Chapter 4

Much comfort is derived from others' failings. In the quiet evenings we talk of our neighbors' weaknesses and we enjoy them. By contrast we admire ourselves.

LET US BE THANKFUL THAT WE NEVER APPRECIATE OUR OWN LIMITATIONS.

Each man's children are beautiful and promising in his view.

He cannot see the hopeless construction of their foreheads, nor can he read in their eyes the sad absence of "speculation."

Let us be thankful for that. The future depends on the good care awarded to almost worthless specimens now. ----

FOR THE UNIVERSAL INSTINCT OF THANKFULNESS, LET BE DEEPLY THANKFUL.

The thick-lipped negro on the Congo finds a dead hippopotamus, half eaten by wild beasts, and in his woolly brain a dim, misty feeling of THANKFULNESS is born.

The Tartar bandit surprises mild Chinese conducting a tea caravan across the stony desert. He murders the mild Celestials and feels THANKFUL as he contemplates the booty.

A great Trust manager finds ways to add some millions to those which he already has and does not need. In THANKFUL mood he gives two millions or three to education.

As inborn, as instinctive as the beating of the heart in the human being is THANKFULNESS.

Thankfulness is the unconscious acknowledgment of a Higher Power.

It is the indestructible evidence of man's permanent belief in just government of the universe.

It is the most hopeful, the most promising feature of man's character.

For THANKFULNESS itself we should be thankful. ----

If you want to succeed, cultivate a feeling of hopeful thankfulness.

Hopefulness, thankfulness and success are as near akin as light, heat and motion--the same force underlies, makes up the first trio, as it does the second.

If you find it hard to be thankful, read a little of history, and thankfulness will come. Thousands of millions of men have lived and suffered to make your existence here at least bearable. You may not be satisfied, but you have comforts that were not dreamed of by the luckiest a few centuries back. You think the prosperous have too many privileges.

Perhaps they have. But when your great-grandfather was a young man a nobleman could order his lackeys to seize Voltaire the greatest mind in Europe--and beat him almost to death. Voltaire was locked up in the Bastile for complaining.

Thanks to the eternal row that Voltaire kicked up, you can never be treated as he was. So be thankful to Voltaire.

Be thankful to the long line of plucky men and fighters--not forgetting Christopher Columbus--who have gone before you.

Be thankful that you are alive in an interesting age with interesting events happening.

Be thankful also that with thankfulness you combine the feeling of dissatisfaction, of unrest that will push you ahead and give you cause for fresh thankfulness next year. ----

We are thankful to have you for a reader.

We are thankful for the criticisms and friendly comments that you occasionally send.

We hope that you will enjoy your dinner to-day and not regret it to-morrow.

WHAT WILL 999 YEARS MEAN TO THE HUMAN RACE

The street railroad company in the Borough of Brooklyn has just executed some leases to endure 999 years. Leases of property have also been made for the same period, though, of course, a lease of 999 years will be about as binding 999 years from now as would a lease of the great pyramid executed the day after it was finished, if such a lease should be presented at present to the Egyptian Government.

These preposterous leases are interesting because they bring vividly before the human mind the certainty of wonderful and splendid changes in human affairs.

The street railroad leases are especially fascinating to the imaginative mind.

They deal with present conditions and will seem inconceivably primitive hundreds of years before the leases will have ended.

These leases deal with miserable little electric cars crawling slowly over the face of the earth, at either end an underpaid, overworked man, and in the middle a crowd of poor, dissatisfied, ill-housed human beings.

Nine hundred and ninety-nine years from now the human race will not by any means have accomplished its destiny. It will still be struggling on toward the goal of real civilization.

But it will have grown far beyond the savage condition of life that marks the execution of these long leases.

Before these street railroad leases expire Brooklyn and all other cities as they now exist will have disappeared from the earth.

Perfect transportation, underground, overground and through the air, will enable human beings, if they choose, to live as far from their work as does the seagull or the eagle.

It will no longer be necessary to crowd together in miserable tenements, and homes will be scattered. Human beings undoubtedly will dwell in huge, splendidly managed structures, each in the centre of its own park, far from the noise and the brutality of modern city life.

Before the leases expire the combined cities of New York and Brooklyn and Yonkers and Coney Island and Montauk Point will have grown into an enormous, hideous human aggregation of fifty million or more human beings.

Even the city of a hundred millions may be seen.

But as that huge, monstrous city will have grown, so it will have died, as the monsters of former geological epochs grew and died in their turn.

The site of the vanished great city will be covered with gardens, and children in schools will be taught that human beings who once lived in the cliffs in the Far West afterward gathered together in horrible municipal ant-hills in the East, called cities, before they learned how to live comfortably. ----

Before those street railroad leases expire the present temporary mania for money will have run its course.

Once every important man felt that a certain number of slaves must be murdered at his funeral. Sometimes his favorite horse was shot. In scores of millions of cases his wife was burned alive with his corpse. We have outgrown that. Nowadays the great man who dies must leave behind him an accumulation of millions, which means that thousands of men have worked to give him what he did not need. Before these leases shall have expired that form of financial barbarism will have ceased to exist.

It is reasonable to hope that the coming thousand years will have seen the end of industrial feudalism, which has had its birth in our day, and which will run its course as did the military feudalism of the Middle Ages.

What a marvellous picture the world will present one thousand years from now!

The earth will be adequately populated.

Science will have conquered disease almost entirely. Each woman will be the mother of two children. She will not bring five or six into the world in order that two or three may live.

Competition will be replaced by emulation. The intelligent servant of government will work as loyally and enthusiastically for his government and for the people as the boy at college now works for his college football team.

The human mind will have wandered on many leagues in its search for a satisfying religion, getting always nearer to a clear conception of the grandeur of the universe, and further away from the superstition necessary to the moral control of a brutal semi-civilization.

Human beings will have learned that the noblest thing one man can do is to work for others.

Each will gladly contribute all his talent and strength to the welfare of all.

All will gladly recognize, applaud and richly reward the special ability of the individual.

There will be no poverty. Willingness to work will insure a comfortable livelihood. Education will have developed the average human intellect far beyond our conception. Nine-tenths of the human race have been able to read only within the past few years. What will a thousand years of universal education do? ----

The end of the leases of the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company will find many of our problems solved.

It will find, however, the real work of man just beginning. The abstract work of the intellect, the proper organization of society as expressed in human passions, the study of the wonderful and beautiful universe outside of our own little planet, will then begin with the conquest of our material conditions.

THE AZORES--A SMALL LOST WORLD IN A UNIVERSE OF WATER

As you cross the Atlantic by the Southern route the "sighting of the Azores" is one incident of your voyage. Just before daybreak the ship is shaking and the passengers roused by the deep tones of the big steam whistle.

One by one shivering forms straggle up from below, like reluctant spirits answering a premature last call. Bare feet in slippers, and shivering forms with overcoats over nightgowns, gradually line the rails.

On the left there appears, apparently, a heavy, dark bank of clouds:

"The Azores!" shouts down from the bridge your yellow-whiskered captain, looking as cheerful and warm as though it were noon.

You watch, shiver and blink as the light grows stronger behind the pinkish clouds in the east. The dark cloud settles into solid land. You see it clearly. Sharply outlined against the sky stands, forty miles long, a mammoth saw with huge teeth, irregular, sharp. The power of old-time volcanoes made all of that land, and those sharp saw-teeth, pointing toward the sky, are the destroyers of long ago, cold and dead now, but telling ominously of the power that lies hidden below.

Between you and the brightening sunrise, suspended in the "crow's nest," half way up the mast, stands the sailor who watches the sea for you through the night. He calls out, and ahead to the left you see a small boat filled with human beings that seem scarcely as big as your finger. Your ship could plough through miles of such small boats-- but out there in the ocean, just as well as inside the biggest court-house, LAW rules, and the big ship must turn out for the small fishing boat.

You realize the power and beauty of law, as our governor and sustainer. You see that laws of little men reach out two thousand miles into the sea. You think of the laws of the universe that stretch across the immeasurable distances of time and space, protecting ALL, and insuring ultimate fulfilment of the destinies of all the worlds.

As those fishermen of the Azores work safely, under full protection, in their little lost corner of the great ocean, so we, in our little world, our little insignificant corner of space, work out our tiny problems safely under the splendid protection of Divine Law and wisdom sent to us from some far- off point of which we know nothing.

The light of the rising sun brings out from shore many other small boats, each with its load of men who wave their arms to the steamship and cheer against the sound of the waves and wind. To them that ship is like the fast express that passes the country railroad station, or the comet that whirls round our sun and off again.

Those fishermen feel that THEY are the REAL world; the steamship and outside creation are only half imagined, interesting phenomena. You look down from the deck and the fishermen seem unreal little ornaments of your European excursion. And so the two sets of human beings go their ways--to each nothing is important, save that which each is doing.

There are great planets and suns that roll past us across this cosmic ocean of ether. Our pathetic little round earth looks to them as that fishing-boat of the Azores looks to you. And WE think of those great interstellar travellers as the fisherman in his little boat thinks of the ocean liner--the great star to us is merely an interesting feature of OUR sky. And we actually wonder whether there is any thought on that big, distant sun; any intelligence on the vast ship that ploughs the ocean of limitless space. ----

The high ridge of volcanic peaks and the others near it are made fertile and green by soil gradually developed through the centuries by seeds brought across the ocean by winds and birds.

The tops of the mountains are black lava. Lakes of black water fill some of the quiet craters. Only, here and there, the rising sulphur smoke from rocky fissures tells of heat and power smouldering.

The last great eruption of the volcanoes occurred a little more than two hundred years ago--so the inhabitants laugh if you speak of danger. They forget that two hundred years in the earth's life is as two minutes in the life of a man--and that what a man did two minutes since he may do again.

Fences are built across the fields of thin soil that cover the lava. Each inch of that land thrown up by fire "belongs" to some man. White houses stand at the edges of deep lava canyons running from the mountain tops to the sea's edge canyons made by pouring lava or by the splitting of the mountains under fearful pressure.

Children play about the blocks of lava--and all their lives, no matter where they may go, those children will think of that far-off island as the only real home, and of black lava blocks as the only REAL kind of stone.

From your passing boat you cannot see these children. Their little lives, lost in the far-off sea, seem as unimportant as the lives of the fish that swim below you.

But some child playing there to-day may be like that other island child, Napoleon, and live to make the rest of the world talk about the island that bred him. Or, better still, some one of those children, with a brain made powerful by solitude and noble thought, may have the idea that shall help us all, teach us more and more to think kindly of each other and help each other, instead of passing each other coldly and indifferently as the big ship passes the little, far-off island.

NO NAPOLEONIC CHESS PLAYER ON AN AIR CUSHION ZANGWILL'S IDEA IS FALSE--WHY CHESS PLAYING STUNTS GENIUS

Mr. Zangwill's keen intellect, straining hard for striking pictures and word effects, sees falsely the great general of the future. He says:

"The Napoleon of the future will be an epileptic chess player, carried about the field of battle on an air cushion."

In this condensed, picturesque fashion Mr. Zangwill expresses sententiously a number of mistaken ideas. He thinks that the game of war is like the game of chess, and that the future world conqueror will be a great chess player, using men as pawns and the world as his chess-board.

He observes the curious and interesting historical fact that of the world's great conquerors many, including the two greatest, Napoleon and Alexander, were afflicted with that mysterious disease, epilepsy. He concludes that the great general of the future will probably be a confirmed epileptic.

The ability of a fighting man to-day resides largely, of course, in the brain. The general's MUSCLES no longer count as a fighting factor. His battles are won or lost inside of his SKULL. Mr. Zangwill concludes that the future great general will have a mind developed to an abnormal extent at the expense of the body--he sees in the future world conqueror an abnormal creature, a giant brain perched on a miserable, wasted body, so feeble and delicate that it must be carried about the field of battle on an air cushion to prevent shocks. ----

The quotation from Zangwill which we print above contains only twenty-one words. Rarely have so many errors, so many fundamental yet plausible errors, been crowded into so little space.

The Napoleon of the future, the great conqueror, will NOT be a chess player. The real Napoleon whom we know had no love for chess or any other waste of time, or any other form of self- indulgence.

Chess is no game for a Napoleon, or for any other man who wants to embody real accomplishment in the story of his life.

CHESS IS A WEAK GAME, FOR IT ADMITS ALL KINDS OF RULES AND ALL KINDS OF FOREORDAINED IMPOSSIBILITIES.

The man who makes the world's great success will not be bound by rules. The great men of the world are great because they refuse to ADMIT impossibilities.

The man who plays chess has two knights, and these knights he can only send two squares in one direction and one square in another, or one square in one direction and two squares in the other. His two bishops can only move diagonally across the board, one on the white and one on the black. His castles lumber along on straight lines. His king cannot be touched or taken, and the game ends when the king is in fatal danger. The queen, in the dull game we call chess, can do almost anything.

But Napoleon was really a great man, and the game of life that he played was very different from the chess game.

When the king was in hopeless danger, Napoleon's game had just begun. Others before him had looked upon kings on the board of life as the chess player looks upon the wooden or ivory king before him.

But to Napoleon kings were pawns, to be moved around and made ridiculous. When he felt like it, he made pawns into kings--the descendant of one of his pawn-kings reigns to-day in Sweden.

Napoleon's game deprived the queen of all power--she was less than a pawn. HIS game sent the bishops hopping back and forth, diagonally or at right angles, as he saw fit. He created knights to his heart's content, and he taught them to move as he wanted.

Napoleon was great because there was nothing of the chess player about him. He did not admit of regular, foreordained moves on the chess-board or on the board of life. HE REFUSED TO CONSIDER ANYTHING IMPOSSIBLE UNTIL HE HAD TRIED IT. He tells us himself that he deserved credit for crossing the Alps, not that he accomplished a difficult feat, but because he refused to believe those who declared the feat impossible.

If anybody said "Check" to Napoleon, he kicked over the chess-board and began a new game of his own--that was what surprised the poor, dull old Austrian generals in Italy.

No; the real great man is no chess player, he has no chess player's mind. And do you, Mr. Reader, waste no time at chess, if you have any idea of being WORTH WHILE in a big or a little way. ----

The Napoleon of the future will be no epileptic. That terrible disease has afflicted many of the noblest intellects, and it is undoubtedly a disease brought on, or at least intensified, by great intellectual activity and a lack of co-ordination between the mental and physical operations of the body. But some great men have been great, not because of that terrible disease, but in spite of it. Science will conquer that trouble, as it has conquered others, and the scientist to do this work will be, himself, one of the world's great men. ----

The Napoleon of the future will be no huge-brained dwarf, with feeble body, carried on an air cushion.

It is true that many great men of to-day are relatively small in body. The gigantic muscle, thick legs, broad shoulders and hairy chests of the successful Viking have nothing to do with modern achievement.

But it is also true that to-day, as always, the healthy mind lives in a healthy body, and lives ON a healthy body.

As well expect to find the most perfect fruit on a withered, half-dead tree, as to find the most able brain in a withered, half-dead body. The blood is the life of the brain, and unless a HEALTHY body supplies HEALTHY blood the brain's chance is small.

Napoleon, it's true, was at one time a physical wreck--BUT DON'T FORGET THAT HIS GREATNESS WAS ALSO A WRECK AT THAT TIME.

The GREAT Napoleon operated in a body tireless and powerful enough to remain thirty consecutive hours on horseback. It was a body so powerful that criminal neglect and stupid ignorance of the laws of health were powerless against it for many years.

The Napoleon that went to St. Helena dwelt in a worn-out body, a fat, degenerate perversion of the Napoleon that conquered the world.

The great conqueror of the future, ladies and gentlemen, will be a splendidly original brain, working through a perfectly developed body, AND WORKING FOR THE MASS OF THE PEOPLE, FOR THEIR FARE, NOT FOR THEIR CONQUEST AND OPPRESSION.

All of which is respectfully submitted to our readers for discussion and criticism.

A GIRL'S FACE IN THE GASLIGHT AND AN IMPORTANT PART OF THE WORLD'S WORK

On a corner of Rector street, down near the river, a loud drum was beating. A guitar and a tambourine competed shrilly with the drum's dull booming. Slowly a careless crowd gathered round the Salvation Army workers.

There were bare-headed women, little girls holding little babies in their arms, sailors drunk, and one or two sober, 'longshoremen pleased with the sound of the drum, and a few of the thin, hungry faces that disturb our well-fed happiness.

The man beat his drum, standing erect and proud in his army uniform.

The two thin, nervous young women played on guitar and tambourine with all their force, striving to gather the crowd whom they hoped to make better men and women.

Thirty or forty people gathered--glad to accept any noise and excitement in their dull lives.

The music stopped, and a young girl stepped to the centre of the circle.

She was frightened. Her voice was weak at first. Gradually her thin, pale face grew animated.

Her blue eyes dilated. In dull, routine way, doing her best, earning respectful silence from the night crowd, she told her story:

"I was bad. I tried to be good. But I couldn't do it with my own strength. I asked God to save me. He did save me. He will save you, if you will ask Him."

She spoke with a strong German accent. With all her deep, earnest soul, with all her poor, limited mental force, she longed to help the men and women around. As she spoke she bent her head farther and farther back, until her eyes looked up to the sky. There, with perfect faith, she saw the God whose work she was humbly doing in the muddy streets and flickering gaslight of the riverside.

While she could control her voice and her deep emotion she talked on her one theme--the power of God to help the helpless. But she BELIEVED, and she FELT what she said. Soon the tears ran over from her upturned eyes, and she could speak no more.

Then a man began--thickset, earnest, with a strong Scotch accent.

He talked to the men about him in a rough way that appealed to them. ----

As the crowd stood listening many passed. A few were contemptuous; the majority were indifferent.

If you see these workers you ask perhaps:

"What good do they do?"

That is the question that may be asked of every man that ever lived, and only One can answer it.

The thin, white-faced girl, playing, singing and PREACHING in the dirty street, does this:

She touches the heart of a half-drunken man. Turning from the saloon door he goes home, and takes to his wife and children as much of his wages as is left, a feeling of repentance, good resolutions.

Her tears are answered by the tears of miserable girls and women who sink back into the shadow as they watch her pure face. Through them she helps to undo the horrible, soul-destroying work of brutal civilization. ----

Mysteriously, diversely, the work of the world is done.

The storm, endless in its power, washes down the mountain-tops to fertilize the valley.

The tiny earthworm works in darkness, crumbling up its little patch of earth to make it fit food for plants.

Each does its work.

The mighty intellect with cyclonic force gives to mankind grand, general views of cosmic grandeur, and introduces to minds prepared the "eternal silences," and the vast serene fields of divine law.

THE "CRIMINAL" CLASS DID THIS VIEW OF IT EVER OCCUR TO YOU?

Much interest just now in CRIMINALS.

Much horror aroused by depravity.

Many plans more or less appropriate for making the air pure.

Many good men, politicians, women and bishops, who spent the Summer at the seaside willing now to spend a few days wiping "CRIME" off the earth. ----

What is CRIME? Who are the criminals? Who makes the criminals?