Part 11

When Henry had no money to pay the tax, some of the “patch” was sold. With never failing regularity the assessment came, and with almost equal regularity a piece of the “patch” was sold to a buyer of tax-titles. Finally, one Sunday in the early spring, Henry drove down to his little farm. It was the first visit since the fall. Here and there a swale filled with the rain of early spring stood in his path. Now and then the black mud of the rich prairie held his buggy fast, but finally, after much time and trouble, he reached the farm, and there, plain before his eyes, was a high, tight board fence which barred him out. His first impulse was to go back and get a gang of men to tear down the fence; his next was to hire a lawyer. After some search he found a lawyer that he thought would do. The lawyer knew more about the case when it was done than when he started bravely in. Of course, Henry had no money, else the taxes would have been paid, so the lawyer took the case on shares and agreed to pay the costs, and then they started in to get the “patch.”

No one familiar with the courts would expect me to tell the history of this case. It is familiar to even the common lawyer who reads the State reports. It was about the year 1880 that Henry’s lawyer filed the first papers in the court. The lawyer was young and full of hope—full of the hope that is the heritage of all the young; the hope that gives courage to live and fight and endure in the vain belief that it all counts for something; the hope that keeps alive while years and adversity, with their deadening, staggering blows, teach that all strivings are equally vain. But Henry’s lawyer was young. He had the money to commence the suit and he thought that this would be enough. Both Henry and his lawyer could see the fence fall down and the farm platted and sold and their money in the bank, while Henry’s life was in the early autumn and the lawyer’s in the first green of summer time. But the days and weeks and months and years went by.

At first they lost the case, but they were not cast down. There were other courts that were better because they were higher up, and besides all this, the law provided that in a contest for real estate each side had the right to try his case twice, and the right to go each time to the highest court of the State. Had Henry’s life been at stake he could have had but a single chance and no right to go to a higher court, unless the judges graciously granted him permission, and then only on the showing that he was innocent of the crime. But land is one thing and life is another. And this is quite right, for the amount of land upon the earth is fixed, while there is no limit to human life.

Well, in a year or two the Supreme Court reversed the case, and then Henry and his lawyer had another chance. In the meantime two more years were passed in waiting and the case came on again. This time Henry won. It was the turn of the other side to find a higher court. But the Supreme Court found a flaw and sent it back to be tried again. Two or three more years were spent in waiting before the case was reached. At last it came again. Henry had grown old and white and feeble; his clothes, too, were shabby and unkempt. His little cigar store had dwindled until only his old comrades came to loaf and talk of the grand old days “before the fire.” Henry never doubted that he would win. Through it all he had held the same faith in final victory that he had ever cherished about the future of his “patch.” He had lived to see cable cars run past his land, to see crosstown electric cars on each side of the little farm, and to see the elevated road stretching slowly down in anticipation of the sub-division that would one day come.

Henry took the stand and told the story of his “patch,” of his early years when he drove out on the raw prairie and fixed the stakes; of his Sunday pilgrimages with his many friends; of his well, and grove and green hedge; of the high board fence that he found on the spring day so long ago. He looked like a patriarch as he sat bent over in the witness chair, and his voice and story was that of some long-forgotten day.

The jury could not resist the old man’s case and again he won. Once more the other side took it to the higher court, but found no relief. Still, under the rules of the law, they had the right to one more trial, because a piece of real estate was involved. So, of course, they took the last chance that the wisdom of the law held out to them.

In the meantime, Henry’s lawyer had spent $5,000 and waited twelve long years. He was no longer young, and most of the illusions and dreams of early life had passed away. He was fighting now from habit, and because he had learned that there was really not much else in life. He knew that one fights for the sake of fighting, not for the hope of any reward that falls to the victorious cause. Two years more dragged on. Henry, of course, grew older and more shabby year by year; then, too, disease had come with age; poverty and age and disease often travel hand in hand. This is when poverty comes in the latter part of life. When it comes in youth the lucky victim misses age. Henry had an iron will, and then he had a life’s ambition which seemed to defy years and poverty and disease. But time is the only warrior that never knows defeat, and it was plain that age and sickness were to triumph even here.

Finally, one day the long-looked-for trial came. If Henry won, this would be the end. It was now fifteen years since the first paper was filed. The lawyer sent a carriage for Henry on this long-to-be-remembered day. It came back empty to the court. Henry had been taken to the hospital in the morning before the carriage came. He had protested, and asked to go to court, but it was of no avail, so they drove him to the great brick building and carried him slowly to the elevator and took him to the top floor and laid him on the bed. He asked for his lawyer, and was told that he was busy with the case, which he had concluded to try without his client’s presence in the court.

Day after day dragged on; each night Henry asked about his case; each day he was told that he was sure to win. The nurse knew nothing about the case, she saw only the old sick man, as white as the spotless coverlet that she smoothed tenderly above his wasted form. She knew that he might as well spend his last few hours in peace, so she told him that the case was coming along all right and that he was sure to win. Henry’s mind was failing with his strength. The nurse could never tell when he was asleep or awake. Sometimes he seemed to be back on his father’s farm, a little boy. Again, he was driving out over the bare prairie looking for his “patch.” Then he wanted to get out of bed and buy a cow and some chickens for his “farm,” and then he sank to sleep.

In the meantime, the lawyer fought valiantly along. Finally the case was ended, and for the last time the jury gave the land to Henry. The lawyer waited only to hear the verdict read, then rushed to the elevator and down to the street. He took a carriage and told the driver to go with all speed to the hospital. He ran to the wide approach, passed the doorkeeper, went up the stairs two steps at a time and turned down the hall. He stopped at Henry’s door, opened it softly and went in.

The nurse was standing silent near the little iron bed. At the window the setting sun was struggling through the smoke and grime of the great city and painting the sky with a dull red glare. Its last beams struggled through the dim window and fell upon the white coverlet, the worn, sad face and the scattering hair. Henry was as still as the bed on which he lay.

The lawyer looked down at the old, white face, and saw the eyes staring out at the red beams of the setting sun. He could plainly see that they rested on nothing this side of the crimson sky.

A white corpuscle, of venerable and intellectual appearance, dug a claw into the lining of an artery and paused.

Past him surged millions of his fellows, all intent upon doing what they believed they had been sent into the Man to do, which was to earn a living; tired mother-leucocytes, starting out upon the day’s work dragging small leucocytes after them; young leucocytes, with not a care in the world and never a thought for tomorrow; serious-looking leucocytes, weighed down with responsibilities.

Here and there were some whose individuality would attract attention—that old fellow with the prominent proboscis, forced along in the rush, as others were, but at the head of an association formed by him, so benevolent to himself that he got all the white meat, while the workers divided pickings, of every disease germ captured. There had been battles with an invasion of diphtheria germs, skirmishes with germs of typhoid, small-pox, and scarlet fever. The leucocytes had overcome every enemy, and they were a triumphant, arrogant race.

The venerable corpuscle might have clung where he was, all day, without interfering with traffic, were it not for a peculiarity of the corpuscles. A very hungry white corpuscle, coursing ravenously, noticed the venerable old gentleman, and paused. Stronger than even hunger was his feeling that he should have to learn why the old gentleman was standing on a corner, instead of pouncing, grabbing, and struggling. Small leucocytes, with messages to deliver, paused and gaped; and, because they paused and gaped, such a crowd gathered that a burly corpuscle, with a stout club, came along and growled:

“G’wan, now! don’t be blocking up this artery.”

But the wise old corpuscle had provided himself with a permit.

He began: “Fellow leucocytes——”

“Hooray!” from irresponsible, small leucocytes.

“Fellow leucocytes, I look around and see among you some who may remember me. These may recall that a long time ago I withdrew from the activity and excitement of our affairs, and may wonder where I have been. I have been secluded in the land of gray soil at the upper end of our world. In a remote convolution of this gray matter I have lived and have absorbed something of a strange spirit permeating it—the spirit of intelligence—and I have learned much from it. I feel that I have a mission among you. Let me start it abruptly with a question. Fellow leucocytes, do you know why we are placed here in this Man?”

“To get all we can out of it!” answered a sleek, shiny corpuscle.

The others laughed good-naturedly, agreeing that this was their sole reason for being.

“Out of _it_!” cried the wise old corpuscle. “Why not out of _him_? Then you don’t believe that the Man we inhabit is a living creature? You think that because his life is not like our life, he has no life? And you think that, when you can feel the element of him that we inhabit, pulsate?”

“Oh, that’s only the tide!”

“You have never heard his voice?”

“Nothing but thunder!”

“You think he never moves?”

“Nothing but a manquake, now and then.”

“You doubt that he is kept alive by internal heat, just as we are? For, without heat, there could not be life.”

A studious white corpuscle had become so interested that he permitted a fine plump pneumonia germ to pass him without pouncing upon it. He stepped forward and said, learnedly:

“Yes, there is internal heat in the world we inhabit, but we are taught that the Man was once a ball of fire and is now gradually cooling off. It is ridiculous to say it is alive like us. Look how fine and delicate is our flesh; see the Man made of coarse, rough substance forming banks along every river we navigate. Think of how tremendous its heat is, when it is great enough to keep these teeming millions of us from perishing! Could any living creature produce such heat? You say we can feel it move? It must move very infrequently then, for these manquakes are far apart. And you regard as a pulsating, the coming and going of the tide? Why, our hearts beat thousands of times in the span of one ebb and flow of the tide we are familiar with!”

Said the wise old corpuscle: “I say that not only is this Man alive, but that he, and millions like him, inhabit a world as vast to him as he is to us.”

“Oh, let the old fellow rave!” laughed good-natured leucocytes.

But the financier-corpuscle, with the prominent proboscis, coming along with a germ under each arm, rolling half a dozen others in front of him, muttered, savagely:

“Another of those cursed agitators!”

“This wide Man of ours,” pursued the cursed agitator, “is between five and six feet in length, according to his system of measuring. The world that he inhabits is twenty-five thousand miles in circumference. Telepathy has told me so; I have been able to interpret throbs of his intellect to mine. He calls his world the Earth. I say that he is a white corpuscle to the Earth, as we are to him. He will not accept this belief. He argues as do you. Flesh that he lives upon is so gross that he calls it rock and soil; as rivers and brooks he looks upon arteries and veins. He knows of a tide and sees it pulsate. During one ebb and flow, his own heart beats thousands of times. He says the Moon causes the tide. Perhaps; then the Moon is the Earth’s heart. He feels agitations similar to those we know as manquakes. They are very infrequent. He knows that there is heat in the Earth, but can not conceive that it is a source of life, because of its extreme degree. He has no sense of proportion. He can not conceive that a tremendous creature with an existence of ages must move, breathe, and throb in proportion to bulk and longevity, and be sustained by heat that would consume him.”

“Too deep for me!” cried a group of young leucocytes. “Oh, he’s some kind of a fake! Start in advertising something, in a minute!” Each jumped on a red corpuscle and went sliding down hill.

But the studious white corpuscle again stepped forward.

“Friends,” he said, “let us not deride this old person. Let us, rather, point out his astonishing errors to him. Be tolerant, I say! Be tolerant, by all means, even when we are opposed. Sir, we’ll admit that there are many Men instead of only this one, and that all inhabit some vast creature that they call the Earth. But what for? We are here for pleasure, profit, and to store up germs.”

“Are we? For a long time it has been my theory that we are here solely for the welfare of the Man we inhabit; that our food and our enemies are elements inimical to him; we remove them in his behalf.”

“Vile agitator!” The financier-corpuscle, coursing round again, was so agitated that he nearly dropped a germ.

“Let him speak!” urged the studious corpuscle. “His views differ from mine, but I will be tolerant! I have arguments that will silence him soon. Now, then, my friend, if our reason for being is such as you describe, and you liken men to us, these many men you speak of must occupy a relation to their Earth similar to ours to this Man. Do they pounce upon and destroy every organism malignant to their creature?”

“I have no doubt of it!” cried the old corpuscle. “I believe that, existing with those that are workers, are others, similar to them but idle or weak, or, at any rate, of no value to the Earth. I do not say that these worthless ones are pounced upon and eaten, but I do believe that in some way those of no value are forced out of existence; perhaps, besides weak and idle individuals, there are whole tribes who are being exterminated, unable to survive in the struggle with the fit.”

“What industrious, unselfish beings these Men must be to do so much for their Earth!” sneered a doubter.

“Now, let him speak!” urged the tolerant philosopher. “I have arguments that will destroy his views, in a moment. Let there be freedom of speech, by all means!”

“Industrious and unselfish?” repeated the old corpuscle. “Are we? Industrious, yes; but unselfish, no! For our own existence we are working in this Man’s behalf. We are not philanthropists. For the necessities of life we perform our appointed functions, most of us never dreaming that we are laboring in the interests of the Man we inhabit. So it is, I believe, with them! I can’t quite imagine what their beneficent tasks are, but perhaps they till the soil, as we till the soil of this Man, keeping the Earth’s system in good order, doing everything in the belief that they are working only for themselves.”

“Pursue your analogy!” cried the rival philosopher. “If we populate a living creature, then the creature inhabited by Man must itself be a corpuscle floating in the system of something inconceivably vaster. We are leucocytes to Men; Men are to the Earth; then hordes of Earths are to a Universe? You speak of many Men. Are there hordes of Earths?”

“You have expressed a thought of my own! I believe that there are other creatures like the Earth. Perhaps they are faintly visible to the Earth. Perhaps they revolve and have orbits and course through a system just as we do.”

“There,” cried the old corpuscle’s opponent, “I’ve got you! Be tolerant to him, my friends; I’ll silence him in a moment. My friend, then these vast revolving creatures like the Earth are remote from one another? They float in nothingness, then? But you have called them corpuscles, or tiny parts of a whole. How can they be parts of a solid, when they are widely separated bodies floating in nothingness?”

“Take an object of any kind,” was the answer. “Of what is it composed? You call it a solid, but I have lingered long enough in this Man’s brain to catch glimmers of what he calls the atomic theory. This doctrine is, that all matter is composed of ultra-microscopic particles known as molecules. These molecules are not stationary; they revolve; they have orbits; in everything you think solid and dead, tiny specks of itself are floating and are never still. A myriad worlds like the Earth, are only molecules floating in ether, forming a solid, just as the molecules of any substance you are familiar with form a solid. Only comparatively are they far apart, as to a creature microscopic enough, the molecules of a bit of bone would seem far apart and not forming a solid, at all. To the molecules nearest to him he would give names, such as Neptune or Mars; like Men, he would call them planets; remoter molecules would be stars.”

“Wretched nonsense!” cried the other philosopher-corpuscle. For he had no argument left. “Subversive of all modern thought! You ought to be locked up for promulgating your wild views! I’ll be the first to hang you, if someone will bring a rope! You have it that all existence is a solid, then? That a myriad worlds like your fancied Earth are molecules to an ultimate creature? But there can, then, be no ultimate creature; he, in turn is but a microscopic part of— Beware of him and don’t listen to him, my friends!”

Suddenly a number of rough-looking corpuscles began to circulate through the crowd, paid in typhoid germs by the wrathful financier-corpuscle, who, standing farther down the artery, could not control his excitement, as he cried:

“Vile agitator! Already there is too much murmuring against my invested rights!”

“You tell us,” shouted a rough-looking corpuscle, “that we, the conquering inhabitants of this Man, fresh from a war in which we were gloriously victorious, are placed in this Man only for his welfare?”

The crowd muttered indignantly.

“Fellow leucocytes,” said the old philosopher, earnestly, “I do tell you that! Through our own selfish motives we do our best to benefit him, but each one of us for himself only, haphazard and without system. Then never mind what Man’s relation to his Earth may be, and never mind what his Earth’s relation to its Universe may be; let us think only of our relation to this Man. Let us have done with our grabbing and monopolizing, and study and find out just what is best for us to do in our appointed task of taking care of this Man. With that view, let us all work together and overcome that egotism that makes the thought of our own true humble sphere so repellent——”

But, excited by the defeated philosopher-corpuscle and the emissaries of the financier-corpuscle, the crowd had become a mob. Angrily it shouted:

“And he says that we, with our great warriors and leaders, our marvellous enterprises, our wondrous inventions, are only insignificant scavengers of this Man we inhabit? Down with him! Or, if we’re too civilized to tear him apart, put him away where he belongs!”

And the fate of the wise old corpuscle would have been the fate common enough in the tragedies of philosophy, were it not that a few disciples hurried him away, seeking refuge in a tiny vein far from battle, struggle, and selfishness.

“He says we were made for the Man!” jeered the few leucocytes who gave the distasteful doctrine another thought. “But we know, and have every reason to know, that this Man was made for us!”

_Election Reforms_

THE TREND TOWARD DEMOCRACY

BY J. C. RUPPENTHAL

Broadly speaking, election is simply choice. In a narrower sense the term is limited to the choice of persons for political offices, or for nomination to such offices, by the people, or by a somewhat numerous body, as distinguished from appointment by a single person; or the determination of other questions submitted by law to popular vote.

This paper seeks to present the general features of American laws in the nature of election reform, in the narrower sense, with especial reference to the decisions of the highest courts thereon.

When the thirteen original American Colonies revolted against the mother country, their government was essentially that which had been evolved in a thousand years of struggle and conflict in England. But in details, there was as wide divergence as could well be imagined among people of practically common origin, race, religion and language. With the more permanent union under the Federal Constitution came an impulse to conform much governmental procedure to a common standard. Especially was this true in the matter of elections.

After 130 years of trial and change, nearly all of the States vote on the same day, choose representatives in Congress and Presidential electors, as well as most other officers in the same manner, and do not differ very widely in methods of voting. The qualifications of Electors are somewhat diverse, though probably less so than at the beginning, and everywhere the right of suffrage has been widely extended. The period of active assimilation to common standards lasted to the time of the Civil War. Then the universal, extended and heated discussion of human rights, the fury of partisanship, the passions engendered in the great internecine conflict, the adoption of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments, and following all this, the expansion of the nation in wealth and power, together with the accumulation of colossal fortunes, and the growth of corporate importance and influence, all these led to the trial and testing of the most fundamental and long-established rights of man, while every new measure in law, has had to run the gantlet from the preliminary proposal in caucus, convention, primary, or elsewhere, to the final decision thereon in the highest judicial tribunal. There was no final judicial inquiry into the right of suffrage until in 1857 in New York and in 1859 in North Carolina; but such became numerous in the reconstruction period. From questioning new rights of black men, it was a short step to attacking old rights of white men.