Part 22

I promise you that when I come into my kingdom I'll devise a worse punishment than physical pain. A soul is an immaterial thing. You cannot flay it with aspic's fangs nor kerosene it and set it on fire. A material hell for immaterial mind were too ridiculous for a progressive devil. But it is not necessary to be a son of Satan to build a hell in which demons dance and sulphur-fumes asphyxiate the soul. You may transform your own home into a valley of Hinnom, a veritable Gehenna; or you may make of the humblest cot a heaven, illumed by love and gilded with God's own glory--a Beulah land where flowers forever bloom, where perfumed censors swing and music throbs and thrills sweeter far than Orphean lyre or song of Israfeel.

The orthodox heaven is a pageant of barbaric splendor, of gaudy tinsel and flaming gold to dazzle the eyes of infants. It is a land of lotus-eaters, where ambition's star is blotted from the firmament and the wild ecstasy of passion beats no longer in the blood; an Oriental heaven, a Paradise for tired people eternal dolce far niente for niggers and yaller dogs. No Celt or Saxon with aspiring mind, with swelling muscles and heart that flames with the fierce joy of strong endeavor, that thrills with the sweetness of sacrifice for others' sake that swells with the mad glory of triumph in the forum or the field, could have conceived such a futile farce.

Give me a land whose skies are lead and soil is sand, yet everlasting life with those I love; give me a lodge in some vast wilderness hallowed by children's laughter; give me a cave in the mountain crag to house those dearest to my heart; give me a tent on the far frontier, where, by the lambent light of their mother's eyes, I may watch my children grow in grace and the truth of God, and I'll build a heaven grander, nobler, sweeter than was ever dreamed of by the gross materialists of bygone days.

. . .

Life is a Humbug only because we make it so. We are frauds because we are fools. This is a beautiful, a glorious world, fit habitation for sons of the Most High God. It is a fruitful mother at whose fair breast all her children may be filled. There should be never a Humbug nor a hypocrite, never a millionaire nor a mendicant on the great round globe. Labor should be but healthful exercise to develop the physical man--to furnish forth a fitting casket for the godlike mind, appropriate setting for the immortal soul. The curse of life arises from a misconception of its significance. We delve in the mine for paltry gems, explore old ocean's deep for pearls; we toil and strive for gold until the hands are worn and the heart is cold; we attire ourselves in Tyrean purples and silks of Ind and strut forth in our gilded frippery on the narrow bridge of time, between the two eternities; we despoil the thin purse of the poor to erect brazen altars and priceless fanes, when the whole earth's a sacred shrine, the universe a temple through which rings the voice of God and rolls the eternal melody of the spheres.

. . .

Perhaps it is unnecessary to state that I'm not posing as a saint. I may eventually become an angel--of some sort--but I'll wear no wings. We are accustomed to think of seraphs flying from heaven to earth, flitting from star to star--irrespective of the fact that feathers are useless where there's no atmosphere. An angel working his wings to propel himself through a vacuum were as ridiculous as a disembodied spirit riding a bike down a rainbow.

I do not expect to reform all Humbugs, to banish all Fakes, to exterminate all Folly. If the world should get too good, I might have to hunt another home. I can understand every crime in the calendar but the crime of greed, every lust of the flesh but the lust for gain, every sin that ever damned a soul but the sin of selfishness. By all the sacred bugs and beasts of ancient Egypt, I'd rather be a witch's cat--or even a politician--and howl in sympathy with my tribe; I'd rather be a tramp and divide my handouts with one more hungry; I'd rather be a mangy yellow dog without a master and keep the company of my kind, than to be a multi-millionaire, with the blood of a snake, the heart of a beast, and carry my soul, like Pedro Garcia, in my purse.

When I think of the three thousand children in the single city of Chicago without rags to shield their nakedness from the keen north wind; of the ten thousand innocents, such as Christ blessed, who died in New York every year of the world for lack of food; of the millions in every country whose cries go up night and day to God's great throne --not for salvation, but for soup; not for the robe of righteousness, but for a second-hand pair of pants--and then contemplate those beside whose hoarded wealth the riches of Lydia's ancient kings were but a beggar's patrimony, praying to Him who reversed the law of nature to feed the poor, I long for the mystic power to coin sentences that sear like sulphur-flames come hot from hell, and weave of words a whip of scorpions to lash the rascals naked through the world.

We humbug our parents, the public, and then, as far as possible, our wives; though the latter are seldom so blind as they seem. The wife who cannot tell when her lord and master is lying--whether he's been sitting up with a sick friend or nursing a Robert-tail flush--well, she must be the newest kind of a "New Woman," with a brain built for bloomers and bike. The New Woman is--she is all right; just the Old Woman in disguise, a paradox and a coat of paint.

Whenever I tackle this subject I'm reminded of a broth of a boy who in days agone drove the team afield on my father's farm. One rare June day, when the sun was slowly sinking in the west, as the novelists say--and I believe that's where Old Sol usually sinks--he got mixed up with a bevy of industrious bumble-bees who were no respecters of persons--would sting an honest delver as quickly as they'd put the gaffles to a scorbutic duke. In about two minutes Mike came over the hill a-whooping like a segment of the Southern Confederacy reaching for a nigger regiment, his head the size and shape of a red peck measure that had been kicked by a roan mule.

"Sure, now, they didn't do a thing t' me," he said. "An ould bumblebug came a bizzin' an' a buzzin' aluken fer all the wurruld like an' Orangeman wid wings, so I up an' hit him a biff. Thin all the 'rist av the haythen tuk up his foight--an' Oi kem home."

Hit one Humbug and every Fraud and Fake in Christendom is ready for the fray. They attempt to crush their critic with calumny, to defeat him with falsehood. When you hear a fellow railing at the ICONOCLAST, just look through its stock of caps and you'll find one that will fit the knot on the end of his neck.

Truth and only truth is eternal. It was not born and it cannot die. It may be obscured by the clouds of falsehood, or buried in the debris of brutish ignorance, but it can never be destroyed. It exists in every atom, lives in every flower and flames in every star. When the heavens and the earth shall pass away and the universe return to cosmic dust, divine truth will stand unscathed amid the crash of matter and the wreck of worlds.

Falsehood is an amorphous monster, conceived in the brain of knaves and brought forth by the breath of fools. It's a mortal pestilence, a miasmic vapor that passes, like a blast from hell, over the face of the world and is gone forever. It may leave death in its wake and disaster dire; it may place on the brow of purity the brand of the courtesan and cover the hero with the stigma of the coward; it may wreck hopes and ruin homes, cause blood to flow and hearts to break; it may pollute the altar and disgrace the throne, corrupt the courts and curse the land, but the lie cannot live forever, and when it's dead and damned there's none so poor as to do it reverence.

* * *

A discourse on political humbugs were incomplete without some reference to the young man whom Texas, in a moment of mental aberration, raised to the chief magistracy. I learn from a sermon recently inflicted on the long-suffering inhabitants of this city, that Son Charles is "our heroic young Christian governor." How he must have changed during the last few months! Shakespeare was probably viewing the Texas politician with prophetic eye when he declared that in the great Drama of Life a man plays many parts. Culberson is the only one, however, who has yet succeeded in playing them all at one and the same time. A man who can run with the hare politically while holding with the hounds personally, is almost too versatile to be virtuous. "Our heroic young Christian governor!" That preacher evidently doesn't know Charles. Or if he does his idea of Christianity is not so altitudinous that he can stand on its apex and keep the flies off the man in the moon. Culberson is a politician who enjoyed excellent health before he entered the public service. He is all things to all men and--"nothing to nobody." He's so slippery that he couldn't stand on the partisan platform to which he owes his political elevation. In the last gubernatorial election pretty much every man who voted for Culberson felt that he had a lead-pipe cinch on a fat office, and the remainder were certain he would work four-and-twenty hours a day to put in effect their pet reforms. They are wiser now. In 1890 Charlie sailed into the attorney-generalship on the ample coat- tails of one J. S. Hogg, and in less than thirty days he was conspiring to retire his chief after one term and slip into his official shoes. The trouble appears to be that the youngster was pulled before he was ripe--before his political integrity had time to harden, or his crop of wild oats was well in the ground.

Now I want it distinctly understood that I am not the apologist of pugilism; I am the apostle of the white- winged Goddess of Peace. I always carry a cruse of oil in my hip-pocket to cast upon the troubled waters. I have a pacific effect on all with whom I come in contact. Children quit crying when they see me coming, women speak well of their neighbors, men respect each other's political opinions, preachers engage in silent prayer and the lion and the lamb lie down together. And that's no lie. But as between pugilism and hypocrisy I prefer the former. I would rather see men pound each other for a fat purse than play the canting Pharisee to promote their political fortunes.

. . .

Let us look to the record of "our heroic young Christian governor." During the four years he officiated as attorney- general he made no determined effort to enforce the law then in effect prohibiting pugilism. Prizefights were pulled off at Galveston, San Antonio, El Paso and other Texas points after having been duly advertised in the daily press. He was elevated to the chief magistracy of the state, and the slugging matches continued--mills between brawny but unskilled boxers, who relied upon brute strength, and pounded each other to a pumice to make a hoodlum holiday. Some of these meetings were especially brutal--as matches between amateur athletes are likely to be; but "our heroic young Christian governor" saw no occasion to get his Ebenezer up. He simply sawed wood--didn't care a continental whether there was a law prohibiting bruising bouts or not.

And the ministerial associations were too busy taking up collections to send Bibles and blankets, salvation and missionary soup to the pagans of the antipodes to pay much attention to these small-fry pugs. They let our blessed "Texas civilization" take care of itself, while they agonized over a job lot of lazy negroes whose souls ain't worth a sou-markee in blocks of five; who wouldn't walk into heaven if the gates were wide open, but once inside would steal the eternal throne if it wasn't spiked down. No Epworth Leaguers or Christian Endeavorers whereased, resoluted or perorated until their tongues were worn to a frazzle, trying to "preserve the honor of our ger-rate and gal-orious State by suppressing feather- pillow pugilism." Why? I don't know; do you? Of course some carping critics declare it was because the world was not watching these brutal slugging matches between youths to pugilistic fortune and fame unknown; that it was because the professionally pious had no opportunity to make a grandstand play and get their names in print-- no chance to POSE in the eye of the universe as the conservators of our fin de siecle civilization. But then these Doubting Thomases are ever ready to make a mock of the righteous and put cockleburrs in the back hair of the godly. I dislike to criticize "the cloth." I am prone to believe that the preachers always do the best they know how; still, I must confess that I am unable to muster up much admiration for the brass band variety of "religion" or the tutti-frutti trademark of "respectability."

Had the belief not been bred in my bones that there is a God in Israel, these little 2x4 preachers, with their great moral hippodrome--their purblind blinking at mountains and much-ado about molehills--would drive me to infidelity. By their egregious folly, their fiery denunciation of all men who dare disagree with them, their attempt to make the State subservient to the church, to establish an imperium in imperio--by their mischievous meddling in matters that in nowise concern them, they are bringing the beautiful religion of Christ into contempt-- are doing more to foster doubt than did all the Humes and Voltaires and Paines that ever wielded pen.

Now don't get the idea that I am antagonistic to the preachers. Far from it. I am something of a minister myself; and we who have been called to labor in the Lord's vineyard--at so much per annum--must stand together. I admire the ministers in a general way--and "whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth." I feel that it is my duty to pull them tenderly but firmly back by the little alpaca coat-tails whenever they have made mistakes --to reprove them in all gentleness when I find them fanning themselves with their ears for the amusement of the mob.

But to return to "our heroic young Christian governor." When it was first proposed to bring the great fistic carnival and a million dollars to Dallas, Gov. Culberson had nothing to say. It was popularly supposed that he understood the law and would respect it. The impression got abroad that he felt rather friendly to the enterprise because it would put 500 scudi in the depleted coffers of the public and turn a great deal of ready money loose within the confines of Texas. He may not have been directly responsible for this popular idea, but he certainly did nothing to discourage it. Arrangements were perfected, important contracts entered into, a vast amount of money invested that would prove a complete loss if the enterprise collapsed. Then Culberson began to complain. He suddenly discovered that pugilism was a brutal sport, which should be suppressed. His conversion was as instantaneous as that of Saul of Tarsus. It were an insult to the intelligence of a hopeless idiot to say he did not know the Corbett-Fitzsimmons affair would prove far less brutal than a hundred fistic encounters which he, as attorney- general and governor, had tacitly encouraged--but his jewel of consistency had evidently gone to join his diamond stud. Col. Dan Stuart didn't appear inclined to do anything to ease the young man's agony, and it rapidly went from bad to worse. The Hurt decision was rendered, and the moral volcano of "our heroic young Christian governor" began to erupt in earnest. He declared that he would override the court of criminal appeals "if men enough can be found in Texas to do it"--gave an excellent imitation of an anarchist who is hungering for canned gore. After this blood-to-horses'-bridles bluff he grew quiescent--waited, Micawber-like, for something to turn up. And still Dan Stuart didn't say a word. Then "our heroic young Christian governor" broke out in a new place. The legislature was convened in extraordinary session to prevent a brace of pugilists smashing the immortal ichor out of modern civilization. It was a great moral aggregation--almost equal to Artemus Ward's Wax Wurx! I am convinced of this, for it employed two doctors of Divinity--at public cost, of course--to pray over it a minute each morning, for $5 per diem each. Everybody expected the president of the Florida Athletic Club to go to Austin and make an earnest free silver speech. Even the lawmakers were looking for him; but he didn't go--and the result was what might have been expected. The law-builders with the worst private records had the most to say about public morality. Men whose I.O.U.'s are not good in a game of penny ante; whose faces are familiar to the inmates of every disreputable dive between the Sabine and the Rio Bravo; who go to their legislative duties from the gambling-room and with six-shooters in the busts of their breeches, grew tearful over the prospective "disgrace of Texas" by a manly boxing bout. Hell hath no fury like a legislative humbug scorned-- while he's holding his hand behind him.

. . .

But the wrath of "our heroic young Christian governor" did not abate with the enactment of a law forbidding prizefights--such a law as he had flagrantly failed to enforce. The promoters of what the court of criminal appeals declared a lawful enterprise were arrested and dragged before the grand jury of Travis County, which appears to have taken the entire earth under its protectorate. Failing an opportunity to prosecute them for an offense against the laws of the land, the powers at Austin proceeded to prosecute them on the hypothesis that they were conspiring to wreck the universe.

And what was their offense? They had "conspired" to pay $500 into the public treasury and bring a million more to Dallas. They had "conspired" to bring several thousand respectable business men to Texas from all parts of the Union and furnished employment at good wages for hundreds of hungry men.

While I do not much admire pugilism as a profession, I must say that the promoters of the enterprise conducted themselves much better than did "our heroic young Christian governor," and those alleged saints who proposed to shoulder their little shotguns and help him override the courts--to butcher their brethren in cold blood to prevent an encounter between brawny athletes armed with pillows; to sustain "modern civilization" by transforming the metropolis of Texas into a charnel-house--to prevent, by brutal homicide in the name of Christ, their neighbors exercising those liberties accorded them by the laws of the land.