Chapter 9

Sir Edwin is a palace-car passenger on the great world- train, and knows little of the perils of the track. His coach rolls smooth, he takes his ease and indulges in optimistic moralizing, while those who serve him look death in the face so frequently that they learn to mock him,--to take desperate chances that may plunge them down to destruction and drag all else after. It has been my lot to look at life from the cab-windows, from the point of view of the man with the grimy hand and the soiled jacket. While Sir Edwin has been contemplating with dreamy interest the faraway purple hills, I have been compelled to scrutinize less giant objects closer at hand; hence it is not strange that my opinion of the world should differ somewhat from that entertained by the speculative author of "The Light of Asia." In brief Sir Edwin knows all about the beauty, wealth and success which make earth a Paradise for the few; I something of that hideousness, poverty and despair that make it a Purgatory for the many. That world to which Sir Edwin belongs, and which he contemplates so approvingly, is but the gold-leaf on the graven image, the bright foam on the bosom of a bottomless sea, a verdant crust cast over a chaos of fierce despair,--which will some day rip it into a million ribbons, enact an all-embracing French Revolution that will sweep our boasted "Car of Progress" back a thousand years on the crimson crest of a wave of blood and fire! If Sir Edwin had explored the infernal vortex beneath his feet he would not talk so complacently of the "trend of human events." For the benefit of Sir Edwin and many other wealthy and cultured palace-car passengers who amuse themselves with theories; who infer that because human slavery is abolished in the Occident and the thrones of the Orient are beginning to totter before the might of democracy; because science is marching on to triumph after triumph, and no Spanish Inquisition or English Court of High Commission longer casts its upas-shadow athwart the hearts of men, the great world is "growing nobler and better," I hereby tender my services to pilot them through that Perdition which does not hover indeterminate in the inane limboes of dogmatic theology, but hath a well-defined latitude and longitude; is visual, tactual,--in which untold millions of mankind writhe and shriek from the cradle to the grave!

. . .

It is no long journey to the portals of the nether world. In many a costly church the worshipers may hear during the rests in the doxology the shrieks of the damned. A walk of a few blocks at most in any of our great, and many of our smaller American cities will enable us to enter that earthly Gehenna whose horrors the pen of Dante could scarce picture, which threatens to engulf the world. Even in Texas, a land so favored by the gods, so blest with brave men and noble women, we may enter the purlieus of the place of pain, across whose portal is inscribed the legend o' dark despair; may commune with all Gehenna's grisly gorgons and witness the writhings of thousands of wretched creatures beneath the fierce fire-whips of the infernal furies.

Let us take a typical American city; not that here we are nearer the great red heart of Hell than are the people of other lands. What is true of one is true in greater or less degree of every city throughout the world. We will suppose the city we are to examine to contain a million inhabitants. We will pause to contemplate its miles of broad streets and magnificent buildings; its imposing schools and scores of costly churches that rear their symmetrical spires far into the empyrean and fill the great dome with their melodious chimes; its marble fountains and costly plants which ravish the senses with sweet perfumes; its wealth and wisdom, luxury and learning, its philanthropic people and happy homes were Peace reigns and Plenty ever smiles. That is one side of the shield,--the one upon which the Arnolds and Talmages have looked so long that they forget there is any other,--that a golden veil may hide the face of a Fury or a Fiend.

The clock is proclaiming Night and Sin's high noon; follow me and I will show you why I do not believe in "humanity" quite so implicitly as does Sir Edwin; why even Dr. Talmage has failed to wean me from "the awful sin of pessimism." It is not necessary to linger long in the low concert halls and brothels where girls scarce in their teens are made the prey of the rum-inflamed passions of brutes old enough to he their grandsires; where old roues, many of whose names are a power "on 'change," bid against each other for half-developed maids whose virginity is certified to by a physician; where green gawks from the country are made drunk with cheap wines sold to them at fancy prices by courtesans, plucked and turned over to a subsidized police if they protest; where hundreds of pure girls are entrapped, drugged and ruined every day of the world. These social ulcers are so protrusive, have been written up so frequently by enterprising young reporters who naively supposed that to expose was to suppress, that even optimistic Dr. Talmage must at least be cognizant that such places exist,--even in Brooklyn, which enjoys the supernal blessing of his direct ministrations, and from which moral Mecca his sounding sentences are transmitted by the vicarious apostles of the press to all men,--who possess a penchant for light literature!

One glance into the low gambling dens, where haggard creatures, created in God's image, but long ago degraded below the brute level, nightly waste the few pence which they pick up Heaven alone knows how,--perhaps by selling the virtue of their daughters, robbing their wives of ill-got gains or plundering the pockets of drunken laborers. We may pass by the opium joints where women of all ages and classes lie for hours, stupid with filthy fumes, at the mercy of bestial orientals and drunken negroes; also those dives devoted to forms of debauchery so debased that many a blase man of the world does not believe their existence more than a demoniacal dream. These are vortices of vice too fearfully foul for eyes of aught but fiends; the air too putrid for lungs that inhale that of pure and happy homes. We must shun those plague spots, else bear false witness to the world, for any true pen-picture of their hell-born horrors would, like Medusa's awful face, turn all who gazed thereon to stone!

. . .

We must content ourselves with traveling the purlieus of Perdition, the sulphur-fumes of those profounder depths of degradation being too strong for lungs accustomed to chant optimistic lays; the glare of the burning marl too fierce for eyes used only to vernal meads and still waters; but even here, in the Purgatorium as it were, sights and sounds calculated to appall the stoutest heart are not wanting. Here stalks the demon Poverty. He is by no means so hideous as some of his brethren in the infernal hierarchy, and perchance we may inspect his dominions without succumbing to moral hysteria.

Poverty? What do you know of it, my well-fed optimistic friends? You pay your taxes, give a few pence to the beggar at the street corner, perhaps contribute a few dollars to this or the other relief fund that does not relieve,-- and wonder that people do not go to work and earn their bread. "There is always work for those who really want it," one of you complacently informs me. Are you quite sure? In a city like this we are traversing I have seen fifty thousand men who "really wanted work," and could not find it. Fifty thousand unemployed, destitute and desperate people in one city. I was one of the number. Why didn't they scatter? you will ask. Whither should they go, and how? Take to the snow-clad country, be arrested as vags, and herded as criminals? For my part I did "scatter,"-- tramped one hundred miles in a northern winter without food, and found three days' employment,--loading ice into box cars! Many of those fifty thousand idle men had families to support. How did they do it? Now you are getting into Hell!

Come with me and I will show you thousands of families in this city alone who have not had in six months as good a meal as could be picked out of your garbage barrel; hundreds of families that sleep this winter night on the bare floor of filthy tenements or huddled like swine on an armful of foul rags and straw; delicate women and children dying for lack of proper warmth and nourishment; hundreds of men who regard it as a godsend to get arrested that they may have shelter from the piercing winds of the night and a bite to eat in the morning. Put your head into this 10-cent lodging house if you want to get some new ideas regarding the "trend of humanity." Glance into this low groggery--but one of several thousand in this great city--and "size up the gang" before being too sure that a "pessimist" is simply a person troubled with a superabundance of black bile. Of the million people who make up this great city, probably six hundred thousand are already plunged deep in the abyss where lurk Want and Crime, or trembling on its verge, and the number who thus "live from hand to mouth," who feel that they have "no stake in the country,"--that God and man are against them-- is ever on the increase. That verdant, sunkissed crust upon which Arnolds complacently saunter and Talmages proudly strut, grows thinner year by year, while the fires below wax ever hotter, more turbulent, more explosive!

Would you know how thin this crust actually is; how fissured and honey-combed from beneath, until it can scarce sustain its own weight, and the sulphur fumes ever rise through it like steam through a sieve, inspect the city government and note how and what constitutes the controlling power. When you learn, as you will if you examine carefully, that those thousands of vile drinking dens dictate who shall be our public servants, and what laws we shall live under; that the "madam" of the fashionable bagnio is more potent at police headquarters than any delegation of the Y.M.C.A.; that no whereas or resolution of philanthropists can withstand the fiat of the ward bosses; that everywhere there is collusion with criminals and jobbery, perhaps you will not be quite so certain of "the world's great future."

. . .

Do you turn to the church to make good the promise of the optimist? Let us explore the "amen corner" and see how many pious souls we shall there find whose incomes are chiefly drawn from buildings rented for immoral purposes. Even while I write I see an old white-haired man, whose power in prayer is the pride of his church, making his rounds, collecting his monthly stipend from the keepers of negro brothels and the lowest grade of drinking dens,--places where nightly assemble people of all ages, colors and sexes and enact scenes that might bring a blush to even the brazen front of Belial!

The church? What is it doing to extinguish the well-nigh shoreless Gehenna that threatens to engulf it? Drilling an augur-hole here and there in the thin crust and pouring in a few drops of water,--or oil, as the case may be; founding a few missions; distributing a little dole; sending a few Bibles to the heathen to offset the much bad whisky supplied them by "Christian countries"; perfecting its choir and sending its pastor to the Orient to hunt for "confirmation of Holy Scripture "amid the mummified cats of Egypt or the hoary trash of Palestine!

What is true of the city is true, though in lesser degree, of the country. If you think our agricultural brethren have no taste of Hell examine the list of mortgages! If you do not believe that Moloch is the presiding deity of commerce visit Trafalgar Square, the Place de la Concorde, or, worst of all, our own Wall Street. In old times men who despoiled others were called pirates and banditti; were execrated by honest men, anathematized by the church, a price set upon their heads by the State; yet they never pretended to be other than what they were; they did their devilish work openly, with the strong hand. Wall Street is a den of banditti who rob, not by open force, but by secret fraud. The tool of the seventeenth century freebooter was the flashing sword; that of his nineteenth century successor the cowardly and sneaking lie. The first pillaged a few ships, towns and castles; the latter plunders hundreds of thousands every year of the world, and then has the sublime audacity to come into court and plead that his business is both legitimate and necessary. And so rotten is society,--so prostrate does it cower before the golden calf-- that the buccaneer, instead of being bastinadoed or beheaded, is crowned with bays! How can we harmonize these stubborn facts with Sir Edwin's view that "the course of mankind is constantly toward perfection?" Of course we should "look at the matter philosophically"; the trouble is that too many content themselves merely with philosophizing and do not look at the matter at all, but only at some optimistic, far-fetched theory thereof.

It is very pleasant to close our eyes and believe--if we can-- that the world is gradually working out its salvation; that it is steadily "growing grander and nobler"; to preach against "the sins of pessimism"; but unfortunately the stubborn fact is all too palpable that the shadow of the social world grows ever broader and deeper; that while the sunlight gilds the mountain tops the great valleys, wherein are congregated the millions of "poor people who have no work," are buried in cimmerian night. If Sir Edwin and Dr. Talmage will but listen they may hear shrieks of woe and wail--not unmingled with bitter curses--cleaving that inky pall; may hear voices proclaiming, Let there be light--though the world blaze for it!

. . .

Progress? We boast of progress? Progress whither? From the slavery of the auction-block and cat-o'-nine-tails to that of the great industrial system, where souls as well as bodies are bought and sold; where wealth is created as by the magic wand of a genie or the touch of gold-accursed King Midas, while thousands and tens of thousands beg in God's great name for the poor privilege of wearing out their wretched lives in the brutal treadmill,--to barter their blood for a scanty crust of black bread and beg in vain; then, finding the world against them, turn their hands against the world,--become recruits to the great army of crime. From the child-like simplicity, where man saw and adored the Deity in all his works, heard his laughter in the ripple of the stream, his voice in the thunder-storm and saw his anger in the writhen bolt, to the present age of skepticism, where he can see his Creator nowhere; and, blinder than his barbarian ancestors--knowing more of processes but less of principles--protests that Force is the only Demiurgus, dead matter the only Immortal.

Progress toward Greatness! Greatness of what? Certainly not of the individual, for the present conditions tend toward mediocrity. Greatness of the State? What does eternity know of States, that to promote their welfare immortal souls should be sacrificed? Why toil and travail, suffer and sin for toy balloons which destiny will whistle down the winds?

There are entirely too many self-commissioned watchmen, who, like Sir Edwin, sit at ease in their boxes and cry all's well,--meaning thereby that it is so with them; too many seers who look into their own cozy back parlors and imagine that they are standing on a Mirza's Hill and reading the riddle of human life; too many listening enchanted to their own sweet voices and mistaking the sound for a world-wide paean of praise, or at least the drowsy hum of human content. Such are blind Neros who complacently fiddle while Rome is, if not actually burning, yet filled to overflowing with combustibles, ready to burst into flame!

THE PLATONIC FRIENDSHIP FAKE.

A charming little lady, the front elevation of whose name is Stella, takes pen in hand and gives the Icon. a red-hot "roast" for having intimated that Platonic Love, so-called, is a pretty good thing for respectable women to let alone. Judged by the amount of caloric she generates, Stella must be a star of the first magnitude, or even an entire constellation. She "believes in the pure, passionless love described by Plato as sometimes existing between the sexes--the affinities of mind as distinguished from the carnal lusts of matter," and opines that the Apostle "must be gross indeed not to comprehend this philosophic and highly satisfactory companionship."

"Twinkle, twinkle little star, How I wonder what you are, Up above the world so high, Like a diamond in the sky."

I plead guilty and cast myself upon the mercy of the court. I sorrowfully admit that my aestheticism is not eighteen karats fine, but mixed with considerable slag. When I should have been acquiring the higher culture, I was either playing hookey or planting hogs. Instead of being fed on the transcendental philosophy of Plato, I was stuffed with mealy Irish spuds and home-grown "punkin" pie. When I should have been learning to relish pate de foie gras and love my neighbor's wife in a purely passionless way, I was following one of McCormick's patents around a forty-acre field or arguing a point of ethics with a contumacious mule. That I am unable to appreciate that Platonic yearning of soul to soul, that deep calling unto deep on which Stella dotes, is my misfortune rather than my fault. It appears to me too much like voting the Prohibition ticket or playing poker with Confederate currency. When I love a woman I love her up one side and down t'other. I may be an uncultured and barbaric noodle, but I want to get hold of her and bite her neck. I want to cuddle her sunny curls on my heaving shirt-front when I talk to her about affinities. I believe with Tennyson in the spirits rushing together at the touching of the lips, and I just let 'em rush. Men may esteem women and enjoy their society with never a thought of sex. I have many female friends, some white-haired gran'dames, some mere girls in short dresses. But for their kindly interest and encouragement I would have cast aside the faber and fled to the desert long ago. The friendship of a noble woman is life's holiest perfume; but that is not the affinity of souls, the supernatural spooning, the Platonic yum-yum for which fair Stella pleads. Love, as I understand the term, is to friendship's non-consuming flame what the fierce glare of the noonday sun is to the mild radiance of the harvest moon. It is something which makes two people of opposite sexes absolutely necessary to each other. It is a glory in which the soul is bathed, an almost savage melody that beats within the blood. It is--O dammed; it's that which transforms a snub-nosed dairy maid into a Grecian goddess, a bench-legged farmer boy into a living Apollo Belvedere. "Love is love forevermore"--differing in degree, but never in kind. The Uranian is but the nobler nature of the Pandemian Venus, not another entity. Love is not altogether of the earth earthy. It is born of the spirit as well as of the flesh, of the perfume as of the beauty of the great red rose. Few of those women who have led captive the souls of the intellectual Titans of the world could boast of wondrous beauty. The moment man passes the pale of savagery he demands something more than mere physical perfection in a companion. Purity, Gentleness, Dignity--such are the three graces of womanhood that ofttimes make Cupid forgive a shapeless bosom and adore a homely face. The love of a parent for a child is the purest affection of which we can conceive; yet is the child the fruition of a love that lies not ever in the clouds. Platonic affection, so-called, is but confluent smallpox masquerading as measles. Those who have it may not know what ails 'em; but they've got a simple case of "spoons" all the same. If Stella were "my dear heart's better part," and tried to convince me that she felt a purely Platonic affection for some other fellow, I'd apply for a writ of injunction or lay for my transcendental rival with a lignumvitae club loaded to scatter. Nobody could convince me that the country was secure. The Platonic racket is being sadly overworked in swell society. Like charity, it covers a multitude of sins. Married women go scouting around at all hours and in all kinds of places with Platonic lovers, until the "old man" feeds a few slugs into a muzzle-loading gun and lets the Platonism leak through artificial holes in the hide of some gay gallant. When madame must have her beaux, and maids receive attention from married men, there's something decayed in the moral Denmarks. Mrs. Tilton thought she felt a Platonic affection for Henry Ward Beecher--was simply worshiping at the shrine of his genius; but she made as bad a mess of it as though she had called her complaint concupiscence. Even here in Texas, where we do preserve a faint adumbration of the simplicity and virtue of ye olden time, it is no uncommon thing to see a chipper married female, who moves in the "best society," flitting about with some fellow who's recognized, as the servants say, as her "steady company." But as we have improved on the Pompeiian "house of joy," so have we added to the French fashion of married flirtation a new and interesting feature. The French allow maids but little liberty so far as male companionship is concerned; but we remove the bridle altogether, and while the matron flirts with the bachelor, the maid appropriates the lonesome benedict. All the old social laws have been laid on the shelf and life rendered a veritable go-as-you-please. In real life there is no "pure Platonic affection," whatever may betide in fiction. No man waits upon another's wife, provides her with carriages and cut flowers, opera tickets and wine suppers with never a suspicion of sex, and no maid who values her virtue will receive marked attentions from a married man. When a virgin finds an "affinity" she should steer it against a marriage contract at the earliest possible moment; when a wife discovers one to whom she is not wedded she should employ a bread and water diet to subdue her "natural super-naturalism"-- and reinforce her religion with a season of penitence and prayer.

* * * TIENS TA FOI.

Though thorny the pathway 'neath our feet, Though nothing in life be left that's sweet; Though friends prove faithless in trial's hours And love a curst and poisonous flower; Though Belial stalk in priestly gown And virtue's reward is fortune's frown; Though true hearts bleed and the coward slave Tramples in dust the fallen brave; Think not the unworthy acts of men Will 'scape the recording angel's pen; The sword of God, in ruin and wraith, Will surely fall! Oh, cling to thy faith!

Though worldly wise say it cannot be That there's a heaven for thee and me; Though logic's banner they have unfurled And by its cold light now view the world, Calling High God to the courts of man To be judged by human reason's span, And failing to grasp the power divine Will blindly assert: "It doth not shine"; Thy mother was wiser far than they In twilight hour when she knelt to pray, A radiant light on her sweet face From Eternal God's high dwelling-place.

Lo here! lo here th' false prophets cry, Pointing out new paths unto the sky, Far pleasanter than our fathers trod With bleeding feet in the fear of God; While Atheists laugh our faith to scorn, And say that no man of woman born Ever pierced the evil or caught a gleam Of the mystic land beyond life's stream; That our fondest hopes, our prayers and sighs For life eternal beyond the skies, Are superstitions conceived in fear And cherished by priest and lying seer.