Chapter 18

During the few months that Mr. Talmage was pottering about in the land of the erstwhile Pharaohs, examining mummified cats and drawing a fat salary for unrendered services, he evidently forgot that in his own, his native land, the people "rule the roost"; that the government is but their creature and has to dance to music of their making. If the distinguished gentleman had spent his vacation in the hayloft in close communion with a copy of the constitution of the United States and a primary work on political economy, instead of gadding from the pyramids to the Acropolis hunting for small pegs upon which to hang large theories, perhaps he would be able to occasionally say something sensible.

Of course, in sloshing around over so wide a field, Mr. Talmage gave his hearers his truly valuable opinion of Mohammedanism. He admitted that it is a religion of cleanliness, sobriety and devotion; but the fact that its founder had four wives caused him to sweat in agony. Polygamy, according to Mr. Talmage, "blights everything it touches." Those who practice it are, he is quite sure, the enemies of womankind. Is it not a trifle strange that from so foul a root should spring such a celestial plant as the Christian religion? that from the loins of a polygamous people should come an immaculate Christ? How can we mention Abraham, Isaac and Jacob without a curse, or think of a God whose teachings they followed, without horror--unless indeed we take issue with the public and vote Mr. Talmage an ass of the longest-eared variety.

Mr. Talmage is quite sure that God was on the side of the allies at the Battle of Waterloo; that he was on the side of the Russians during the French invasion. Mr. Talmage does not take it upon himself to explain, however, how the Deity chanced to be on the other side at Marengo and Austerlitz! No wonder that war is a risky business, if the God of battle changes his allegiance so erratically and without apparent provocation! Mr. Talmage should advise the government to cease expending money for ironclads and coast fortifications. In case of a foreign complication it were "all day with us" if the Autocrat of the Universe were swinging a battle-ax against us; while if we chanced to have him with us, we could send Baby McKee out with the jawbone of a hen, and put the armies of the world to shame!

Mr. Talmage should retire to some secluded spot and make a careful analysis of his sermons before firing them out to the press. They may sound all right in the big tabernacle, where a great volume of noise is the chief desideratum; but they make very poor reading. Like a flapjack, they may tickle the palate when served hot and with plenty of "sop"; but when allowed to grow cold are stale, flat and unprofitable.

Mr. Talmage is troubled with a diarrhoea of words and should take something for it. Perhaps the best possible prescription would be a long rest,--of a couple of centuries or so. How in God's name the American people ever became afflicted with the idea that he is a great man, is a riddle which might make Oedipus cudgel his wits in vain. He is not even a skillful pretender, shining like the moon, by borrowed light,--for he does not shine at all. His sentences are neither picturesque, dramatic nor wise. His so-called "sermons" are but fragmentary and usually ignorant allusions to things in general. He seldom or never encroaches upon the realms of science and philosophy, although he frequently attempts it, and evidently imagines that he is succeeding admirably, when he is but sloshing around, like a drunken comet that is chiefly tail, in inane limboes.

I can find no other explanation of Mr. Talmage's distinction than that, like Elliott F. Shepard, he can be more kinds of a fool in a given time than any other man in his profession. That were indeed distinction enough for one man, well calculated to cause the world to stand agaze! Notoriety and fame have, in this age, become synonymous if not exactly the same. The world gauges greatness by the volume of sound which the aspirant for immortal honors succeeds in setting afloat, little caring whether it be such celestial harp-music as caused Thebe's walls to rise, or the discordant bray of the ram's horn which made Jericho's to fall, and Mr. Talmage is emphatically a noise-producer. From the lecherous, but learned and logical Beecher to the gabbling inanity now doing the drum-major act, is a long stride.

* * * NUDE ART AT CHICAGO.

Now the very Old Nick is to pay at the World's Fair, and an exasperating stringency in the money market. The great "uncultured West" is flocking to Chicago to see the show, and is seeing more than it bargained for. Its modest cheek has been set aflame by the exuberant display of the nude in art. And the West is kicking, kicking with both feet, kicking like a bay steer who has a kick coming and knows how to recalcitrate. The culchawed East and blase Yewrup look on with mild astonishment and wondah what ails the bawbarians, doncher know.

We learn from our Chicago correspondent that the great buildings are liberally adorned with "figures of nude men of heroic size, not a detail of which has escaped the loving care of the fin de siecle sculptors. Elsewhere the examples of the nude represent both sexes." Yet the East wonders that the West is shocked,--cannot understand why "wives drag their husbands away and young ladies leave the building with faces ablaze with indignation!" Our correspondent volunteers the information that "a much severer test of the patience of the Western people will come when the art palace is opened"; also that "the treatment the Western people are getting is drastic and cruel, but it will work wonders in cultivating and refining them."

We beg leave to dissent from the conclusion. We hardly think that any of our readers will accuse us of prudery. We are willing to concede special privileges to art. Its province is to portray the beautiful, and the most beautiful thing on all God's earth is a perfect female form. The painter or sculptor who loves his art may be permitted to reproduce in modest pose a naked female figure; but he should not be allowed to force it upon the attention of a mixed multitude. Let him place it where it will only be seen by those who seek it. A man may take his mother, wife,--even his sweetheart to look upon such work of art, and they may be better, purer, nobler for having worshiped at the shrine of beauty; but to compel them to stand before it with a mixed multitude to most of whom it suggests but grossest sensuality, is a brutal crime against modesty. So much for the female nude.

What man would take a woman near and dear to him to look upon a nude male statue or painting,--"not a detail of which has escaped the loving care" of the artist? Certainly few Western or Southern men would do so! Worship of the beautiful may pardon the nude female figure, but the nude male figure never. Hercules nude is but an animal, and Apollo a nightmare. To place nude male figures indiscriminately about the great Fair buildings, where they must be seen by modest maids, whether they will or no, and that while insolent strangers enjoy their confusion, is the very apotheosis of brutality.

The idea that such an outrage upon divine modesty will "cultivate and refine" people sounds like one of Satan's satires. We honor the "uncultured West" for making a heroic kick, and trust that it will keep on recalcitrating until every unclean statue forced upon its attention in the name of art is forever disfigured. The protest of the West proves that its mind is still pure,--that it has not yet reached that plane of "culture" where modesty perishes in the frosts of formalism.

The liberty accorded art has degenerated into license. The beautiful is no longer sought, but the bizarre. It is not the massy shoulders of Hercules, the rounded arm of Juno, the beautiful bust of Hebe, the godlike pose of Apollo or the shapely limb of Aphrodite that painter and sculptor seek to reproduce; it is an "effect" similar to that of Boccaccio or a fragrant French novel. It is not against the true in art that the West is rebelling, but against the vulgar.

* * * "THERE'S ONE COMES AFTER."

A SKETCH.

None so poor but they may build fairy castles in the air; none so wretched but they may fondly gaze upon the fickle star of Hope, flaming ever in that Heaven we see by Faith.

A man, worn with suffering and sorrow and sin, was toiling homeward in the night from a far hunter's camp, whither he had been banished by a doctor's edict, "Rest from labor lest ye die." "That indeed is a misfortune," he had said, and redoubled his vigils at the desk. Then they brought his little son, the last gem in the sacred circle of the home whose breaking up broke his heart, and placed the child upon his knee. He looked at its fair face and said, "I will go." A man for whom the shadows should still be falling toward the west, but old before his time, deep scarred by angry storms, battered and bruised like some presumptuous mortal who had seized his puny spear and plunged into such wars as the Titans were wont to wage upon the Grecian Gods. The jaded steed stumbled along the dark and dangerous way, while its rider dreamed with wide open eyes and sometimes muttered to himself in that dreary solitude.

"There's one comes after--in dying I do not die, in losing I simply pass the sword from sire to son. I may but fill a ditch for a better to mount upon and win the mural crown. What, then, if that other be----"

The owl hooted as he passed, and from the thicket came the angry snarl of wolves. "How human!" he bitterly exclaimed. "Hoots and hungry howls, all along life's path-- a weird pilgrimage in the dark."

He nodded, his head bowing almost to the saddle-bow, then awoke humming, he knew not why,

"As long as the heart knows passion. As long as life, as long."

His dog, a powerful mastiff, bristled and uttered an angry growl as a great gray wolf slunk along in the dry grass but a few yards distant. "The brutes follow the wounded," he muttered, "and I am stricken deep." He unslung his heavy fowling-piece and fired. The eyes of the brute glowed like green globes of phosphorescence in the light of the gun, then sank down with a howl that drew its comrades about it, not to succor and to save, but to tear and rend. He watched them a moment, muttering again, "How human!" and turning to an aged oak that spread its branches wide, built a fire of brush and bivouacked. But he could not sleep--the blue devils were playing at hide-and-seek within his heart, and phantoms that once were flesh came trooping from out the gloom and hovered round him. He put out his hands to them, he cried to them to speak to him, but they receded into the darkness from whence they came--the grave had given up its dead only to mock him, to emphasize his utter desolation. He embraced the sturdy oak as though he would draw strength from its stubborn heart which had defied the storms of a thousand years, then sank prostrate at its base and, with only dumb animals to note his weakness, wept as only strong men weep when shivered by the bolts of Destiny.

"One left--but one of those I loved; my strength is broken, my labors are in vain--I can but die; yet must I live, lest the one in whom is centered all my hopes, doth fall in evil ways and also come to naught."

He dreamed of the days that were dead, and of those rushing upon him from the mystic future, "each bearing its burden of sorrow." He trod again life's thorny path, from the cradle to manhood's somber noon, a path strewn with wreck and wraith and wet with blood and tears. Again the well-known forms came from beyond the firelight and, winding their shadowy arms about his neck, wept for his loneliness. He tried to embrace them, to gather them to his heart as in the old days when they welcomed his homecoming with glad acclaim, but clutched only air--his kisses fell on vacancy. As they receded into the gloom he followed crying, "Stay! Stay!" and wandered here and there through bogs and briers and over the rough rocks, calling them each by name with many an endearing term, until he fell exhausted, and, putting forth his hand to break his fall, encircled the neck of his faithful dog and lay there bruised and bleeding. Then other phantoms came, two women, one old, one young, bearing a ghastly burden, around which little children wailed. They laid it down at his feet, a horrid thing with wide-scaring eyes and gaping wounds all wet with gore. And the elder bowed herself upon it and kissed the rigid hands, the lips and hair and moaned that she was left childless in her age, but the younger stood erect, imperious, the frightened children clinging to her skirts and, calling him by a name that froze his blood, bade him look upon her widowhood.

"It was self-defense," he doggedly replied, as he met the glance of her scornful eyes.

"O egotist!" she cried; "must a man die that a dog may live? Must a mother's gray hairs be brought in sorrow to the grave; must the heart of a wife be crushed within a bloody hand and children never know a father's loving care, that such a thing as thou may'st yet encumber this fair earth? Precious indeed must be that life, purchased at such a price!"

But again the forms that had fled returned, and one, a frail, sweet-faced woman with a world of pity in her eyes, stood between him and his accuser. She took the scornful woman's hand and gently said: "Sister, 'twas thee or me, 'twas thine or mine;" and in the music of her voice the ghastly object vanished.

The hoot of the owl and the howl of the wolf grew faint and far away; he fell into an uneasy slumber and saw himself, aged and gray, trying to keep pace with a fair youth, who mounted with free and graceful step a mountain whose summit was crowned with the light of everlasting day. Steeper and steeper grew the path, yet he strove with failing strength. The youth reached out a strong hand to him and said, "Lean on me;" but he put it back, crying fiercely: "No! no! climb thou alone farther I cannot go. On! On to the summit, where breaks the great white light, and there is no death!"

The youth struggled with the steeps and overcame them one by one, and mounted higher and ever higher, until he stood where never man had stood, the glory of the gods upon his face, the immortelles upon his brow. And people wondered and said to him, "Who is it that stands upon the mountain top where only tread the gods?" And he answered, "It is I--it is my other self." And they said, "The poor old man is mad; let be, let be."

The dog crept closer to its master and laid its head upon his breast. The vision changed, and he sat by a seacoal fire in chambers that once had echoed the glad voices of those whose graves were 'mid the soughing pines. He held his one treasure to his heart and sang to it the old ditties that its mother was wont to sing when soothing her babe to slumber, until the golden head drooped low upon his breast. He wove about it fond dreams of what should be in the years to come, when, grown to manhood, it entered the arena of the world. A bony hand stole over his shoulder and seized the child, and looking up he beheld Death standing by his chair. He clasped his treasure close and struggled with the grisly specter, but it only mocked him, and tearing the child from him, fled into the outer void. He struggled to his feet and from his parched lips there burst a cry that echoed and reechoed through the dark woods and was hurled back from the distant hills.

At dawn the rustics found him, lying cold as his rocky bed, the beaded dew upon his grizzled beard, his horse with head low hanging over him, his dog keeping watch and ward.

* * * POOR OLD TEXAS.

'Twas said in days of old that misfortune never comes singly. The fates are turning upon Texas an unkindly eye. She is o'erwhelmed quite, sunk in the Serbonian bogs of dark despair. First our mighty Democratic majority slipped up on the Hoggeian banana peel and drove its vertebrae through the crown of its convention plug, while unfeeling Populists and Republicans jeered and flouted us. Then our blessed railway kermishen lost its linchpin and the soulless corporations heaped coals of fire upon our heads by reducing rates, thereby making our boasted wisdom a byword and a reproach. The cyclone swooped down upon us from Kansas and swiped our crops, making our boasts that here was an Elysium beyond the storm-belt sound as hollow as Adam's dream of Eden after he was lifted over the garden wall. Still we bore up and presented a bold, if not an unbroken front to a carping world. But the vials of wrath were not yet exhausted. Pandora's box had not yet emptied itself of all its plagues. Our sorrow's crown of sorrow was yet to come. It is here; our humiliation is accomplished, our agony is complete. A lone highwayman has held up and robbed a populous passenger train in Texas--in West Texas, the rendezvous of the sure-enough bad man, who catches catamounts and clips their claws,-- who defies whole barrels o' Jersey lightning and uses the bucking-broncho for his laughter, yea, his sport! Shades o' Ben Thompson and Luke Short, has it come to this,--that a rank stranger can lasso a Texas train, drive the passengers under the seats, plunder them at his pleasure, with no one to molest or make him afraid! Half a hundred Texans trembling at sight of one gun were a sight worth seeing,-- and they did not even know it was loaded! Gone is our ancient glory--our rep. is irretrievably in the tureen. Henceforth when a pilgrim from the pathless Southwest registers at an Eastern hotel the bell-boys will not fall over each other to do him honor as a dime-novel hero, nor the gilded clerk insure his life before politely requesting him to pay in advance. The last lingering shadow of our greatness hath departed. The tenderfoot will trample upon us, and the visiting capitalist neglect to ask us up to the bar. The fair ladies of other lands will no longer worship us as the picturesque knights of a reckless but romantic chivalry. They will remember that in a whole trainload of Texans there was not one who would fight even on compulsion,-- will sweep by with frigid hauteur, leaving us to weep for the days that are no more. Alas, poor Texas!

* * * THE SEVENTH COMMANDMENT.

A correspondent wants to know what I think of "the Single Standard of Morals, which assumes that tampering with the Seventh Commandment is as demoralizing to men as to women."