon. This was during church hours, for church attendance had begun to fall off very perceptibly.

Bradlaugh thought the order was without due process of law—that the parks belonged to the people, and that public speaking in the open was not an abuse of the people's rights. More people than ever flocked to Hyde Park on the Sunday set for the fray. Bradlaugh arranged that a dozen or more of his colleagues should begin to speak at the same time in different parts of the park. The police began to charge and the crowds began to push. Then the police used their truncheons. Two policemen seized Bradlaugh. He politely asked them to keep their hands off, and when they did not he showed them his quality by wresting their truncheons from them, and flinging them to the cheering crowd. He then bumped the heads of the officers together, inciting riot, so ran the records.

This all sounds rather tragic, and I am sorry to believe that Bradlaugh rather enjoyed it. No one man physically was a match for him, and all men fall easy victims to their facility. The police did not succeed on this occasion in arresting him; and it seems that there was a sentiment abroad that made the Government hesitate about arresting him on a bench warrant. A few years before, and Bradlaugh would have been hanged, and there would 'a been an end on't. However, several friends of the "Cause" were locked up, and the next day Bradlaugh appeared in court to defend them. A truce was declared, without renouncing the rights of free speech, and Bradlaugh agreed, for the present, to cease holding public meetings.

The little weekly newspaper, "The Reasoner," published by Bradlaugh was paying expenses, and there was a fair demand for his intellectual wares. When he lectured in the provinces, there were the usual warnings from pastors to their flocks which served to lessen the advertising expenses of the lecture. Many of those warned not to go, of course went, just to see how bad it was. Then occasionally halls were closed against Bradlaugh on account of local pressure, and lawsuits followed, for the "Iconoclast," while not believing much in law, was yet so inconsistent as to invoke it. So all through life, when he did not have a lawsuit on hand, existence seemed tasteless and insipid. After he had lectured in a town, there was the usual theological and oratorical pyrotechnics in reply, with sermons from that indelicate text, "The fool saith in his heart, there is no God," and challenges that he should come back and fight it out. The number of people who won tuppence worth of fame by replying to Ingersoll were as naught compared to those who achieved fame by berating Bradlaugh.

In all of the opposition encountered by Ingersoll, his arguments were never met with physical violence. Halls were locked against him, newspapers denounced him, preachers thundered, but no mobs gathered to hoot him down. Neither did he ever have to excuse himself in the midst of a discourse, and go outside to stop a tin-pan serenade.

The Governor of Delaware, I believe, once notified Ingersoll that Delaware had its whipping-post ready for his benefit when he came that way. But the threat raised such a laugh that Delaware, for a time, became a national joke. Later, a committee of Delaware citizens, as if to make amends, invited Colonel Ingersoll to speak at Dover, and this he did, also addressing the State Legislature.

Bradlaugh, however, for many years encountered ancient eggs, vegetables, rocks, and pushing, jostling mobs, which on several occasions swept him off the platform, but not before a few first citizens had been tumbled pellmell into the orchestra. Let it here be repeated that the sole offense of Bradlaugh was that he opposed the Christian religion. The violence offered him was of necessity the work of Christians, or those directly influenced and instigated by them. Ingersoll's reference to the fact that the most zealous, orthodox Christian State in the Union still had its whipping-post was a turn of the argument which Bradlaugh effectively used. And so stingingly true was his statement that violence and mob-rule in England were the monopoly of organized religion, that the better element began to discourage the hot-headed communicants instead of urging them on. So, by Eighteen Hundred Seventy-six, Bradlaugh lectured throughout the United Kingdom to large audiences of highly cultured people, who came and gladly paid admission to hear him speak. Newspapers that had tried either to smother him with silence or else denounce him without reason began to report his speeches. Of course there was a little unkind comment, too, but this became less frequent, and was mostly the work of insignificant journals. One semi-religious paper of very small caliber, in a suburb of London, where he lived, published a "roast" that is worth repeating. It runs as follows:

We have in our midst the very Corypheus of infidelity, a compeer of Holyoake, a man who thinks no more of the Bible than if it were an old ballad—Colenso is a babe to him. This is a mighty man of valor, I assure you—a very Goliath in his way. He used to go starring it in the provinces, itinerating as a tuppenny lecturer on Tom Paine. He has occasionally appeared in our Lecture-Hall. He, too, as well as other conjurers, has thrown dust in our eyes and has made the platform reel beneath the superincumbent weight of his balderdash and blasphemy. The house he lives in is a sort of "Voltaire Villa." The man and his "squaw" occupy it, united by a bond unblessed by priest or parson. But that has an advantage: it will enable him to turn his squaw out to grass, like his friend Charles Dickens, when he feels tired of her, unawed by either the ghost or the successor of Sir Cresswell Cresswell. Not having any particular scruples of conscience about the Lord's Day, the gentleman worships the God of Nature in his own way. He thinks "ratting" on a Sunday with a good Scotch terrier is better than the "ranting" of a good Scotch divine— for the Presbyterian element has latterly made its appearance among us. Like the homeopathic doctor described in the sketch, this gentleman combines a variety of professions "rolled into one." In the provinces he is a star of the first magnitude, known by the name of Moses Scoffer; in the city a myth known to his pals as Swear 'Em Charley; and in our neighborhood he is a cipher—incog., but perfectly understood. He contrives to eke out a tolerable livelihood: I should say that his provincial blasphemies and his city practise bring him a clear five hundred pounds a year at the least. But is it not the wages of iniquity? He has a few followers here, but only a few. He has recently done a very silly act; for he has, all at once, converted "Voltaire Villa" into a glass house, and the whole neighborhood can now see into the wigwam, where he dwells in true Red Indian fashion with his squaw.

Had this clumsy libel appeared anywhere else than in a paper circulated in the immediate neighborhood of his home, probably Bradlaugh would have paid no attention to it. Other things quite as bad had been said about him; but this time he simply put on his hat and called on the writer, the Reverend Hugh McSorley. Just what happened Bradlaugh never told, and about it McSorley was singularly silent. It is feared, however, that at that time Bradlaugh had not quite gotten rid of all his Christian virtues.

He carried a rattan cane, and his daughters thought that he went to see McSorley with no intent of breaking the Bible injunction to spare the rod. This we know, that the Reverend Mr. McSorley linked his name with that of the Reverend J. G. Packer, and that McSorley's friends paid Bradlaugh five hundred pounds, which money was promptly turned over by Bradlaugh to the "Masonic Home" and "The Working-Men's Relief," two charities that Bradlaugh ever remembered when he realized on libel-suits. In the next issue of McSorley's paper appeared the following apology:

The editor and proprietor of this newspaper desires to express his extreme pain that the columns of a journal which has never before been made the vehicle for reflection on private character should, partly by inadvertence, and partly by a too-unhesitating reliance on the authority and good faith of others, have contained a mischievous and unfounded libel upon Mr. Charles Bradlaugh.

That Mr. Bradlaugh holds, and fearlessly expounds, theological opinions entirely opposed to those of the editor and the majority of our readers, is undoubtedly true, and Mr. Bradlaugh can not and does not complain that his name is associated with Colenso, Holyoake or Paine; but that he has offensively intruded those opinions in our lecture-hall is not true. That his ordinary language on the platform is balderdash and blasphemy is not true. That he makes a practise of openly desecrating the Sabbath is not true. That he is known by the name of Moses Scoffer, or Swear 'Em Charley, is not true. Nor is there any foundation for the sneer as to his city practise, or for the insinuations made against his conduct or character as a scholar and a gentleman.

While making this atonement to Mr. Bradlaugh, the editor must express his unfeigned sorrow that the name of Mrs. Bradlaugh should have been introduced into the article in question, accompanied by a suggestion calculated to wound her in the most vital part, conveying as it does a reflection upon her honor and fair fame as a woman and a wife. Mrs. Bradlaugh is too well known and too much respected to suffer by such a calumny; but for the pain so heedlessly given to a sensitive and delicate nature the editor offers this expression of his profound and sincere regret.

When Bradlaugh was forty-one years of age he met Annie Besant. This was in Eighteen Hundred Seventy-four, and a friendship grew up between them that was of great benefit to both. Mrs. Besant was a woman of much power, a clear, logical thinker, and a fluent and eloquent public speaker. Her influence upon Bradlaugh was marked. After meeting her, much of the storm and stress seemed to leave his nature, and he acquired a poise and peace he had never before known.

They entered into a business partnership and together published the "National Reformer." The exceptional quality of Mrs. Besant's mind raised the status of the paper. Charles Bradlaugh and Annie Besant were influencing their times, and were being influenced by their times. Once they talked to mobs, now they had audiences.

It was through Mrs. Besant's influence that Bradlaugh was nominated for Parliament in Northampton. Three successive elections he ran, and was defeated, each defeat, however, being by a smaller majority than before. Mrs. Besant campaigned the district and certainly introduced a new element into politics. "I can not vote," she said, "but I trust I can use a woman's privilege and influence men concerning the use of the ballot for truth and right."

In Eighteen Hundred Eighty, Bradlaugh was elected with Mr. Labouchere, whose views as to theology and the Established Church were one with Bradlaugh's.

"Labby" took the oath quite as a matter of course, just as atheists everywhere kiss the book in courts, it being to them but an antique form of affirming that what they say will be truth. Had Bradlaugh followed Labouchere's example, the most important chapter of his life would not have been written. Bradlaugh asked that he be allowed to affirm his allegiance, instead of making oath. Here the House of Commons blundered, for if as a body it had given assent, that would have made the request of Bradlaugh quite incidental and trivial. Instead, the House made a mountain out of a molehill, by refusing the request and appointing a select committee of seventeen members to consider the matter. They called Bradlaugh before them and interrogated him at length as to his belief in a Supreme Being and a life after death. Then they voted, and the ballot stood eight to eight. The chairman, a large white barn-owl, gave the casting vote, declining to accept the affirmation. The matter was reported to the House, and the action duly confirmed. Bradlaugh then, on advice of Labouchere, notified the House that he was willing to accept the regulation oath, all in the interests of amity, it being of course understood that his religious views had not changed. Bradlaugh thought, of course, that this would end the matter, his view being that he had fully receded from his former position, and was conforming to the pleasure of his colleagues in accepting the regulation oath. To his surprise, however, when he approached the bar to take the oath, Gladstone arose and remonstrated against administering the oath to a man who had publicly disavowed his belief in a Supreme Being, and moved that the question be referred to a select committee.

Here was a new and unexpected issue. The ayes had it. A committee, consisting of the suggestive number of twenty-three, examined Bradlaugh at length and finally reported against allowing him to take the oath, but recommended that he be allowed to affirm at his own legal risk. The suggestion was promptly voted down, to the eternal discredit of Gladstone, who led the opposition, and was bent on keeping the "infidel" out of Parliament. During the conflict, the character, high endowments, and personal worth of Bradlaugh were never officially challenged—it was just his lack of religious belief. The matter was fast becoming a national issue, and Churchwomen without number were canvassing all England with petitions asking Parliament to remember that England was a Christian nation.

Bradlaugh was down and out, legally, but he presented himself again at the bar, showed his election credentials, and demanded that the oath be administered. He was arrested as an intruder on motion of Sir Stafford Northcote, but was immediately released, as it was seen he was going to meet violence with violence.

Gladstone here came in with a very sharp bit of practise. He introduced a resolution that "any member shall be allowed to affirm or to take oath, at his own legal peril."

Bradlaugh here fell an easy prey, and at once affirmed, and took his seat, when he was straightway arrested on a warrant for violation of the rules of the House, which ordained that no man should take official part in Parliament who had not taken the oath.

This transferred the case to the criminal courts, where the case was tried and Bradlaugh found guilty. This legally vacated his seat. The Church folks were jubilant, and Gladstone received many congratulations from men with collars buttoned behind, on having disposed of the infidel Bradlaugh.

But the matter was not yet settled. Northampton had another election, and Bradlaugh was again elected.

Again he presented himself at the bar of the House and asked to be sworn. The House, however, would not accept either his oath or his affirmation, and asked for time to consider. In the meantime, writs were issued to "show cause," demurrers filled the air, and the mandamus grew gross through lack of exercise.

Four months passed, and the House making no move, Bradlaugh endeavored to appear and address the members on his own behalf. He was ordered to leave. But he demanded "English fair play." He said: "I have been elected a member of the House of Commons, you do not contest my election, neither do you declare my seat vacant. I ask to be allowed either to take the oath or to affirm, whichever you choose, but so far you allow me to do neither. In justice to my constituents I am here to stay."

The order was given that he be removed, and then occurred a scene such as had never occurred in the House before, and probably never will occur again. Four messengers attempted to seize Bradlaugh. He flung them from him as though they were children. They stood about him attempting to get a hold upon him, menacing him. The police were called and ten of them made a rush at the man. Benches were torn up, tables upset, and the mass of fifteen men went down in a heap. Bradlaugh's clothing was literally torn into shreds, and his face was bruised and bloody when after ten minutes' battle he was overpowered and carried outside. No attempt was made to arrest him: he was simply put out and the gates locked. The crowd in the street would have overrun the place in an instant, had not Mrs. Besant, who stood outside, motioned them back. They had put him out, but the end was not yet. Things done in violence have to be done over again.

Bradlaugh was elected for the third time. Again he presented himself at the House, and on refusal to administer the oath he administered it himself. He was arrested for blasphemy, and charges of circulating atheistic literature were brought in various courts. The endeavor was to enmesh him in legal coils and break his spirit. Where then was the English spirit of fair play!

But public opinion was crystallizing, society was waking up, and a rapidly growing conviction was springing into being that, aside from the injustice to Bradlaugh himself, the House of Commons was unfair to Northampton in not allowing the borough to be represented by the man they so persistently sent. "An affirmation bill" was introduced in the House and voted down.

Again Bradlaugh was elected. On his sixth election Bradlaugh presented himself as usual at the bar, and this time, on the order of Speaker Peel, who had been elected on this very issue, Bradlaugh's oath was accepted, and he took his seat. The opposition was dumb. Bradlaugh had won.

He promptly introduced an affirmation bill which became a law without any opposition worth the name. Bradlaugh's crowning achievement is that he fixed in English law the truth that the affirmation of a man who does not believe in a Supreme Being is just as good as the oath of one who does.

During the Bradlaugh struggle, John Morley, the free-thinker, was a member of the House of commons, having taken the regulation oath and been accepted without quibble. Morley constantly used his influence with Labouchere in Bradlaugh's behalf, but for five years he was blocked by Gladstone.

However, John Morley is now a member of the Cabinet. Gladstone is dead. In January, Eighteen Hundred Ninety-one, when it was known that Bradlaugh was dying, a resolution was introduced and passed by the House of Commons, expunging from the records all references to Bradlaugh having been expelled or debarred from his seat. Gladstone, the chief figure in the expulsion and disbarment, favored the resolution.

When the dying man was told this, he said: "Give them my greetings—I am grateful. I have forgiven it all, and would have forgotten it, save for this." Here he paused, and was silent. After some moments, he opened his eyes, half-smiled, and motioning to Labouchere to come close, whispered: "But, Labby, the past can not be wiped out by a resolution of Parliament. The moving finger writes, and having writ, moves on, nor all your tears shall blot a line of it."

THEODORE PARKER

  He tells of the rhodora, the club-moss, the blooming clover, not of
  the hibiscus and the asphodel. He knows the bumblebee, the
  blackbird, the bat and the wren. He illustrates his high thought by
  common things out of our plain New England life: the meeting of the
  church, the Sunday-School, the dancing-school, a huckleberry party,
  the boys and girls hastening home from school, the youth in the shop
  beginning an unconscious courtship with his unheeding customer, the
  farmers about their work in the fields, the bustling trader in the
  city, the cattle, the new hay, the voters at a town meeting, the
  village brawler in a tavern full of tipsy riot, the conservative who
  thinks the nation is lost if his ticket chances to miscarry, the
  bigot worshiping the knot-hole through which a dusty beam of light
  has looked in upon the darkness, the radical who declares that
  nothing is good if established, and the patent reformer who screams
  in your unwilling ears that he can finish the world with a single
  touch—and out of all these he makes his poetry, or illustrates his
  philosophy.
  —Theodore Parser's Lecture on Emerson

[Illustration: Theodore Parker]

Among wild animals, members of each species look alike. Horses, wolves, deer, cattle, quails, prairie-chickens, rabbits—think it over!

Breeds in birds and animals are formed by taking individual peculiarities and repeating them through artificial selection until that which was once peculiar and unique becomes common. White pigeons are simply albinos. But all breeds in time "run out" and form a type, just as a dozen kinds of pigeons in a loft will in a few years degenerate into a flock, where all the members so closely resemble each other that you can not tell one from another.

A religious denomination or a political party is a breed. When it is new it has marks of individuality; it means something. In a few years it reverts to type. Political parties grown old are all equally bad. They begin as radical and end as conservative. That which began in virtue is undone through profligacy. Among successful religions there is no choice—they all have a dash of lavender.

When the man who founded the party, or upon whose name, fame and influence the party was founded, dies, the many who belong to it are tinted by the whims and notions of Thomas, Richard and Henry, and it reverts to type.

Only very strong and self-reliant characters form sects. Moses founded a denomination which has been kept marvelously pure by persecution, and healthy by constant migration. Jesus broke away from this sect and became an independent preacher. Naturally he was killed, for up to very recent times all independent preachers were killed, and quickly. Paul took up the teachings of Jesus and interpreted them, and by his own strong personality founded a religion. Paul was crucified, too, head downward, and his death was really more dramatic than that of his chief, but there was a lack of literary men to record it.

So we get the religion of Christ interpreted by Paul, and finally viseed and launched by a Roman Emperor. Now, countries are this or that, because the reigning ruler is. This must be so where there is a state religion and forth thousand priests look to the king for their pay-envelope and immunity from all taxation. Henry the Eighth and his daughter Elizabeth decreed that England should be Protestant. They gave the Catholic clergy the choice of resigning their livings or swearing allegiance to the new faith. Only seventy-nine out of ten thousand dropped out. If Mary Tudor and Mary Stuart had succeeded politically, England would today have been Catholic. The many have no belief of any kind: they simply accept some one's else belief.

When Constantine professed Christianity, every pagan temple in Rome became a Christian Church. Had Constantine been circumcised, instead of baptized, all the pagan temples would have become synagogues, and every priest a rabbi. They do say it was a Christian woman who influenced Constantine in favor of Christianity, If so, it is neither remarkable nor strange. Constantine made the labarum the battle-flag of Rome. "By this sign I conquer." And he did. So we get the religion of Jesus, siphoned through the personality of Paul, fused with paganism, and paganism being the stronger tendency, the whole fabric reverts to type.

We loose the pouter, the tumbler is forgot, and we get slaty-gray men and women ruled by ruffed Jacobins.

* * * * *

Christianity is one thing; the religion of the Christ is another. Christianity is a river into which has flowed thousands upon thousands of streams, springs, brooks and rills, as well as the sewage of the cities. In the main it traces to pagan Rome, united with the cool, rapid-running Rhone of classic Greece. But the waters of placidly flowing Judaism, paralleling it, have always seeped through, and the fact that more than half of all Christianity prays to a Jewess, and that both Jesus and Paul were Jews, should not be forgotten.

The blood of all the martyrs, rebels and revolters who have attempted to turn the current of this river has tinted its waters. That its ultimate end is irrigation, and not transportation, is everywhere evident.

To keep religion a muddy, polluted, pestilential river, instead of allowing it to resolve itself into a million irrigating-ditches, has been the fight of the centuries. The trouble is that irrigation is not an end—it is just a beginning. Irrigation means constant and increasing effort, and priests and preachers have never prayed, "Give us this day our daily work." Their desire has been to be carried—to float with the tide, and he who floats is being carried downstream. Men who have tried to tap the stream and divert its waters to parched pastures have usually been caught and drowned in its depths. And this is what you call history.

All new religions have their beginning in exactly this way: they are streams diverted from the parent waters. And the quality and influence of the new religion depend upon the depth of the new channel, its current, and the territory it traverses.

As before stated, most of the rebels were quickly caught, Moses rebelled from the religion of Egypt; Jesus rebelled from the religion of Moses; Paul rebelled from Judaism, adopted the name and led the little following of the martyred Savior; Constantine seized the name and good-will, and destroyed rebellion and competition by a master stroke of fusion—when you can not successfully fight a thing, all is not lost, you can still embrace it; Savonarola was an unsuccessful rebel from Constantine's composite religion; Luther, Calvin and Knox successfully rebelled; Henry the Eighth defied the Catholic Church for reasons of his own and broke from it; Methodism and Congregationalism broke from both the canal of John Knox and that of Queen Elizabeth and her lamented father; Unitarianism in New England was a revolt from the rule of the Congregational Church, and Emerson and Theodore Parker were rebels from Unitarianism.

Emerson and Parker were irrigators. They gave the water to the land, instead of trying to keep it for a fishpond. Neither one ever ordered the populace to cut bait or fall in and drown. As a result we are enriched with the flowers and fruits of their energies; they bequeathed to us something more than a threat and a promise—they gave us the broad pastures, the meadows, the fertile fields, and the lofty trees with their refreshing shade.

* * * * *

Theodore Parker was the first of his kind in America—an independent, single-handed, theological fighter—a preacher without a denomination, dictated to by no bishop, governed by no machine. He has had many imitators, and a few successors. The number will increase as the days go by. Parker was a piece of ecclesiastical nebulae thrown off by the Unitarian denomination, moving through space in its orbit towards oblivion, the end of all religions, where one childless god presides, Silence. The destiny of all religions is to die and fertilize others. It is yet too soon to say what man's final religion will be.

Parker's business was not to start a new world; rather, it was to collide with old, reeling, wobbling worlds, break them into pieces, and send these pieces spinning through space.

For fourteen years Theodore Parker spoke at Music-Hall, Boston, every Sunday, to congregations that varied from a thousand to three thousand, the capacity of the auditorium. During these years he was the dominating intellectual factor of Boston, if not all New England. People went to Boston, for hundreds of miles, just to hear Parker, as they went to Brooklyn to hear Beecher. And as for many people, Plymouth Church and Beecher were Brooklyn, so to others Music-Hall and Parker were Boston.

Churchianity can only be disintegrated by the slow process of erosion. Joseph Parker's work in London tended to make all English clergymen who desired freedom, free. For over twenty years he preached every Thursday noon, and often twice on Sunday. No topic of vital human interest escaped him. He was a self-appointed censor and critic— sharp, vigilant, alert, yet commending as well as protesting. The two Parkers, one in America and one in England, made epochs. In point of time Theodore Parker comes first, and his discourses were keyed to a higher strain. Less theatrical than his gifted namesake, not so fluid nor so picturesque, his thought reduced to black and white reads better. What Theodore Parker said can be analyzed, parsed, taken apart. He always had a motif and his verb fetches up. He said things.

His best successor was David Swing, a man so great that the Presbyterian Church did not need him. Gentle, deliberate, homely, lovable, eloquent—David Swing was made free by those who had not the ability to appreciate him, and of course knew not what they did. You keep freedom by giving it away. Swing swung wide the gates that the captives might go free. Truly was it said of him that he liberalized every denomination in the West. Contemporary with Swing was Hiram W. Thomas, the door of the Methodist cage opening for him, because he believed in the divinity of everybody. Thomas believed even in the goodness of bad people. Swing and Thomas prepared the way, and are the prototypes of these modern saints: Felix Adler, Minot Savage, Brand Whitlock, B. Fay Mills, Rabbi Fleischer, M. M. Mangasarian, Henry Frank, Thomas Osborne, John Worthy, Ben Lindsey, Margaret Lagrange, Levi M. Powers, John E. Roberts, Winifred Sackville Stoner, Sam Alschuler, Katharine Tingley, James A. Burns, Jacob Beilhart, McIvor Tyndall, and all the other radiant rationalists in ordinary who gratify the messianic instinct of their particular group.

It is the unexpected that happens. One of the peculiar, unlooked-for results of independent preaching was to evolve the sensational preacher, who, clinging like a barnacle to orthodoxy, sought to meet the competition of the independent by flaunting a frankness designed to deceive the unwary. This species announced on blackboards and in the public prints that he would preach to "Men Only," or "Women Only," and his subjects were "Girls, Nice and Naughty," "Baldheads, Billboards and Bullheads," "Should Women Propose?" "Love, Courtship and Marriage," "Lums, Tums and Bums," "The Eight Johns," "The Late Mrs. Potiphar," or some other subject savoring of the salacious.

The Reverend T. DeWitt Talmage was the high priest of all sensational preachers. He was without the phosphorus to attract an audience of intellectual people, but he did draw great crowds who came out of curiosity to see the gyroscopic gyrations. Talmage never ventured far from shore, and he of all men knew that while the mob would forgive vulgarity—in fact, really enjoyed it—unsoundness of doctrine was to it a hissing. Orthodoxy is very tolerant—it forgives everything but truth. Every fetish of the superstitious and cringing mind, Talmage repeated over and over in varying phrase. He was the antithesis of an independent, exactly as Spurgeon was. It is the fate of every man who lives above the law to be hailed as brother by some of those who are genuine lawbreakers.

Talmage thought he was an independent, but he was independent in nothing but oratorical gymnastics. Talmage spawned a large theological brood who barnstorm the provinces as independent evangelists. These base, bawling, baseball ranters, who have gotten their pulpit manners from the bleachers, do little beyond deepening superstition, pandering to the ignorance of the mob, holding progress back, and securing unto themselves much moneys. They mark the degeneration of a dying religion, that is kept alive by frequent injections of sensationalism. Light awaits them just beyond.

Theodore Parker drew immense audiences, not because he pandered to the many, but because he deferred to none. He challenged the moss-covered beliefs of all denominations, and spoke with an inward self-reliance, up to that time, unknown in a single pulpit of America.

* * * * *

In the year Eighteen Hundred Ten, Lincoln, Darwin, Tennyson,
Gladstone, Elizabeth Browning, Mary Cowden Clarke, Felix Mendelssohn,
Edgar Allan Poe, Oliver Wendell Holmes and Cyrus McCormick were each
and all a year old.

The parents of Theodore Parker had been married twenty-six years, and been blessed with ten children, the eldest, twenty-five years old, and the youngest five, when Theodore persistently forced his presence upon them. Of course, no one suspected at the time that it was Theodore Parker, but "Theodore" was the name they gave him, meaning, "One sent from God." That this implied no disrespect to the other members of the family can be safely assumed.

The Old-World plan of making the eldest son the heir was based upon the theory that the firstborn possessed more power and vitality than the rest. The fact that all of Theodore Parker's brothers and sisters occupy reserved seats in oblivion, and he alone of the brood arrived, affords basis for an argument which married couples of discreet years may build upon if they wish.

Theodore Parker was born in the same old farmhouse where his father was born, three miles from the village of Lexington. The house has now disappeared, but the site is marked with a bronze tablet set in a granite slab, and is a place of pilgrimage to many who love their historic New England.

The house was on a hillside overlooking the valley, pleasant for situation. Above and beyond were great jutting boulders, over which the lad early learned to scramble. There he played I-Spy with his sisters, his brothers regarding themselves as in another class, so that he grew up a girl-boy, and picked flowers instead of killing snakes.

The coming of Spring is always a delight to country children, and it was a delight that Theodore Parker never outgrew. In many of his sermons he refers to the slow melting of the snow, and the children's search for the first Spring flowers that trustingly pushed their way up through the encrusted leaves on the south side of rotting logs. Then a little later came the violets, blue and white, anemones, sweet- william, columbine and saxifrage. In the State House at Boston the visitor may see a musket bearing a card reading thus: "This firearm was used by Captain John Parker in the Battle of Lexington, April 19, 1775." Then just beneath this is another musket and its card reads: "Captured in the War for Independence by Captain John Parker at Lexington. Presented by Theodore Parker." These two guns were upon the walls of Theodore Parker's library for over thirty years. And of nothing pertaining to his life was he so proud as that of the war record of his grandfather. When little Theodore was four years of age his sisters would stand him on a chair and ask, "What did grandpa say to the soldiers?" And the chubby cherub in linsey-woolsey dress would repeat in a single mouthful, "Do not fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war let it begin here!"

John Parker, son of the man who captured the first British musket in the War of the Revolution, lacked the proverbial New England thrift. Instead of looking after his crops and flocks and herds, he preferred to putter around a little carpenter-shop attached to the barn, and make boats and curious windmills, and discuss that wonderful day of the Nineteenth of April, Seventeen Hundred Seventy-five, when he was fourteen years old, and had begged to try just one shot from his father's flintlock at the straggling British, who had innocently stirred up such a hornets' nest.

That storied twenty-mile march from Boston to Concord was mapped, re- mapped, discussed and explained, and is still being explained and wondered at by descendants of the embattled farmers.

All of which is beautiful and well; and he who cavils concerning it, let his name be anathema. But the actual fact is that, instead of the War of the Revolution beginning at Lexington, it began several years before at Mecklenburg, North Carolina, where the mountaineers arose in revolt against laws made in London and in the making of which they had no part. There at Mecklenburg over two hundred Americans were killed by British troops, while the "massacre" at Lexington cost the Colonists just seven lives.

And the moral seems to be this: Parties about to perform heroic deeds would do well to choose a place where poets, essayists and historians abound. It was Emerson who fired the shot heard 'round the world.

* * * * *

All good writing men exercise their privilege to use that little Pliocene pleasantry about the boy who is not strong enough to work being educated for a preacher. We are apt to overlook the fact, however, that the boy not strong enough to work is often the only one who desires an education—all of this according to Emerson's Law of Compensation.

Theodore Parker in his youth was slight, slender and sickly, but he had a great hunger for knowledge. Those who have brawn use it, those without fall back on brain—sometimes.

It can not be said that Theodore Parker's parents set him apart for the ministry: he set himself apart and got his education in spite of them. At fifteen, he once created a small seismic disturbance by announcing to the family at supper, "I entered Harvard College today."

This educational move was scouted and flouted, and the fact pointed to that there was not enough money in the ginger-jar to keep him at Cambridge a week. And then the boy explained that he was going to borrow books and do his studying at home. He had passed the examinations and been duly admitted to the freshman class.

Let the fact stand that Theodore Parker kept up his studies for four years, and would have been entitled to his degree had he not been a non-resident. In Eighteen Hundred Forty, when Parker was thirty years of age, Harvard voted him the honorary degree of A.M. This was well, but if a little delay had occurred Parker would not have been so honored, and as it was, it was suggested by several worthy persons that the degree should be taken away without anesthetics. Both Parker and Emerson seriously offended their Alma Mater and were practically repudiated.

When eighteen years old Theodore Parker was a fairly prosperous pedagogue, and at twenty had saved up enough money to go to Harvard Divinity School.

Here he was very studious, and his skill in Greek and Latin made the professors in dead languages feel to see that their laurels were in place. Everybody prophesied that the Parker boy would be a great man— possibly a college professor! Theodore was passing through the realistic age when every detail must be carefully put in the picture. He was painstaking as to tenses, conscientious as to the ablative, and had scruples concerning the King James version of Deuteronomy. About the same time he fell in love—very much in love. Some one has said that an Irishman in love is like Vesuvius in a state of eruption. A theological student in love is like a boy with the hives. Theodore thought that all Cambridge was interested in his private affairs, so he wrote to this one and that advising them of the engagement, but cautioning secrecy, the object of secrecy in such cases being that the immediate parties themselves may tell everybody. He asked his father's consent, intimating that it made no difference whether it was forthcoming or not—the die was cast. He asked the consent of the girl's parents, and they having a grudge against the Parkers assented. Having removed all obstacles, the happy couple waited four years, and were safely married. Lydia Cabot's character can all be summed up in the word "good." She went through Europe, and remembered nothing but the wooden bears in Switzerland, of which she made a modest collection. When her husband preached, her solicitude was that his cravat might not become disarranged, for once when he was discussing the condition of sinners after death, his necktie gravitated around under his ear, and his wife nearly died of mortification. When he began to lose his hair she consulted everybody as to cures for baldness, and brought up the theme once at prayer-meeting, making her appeal to the Throne of Grace. This led Parker to say that the calamity of being bald was not in the loss of hair; it was that your friends suddenly revealed that they had recipes concealed on their person. Before his marriage Parker had positive ideas on the bringing up of children, and intimated what he proposed to do. But Fate decreed that he should be childless, that all religious independents might call him father. There is only one thing better than for a strong man to marry an absolutely dull woman. She teaches him by antithesis: he learns by contrast, and her stupidity is ever a foil for his brilliancy. He soon grows to a point where he does not mentally defer to her in the slightest degree, but goes his solitary way, making good that maxim of Kipling, "He travels the fastest who travels alone." He learns to love the ideal. The mediocre quality of Parker's wife was, no doubt, a prime factor in bringing out the self-reliant qualities in his own nature.

Parker's first pastorate was the Unitarian church at West Roxbury, ten miles from Boston, and an easy drive from Concord and Lexington. This was in the year Eighteen Hundred Thirty-six, a year memorable to lovers of Emerson, because it was during that year that the "Essay on Nature" was issued. It was put forth anonymously, and published at the author's expense. Doctor Francis Bowen, Dean of Harvard Divinity School, had denounced the essay as "pantheistic and dangerous." He also discovered the authorship, and expressed his deep sorrow and regret that a Harvard man should so far forget the traditions as to put forth such a work. Theodore Parker came to the defense of Emerson, and this seems to have been Parker's first radical expression.

Emerson was seven years older than Parker, but Parker had the ear of the public; whereas at this time Emerson was living in forced retirement, having been compelled to resign his pastorate in Boston on account of heretical utterances.

Theodore Parker was very fortunate in his environment. It will hardly do to say that he was the product of his surroundings, because there were a good many thousand people living within the radius of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Thoreau, Bronson Alcott, George Ripley and William Ellery Channing, who were absolutely unaware of the presence of these men. The most popular church in Concord today is the Roman Catholic. Theodore Parker fitted his environment and added his aura to the transcendental gleam. He was the lodestone that attracted the Brook-Farmers to West Roxbury. It is easy to say that if these Utopians had not selected West Roxbury as the seat of the new regime, they would have performed their transcendental tricks elsewhere; but the fact remains, they did not.

Parker was on the ground first; Ripley used to come over and exchange pulpits with him. Charles A. Dana, Margaret Fuller, Bronson Alcott, George William Curtis and Henry Thoreau once walked out from Boston to hear him preach.

All these people exercised a decided influence on Theodore Parker; and when "The Dial" was published, Parker was one of the first contributors.

Parker preached for thinking people—his appeal was not made to punk. A sermon is a collaboration between the pew and the pulpit; happy is the speaker with listeners who are satisfied with nothing but his best.

The Thursday lecture was an institution in Boston intermittently for two hundred years, being first inaugurated by Anne Hutchinson and the Reverend John Cotton. The affair was mostly for the benefit of clergymen, in order that they might hear one another and see themselves as others saw them. To be invited to give a Thursday lecture was a great honor.

Theodore Parker was invited to give one; he gave the address and then was invited back, in order that his hearers might ascertain whether they had understood correctly. Parker had said that to try to prove the greatness of Jesus by his miracles was childish and absurd. Even God was no better or greater through diverting the orderly course of Nature and breaking His own laws by strange and exceptional acts. Parker did not try to disprove the matter of miracles. He only said that wise men would do well not to say anything about them, because goodness, faith, gentleness and love have nothing to do with the miraculous, neither does a faith in the miraculous tend to an increased harmony of life. A man might be a good neighbor, a model parent and a useful citizen, and yet have no particular views concerning the immaculate conception.

This all sounds very trite to us: it is so true that we do not think to affirm it. But then it raised a storm of dissent, and a resolution was offered expressing regret that the Reverend Theodore Parker had been invited to address a Boston Christian assemblage. The resolution was tabled, but the matter had gotten into the papers, and was being discussed by the peripatetics.

Parker had at his church in Roxbury substituted Marcus Aurelius for the Bible at one of his services; and everybody knew that Marcus Aurelius was a Pagan who had persecuted the Christians. Was it the desire of Theodore Parker to transform Christian Boston into a Pagan Rome? Parker replied with a sermon showing that Boston sent vast quantities of rum to the heathen; that many of her first citizens thrived on the manufacture, export and sale of strong drink; and that to call Boston a Christian city was to reveal a woeful lack of knowledge concerning the use of words. About this time there was a goodly stir in the congregation, some of whom were engaged in the shipping trade. After the sermon they said, "Is it I—Is it I?" And one asked, "Is it me?"

The Unitarian Association of Boston notified Theodore Parker that in their opinion he was no better than Emerson, and it was well to remember that Pantheism and Unitarianism were quite different. That night Theodore Parker read the letter, and wrote in his journal as follows:

The experience of the last twelve months shows me what I am to expect of the next twelve years. I have no fellowship from the other clergy; no one that helped in my ordination will now exchange ministerial courtesies with me. Only one or two of the Boston Association, and perhaps one or two out of it, will have any ministerial intercourse with me. "They that are younger than I have me in derision." I must confess that I am disappointed in the ministers—the Unitarian ministers. I once thought them noble; that they would be true to an ideal principle of right. I find that no body of men was ever more completely sold to the sense of expediency.

All the agitation and quasi-persecution was a loosening of the tendrils, and a preparation for transplanting. Growth is often a painful process. Socially, Parker had been snubbed and slighted by the best society, and his good wife was in tears of distress because the meetings of the missionary band were held without her assistance and elsewhere than at her house.

Here writes Parker:

Now, I am not going to sit down tamely, and be driven out of my position by the opposition of some and the neglect of others, whose conduct shows that they have no love of freedom except for themselves—to sail with the popular wind and tide. I shall do this when obliged to desert the pulpit because a free voice and a free heart can not be in "that bad eminence." I mean to live with Ripley at Brook Farm. I will study seven or eight months of the year; and, four or five months. I will go about and preach and lecture in the city and glen, by the roadside and fieldside, and wherever men and women may be found. I will go eastward and westward, and northward and southward, and make the land ring; and if this New England theology that cramps the intellect and palsies the soul of us does not come to the ground, then it shall be because it has more truth in it than I have ever found.

Then came the suggestion from Charles M. Ellis, a Boston merchant, that Parker quit sleepy Roxbury and defy classic Boston by renting the Melodeon Theater and stating his views, instead of having them retailed on the street from mouth to mouth. If the orthodox Congregationalists wanted war, why let it begin there. The rent for the theater was thirty dollars a day; but a few friends plunged, rented the theater, and notified Parker that he must do the rest.

Would any one come—that was the question. And Sunday at eleven A. M. the question answered itself. Then the proposition was—would they come again? And this like all other propositions was answered by time.

The people were hungry for truth—the seats were filled.

What began as a simple experiment became a fixed fact. Boston needed
Theodore Parker.

An organization was effected, and after much discussion a name was selected, "The Twenty-eighth Congregational Society of Boston." And the Orthodox Congregationalists raised a howl of protest. They showed that Parker was not a Congregationalist at all, and the Parkerites protested that they were the only genuine sure-enoughs, and anyway, there was no copyright on the word. Congregational Societies were independent bodies, and any group of people could organize one who chose.

In the meantime the society flourished, advertised both by its loving friends and by its frenzied enemies.

Parker grew with the place. The Melodeon was found too small, and
Music-Hall was secured.

The audience increased, and the prophets who had prophesied failure waited in vain to say, "I told you so."

There sprang up a demand for Parker's services in the Lyceum lecture- field. People who could not go to Boston wanted Parker to come to them. His fee was one hundred dollars a lecture, and this at a time when Emerson could be hired for fifty.

Parker had at first received six hundred dollars a year at Roxbury, then this had gradually been increased to one thousand a year.

The "Twenty-eighth" paid him five thousand a year, but the Lyceum work yielded him three times as much. The sons of New England who fight poverty and privation until they are forty acquire the virtue of acquisitiveness.

Parker and his wife lived like poor people, as every one should. The saving habit was upon them. Lydia Parker had her limitations, but her weakness was not in the line of dress and equipage. She did her own work, and demanded an accounting from her Theodore as to receipts and disbursements, when he returned from a lecture-tour. To save money, she did not usually accompany him on his tours. So God is good. To get needful funds for personal use he had to juggle the expense-account.

Reformers are supposed to live on half-rations, and preachers are poor as church mice; but there may be exceptions. Both Emerson and Parker contrived to collect from the world what was coming to them. Emerson left an estate worth more than fifty thousand dollars, and Theodore Parker left two hundred thousand dollars, all made during the last fourteen years of his life.

Theodore Parker preached at Music-Hall nine hundred sermons. All were written out with great care, but when it came to delivering them, although he had the manuscript on his little reading-desk, he seldom referred to it. The man was most conscientious and had a beautiful contempt for the so-called extemporaneous speaker. His lyceum lectures were shavings from his workshop, as most lectures are. But preparing one new address, and giving on an average four lectures a week, with much travel, made sad inroads on his vitality. Every phase of man's relationship to man was vital to him, and human betterment was his one theme. In Eighteen Hundred Fifty-five he was indicted, along with Colonel Higginson and William Lloyd Garrison, for violation of the Fugitive-Slave Law. And when John Brown made his raid, Theodore Parker was indicted as an "accessory before the fact." Had he been caught on Virginia soil he would doubtless have been hanged on a sour-apple tree and his soul sent marching on.

In his sermons he was brief, pointed, direct and homely in expression. He used the language of the plain people On one occasion he said: "I have more hay down than I can get in. Whether it will be rained on before next Sunday I can not say, but I will ask you to use your imaginations and mow it away."

Again he says: "I do not care a rush for what men who differ from me do or say, but it has grieved me a little, I confess, to see men who think as I do of the historical and mythical connected with Christianity, who yet repudiate me. It is like putting your hand in your pocket where you expect to find money and discovering that the gold is gone, and that only the copper is left."

Recently there has been resurrected and regalvanized a story that was first told in Music-Hall by Theodore Parker on June Nineteenth, Eighteen Hundred Fifty-six. The story was about as follows:

Once in a stagecoach there was a man who carried on his knees a box, on which slats were nailed. Now a box like that always incites curiosity. Finally a personage leaned over and said to the man of the mysterious package:

  "Stranger, may I be so bold as to ask what you have in that box?"
  "A mongoose," was the polite answer.

"Oh, I see—but what is a mongoose?"

"Why, a mongoose is a little animal we use for killing snakes."

  "Of course, of course—oh, but—but where are you going to kill
  snakes with your mongoose?"

  And the man replied, "My brother has the delirium tremens, and I
  have brought this mongoose so he can use it to kill the snakes."

There was silence then for nearly a mile, when the man of the Socratic Method had an idea and burst out with, "But Lordy gracious, you do not need a mongoose to kill the snakes a fellow sees who has delirium tremens—for they are only imaginary snakes!" "I know," said the owner of the box, tapping his precious package gently, "I know that delirium-tremens snakes are only imaginary snakes, but this is only an imaginary mongoose."

And the moral was, according to Theodore Parker, that, to appease the wrath of an imaginary God, we must believe in an imaginary formula, and thereby we could all be redeemed from the danger of an imaginary hell. Also that an imaginary disease can be cured by an imaginary remedy.

Theodore Parker died in Florence, Italy, in Eighteen Hundred Sixty, aged fifty years. His disease was an excess of Theodore Parker. His body lies buried there in Florence, in the Protestant cemetery, only a little way from the grave of Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

At his funeral services held in Boston, Emerson said:

Ah, my brave brother! It seems as if, in a frivolous age, our loss were immense, and your place can not be supplied. But you will already be consoled in the transfer of your genius, knowing well that the nature of the world will affirm to all men, in all times, that which for twenty-five years you valiantly spoke. The breezes of Italy murmur the same truth over your grave, the winds of America over these bereaved streets, and the sea which bore your mourners home affirms it. Whilst the polished and pleasant traitors to human rights, with perverted learning and disgraced graces, die and are utterly forgotten, with their double tongue saying all that is sordid about the corruption of man, you believed in the divinity of all, and you live on.

OLIVER CROMWELL

For my beloved wife, Elizabeth Cromwell. These: Edinburgh, 3d May, 1651

My Dearest: I could not satisfy myself to omit this post, although I have not much to write; yet indeed I love to write to my dear who is so very much in my heart. It joys me to hear thy soul prospereth: the Lord increase His favors to thee more and more. The great good thy soul can wish is, that the Lord lift upon thee the light of His countenance, which is better than life. The Lord bless all thy good counsel and example to all those about thee, and hear all thy prayers and accept thee always.

  I am glad to hear thy son and daughter are with thee. I hope thou
  wilt have some opportunity of good advice to them. Present my duty
  to my mother. My love to all the family. Still pray for Thine,
                                      Oliver Cromwell

[Illustration: OLIVER CROMWELL]

Oliver Cromwell was a Puritan, which word was first applied in bucolic pleasantry by an unbeliever—may God rest his soul!—and was adopted by this body of people who desired to live lives of purity, reflecting the will of the Lord.

Oliver did in his life so typify all the Puritan qualities of sterling honesty (as well as some simplicities springing out of his faults) that the time spent in considering him shall not be lost. "Our Oliver was the last glimpse of the godlike vanishing from England," wrote Thomas Carlyle. Obscured in lurid twilight as the shadow of death, hated by somnambulant pedants, doleful dilettanti, phantasmagoric errors, bodeful inconceivabilities, trackless, behind pasteboard griffins, wiverns, chimeras, Carlyle had to search through thirty thousand pamphlets and forty thousand letters for the soul of Cromwell.

Oliver Cromwell was born in Huntingdon, England, April Twenty-fifth, Fifteen Hundred Ninety-nine. His parents belonged to the landed gentry, but who yet were poor enough so they ever felt the necessity of work and economy. The mother of Cromwell was a widow when she wedded Richard, the happy father of Oliver. The widow's husband had accommodatingly died, and he now has a monument, placed they say by Oliver Cromwell himself, in Ely Cathedral, which records him thus: "Here sleepeth until the last Great Day, when the Trump shall sound, William Lynne, Esq., who had the honor and felicity to be the first husband of Elizabeth, Mother through the Grace of God to Oliver Cromwell." At the bottom of the inscription a would-be wag wrote, "Had he lived long enough he would have been the stepfather of Oliver."

Oliver was the fifth child of his parents, who it seems were happily wedded, the gray mare being much the better horse. And this once caused Oliver to say (and which the same is here recorded to disprove the statement that he had no wit), "Men who are born to rule other men are themselves ruled by women." This may be truth or not—I can not say.

Smelted out of the dross-heap of lying biographers, most of whose stories should be given Christian burial, we get the truth that this boy was brought up by pious, hard-working parents.

The splenetic capacity, the calumnious credulity, the pleasures of prevarication and of rolling falsehoods like a sweet morsel under the tongue, have made those thirty thousand Cromwell pamphlets possible. It is stated by one writer, Heath, now pleasantly known as "Carrion Heath," that Oliver's father was a brewer, and the son grew up a tapster, but was compelled to resign his office on account of being his own best customer.

Waiving all these precious libels, created to supply a demand, we find that Oliver grew up, swart and strong, a sturdy country lad, who did the things that all country boys do, both good and ill. He wrestled, fought, swam, worked, studied a little. He was packed off to Cambridge, where he entered Sidney Sussex College, April Twenty- second, Sixteen Hundred Sixteen, which is the day that one William Shakespeare died, but which worthy playwright was never even so much as once mentioned by Cromwell in all of his voluminous writings. If Cromwell ever heard of Shakespeare he carefully concealed the fact.

Before we proceed further it may be proper to say that the father of our Oliver had a sister who married William Hampden of Bucks, and this woman was the mother of John Hampden, who was deemed worthy of mention in "Gray's Elegy" and also in several prose works, notably the court records of England. The family of Oliver traced to that of Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex; although such is the contempt for pedigree by men who can themselves do things, that Oliver once disclaimed Thomas, as much as to say. "There has been only one Cromwell, and I am the one." It was about thus (I do not five the exact words, because I was not present and the Pitt system was not then in use, great men at that time not having stenographers at their elbows): Bishop Goodman, (known as Badman) was reading to the Protector a long, slushy Billwalker-of- Fargo address full of semi-popish jargon, when his Lordship's relationship to Thomas, the Mauler of Monasteries, was mentioned. Here broke in Oliver with, "Eliminate that—eliminate that—he was no relative of mine—good morning!"

Bishop Badman was a queer old piece of theological confusion, who went over to popery, body, boots and breeches, believing that Oliver was a bounder and was soon to be ditched by destiny. Bishop Badman, having made the prophecy of ill-luck, did all he could to bring it about, when death ditched him; and whether he ever knew the rest about Cromwell, we do not know, even yet, as our knowledge of another world comes to us through persons who can not always be safely trusted to tell the truth about this.

At Cambridge, our Oliver did not learn as much from books as from the boys, eke girls, I am sorry to say—all great universities being co-ed in fact, if not in name. His mother sent him things to eat and things to wear, but among items to wear at that time, stockings were for royalty alone. Queen Elizabeth was the first person of either the male or the female persuasion in England to wear knit stockings, and also to use a table-fork—this being for spearing purposes.

Oliver's mother sent him a baize or bombazine table-cloth. And this tablecloth did he cut up, prompted by the devil, into stockings, for he was justly proud of his calves, the same having been admired by the co-eds of Cambridge. For all of these things, in after-years, Oliver did pray forgiveness and beseech pardon for such pride of the eye and lust of the flesh, manifest in pedal millinery.

A year at Cambridge proved the uselessness of the place, but it was necessary to go there to find this out. The death of his father brought matters to a climax, and Oliver must prepare for very hard times. Then London and a lawyer's office welcomed him.

On Thursday, October Twenty-ninth, Sixteen Hundred Eighteen, Cromwell saw a curious sight: it was the fall of the curtain in the fifth act of the life of Sir Walter Raleigh, who introduced tobacco into England, and did several other things, for which the monarchy was, as usual, ungrateful. Raleigh had sought to find an Eldorado for England, and alas! he only found that man must work wherever he is, if he would succeed, and that fields of gold and springs of eternal youth exist only in dreams, where they best belong. It was a cold, gray morning, and Sir Walter was kept standing on the scaffold while the headsman ground his ax, the delay being for the amusement and edification of the Christian friends assembled.

"One thing I will never do," said Oliver Cromwell, law-clerk, swart and lusty, in green stockings and other sartor-resartus trifles; "one thing I will never do—and that is, take human life!" Oliver was both tender-hearted and grim.

Sir Walter's frame shook in the cold, dank fog, and the sheriff offered to bring a brazier of coals; but the great man proudly drew around him the cloak, now somewhat threadbare, that he had once spread for good Queen Bess to tread upon, and said, "It is the ague I contracted in America—the crowd will think it fear—I will soon be cured of it," and he laid his proud head, gray in the service of his country, calmly on the block, as if to say, "There now, take that, it is all I have left to give you!"

* * * * *

How much legal lore Cromwell acquired in London is a matter of dim and dusty doubt. That his vocabulary was slightly extended there is quite probable, for later he uses the word "law-wolf," thus supplying Alfred Henry Lewis with a phrase that was to be sent clattering down the corridors of time. That Alfred Henry may have been absolutely innocent of the truth that he was using a classicism and not a Kansas mouth-filler is quite probable. In London, Oliver took unto himself a wife, he being twenty-one and three weeks over. The lady was the daughter of a client of the firm for which Oliver Cromwell was a process-server. That he successfully served papers on the young lady is undeniable, for he led her captive to Saint Giles' Church, Cripplegate, and they were there married August, Sixteen Hundred Twenty, the clerk being so overcome (doubtless by the presence of Oliver Cromwell, the coming Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland) that he neglected to put in the day of the month. In the same church sleeps one John Milton, who was much respected and beloved by our Oliver, and who proved that a Puritan could write poetry.

The father of Oliver having died, as before truthfully stated, first prophesying that his son would grow up a ne'er-do-well, this son took his new-found wife up to the Fen Country to live with his mother and sister. That he would be Lord Protector of the Farm seems quite the proper thing to say, but that he was dutiful, modest, teachable, is a fact.

Here he lived, with babies coming along one a year, hard-working, simple, earnest, for seven years escaping the censorious eye of Clio, weaver of history. Happy lives make dull biographies. Also, we can truthfully say that nothing tames a man like marriage. Take marriage, business, responsibility, and a dash of poverty, mix, and we get an ideal condition. These things make for a noble discontent and the industry and unrest that unlimber progress.

Then comes that peculiar psychic experience which is often the lot of men born to make epochs, who also have souls fit to assert themselves. We find our Oliver consumed with a strange despair, biting world- sorrow, Tophet pouring black smoke into the universe of his being— temptations in the wilderness!

Men of neutral quality do not make good Christians-militant. Our Oliver was not neutral. Out of the black night of unrest and through the thick darkness, he gradually saw the eternal ways and got good reckonings by aid of the celestial guiding stars.

So Oliver emerged at twenty-seven, alive with cosmic consciousness—a
God-intoxicated man. That Deity spoke through him, he never doubted.
Thereafter he was to be religious, not only on Sundays and Wednesday
evenings, but always and forever.

Suddenly and without warning appears in history, Oliver Cromwell, taking his seat in the House of Commons on Monday, March Seventeenth, Sixteen Hundred Twenty-seven, making then a speech of five minutes, accusing one Reverend Doctor Alablaster of flat popery; and goes back into the silence, pulling the silence in after him, to remain twelve years.

Then comes he forth again as member of Cambridge. He was a country squire, bronze-faced, callous-handed, clothes plainly made by a woman, dyed brown with walnut-juice. The man was much in earnest, although seemingly having little to say. He was not especially conspicuous, because it was largely a Parliament of Puritans. As members, there sat in it John Hampden, Selden, Stratford, Prynne, and with these, the rising tide had carried Oliver Cromwell. In a seat near him sat Sir Edward Coke, known to posterity because he wrote a book on Lyttleton, and Lyttleton is known to us for one sole reason only, and that is because Coke used him for literary flux.

Religions are founded on antipathies.

Patriotism, which Doctor Johnson, beefeater-in-ordinary, said is the last refuge of a rogue, is usually nothing but hatred of other countries, very much as we are told that the shibboleth of Harvard is, "To hell with Yale."

Puritanism is a reactionary move, a swinging out of the pendulum away from idleness, gluttony, sham, pretense and hypocrisy.

Charles the First was king. He was a year younger than Oliver, but as Fate would have it, he was to die first. So sat Oliver Cromwell, grim, silent—thinking. And then back he lumbered by the stagecoach to his country house.

His finances not prospering, he had moved to the little village of Saint Ives, famous because of the fact that there was born the only lawyer ever elected to a saintship. Once a year there is a village festival at Saint Ives in honor of the attorney, when all the children sing, "Advocatus et non latro, res miranda populo."

The land owned by Cromwell was boggy, willow-grown, marshy, fit only for grazing. Oliver was a justice of the peace, now devoting his days to improving his herds, draining the marsh-lands, praying, occasionally fasting, exhorting at the village crossroads, and once collaring the loafers at a country tavern and making them join in a hymn. This exploit, together with that of quelling a small disturbance among some student factions at the neighboring town of Cambridge, had attracted a little attention to him, and Cambridge Puritans, not knowing whom else to send to Parliament, chose Cromwell, the dark horse.

With his big family he was very gentle, yet obedience was demanded, and given, without question or dispute, and a glance at the portrait of the man makes the matter plain. It was easier to agree with him than successfully to oppose him.

So slipped the years away, broken only by an echo from cousin John Hampden, who refused to pay "ship-money." This ship-money meant that if you didn't pay so much—twenty shillings or ten pounds, according to the needs of the exchequer—you could be drafted into His Majesty's service and sent to sea. The money you paid was nominally to hire a substitute, but no one but King Charles and Attorney-General Noy, who fished out the precious precedent from the rag-bag of the past, knew what became of the money.

Noy was a close-running mate of Archbishop Laud, who hunted heretics and cropped the ears of a thousand Puritans. Noy is described for us as a law-pedant, finding legal precedent for anything that royalty wished to do. Noy devised the ship-money scheme, and then died before his law went into effect: killed by the hand of Providence, the Puritans said, who uttered prayers of thankfulness for his taking off, all of which was quite absurd, since the law lives, no matter who devised it. Rulers who wish to tax their subjects heavily should do it by indirection—say by means of the tariff.

The affection in which Noy was held is shown in that he was known as Monster to the King, the domdaniel of attorneys. When he died the result of the autopsy was that "his brains were found to be two handfuls of dry dust, his heart a bundle of sheepskin writs, and his belly a barrel of soft soap." He wasn't a man at all.

John Hampden was tried for refusal to pay ship-money. The trial lasted three weeks and three days.

The best legal talent in England had a hand in it, and one man made a speech eleven hours long, without sipping water. The verdict went against Hampden—he must pay the twenty shillings. I believe, however, he did not; neither did John Milton, who wrote a pamphlet on the subject; neither did Oliver Cromwell.

* * * * *

There is a tale in that good old classic, McGuffy's Third Reader, to the effect that a man once punished one of his children, and a minute after had his own ears violently boxed by his mother, with the admonition, "You box the ears of your child, and I'll box the ears of mine!" This story, which once much delighted the rosy children of honest farmers, was told by Charles Dickens, with Oliver Cromwell in the title role.

That Cromwell inherited his mother's leading traits of character, all agree. She lived to be ninety, and to the day of her death took a deep interest in political and theological history. She believed in her boy even more than she believed in God, and took a deep delight in "that heaven has used me as an instrument in bringing about His will." In her nature she combined the attributes of Quaker, Dunkard and Mennonite. She was a come-outer before her son was, and ever appealed in spirit to the God of Battles for peace.

It was the year Sixteen Hundred Forty, and Oliver was again a member of Parliament. The session lasted only three weeks, and then was petulantly dissolved by King Charles, who, not being able to compel the members to do his bidding, yet had the power to send them scampering into space.

At the new election Cambridge again elected Oliver, not for anything he had done, but as a rebuke to the haughty and frivolous Charles for rejecting him. This was known as the Long Parliament: it lasted two years, and during its sessions about all that Oliver did was to sit and cogitate.

In January, Sixteen Hundred Forty-two, there took place the inevitable—Charles and Parliament clashed. The Royalists had been so busy enjoying themselves, and cutting off the ears of people who failed to bow at the right time, that they had not rightly interpreted the spirit of the times. There was an attempt being made to oust Presbyterianism from Scotland and supplant it with the Episcopacy. These religious denominations were really political parties, and while the Puritans belonged to neither, calling themselves Independents, their hearts were with the persecuted Presbyterians, because they were come-outers for conscience' sake, while the Episcopalians never were. Old Noll called Episcopalians, "bastard Catholics," and it is no wonder his ears burned. The Bishops wanted to use them in their business.

Come-outism is a peculiar and well-defined move on the part of humanity towards self-preservation, righteousness, at the last, being only a form of common-sense. That greed, selfishness, pomp and folly in all the million forms which idleness can invent, investing itself in the name of religion, will cause certain people to come out and lead lives of truth, sobriety, method, industry and mutual service, is as natural as that cattle should protect themselves from the coming storm.

When the great Omnipotence that rules the world wishes to destroy a nation or a party, He gives it its own way. When the governor of an engine breaks and the machine begins to race, all ye who love life had better look out and come out.

The dominant party had outdone the matter of taxations, star- chamberings, hangings, whippings, and the maintaining of blood- sprinkled pillories. The time was ripe: Charles and his rollicking, reckless Royalists failed to see the handwriting on the wall. It was a case of spontaneous combustion. Oliver was forty-three, with hair getting thin in front, and three moles (which he ordered the portrait- painter not to omit) were reinforced by wrinkles. He had a son married, and was a grandfather.

So he went back to his farm on the order of Charles and took his moles with him. He was a bit sobered by the thought that he had been one of a body who had openly defied the king, and therefore he was an outlaw. To submit quietly now meant branding and ear-cropping, if not the stake. He called a prayer-meeting at his house—the neighbors came— they sang and supplicated God, not Charles the First, and then Oliver asked for volunteers to follow him to the government powder-magazine near by, and capture it ere the Royalists used it for the undoing of the Lord's people. "His salvation is nigh unto them that fear Him, that His glory may dwell in the land!" And they went forth, and seized the sleepy guards, who had not been informed that war had begun. The plate belonging to the University was taken care of, so that it would not fall into the hands of the enemy, and the classic old campus took on the look of a siege.

Cromwell commissioned himself Captain of Horse. It was a farmers' uprising, for freedom is ever a sort of farm-product. Adam Smith says, "All wealth comes from the soil." What he meant to say was "health," not "wealth." Men who fight well, fight for farms—their homes, not flats or hotels. Indians do not fight for reservations. The sturdy come-outer is a man near the soil. Successful revolutions are always fought by farmers, and the government which they create is destroyed by city mobs.

Cromwell knew this and said to Cousin John Hampden: "Old, decayed serving-men and tapsters can never encounter gentlemen. To match men of honor you must have God-fearing, sober, serious men who fight for conscience, freedom, and their wives, children, aged parents, and their farms. Give me a few honest men and I will not demand numbers— save for enemies." And he gathered around him a thousand picked Puritans, men with moles, farmers and herdsmen, who were used to the open. This regiment, which was called "Ironsides," was never beaten, and in time came to be regarded as invincible. The men who composed it compared closely with the valiant and religious Boers, who were overpowered only by starvation and a force of six to one. The Ironsides were like Caesar's Tenth Legion, only different. They went into battle singing the Psalms of David, and never stopped so long as an enemy was in sight, except for prayer.

John Forster, who wrote a life of Cromwell in seven volumes, says, "If Oliver Cromwell had never done anything else but muster, teach and discipline this one regiment, his name would have left a sufficient warrant of his greatness."

The Winter of Sixteen Hundred Forty-two and Sixteen Hundred Forty- three was devoted to preparations for the coming struggle, which Cromwell knew would be renewed in the Spring. All his private fortune went into the venture. He covered the country for a hundred miles square, and broke up every Royalist rendezvous. The Spring did not bring disappointment, for the Royalist army came forward, and were successful until they reached Cromwell's country. Here the Parliamentarians met them as one to three, and routed them.

"They were as stubble before our swords," wrote Cromwell to his wife. Old Noll not only led the fighting, but the singing, and insisted on being in every charge where the Ironsides took part. He had not been trained in the art of war, but from the very first he showed consummate genius as a general. He aimed to strike the advancing army in the center, go straight through the lines, and then circle to either the right or the left, milling the mass into a mob, destroying it utterly. It was all the work of men born on horseback, who, if a horse went down, clambered free and jumped up behind the nearest trooper, or, clinging to the tail of a running horse, swung sword right and left and all the time sang, "Unto Thee, O Lord, and not unto us!" This two-men-to-a-horse performance was an exercise in which our Oliver personally trained his Ironsides. He showed them how to sing, pray, fight and ride horseback double. At Marston Moor, Fairfax led the right wing of the Parliamentary army. Prince Rupert at the head of twenty thousand men charged Fairfax and defeated him. Cromwell played a waiting game and allowed the army of Rupert to tire itself, when he met it with his Ironsides and sent it down the pages of history in confusion and derision. At this battle the eldest son of Cromwell was killed, and the way he breaks the news to a fellow-soldier, a young man, as if he were consoling him, reveals the soul of this sturdy man:

To my loving Brother, Colonel Valentine Walton. These: Before York 5th July, 1644

Dear Sir: It's our duty to sympathize in all mercies, and to praise the Lord together in chastisement or trials, that so we may sorrow together.

Truly England and the Church of God hath had a great favor from the Lord, in this great victory given unto us, such as the like never was since this war began. It had all the evidences of an absolute victory obtained by the Lord's blessing upon the godly party principally. We never charged but we routed the enemy. The left wing, which I commanded, being on our own horse, saving a few Scots in our rear, beat all the Prince's horse. God made them as stubble to our swords. We charged their foot regiments with our horse, and routed all we charged. The particulars I can not relate now; but I believe of the twenty thousand the Prince has not four thousand left. Give glory, all the glory, to God.

Sir, God hath taken away our eldest son by a cannon-shot. It broke his leg. We were necessitated to have it cut off, whereof he died.

Sir, you know my own trials this way; but the Lord supported me with this: That the Lord took him into the happiness we all pant for and live for. There is our precious child full of glory, never to know sin and sorrow any more. He was a gallant young man, exceedingly gracious. God give you His comfort. Before his death he was so full of comfort that to Frank Russel and myself he could not express it, "It is so great above my pain." This he said to us. Indeed it was admirable. A little after, he said, "One thing lies upon my spirit." I asked him what that was. He told me it was that God had not suffered him to be any more the executioner of His enemies. At this fall, his horse being killed with the bullet, and as I am informed three horses more, I am told he bid them open to the right and left, that he might see the rogues run. Truly he was exceedingly beloved in the army of all who knew him. But few knew him; for he was a precious young man fit for God. You have cause to bless the Lord. He is a glorious saint in heaven; wherein you ought exceedingly to rejoice. Let this drink up your sorrow; seeing these are not feigned words to comfort you, but the thing is so real and undoubted a truth. We may do all things by the strength of Christ. Seek that, and you shall easily bear your trial. Let this public mercy to the Church of God make you forget your private sorrow. The Lord be your strength: so prays Your truly faithful and loving brother, Oliver Cromwell

* * * * *

Great Britain was rent with civil war: plot and counterplot—intrigue, feud, fear and vengeance—filled the air. Men alternately prayed and cursed, then they shivered. Commerce stood still. Farmers feared to plant, for they knew that probably the work would be worse than vain: the product would go to feed their enemies and deepen their oppression. Backward and forward surged the armies, consuming, destroying and wasting. The pride and flower of England's manhood had enlisted or been drafted into the fray.

The fight was Episcopalians against Dissenters: the Church versus the People. Most of the Dissenters were Puritans, and they belonged to various denominations; and many, like Oliver Cromwell, belonged to none. The issue was freedom of conscience. Cromwell regarded religion as life and life as religion, and to him and to all men he believed that God spoke directly, if we would but listen.

If the Church won, many felt that freedom would flee, and England would be as it was in the reign of Bloody Mary.

If the Puritans won, no one knew the result—would power be safe in their hands? Men at the last were but men. In the hands of royalty, money flowed free. There had been thousands of pensioners, parasites, ladies of fashion and gentlemen of leisure, parties who worked an hour every other Thursday, and whose duties were limited largely to signing their vouchers—royalty and relatives of royalty, all feeding at the public trough. These people "spent their money like kings"—which means that they wasted their substance in riotous living. And the average mind—jumping at conclusions—reasons that liberal spenders benefit society. In the South our colored brothers are much happier when getting ten cents at a time, ten times a day, than if receiving a monthly stipend of fifty dollars. Even yet there be those who argue that rich people who spend money freely on folly benefit the race, forgetful that anything which calls for human energy is a waste to the world of human life, unless it is a producer of wealth and happiness as well as a distributor. Waste must always be paid for, and usually it is paid for in blood and tears; but beggars who live on tips never know it. A tramp who is given a quarter feels a deal more lucky than if he gets a chance to earn a dollar.

All wealth comes through labor: the people earn the money, and the parasites get a part of it; and in the Seventeenth Century, they got most of it. Then when these parasites wasted the money the people had earned, the many thought they were being blessed. The English people in the Seventeenth Century were about where the colored brother is now, and I apologize to all Afro-Americans when I say it. However, out of the mass of ignorance, innocence, brutality, bestiality, fanaticism, superstition, arose here and there at long intervals a man equal to any we can now produce. But they were fugitive stars, unsupported, and they had to supply their own atmosphere.

Cromwell was an accident, a providential accident, sent by Deity in pleasantry, to give a glimpse of what a man might really be.

* * * * *

William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, was to Charles the First what Richelieu was to Louis the Thirteenth of France. Laud came so near being a Catholic that the Pope, perceiving his fitness, offered to make him a cardinal. In fact, but a few years before, all of the clergy in England were Catholics and when their monarch changed religions they changed theirs. Laud was of the opinion that vows, responses, intonings, genuflexions and ringing of bells constituted religion.

Cromwell said that religion was the dwelling of the spirit of God in the heart of man. Laud brought about much kneeling and candle- snuffing. He was Pope of the English Church, and played the part according to the traditions.

A Scotch Presbyterian clergyman by the name of Leighton declared in a sermon that bishops derived their power from men, not God. Laud showed him differently by placing him in the pillory, giving him a hundred lashes on the bare back, branding him with the letter "I," meaning infidel, cutting off one ear and slitting his nose.

William Prynne, a barrister, denounced Laud for his inhuman cruelty, and declared that Laud's misuse of power proved Leighton was right. Then it was Prynne's turn. He was fined two thousand pounds for "treason, contumacy and contravention." Archbishop Laud was head of the Church of England, and he who spoke ill of Laud spoke ill of the Church; and he who slandered the Church was guilty of disloyalty to God and his country. King Charles looked on and smiled approval while Prynne had his ears cut off and his nose slit. Charles signed the sentence that Prynne should wear a red letter "I" on his breast and stand in the marketplace on a scaffold two hours a day for a month, and then be imprisoned for life. Thus was Nathaniel Hawthorne supplied a name and an incident. Also thus did Charles and his needlessly pious Archbishop set an awful example to Puritans, for we teach forever by example and not by precept. Rulers who kill their enemies are teaching murder as a fine art, and fixing private individuals in the belief that for them to kill their enemies is according to the "higher law," and also preparing them for the abuse of power when they get the chance.

Doctor Bastwick, a physician in high repute, expressed sympathy for Barrister Prynne as he stood in the sun on the scaffold, consoling him with a word of friendship and a foolish tear. Laud had a clergyman in disguise standing near the condemned Prynne, "to feel the pulse of the people." He felt the pulse of Doctor Bastwick, and reported his action to Laud, the religieux. Then Bastwick was a candidate. He was arrested, fined a thousand pounds, had his ears cut off without the use of cocaine, a month apart, both nostrils were slit, and he was imprisoned for life. Cousin John Hampden took a petition to King Charles, asking that mercy should be granted Doctor Bastwick, as he was an old man, a good physician, and his action was merely a kindly impulse, and not a deliberate insult to either the Archbishop or the King. The petition was ignored and John Hampden cautioned.

Oliver Cromwell was then in London, having come to town with three wagonloads of wool, but his wits were not woolgathering. Dissenters were not safe. There is a report noted by both Carlyle and Charles Dickens that Cromwell, having sold his wool and also his horses, embarked on a ship with John Hampden, bound for Massachusetts Bay Colony, leaving orders for his family to follow. The ship being searched by spies of Laud, Oliver and John were put ashore and ordered to make haste to their country houses and stay there and cultivate the soil. The King and his Archbishop made a slight lapse in not allowing Oliver and John to depart in peace.

When John Hampden refused to pay ship-money, Laud wanted him publicly whipped. Charles, guessing the temper of the times, allowed the case to go to trial.

Cromwell was a member of the Long parliament that ordered the arrest and trial of Laud. Laud was placed in the Tower in Sixteen Hundred Forty-one, but his trial did not take place until Sixteen Hundred Forty-four. Cromwell argued that anybody who could speak well of Laud must be heard. The trial consumed a year. Laud was found guilty of six hundred counts of gross inhumanity and violation of his priestly oath, and was beheaded with a single stroke of the ax that had severed the head of Raleigh.

At this time Charles was in the field, moving from this point to that, feeling to see if his head was in place, and trying to dodge the Parliamentary armies. Also, at this time, fighting in the ranks of Cromwell, was one John Bunyan, who was to outlive Cromwell, write a book, glorify Bedford Jail and fall a victim to Royal vengeance.

Fate dug down and tapped in Cromwell's nature great reservoirs of unguessed strength. As Ingersoll said of Lincoln, "He always rose to the level of events." There is an unanalyzed bit of psychology here: a man is tired, ready to drop out, and lo! circumstances call upon him, and he makes the effort of his life. Beneath all humanity there is a lake of power, as yet untapped.

Cromwell's greatest successes were snatched from the teeth of defeat. He always had a few extra links to let out. He grew great by doing. When others were ready to quit, he had just begun. Like Paul Jones, when called upon to surrender he shouted back, "Why, sir, by the living God, I have not yet commenced to fight!"

* * * * *

When conversation lags in Great Britain, or any of her Colonies, the question of whether the execution of Charles the First was justifiable is still debated.

That Charles the First was a saint compared with his son Charles the Second can easily be shown. He was cool, courageous, diplomatic, regular in church attendance, gentle in his family relations. He was objectionable only in his official capacity. He was weak, vacillating and full of duplicity. It is absolutely true that cutting off his head did not increase the sum total of love, beauty, truth, kindness and virtue in the breast of the beefeaters.

England still spends ten times as much for beer as for books, and the religion in which Charles believed is yet the established one. The religion of Cromwell, which represented simple industry, truth, and mutual helpfulness, omitting ritual, is still considered strange, erratic and peculiar.

For fifteen years the rule of Oliver Cromwell in England was supreme. With the help of Admiral Blake he drove the pirates from the Mediterranean, set English captives free, and made Great Britain both respected and feared the round world over. Spain gave way and dipped her colors; Italy paid a long-delayed indemnity of sixty thousand pounds for injuries done to British subjects; Catholic France religiously kept hands off.

The Episcopal faith was not suppressed, but was simply placed on the same footing as Presbyterianism. Toleration for each and every faith was manifest, and the pillory and whipping-post fell into disuse. The prison-ships lying in the Thames, waiting for their living cargo to be carried away and dumped on distant lands, were cleaned out, refitted, holystoned, and sent out as merchant-ships. Roads were built, waterways deepened, canals dug, and marsh-lands drained.

A general order was issued that any British soldier or sailor, in any place or clime, who at any time was guilty of assault on women, or who looted or damaged private property, or attacked a neutral, should be at once tried, and, if found guilty, shot. If, in the exigency of war, English soldiers were compelled to take private property, receipts must be given, prices fixed, and drafts drawn for same on the home office. All this to the end, "Thou shalt not steal." Pensions were cut off, parasites set to work, vagabonds collared and given jobs, and all State business managed on the same plan that a man would bring to bear in his private affairs. For carrying dummy names on his payroll, the governor of a shipyard was led forth and dropped into the sea, and a man who gave a ball at the expense of the State was deprived of his office and sent to the Barbados.

Cromwell liked to dress as a private soldier, mixing with his men, and going to taverns or palaces looking for contraband of war. When he was Chief Commander of the armies of England, he insisted on acting as colonel and leading the Ironsides into battle at the head of a charge.

When Cromwell was presented with six coach-horses, all alike, and by one sire, he insisted on personally driving them. The coach was loaded with broad-brimmed Puritans, who had guiltily left their work, when the horses ran away, frightened, they say, by an Episcopal bishop. All Royalists laughed—but not very loud. A few ultra-Puritans said it was a warning to Oliver not to try to set up a monarchy.

In Cromwell's time the Ananias Club had not been formed, although eligible candidates were plentiful. Oliver refers to Archbishop Laud as a "deep-dyed liar," and in the Cathedral, at Ely, he once interrupted the services by calling the officiating clergyman, "a pious prevaricator."

Cromwell, like many another bluff and gruff man, was a deal more tender-hearted than he was willing to admit. The death of his daughter broke the heart of Old Noll—he could not live without her. So passed away Oliver Cromwell in his sixtieth year. The very human side of his nature was shown in his supposing that his son Richard could rule in his place. A short year and the young man was compelled to give way. Royalists came flocking home, with greedy mouths watering for fleshpots, ecclesiastical and political.

And so we have Charles the Second and confusion.

ANNE HUTCHINSON

As I do understand it, laws, commands, rules and edicts are for those who have not the light which makes plain the pathway. He who has God's grace in his heart can not go astray. —Anne Hutchinson

[Illustration: ANNE HUTCHINSON]

Boston was founded in Sixteen Hundred Thirty. The village was first called Trimountain, which was shortened as a matter of prenatal economy to Tremont.

The site was commanding and beautiful—a pear-shaped peninsula, devoid of trees, wind-swept, facing the sea, fringed by the salt-marsh, and transformed at high tide into an actual island.

The immediate inspirer of the Puritan exodus from England was Archbishop Laud, who had a cheerful habit of cutting off the ears of people who differed with him concerning the unknowable. The Puritans were people who believed in religious liberty. They rebelled from ritual, form, pomp and parade in sacred things. Their clergy were "ministers," their churches were "meetinghouses," their communicants "a congregation."

The Boston settlers were Congregationalists, and stood about halfway between Presbyterianism and the Independents. Oliver Cromwell, it will be remembered, was an Independent. John Winthrop, a man very much like him, was a Congregationalist.

The Independents had no priests, but the Congregationalists compromised on a minister.

Charles the First and his beloved Archbishop Laud regarded these
Congregationalists as undesirable citizens, and so obligingly gave
John Winthrop his charter for the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and said,
"Go, and peace be with you," although that is not the exact phrase
they used.

In Sixteen Hundred Thirty-three, the Reverend John Cotton arrived at Tremont from Boston, Lincolnshire, England. In his honor, in a burst of enthusiasm, the settlers voted to change the name of their town from Tremont to Boston. And Boston Village it remained—Saint Botolph's Town—governed by the town-meeting, until Eighteen Hundred Thirty-two, when it became a city, and Boston it is, even unto this day.

Boston now has considerably more than half a million people; at the beginning of the Revolutionary War it had twenty thousand inhabitants; in Sixteen Hundred Thirty-three, when John Cotton arrived, it had three hundred seven folk. The houses were built of logs—not of cut stone and marble—mostly in blockhouse style, chinked with mud. There were no wharves, but John Winthrop proudly says, "A ship can come within half a mile of my house, so deep is the channel."

John Cotton was a very strong and earnest man, much beloved by all who knew him. Almost every family in the Massachusetts Bay Colony named a child after him. Increase Mather named one of his sons "Cotton." The Colonists did not leave England by individuals or single families. They came in groups—church-groups—headed by the pastor of his flock. They were not in search of an Eldorado, nor a fountain of youth. It was distinctly a religious movement, the object being religious liberty. They wished to worship God in their own way. They believed that this world was a preparation for eternity. They believed that religion is the chief concern of mortals here below. Had they been told that man moves in a mysterious way his blunders to perform, the remark would have been lost on them.

Religion was the oil which caused the flame of their lives to burn brightly. They knew nothing of science, of history, of romance or of poetry. Their one book was the Bible, and by it they endeavored to guide their lives. Nature to them was something opposed to God, and all natural impulses were looked upon with suspicion. They never played and seldom laughed. They toiled, prayed, sang, and for recreation argued as to the meaning of Scriptural passages. To know what these passages meant was absolutely necessary in order to find a right location for your soul in another world. The fear of the Lord is not only the beginning of wisdom, but also its end.

And yet there was a recompense in their zeal, for it was the one thing which caused them to emigrate. In its holy flame all old ties were consumed, the past became ashes, hardships and dangers as naught, and although there was much brutality in their lives, they were at least different kinds of brutes from what they otherwise would have been. They were transplanted weeds. Religious zeal has its benefits, but they are often bought at a high price.

The Puritans left the Old World to gain religious liberty, but to give religious liberty in the New was beyond their power. The only liberty they allowed was the liberty to believe as they believed. Others were wrong, they were right—therefore it was right for them to take the wrong in hand and set them right. They were filled with fear, and fear is the finish of everything upon which it gets a clutch. Were it not for fear man's religion would reduce itself to a healthful emotional exercise, a beautiful intermittent impulse. Institutional religion is founded on the monstrous assumption that man is a fully developed creature, and has the ability, when rightly instructed, to comprehend, appreciate and understand final truth—hence the creeds, those curious ossified metaphors, figures of speech paralyzed with fright.

Sufficient unto the day is the knowledge thereof. What is best today is best for the future. We must realize that life is a voyage and we are sailing under sealed orders. We open our orders every morning, and this allows us to change our course as we get new light.

These Puritans knew the voyage from start to finish, or thought they did. They never doubted—hence their inhumanities, their lack of justice, their absence of sympathy. And all the persecutions that had been visited upon them, they in turn visited upon others as soon as they had the power. Their lives were given over to cruelty and quibble.

These church-groups seemed to understand intuitively that a little separation was a good thing. If this were not so, things would have been even worse than they were. There were groups at Salem, Charlestown, Newtown, Cambridge, Watertown, Roxbury, Dorchester, Mystic and Lynn, each presided over by a "minister." This minister was a teacher, preacher, doctor, lawyer and magistrate. In times of doubt all questions were referred to him. The first "General Court" was a meeting composed of the ministers, presided over by the Governor of the Colony, and all things ecclesiastic and civil were regulated by them.

Of course these men believed in religious liberty—liberty to do as they said—but any one who questioned their authority or criticized their rulings was looked upon as an enemy of the Colony. So we see how very easily, how very naturally, State and Church join hands.

Puritans were opposed to a theocracy, but before the Colony was six weeks old, the ministers got together and passed resolutions, and these resolutions being signed by the Governor, who was of their religious faith, were laws. The "General Court" was a House of Lords, where the members, instead of being bishops, were ministers, and the State religion was of course Congregationalism.

All that is needed is time, and the rebels evolve exactly the same kind of institution as that from which they rebelled. The Puritans fled for freedom, and now in their midst, if there be any who want the privilege of disagreeing with them, these, too, must flee. And so does mankind ever move in circles.

Successful religions are all equally bad.

* * * * *

Anne Hutchinson arrived in Boston, September Eighteenth, Sixteen Hundred Thirty-four, on board the good ship "Griffin." With her was her husband, William Hutchinson, and their fifteen children. It had been a pleasant passage of seven weeks.

The Hutchinsons came from Boston, England, and had been members of the Reverend John Cotton's church. It had been their intention to leave for the New World with him the year before, but they had been detained by the authorities, for just what reason we do not know. If the persons who held them back a year had succeeded in keeping them entirely, it would have been well for them, but not for literature, for then this "Little Journey" would not have been written.

The Hutchinsons were accounted rich, having a thousand guineas in gold, not to mention the big family of children. John Cotton had told of them, and of the many fine qualities of heart and mind possessed by Mrs. Hutchinson. Several of the Hutchinson children were fully grown, and we are apt to think of the mother as well along in years. The fact was, she had barely turned forty, with just a becoming sprinkling of gray in her hair, when she reached the friendly shores of America.

Life on shipboard is a severe test of character. The pent-up quarters bring out qualities, and often attachments are made or repulsions formed, that last a lifetime. On board a co-ed ship, people either make love or quarrel, or they may do both.

The "Griffin" carried more than a hundred passengers, among them two clergymen who are known to fame simply because they crossed the sea with Anne Hutchinson. These men were the Reverend John Lathrop and the Reverend Zacharius Symmes. Religious devotions occupied a goodly portion of the Puritan time, both on ship and on shore. The two clergymen on the "Griffin" very naturally took charge of the spiritual affairs on the craft, and apportioned out the time as best suited them. There were prayers in the morning, prayers in the evening, preaching in the forenoon, prayers and singing psalms between times.

Mrs. Hutchinson was a physician by natural endowment, and made it her special business to look after the physical welfare of the women and children on the ship. This was well; but when she called a meeting of all the women on board ship, and addressed them, the Reverend John Lathrop and the Reverend Zacharius Symmes invited the themselves to attend, in order to see what manner of meeting it might be.

All went well. But in a week, Mrs. Hutchinson kind of got on the nerves of the reverend gentlemen. Both men were strictly class B: stern, severe, sober, serious, sincere, very sincere. Mrs. Hutchinson was practical, rapid, witty and ready in speech; they were obtuse and profound. Of course they argued—for all parties were Puritans. Daily disputes were indulged in about the meaning of misty passages of biblical lore. The ministers attended Mrs. Hutchinson's meetings, and she attended theirs. They criticized her teachings, and she made bold to say a few words about their sermons. The passengers, having nothing better to do, took sides.

When land was sighted, and at last the "Griffin" passed slowly through the mouth of the harbor, all disputes were forgotten and a joyous service of thanksgiving was held. I said all disputes were forgotten: two men, however, remembered. These men were the Reverend John Lathrop and the Reverend Zacharius Symmes. They felt hurt, grieved, injured: the woman had usurped their place, and besprinkled their sacred offices with disrespect—at least they thought so.

When anchor was dropped, they were among the first to clamber over the side and pull for the shore. They sought out John Winthrop, Governor of the Colony, and told him to beware of that Hutchinson woman—she had a tongue that was double-edged. John Winthrop smiled and guessed that a woman with fifteen children could not help but be a blessing to the Colony. The two ministers drew down long Puritan visages and thought otherwise.

* * * * *

The capacity for intellectual endeavor in a well-balanced woman is not at its height until her childbearing days are in abeyance. At such a time, in many instances, there comes to her a new birth of power: aspiration, ambition, desire, find new channels, and she views the world from a broad and generous vantage-ground before unguessed. The frivolous, the transient, the petty—each assumes its proper place, and she has the sense of value now if ever.

A great man once said in his haste that no woman under thirty knew anything worth mentioning, her life being ruled by emotion, not intellect. The great man was then forty; at fifty he pushed the limit along ten years. At thirty feeling is apt to cool a little, and the woman has times when she really thinks. Between forty and fifty is her harvest-time, and if she ever realizes cosmic consciousness it is then.

Anne Hutchinson was rounding her fortieth milestone when she conceived a great and sublime truth. It took possession of her being and seemed to sway her entire life. This truth was called "Covenant of Grace." Its antithesis is "Covenant of Works."

All theological dogmas, at the base, have in them a germ of truth. The danger lies in making words concrete and building a structure upon grammar.

Covenant of Grace and Covenant of Works are both true, but the first is sublimely true, while the second is true relatively. Both phrases come from Saint Paul, who was the very prince of theological quibblers. Covenant of Grace means that if you have the grace of God in your heart, your life will justify itself; that is, if you are filled with the spirit of good, inspired by right intent, and possess a firm faith that you are the child of God, and God has actually entered into a covenant with you to bless, benefit and protect you here and hereafter. Also, that under these conditions you can really do no sin. You may make mistakes, but this divine covenant that is yours transforms even your lapses, blemishes, blunders, errors and sins into blessings, so that in the end only the good is yours.

When you have gotten your mind and soul into right relationship with God or the Divine Spirit, you do not have to seek, strive, struggle, or painstakingly select and decide as to your actions. God's spirit acting through you makes you immune from harm and wrong. Your mind being right, your actions must of necessity be right, because an act is but a thought in motion.

So, enter into the Covenant of Grace—make a bargain with God that you will keep your being free from wrong thought—lie low in His hand. Let His spirit play through you, relax, cease wrestling for a blessing, and realize that you already have it. Then for you all of the harassing details of life become simplified. What you shall say, what you shall do, how you shall dress, what the particular actions of the day shall be—all are as naught. Life becomes automatic, divinely so, and regulates itself if you but have the Covenant of Grace.

The opposite view is the Covenant of Works. That is, you make an agreement with God that you will obey His will; that you will control and guard your "work," or actions; that your conduct will be correct. Conduct then becomes the vital thing, not thought. By a "work" was meant a deed, and you got God's assurance in your heart of salvation through the propriety of your acts. Turner painted painstakingly before he acquired the broad and general sweep. Washington, Franklin and Lincoln, all in youth, compiled lists of good actions and bad ones.

People in this stage set down lists of things which they should not do, and also lists of things they should do. Young people usually make lists of things they want to do, but must not. This stage compares with the stage of realism in art. You must be realistic before you become impressionistic. They want God's favor, they wish Him to smile upon them, and so they are feverishly intent on doing only the things of which He approves. Likewise they are fearful of doing the things of which He disapproves.

Moses made a list of seven things the children of Israel must not do, and three things they must do; and these we call the Ten Commandments.

The question of Covenant of Grace or Covenant of Works is a very old one, and it is not settled yet. It goes forever with a certain type of mind. Our criminal laws punish for the act—magistrates consider the deed. And it is only a few years ago since a judge in America focused the world's attention upon himself by refusing to punish delinquent children brought before him for their deeds. He organized the Juvenile Court, the sole intent of which is not to punish for the act, but to go back of this and find out why this child committed the act, and then remove the cause. And in doing this Judge Lindsey had to become a lawbreaker himself, for he often violated his oath of office by refusing to enforce the law where a specific punishment was provided for a specific offense.

The entire and sole offense of Anne Hutchinson was her emphasis of a Covenant of Grace. She had first gotten the idea from the Reverend John Cotton; but it had enlarged in her mind until it took possession of her nature, perhaps to the exclusion of some other good things. All of her exhortations to the women on shipboard were: Don't be anxious; don't be fearful; don't worry about the cares of your household or the conduct of your husband or children. Don't be anxious about your own conduct. Just dedicate your lives to God, and in consideration of the dedication His grace or spirit will fill your hearts, so that all of your actions will be right and proper and without sin.

Of course, this plea was met with specific questions, such as, if works are immaterial and grace is all, then what shall I do in this case, also that and the other? And how about teaching the catechism and memorizing the Ten Commandments? Must not we say prayers, and attend divine worship, and pay tithes, and obey magistrates?

Little minds always find endless food for argument and disputation, right here. To leave the question to Nature and let actions adjust themselves, they will never do. They want direct orders covering all the exigencies of life. To meet this demand the Torah of the Jews was devised, telling how to kill chickens, how to remove the feathers, how to pass a stranger in an alley, how to cook, eat, pray, sleep, sing, and cut one's hair.

Thus we get such peculiar laws as that it is a sin for a Jew to make a fire at certain hours, to trim his beard, or for a Chinaman to clip his cue. All barbaric people devise codes covering the minutiae of conduct. With the Hopi Indians the maidens dress their hair in one way and the married women in another, and if a married woman clothes herself like a maiden, she is regarded as past redemption, and is killed. One of the Ten Commandments, that against making graven images, was founded on the fallacy that sculpture and idolatry were one and the same thing. The Puritans believed that the arts of sculpture and painting were both idolatrous. Some believed also that instrumental music was the work of the devil. While a few believed that wind-instruments, like the organ, were proper and right, yet stringed instruments were harmful and tended to lascivious pleasings. Now there are churches that use the pipe-organ, but allow the use of a piano only in the lecture-room, or guildhouse. The United Presbyterians disunited from the main body by abjuring all music but that of the human voice, and then they split as to the propriety of using a tuning-fork.

The Baptists have always played the organ, but the cornet as an instrument to be used in leading congregational singing has caused much dispute and contention. And while the cornet is allowed by many, the violin is still tabu absolutely in certain districts. All this is "Covenant of Works": be careful concerning what you do—have a sleepless and vigilant eye for conduct—look to your deeds!

Anne Hutchinson cut the Gordian knot of law at a stroke, by saying, "Get the grace of God in your hearts, and it is really no difference what you do, or do not do." Now this is a very old idea. The elect few who get their heads into a certain mental stratum have always come to a belief in the truth of the Covenant of Grace.

When Jesus plucked the ears of corn on the Sabbath day he violated Jewish law, and showed them then and at various other times that he had small respect for laws governing conduct.

Persons who take this view are regarded as anarchists. They are looked upon as enemies of the State; consequently they are dangerous persons, and must be gotten rid of. Their guilt is always founded on an inference: they do not believe in this, hence surely they are guilty of that.

During the Civil War it was assumed by a large contingent that if you believed in equal rights for the colored man you were desirous of having your daughter marry a "nigger."

Many good men assume that if you believe in giving the right of suffrage to women, you want your wife to run for the office of constable. There are those who assume that men who do not go to church play cards; those who play cards chew tobacco; those who chew tobacco drink whisky; those who drink whisky beat their wives; therefore all men should go to church.

All of Anne Hutchinson's troubles came from inferences; these inferences were the work of the clergy.

* * * * *

Those first Colonists lived practically communal lives, as pioneers usually do. In their labors they worked together and for one another. If a house was to be built, there was a "bee" and everybody got busy. When a shipload of emigrants arrived, the entire town welcomed them at the waterside. The Hutchinsons were especially welcome, coming as the near and dear personal friends of John Cotton. Mrs. Hutchinson and several of her children were housed with the Cotton family, until they could build a home of their own.

Mrs. Hutchinson was regarded as an especially valuable arrival, for she had rare skill in medicine and a devotion in nursing the sick that caused her to be looked upon with awe. With children she was especially fortunate. Hers was the healing touch, for she had the welling mother-heart, the heart of infinite love; and the cures she worked by simply holding the stricken child in her arms and breathing upon it were thought to be miraculous.

With pioneers, children are at a premium. Puritans regarded the death of a child as a visitation of the wrath of God; it filled the whole settlement with terror. So naturally, any one who could stay the hand of death was regarded as divinely endowed. Also, they were regarded by some with suspicion, for these people believed there were two sources of power, God and Satan.

Anne Hutchinson smiled at this, and told the people that sickness was a result of wrong living or accident, and was not a manifestation of the wrath of God at all, and the cure was simply worked by getting in harmony with the laws of Nature.

Here, unwittingly, Mrs. Hutchinson was treading on very thin theological ice. She was contradicting the clergy. She thought Nature and God were one—they knew otherwise. But her days were so filled with the care of the sick who besieged her house, that she was forced in self-protection to give the people strong meat.

There were times when the weather was bad, and the whole settlement would sink into melancholia. These people were on the bleak hillside, facing the sea. Back of them, hedging them close, was the forest, dim, dark and mysterious. In this wood were bears, wolves, panthers, which in Winter, lured by the smell of food, would occasionally enter the village to the great danger of life. At nightfall the settlers would go inside, bar the windows and doors, and look to their matchlocks, which in emergency might be needed.

Now and again came Indians, proud and painted, and paraded through the village threateningly, and innocently helped themselves to whatsoever they saw which they needed. Mrs. Hutchinson's power of healing had gone abroad among these red men, and now and again an Indian mother would stop at her door with a stricken papoose, and such were never turned away.

The houses were small, ill-ventilated, overcrowded, and the singing, praying and exhortation were not favorable to the welfare of the sick, nervous or tired. The long severe Winter was a cause of dread and apprehension. This was weather to which English people were not used, and they had not grown accustomed to battle with the snow and ice. Instead of facing it, they went into their houses to protect themselves against it. So there was much idle time, when only prayer and praise for a God of wrath filled the hours. Not a family was free from disease, not a house but that upon the doorposts were marks of blood.

The word "psychology" had never been heard by Mrs. Hutchinson, but the thing itself she knew. She sought to relieve the people of gloom, to stop introspection and self-analyzation. They quarreled, strife was imminent; and when, with the dread of Winter, came the added fear of a Pequot uprising, the whole place was treading the border-land of insanity. It is doubtful whether Anne Hutchinson knew that insanity was infectious, and that whole families, communities, can become possessed of hallucinations—that towns can go mad, and nations have a disease.

But this we know, she challenged the eight ministers who were there in the Colony by calling meetings of women only, and teaching a gospel which was at variance with what the eight learned men upheld. Her theme was the Covenant of Grace. Get His spirit in your hearts and you will not have to trouble about details. All your anxious care about your children, your fear of disease, and horror at thought of death, will disappear. This fear is what causes your sickness.

"You think some of your acts have been displeasing to God, and therefore you suffer; but I say, if you but have the Grace of God in your souls, and have transcendent minds, you can never displease Him."

It will be seen that this is the pure Emersonian faith which has not only been applied to life in general, but to the arts. Anne Hutchinson was the mother of New England Transcendentalism. Self-consciousness is fatal to the art of expression; he who fixes his thought on the movements of his hands and feet is sure to get tangled up in them; good digestion does not require the attention of the party most interested; and he who devotes all of the time to his spiritual estate will soon have the whole property in chancery. Man is not a finality— he is not the thing—the play's the thing: life is the play and the play is life. Man is only one of the properties. Look out, not in; up, not down, and lend a hand. And these things form the modern application of the philosophy of Anne Hutchinson.

The ministers got together in secret session and decided that Anne Hutchinson must be subdued. She was a usurper upon their preserve, a trespasser and an interloper. Fear was the rock upon which they split. And I am not sure but that fear is the only rock in life's channel. Mrs. Hutchinson had told them that sermons, prayers and hymns were mere "works," and that a person could do all that they demanded and still be a thief and a rogue at heart, and that this close attention to conduct meant eventual hypocrisy. On the other hand, if your mental attitude was right, your conduct would be right.

"Even though it is wrong?" asked the Reverend Mr. Wilson.

And Anne Hutchinson replied, "Aye, verily."

"Then you say that you can commit no sin?"

"If my heart is right, I can not sin."

"Is your heart right?"

"I am trying to make it so."

"Then you can commit any act you wish?"

"Whatever I wish to do will be right, if my heart is right."

"But suppose, now—" and here these clergymen asked questions which no gentleman ever asks a lady.

These men had a fine faculty for misunderstanding, misinterpreting, and misrepresenting other people's thoughts.

John Cotton tried to pour oil on the troubled waters by explaining that the idea of a Covenant of Grace was general, and to make it specific was unjust and unreasonable. Then they turned on Cotton and said, "So, you are one of them?"

Anne Hutchinson was ordered not to speak in public.

She still held meetings at her own house, and claimed she had the right to ask her friends to her home and there to talk to them.

She it was who instituted the Boston Thursday Lecture, which was taken up by John Cotton and carried by an apostolic succession to the crowning days of its success, when Adirondack Murray reigned supreme. Mrs. Hutchinson spoke to all the women the house would hold. The Colony was divided into two parts: those who believed in a Covenant of Grace and those who held to a Covenant of Works.

John Cotton seemed to be the only clergyman of the eight who realized that both sides were right. Anne Hutchinson quoted him, told what he had said in England, as well as here—and then John Cotton had to defend himself. He did it by criticizing her, and then by accusing her of taking his words too literally. He feared the mob.

The breach widened—he denounced her. Winthrop was against her, and Cotton saw defeat for himself if he longer stood by her. She was a good woman, but she must be suppressed for the good of the Colony. With the consent of Cotton, and Wilson, his colleague, these two men, being joint ministers to the Boston church, made formal charges of heresy against her.

Sir Henry Vane, a youth of twenty-four, noble both by birth and by nature, was elected Governor of the Colony. He sided with Mrs. Hutchinson, and sought to bring commonsense to bear and stem the tide of fanaticism. They turned on him, and his downfall was identical with hers, although he was to return to England and make his own way to success: to love Peg Woffington and elbow his way to place and power, and also to London Tower, and lay his head upon the block in the interests of human rights.

Mrs. Hutchinson was tried by an ecclesiastic court and found guilty. In the trial, which covered several months, Mrs. Hutchinson defended herself at great length and with much skill; but what the clergymen demanded was an absolute retraction, and a promise that she would no longer usurp their special function of giving public instruction.

All this time the Colony was rent by schism. Up at Salem was a Baptist preacher by the name of Roger Williams, who was much in sympathy with Mrs. Hutchinson, personally, although not adopting all of her ideas. He thought that in view of the great usefulness of Mrs. Hutchinson as a nurse and neighbor, she should be allowed to speak when she chose and say what she wished, "because if it be a lie, it will die; and if it be truth, we ought to know it." Roger Williams would have done well to have kept a civil tongue in his head. There was a rod in pickle for him, too, and his words were duly noted and recorded by witnesses.

Then there was Mary Dyer, wife of William Dyer, who came to Boston in Sixteen Hundred Thirty-five, when the Hutchinson trouble was beginning to brew. Mary Dyer is described by John Winthrop as "a comely person of ready tongue, somewhat given to frivolity." But the years were to subdue her. She became much attached to Mrs. Hutchinson, and whenever Mrs. Hutchinson spoke in public Mrs. Dyer was always near at hand to lend her support. In the journal of Winthrop there are various references to Mrs. Dyer. The man was interested in her, but one of these references reflects most seriously on the mental processes of this excellent man. When the charges of heresy were brought against Mrs. Hutchinson, Mrs. Dyer stood by her boldly, and was threatened by the clergymen with similar proceedings. Winthrop says Mrs. Dyer was so wrought upon by the excitement that she was taken with premature childbirth. She was attended by Mrs. Hutchinson, and the child, "being not human," was despatched. This horrible story was related throughout the Colony, and both women were regarded as being in league with the devil. School-children used to run and hide when they saw Mrs. Dyer coming. A little later the Reverend Cotton Mather was to cite the case of Mary Dyer as precedent for his pet belief in witchcraft.

Mrs. Hutchinson was found guilty and expelled from the church. She was then again tried by the General Court, wherein all of her judges in the Ecclesiastic Court also sat. After a long, laborious and insulting trial, with no one but herself to raise a voice in her defense, pitted against the eight clergymen, she ably defended her cause and actually put them all to rout—an unforgivable thing, and an error in judgment on her part.

There is much literature surrounding the case, and one of the ministers, Thomas Welde, wrote a pamphlet explaining his part in it, quite forgetful of the fact that explanations never explain. The more one reads of Welde, the greater is his admiration for Mrs. Hutchinson. Governor Hutchinson of Massachusetts, the great-grandson of Anne Hutchinson, edited the journal of Winthrop, and gives a remarkably unprejudiced account of the sufferings of his great maternal ancestor.

Being banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Mrs. Hutchinson found refuge in Rhode Island, where she was welcomed by Roger Williams, the first person, I believe, who lifted up his voice for free speech in America. Mrs. Hutchinson was followed by her own family and eighteen persons from Boston who sympathized with her. Included in the party was Mary Dyer.

At Providence, Mrs. Hutchinson drew around her a goodly number of people, including Quakers and Baptists, who listened to her discourses with interest.

The ministers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony evidently felt that they had made a mistake, for they got together and delegated three of their number to go down to Providence and acquaint the renegades with the news that if they would recant all belief in a Covenant of Grace, they could return. Mrs. Hutchinson met the delegates with dignity and kindness. The conference lasted for two days, and the committee returned reporting the matter hopeless.

There were several desertions from Boston by those who sympathized with Mrs. Hutchinson, and some of those people Mrs. Hutchinson prevailed upon to go back. There were threats that the Massachusetts people were coming down to capture them all by force. This so preyed upon the Hutchinsons, who had suffered severely, that they packed their now scanty goods upon a raft, and with improvised sails headed for the Dutch settlement of Manhattan.

They were kindly received and given title to a tract of land on Long Island, near Hell Gate. There, in a little clearing, on the water's edge, they began to build a house. Ere the roof was on they were attacked by Indians, who evidently mistook them for Dutch, and all were massacred.

So died Anne Hutchinson.

* * * * *

Anne Hutchinson was mourned by Mary Dyer as a sister, and she preached a funeral sermon at Providence in eulogy of her. Mrs. Dyer also went back to Boston and made an address in praise of Anne Hutchinson on Boston Common, to the great scandal of the community. Mrs. Dyer had now become a Quaker, principally because Quakers had no paid priesthood and allowed women who heard the Voice to preach.

Mary Dyer heard the Voice and preached. Her attention was called to the law, which in Boston provided that Quakers and Jews should have their ears cut off and their tongues bored.

She continued to preach, and was banished.

She came back, and was found standing in front of the jail talking through the bars to two Quakers, Robinson and Stevenson, who were confined there awaiting sentence. She had brought them food, and was exhorting them to be of good-cheer. She was locked up, and asked to recant. She acknowledged she was a Quaker, and not in sympathy with magistracy.

She was sentenced by Governor Endicott, on her own confession, with having a contempt for authority, and ordered to be hanged. The day came and she was led forth, walking hand in hand with her two guilty Quaker brothers.

The scaffold was on Boston Common, on the little hill about where the band-stand is at the present day.

Mrs. Dyer stood and watched them hang her friends, one at a time. As they were swung off into space she called to them to hold fast to the truth, "for Christ is with us!" Whenever she spoke or sang, the drums that were standing in front and back of her were ordered to beat, so as to drown her voice.

After the bodies of her friends had dangled half an hour they were cut down.

It was then her turn. She ascended the scaffold, refusing the help of the Reverend Mr. Wilson. He followed her and bound his handkerchief over her eyes, a guard in the meantime tying her hands and feet with rawhide.

"Do you renounce the Quakers?" "Never, praise God, His son Jesus Christ, and Anne Hutchinson, His handmaiden—we live by truth!".

"A reprieve! a reprieve!!" some one shouted. And it was so—Governor Endicott had ordered that this woman be banished, not hanged, unless she again came back to Boston. It was all an arranged trick to frighten the woman thoroughly.

Wilson removed the handkerchief from her eyes. They unbound her feet, and the thongs that held her hands were loosed. She looked down below at the bodies of Robinson and Stevenson lying dead on the grass. She asked that the sentence upon her be carried out. But not so: she was led by guards fifteen miles out into the forest and there liberated.

In a few months she was back in Boston, to see her two grown-up sons, and also to bear witness to the "Inner Light."

Being brought before Governor Endicott, she was asked, "Are you the same Mary Dyer that was here before?"

"I am the same Mary Dyer."

"Do you know you are under sentence of death?"

"I do, and I came back to remind you of the unrighteousness of your laws, and to warn you to repent!"

"Are you still a Quaker?"

"I am still reproachfully so called."

"Tomorrow at nine o'clock I order that you shall be hanged."

"This sounds like something you said before!"

"Lead her away—away, I say!"

At nine the next morning a vast crowd covered the Common, the shops and stores being closed, by order, for a holiday.

Mr. Wilson again attended the culprit. "Mary Dyer, Mary Dyer!" he called in a loud voice as they stood together on the scaffold. "Mary Dyer, repent, oh, repent, and renounce your heresies!"

And Mary Dyer answered, "Nay, man; I am not now to repent, knowing nothing to repent of!"

"Shall I have the men of God pray for you?"

She looked about curiously, half-smiled, and said, "I see none here."

"Will you have the people pray for you?"

"Yes; I want all the people to pray for me!"

Again the light was shut out from her eyes, this time forever. Her hands were bound behind her with thongs that cut into her wrists, her feet were tied. She reeled, and the Reverend Mr. Wilson kindly supported her. The noose was adjusted.

"Let us all pray!" said the Reverend Mr. Wilson. So they hanged Mary
Dyer in the morning.

JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU

When the service of the public ceases to be the principal concern of the citizens, and they would rather discharge it by their purses than their persons, the State is already far on the way to ruin. When they should march to fight, they pay troops to fight for them and stay at home; when they should go to council, they send deputies and remain away; thus, in consequence of their indolence and wealth, they in the end employ soldiers to enslave their country, and representatives to sell it. So soon as a citizen says, What are State Affairs to me? the State may be given up for lost. —Rousseau

[Illustration]

Who is the great man?

Listen, and I will tell you: He is great who feeds other minds. He is great who inspires others to think for themselves. He is great who tells you the things you already know, but which you did not know you knew until he told you. He is great who shocks you, irritates you, affronts you, so that you are jostled out of your wonted ways, pulled out of your mental ruts, lifted out of the mire of the commonplace.

That writer is great whom you alternately love and hate. That writer is great whom you can not forget.

Certainly, yes, the man in his private life may be proud, irritable, rude, crude, coarse, faulty, absurd, ignorant, immoral—grant it all, and yes be great. He is not great on account of these things, but in spite of them. The seeming inconsistencies and inequalities of his nature may contribute to his strength, as the mountains and valleys, the rocks and woods, make up the picturesqueness of the landscape.

He is great to whom writers, poets, painters, philosophers, preachers, and scientists go, each to fill his own little tin cup, dipper, calabash, vase, stein, pitcher, amphora, bucket, tub, barrel or cask. These men may hate him, refute him, despise him, reject him, insult him, as they probably will if they are much indebted to him; yet if he stirs the molecules in their minds to a point where they create caloric, he has benefited them and therefore he is a great man.

Jean Jacques Rousseau was a great man. We are still reading him—still talking about him—still trying to clap label upon him—still hunting for a pigeonhole in which to place him.

If a man were wholly crude, rude, ignorant and coarse, and if he did nothing but shock and irritate us, we would quickly cast him aside. But in addition to shocking us the great man fascinates us by his insight, his subtlety, his imagination, his sympathy, his tenderness, his love. Behind the act he sees the cause, and so he excuses and forgives. Knowing the present he is able to forecast the future, for he, of all men, knows that effect follows cause. He does what we dare not and says what we would like to if we had the mind. So in one sense the man is our vicarious self—"I am that man." His very faultiness brings him near. His blunders make him to us akin.

* * * * *

To answer the arguments of Jean Jacques by references to his private life were easy and obvious. He did not apologize for his life, and perhaps we would do well to follow his example.

The fact that with his own hands he carried five of his offspring to foundling asylums as they came into the world does not alter or change the fact that he was also the author of "Emile," in which book, let it be remembered, the idea of substituting natural for pedantic methods in the training and developing of the physical, mental and moral faculties of the growing child first found expression.

The book furnished Froebel with the fund of ideas for his experiments with children which resulted in the Kindergarten, an institution that has profoundly influenced the educational methods of every enlightened country in the world.

Without a doubt this man who abandoned his own children became one of the great instructors of the age.

But a fair understanding of the situation demands that we should realize that things for which we blame him most occured before he was thirty-eight years old. And the writings of his that really influenced humanity were not written until after he was thirty-eight. To confound the reasoning of the mature man, by pointing to what he did at twenty-two, is, I submit, irrelevant, immaterial, inconsequent, unrelated and uncalled for. When a critic has nothing to say of a man's work, but calls attention to the errors of the author's youth, he is running short of material.

That Rousseau revised his mode of living and reformed his reasoning in his later years, viewing his early life with bitter regret, should be put forward to his credit and not be used for his condemnation. The facts, however, are all that his harshest critics state. But fact and truth are often totally different things. Untruth enters when we reason wrongly from our facts.

We have been told by both the friends and the enemies of Rousseau that to him the French Revolution traces a direct lineage. For this his friends give him credit, and his enemies blame. The truth is, that revolutions are things that require long time and many factors to evolve. A revolution is the culmination of a long train of evils. Rousseau saw the evils and called attention to them, but he did not exactly cause them—bless me! His little love-affairs with elderly ladies, and grateful, should not be confused with the atrocious cruelties and inhumanities that existed in France and had existed for a hundred years and more.

A wise man of the East was once eating his dinner of dried figs, and at the same time explaining to an admiring group the beauty and healthfulness of a purely vegetable diet.

"Look at your figs through this," said a scientist present, handing the man a microscope. The pundit looked and saw his precious figs were covered with crawling microbes.

He handed the microscope back and said, "Friend, keep your glass—the bugs no longer exist."

Jean Jacques handed the peasantry of France a reading-glass; Voltaire did as much for the nobility.

* * * * *

Jean Jacques Rousseau was born in Switzerland, which land, as all folks know, has produced her full quota and more of reformers. The father of Jean Jacques, quite naturally, was a watchmaker, with mainspring ill-adjusted and dial askew, according to the report of the son, who claimed to be full-jeweled, but was not perfectly adjusted to position and temperature. Jean Jacques tells us that his first misfortune was his birth, and this cost his mother her life. He was adopted by Time and Chance and fed by Fate. When the lad was ten the father fled from Geneva to escape the penalty of a foolish brawl, and never again saw the son who was to rescue the family-name from oblivion.

Kinsmen of the mother gave the boy into the hands of a retired clergyman who levied polite blackmail on his former constituents by asking them to place children, their own and others, in his hands that they might be taught the way of life—and that the clergyman might live, which, according to Whistlerian philosophy, was unnecessary.

That the boy was clever, shrewd, quick to learn, secretive as castaway children ever are, can well be understood. He became a secretary, an engineer, a valet, a waiter, working life's gamut backward, thus proving that in human service there is no high nor low degree, only this: he, at this time, knew nothing about human service—he was fighting for existence.

Knowledge comes through desire, but where desire comes from no man can say. It surely is not a matter of will.

Jean Jacques had a hunger for knowledge, and this, some wise men say, is the precious legacy of mother to son. He wanted to know!

And it was this desire that shaped his career.

He asked questions of priests all day long, because he was filled with the fallacy that priests knew the secrets of the unknowable and were on friendly terms with God.

To escape importunity a priest sent him to Madame De Warens. Now Madame was a widow, rich and volatile, filled with a holy religious zeal. Where religion begins and sex ends no man can say—the books are silent and revelation is dumb. Indeed, there be those who are so bold as to say that art, love and religion are one.

Leaving this to the specialists, let us simply say that the love of learning landed Jean Jacques, aged seventeen, poetic and philosophic vagabond, into the precious care of Madame De Warens, who kept a religious retreat for novitiates intent on the ideal life.

The religion of Mohammed made converts in numbers like unto the sands of the desert, because they were promised a Paradise peopled by dark- eyed houris. Orthodoxy got its hold by a promise of rest, idleness and freedom from responsibility. The heaven into which Jean Jacques slipped was a combination of all that Allah, Gabriel and the seductive dreams of Moody, Sankey and such could provide. Science founded on truth can never be popular until mankind further evolves, since it offers nothing better than toil and difficulty, and after each achievement increased work as a reward for work. This condition stands no show when compared with a heaven that gives harps that never require tuning, robes that need not be laundered, and mansions that demand no plumbing.

Jean Jacques lived an ideal existence; he was the guest, pupil, servant and lover of the Religious Lady who kept the Religious Retreat. Also, he was immune from responsibility. But Paradise has one serious objection—the serpent. This time the serpent was jealousy. Whenever the Religious Lady had guests of quality, the snake sank its fangs deep into the quivering flesh of her valet-lover. Thus does the Law of Compensation never rest.

"What is your favorite book?" asked Ralph Waldo Emerson of George
Eliot.

And the answer was, "Rousseau's 'Confessions.'"

And Emerson's counter-confession was, "So is it mine."

Elizabeth Barrett Browning nibbled at the same cheese. But the belief now is that Rousseau's "Confessions" is largely constructive truth, as differentiated from fact, and constructive truth is the thing which might have happened, but did not. Rousseau's "Confessions" is a psychological study of hopes, desires, aspirations and hesitations, flavored with regrets. All literature is confession—vicarious confession. The gentle reader has the joy of doing the thing, and escaping the penalty.

* * * * *

Rousseu's first literary effort to attract attention was written in his thirty-ninth year. It was merely an exercise penned with intent to show that so-called civilization had really polluted mankind and done more harm than good.

The essay was a subtle indictment of the times, with the French Government in mind, all from the standpoint of a Swiss. And it convinced at least one man—the author—of the truth of its allegations.

At this time there were in France more than a hundred offenses punishable with death. In the coronation oath of the King was a clause promising that he would exterminate all heretics. Just how this was to be done, the King left to experts. The "lettre de cachet," or secret arrest, was in full swing and very popular among princes and church officials high in authority. Any suspected man could be removed from family and friends as though the earth had swallowed him. He went out to drive, or to walk, or to work, and was seen no more. Search was vain and inquiry useless—aye, worse, it might involve the inquirer. The writ of habeas corpus was as yet a barren hypothesis.

Common people had no rights: they were merely granted privileges, one of which was the privilege to live until the order went out that the man should die.

Confessions were wrung from men and women by the use of the rack, twistings, blows, indignities, an exact description of which could not be printed. These details were left to priests, sanctimonious men who did their work with pious zeal and therefore were not accountable. Church and State were wedded. To doubt Scripture was to be in league against the State. Heresy and treason were one. To laugh at a priest might be death. To fail to attend mass and pay was to run a risk.

Lords and bishops held vast estates and paid no taxes. Grain was not allowed to flow from parish to parish, but was held in check by prohibitive tariffs. The King, himself, speculated in breadstuffs and banked on famine, for royalty was exempt from all tariff law. Thus was food made a monopoly. To petition was construed as an insult to the crown and was treated accordingly.

Most estates held serfs who were not allowed to leave the premises of their lord on penalty of death—they belonged to the land.

Officers in the army had the right to beat their soldiers, and if the soldier raised a hand to protect himself, he could be legally killed.

All skilled labor was in the hands of the guilds. These guilds got their charters from the crown. They fixed prices, regulated the number of apprentices, and decided who should work and who should not. To work at an art without a license from the guild was punishable by fine and imprisonment; to repeat the offense was death. Citizens could neither sell their labor nor buy the labor of their neighbors or families, without permission. The guild was master, and the guild got its authority by dividing profits with a corrupt court. Thus a few laborers received very high wages, but for the many there was no work. The guild made common cause with the priest and the peer. The collection of taxes was farmed out to the "farmers-general," who kept half they got. When the yearly contract was signed, the Secretary of State was given a present called "The Bottle of Wine," by the successful bidders. This present was in cash and varied anywhere from fifty to a hundred thousand francs. Where the custom began, no one knew; but it ended with Turgot, who turned in to the government treasury a perquisite that had been made him of seventy thousand francs, and issued an order that no official should accept a present of money from a government contractor.

Needless to say, Turgot was regarded as an unsafe person, and his official career was cut short.

Thomas E. Watson, in his most interesting book, "The Story of France," says:

  The Catholic church was a huge religious monopoly. Its hierarchy was
entrenched in a power before which the king himself was a secondary
  potentate. Then followed those consequences which have always
  followed when too much power is granted to any set of men. The
  Catholic church absorbed much of the wealth of the land. The higher
  priesthood became an aristocracy, imitating in every respect the
  feudal aristocracy, which was rich, idle and licentious. Just as the
  State regarded the subject from the standpoint of taxpayer only;
  just as the State imposed upon the common people all the burdens of
  government while denying them the benefits; so the nobility of the
  Catholic church lived sumptuously, lazily, licentiously—shirking
  their duties, forgetting the responsibilities of their sacred
  calling, neglecting the flock committed to their care, allowing
  ignorance and superstition to take full possession of the minds of
  the common people.

In the records of the human race there can be found no evidence more damming to absolutism and the union of Church and State than is to be found in the degraded, besotted condition of the common people of France immediately proceeding the French Revolution.

All France was orthodox. The masses believed. With boundless credulity they knelt at the foot of the priest.

Yet what had the priest done for them? Had he introduced books among them? No. Liberal ideas? No. Schools? No. Information upon such matters as concerned their material welfare? No. Had the Church ever pleaded the peasant's case at the bar of public opinion? No. Ever besought the king to lighten the weight of his heavy hand? No. Ever protested against feudal wrongs? No. Ever shown the least desire that the condition of the masses should be improved? No.

Royalist writers dwell scornfully upon the ignorance, brutality and prejudice of the lower orders in France at the time of the Revolution —let them write ever so scornfully, the lower they degrade the peasant, the higher mounts the evidence and the indignation against those who had been his keepers!

This government of France had been absolute. The State and the Church, the king and the priest, had had entire control. The people had no voice, no vote, no power. They had never been consulted. The entire responsibility had been assumed by the monarch and his privileged few —and here was the result. Theirs was the tree, theirs the fruit. "Whatsoever a man sow, that also shall he reap"; and the crimes, the ignorance, the brutality, the poverty, the misery of the masses of the French people in Seventeen Hundred Eighty-nine, stands as a permanent judgment of condemnation against the ruling classes, who were responsible for the material, mental and spiritual condition of a people who had so long been under their absolute control.

* * * * *

Rousseau, the subtly silent, the handsome, the bewitchingly melancholic, lived his subterranean life until he was forty-two. Then he was dogged out of Paris by the police, and soon after appeared in his native Geneva after an absence of twenty-five years. He was accompanied by his wife Therese, her mother, and his dog Duke.

This mating between Jean Jacques and Therese was a happy one. She could neither read nor write, nor did she care to. Yet she had an idolatrous regard for her liege, and every evening he read aloud to her and to his mother-in-law what he had written during the day. At every pause in the reading, the old lady, without understanding a word of it, would interject, "This is very fine!" And Therese would skilfully transform a yawn into a sigh of delight, roll her eyes in a transport of joy, and say nothing.

This was just what was required, and all that was required, save a chronic quarrel with influential friends, to keep Rousseau in good literary fighting form.

"A wife who is in competition with her husband, or who has just enough mind to detect his faults, is the extinguisher of genius," said Goethe, who lived up to his blue china and referred to his wife as a convenient loaf of brown bread, which he declared was much more nourishing than cake, having tried both.

Just outside Geneva, at Les Delices, Voltaire had built his private theater, where he used to invite the favored children of Calvin to witness the drama. Voltaire being a playwright and without prejudice in the matter, had even suggested a municipal theater for Geneva. This brought forth from Jean Jacques a scorching pamphlet on the seductive deviltry of the drama, wherein it was pointed out that the downfall of every nation that had gone by the boards had begun its slide to Avernus in its love of the play. In this essay Rousseau expressed the view of orthodox Geneva, where the traditions of Calvin still survived. "The theater stands for luxury, idleness, sensuality and all that is feverish and base; private theaters are private bagnios," wrote Rousseau. Probably Rousseau, when he began to write, did not care anything about the matter one way or the other. But Voltaire had neglected to invite him to a "first night," and now he was getting even. As he wrote he convinced himself.

"He is like an oven that is too hot," said Voltaire; "it burns everything that is put into it." Then when Voltaire found that Rousseau's pamphlet was really making a splash in the sea of books, he got mad and called Rousseau a "dog of Diogenes," "that Punchinello of letters," the "fanfaron of ink," and other choice epithets.

Every knock being a boost, then as now, Rousseau found himself lifted into the domain of successful authorship. His income was less than a hundred pounds a year (Voltaire's was two or three thousand pounds). but he had all he needed, and things were coming his way.

Voltaire represented the nobility—Rousseau stood for the people. And Geneva being but a big village—twenty-four thousand inhabitants—the battle of the giants was watched by the neighbors with interest.

Rousseau was a member of the Protestant Church; Voltaire called himself a Catholic—so little do labels count.

Voltaire lived in a palace and rode in a coach with outriders; Rousseau trudged on foot alone. Solitary, he would take his piece of dry bread and grape-leaf full of cherries, and wander to the woods or on the mountain-side, stopping and sitting on a boulder to write on his ever-faithful pad when the thought came. "I have to walk ten miles to get a thousand words," he said.

In Geneva at this time lived Diderot and D'Alembert, literary refugees, busy at that first encyclopedia. They ran a kind of literary clearing-house, and gave piecework to everybody who could write and had two ideas to jingle against each other. Both Rousseau and Voltaire, whenever they were in the mood, wrote for the encyclopedia. Finally Voltaire started a dictionary of his own.

Geneva at this time must have been a very attractive place in which to live. There were men there who wrote like geniuses and quarreled like children. Father Taylor said that if Emerson were sent to hell, he would start emigration in that direction. The refugees from France made Geneva popular, and all the bickering added spice to existence and made exile tolerable.

Rousseau persistently flocked alone and made much dole because his friends forsook him. Then when they went to see him he complained because they would not leave him alone. Diderot accused him of insincerity because he changed the name of his dog from "Duke" to "Turk," for fear of offending Madame d'Epinay, who gave him a cottage rent-free. "He is a dwarf, mounted on stilts," said Baron Grimm.

And all the time Jean Jacques wandered on the mountain-side, ate his brown bread and cherries, talked to himself and wrote, and got back home in the twilight to present the day's catch of ideas to Therese and the fat mother-in-law, who at the right time always said, "This is very fine!" And Rousseau, full-jeweled, but unreliable as a horologe, loved them both, second only to his dog, Turk, who lay at his feet and occasionally pounded his tail on the floor to prove that he was still awake and that the sentiments were his, and that he agreed with the old lady—"This is very fine!" The quarrels of Jean Jacques with all three were only a quarrel with himself.

* * * * *

Having entertained Voltaire for a year, Frederick the Great shot this winged arrow, "If I had a province to punish, I would give it to a philosopher to govern."

Rousseau is flowery and often over-sentimental. But it can be assumed that he himself always knew what he meant. Yet he has given rise to much loose thinking. His references to the "Book of Nature," for instance, were worked overtime by zealous converts. It will be recalled how Chief Justice Marshall paralyzed a poetic attorney in mid-flight, who referred to the "Book of Nature," by looking over his glasses and saying, "One moment, please, while I take down the page and paragraph of that passage in the volume to which counsel has just kindly referred us."

It is the penalty of all original thinking that it inspires fools to unseemliness as well as wise men to action.

Napoleon Bonaparte said, "Had there been no Rousseau, there would have been no Revolution."

And George Sand said, "To blame the 'Social Contract' for the
Revolution is like blaming the Gospels for the massacre of Saint
Bartholomew."

George Sand is literary, but wrong, since Marat, Mirabeau, Robespierre, got their arguments directly from Rousseau, and no one I have ever heard made an appeal to Scripture as a defense for murdering thirty thousand men, women and children. Mirabeau quotes this from Rousseau in self-defense: "No true believer can be a persecutor. If I were a magistrate and the law inflicted death on an atheist, I should begin to put it into execution by burning the first man who should accuse or persecute another."

Jefferson and Franklin both read the "Social Contract" in the original French, and quoted from it in giving reasons why it was not only right, but the duty, of the Colonies to separate from Great Britain. Rousseau fired the heart and inspired the brain of Thomas Paine to write the pamphlet, "Common-sense," which, more than any other one influence, brought about the American Revolution.

Jefferson especially was fascinated by Rousseau, and in his library was a well-thumbed copy of the "Social Contract." marked and re- marked on page and margin. Paine and Jefferson were the only men connected with the strenuous times of Seventeen Hundred Seventy-six who had a distinct literary style—who worked epigram and antithesis. And the style of each is identical with the other. That Paine wrote the first draft of the Declaration of Independence needs no argument for the literary connoisseur—he simply says, "Read it." But while we know that both Paine and Jefferson fed on Rousseau for ten years, it is not so clear that they collaborated. They got their information from the same source—one in England and the other in America—and met with minds mature.

As Victor Hugo gave the key to the modern American stylists, so did
the stylists—and precious few there were—of Seventeen Hundred
Seventy-six trace to Jean Jacques. The man who wrote the "Junius
Letters" had only one model.

That opening phrase of the Declaration, "We hold these truths to be self-evident." is a literal translation from Jean Jacques.

The Reverend Joseph Parker once said to me, "I always begin strong and I end strong, for only your first phrase and your last will be remembered, if remembered at all, by the average listener."

Jean Jacques begins strong. The first words of the "Social Contract" are, "Man is born free, but is everywhere enslaved."

Does not that remind you of the not-to-be-forgotten opening words of
"The Crisis": "These are the times that try men's souls"?

Rousseau says, "Every individual who opposes himself to the general will ought to be restrained by the whole body, which signifies nothing else than that they force him to be free." That is, he is no longer fit to receive the benefits of the social contract since he refused to pay the price.

The argument of the "Social Contract" is that, in all and every form of government, the people enter into an agreement with the prince or ruler, agreeing to waive the mutual right of freedom in consideration of his seeing to it that laws shall be passed and enforced giving the greatest good to the greatest number.

And this led to that shibboleth of the Revolution, "Liberty, Fraternity, Equality." Only when it was written by Jean Jacques twenty years before it ran thus, "Liberty, Fraternity, Equality—or Death." The final word was too strong for even his fiery followers to digest. But once understood it means that if either prince or pauper refuses to sign the Social Contract and live for all, death then must be his portion. For and in consideration of this interest in the peace and welfare of all, the prince is given honors and is allowed to call himself "a ruler." If, however, at any time the prince should so forget his sacred office as to work for private gain or for a favored few, then he is guilty of a breach of the contract, and the people owe to themselves the duty of deposition or revolution. Just as Nature, when a man's body is no more fit for service, kills the man, so must we kill the office and begin anew.

And this was to cause Thomas Paine to say in the Chamber of Deputies, when the execution of Louis the Sixteenth was under discussion, "I vote to kill the kingly office, not the man."

The following passages taken at random from Jean Jacques might safely be attributed to either Paine, Jefferson or "Junius":

Wherever theological intolerance is admitted, it is impossible that it should not have some civil effect; and so soon as it has, the sovereign is no longer sovereign even in secular matters: the priests become the real masters, and kings are only their officers. Whoever dares to say, Beyond the Church there is no salvation, ought to be driven from the State.

I perceive God in all His works; I feel Him in myself; I see Him all around me; but as soon as I contemplate His nature, as soon as I try to find out where He is, what He is, what is His substance, He eludes my gaze; my imagination is overwhelmed. I do not therefore reason about Him, for it is more injurious to the Deity to think wrongly of Him than not to think of Him at all.

By equality we do not mean that all individuals shall have the same degree of wealth and power, but only, with respect to the former, that no citizen shall be rich enough to buy another, and that none shall be so poor as to be obliged to sell himself.

Almost everything conspires to deprive a man brought up to command others of the principles of reason and justice. Great pains are taken, it is said, to teach young princes the art of reigning; it does not, however, appear that they profit much by their education. The greatest monarchs are those who have never been trained to rule. It is a science of which those who know least succeed best; and it is acquired better by studying obedience than command.

Did there exist a nation of gods, their government would doubtless be democratic; it is too perfect for mankind.

The individual by giving himself up to all gives himself up to none; and there is no member over whom he does not acquire the same right as that which he gives up himself. He gains an equivalent for what he loses, and a still greater power to preserve what he has. If, therefore, we take from the social contract everything which is not essential to it, we shall find it reduced to the following terms: Each of us puts his person and his power under the superior direction of the general will of all, and, as a collective body, receives each member into that body as an indivisible part of the whole.

* * * * *

Rousseau was born in Seventeen Hundred Twelve, and died in Seventeen Hundred Seventy-eight. He wrote four books that are yet being read. These books are the "Confessions," the "Social Contract," "Emile," and the "New Heloise." I give the titles in order of popularity. It is easy to say that people read the "Confessions" for the same reason that they read "Peregrine Pickle" and "Tom Jones," it being one of those peculiar books labeled by our French friends "risque." But its salacious features are only incidental, and of themselves would not have kept it afloat upon the tide of the times. The author, dead over a hundred years, must have said something to keep men still reading and discussing him.

Rousseau dealt with the elemental impulses of men and women. His cry, "Back to Nature," is still the shibboleth of a great many good men, from Parson Wagner to Theodore Roosevelt. Between the nobility and orthodox Christianity, Nature was in a bad way in Rousseau's time. The nobles thought to improve on her, and the preachers told the people that what was natural was base. God was good, but Nature and the devil were playing a game and the stakes were the souls of men. There are many people still haunted with the hallucination that to trust your impulses is to be damned.

Rousseau described human nature, and being truthful, some of it he pictured as rude, crude and course. But on the other hand he showed much that was redeeming—traits of beauty, truth, gentleness, consideration, worth and aspirations that reached the skies. To trust humanity, he thought, was the only way humanity could be redeemed. He believed that blunders were sources of power, since by them we came to distinguish between right and wrong. He was the first man to say, "That country is governed best which is governed least." He gave Horace Walpole the cue for the mot, "When the people of Paris speak of the Garden of Eden, they always think of Versailles."

Rousseau is the first man of modern times to show us the beauty of Nature in her wild and uncultivated attire. And he, more than any other man who can be named, turned the attention of society towards nature-study as a refining force. Read this from "Emile": "It was Summer; we arose at break of day. He led me outside the town to a high hill, below which the Po wound its way; in the distance the immense chains of the Alps crowned the landscape; the rays of the rising sun struck athwart the plains, and projected on the fields the long shadows of the trees, the slopes, the houses, enriching by a thousand accidents of light the loveliest prospect which the human eye could behold." Rousseau is the spiritual ancestor of John Burroughs, Thompson-Seton, and all our scientific, unscientific and sentimental friends who flood us with Nature stories—fiction, fake or fact.

In his "Emile" he outlines our so-called pedagogic new-thought methods. Birds' nests, bumblebees, hornets' nests, leaves, buds, flowers, grasses, mosses, are schoolroom properties to which he often refers. To a great degree he replaced the ferule, cat-o'-nine-tails, dunce-cap, musty, dusty books, tear-stained slates, awful examples and punishments of a hundred lines of Vergil, by wholesome good-cheer and limpid forgetfulness of self in drawing pictures of spiders and noting the difference between a wasp and a bee, a butterfly and a moth, a frog and a toad, a mushroom and a toadstool. And so the reason Rousseau is read is because there is much in his work that is essentially modern. No thinker writes on political economy without quoting the "Social Contract," either for the sake of bolstering his own argument, or to show the folly of Jean Jacques. And I submit that as long as we feel it necessary to refute an author, Andrew Lang may expect letters from him any time, for, although dead, he yet lives.

SO HERE ENDETH "LITTLE JOURNEYS TO THE HOMES OF GREAT REFORMERS," BEING VOLUME NINE OF THE SERIES, AS WRITTEN BY ELBERT HUBBARD; EDITED AND ARRANGED BY FRED BANN; BORDERS AND INITIALS BY ROYCROFT ARTISTS, AND PRODUCED BY THE ROYCROFTERS, AT THEIR SHOPS, WHICH ARE IN EAST AURORA, ERIE COUNTY, NEW YORK. MCMXXII

Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14. Elbert Hubbard

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