Part 21

FATE.--Never hurried, never delayed, passionless, pitiless, patient, keeping the tryst--neither early nor late--there, on the very stroke and center of the instant fixed.

*****

QUIET, and introspective calm come with the afternoon. Toward evening the mind grows satisfied and still. The flare and flicker of youth are gone, and the soul is like the flame of a lamp where the air is at rest. Age discards the superfluous, the immaterial, the straw and chaff, and hoards the golden grain. The highway is known, and the paths no longer mislead. Clouds are not mistaken for mountains.

*****

THE OLD MAN has been long at the fair. He is acquainted with the jugglers at the booths. His curiosity has been satisfied. He no longer cares for the exceptional, the monstrous, the marvelous and deformed. He looks through and beyond the gilding, the glitter and gloss, not only of things, but of conduct, of manners, theories, religions and philosophies. He sees clearer. The light no longer shines in his eyes.

*****

The time will come when even selfishness will be charitable for its own sake, because at that time the man will have grown and developed to that degree that selfishness demands generosity and kindness and justice. The self becomes so noble that selfishness is a virtue. The lowest form of selfishness is when one is willing to be happy, or wishes to be happy, at the expense or the misery of another. The highest form of selfishness is when a man becomes so noble that he finds his happiness in making others so. This is the nobility of selfishness.

*****

CUBA fell upon her knees--stretched her thin hands toward the great Republic. We saw her tear-filled eyes--her withered breasts--her dead babes--her dying--her buried and unburied dead. We heard her voice, and pity, roused to action by her grief, became as stern as justice, and the great Republic cried to Spain: "Sheathe the dagger of assassination; take your bloody hand from the throat of the helpless; and take your flag from the heaven of the Western World."

*****

Perhaps I have reached the years of discretion. But it may be that discretion is the enemy of happiness. If the buds had discretion there might be no fruit. So it may be that the follies committed in the spring give autumn the harvest.--August 11,1892.

*****

Dickens wrote for homes--Thackeray for clubs. Byron did not care for the fireside--for the prattle of babes--for the smiles and tears of humble life. He was touched by grandeur rather than goodness,--loved storm and crag and the wild sea. But Burns lived in the valley, touched by the joys and griefs of lowly lives.

Imagine amethysts, rubies, diamonds, emeralds and opals mingled as liquids--then imagine these marvelous glories of light and color changed to a tone, and you have the wondrous, the incomparable voice of Scalchi.

*****

THE ORGAN.--The beginnings--the timidities--the half thoughts--blushes--suggestions--a phrase of grace and feeling--a sustained note--the wing on the wind--confidence--the flight--rising with many harmonies that unite in the voluptuous swell--in the passionate tremor--rising still higher--flooding the great dome with the soul of enraptured sound.

*****

NEW MEXICO is a most wonderful country. It is a ragged miser with billions of buried treasure. It looks as if Nature had guarded her silver and gold with enough desolation to deter all but the brave.

*****

WHY SHOULD THE INDIAN SUMMER of a life be lost--the long, serene, and tender days when earth and sky are friends? The falling leaves disclose the ripened fruit--and so the flight of youth with dreams and fancies should show the wealth of bending bough.

*****

Give milk to babes, and wine to youth. But for old age, when ghosts of more than two-score years are wandering on the traveled road, the fragrant tea, that loosens gossip's tongue, is best.--December 25,1892.

[From a letter thanking a friend for a Christmas present of a chest of tea.]

*****

ON MEMORIAL DAY our hearts blossom in gratitude as we lovingly remember the brave men upon whose brows Death, with fleshless hands, placed the laurel wreath of fame.

*****

THE SOUL IS AN ARCHITECt--it builds a habitation for itself--and as the soul is, is the habitation. Some live in dens and caves, and some in lowly homes made rich with love, and overrun with vine and flower.

*****

SCIENCE at last holds with honest hand the scales wherein are weighed the facts and fictions of the world. She neither kneels nor prays, she stands erect and thinks. Her tongue is not a traitor to her brain. Her thought and speech agree.

*****

THE NEGRO who can pass me in the race of life will receive my admiration, and he can count on my friendship. No man ever lived who proved his superiority by trampling on the weak.

*****

RELIGION is like a palm tree--it grows at the top. The dead leaves are all orthodox, while the new ones and the buds are all heretics.

*****

MEMORY is the miser of the mind; forgetfulness the spendthrift.

*****

HOPE is the only bee that makes honey without flowers.

*****

THE FIRES OF THE NEXT WORLD sustain the same relation to churches that those in this world sustain to insurance companies.

*****

Now and then there arises a man who on peril's edge draws from the scabbard of despair the sword of victory.

*****

The falling leaf that tells of autumn's death is, in a subtler sense, a prophecy of spring.

*****

Vice lives either before Love is born, or after Love is dead.

*****

Intellectual freedom is only the right to be honest.

*****

I believe that finally man will go through the phase of religion before birth.

*****

When shrill chanticleer pierces the dull ear of morn.

*****

Orthodoxy is the refuge of mediocrity.

*****

The ocean is the womb of all that will be, the tomb of all that has been.

*****

Jealousy never knows the value of a fact.

Envy cannot reason, malice cannot prophesy.

*****

Love has a kind of second sight.

*****

I have never given to any one a sketch of my life. According to my idea a life should not be written until it has been lived.--July 1, 1888.

EFFECT OF THE WORLD'S FAIR ON THE HUMAN RACE.

THE Great Fair should be for the intellectual, mechanical, artistic, political and social advancement of the world. Nations, like small communities, are in danger of becoming provincial, and must become so, unless they exchange commodities, theories, thoughts, and ideals. Isolation is the soil of ignorance, and ignorance is the soil of egotism; and nations, like individuals who live apart, mistake provincialism for perfection, and hatred of all other nations for patriotism. With most people, strangers are not only enemies, but inferiors. They imagine that they are progressive because they know little of others, and compare their present, not with the present of other nations, but with their own past.

Few people have imagination enough to sympathize with those of a different complexion, with those professing another religion or speaking another language, or even wearing garments unlike their own. Most people regard every difference between themselves and others as an evidence of the inferiority of the others. They have not intelligence enough to put themselves in the place of another if that other happens to be outwardly unlike themselves.

Countless agencies have been at work for many years destroying the hedges of thorn that have so long divided nations, and we at last are beginning to see that other people do not differ from us, except in the same particulars that we differ from them. At last, nations are becoming acquainted with each other, and they now know that people everywhere are substantially the same. We now know that while nations differ outwardly in form and feature, somewhat in theory, philosophy and creed, still, inwardly--that is to say, so far as hopes and passions are concerned--they are much the same, having the same fears, experiencing the same joys and sorrows. So we are beginning to find that the virtues belong exclusively to no race, to no creed, and to no religion; that the humanities dwell in the hearts of men, whomever and whatever they may happen to worship. We have at last found that every creed is of necessity a provincialism, destined to be lost in the universal.

At last, Science extends an invitation to all nations, and places at their disposal its ships and its cars; and when these people meet--or rather, the representatives of these people--they will find that, in spite of the accidents of birth, they are, after all, about the same; that their sympathies, their ideas' of right and wrong, of virtue and vice, of heroism and honor, are substantially alike. They will find that in every land honesty is honored, truth respected and admired, and that generosity and charity touch all hearts.

So it is of the greatest importance that the inventions of the world should be brought beneath one roof. These inventions, in my judgment, are destined to be the liberators of mankind. They enslave forces and compel the energies of nature to work for man. These forces have no backs to feel the lash, no tears to shed, no hearts to break.

The history of the world demonstrates that man becomes What we call civilized by increasing his wants. As his necessities increase, he becomes industrious and energetic. If his heart does not keep pace with his brain, he is cruel, and the physically or mentally strong enslave the physically or mentally weak. At present these inventions, while they have greatly increased the countless articles needed by man, have to a certain extent enslaved mankind. In a savage state there are few failures. Almost any one succeeds in hunting and fishing. The wants are few, and easily supplied. As man becomes civilized, wants increase; or rather as wants increase, man becomes civilized. Then the struggle for existence becomes complex; failures increase.

The first result of the invention of machinery has been to increase the wealth of the few. The hope of the world is that through invention man can finally take such advantage of these forces of nature, of the weight of water, of the force of wind, of steam, of electricity, that they will do the work of the world; and it is the hope of the really civilized that these inventions will finally cease to be the property of the few, to the end that they may do the work of all for all.

When those who do the work own the machines, when those who toil control the invention, then, and not till then, can the world be civilized or free. When these forces shall do the bidding of the individual, when they become the property of the mechanic instead of the monopoly, when they belong to labor instead of what is called capital, when these great powers are as free to the individual laborer as the air and light are now free to all, then, and not until then, the individual will be restored and all forms of slavery will disappear.

Another great benefit will come from the Fair. Other nations in some directions are more artistic than we, but no other nation has made the common as beautiful as we have. We have given beauty of form to machines, to common utensils, to the things of every day, and have thus laid the foundation for producing the artistic in its highest possible forms. It will be of great benefit to us to look upon the paintings and marbles of the Old World. To see them is an education.

The great Republic has lived a greater poem than the brain and heart of man have as yet produced, and we have supplied material for artists and poets yet unborn; material for form and color and song. The Republic is to-day Art's greatest market.

Nothing else is so well calculated to make friends of all nations as really to become acquainted with the best that each has produced.

The nation that has produced a great poet, a great artist, a great statesman, a great thinker, takes its place on an equality with other nations of the world, and transfers to all of its citizens some of the genius of its most illustrious men.

This great Fair will be an object lesson to other nations. They will see the result of a government, republican in form, where the people are the source of authority, where governors and presidents are servants--not rulers. We want all nations to see the great Republic as it is, to study and understand its growth, development and destiny. We want them to know that here, under our flag, are sixty-five millions of people and that they are the best fed, the best clothed and the best housed in the world. We want them to know that we are solving the great social problems, and that we are going to demonstrate the right and power of man to govern himself. We want the subjects of other nations to see aland filled with citizens--not subjects; aland in which the pew is above the pulpit; where the people are superior to the state; where legislators are representatives and where authority means simply the duty to enforce the people's will.

Let us hope above all things that this Fair will bind the nations together closer and stronger; and let us hope that this will result in the settlement of all national difficulties by arbitration instead of war. In a savage state, individuals settle their own difficulties by an appeal to force. After a time these individuals agree that their difficulties shall be settled by others. This is the first great step toward civilization. The result is the establishment of courts. Nations at present sustain to each other the same relation that savage does to savage. Each nation is left to decide for itself, and it generally decides according to its strength--not the strength of its side of the case, but the strength of its army. The consequence is that what is called "the Law of Nations" is a savage code. The world will never be civilized until there is an international court. Savages begin to be civilized when they submit their difficulties to their peers. Nations will become civilized when they submit their difficulties to a great court, the judgments of which can be carried out, all nations pledging the co-operation of their armies and their navies for that purpose.

If the holding of the great Fair shall result in hastening the coming of that time it will be a blessing to the whole world.

And here let me prophesy: The Fair will be worthy of Chicago, the most wonderful city of the world--of Illinois, the best State in the Union--of the United States, the best country on the earth. It will eclipse all predecessors in every department. It will represent the progressive spirit of the nineteenth century. Beneath its ample roofs will be gathered the treasures of Art, and the accomplishments of Science. At the feet of the Republic will be laid the triumphs of our race, the best of every land.--The illustrated World's Fair, Chicago, November, 1891.

SABBATH SUPERSTITION.

THE idea that one day in the week is better than the others and should be set apart for religious purposes; that it should be considered holy; that no useful work should be done on that day; that it should be given over to pious idleness and sad ceremonies connected with the worship of a supposed Being, seems to have been originated by the Jews.

According to the Old Testament, the Sabbath was marvelously sacred for two reasons; the first being, that Jehovah created the universe in six days and rested on the seventh: and the second, because the Jews had been delivered from the Egyptians.

The first of these reasons we now know to be false; and the second has nothing, so far as we are concerned, to do with the question.

There is no reason for our keeping the seventh day because the Hebrews were delivered from the Egyptians.

The Sabbath was a Jewish institution, and, according to the Bible, only the Jews were commanded to keep that day. Jehovah said nothing to the Egyptians on that subject; nothing to the Philistines, nothing to the Gentiles.

The Jews kept that day with infinite strictness, and with them this space of time known as the Sabbath became so holy that he who violated it by working was put to death. Sabbath-breaking and murder were equal crimes. On the Sabbath the pious Jew would not build a fire in his house. He ate cold victuals and thanked God. The gates of the city were closed. No business was done, and the traveler who arrived at the city on that day remained outside until evening. If he happened to fall, he remained where he fell until the sun had gone done.

The early Christians did not hold the seventh day in such veneration. As a matter of fact, they ceased to regard it as holy, and changed the sacred day from the seventh to the first. This change was really made by Constantine, because the first day of the week was the Sunday of the Pagans; and this day had been given to pleasure and recreation and to religious ceremonies for many centuries.

After Constantine designated the first day to be kept and observed by Christians, our Sunday became the sacred time.

The early Christians, however, kept the day much as it had been kept by the Pagans. They attended church in the morning, and in the afternoon enjoyed themselves as best they could..

The Catholic Church fell in with the prevailing customs, and to accommodate itself to Pagan ways and superstitions, it agreed, as far as it could, with the ideas of the Pagan.

Up to the time of the Reformation, Sunday had been divided between the discharge of religious duties and recreation.

Luther did not believe in the sacredness of the Sabbath. After church he enjoyed himself by playing games, and wanted others to do the same.

Even John Calvin, whose view had been blurred by the "Five Points," allowed the people to enjoy themselves on Sunday afternoon.

The reformers on the continent never had the Jewish idea of the sacredness of the Sabbath.

In Geneva, Germany and France, all kinds of innocent amusement were allowed on that day; and I believe the same was true of Holland.

But in Scotland the Jewish idea was adopted to the fullest extent. There Sabbath-breaking was one of the blackest and one of the most terrible crimes. Nothing was considered quite as sacred as the Sabbath.

The Scotch went so far as to take the ground that it was wrong to save people who were drowning on Sunday, the drowning being a punishment inflicted by God. Upon the question of keeping the Sabbath most of the Scottish people became insane.

The same notions about the holy day were adopted by the Dissenters in England, and it became the principal tenet in their creed.

The Puritans and Pilgrims were substantially crazy about the sacredness of Sunday. With them the first day of the week was set apart for preaching, praying, attending church, reading the Bible and studying the catechism. Walking, riding, playing on musical instruments, boating, swimming and courting, were all crimes.

No one had the right to be happy on that blessed day. It was a time of gloom, sacred, solemn and religiously stupid.

They did their best to strip their religion of every redeeming feature. They hated art and music--everything calculated to produce joy. They despised everything except the Bible, the church, God, Sunday and the creed.

The influence of these people has been felt in every part of our country. The Sabbath superstition became almost universal. No laughter, no smiles on that day; no games, no recreation, no riding, no walking through the perfumed fields or by the winding streams or the shore of the sea. No communion with the subtile beauties of nature; no wandering in the woods with wife and children, no reading of poetry and fiction; nothing but solemnity and gloom, listening to sermons, thinking about sin, death, graves, coffins, shrouds, epitaphs and ceremonies and the marvelous truths of sectarian religion, and the weaknesses of those who were natural enough and sensible enough to enjoy themselves on the Sabbath day.

So universal became the Sabbath superstition that the Legislatures of all the States, or nearly all, passed laws to prevent work and enjoyment on that day, and declared all contracts void relating to business entered into on Sunday.

The Germans gave us the first valuable lesson on this subject. They came to this country in great numbers; they did not keep the American Sabbath. They listened to music and they drank beer on that holy day. They took their wives and children with them and enjoyed themselves; yet they were good, kind, industrious people. They paid their debts and their credit was the best.

Our people saw that men could be good and women virtuous without "keeping" the Sabbath.

This did us great good, and changed the opinions of hundreds of thousands of Americans.

But the churches insisted on the old way. Gradually our people began to appreciate the fact that one-seventh of the time was being stolen by superstition. They began to ask for the opening of libraries, for music in the parks and to be allowed to visit museums and public places on the Sabbath.

In several States these demands were granted, and the privileges have never been abused. The people were orderly, polite to officials and to each other.

In 1876, when the Centennial was held at Philadelphia, the Sabbatarians had control. Philadelphia was a Sunday city, and so the gates of the Centennial were closed on that day.

This was in Philadelphia where the Sabbath superstition had been so virulent that chains had been put across the streets to prevent stages and carriages from passing at that holy time.

At that time millions of Americans felt that a great wrong was done by closing the Centennial to the laboring people; but the managers--most of them being politicians--took care of themselves and kept the gates closed.

In 1876 the Sabbatarians triumphed, and when it was determined to hold a world's fair at Chicago they made up their minds that no one should look upon the world's wonders on the Sabbath day.

To accomplish this pious and foolish purpose committees were appointed all over the country; money was raised to make a campaign; persons were employed to go about and arouse the enthusiasm of religious people; petitions by the thousand were sent to Congress and to the officers of the World's Fair, signed by thousands of people who never saw them; resolutions were passed in favor of Sunday closing by conventions, presbyteries, councils and associations. Lobbyists were employed to influence members of Congress. Great bodies of Christians threatened to boycott the fair and yet the World's Fair is open on Sunday.

What is the meaning of this? Let me tell you. It means that in this country the Scotch New England Sabbath has ceased to be; it means that it is dead. The last great effort for its salvation has been put forth, and has failed. It belonged to the creed of Jonathan Edwards and the belief of the witch-burners, and in this age it is out of place.

There was a time when the minister and priest were regarded as the foundation of wisdom; when information came from the altar, from the pulpit; and when the sheep were the property of the shepherd.

That day in intelligent communities has passed. We no longer go to the minister or the church for information. The orthodox minister is losing his power, and the Sabbath is now regarded as a day of rest, of recreation and of pleasure.

The church must keep up with the people. The minister must take another step. The multitude care but little about controversies in churches, but they do care about the practical questions that directly affect their daily lives.

Must we waste one day in seven; must we make ourselves unhappy or melancholy one-seventh of the time?

These are important questions and for many years the church in our country has answered them both in the affirmative, and a vast number of people not Christians have also said "yes" because they wanted votes, or because they feared to incite the hatred of the church.