QiatmU Ittitteraitg ajibtatg 
 
 iltlfata, Jfeui fart 
 
 LIBRARY OF 
 
 LEWIS BINGLEY WYNNE 
 
 A.B..A.M..COLUMB1ANCOLLEGE.-71.-73 
 WASHINGTON. D. C. 
 
 THE GIFT OF 
 
 MRS. MARY A. WYNNE 
 
 AND 
 
 JOHN H. WYNNE 
 
 CORNELL "98 
 1922 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tlie Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924022366102 
 
Cornell University Library 
 
 PS 3507.U15F9 
 
 Fun and pathos of one life. 
 
 3 1924 022 366 102 
 
FUN AND PATHOS 
 
 OF 
 
 ONE LIFE 
 
iiiiN[iii 
 
 BUI 
 
FUN AND PATHOS 
 
 OF 
 
 ONE LIFE 
 
 JAMES T. Dubois 
 
 New York and Washington 
 
 THE NEALE PUBLISHING COMPANY 
 
 1908 
 
Copyright, 1908, by 
 
 JAMES T. Dubois 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 The existence of man from birth to death 
 is a series of encounters. To preserve in type 
 some of the incidents that have come into the 
 life of one person, " Fun and Pathos of One 
 Life " has been written. If they should 
 create a single smile or awaken one kind 
 thought in the lives of men the author will 
 have been well paid for the hours spent 
 on the little volume. The contents are not 
 whoUy original, but quite as original as are 
 most human things, for under the sun there 
 is nothing new. The booklet was written for 
 pastime and is respectfully dedicated to all 
 who buy it and pay the regular price. For 
 the disappointed reader there will be plenty 
 of sympathy, but no rebate. 
 
 The Author. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PACE 
 
 Prelude 9 
 
 Buyers Versus Bibles 19 
 
 A Spiritualistic Catastrophe ... 46 
 
 Checking a Rude Habit 58 
 
 The Cry of the Dead 63 
 
 A Prophecy Realized 72 
 
 The Hoback-Topper Feud .... 75 
 A " Dandymite " Clock at the White 
 
 House 124 
 
 Who Broke the Tie? 129 
 
 Woman 137 
 
 The Sovereign Shad 142 
 
 Raising Pigs in Maryland .... 145 
 
 The Spirit of a Nation's Song . 153 
 
 Jack Breaks into the Consular Service 165 
 
PRELUDE 
 
 Jack Stanley belonged to that type of 
 men who come into the world, pass through 
 it — and make an exit — ^without creating com- 
 motion; but who get all that belong to them 
 of fun and pathos; and human life is after 
 all simply fun and pathos. 
 
 He was born of poor and honest parents; 
 not " poor but honest," as the thoughtless 
 are prone to say, thus reflecting upon the 
 poor as if it were unusual to be poor and 
 honest at the same time. His father was a 
 good man, and a frank one, for in his will he 
 said laconically, " To my son Jack I be- 
 queath a strong frame and a true heart, 
 together with as much of the earth as he can 
 occupy by his own efforts." Jack accepted 
 the legacy in the spirit of a worthy son, know- 
 ing his father would have left him two thou- 
 sand a year in the concrete, rather than a 
 section of the earth in the abstract, if it had 
 been in his power. Thus he went forth to 
 meet the shadowy future without fear and 
 without reproach. He found that part of 
 the earth his father had tentatively be- 
 
10 Pun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 queathed to him not a bad place to live in, 
 and while some conditions did not meet his 
 views, he was amsoled by the thought that 
 he did not create them and could not be held 
 responsible for their existence. 
 
 As his father was about to cross the great 
 dead sea, he remarked that his family 
 would not find creditors dangling their heels 
 from the porch of their humble home, and 
 he made good his word. There were no 
 debts, but there was also no income, and 
 while one was a relief the other was the 
 source of anxiety; but it did not ruffle the 
 appreciation Jack, had of the real worth of 
 his father. He was not the sort of boy who 
 in childhood thinks his father knows more 
 than God, in his teens believes he knows 
 more than his father, at twenty feels his 
 father would be fortunate if he knew half 
 as much as he does, at twenty-five wcmders 
 why his father does not come to him for ad- 
 vice, at thirty again thinks his father knows 
 something, at forty comes to his father for 
 advice, and when his father is dead, firmly 
 believes him to have been the smartest man 
 that ever lived. He had always sought his 
 father's counsel and desired his companion- 
 ship, and in return his father showed him 
 that paternal interest which pervades all 
 
Prelude 1 1 
 
 homes where fathers Math red blood in their 
 veins maintain a sound friendship with their 
 sons. To this happy condition a worthy 
 mother added the blessings of her sweet and 
 wholesome life. His father taught him to 
 do nothing but what was defensible, while 
 his mother impressed him with the fact that 
 the descent into hell is easy, but to climb back 
 again is difficult, and both urged him not to 
 wait for opportunity, as that killed time, but 
 to hunt for it, as that meant success, and also 
 to get all the good possible out of this life, 
 and hope for all that is good in the next. 
 With these admonitions Jack passed into 
 young manhood, and they helped him over 
 many a bog and fen in the journey of life. 
 
 It has been written that every thoughtful 
 man in his passage through the world takes 
 a pencil with him, and, unperceived, marks 
 on every person, or thing, the figure ex- 
 pressive of its value ; and whenever that per- 
 son or thing is met again he knows exactly 
 what kind and degree of attention to give to 
 it. This is applying experience to practical 
 use, and Jack, courting experience, remem- 
 bered her teachings from day to day, and ac- 
 quired a store of knowledge for which he 
 found ample need. Experience taught him 
 that you cannot antidote a poison when it 
 
12 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 gets well Into the blood, so that prevention is 
 worth a whole pharmacopoeia in both 
 a moral and a physical sense; that one vice 
 begets another as naturally as eggs beget 
 chicks; that young men are exposed to dan- 
 ger when they are the least prepared to de- 
 fend; and that everybody knows more than 
 anybody, for which reason all minds should 
 be open to advice. 
 
 As you go on in life, said the Teacher 
 Experience, you will find men ready to 
 divide the full measure of your joys, but 
 they will leave you alone with your woes. 
 They will sup your wine, but they will let 
 you drink the cup of gall. No one makes 
 both ends meet who " spends much time in 
 making one end drink," and he who tries to 
 submerge his troubles in " the flowing bowl " 
 will find them irrepressible mermaids. As 
 you grow older, and elbow the world, it will 
 be made plain that if a young man would 
 abhor deceit, duplicity, and policy, and es- 
 teem people, not because of their wealth, or 
 political and social success, but for their 
 character and virtues, it would dispel the 
 love for superficial life which is one of the 
 potent evils that plague mankind. 
 
 Nothing is as perfect possessed as remem- 
 bered, or anticipated, and as one grows old 
 
Prelude 13 
 
 he lives largely upon memories. Therefore, 
 said the Teacher, it is wise to lay up a good 
 store of pleasant ones for the sunset time of 
 life. In this respect Nature is kind to man. 
 As he advances in years he forgets the evil 
 and remembers the good. Even with the 
 Devil there is some virtue, continued the 
 Teacher, as among thieves there is some 
 honor, while under the cloak of piety, at 
 times, skulks the great white skeleton of 
 wrong. The planet might as well tug against 
 the sun, or Niagara resolve not to fall, as 
 to hope for the perfect anywhere, aldiough 
 some men who marry twice always claim their 
 first wives were perfect. 
 
 In her ministrations the Teacher, Experi- 
 ence, was sometimes harsh, but Jack received 
 eagerly all that was taught. He learned that 
 you may gild a lie or a wrong with bright 
 excuses, but it can never change the true 
 character of the thing said or done. He 
 learned that it is an important part of a boy's 
 education if, without being a plodder, he 
 could plod when necessary, and, without being 
 a machine, he could master details, and re- 
 tain the best he sees, reads, and hears. He 
 learned that no thraldom equals that in 
 which a man's sole thought is based on what 
 the world may say or think. Do what is 
 
14 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 right and defy the world. He learned that 
 freedom is dangerous to all save the wise and 
 noble, that no man is robbed of his liberty 
 who is " deprived of the liberty of doing 
 wrong," and that you cannot fool men all 
 the time any more than you can fool Nature 
 once. If you sow weeds you cannot harvest 
 grain. He learned that if you aim at noth- 
 ing you will never hit anything worth hav- 
 ing; if you worry about the future you bor- 
 row trouble; if you moan over the past you 
 waste your time and yourself, but if you seize 
 the present and make the most of it, you 
 make for success, because the movement of 
 life is forward and upward, and the " eternal 
 step of progress beats to that great anthem, 
 calm and clear, which the Master ever and 
 forever repeats." He learned that life is a 
 complaint, and a very contagious one, and 
 for its evils there is no certain remedy except 
 death; but if you treat the disease with the 
 best palliatives you may be comfortable, and 
 these palliatives are industry, economy, tem- 
 perance, patience, justice, cleanliness, and 
 godliness. These, blended with a desire to 
 make the world better, and make others hap- 
 pier, are the best palliatives, because giving 
 happiness to others keeps alive the chance of 
 being happy yourself. 
 
Prelude 1 5 
 
 The Teacher taught him that good luck 
 comes to the meanest as well as the best; 
 and, to some of the downright mean, it 
 comes like the dew at night, gently as the 
 sunbeams move to life the budding trees. As 
 for the dead we have wronged, no matter 
 how deep our remorse, they cannot pardon 
 us, because they cannot hear our appeals, 
 therefore always do a kindness straightway 
 while the fateful future is not here, for time 
 is always on the wing. He stands by the dial 
 of the universe, and as the minutes are ticked 
 off "he gives to those who grasp them; but 
 left unclaimed, they pass unused, unfruitful, 
 unyielding into the night of the unreturning 
 past." 
 
 In the never ceasing, but always changing 
 struggle of man, said the Teacher, " some 
 hands fold where others are lifted bravely in 
 the strife, and thus through all lands and 
 through all ages move on the two extremes." 
 In the wild race for competence, thrift com- 
 bined with industry make the safest team, 
 and the bird that seeks the worm after nine 
 in the morning flies on an empty stomach till 
 eventide. The spirit which impels the 
 miser to hoard his gold is contemptible, but 
 to consider when you spend five cents that it 
 is five per cent, of one dollar is commendable, 
 
i6 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 because that makes for economy, which is a 
 virtue this nation most needs, and which it 
 must acquire, or pay the penalty in beggary 
 and want. He learned that some men are 
 forced into honesty because no man will trust 
 them, and that both sexes sit up nights in- 
 venting schemes to exist without work. If 
 such creatures exchange checks with you as 
 an accommodation to them and their checks 
 are made payable next week, that week never 
 comes. They do not remember borrowing 
 money of you longer than it takes to spend it, 
 and when the debt is outlawed it is to them 
 a matter for self-congratulation. He learned 
 that a few paltry dollars will change some 
 men's " no " into a " yes " as quick as you 
 can pass the money, and that many men 
 and women are " doing " the social act whose 
 principle it is not to pay interest because it 
 is to their interest not to pay principal. Such 
 people are straightaway scoundrels who have 
 never been able to draw from their veins the 
 black spot inherited from an ancestry of 
 deadbeats, and yet the influence of these 
 vicious lives is not much worse than evils re- 
 sulting from amiable motives which have 
 strewn the earth with social, religious, and 
 financial wrecks, and the highways of hell 
 with broken hopes. 
 
Prelude 17 
 
 It is said that against the stupid the gods 
 fight in vain ; another friend, another trouble ; 
 a foe will slander you and a friend will hurry 
 the news to your ears. With these and a 
 myriad of other evils, man must contend 
 from birthday to deathday, and yet Jack 
 learned that none of them cut quite so deep 
 nor grieve quite so much as human ingrati- 
 tude. Gratitude signifies sensibility, generos- 
 ity, and a feeling of obligation, but it is a 
 virtue more conspicuous for its absence than 
 any of the good qualities the human race 
 ought to possess. Even a common yellow 
 cur has more gratitude in a heart-beat than 
 some men show in a life-time. Debts of 
 gratitude, as a rule, are worth less than five 
 cents on the dollar, and even this amount is 
 hard to collect. In the life of one kind- 
 hearted and self-sacrificing man it occurred 
 that of one hundred and twenty-seven per- 
 sons to whom he had rendered valuable as- 
 sistance in times of need only three showed 
 genuine appreciation, while of forty persons 
 who borrowed money of him only six re- 
 turned the loans, and this, all lenders will 
 agree, was a record-breaking average. Of 
 the remaining thirty-four, five remained on 
 speaking terms with him ; but of these, three 
 preferred to use the telephone. 
 
1 8 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 Nothing is more certainly written in the 
 book of human experience than that the lives 
 of most men differ from their words; and this 
 is so true that no one should consider every 
 man innocent until he is proven guilty — as 
 the law does; that is, he should remember 
 that few men are what they seem. 
 
 The truth of all this came to Jack Stanley 
 in many ways on his journey to manhood, 
 and a few of the varied experiences which he 
 gleaned from the Master Teacher are re- 
 corded in " Fun and Pathos of One Life." 
 
BUYERS VERSUS BIBLES 
 
 Boys, as a rule, develop slowly. The 
 metal in them does not show until they have 
 passed through the smelter of practical ex- 
 perience, and you cannot tell much about 
 them until they get busy with the serious 
 things of life. Big boy bullies are impressive 
 in their way, but they sometimes get soundly 
 punished by quiet little fellows who do not 
 want to fight. A quarter of a century was 
 required to convince the mother of Bismarck 
 that in producing him she had not produced 
 a goose, but the name of the Man of Blood 
 and Iron will be uttered with admiration by 
 millions still unborn. Precocious youths often 
 go to seed before they are fully grown, while 
 boys who plod along in study and in work, 
 using well the time allotted for their tasks, 
 sometimes surprise the world with acts of 
 sterling worth and win a wide renown. 
 
 Jack Stanley had drifted contentedly on 
 the placid waters of home life. He loved 
 home and aU of its surroundings. His father 
 taught him that when a person scorns the 
 place of his birth the first question is, " What 
 mean thing has he done there?" From 
 19 
 
20 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 childhood he had learned to honor and re- 
 spect the ancient refuge of his race. His love 
 for the place of his nativity was like that of 
 the prairie farmer who, while looking at 
 the towering Sierras, was asked, " Can any- 
 thing beat that? " " Yes," he replied, " them 
 things that wears skirts at home." Jack had 
 never gone out into the world to knock at its 
 closed doors, and be jolted on its crowded 
 thoroughfares, and feel the sting of its 
 greedy life. Sheltered in the arms of a 
 friendly community he did not know that out- 
 side of that circle was a heartless realm in 
 which the golden rule is seldom used in meas- 
 uring up a stranger, but where in doing 
 things they try to " do " the stranger first. 
 
 When Jack reached the age where the ques- 
 tion of an education must be considered he 
 was without means, and he began to plan 
 how he could earn the necessary funds. 
 While searching for work he was offered an 
 agency for the sale of illustrated Bibles. He 
 accepted, and sought subscribers in his native 
 town. The scheme worked like a well-ad- 
 justed machine. Everybody he knew seemed 
 to need a Bible. His relatives bought to en- 
 courage him, his friends bought to show their 
 good will. He unloaded the Holy Word 
 onto his relatives first, then he resorted to his 
 
Buyers Versus Bibles 21 
 
 friends, and finally to his mere acquaintances. 
 One old lady, who had been his grand- 
 father's sweetheart sixty years before, gave 
 him a ten-dollar gold piece for a nine-dollar 
 Bible and told him to keep the change ; a man 
 who had been a Forty-niner with his uncle 
 took two Bibles to help the nephew along, 
 gave one away and used the other long 
 enough to look at the pictures; the old mid- 
 wife who assisted him into the world bought 
 one to help him through it; a maiden lady 
 who loved his father, before his mother cut 
 her out, took one for Auld Lang Syne; the 
 family washerwoman, who could not read, 
 but who had just received a big back pension, 
 took one, and when asked, some weeks after, 
 how she liked it, replied, " Well, it ends like 
 all the rest of them books. They git married 
 at last." 
 
 In short, he passed from success to tri- 
 umph as easy as water finds its level. His 
 Bibles were in great demand. So rapid were 
 the sales he imagined he could hear the 
 presses of the Bible concern himuning to fiU 
 his orders. He stopped shipment by freight 
 and expressed the Holy Word to meet the 
 demands. Everj^ing went his way and he 
 saw wealth and independence in the near fu- 
 ture. 
 
22 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 It has been said that in the minds of some 
 men who make quick success self looms up 
 largest and they contemplate self alone; 
 others think as far as their families; others 
 concern themselves with communities; few 
 think in terms of nations ; very few, like Bis- 
 marck, Hay, and Root, think in continents, 
 while God alone thinks in universes. 
 
 The success Jack Stanley achieved in sell- 
 ing Bibles among his friends caused his per- 
 sonality to loom up the largest thing on his 
 own mental horizon, and he became eager 
 for a field of larger range. He magnified his 
 capacity for selling Bibles, and would brook 
 no delay in seeking a broader sphere of 
 operation. " Delays," he said, " are danger- 
 ous, and procrastination has a mortal enemy 
 and it is hours." How little he compre- 
 hended the meaning of delay. How ma- 
 ligned and misunderstood is that word In its 
 relation to the lives of men. " No gentler 
 hand is used to soften death's unkindly blow. 
 It halts the grim messenger on its way. To 
 shame's swift commissioner it says pause a 
 little with thy weight of woe. It bids passion 
 stay like a stem highwayman when joys over- 
 flow. It robs the lover's pulse of heat, and 
 even heaven might seem less fair If we could 
 hurry to it when we would, for things hoped 
 
Buyers Versus Bibles 23 
 
 for are often sweeter than things pos- 
 sessed." 
 
 But Jack Stanley, inspired by easy success 
 among his friends, would tolerate no delay. 
 Like most men he thought any place other 
 than the one he was in was the best place. He 
 imagined the triumphs that had come to him 
 at home would come as sure in wider and 
 stranger fields. Having sold Bibles with ease 
 to those who knew and sympathized with 
 him, he believed he could sell Bibles even to 
 those who made them if he had the chance. 
 With this thought he went forth to meet 
 strange faces in a strange land, taking with 
 him a stout heart, one sample Bible and a 
 blank subscription book. 
 
 No one is wise at all times. Even Jove 
 could not be discreet and love in the same 
 hour. In Jack's thoughts of easy conquest 
 amid alien surroundings he gravely misjudged 
 mankind. He did not know that the com- 
 munity into which he went, unaccredited and 
 unknown, was aiding book agents out of town 
 when they desired to stay, a fact that was 
 rudely disclosed as he paused to ring the bell 
 at the first house where he hoped to sell the 
 Holy Word. The door opened and a voice 
 cried: 
 
 "^Vhat yer want?" 
 
24 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 " I have here," began Jack, " a fifteen dol- 
 lar Bible for " 
 
 " We've got Bibles enough in this house to 
 bum a wet dog withl " shouted the man as 
 he slammed the door shut with a jar that 
 awoke in the young agent thoughts that were 
 new. 
 
 He had started out to make a hurricane 
 canvass of the town. Now he knew that a 
 cyclone cellar was what was needed. He had 
 learned from Experience that only one thing 
 can be well done at a time, and the one thing 
 to do is that which is most urgent. Accord- 
 ingly, he moved on to the next house. As he 
 entered the front yard he saw a sign which 
 evidently intended that he who reads might 
 run. It read : 
 
 " No buk agents need appli, nor no litenin 
 rod sellers nuther." 
 
 Certain kinds of pain, the sort that avert 
 greater pain, are to be endured, and to ac- 
 cept this warning was wiser than to face a 
 danger that was ready to meet him at the 
 door, so he once more moved on. As he 
 approached the next house he saw on the 
 door step, untied and restless, a burly dog 
 with a passion that seemed to call for re- 
 straint. The dog's presence made Jack 
 poorer by one hope, but richer by one ex- 
 
Buyers Versus Bibles 25 
 
 perience, and he backed off and bolted away, 
 remembering what happened to a book agent 
 who called at the farmhouse of an old Ger- 
 man. 
 
 Just as the agent rapped at the front door 
 a massive bull-terrier paid him a visit from 
 the back yard, greeting him, as he plunged 
 through the gateway, by removing a part 
 of the bosom of his trousers. While de- 
 fending himself and measuring off yards of 
 robust words, the window opened and the 
 head of an old German woman peeped out. 
 
 " Mein freund," said she, " did dose dogs 
 bide you ? " 
 
 " No," said the agent, " he didn't exactly 
 bite me, but he left me no seat to sit on." 
 
 " Veil, mein freimd," cried the old woman, 
 " you mus' accuse dose dogs ef he didn't bide 
 you ; dose dogs is young now, but you wait a 
 leedle bit und come around bye and bye ven 
 dose dogs gits older, und he vill bide der 
 bones right out of a book agent." 
 
 At the next house the coast seemed clear. 
 Jack rapped h(^efully. A little male thing 
 in bare feet, looking altogether too solemn 
 for his size, appeared in the doorway. His 
 legs were bowed and abbreviated, his stom- 
 ach was evidently the chief metropolis of his 
 system, and while he was not as handsome as 
 
26 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 Satan he appeared quite as devilish. Look- 
 ing at him Jack felt that Moses must have 
 had just that kind of a human thing in mind 
 when he wrote the ten commandments. The 
 first words uttered proved he was addicted 
 to a certain kind of sausage. He growled: 
 
 "Whatyersellin'?" 
 
 " Bibles," said Jack, " and I want to sell 
 you one." 
 
 " Do ye? " he bellowed with a voice like 
 a Scotch bag-pipe out of tune. " Well, I'll 
 live to hear ye preach my funeral sermon ef 
 ye do." 
 
 "But," said Jack, "I'm selling fifteen- 
 dollar Bibles for nine dollars to-day." 
 
 " You be, be ye? " said the man. " Well, 
 what yer goin' to do to-morrer? Every 
 buyer, I suppose, by sellin' 'em for seven." 
 
 " No," replied Jack, " I have but one 
 price — fifteen-dollar Bibles for nine dollars, 
 and I'll sell you one for that." 
 
 "Will ye?" snarled the man. "I guess 
 not to-day, nor to-morrer, nor next Christ- 
 mas. Let me tell you somethin', youngster. 
 I've been making so many of them fifteen- 
 dollar investments for nine dollars during 
 the past three years I'm gone dead busted." 
 
 To know when to quit is quite as impor- 
 tant in the battle of life as to know when to 
 
Buyers Versus Bibles 27 
 
 start. Embarrassed as a bachelor on the 
 threshold of a bath full of fairies, Jack, feel- 
 ing that such a man could never be brought 
 to a decent flesh and blood consistency, 
 begged pardon for having intruded upon his 
 bunch of misfortunes and walked on, going 
 slowly toward a small cottage over the way. 
 He was discerning that to sell to those who 
 want is easy, but to sell to those who don't 
 want is real business. Every hour he was 
 finding out things about mankind worthy of 
 analysis. As he knocked at the cottage door 
 an old woman opened it about half an inch 
 and said: 
 
 "Well, what's doin'?" 
 
 At a glance Jack was convinced she did 
 not belong to the Bible-class, for she looked 
 capable of putting any Christian on his back 
 and going through his pockets when she 
 needed money. 
 
 " Madam," said he timidly, " I want to 
 go to school and " 
 
 "Well, why don't you mog along?" she 
 broke in with a voice like the fretful cluck of 
 an unsuccessful hen. 
 
 " But, madam," said Jack, " you're a lady 
 and I would like " 
 
 " You jest bet I'm a lady, and by thunder 
 don't yer forgit it! " she screeched, looking as 
 
28 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 though she could swallow a book agent with- 
 out loosening her collar. 
 
 " I will try to remember you are a lady," 
 said Jack with a grin, " and I hope to sell you 
 a fifteen-dollar Bible " 
 
 " Sellin' Bibles, be ye?" and she shot a 
 glance at the poor boy that fairly stunned 
 him. " Kid," droned she, " do yer know yer 
 chance of flyin' to heaven in a battleship is 
 better than sellin' Bibles in this house? It's 
 too late. My old man had a dream last 
 night and he saw me floatin' around in para- 
 dise with my angel plumage on, and his 
 dreams go by contraries. If he'd seen me sail- 
 in' around in Hotland with asbestos skirts on 
 there would have been a chance of unloadin' 
 a Bible right here and now. If you had fire- 
 proof corsets I'd buy; but Bibles — ^well it 
 'pears I ain't goin' where Bibles is popular." 
 
 When one is dancing in a temperature of 
 ninety degrees how delightful it is to steal 
 out upon a spacious lawn and "watch the 
 fire-flies flitting through royal palms in a gar- 
 den flooded with the rich glories of a harvest 
 moon." Jack stole away from that over- 
 heated atmosphere and, entering a small park 
 near by, sat down for rest and meditation. 
 
 Thus far the day had been a panorama of 
 failures, but the star of hope still twinkled in 
 
Buyers Versus Bibles 29 
 
 his breast, a faint belief that disappointments 
 were behind, and success awaited just ahead. 
 Thus hope forever lures men on. It has a 
 potent influence, though it is ever serving out 
 things it does not possess. It has been said 
 that it is the balmy cordial and prospect 
 bright; the nurse of young desire; the painted 
 vapor; the glowworm fire; the tickler of 
 fancy; a kind deceiver; a sweet flatterer; the 
 earnest of delight, and like sleep, the softest 
 soother of the mind. Jack arose and went 
 forth to renewed effort. 
 
 A lean thing, with a composite man-and- 
 monkey face, shoved up the window as he 
 approached the next house, and bawled in a 
 metallic voice : 
 
 " We don't buy no bools at the door ! " 
 
 " Madam," said Jack, questioning 
 whether he had hit the right sex or not, " I 
 will step inside if you prefer." 
 
 " Young man," said she, " if you will give 
 that wood-pile a hot half hour I'll give you 
 a warm bite, but we don't want no ' Encyclo- 
 pedias,' nor ' On-a-bridge Websters,' nor 
 ' Left-overs-done-over-by-the-Cook,' nor ' Be- 
 your-own-Doctor,' nor ' Expurgatoried Lives 
 of the Saints,' nor no books nohow." 
 
 " But," persisted Jack, " I have a fifteen- 
 dollar Bible for nine dollars, and " 
 
30 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 " Git right out of here quicker than a 
 flicker," broke in the composite-face, " and 
 skip over to Hannah Skinner's with yer 
 Bibles; they are low down with the small-pox 
 there, and need religion more'n medicine." 
 
 Jack was now well convinced that most 
 people wish book agents were centennial oc- 
 currences only, and Bible selling seemed a 
 lost art. He turned to go, muttering, " Even 
 a Mormon must be patient as well as chaste 
 to live with such creatures, and be watched 
 by a bevy of them." He paused and was 
 about to back out in a hushed kind of a way, 
 when it occurred to him that the woman 
 might be bluffing and wanted a Bible after 
 all, because her sex often say " no " when 
 they mean " yes," just as a horse says " nay " 
 when you offer him hay. Jack turned back, 
 touched his hat to the old woman, and said: 
 
 " Madam, I am selling the Holy Word 
 bound in morocco and " 
 
 " Be ye? " blurted the woman. " Well, I 
 suspect you'd better tog back to Morocco 
 and quit huntin' Bible fiends around these 
 diggin's, for what you'll need most in a min- 
 ute is legs and lots on 'em. See that dog? 
 Any book agent who comes around here 
 ought to wear leather breeches and have the 
 bosom saturated with strychnine, for that 
 
Buyers Versus Bibles 31 
 
 pup will eat anything and is very fond of 
 book agents." 
 
 Jade turned, and saw moving toward him 
 a wild-eyed mastiff with ears and tail erect, 
 apparently delighted with his immediate 
 prospects. 
 
 " Take off your dog, madam," cried Jack 
 nervously, " and I'll take off the Holy Word 
 and we'll call it quits." 
 
 He did not wait for^ an answer, but 
 grabbed his presence of mind and walked 
 backward out of the open gate. So it went 
 with him, poor fellow, all the day long. His 
 luck had been worse than the colporteur's in 
 Turkey, where propaganda explaining the 
 use of the Scriptures is prohibited by law. 
 That milestone in his life had been reached 
 where a person is justified in feeling that any 
 place other than the one he is in is the best 
 place. Adversity had thus far been the rule 
 of that day and the measure of misery 
 seemed near. 
 
 Some persons are so nervous they consider 
 every incident an accident, and every acci- 
 dent a calamity. Some fear pain who never 
 have it. Some shrink from evils recollected; 
 some pale at evils anticipated, and many are 
 so tormented with that which never arrives 
 they expect every minute to be their last. 
 
32 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 Jack Stanley was made of sterner sub- 
 stance. While his string of failures were 
 monotonous he had no desire to give up. To 
 do that would have been as efficacious to 
 right matters as would be the extraction of a 
 bullet by an assassin from the heart of a man 
 whom he had slain. Besides, he was cheered 
 with the remembrance that even the Happy 
 Valley disgusted l^asselas by the recurrence 
 of its luxuries. Such experiences as Jack had 
 confronted since leaving the home circle and 
 friends would have made chinks in the but- 
 tressed walls of most boys' souls, but with 
 him they were lessons, from which knowledge 
 came, that fixed his determination to sell 
 Bibles, because he now realized the need of 
 them among men. 
 
 In the never-ending struggle for existence 
 all men are allotted loads, but no padc is like 
 that the book agent bears going from house 
 to house, meeting with rebuffs so brutal they 
 prove that the Levites are not all dead who 
 pass the fallen man by because they know he 
 has already been robbed. Jack had met many 
 reverses, so many, that when one came it was 
 second nature to go and find another, and he 
 had not far to travel. 
 
 As the door of the next house opened a 
 maid with a gentle voice invited him in. It 
 
Buyers Versus Bibles 33 
 
 was the first amiable prospect, and a triumph 
 seemed near. As Jack was about to drop 
 into a rocker the mistress of the house ap- 
 peared, and in tones of surprise exclaimed: 
 
 " Oh ! I thought it was the new parson 
 come to make his first call." 
 
 " Madam," said Jack, " I hope not to dis- 
 appoint you, for while the parson may give 
 you the Holy Word in sections, I can deliver 
 it to you in bulk. And while he would require 
 years in the deliverance, I can give you the 
 whole thing, for nine dollars, while you 
 wait." 
 
 The old lady smiled and waved him 
 graciously to a seat. It was the sole evi- 
 dence of hospitality he had seen through all 
 that weary day, and it aroused in him 
 thoughts both hopeful and happy. 
 
 " Madam," said he, " there is a language 
 in every countenance that needs no interpre- 
 ter; but this is all so unexpected it puzzles 
 me. Does that smile mean you want a 
 Bible?" 
 
 " Young man," said she, " you may not 
 know that we aU must be embedded in the 
 same conglomerate with all kinds of devas- 
 tators of the day, and it is wise to be decent 
 with them here so we may be at peace with 
 them there. Benevolence is a prime virtue 
 
34 Pun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 and it has taught me to treat every one hu- 
 manely, even a book agent; for this reason 
 I bid you welcome with a smile, but as to 
 Bible buying that is another question." 
 
 The science of persuasion is in understand- 
 ing human nature, and the purchasing spirit 
 being partially manifest, the present moment 
 seemed to be worth any forty that had passed 
 that day. 
 
 " Madam," said Jack, " every one must 
 defend and support himself; but when he 
 puts forth his best and fails, what is to be 
 done? All day long I have offered this fif- 
 teen-dollar Bible for nine dollars, and be- 
 tween the insults of persons and the assaults 
 of dogs it is evident that any genius who will 
 inspire some one in this community to give 
 the glad hand to a mortal with the immortal 
 Word of God for sale at any price wiU de- 
 serve to sit side by side in the temple of fame 
 with the man who discovers perpetual mo- 
 
 tion." 
 
 To arouse S3mipathy first, then awake the 
 sense of moral duty; then educate the judg- 
 ment by well-selected phrases is the best pro- 
 cedure for a book agent in homes where they 
 prefer the society of parsons to that of 
 chumps, and Jade now felt that he was 
 within that charmed circle. 
 
Buyers Versus Bibles 35 
 
 " Madam," continued he, " the good 
 deeds of to-day will live to-morrow, a kind 
 act done now will stand sponsor for you 
 when I am gone and you are alone with this 
 fifteen-dollar Book of Books. It will intro- 
 duce you where you are unknown; pay for 
 you when you are without funds ; toil for you 
 while you slumber; soothe your sorrows; 
 soften your pain, and when you go hence will 
 help you in at the pearly gates. I conceive 
 of no more beneficent deed than to buy a fif- 
 teen-dollar Bible for nine doUars. Buy it 
 and send it down to posterity as an heirloom. 
 Buy and make it the sacred family Bible. 
 No family ought to be without one, for while 
 God may have created so many common peo- 
 ple because He loves them. He wiU have lit- 
 tle love for Bibleless families, be they never 
 so common." 
 
 What an easement it was for Jack to say 
 this. Through the disheartening experiences 
 of the day his word batteries had been si- 
 lenced by negative persons and menacing 
 whelps. He knew that a successful book 
 agent must be a rapid-fire word-battery and 
 let no mark, shining or otherwise, escape. He 
 knew that the kindly jest, the pleasant talk, 
 mingled with a few soft compliments, such 
 as dbaracterize a back parlor scene at night. 
 
36 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 with two lovers in one chair, was the right 
 lingo for maidens and young widows, but the 
 subject that fronted him now required rhet- 
 oric and plenty of it. He also realized that 
 he who goes ahead, stands still, or goes to 
 sleep at the right time has solved the problem 
 of life, and now was the time to go ahead. 
 
 " Madam," he said, " all day long I have 
 faced rebuffs to find a friendly shelter here. 
 I have learned what Bible-selling means 
 where Bibles are unfashionable, and yearn- 
 ing for some kind benison to fall I entered 
 here where I hope to leave this Book, here in 
 this home which seems its natural habitat." 
 
 The old lady beamed sympathetically, 
 hitched her chair a trifle closer, and said: 
 
 " Man is such a riddle as an individual, 
 and, in the total, such a nut-to-crack, that I 
 am not surprised at the treatment you have 
 received." For a moment Jack felt that he 
 was in the midst of a great opportunity if he 
 could only think of the right thing to say, 
 but the old lady continued. " You spoke of 
 family Bibles, — I love them, I dote on them, 
 they possess such an air of hospitality. In 
 them we recall the dead faces when we want 
 them, bid them stay as long as we wish, and 
 send them away when we will. They are 
 such a consolation; they exhilarate the spirit 
 
Buyers Versus Bibles 37 
 
 and restore the tone of soul-peace. But, 
 young man, what if I don't need one? " 
 
 It was abruptly made manifest to young 
 Stanley that nothing is more uncertain with 
 a woman than a sure thing. His lips parted 
 to speak, when the old lady prevented by say- 
 ing: 
 
 " I have a family Bible, and it was so 
 popular I had to fight the whole family to 
 get it. It was a prolonged effort, and 
 loosened up family ties quite a bit, but as it 
 is well preserved it comes to more than it cost. 
 It contains a record of marriages, births, and 
 deaths for five generations. It inspires one 
 with sacred memories. Joy, sorrow, hope 
 and romance gleam through its open door- 
 way. In it are the shining links dropped 
 from the chain that bound the family circle 
 for twelve decades. The names of those who 
 have passed through the dark gate, and 
 across the wild that no man knows, are there 
 When death stilled the fitful star of their 
 lives their names found place upon its sacred 
 pages. Through all these fateful years it 
 has borne the family tree and within its hal- 
 lowed covers are reimited a host time has 
 disbanded. Dead though they are, still in 
 this book they seem to live, visiting with us 
 and we with them, growing no longer old. 
 
38 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 but gliding o'er our memories like summer 
 shadows o'er a stream. My father's kindly 
 face is there, my mother's angel brow, and 
 there their pleasant smiles fall on me, and 
 ofttimes I seem to hear them call my name. 
 So through and in and around it seem to cling 
 the sweetest thoughts of life. All else may 
 prove false, but that honored Book, the 
 family Bible, will remain the safest counsel- 
 lor and friend. It teaches us the way to live 
 and how to die. No mines of earth can ever 
 hold such priceless gems, no dreamland 
 scenes such visions rare. Trees nursed by 
 those whose names its pages bear now sing to 
 alien ears. The streams that murmur sweet- 
 est music Nature ever gives flow swiftly to 
 the boundless sea but bring no word from 
 them; the woodland has forgotten their 
 laughter, and the shady paths their feet, yet 
 in the pages of this Book we hear and see 
 them still. No melody of forest sounds, nor 
 thrilling notes of summer birds, nor murmur- 
 ing voice of mountain stream can be so dear 
 to me as their remembered words." As she 
 finished she produced a broad, triumphant 
 smile and said, " Young man, I fairly dote 
 on family Bibles; but I have one and need 
 another about as much as a pocket needs a 
 hole." 
 
Buyers Versus Bibles 39 
 
 It was a stunning blow to the yoiuig agent. 
 He had played the game of words as best he 
 could. He had waged a battle in which he 
 had spilt words like water, but he found him- 
 self beaten by a royal vocabulary on the lips 
 of a past master in phrases. He felt cha- 
 grined, embarrassed, and disappointed. 
 Again he was a hope poorer and an experi- 
 ence richer. Once more he had met a woman 
 engaged in dilating herself with the wrong 
 emotion. This time she resembled Deacon 
 Hoback, who in trying to make people feel 
 good, tried so hard that he made them feel 
 uncomfortable, a success akin to that of the 
 wife in her efforts to place the slippers of her 
 husband in the right spot. From what Jack 
 Stanley had learned that day he thanked the 
 Lord he was not created all eyes and ears, 
 but had been well supplied with legs. As he 
 contemplated these things the aching need of 
 repose came over him. He arose, bowed 
 with cold courtesy to the old lady just as she 
 turned to greet the new parson, and walked 
 out into the gloom of the night. He was 
 al(Hie with his Maker, the Bible, and a blank 
 subscription book. He thought of and about 
 several thoughts. One especially interested 
 him. Had the hour struck for him to go 
 home and steal noiselessly into the family 
 
40 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 vault, or should he seek some quiet place and 
 sit, like a Turk, down to cross-legged melan- 
 choly? He was not sure, nor was he happy, 
 so he moved slowly cm in meditation. 
 
 " In the swaying to and fro of molecules ; 
 in the ceaseless pulsation of ether; in the secu- 
 lar shifting of planetary orbits; in the busy 
 work of frost and raindrops; in the mys- 
 terious sprouting of the seed ; in the everlast- 
 ing tale of life and death," was revealed to 
 Jack Stanley an opening through which shone 
 the glory of Eternal Majesty; but just why 
 this omniscient force tolerated so much blind 
 indifference to Holy Writ in a town with two 
 schools and seven churches was beyond his 
 ken; but he was young. As he grew older 
 he learned more about modem life and the 
 interposition of Providence in the affairs of 
 men. 
 
 Unimportant as all this may appear, it was 
 of intense interest to Jack Stanley. He felt 
 it necessary to get an education, but he could 
 not find it in an empty subscription book. 
 He also felt it necessary to exist, but no one 
 in that alien community seemed to recognize 
 the necessity. He felt the Isolation and 
 gloom of one who walks alone amid the wreck 
 of hopes. His last chance of making a sale 
 seemed gone. He began to realize what it 
 
Buyers Versus Bibles 41 
 
 means, when young, to go into a strange land, 
 amid strange faces, where one can clasp no 
 mother's hand nor listen to a father's kind 
 advice, nor receive a sister's tender kiss, nor 
 hear a friend's welcome call. Bible selling 
 in that alien land had been a fruitless mis- 
 sion. He was through, and he was glad he 
 was through. He turned his steps toward 
 the railway station with thoughts of home 
 and friends which relieved the gloom of the 
 deserted thoroughfare. As he passed slowly 
 on, recalling the events of the day, he was 
 suddenly attracted by a sobbing voice issuing 
 from an open window over the way. He 
 stepped swiftly across the dimly lighted street 
 and paused at the gate to listen. It was a 
 female voice in fenent supplication. It was 
 the voice of Euretta Betts, the star old maid 
 of that wicked old town, and she was sa3^ng : 
 " In distress I come unto Thee, O Lord, 
 for help. I have balanced on the lid of single 
 life until the limit of maidenly endurance has 
 been reached. What I want is a robust man, 
 and if he don't come soon I must look for- 
 ward to a horizon of discontent. Verily, 
 verily, man seemeth an apparatus of elusion. 
 Delays are dangerous, O Lord, at my time 
 of life, therefore let me sit down no longer 
 in the day, and sit up no longer in the night 
 
42 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 with unrealized anticipations. Give me the 
 substance, O Lord, and give it soon. If 
 through Thy mercy an able-bodied man 
 should come within reach I will see that he 
 don't get away of his own accord for several 
 
 reasons." 
 
 The opportune hour was striking, and Jack 
 must act quickly. In the dim light that came 
 from the window he opened the sample 
 Bible, turned down the leaf at the twenty- 
 fifth chapter of Matthew, sixth verse, and 
 stepped to the door and rapped gently. 
 Skirts rustled, feet scurried, then there was 
 silence. He rapped again louder and more 
 prolonged. The door slowly swung on its 
 hinges, and the star old maid, ugly enough to 
 be barred from all fields of human endeavor 
 except bridge whist, cautiously peeped out. 
 
 " Madam," said Jack, " I have here a fif- 
 teen-dollar Bible " 
 
 " It's no use, young man," said she, wav- 
 ing her hand and shaking the atmosphere 
 with protests. " It's no use; I'm no hard sit- 
 ter at books; and what's more, I wish the 
 first book agent had fallen out of the Ark 
 into fifty fathoms of water and taken his 
 whole progeny with him." 
 
 " But, madam," said Jack, " this Bible is 
 beautifully illustrated. It contains pictures of 
 
Buyers Versus Bibles 43 
 
 all the famous weddings and love romances 
 of Holy Writ." As he said this he handed 
 Euretta the Bible, taking good care that it 
 should fall open at the twenty-fifth chapter 
 of Matthew, sixth verse. She glanced indif- 
 ferently over the page at first, then suddenly 
 her whole midriff was given up to ardor and 
 her eyes shone with a new light. She read: 
 
 " Behold the bridegroom cometh : go ye 
 out to meet him." 
 
 It was a moment among ten thousand. 
 The hour had struck; the star of hope twin- 
 kled; and Euretta Betts felt the Lord was 
 about to answer her prayer. 
 
 Jade Stanley could no more have taken 
 the sample Bible from that ancient maid 
 than he could have snatched a star from the 
 skies. No one outside of Bedlam would have 
 tried. Jack did not. He quietly buttoned 
 the nine one-dollar bills up in his wallet, 
 thanked Euretta, and walked out into the 
 darkness. 
 
 Experience had taught Jack Stanley much 
 in the effort to sell one Bible. At the same 
 ratio the sale of ten would make him as wise 
 as the whole Academy of France. He 
 found that self-interest will take or reject a 
 Bible, and that in the majority of human ac- 
 tions self-interest is the moving q)irit, just as 
 
44 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 in every horse trade the prime factor is the 
 Devil. He learned that while the Lord 
 brought him into the world to work, it was 
 also intended that he should be worked. He 
 was convinced that the longer one lives the 
 more he must endure the elementary exist- 
 ence of man, for if the Master made all men 
 equal to-day they would make themselves un- 
 equal to-morrow. He found that a recon- 
 ciliation between the theories and practices of 
 men is impossible, because their deeds never 
 measure up to their words. He had not 
 lived long, but long enough to discover that 
 hoped-for perfection is the most insidious 
 disease that ever harmed the brain, because 
 it is unattainable. He was persuaded that 
 being over-good means non-success, non-suc- 
 cess means failure, and failure means a quiet 
 berth among the " never was," which is just 
 as hapless as a " never-will-be." He learned 
 that common sense is the saving grace of 
 valid minds, that tact and patience are its 
 handmaids, and he who knows the true use 
 of these will possess a mighty resource 
 against defeat in the push and pull of modern 
 life. In the work of Bible selling from 
 house to house he found that troubles are a 
 social brotherhood, and come hand In hand, 
 and stand side by side, along the path of 
 
Buyers Versus Bibles 45 
 
 every agent. In a hard day's work he sold 
 one Bible. He sold it to an old maid in a 
 town adorned with seven churches. He sold 
 it by appealing to her to cheer her lonely life 
 by robbing some man of his single blessed- 
 ness, and, incidentally, transmit her virtues 
 to posterity. To do it he had run the gaunt- 
 let of cynical men, impudent women, and 
 vicious brutes, and as the shadows of night 
 gathered about him he realized that one is 
 happiest where he is best known and knows 
 the most people, and he went back to his 
 native town, resigned his agency, and com- 
 menced, as best he could, his student life. 
 
A SPIRITUALISTIC CATASTROPHE 
 
 News was daily coming from over the sea 
 that diviners, soothsayers, and clairvoyants 
 were visiting imperial palaces, and seance 
 after seance was being held in high places. 
 From urban and suburban regions in the 
 United States came frequent reports that the 
 spiritualistic microbe had inoculated the up- 
 per circles and was spreading the psychologic 
 epidemic even to the lower strata of the toil- 
 ing world. 
 
 At this time Jack Stanley was attending 
 the High School in a beautiful town in cen- 
 tral New York, and during his sojourn there 
 he lived with a kind relative who permitted 
 him to work for his bed and board. A me- 
 dium visited the town and excited the com- 
 munity by some remarkable conferences with 
 the dead. The medium not only conversed 
 with the spirits of his own departed friends, 
 but he talked with ghosts of former resi- 
 dents to whom he had never been introduced. 
 The seances were in a large hall, which was 
 crowded every night with curious and credu- 
 46 
 
A Spiritualistic Catastrophe 47 
 
 lous people. Even the skeptic who came to 
 scoff remained to marvel at the medium's 
 work. He was clever and knew his art. 
 " Nothing," said he, " is lost, for what is 
 done is done forever, whether written or un- 
 written on the page of mortal sense ; for the 
 vibration of a single note of music will linger 
 in motion through the corridors of eternity." 
 He seemed to penetrate as far into the 
 ad^'tum of the temple of occult force, which 
 enshrines the mystic cord uniting spirit with 
 matter, as any one who is or has been taber- 
 nacled in the flesh. He was a past master in 
 supematuralism, which is the woof spun by 
 the hands of a powerful but invisible exist- 
 ence that incloses all human life and shapes 
 all human destiny. He claimed that the mo- 
 ment the soul is disembodied it acquires a 
 perfection of form which characterizes it 
 through all the ages, and the progress of 
 these bodies is slow and not marked by leaps 
 and bounds. He insisted that when these 
 spirits enter a dark room they must grope 
 their way like mortals, during which time 
 they are invisible to us as we are to them; 
 but if a well-developed medium is present the 
 air surrounding him becomes luminous, by 
 the light of which persons and objects are 
 more or less distinctly perceived. He said an 
 
48 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 atmosphere delicately perfumed with violet, 
 neroli, bergamot or Florida water is very 
 agreeable to spirits and aids manifestations, 
 and that the spiritual world is a vast realm 
 to which spirits from our earth and all other 
 worlds meet together and are equally related, 
 while on the other hand the spirit-world is 
 a series of zones associated with our planet 
 which revolve with it, — ^both in its diurnal and 
 solar revolutions, and are fixed in their rela- 
 tion to it. " No such beings," said he, " as 
 elementaries, fairies, elves, sprites, gnomes, 
 kobolds, fauns, satyrs, and demons exist in 
 the spirit-world, as everything semi-human 
 would be out of place." He told of solids 
 and liquids, of electrons and atoms, of en- 
 tities and non-entities. He said that if mor- 
 tals possessed eyes to see by electricity, which 
 is an ether relative of light, they would see 
 things that are non-conductors, while the re- 
 maining solid-seeming world would be invisi- 
 ble. He argued that an atom of hydrogen 
 contains a thousand powerful entities called 
 electrons, while an atom of mercury contains 
 one hundred thousand, and the relative sizes 
 of the mercurial and hydrogenic electrons are 
 like a cart wheel compared to a full stop. 
 When the medium declared that these par- 
 ticles can be dematerialized and put as much 
 
A Spiritualistic Catastrophe 49 
 
 out of reach of the most delicate tests of 
 science as is the essence that forms the soul, 
 and that these minute entities of awful po- 
 tency are prime factors in the soul itself, 
 Jack, hearing all this, was as bewildered as 
 though the brain-haze microbe had made 
 easy lodgment in his gray matter. Still he 
 was fascinated with the argument. 
 
 When the medium claimed that electrons 
 occupy an atom something as a colony of 
 ants occupy a ten-acre lot, and yet one 
 gramme of electrons contains force enough 
 to lift the Washington monument on to the 
 top of Pike's Peak without straining a muscle, 
 Jack's head felt like the pate of a cyclist who 
 made an involuntary effort to smooth down 
 a road covered with cracked stone ; and when 
 the medium said that an ether atom can per- 
 meate a material atom and become an elec- 
 tronic trinity in an atomic unity, a condition 
 which scientists consider as absurd as the 
 luminous end of a glowworm hitched to the 
 rear end of a mosquito. Jack was not sure 
 that he had any head at all. 
 
 But the practical demonstrations of the 
 medium are what puzzled him as much as 
 the colic puzzles a camel when its seventh 
 stomach is involved. Luminous appearances 
 occurred. Hands self-illuminated, or visible 
 
50 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 by natural or artificial light, were passed 
 about in shaking attitudes. Skeptics grasped 
 them, and, while they made no effort to get 
 away, they gradually resolved into nebulous 
 matter, leaving the hands of unbelievers 
 empty and their minds full of perturbed 
 thoughts. Once a nebulous cloud appeared, 
 condensed itself into a shapely hand, plucked 
 flowers from a vase on the table at which 
 the medium was sitting, and presented them 
 to the faithful who stood near the place of 
 manifestation. To tell an unembroidered 
 truth, the movements of several heavy sub- 
 stances, such as chairs and desks, were inex- 
 plicable to Jack except as a phenomena of 
 some mysterious force. 
 
 When he observed a desk, placed in an 
 exposed position, slowly arise from the floor, 
 while two persons held the medium in his 
 chair, it was with difficulty that he prevented 
 himself from a burst of applause. But it 
 must be confessed with reluctance that these 
 manifestations were nothing compared to 
 what some of the more sensitive minds said 
 they saw while Jack was absent. They 
 claimed that the bonnet of a spinster was 
 lifted from her wig, and floating through 
 the auditorium, remained poised over the 
 head of an old bachelor, and the medium 
 
A Spiritualistic Catastrophe 51 
 
 observed that it was an evidence of affinity, 
 as well as a happy omen, at which the entire 
 audience gave itself up to nervous glee. 
 Some, who were scantily supplied with gray 
 matter, insisted that during one of the seances 
 the medium, by some occult force, was raised 
 from the floor, and, floating out of one open 
 window, was wafted in at another, during 
 low lights, while an invisible organist played 
 the national anthem with variations. Fortu- 
 nately, Jack did not witness these manifesta- 
 tions, for he was already saturated with psy- 
 chology, and other concealed things, sufficient 
 to make him a good medium of the mys- 
 terious forces. 
 
 During one of the seances the medium 
 maintained that the air is teeming with the 
 spirits of the dead. He said that he used 
 the word " teeming " advisedly, because, 
 since Cain killed Abel over twenty-five bil- 
 lions of mortals had taken on immortality. 
 In other words, so many bodied spirits had 
 become disembodied and were floating around 
 through cosmic ether that if it were not for 
 the fact that several can occupy the same 
 space at the same time they would have to 
 use folding tooth brushes for the want of 
 room. 
 
 And the professor permitted other remark- 
 
52 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 able statements to escape from his gray mat- 
 ter. He said that around the living constantly 
 hover these rarely visible, but always present, 
 astral bodies, composed of fixed ether. Of 
 course. Jack Stanley was impressed. He was 
 so impressed that he would not sit down 
 when he was tired for fear of resting on 
 some departed ancestor or friend. In this 
 nervous condition he left the seance one night 
 at the hour when church yards are busy, feel- 
 ing very much like an ethero-material phe- 
 nomenon himself. 
 
 It was his duty, every night before retir- 
 ing, to fix the furnace, which was located at 
 the farthermost end of a long dark cellar, in 
 the home where he lodged. As he entered 
 the old-fashioned house the tall clock in the 
 hall struck the hour of midnight, and each 
 stroke sounded like a muffled moan. As 
 these died away a dead silence filled the hall- 
 way and the deserted rooms on either side. 
 All were in deep sleep throughout the house. 
 Jack groped his way in the darkness to the 
 cellar door and timidly swung it open. It 
 creaked on its hinges and he started back. 
 Then, as he cautiously approached the door- 
 way and peered into the blackness below, 
 slowly from its depths a group of manifesta- 
 tions floated up the cellar stairway, and 
 
A Spiritualistic Catastrophe 53 
 
 vaporous hands seized him and smothered 
 voices cried, " Come with us," and he seemed 
 drawn down into the opaque gloom below. 
 
 A startled rat scurried across the cellar 
 floor. To Jack it seemed a bunch of sub- 
 mundane agents whose rasping voices 
 threaded the denseness of the night. He 
 moved slowly toward the furnace, and the 
 laughter of ghostly legions greeted him on 
 either side, while behind were echoing foot- 
 steps of pursuit, then the laughter turned to 
 hisses as if snakes were at his back. He hur- 
 ried to the furnace. A group stood there 
 with waving arms and yellow eyes. Jack 
 gripped his hands to still the beating of his 
 heart. He never had believed in ghosts, but 
 like most mortals he feared them, and now 
 that they were crowding about him, and push- 
 ing each other in their eagerness to get near, 
 and creeping up silently from all directions, 
 peering at him from out of the gloom, he 
 could feel the glitter of their yellow eyes, 
 and he was stunned and stupefied. 
 
 The furnace seemed a blazing creature 
 radiating intense heat from its grim form. 
 He seized the door, opened it, and the 
 ghostly denizens of the cellar began to batten 
 their eyes in the sudden light. He shook the 
 grate and the metallic ring of the iron made 
 
54 Pun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 music for the astral bodies, and they stared 
 and shook their vaporous heads and filled aU 
 the place with husky laughter. 
 
 Jack rushed his appointed task and hurried 
 back across the long reach of cellar. The 
 creatures of the night chuckled as he passed 
 by, opening their mouths so wide they seemed 
 to laugh in their ears. Some beckoned, some 
 threatened, and a sea of white faces pursued 
 and gave out wild sobs that did not belong 
 to this world. He pushed on to rid himself 
 of the vaporous forms, and reaching the nar- 
 row stairway rushed up by leaps and bounds, 
 slamming the door upon the scene of horror 
 as the last pursuing spirit hissed some wild 
 jargon in his throbbing ears. 
 
 He hurried through the darkness to his 
 room, surrounded by a dimly luminous group 
 that resembled puffs of smoke. He longed 
 for flesh and blood companionship, but as 
 all were in deep sleep throughout the great 
 house, he was destined to tread the ghostly 
 wine-press alone. 
 
 He quickly lit the gas and gave a sigh of 
 relief. Undressing, he pushed himself into 
 his pajamas, turned down a heavy quilt that 
 hung over the footboard onto the bed, crept 
 under the cover, pulled the clothes tight over 
 his head and breathed an extra prayer. All 
 
A Spiritualistic Catastrophe 55 
 
 was still, but his mind would not rest. He 
 counted ten nine times to win sleep. He 
 looked persistently in imagination at the end 
 of his nose to conquer wakefulness. That 
 failed. He tried to persuade himself that it 
 was absurd to give way to such wild fancies, 
 but he continued to give way. 
 
 In the midst of this agitation his attention 
 was called to an almost imperceptible move- 
 ment on the coverlid just over his abdomen. 
 Was it a slew of witch ponies prancing on 
 his stomach? He thought he felt the soft 
 thud, thud of their hoofs upon the quilt. He 
 was not sure. It might be anything at that 
 time of night. He syphoned his brain to 
 solve the riddle, failed, and waited for the 
 next manifestation. It came, the same almost 
 imperceptible tread. What in the name of 
 atoms could it be? Was it a fortuitous con- 
 course of unrelated psychodes disputing 
 which should enter a high or low vacuum 
 first ? Of this he was not certain, but he was 
 sure he could stand the mystery no longer. 
 He summoned what courage remained, shut 
 his eyes, uncovered his head, sat upright, and 
 passed his hands nervously over the quilt. 
 Nothing was there but the soft quilt. He 
 sank back puzzled, and pulled his head snug 
 under the cover. 
 
56 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 If Jack Stanley ever needed electro-biologic 
 power to solve a mystery he wanted it now. 
 He was confused and scared. The quick- 
 ened thud of the blood pump, and the click 
 of the tall clock, alone broke the silence. 
 He gathered his thoughts for one mighty 
 think. 
 
 " It is the imagination of a morbid brain," 
 said he, " and has naught to do with cosmic 
 emotion." These words were scarcely ut- 
 tered when another gentle tread was felt on 
 his abdomen. It was accompanied by a sob- 
 bing moan. Could it be the awful potency 
 of minute entities struggling to get in or out 
 of a group of atoms, or was it an electron 
 pushing its way into space occupied by an 
 over-crowded psychode? He could not say. 
 He only knew that he felt the presence and 
 heard the moan, a smothered moan like that 
 of a wounded animal. An unfettered thrill of 
 mystery and fear swarmed through his fright- 
 ened soul. He could bear the nervous strain 
 no longer. He shut his eyes, unmantled his 
 head, sat erect, and seizing the top quilt with 
 both hands, lifted it high — ^when, whiz, biff, 
 bang! a white cat scrambled over his face 
 and scurried to the floor! Quick as a flash 
 Jack sprang after the bunch of fur-covered 
 vortex atoms, seized it by the tail, rushed 
 
A Spiritualistic Catastrophe 57 
 
 through the hall, down the stairs and out of 
 the back door, and when the ghostus felinus, 
 the family tabby, landed, it was twenty feet 
 from the house and buried so deep in the 
 snow that just enough tail was left in sight to 
 mark the catastrophe. 
 
CHECKING A RUDE HABIT 
 
 In all communities there are people who 
 seem born to make those about them un- 
 comfortable. " You look poorly." " Are 
 you ill?" "You look sallow." "What's 
 the matter with you?" "You look so 
 awfully thin." Do you recognize any of 
 these pet terms? When you are nervous, 
 tired and troubled, have you not had some 
 kind friend approach and hurl two or three 
 of them at you? Of course you have, be- 
 cause they are common words spoken to mor- 
 tals already burdened with trials enough, by 
 people who lack that virtue, — the most sturdy 
 of all human attributes, — tact. 
 
 When Jack Stanley came home on his first 
 vacation he was pale and thin from over- 
 study. He was not ill, but as the propensity 
 to say, "What's the matter with you?" 
 " You look thin." " Why are you so pale? " 
 was very robust in his native town, he had 
 not been home a week when he imagined he 
 possessed all the ills of which the flesh is 
 capable. As he walked the streets and passed 
 in and out of friendly circles he was greeted 
 58 
 
Checking a Rude Habit 59 
 
 with, " How pale you are." " You look 
 thin." " What's the matter with you," until 
 his troubled soul was fired with resentment 
 and he said: 
 
 " I am opposed to this wretched habit and 
 I will break it though I may gain no fame 
 by the attempt. It shall never be said of me, 
 its victim, that I died and made no effort. 
 The next person who mentions to me my 
 paleness or thinness will hear something drop 
 with a thud." 
 
 Scarcely had Jack uttered these words 
 when the amiable pastor, in whose church he 
 was baptized, and under whose ministrations 
 he communed, turned the corner and met him 
 face to face. It was unfortunate, but it hap- 
 pened just as many embarrassing things hap- 
 pen in this life. 
 
 "What's the matter. Jack? You look 
 awfully thin," cried the dear old tactless di- 
 vine, stretching out a friendly hand. It was 
 too bad, but it had to occur. Without re- 
 serve, in full and ample tones, backed up by 
 two snapping gray eyes. Jack said: 
 
 " Yes, Domine Johnson, I am looking 
 thin, and what is worse yet, you make me 
 feel damn thin! Good morning, sir," and he 
 walked on, leaving the reverend Mr. John- 
 son transfixed with thought. 
 
6o Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 One might as well expect to hear buUets 
 whistle popular airs as to have hoped, at that 
 instant, to fathom the thoughts of that good, 
 tactless old pastor. It is the concensus of 
 well-balanced opinion that a man is excusable 
 for gently swearing when, in his efforts to 
 escape, he gets fast in a barbed-wire fence 
 while an excited ram located in his rear is 
 shouting, " Buttin', buttin', who's got the but- 
 tin' now? " But the minister, having always 
 considered Jack a model young man, as far 
 as model young men go, could not compre- 
 hend this harsh reply, and concluded that 
 boarding-school life was affecting his morals 
 seriously. 
 
 It is not reasonable to pray for rain and 
 then when it rains get angry because you have 
 no umbrella, neither is it fair to rap at the 
 front door of a hornet's house and expect to 
 look pretty the next morning. The domine 
 got what was coming to him. He had failed 
 in the common courtesy that every man owes 
 to another, for nothing is so discourteous as 
 making a human being uncomfortable with- 
 out cause. 
 
 The habit of saying things that create 
 unhappiness is a weakness of ill-bred per- 
 sons, and you might as well ask a modern 
 Adam to go back to Eden and turn over a 
 
Checking a Rude Habit 6i 
 
 new leaf as to hope for escape from this in- 
 bred impudence. 
 
 The morbid tendency of some people to 
 make others miserable, as the course Mr. 
 Johnson pursued is sure to do, demands heroic 
 treatment, and every one who has been a vic- 
 tim of this stupid mania will agree that the 
 parson received a drastic remedy quite suited 
 to his noisome disease. 
 
 Some men wear single eye-glasses because 
 they can see with one eye all they can compre- 
 hend. Some wear a woe-begone expression 
 at weddings, and some giggle at funerals. It 
 is the want of knowing how to do the right 
 thing at the right time that trips down some 
 well-intending people. Thus it is the want 
 of tact and courtesy that project annoyances 
 into life. If men possess tact they never 
 wound the feelings of others without cause. 
 It is a fact that the Lord puts up with many 
 people we can't put up with; amiable people, 
 perhaps, who never intend to get onto the 
 nerves of others, but who lack the sense of 
 true politeness which always graces a well- 
 bred man. Good breeding is to be natural, 
 provided one is naturally polite, and natural 
 politeness has created more happiness and 
 more triumphs than any other virtue in man. 
 No monument bears a nobler inscription than. 
 
62 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 " He tried to make others happy." The rich- 
 est man who does nothing to soften misery 
 and inspire hope is a pauper compared to 
 the poor man who is worthy of that inscrip- 
 tion. The men who, from want of tact, 
 bring unhappiness to others will find it easier 
 to render vocal music on a harp than to ob- 
 tain favor among generous souls. 
 
THE CRY OF THE DEAD 
 
 A FEW miles from the home of Jack Stan- 
 ley was a logging camp located in a wild and 
 lonely region. In the settlement lived a 
 comely brunette who loved and was betrothed 
 to one of the young lumbermen. After a 
 while the brawny lover wearied of woodland 
 life and went to a nearby town to secure 
 work, promising to return in a short time 
 for his bride. But he fell in love with a 
 shapely blonde and wrote his fiancee the truth 
 with brutal frankness, inclosing a picture of 
 his new sweetheart in the letter. 
 
 The blue devils are never quite as blue as 
 when a blonde defeats a brunette in the battle 
 of love, for defeat means bitter grief and even 
 death in some cases. 
 
 Jack's father was justice of the peace and 
 ex-officio coroner for the town and surround- 
 ing country. One night while Jack was home 
 on his summer vacation the coroner was 
 aroused from his sleep by a courier who had 
 ridden into town from the backwoods to 
 notify him that a young girl living in an 
 isolated valley some three miles away had 
 63 
 
64 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 been discovered near a timber camp, hanging 
 to the limb of a tree, and the belief was that 
 a brutal outrage and murder had been com- 
 mitted. The coroner summoned a jury at 
 once and requested Jack to serve. 
 
 It was a forbidding mission. The night 
 was threatening, sullen cloud masses were 
 pushing up from the horizon, and the flashes 
 of light along their borders gave warning of 
 an oncoming storm. Even in daylight the 
 journey was a hard one, but at night it was 
 surrounded with many difliculties, and on a 
 dark night it was almost a hopeless task. 
 It was over a rough country road, which 
 terminated half a mile from the scene of the 
 mysterious death, and from this point the 
 jury were compelled to make their way on 
 foot along a desolate trail which threaded a 
 wild ravine whose sharp flanks were covered 
 with pine and hemlock. The night wind, a 
 restless wind that warned the wayfarers of 
 an approaching storm, moaned in the gorge 
 and breathed its doleful music through the 
 trees as if chanting dirges for the dead. The 
 lightning began to play about them as they 
 toiled slowly through the narrow pass where 
 giant pine and hemlock stood, like phantom 
 sentinels guarding the scene. 
 
 He who has never been in the depths of a 
 
The Cry of the Dead 65 
 
 great forest during a black and stormy night 
 does not know the meaning of solitude. The 
 ceaseless wail that drifts through the haunted 
 chambers of the woods, and the masses of 
 dull clouds that sweep the branches with their 
 trail of wind, give to the stem and solemn 
 voices of the pines an inexpressible sound of 
 anguish. The anthem of the pine needles; 
 the roar of the angry stream; the squeak of 
 the vagrant wood bat; the hoot of the grey- 
 coated owl ; the scream of the startled night- 
 hawk — these are the strange sounds that 
 issue from the sable trappings of the night, 
 for only birds of prey brood among trees 
 that moan and sigh. 
 
 The storm gathered in fury and the rain 
 spat spitefully in the faces of the men as 
 they hurried through the rugged gorge, 
 stumbling over fallen timber and crowding 
 by jutting crag, while ever and anon the cry 
 of the restless catamount came from the 
 mountain slope and the noises of the storm- 
 devils seemed to answer the call of the wild. 
 Slowlv they penetrated deeper and deeper into 
 the gloom of the unknown way, facing the 
 blast as it howled down the narrowing defile 
 and wrenched at every branch, hurling its 
 weapons headlong across their way. Sud- 
 denly from out of the dark aisles of the forest 
 
66 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 came faint and broken voices like the gibber 
 of quarreling gnomes and night witches, and 
 as the men paused to listen they discovered 
 high up on the flank of the gorge a dim 
 light like some far-off phosphorescent glow. 
 Then in the moment of hush between the re- 
 frain of the wind and of the thunder, the 
 shrill voice of the coroner cried " Where is 
 the body of the dead?" and through the 
 darkness came the faint reply, " Up here on 
 the mountain side." 
 
 The depths of a great forest at night is a 
 lonely place. A wide-reaching woodland 
 moved and swayed by the storm-god when 
 darkness broods upon the earth is the em- 
 bodiment of gloom, but a wild ravine in 
 the heart of a pine forest at midnight and 
 surrounded by the mystery of death will chill 
 the blood of the bravest man and fill his heart 
 with awe. 
 
 It was a rough and pathless journey up the 
 rugged side of the gorge, the way that led 
 to the place of death, and after battling 
 against blinding sheets of rain the jury 
 reached the timber camp. There, surround- 
 ing the storm-smothered embers of a fire, 
 they found a group of stolid axmen who re- 
 sembled bandits more than kindly men per- 
 forming a mission of mercy. " Where is the 
 
The Cry of the Dead 6'j 
 
 body?" the coroner asked in a low voice, 
 and a silent gesture from the leader of the 
 woodsmen indicated the place. They looked, 
 and through the gloom, not far away, could 
 be faintly seen the form of a girl clothed in 
 white suspended from the low limb of a 
 sturdy oak, one of the few that had made 
 their home on the border of the great pine 
 forest. A sudden onrush of wind turned the 
 dead girl's face toward the camp fire, and 
 the fitful flames illumined it with a strange 
 glow. 
 
 A solemn hush wrapped the scene for a mo- 
 ment as the men peered into the darkness, 
 catching the dim outlines of the form as it 
 swayed in the wind. There were a few hur- 
 ried words of consultation with one who 
 seemed to be a leader of the axmen. Then 
 the coroner beckoned his men to follow as he 
 made his way to the fateful spot. A careful 
 examination was made and it was foimd 
 necessary for some one to mount the tree and 
 untie the knot of the rope, so that the body 
 could be lowered to the earth. The coroner 
 called for a volunteer, and Jack Stanley im- 
 pulsively responded. As he worked his way 
 up the tree and reached the limb from which 
 the body was hanging, the white face of the 
 dead girl was so near, and the wide-(^en eyes 
 
68 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 strained at him with such a pleading stare, 
 that he turned away in horror, momentarily 
 unnerved for his task. Should he go back 
 or stay and do the work he had volunteered 
 to do ? He stayed, but he has often said that 
 rather than face the stare of those wild eyes 
 again he would prefer to be stoned like 
 Stephen, or pierced with arrows like Sebas- 
 tian. 
 
 A man up a tree on a black night, in the 
 midst of a terrific thunder storm, with lurid 
 lightning flashing forked and zigzagging 
 through the air as he hangs on with his feet 
 while he vainly tries to undo the knot of a 
 rope that clinches the throat of a dead body, 
 while the wide-open eyes glare at him in mute 
 appeal, is thrilling but not attractive, as Jack 
 Stanley realized. And yet while the situation 
 was startling, a more shocking thing soon 
 came to pass. 
 
 Two stalwart woodsmen had been sta- 
 tioned beneath the body to catch it when it 
 fell. They were giant fellows, strong as 
 oxen, and looked fierce enough to handle 
 death without fear. But it comes to pass in 
 this contradictory life that some men who 
 boastfully declare in health that they will 
 welcome death no matter when the white 
 specter may grasp them, will, as soon as the 
 
The Cry of the Dead 6g 
 
 first symptoms of disease are felt, call in a 
 syndicate of doctors. These two burly woods- 
 men were conspicuous examples of this class. 
 Jack summoned courage and remained at 
 his post of duty, trying to untie the knot. 
 The wind was howling in great blasts through 
 the branches of the tree, and sighing mourn- 
 fully as she trailed her garments over the 
 towering pines which surrounded him, 
 and the lightning, in flashes, illuminated all 
 with its yellow light. The jury and axmen 
 had formed a semicircle about the tree and 
 the firelight fell upon their anxious faces as 
 they stood bareheaded watching the ghostly 
 form mirrored in the gloom. No word was 
 spoken, but all eyes were turned toward Jack 
 and the weird figure so near him. He tugged 
 nervously at the knotted rope. It yielded 
 slightly just as a sudden rush of wind fanned 
 the dying embers of the campfire into tem- 
 porary life. Darkness paled before the glare 
 and the glare melted again into blackness. In 
 the brief light the face shone white and the 
 glazed eyes seemed to batten and blink at 
 him with such a glitter as mortals seldom see. 
 Then came darkness, and a slow-drawn moan 
 was heard like a muffled cry from out the 
 deep of the night. Overcome with terror 
 Jack had an impulse to desert his task, when 
 
70 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 a thrill of shame came over him and he 
 stayed at his work. Again there came a sud- 
 den gust and with it a blinding flash. A 
 swift bolt fell from the angry sky and smote 
 to death a monarch tree near by with a shock 
 that rocked the forest like an earthquake. 
 The blaze of light revealed a slight struggle 
 on the dead girl's face. There was a quaver 
 in her body and the eyeballs seemed to move 
 and again appeal for help. " Am I dealing 
 with life or death? " thought Jack. " Can I 
 bear the strain and mystery of it any longer? " 
 A strange fear took hold of him and a tight 
 grip was on his brain as if an invisible hand 
 had been laid upon him. His throat was 
 feverish ; his muscles quivered ; his heart beat 
 quick, and for a moment he seemed to reel 
 with the shadows. He paused in his hideous 
 task and silently appealed to the jury for 
 relief. 
 
 Only the wind answered with deep-drawn 
 sighs and the pines breathed on their endless 
 moan. 
 
 Again the fire flamed dimly and as quickly 
 died away. A momentary lull came in the 
 storm, and all was still. Then a rush of 
 wind set the great pines in wild commotion, 
 and, with an alarming crash, the lightning 
 once more hurled a destroying bolt at a 
 
The Cry of the Dead 71 
 
 near-by tree and spread a yellow glare over 
 sky and woodland. In this flash of light the 
 dead body swayed and turned its wan face 
 full upon Jack. The wild eyes seemed to stir 
 in their sockets and peered straight into his, 
 and the lips apparently moved in speech. 
 Then came another flash followed by a ter- 
 rific roar, then darkness, and as the white face 
 faded in the gloom the knot gave way and 
 out of the deep blackness came a piercing, 
 unearthly cry — and it came from the throat 
 of the falling dead! 
 
 " God o' Mercy, God o' Mercy ! she's 
 alive! " shouted the two brawny men, who 
 stood to catch the body as it fell. Dropping 
 it in their fright, they plunged down the steep 
 sides of the chasm, followed a short distance 
 by the rolling corpse, and did not pause until 
 they rushed across the threshold of their 
 home a mile or more away. 
 
 But they had flown from a dead and harm- 
 less thing. The frightful cry came when the 
 pressure of the rope on the suicide's throat 
 was released, and the pent-up gases rushing 
 over the vocal cords sounded the hideous 
 moan, a moan which men say still echoes in 
 the deep of night through those forest aisles 
 and among the crags of that wild gorge. 
 
A PROPHECY REALIZED 
 
 During one of Jack's summer vacations 
 he was engaged as assistant attorney in a re- 
 markable case. Not far from his town lived 
 a burly young farmer with an invalid mother 
 and blind sister. He worked the small farm 
 on shares for his mother, and at her death 
 was to become part owner of the place with 
 his sister, and if she died before her brother 
 he was to have the farm in fee simple. In 
 his service was an orphan boy twelve years 
 of age who was to receive a monthly wage 
 of twelve dollars. For a long time he had 
 received no wages, and from time to time he 
 importuned the farmer for payment. One 
 day the man conceived a plan of ridding 
 himself of the little fellow and the debt at 
 the same time. He placed a silver dollar on 
 the floor of the kitchen and concealed himself 
 to watch results. The boy entered the room, 
 and seeing the doUar picked it up and put it 
 in his pocket. The farmer rushed suddenly 
 from his place of concealment, seized him, 
 beat him brutally, and then charged him with 
 theft. The orphan begged for mercy, but 
 72 
 
A Prophecy Realized 73 
 
 the farmer unrelentingly told him that if he 
 would take the next train at a station five 
 miles away, cross the line into an adjoining 
 State, and never return, he would not prose- 
 cute him, otherwise he would send him to 
 jail. Frightened and helpless, the boy agreed 
 to go and the farmer allowed him to retain 
 the dollar with which to pay his fare. 
 
 A few hours afterward the orphan ap- 
 peared at the railway station in the village, 
 weeping and in great distress. A man notic- 
 ing his troubled face asked him some ques- 
 tions and discovered that the farmer owed 
 him forty dollars in back wages and was forc- 
 ing him out of the State to avoid paying the 
 debt. He took the lad to his own home and 
 secured a warrant against the farmer for at- 
 tempting to defraud an employe of his 
 wages. 
 
 At this time Jack was practicing law be- 
 fore the justice's court during his vacation, 
 and was engaged with a regular attorney to 
 prosecute the case. After a long and exciting 
 trial the fanner was convicted and sentenced 
 to pay the wage amount and the costs. 
 
 In summing up the case Jack said in part: 
 " Some men are naturally good, some in- 
 nately bad. It is as easy for the latter to sin 
 as it is for the former to do right, but it 
 
74 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 seldom happens that a man can be as bru- 
 tally mean as this defendant. Could any- 
 thing be more contemptible than that which 
 he has done? A man who could set a trap 
 to rob a helpless orphan of his hard-earned 
 wage would under certain conditions be ca- 
 pable of committing murder." 
 
 Within three months this prophecy was 
 realized. The farmer, in order to get full 
 possession of the farm and at the same time 
 rid himself of the burden of his helpless 
 mother and sister, deliberately brained the 
 former with a sledge hammer and choked the 
 sightless girl to death with his own hands, 
 then chaining their bodies to a log sled 
 dragged them six miles to a railway crossing 
 and left them on the track to be struck by a 
 fast freight and mangled beyond recognition. 
 It does not seem possible that the human 
 tabernacle could harbor such a soul. 
 
THE HOBACK-TOPPER FEUD 
 
 There is no hero in this story, but as 
 every tale should have one and as Hoback 
 and Topper are the chief characters in it, 
 and as each was an evil, the least has been 
 chosen by making Deacon Hoback as much 
 of a hero as circumstances will permit. 
 
 The narrative is a history of the Ho- 
 back-Topper Feud, showing how the deacon 
 triumphed over the sexton by out-living him 
 after twenty years of bitter rivalry which left 
 little of the church except the interest-devour- 
 ing mortgage, and that was finally foreclosed 
 by the sheriff, and the sacred temple became 
 the refuge of traveling shows — a climax 
 manifestly contrary to the law of the survival 
 of the fittest. 
 
 The quaint little village in which the Ho- 
 back-Topper Feud was born and nurtured 
 and in which Jack Stanley lived for a while, 
 nestled in a river valley of rare beauty. It 
 was beautiful enough to make all of its in- 
 habitants sweet-tempered, kind, and happy. 
 But were they? 
 
 The town was famous for its bluestone 
 75 
 
76 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 walks, its fine shade trees and wholesome wa- 
 ter supply, but the village fathers had over- 
 /looked the question of sewage to such an 
 extent that a healthy nose could detect twenty- 
 one different odors in a short walk about the 
 place. It was also noted for its stone school- 
 house and five churches. To keep the school 
 supplied with teachers of sufficient tact to 
 satisfy parents and pupils gave the directors 
 a mountain of trouble. As for the churches, 
 it may be recorded without wounding the 
 truth, that they were large enough for three 
 such towns, and were decorated with mort- 
 gages, which huns like millstones around 
 their steeples, while five devoted ministers 
 were harnessed to the church debts and left 
 to pull the loads alone. 
 
 In this village lived Deacon Ante Hoback 
 and Sexton Triple Topper, both members of 
 the same church, and each determined to run 
 it along lines suited to his individual conceits. 
 
 Deacon Ante Hoback had a reputation 
 for peculiar religious activity that extended 
 miles in all directions and made him, with 
 the exception of the constable, the widest 
 known man in town. He was an all-round 
 person by trade and possessed as rare an an- 
 atomy as nature, even in her sourest mood, 
 has ever allowed. 
 
The Hoback-Topper Feud 77 
 
 His plump and pinguid figure, topped by 
 a bullet head on a curtailed neck, was sup- 
 ported by legs shorter than his body, in fact, 
 so short and bandy that, in order to cover 
 the defect, he wore trousers so wide they fit 
 him like a skin made for a smaller dog. He 
 was also red headed to a degree that some 
 called ten-candle hot, and this came from a 
 wig he wore to match a pair of madder-red 
 side-whiskers. His chin was stubbed, chopped 
 off, as it were, and pushed in like his nose, 
 which nature or accident had stuck a trifle to 
 one side of his lubberly face; and, while 
 there was hardly enough of it to be out of 
 place, his old foe Topper insisted there was 
 plenty to absorb a rubv hue during the period 
 in which the Deacon did the agricultural trick 
 of sowing his wild oats. 
 
 Of Sexton Topper it is well to say that as 
 far as his influence extended, he produced 
 trouble. He was no friend of Hoback, never 
 had been, and often said he never would be 
 " Till Kingdom come." And why? That will 
 be understood later. It is sufficient to note, at 
 this juncture, that Triple Topper was a none- 
 such. Nature seemed to have had trouble In 
 making him, and in the end, threw him to- 
 gether carelessly. To see him with both eyes 
 and nearby, meant that you could never get 
 
78 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 away from the sight unto your dying day. He 
 was one of those humans it is an inexpressible 
 pleasure to know as little of as possible. 
 Some even went so far as to say that his por- 
 trait was unfit for publication. He was so 
 thin that Death would have had no difficulty 
 in making a ghost of him. His head, in 
 which there were brain lofts to let, ran up to 
 la peak, whereas the Deacon's rounded off 
 flat-like; and to increase this attractiveness, 
 he was perpetually surrounded by ten feet of 
 pestiferous smell of onions and plug tobacco. 
 As for his face, it was so wizen, and his body 
 so lank, and his legs so thin, and his nose 
 so beaked, that it was conceded by all that 
 he was the most unique knight of the bell- 
 tower that ever tolled a bell or a lie, and, 
 while It was easy to measure his person at a 
 glance, a lifetime would not suffice to secure 
 the dimensions of his character. 
 
 Thus we find in this quaint little town two 
 queer men, burdened with odd names which 
 came from a strange immemorial usage. It 
 was a fad in this and adjoining regions to 
 christen babies in harmony with birth condi- 
 tions. If the birth was without accident the 
 infant was named " Good Luck," or " Free- 
 born," or " Happy." If delay occurred, it 
 was called "Tardy," or " Slocum," or 
 
The Hoback-Topper Feud 79 
 
 " Waity," and sometimes " Putoff "; if twins 
 appeared the first was christened " Ante " 
 and the other " Post " ; but if, by chance, 
 triplets came, the last was called " Triple," 
 or " Trip " for short. 
 
 It is a therapeutic fact, known to medical 
 practitioners, that in the event of twins the 
 first child born is endowed with a patient na- 
 ture, but, if triplets come, the second will be 
 irritable, while the third will have a morose 
 character. Be this as it may, one thing is 
 certain, baby Hoback preceded a twin brother 
 and was named " Ante," while baby Topper, 
 being the last of a group of triplets, was 
 named "Triple"; and as you follow these 
 freak productions of human love through 
 this narrative it will be made plain that the 
 opinion of the medical fraternity is fully sus- 
 tained concerning the influence of birth con- 
 ditions on the character and temper of 
 men. 
 
 As Ante Hoback grew to manhood he be- 
 came a person of parts, and one of the largest 
 of these was his controversial trend. He 
 would argue anything with anybody, at any 
 time or place, sacred or profane, whether 
 they had a spare moment or not; and, if 
 they beat him in the argument, he would ab- 
 ruptly close the debate with, "So 's your sis- 
 
8o Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 ter," "Which way did the cow kick you," 
 " Ain't it queer that one-half the world like 
 Johnny-cake and t'other half don't," and 
 other classic terms, and then would bolt the 
 conference as fast as his duck-legs could wad- 
 dle, shouting " Au reservoir, spater, peut-etre, 
 if not later," which he thought he had 
 learned from the French. 
 
 Hoback and Topper were old bachelors, 
 Ante because of a first-love disappointment, 
 Triple for the reason that he did not have 
 red blood enough in his veins to love any 
 woman; in fact, there was less sentiment in 
 his heart than there is in the differential cal- 
 culus, for he believed that women should be 
 taken in homeopathic doses, and well shaken 
 at that. 
 
 Hoback's case was pathetic, and won sym- 
 pathy for him among those who knew the 
 story. When young he visited a village where 
 he fell in love with a pretty girl, and the pas- 
 sion seemed mutual. He soon found em- 
 ployment in the place, and to facilitate their 
 meeting the maiden would raise a curtain in 
 a certain window of her home as a signal 
 that Ante would find her in, and glad to re- 
 ceive him. Many happy hours came to him 
 through this signal system, and that window 
 was, until his death, the most attractive spot 
 
The Hohack-Topper Feud 8i 
 
 to him on earth, excepting, of course, the 
 sofa in the back parlor. 
 
 In the course of time young Hoback was 
 dismayed to learn that his sweetheart had 
 run away with and married a handsomer man. 
 The blow broke his heart into such a multi- 
 tude of pieces that it never would mend, and 
 yet, so deep was his love for the little traitor, 
 he remained in that town until he died, and 
 every day, in fair and in foul weather, he 
 passed that house, gazed at the signal win- 
 dow, and reveled in the memory of the days 
 that were gone, which proves as sure as one 
 and two make twelve, that only one true love 
 ever comes to man, all others being watered 
 sentiment. " I believe," said Ante one day 
 to a confidant, " that in after life the soul 
 can only become immortal through the trials 
 of love, which is the greatest thing on earth ; 
 but it must be confined to one love." It is 
 reasonable to think that the Deacon never 
 believed in the modern theory that to be 
 faithful to one woman is unfair to all the 
 rest, for he remained single the rest of his 
 days without any other love so far as the 
 world knew, and it is fortunate that the world 
 does not know everything. If it did the area 
 of gossip would be uncomfortably enlarged. 
 
 To be fairly truthful, the treachery of the 
 
82 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 girl did not make Ante a drunkard, or a fool, 
 nor did it prevent him from becoming a very 
 poor deacon. He plunged into spiritual ac- 
 tivity and reached the deaconship early; but 
 some avowed that he was drowning his grief 
 in religious excitement as other people drown 
 theirs in strong drink. Be this as it may, no 
 one denied that a church function without 
 Hoback was worse than a yawl without a 
 rudder, for he was a steering committee of 
 one, and he steered things his own way so 
 long that it seemed like beating the air to 
 question his course or the accuracy of his 
 reckonings. This was natural, for in every 
 community there is an all-round man in each 
 church circle who does things, and he is called 
 the "Hustler" or the "Busy Angel," and 
 Ante was worthy of both these titles. He 
 even considered himself the Atlas of his 
 church, and in a way he was, for on his round 
 shoulders rested a world of trouble and work. 
 In truth, he was so active religiously that it 
 was a mystery he was not a better man. 
 
 The likes and dislikes of Deacon Hoback 
 were the most powerful things about him 
 except his wigs, of which. Topper claimed, 
 he had two of different shades, a dead-red one 
 for funerals, and a live-red one for weddings. 
 As for his benevolence, he had lots of it, but 
 
The Hoback-Topper Feud 83 
 
 not enough to open a fight with prayer, or 
 hold an umbrella over a fish in a shower; 
 but it was enough to make him mellow at 
 times. During picnics he showed himself to 
 be a man of some soul. He would take a 
 " heart-rending cup of tea " or a " sublime 
 lemonade " without urging, still he was tem- 
 perate; but you could not have proved it by 
 the color of his nose. He never liked caucuses, 
 cornhuskings, or town-meetings; but wed- 
 dings, baptisms, and funerals were his de- 
 light. They got into his heart, as it were, 
 and circulated with his blood, and his ab- 
 sence from them almost created a panic in 
 the church. This sentiment, however, was 
 confined to his own flock; men of other de- 
 nominations never considered him as sweet 
 as a lost bargain; still, he averaged well for 
 a " Busy Angel " doing miscellaneous stunts 
 in a quaint old town. 
 
 It is but just to record that there were some 
 things Hoback would not do. He never 
 honey-fuggled openly with profane things. 
 He never was fuddled with beer, nor muddled 
 with hard cider, but he could, and every 
 winter morning did, roll up and swallow 
 twenty-six buckwheat cakes in fifteen minutes, 
 and then stand the rest of the hour, with 
 hands folded under his coat-tails, backed up 
 
84 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 to the kitchen fire, listening to the rumbling 
 music of the pancakes as they slowly unrolled. 
 With such a disposition it is not strange 
 that the Deacon seldom growled at public 
 abuses, or moaned over the evils of the times 
 unless they appeared in his own church and 
 were not of his own creation. He never 
 acted as peacemaker in street brawls. Not, 
 as Topper said, because he feared bodily 
 harm; but he figured it out in this way: that 
 if the brawlers kept busy until one or the 
 other got enough, it would preclude the 
 chance of another row between the same par- 
 ties, and thus reduce the probability of a dis- 
 turbance of the public peace by one. He 
 avoided pole-raisings, political meetings, 
 barbecues, and things of like nature, because 
 he abhorred any function that did not begin 
 with prayer and end with a benediction. As 
 for receptions, with collations, he said they 
 were functions to which people would " come, 
 gaze, gulp, go, and growl," and he never 
 attended them. Circuses, dances, pink-teas 
 and theatres were, in his opinion, things 
 which the Devil used to pull people away 
 from religious work. The " church supper " 
 he opposed on the very solid ground that 
 trying to make money by giving two hundred 
 hungry beings two hundred dollars' worth of 
 
The Hoback-Topper Feud 85 
 
 food at twenty-five cents a head is quite as 
 insane as fastening a life preserver to your 
 heels in a shipwreck and expecting to swim. 
 
 Foreign missions he opposed with might 
 and main. To every one of them he had a 
 stout objection, and in this he made the de- 
 voted minister, whose meager salary was usu- 
 ally six months in arrears, and who was com- 
 pelled by the program of the church to urge 
 liberal contributions to the foreign mission 
 fund, feel embarrassed and disturbed. " I'm 
 for the American heathen first, last, and every 
 time," the Deacon would say when asked to 
 contribute. " Is there not," said he, " an 
 army of unredeemed in our town, including 
 Topper, and is there not an interest-eating 
 mortgage on our own church? Whyfor, 
 therefore, should we contribute to save far- 
 away devils when we have a surplus needing 
 salvation at home ? " 
 
 In a measure the Deacon's opposition 
 arose from the fact that a missionary 
 preached a special collection sermon in his 
 church one Sunday, during which he stated 
 that, while building a beautiful chapel near 
 Calcutta for the use of a handful of converts, 
 a poor half caste, dazed with religious ex- 
 citement, contributed the wages of a year to 
 the enterprise, thus robbing a wife and five 
 
86 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 children of the necessaries of life, and the 
 promoters accepted the gift as eagerly as if 
 it had come from an opulent heathen prince. 
 This revelation spoiled what little stomach 
 the Deacon had for foreign missions, and, 
 ever after, he delighted in relating how, when 
 the plate was once passed for the foreign 
 mission fund, a stranger dropped a five-cent 
 piece upon it saying, " There's a nickel for 
 the heathen," and then dropping a five-dollar 
 gold piece after It, shouted in a loud voice, 
 " and there's five dollars to get it to them! " 
 Ante Hoback had a regular home, but no 
 regular employment. His household con- 
 sisted of himself, his housekeeper. Miss Sally, 
 her bunions, and a yellow cat. While he had 
 no regular employment, he could, and would, 
 do anything, or anybody, as occasion per- 
 mitted. He divided his time between church 
 functions and odd jobs, the odder the better. 
 If there was a back yard to clean, no one was 
 thought of but Ante. If carpets needed dust- 
 ing, he would beat them until the last microbe 
 flew like air. If there was wood to saw, no one 
 could saw it quicker, or pile it snugger. If a 
 garden had to be hoed, he would hoe it until 
 he tore up the last tare by the roots. Topper 
 went so far as to say that Hoback would hoe 
 other people's potatoes, weed them, dig them 
 
The Hoback-Topper Feud 87 
 
 and — take a lot home if he got a chance. 
 When he worked by the day he charged one 
 dollar in addition to any perquisites that lay 
 around loose; but if he worked by the job, 
 he calculated to make two dollars a day with 
 or without taking things that were not nailed 
 fast. Nor should it be forgotten that he was 
 the best all-round nurse in that nook of the 
 earth, and as he had won fame in this field 
 of human succor he was able to make both 
 ends touch, being " providentially aided," as 
 he often said, by several epidemics which vis- 
 ited the sewerless town from time to time. 
 
 And Ante Hoback wrought in other things. 
 If the organ pump-boy of the church played 
 truant, he would work the pump so vigor- 
 ously the organist often remarked that the 
 wind he produced had a quaver and triumph- 
 ant cadence seldom equaled, while the supply 
 was ample for the most prolonged effort. 
 Upon hearing this commendation Topper an- 
 nounced that it was natural, because Hoback 
 was a boundless wind-bag himself. But Top- 
 per also had the church-job hunger, and no 
 one gave his envious remark half a thought. 
 
 At times the Deacon would occupy the pul- 
 pit in the absence of the minister, and read 
 selected sermons which Topper said " sounded 
 well if you couldn't hear them," but if you 
 
88 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 did, they had the effect of " soporific com- 
 pounds administered through the ear." Upon 
 such occasions there was a surplus of meet- 
 ing, for the Deacon would discourse with a 
 solemnity that caused strangers, who re- 
 mained awake, to glance furtively about for 
 the corpse. When a choir member was ill. 
 Ante would try to fill the gap with his hurdy- 
 gurdy voice; but fastidious members, abetted 
 by Topper, insisted that he simply snored 
 verse-music, and that, while swans sing be- 
 fore they die, the Deacon ought to have re- 
 versed the habit. 
 
 As plate-passer he displayed a talent no 
 one but Topper had heart to deny. He woke 
 up nappers by prodding them under the ear 
 with the contribution-box in a gentle way 
 that proved lucrative, and he considered it 
 one of his great achievements that no drowsy 
 pew-sitter had ever escaped paying for his 
 lodgings. 
 
 Ante was ill one Sunday and Topper was 
 asked to pass the plate, which he did all over 
 the church and back again. But when the 
 Deacon heard that the collection returns 
 showed a total of only one dollar and fifteen 
 cents, he cried, " That man will make me 
 lose my religion," and then rolled out of his 
 sick-bed, put on his dead-red wig and hurried 
 
The Hoback-Topper Feud 89 
 
 straightway to the parson, informing him, 
 with all the agitation his body would hold, 
 that as the amount was forty per cent, below 
 the smallest collection of record, either Top- 
 per had overlooked a lot of pew-nappers, or 
 the deficit had been created by him in a mo- 
 ment of abstraction, and he himself favored 
 the latter conclusion. It was the last appear- 
 ance of Topper as plate-passer in that church. 
 
 In short, if these men had business to- 
 gether, especially church business, the buckle- 
 and-tongue ends of good-will never met, for 
 a stream of mutual undervaluation flowed 
 ever between them, and there was always 
 space enough left for a brabble. Harmony 
 between them was impossible. They resem- 
 bled a cat and dog, which, reposing on op- 
 posite sides of a fireplace, dream hours away 
 in peace, but, if they occupy the same side, 
 instantly there is a whirr and caterwaul that 
 loads the air with fur and fierce discordant 
 noises. So it was with these men. Apart, 
 they were peaceable, but If they came to- 
 gether in any phase of church work, concord 
 stood as much chance in that combine as a 
 snowbaU does in the Devil's summer-garden. 
 
 It is reluctantly recorded, in support of 
 this assertion, that upon one occasion Topper 
 invaded Hoback's funeral domain by assist- 
 
90 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 ing the undertaker to " lower the remains," 
 a thing the Deacon had been doing for 
 twenty years. Upon returning from the 
 cemetery a collision occurred in the public 
 highway head on. The Deacon, it is said: 
 
 Pulled down his wig, and raised his stick, 
 
 And assumed a war-like air. 
 Then approached the guilty sexton. 
 
 With a grim and grisly stare, 
 Tried to walk straight through him. 
 
 As though he wasn't there. 
 
 But he didn't. He ran into a bunch of 
 skin and bones, and paused for breath. In 
 the collision his hat and dead-red wig were 
 knocked off, and, grabbing the wig, he clap- 
 ped it on wrong side up, which brought a 
 roar of laughter from the bystanders and a 
 lull in the fight. This gave Topper a chance 
 to side-step from the field of battle, which 
 he did in high daddy, whistling the Deacon's 
 favorite dead march. The latter had half 
 a mind to chase after the sexton at once, but 
 the other half was more powerful, and helped 
 him to wait until Topper got too far to be 
 overtaken, then he started slowly toward 
 him, crying, " You're a madam bad man, Mr. 
 Topper, and after I die you'll never see my 
 face again for I'm going to heaven." When 
 
The Hoback-Topper Feud 91 
 
 he had voiced his mind, he turned back mut- 
 tering : 
 
 " Flies on sugar alighting, 
 Cease their hum, 
 And Toppers in office. 
 Soon grow bum." 
 
 Such scenes were not rare, but they were 
 always distressing to some members, who felt 
 that if they continued they would gravely 
 harm the church, and constant efforts were 
 made to bring the belligerents within the 
 sphere of concord. But it was like trying to 
 mix oil with water, or religion with politics. 
 Both had big sticks in pickle for each other, 
 and they were used on all occasions. So 
 these men wrangled on, making the temple 
 of love and goodwill their cockpit and their 
 church work the basis of strife. 
 
 How Hoback and Topper maintained their 
 hold on the congregation sufficient to retain 
 their positions was a mystery to thoughtful 
 men. To be sure there was in this circle, as 
 there is in every circle, a class bom to be 
 hocus-pocused by religious as well as profane 
 frauds. This species appeared inordinately 
 large in this particular church. They seemed 
 to realize, and that was quite enough for 
 them, that Hoback held all of the positions 
 
92 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 in the church except the pastorship and Top- 
 per's job, and, as far as they were capable of 
 judging, he possessed a wider knowledge of 
 the Bible, from Genesis to the Apocalyp- 
 tical Vision, than any other man, and as for 
 hell, he could describe it with the fullness 
 and accuracy of a German topographical 
 map. Among those who drifted along on 
 the mental diet of mechanical prayers and 
 wordy orthodoxy there was the belief that 
 when Ante died and went to heaven — no 
 other place was thought of — he would ask 
 for and take the nearest way to the throne. 
 His educational moans at funerals, and high- 
 jinks at weddings, filled them with equal 
 amounts of sorrow and delight. It was a 
 hopeful sign, however, that when he told 
 of modem miracles he had seen " with his 
 own eyes " as comparative proof that biblical 
 miracles were not myths, there were some 
 persons in the church well-done enough to 
 question his narratives, and even insinuated 
 that if the Deacon were ever caught in the 
 society of Ananias and his lady Sapphira, 
 there would be three of a kind and all would 
 feel at home. 
 
 During sermons, that were at times a mix- 
 ture of sulphur and balm of Gilead, his ad- 
 mirers would keep an eye on him, and noticed 
 
The Hoback-Topper Feud 93 
 
 that any attempt of the parson's to let down 
 long enough to be liberal on foreordination 
 or infant baptism would throw Hoback into 
 the dumps all that day and often until the 
 next Sunday. He was an orthodox fanatic. 
 Theological dogmatism was his base of sup- 
 ply. All the stories of old-time religious 
 cruelty, its tortures and burning of witches 
 and everything ultra-orthodoxy taught as di- 
 vine retribution, he believed in and firmly 
 approved. Some of his prayers were gro- 
 tesque and had a tinge of ribaldry, but they 
 were heard with composure and some amens. 
 When he prayed, " O Lord, come down 
 upon us with all Your might and main, come 
 right down through the chimney. Topper 
 will keep the fire low," a murmur of ap- 
 proval came from the half-done members, 
 and when he said, " O Lord, chase the 
 Devil off the earth and chuck him in his 
 fiery berth," even some of the well-done mem- 
 bers seemed impressed. Sometimes he would 
 claim that all the sacred promises were made 
 to his church alone, and all outside of it had 
 no part in God's plan of salvation. He de- 
 nounced the most harmless church amuse- 
 ments, and members who participated in 
 them were forever lost. He was hide-bound 
 in his convictions and heart-hard in follow- 
 
94 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 ing them, and yet there were many in his 
 little church who tolerated him, and some 
 who were touched with admiration. 
 
 The truth is, some of the ignorant and 
 thoughtless ones had such an opinion of Ho- 
 back's greatness that in an effort to compre- 
 hend the mysteries of creation, and locate 
 the Creator, their bewildered minds would 
 drift back to the beginning of time ; but think 
 hard as they could, they never got beyond 
 the august person of the Deacon, who seemed 
 to have been at the beginning and had more 
 to do with making things begin than any one 
 else. Thus, Hoback and Creation were 
 synonymous terms with them. To look upon 
 him was to them a university course, and to 
 hear him discuss the shortcomings of man, es- 
 pecially of Topper, and the mysteries of 
 miracles, was an A. M., A. B., Ph. D., 
 and D. D. all in one. Their opinion 
 of him was like an amateur's notion 
 about chickens. He will take one rooster, 
 two hens, a pencil and a piece of paper, 
 and figure himself into a bank president 
 in ten minutes. They took the Deacon's 
 success at plate-passing and pall-bearing, 
 together with his supposed knowledge of 
 divine things, and, multiplying them by the 
 positions he held in the church, the result 
 
The Hoback-Topper Feud 95 
 
 gave Ante a reserved seat in heaven without 
 the formalities of death and a funeral, any 
 time he cared to take possession. 
 
 Some mortals are frail vessels indeed. Ap- 
 pearances go a long way. Every person 
 with a sanctimonious air is, to them, as good 
 on the inside as on the out. They do not 
 realize that pious fuss and feathers may sig- 
 nify nothing but fuss and feathers. They 
 are not aware that wise distrust will safe- 
 guard men from wrong; that skill in judging 
 men comes slow, and time flies fast, while 
 knowledge necessary to the detection of sham 
 often matures too late, and so they amble 
 through life in a passive mood. So did these 
 people drift along, leaving the administra- 
 tion of the church with Hoback and Top- 
 per, neither of whom possessed the fragment 
 of an idea as to the sacredness of their trusts, 
 or the true spirit in which they should be dis- 
 charged. 
 
 To understand Ante Hoback, who, with 
 all his weakness, is our hero, it may be well 
 to study his character a little more. He was 
 superstitious to a degree that proves he was 
 strong in some of the human weaknesses. 
 If a bird flew in a northerly direction before 
 sunrise, or a duck quacked loudly at the early 
 rising moon, it portended death to some 
 
g6 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 member of the church, and forewarned him 
 of pall-bearing possibilities. If he met a 
 cross-eyed man on the street he would side- 
 step and spit over his right shoulder. If he 
 passed a cross-eyed woman, he would hurry 
 to the curb and spit over his left shoulder 
 three times. If he saw the new moon over 
 his left shoulder he would stop the first man, 
 woman, or child, and urge that individual to 
 look at it over his or her right shoulder and 
 thus neutralize the effect, otherwise he would 
 have been unlucky during the change of four 
 tides. He never passed salt to any one, for 
 that broke friendship beyond mending, and 
 once he insisted that an old lady who had 
 asked him to dine where thirteen were at the 
 board, should wake up a sleeping grand-child 
 and place it at the table to break the fatal 
 number. 
 
 He coughed four times when entering a 
 house, as something might be doing he ought 
 not to see, and he knocked three times on 
 wood whenever he said he felt well for 
 fear he might feel worse. As for being 
 moved from one place to another after 
 death, he said, " If I die away from home, 
 don't ship me back for burial, for I never 
 like to dead-head it." 
 
 One characteristic made for Ante's noto- 
 
The Hoback-Topper Feud 97 
 
 riety beyond the town in which he lived. He 
 was q^clopedic on burials and possessed an 
 overweening fondness for funerals. He 
 seemed to have contracted an active partner- 
 ship with death and the undertaker, and, in 
 that sewerless town, they supplied him with 
 ample resources. At burial rites he appar- 
 ently held in his heart the sorrows of all 
 the bereaved. It was at these functions that 
 he heaved every sigh and shed every tear in 
 his little round body, and often he reminded 
 one of the Bridge of Sighs. He would whis- 
 per in such mournful tones and sob in such 
 measureless amounts that the domain of the 
 dead seemed his in fee simple. He would 
 weep copiously over the remains of an entire 
 stranger, and, if a member of the church was 
 dead, he would make such soluble use of his 
 eyes that some thought he had a surplus of 
 water on the brain which helped his pall- 
 bearing mania to create brain-storms that 
 were at times woefully wet. His appetite 
 for sorrowful excitement was whetted to 
 such an edge that he might as well have tried 
 to turn a rusty screw with a feather as to 
 have attempted foregoing the pleasures of 
 the dead-house. He could no more refrain 
 from anything in this line than boys can ab- 
 stain from chasing a brass band. 
 
98 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 And Deacon Hoback had other " Busy 
 Angel " qualities of no mean proportions. 
 Topper insisted that every day the Deacon 
 absorbed " potion after potion " of an elixir 
 he called " strenuine " in order to increase 
 his strenuosity; but no analysis was ever 
 made of the liquid, because the circle in 
 which he moved had no interest in the re- 
 sult. All they cared for was to see Ante on 
 deck ready for church functions on Sunday 
 and odd jobs during the week days, even if 
 he did suffer now and then from a swollen 
 latch-key in the evening. 
 
 His strenuous life was ever apparent. If 
 the minister were absent, he filled the pulpit, 
 and it was upon these occasions that Triple 
 Topper had his special innings. If the day 
 was cold he would slow the fire in the stove 
 that warmed the pulpit-end of the sanctuary 
 so the Deacon had to keep on his top-coat 
 until he reached a point in the sermon where 
 the circulation got active. If a thaw was on 
 he would encourage the stove to a red-hot 
 activity that cruelly wasted a large amount 
 of Hoback perspiration. At such times even 
 those in the back pews observed that Ante's 
 thoughts were for war, but he buttoned up 
 his resentment, which, if vented, would have 
 poured a volley' of rhetoric at the head of 
 
The Hoback-Topper Feud 99 
 
 Triple Topper that would have given him 
 all kinds of astronomical visions and a few 
 things besides. This state of things could not 
 endure always and a day of reckoning was 
 at hand. 
 
 It was the duty of Topper, as sexton, to 
 ring the bell at twelve sharp to call the Sun- 
 day-school together at close of the regular 
 service. He performed this task with such 
 uncomfortable punctilio, that if the Deacon 
 was long on benediction, as he was prone to 
 be, his words were drowned in the clamor 
 and he was forced to cut it short to prevent 
 the banging from smothering his voice in the 
 final wind up. 
 
 It is a matter of local history about which 
 people gossip to this very day, that upon 
 three occasions Topper banged the bell in 
 triple bob-majors just in time to overwhelm 
 a large part of the benediction with parox- 
 ysms of alarum. But the third time he rode 
 his vicious hobby to a fall, for when the first 
 twang smothered the noise the Deacon was 
 making, he stopped short, listened for ten 
 seconds as if his soul had taken off its hat, 
 then flinging an outraged glance at the belfry, 
 picked up his Sunday beaver and waddled 
 toward the entrance to the steeple, taking 
 with him his big hickory stick. Sublunary 
 
lOO Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 things seemed at an end for the sexton and 
 some of the congregation hoped he was 
 ready for the approaching doxology. Jus- 
 tice may have traveled with bandy-legs, but 
 she struck with a bludgeoned hand. 
 
 Whether Hoback entered the belfry to end 
 the benediction, or the sexton, is a mystery. 
 One thing is certain, something happened, 
 for even those half deaf heard noises in the 
 bell-tower like sounds issuing from a painful 
 accident. For a time the pew sitters were 
 awed and silence reigned in the little church. 
 Then suddenly from the steeple entrance 
 came the Deacon, with his chest dilating, 
 while upon his red wig victory was perched 
 in a most disorderly manner. His Sunday 
 beaver, crownless and crumpled, was in one 
 hand, and in the other was the big stick, 
 while, at a respectful distance, the sexton fol- 
 lowed, with nerves all gone to smithers, look- 
 ing like a rat that had just seen a cat. 
 
 The dignity of the church had been vindi- 
 cated. Topper's bell-whanging mania had 
 unchained a catastrophe which sent him 
 home to a horizon of suffering and discon- 
 tent, and, needless to say, most of the church- 
 goers were secretly delighted. 
 
 Only once before, in his connection with 
 this church, had Topper been so hard 
 
The Hoback-Topper Feud loi 
 
 pressed. It was Christmas time. The old 
 housekeeper of the Deacon, Miss Sally, had 
 gone to glory, or otherwise, and, soon after 
 she was housed in God's acre, the Deacon 
 ordered a rose wreath to be sent to the grave, 
 bearing the inscription " In loving remem- 
 brance." By mistake the florist sent a 
 wreath for some Christmas festival to Top- 
 per's house, with a note saying it was for 
 Miss Sally's grave. This was an opportunity 
 for the sexton to show his love for the 
 Deacon. He started at once for the ceme- 
 tery and laid the Christmas wreath on Miss 
 Sally's grave. The next morning Ante 
 strolled over to the place to see if his floral 
 tribute had been delivered, and he was dumb- 
 founded to find a garland of holly with the 
 legend " A Merry Christmas to You " on 
 the tomb. Within one short hour he discov- 
 ered the culprit. The conference lasted less 
 than three minutes, and while both men were 
 in need of a surgeon at the finish, it was Top- 
 per who required a hospital. 
 
 Thus, from tifne to time, the Hoback- 
 Topper Feud dispelled the dullness of the 
 day, bringing gayety to the town and much 
 distress to the church. While many deplored 
 the strife, others enjoyed the Donnybrook 
 Fair, especially when both naggers were able 
 
102 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 to raise a lot of that article whose existence 
 Robert IngersoU doubted while he was alive. 
 Notwithstanding these profane antics, Top- 
 per still held his place, and Hoback retained 
 his grasp on church functions, which in a 
 way was not surprising, for had he not helped 
 to build the church? Did he not fill nearly 
 every official place in it ? And was he not the 
 moving spirit that fastened the interest-eat- 
 ing mortage upon it to batten on its life and 
 frighten prospective members away? 
 
 As for Topper, his family tree, according 
 to Ante, was a very shady one. He was an 
 interloper from the back country. He wan- 
 dered into the town years after Hoback be- 
 came Deacon, and won the sextonship after 
 a bitter contest, in which Ante opposed him 
 on the very good ground that he could take 
 care of the place himself. 
 
 When Topper arrived in the quiet hamlet 
 it was soon discovered that he brought with 
 him three titles, " Colonel," " Doctor," and 
 " Honorable," and he i^expose^ them to the 
 people whenever he got a chance. Of their 
 validity no one was more skeptical than Ho- 
 back, who, upon investigation, a business at 
 which he was no tyro, reported that " Col- 
 onel " arose from the fact that Topper took 
 a car-load of discarded army mules Into Vir- 
 
The Hoback-Topper Feud 103 
 
 ginia after the close of the Civil War and 
 sold them to the colored farmers at a fat 
 profit, for which kindness they dubbed him 
 " Colonel." 
 
 The title of " Doctor " was quite as easily 
 obtained. One day he explained the efficacy 
 of hot water on the human stomach to a 
 dyspeptic old maid, telling her that married 
 people did not need it, because they were al- 
 ways in it; but for maiden ladies it was a 
 famous remedy, as it had the same power of 
 " cleaning the inside of their inwards that it 
 has of removing greasy substances from 
 soup-plates," and the maiden lady, being im- 
 pressed with his medical knowledge, greeted 
 him as " Doctor," which title he at once 
 assumed. 
 
 It was the title of " Honorable " that puz- 
 zled Hoback the most. He could not under- 
 stand how a man of Topper's turpitude had 
 any right in such company; but finally he dis- 
 covered the origin of the " epithet," as he 
 termed it, and he voiced his discovery with 
 ardor whenever he had an audience. 
 
 Hoback claimed that Topper used the title 
 because he once came near breaking into the 
 State Legislature by a trick which he played 
 on the dear people when he secured the nomi- 
 nation. At this period Topper was almost 
 
I04 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 unknown, but, by some hocus-pocus in poli- 
 tics, he was sent to the convention as a dele- 
 gate. On the night of the nomination he 
 hired a band and marched it all over the 
 town until a motley crowd fell into line, 
 among whom were a number of country dele- 
 gates. Under the guide of a paid heeler the 
 paraders were steered to Topper's hotel for 
 the open purpose of giving him a serenade, 
 but for the covert purpose of booming him 
 for the legislature. It was claimed by the 
 Deacon, and his veracity was not always 
 flexible, that Topper, who could no more 
 make a speech than a dusty old dodo, had 
 imported a clever orator to impersonate him 
 when he was called out to make a few re- 
 marks, as had been prearranged. 
 
 The night was very dark; no lights were 
 in the streets, and the dingy balcony project- 
 ing from Topper's room was darker than the 
 night, making it a safe spot for the trick he 
 was about to play. When the paraders, led 
 on by paid heelers, began to cry for Topper, 
 he quietly pushed his oratorical substitute 
 onto the dark balcony and turned him loose 
 on the unsuspecting crowd. It was a memor- 
 able thirty minutes in the history of that 
 place. The oldest inhabitants had never 
 heard so much rhetoric huddled into a short 
 
The Hoback-Topper Feud 105 
 
 half hour, and when the orator, in closing 
 his peroration, announced that he had de- 
 cided to be a candidate for the legislature, tre- 
 mendous cheering followed and the entire 
 mob bolted pell-mell to the convention hall 
 and forced the nomination of Topper on the 
 first ballot. 
 
 The political career of Topper ended, 
 however, on election night, for the people, 
 who won't be bamboozled always, learning of 
 his trick, buried him under such a land- 
 slide of ballots that his reputation was sub- 
 merged In that community, and he soon de- 
 parted to invade the religious domain so long 
 occupied by Ante Hoback. 
 
 There was as much difference between 
 these two men as there is between green old 
 age and ripe old age, and this was made plain 
 the hour they met in the arena of church 
 work. The sexton could do less labor in 
 more time than the Deacon. Topper be- 
 lieved that toil was an old-fashioned way of 
 getting a living and that very little of it 
 should be done between meals. Work an- 
 noyed him. He did not like it, and the 
 throne of laziness, the sextonship, being va- 
 cant, he fell into It, not as easily as old Silas 
 Wegg, with his peg-leg, fell into poetry, but 
 with ease enough in spite of the Deacon, who 
 
io6 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 ever after insisted that Topper was such a 
 vegetator that he had moss on his nose. His 
 head was so hard that whenever the Deacon 
 beat it with his hickory cudgel, which was 
 not infrequently, it beat the cudgel back 
 again; and, as for his heart, it was as dry as 
 the summer's dust. He did not know what 
 reconciliation meant, and would rub out sore 
 spots with a brick. He was not only morose 
 from birth, but pessimistic, and if by chance 
 he had a choice between two evils, he chose 
 both, and usually kept the larger one for the 
 Deacon. If his entire anatomy had been 
 constructed in proportion to what he said to 
 what he did, there would have been little of 
 him but his mouth. If by accident he smiled 
 at a wedding, he felt ashamed of it; if he 
 shed a tear at a funeral, it was owing to the 
 weakness of the water duct of his left eye 
 which gave him the appearance of perpetual 
 weeping. He was not entirely godless, but 
 his god was hatred and envy of the Deacon. 
 He would get up early any morning to hurl 
 tirades at him and tell people of the mistakes 
 he had made. Once Ante claimed that he 
 was a self-made man, whereupon Topper 
 added, " And he worships his maker." The 
 jeremiads that Topper handed out to Ho- 
 back were numberless. At a church supper 
 
The Hohack-Topper Feud 107 
 
 he said that Ante ate fish for brain food, but 
 that it was a shameful waste of pho^horj 
 and when the Deacon opposed the~Tntroduc- 
 tion of a patent cremating machine into the 
 church cemetery Topper said it was because 
 the Deacon didn't want to be burned twice. 
 When Hoback heard of this he said, so every 
 body could hear it, " Fools have flashes of 
 sense which seem like intuition, but ever and 
 anon one is born who is such an idiot that it 
 proves brainless men may live " — and, with 
 a suggestive glance toward Topper's house, 
 he added — " in this community." 
 
 If the ladies of the church called the 
 Deacon " the salt of the earth," which they 
 often did, Topper would add, " And the pep- 
 per of our church, and a red-headed pepper 
 too." Once, in a moment of supreme testl- 
 ness, he said, " The reason Ante is so 
 reckless with his character is because he has 
 nothing to lose but his breath, and it would 
 be an improvement if he sent that out with 
 his weekly wash." When the Deacon was once 
 defending some of his acts against criticism, 
 he insisted that he was the guardian of his 
 own honor, and Topper, hearing the asser- 
 tion, said, " Oh, Lord, what an easy job ! " 
 He even contended that when he, Topper, 
 did anything of value for the church, Ho- 
 
io8 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 back would climb on to the poop deck of 
 publicity and shout, " I did it, I did it." But 
 Topper forgot that this is a common weak- 
 ness among men. 
 
 In one of his outbursts he proclaimed that 
 Ante thought around things and never into 
 them, and was therefore about as correct as 
 a gas meter when he tried to give facts. On 
 one occasion, when he had a good street au- 
 dience, he said, " Every community has men 
 who resemble fish. The boastful are the 
 wide-mouth bass; the stupid are the bull- 
 heads; the mud-slingers are the carp; the 
 borrowers are the suckers; the pirates are the 
 sharks, the most selfish of all fish, and of this 
 species Ante Hoback is a land shark of no 
 mean proportions," and to prove this he re- 
 lated the following remarkable dream of 
 Ante's selfishness, which he claimed to have 
 had after one of his encounters with the 
 Deacon : 
 
 " I dreamed," said Topper, " that the 
 world came suddenly to an end, catching, as 
 such an event is sure to do, a large majority 
 unprepared. It was announced, upon good 
 authority, that twenty-four hours would be 
 allowed in which to secure a trip to glory, at 
 the expiration of which time all skyward 
 transportation would be at an end. The de- 
 
The Hoback-Topper Feud 109 
 
 mand for aerial wafture was stupendous. 
 Such a clamoring of tongues and hurrying 
 hither and thither was never seen before. 
 The bosom of mother earth was restless and 
 ^^flushed with agitation. There was a rough- 
 and-tumble scramble for transportation that 
 di mmed the antics of the graftlest legisla- 
 ture. Heavenly elevators were in great de- 
 mand and hard to get. All were on the rush 
 and in the push. Everybody got in the way 
 of somebody, and nobody got out of the way 
 of anybody. No one asked anybody to ride 
 and no one helped any one to catch on. 
 Every human thing was agog. Some scur- 
 ried after argosies that had just left. Others 
 grabbed at'air galleons about to start. Men 
 who had never moved faster than a walk ran 
 because they could not fly. Women who had 
 not been able to sit up and take notice for 
 months were out for_^ ^?ide^ Daughters who 
 had always waited for mother to do things 
 had no time to wait for mother now. All 
 were in paroxysms of alarm and universal 
 hubbub reigned. How to get there was the 
 main thing and modesty retired. Some as- 
 cended in balloons, some in aeroplanes, some 
 in Maxim kites and Lilienthal birds, some in 
 Bell air-motors, and others climbed golden 
 ladders that were lowered from the sky. The 
 
no Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 air was alive with flying things, among which 
 fVas an airship constructed on a modified 
 orthodox plan, and on board could be 
 seen the members of five different denomi- 
 nations, all willing to be saved in the same 
 way, and all anxious to go to glory by the 
 same route, but it took an awful crisis to 
 bring it about. 
 
 "~ " In the storm center of this wild tumult," 
 continued Topper, " I stood helpless and 
 dazed. If I chanced a ride on anything some 
 selfish mortal pushed in and cut me out. In 
 all that hurrying host there was no glad hand 
 to help and no kind voice to cheer. All were 
 anxious to get ahead, believing the Devil 
 would get the hindmost. Repulsed in my 
 efforts to obtain passage, even with my 
 friends, and conscious that the end of the al- 
 lotted time was near, I stood dumfounded 
 at the utter selfishness of man. Chagrined 
 at this discovery, and sick with fear of ap- 
 proaching doom, I glanced anxiously about, 
 and there, to my amazement, was Ante Ho- 
 back, his face blasted with antiquity, clinging 
 to the~car of a bursteytjallooinr^H sjnging, 
 in a scared voiced 'Oh' what shall I do to be 
 saved?' 
 
 " Could such a thing be real? thought I. 
 Is this dismayed creature the paragon of our 
 
The Hoback-Topper Feud in 
 
 church? Is this the mighty pallbearer, the 
 strenuous knight of the plate-passers, the po- 
 tentate of odd jobs; the man who some half- 
 done mortals believed would escape the 
 formalities of death by being translated in 
 a chariot of fire ? For a moment the spectacle 
 staggered me. I knew he was getting what 
 was coming to him, and yet a quaver of pity 
 came over me, as I turned from that woeful 
 sight to see if there was still a chance to as- 
 cend. Alas, all communications were sus- 
 pended. Every one had disappeared except 
 the Deacon and myself. 
 
 " ' Some men,' " Topper went on, and he 
 was no fool with quotations, " ' do not know 
 their own greatness until an emergency 
 arises. Others never realize their smallness 
 until they stand face to face with a great 
 crisis.' Hoback had found his level in the 
 crucial moment and was sinking in utter 
 helplessness. ' Is it possible,' said I, half 
 aloud, ' that this miracle-seer possesses no 
 divine means of transportation — this man 
 who talked and acted as if he were at the 
 beginning of things and helped things to he- 
 \^n ?J) Is it possible that he is to be lost in the 
 grand closing out when so many indifferent 
 souls are to be saved ? ' For the first time in 
 my life a lump of sympathy for the Deacon 
 
112 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 arose from my heart and choked my throat. 
 
 " At this moment, solemn and awful in 
 its intensity, a thoughtful angel lowered a 
 golden rope to the earth just where I stood — 
 a mighty good shot for a cherub. I seized 
 it and turned to see if Ante had been likewise 
 blessed. A21; lack-a-day ! There he lay, 
 clinging to his shattered balloon, his dinky 
 old beaver gone, his wig topsy-turvey on the 
 ground, his body quaking with fear, while 
 his whiffling voice was still crying, ' Oh, what 
 shall I do to be saved ? ' 
 
 " Things looked gloomy enough for the 
 Deacon, and again I began to feel mellow, 
 but something said to me, ' Sexton, you'vfe 
 met that man before, he's uncertain, you'd 
 better look out for the main chance.' So I 
 clutched the golden rope tight and cried, 
 ' Hoist away,' and as the angels began to 
 lift me to glory, I turned with curiosity to- 
 ward Ante. There he was, the mighty ab- 
 sorber of church jobs, hugging his wrecked 
 and useless balloon, and still wailing, ' Oh, 
 what shall I do to be saved ? ' It was the 
 acme of pathos, the most piteous sight I ever 
 saw, and I weakened enough to shout, ' Hi 
 there, Deacon ! here's your last chance ; hurry 
 up and catch on.' 
 
 " I was well acquainted with the old sin- 
 
The Hob(ick-Topper Feud 113 
 
 ner, but he gave me something new to think 
 about. <- Never has a pail of hot water moved 
 a gopher out of his hole quicker^than the 
 sound of my voice and the sight dlf that rope 
 brought the Deacon to his feet. With a 
 shout of joy he rushed to the spot, grabbed 
 my heels, and jerking me loose from the 
 rope, seized it, and as I landed on my back 
 I looked up and saw Hoback swinging 
 swiftly toward the bowers of bliss, singing, 
 ' Now I can read my title clear to mansions 
 in the sky,' and the far-away voices of the 
 angels, murmuring reproaches at the selfish 
 deed, aroused me from my dream." 
 
 So Topper mouthed along about the Dea- 
 con whenever he got a listener. He was al- 
 ways ready to give even a small boy a piece 
 of mind upon this subject, and, no matter 
 how many pieces he gave during the week, he 
 had a good supply for Sundays. He was 
 really fixing for the Deacon to perform the 
 anaconda trick of swallowing; a sexton, but 
 he did not realize the situation. 
 
 Ante Hoback, viewed in any direction 
 from the Topper standpoint, was a bad man. 
 But this was not so to a small, yet redeeming, 
 extent. Ante had his ways, but they were his 
 by nature, and he never encouraged any in- 
 terference with them. He claimed, among 
 
114 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 other things, two inalienable rights, growing 
 out of his long connection with the church, 
 pallbearing and plate-passing, and in this he 
 was an ego-maniac. He thought no one 
 could perform these functions as he could, 
 and the members, unable to arouse them- 
 selves to the true interests of the church, 
 thought the same simply because it was the 
 easiest way, and thus left him in possession 
 of his hobbies for many years. Upon one 
 occasion he resented an invasion of his pall- 
 bearing rights with so much vigor that it be- 
 came a town topic for some time. It seems 
 that Topper, in conspiracy with some of the 
 anti-Hoback crowd in the church, attempted 
 to usurp this right by supervising the funeral 
 of a choir member, in which arrangement 
 the Deacon was not chosen as one of the 
 pallbearers; but he made it so uncomfortable 
 for the mourners, as well as for the under- 
 taker and the poor parson, that all were glad 
 to give way and let him occupy his accus- 
 tomed place at the head end, and on the right 
 side of the corpse. Topper was at the bot- 
 tom of this conspiracy; in fact, he was the 
 only person who ever openly attempted to 
 thwart the Deacon in the exercise of this In- 
 alienable right. He did it with a hatred, 
 characteristic of all his relations with the 
 
The Hoback-Topper Feud 115 
 
 Deacon, that none could fathom, and with a 
 persistency that hurt the church and _dis- 
 turb ed its concord. At last this enmity took 
 a sharp turn for the worse, and Topper's mo- 
 roseness became suddenly so intense that he 
 locked up the bell-tower, remained at home 
 and refused to ring the bell or produce the 
 key, and all were puzzled as to the real cause. 
 Finally the mystery of this increased hatred 
 was solved. In a confiding moment, and un- 
 der the ban of secrecy. Topper, in the seclu- 
 sion of his home, made a statement to the 
 dunder-pated organ pump-boy. From this 
 confidential statement, which the pump-boy, 
 at the earliest moment, confided to the or- 
 ganist, who transmitted it to the choir, who 
 delivered it to the congregation, who imme- 
 diately consigned it to the town, it appears 
 that Topper, in the days of prosperity, either 
 from platonic love, or the real thing, gave to 
 a young widow a promissory note for several 
 hundred dollars, upon which he was to pay 
 interest semi-annually, with the understand- 
 ing that, at the death of either party, the 
 note was to become null and void. But the 
 note did not contain this provision, and, as 
 the young widow had room in her heart for a 
 battalion of boys, the omission proved disas- 
 trous for the sexton. 
 
Ii6 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 For several years Topper kept up the in- 
 terest and the company of the widow, little 
 dreaming that Hoback had secretly staked a 
 claim on the same property. One day the 
 widow died suddenly, leaving a last will and 
 testament. When the document was opened, 
 in the presence of Topper and the beneficia- 
 ries, it was found that Ante Hoback, who was 
 supposed to be a mere acquaintance of the 
 widow, had not only been named as sole 
 executor of* the will without bond, but was 
 made legatee of the Topper note in pay- 
 ment for services as administrator of the 
 estate. 
 
 Triple Topper, with a quarter of a chance, 
 in that distressful moment, would have 
 chmbed on to the throne of Jupiter and 
 hurled thunderbolts at anything in sight. 
 But his temper was sweet in quality and 
 small in quantity to what it was when the 
 conference ended and the beneficiaries had 
 departed, for then, to his amazement, he 
 discovered that Hoback had not only gone 
 off with the promissory note, but had prigged 
 Topper's new cylinder and left his dinky old 
 beaver in its stead. It is said that the sexton 
 looked twenty years older in a minute, and 
 muttered, "If High Heaven should omit the 
 day of Judgment, it would be a lucky thing 
 
The Hoback-Topper Feud 117 
 
 for Hoback and the widow," and then he 
 wandered, half dazed, out into the street and 
 went sadly home after locking the bell-tower. 
 The blow was too much for Triple Topper. 
 He sank rapidly under the shock, from which 
 he never recovered. 
 
 A few months after the perfidy of the 
 widow was revealed, the old sexton, to the 
 relief of many, " fell asleep," by a red flash 
 of apoplexy. He woke up in the next 
 world, — no matter which, — leaving a suit of 
 homespun, two chairs, one bedstead, one 
 plate, one knife, one fork, one cup, one tea- 
 kettle, one coffee-pot, and a will, written by 
 his own hand and witnessed by the half- 
 witted organ pump-boy and the parson, who 
 seemed to have been his only confidants. The 
 would-be heirs, impatient to learn the worst, 
 as most expectant heirs are wont to be, were 
 delighted to find that the sexton had endorsed 
 the following words on the envelope contain- 
 ing the will: 
 
 " To be opened before I am put to bed 
 with a shovel." 
 
 It was opened and paragraph first said: 
 " To Willie Williams, the organ-blower, I 
 give all of my household effects, except my 
 old clothes; these I leave, with my sympa- 
 thetic regards, to Domine Sadson, who has 
 
1 1 8 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 an unspeakable deacon to deal with from 
 day to day, and all day Sunday." 
 
 The second paragraph read: 
 
 " Being unmarried and consequently of 
 sound mind, and knowing what I want, I ex- 
 press in this, my last will, a special wish to 
 wit: Under no circumstances shall Ante Ho- 
 back attend my funeral, either in person or 
 by proxy. For two-and-twenty years this 
 adulterated religionist has, in and out of 
 church, declared that no funeral had taken 
 place, no funeral could take place, and no 
 corpse could pass through our church to 
 God's acre without his personal aid and su- 
 pervision as long as he could work his lungs 
 and walk. Therefore, by this, my last will, 
 I desire to prove that the funeral of Triple 
 Topper can take place, and the bones of 
 Triple Topper can pass through our church 
 to God's acre without the aid of Ante-Up 
 Hoback, either in person or by proxy, or any 
 other way." 
 
 For the first time in the history of his 
 deaconship the pall-bearing rights of Ante 
 Hoback were successfully denied, and he re- 
 garded a breach of the third commandment 
 as hardly a balm strong enough for such a 
 bruise. A friend from the back country met 
 him just after the will was read, and hearing 
 
The Hoback-Topper Feud 119 
 
 for the first time of Topper's death, asked, 
 "What was the complaint?" and Hoback 
 grimly replied, " Don't know for sure, but 
 whatever it was the disease was danged well 
 employed." 
 
 Ante Hoback felt the blow struck at his 
 inalienable rights from the top of his red wig 
 to the soles of his number tens. It was gall- 
 ing, and it crushed both the pride and the 
 prerogative of the old man. Chafing under 
 the indignity, and incensed by the indictment, 
 he sold his lot in the church-yard in which 
 Topper was buried to the worst sinner in 
 town, and codiciled his will to the effect that, 
 " Under no circumstances, not even an emer- 
 gency, are my remains to be placed in the 
 same cemetery with Topper's bones," and to 
 make the matter sure, he bought a lot in a 
 rival graveyard on the opposite side of the 
 village and set up a little monument bearing 
 these words: 
 
 " Here lies Deacon Ante Hoback, Bom 
 
 December 26, 1839, Died after Triple 
 
 Topper." 
 
 He had triumphed over the sexton by out- 
 living him. 
 
 When Topper found a resting-place in 
 that house " which lasts till doomsday," he 
 left Hoback sole arbiter of church func- 
 
I20 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 tions, andl Ante at once absorbed the sexton- 
 ship, while a supine congregation, in its 
 lethargy, tolerated him until the kindly but 
 hapless parson, despairing of concord in the 
 church, resigned to become a book agent, and 
 the sheriff foreclosed the mortgage for a syn- 
 dicate of worldly men who transformed the 
 sacred temple into a theater, where " Tracy 
 the Outlaw " and " The True Jesse James " 
 and like plays were greeted from night to 
 night with ardor, and gathered in, and re- 
 moved from the town, a large amount of 
 box receipts every year. Thus death and the 
 sheriff ended the Hoback-Topper Feud and 
 closed the portals of the building as a church 
 forever. 
 
 God may forgive sins of high and low de- 
 gree under certain prescribed conditions, but 
 the sin of church discord may be beyond His 
 mercy. Certainly the misdemeanor of it is 
 reprehensible enough to place the culprits 
 outside of the sphere of divine forgiveness, 
 for men with a more handsome incompetence 
 for uplifting work do not exist in any other 
 field of human endeavor. The whole church 
 atmosphere is tainted by their conduct, and 
 their lives need fumigating with the odor of 
 good-will and common sense. An evangeli- 
 
The Hoback-Topper Feud 121 
 
 cal bushwhacker like Topper, or a guerrilla 
 lay brother like Hoback, are abscesses on the 
 church body, and, if not cut out, will give the 
 congregation a stud of nightmares in the 
 end. Such church men seem to eat of the 
 insane root that makes them imagine they 
 are the light and life of the sanctuary, while, 
 in truth, their performances are only dear to 
 the_jgods_of_Sheol. They cause the little 
 world around them to creak vilely on its 
 hinges, for, as a rule, they are as disagree- 
 able as the occasion will permit. In the pres- 
 ence of such sluggish livers and active 
 spleens, the pulse of any religion will beat 
 low. Loyal members within the church are 
 repelled by these conditions, and thinking 
 people without can never be reached while 
 such things exist. A house cleaning must 
 take place that will drive brabblers from the 
 church as the money-changers were driven 
 from the temple, before worthy^evotees can 
 begin thatjtri.um£hant march which will lead 
 to the^alKation of the world. 
 
 How many churches there are which ought 
 to be progressive, but are retarded in 
 growth, and crippled in usefulness by inter- 
 nal feuds arising from meddlesome deacons, 
 cat-and-dog sextons, pompous trustees, and 
 wrangling communicants I The influence of 
 
122 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 such mortals on the life of the church is as 
 blighting as the shade of upas trees. 
 
 Bedeck the truth as we_Chr istians may, 
 the stolid fact remains, tEat^if menTike Ho- 
 back and Topper are tolerated in the ad- 
 ministration of the church, the Devil will 
 occupy a front pew in the end. From these 
 bickerings, sacred things and holy places sink 
 into contempt. Feuds among officers or 
 members of any religious denomination 
 must breed disorder and bring the kindliest 
 religion in the world within the pale of rea- 
 sonable criticism. The Temple of God is a 
 harbor of peace and good-will, not the refuge 
 of churlish men. It is a place where the at- 
 mosphere should soften and elevate. It is a 
 " union of religious fellowship independent 
 of, and different from, all other forms of 
 human association." Harmony is its object, 
 not animosity; concord its aim, not strife. 
 In every community it is the badge of honor, 
 and its true safety abides in the character and 
 conduct of its members. If good-will and 
 mutual helpfulness find a sanctuary in their 
 hearts, the church will become a tower of 
 strength. If factious strife develop, and 
 feuds find root, the bell might as well hang 
 silent in the belfry and the portals of the 
 temple remain forever closed, for nothing 
 
The Hoback-Topper Feud 123 
 
 can equal or measure up to the evils of dis- 
 cord in holy places, where the benign pre- 
 cepts of the Saviour are taught, and where 
 they should be supreme. Were it not for 
 the vast army of noble and gracious souls, 
 both laymen and clergy, who beautify the 
 world by their worthy lives, the doom of the 
 church would have been sounded long ago. 
 Not by external foes, but by those who are 
 stupidly active or indifferent within its sacred 
 portals. 
 
A DANDYMITE CLOCK AT THE 
 WHITE HOUSE 
 
 After graduating Jack Stanley went to 
 the National Capital to finish his law studies, 
 and in order to meet expenses he secured a 
 position on a daily newspaper. One night, 
 during the time he was employed as night 
 editor, a reporter, laboring under excitement, 
 rushed into his room and handed him a sheet 
 of paper upon which was written, " I, Edwin 
 B. Screvin, do hereby certify that the box con- 
 taining the dynamite clock has been placed 
 under the White House timed to explode at 
 twelve o'clock to-night, for which I acknowl- 
 edge receipt of $500 paid to me, according 
 to agreement, by the man in the red sweater." 
 
 " My brother was sitting in the reading 
 room of Willard's Hotel this evening," said 
 the reporter, " when a man entered, sat down 
 at one of the tables and commenced writing. 
 His nervous manner attracted my brother's 
 attention, for he wrote something, read it, 
 and then tore it up, then he took another 
 sheet, wrote something hurriedly, read it, 
 and instantly destroyed it. He wrote again, 
 124 
 
A Dandymite Clock at PFhite House 125 
 
 looked it over, pushed the sheet aside, and 
 it slipped under a newspaper that lay upon 
 the table. He then took the fourth sheet, 
 wrote again, read it over carefully, sealed it 
 in an envelope and left the place apparently 
 under marked excitement. My brother went 
 to the table, lifted the newspaper, found this 
 document, and gave it to me." 
 
 The managing editor was consulted, and in- 
 structed Jack to probe the affair to the bot- 
 tom, as it was known that several letters con- 
 taining threats and warnings had recently 
 been received at the White House. A visit to 
 the hotel proved that Screvin had registered 
 there and taken a room in which was found 
 the card of an anarchist suspect. Screvin had 
 disappeared. Jack hastened to the White 
 House, as it was nearing midnight, and pre- 
 sented the mysterious document to Marshal 
 Sharpe, who read it carefully, stepped into 
 the President's room, and returned in a mo- 
 ment with General Grant, who looked the 
 document over, grimly smiled, and said that 
 he did not think an investigation necessary, 
 as he was used to such letters. " But," he 
 said to the marshal, " whatever you do I 
 would not like to have a sensational thing 
 like this published in the newspapers." The 
 marshal insisted on making an investigation 
 
126 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 and the General smiled and said, " All right, 
 do as you please; but if the dynamite goes 
 off, don't go with it as I need you in my 
 business." 
 
 The male personnel on duty was then sum- 
 moned and ordered to make a careful search 
 of the basement. It was a grim and gloomy 
 place in those days. In one of the rooms an 
 old messenger, who had made similar searches 
 before, picked up, unnoticed, a small paper 
 bag, inflated it with his breath, and just as 
 a colored man, who was carrying a lantern, 
 pushed over an empty wine cask, he exploded 
 the bag. The lantern went one way and the 
 colored man another, crying, " Lord o' 
 mercy, dat dar dandymite clock done gone 
 struck I " 
 
 When the basement had been searched, 
 without further results than this episode, the 
 squad was ordered to the East Room, which 
 was the only one on the first floor that had 
 been opened to the public that day. Jack 
 tested many dark and secluded spots with 
 his walking stick, and while standing at the 
 south end of the room in the act of pushing 
 his cane under a heavy curtain whose folds 
 rested on the floor, President Grant entered, 
 and with an amused expression on his face 
 silently watched the scene. Presently Jack's 
 
'A Dandymite Clock at White House 127 
 
 cane struck something hidden beneath the 
 curtain which gave forth a sharp metallic 
 sound. He stepped back quickly and the 
 President said, " Don't let it go off before 
 you do," and stepping up he lifted the cur- 
 tain, and there on the carpet, empty and 
 alone, lay a whisky bottle of the commonest 
 sort. The President looked at it a moment 
 and laughingly said, " Well, the dynamite in 
 that clock seems to have gone off with the 
 anarchist that brought it." 
 
 This ended the search at the White House, 
 but the marshal insisted that the man who 
 wrote the letter must be found. Detectives 
 were put on the trail. They discovered that 
 Screvin had taken a cab to the railway sta- 
 tion soon after he left the reading-room, hav- 
 ing inquired about the train to Baltimore. 
 This was a clue. The detectives obtained a 
 description of the culprit and hastened to 
 Baltimore to find their man. Early in the 
 dawn the keen-eyed sleuths entered the bar 
 of a small hotel near the railway station, 
 stepped quickly up to a man who was putting 
 himself on the outside of three fingers of 
 gin, and tapping him on the shoulder said: 
 
 " Screvin, you are wanted In Washington." 
 
 "What for?" cried Screvin in surprise. 
 
 " You are the author of this anarchistic 
 
128 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 letter. That's your writing, is it not? " and 
 the detective showed him the document. 
 
 " Yes," said Screvin, " 'tis and 'tain't. If 
 you look closely you will find two different 
 handwritings. I wrote ' I, Edwin B. Screvin, 
 do hereby certify that the box containing — ' 
 there my handwriting ceases and the forger's 
 begins. I wrote the first part of that letter 
 to certify to a firm in New York that I had 
 deposited a box containing some valuable 
 papers with a Washington trust company; 
 but not satisfied with the wording I threw it 
 aside and some chap, for a practical joke, 
 has done the rest and the Washington police 
 at the same time." 
 
 A close examination proved the forgery, 
 and the detectives returned to Washington 
 to run down the forger. He was the brother 
 of the reporter and had left for the far South 
 as soon as he found that his proposed news- 
 paper sensation had assumed such large offi- 
 cial proportions. 
 
WHO BROKE THE TIE? 
 
 As Jack Stanley grew into young manhood 
 he was often invited to deliver after-dinner 
 talks, five of which are included in this little 
 volume. The following is an extract from 
 a speech delivered in Independence Hall, 
 Philadelphia : ---"- 
 
 Opportunities come to all men. Some 
 come but once, and if lost are lost forever. 
 Ingalls wrote of opportunity: 
 
 " Master of human destiny am I. 
 Fame, love, and fortune on my foot-steps wait. 
 Cities and fields I walk. I penetrate 
 Deserts and seas remote, and passing by 
 Hovel and mart and palace, soon or late 
 I knock unbidden once at every gate. 
 If sleeping, wake; if feasting, rise before 
 I turn away. It is the hour of fatey 
 And they who follow me reach every state 
 Mortals desire, and conquer every foe 
 Save death; but^^ej;_who do^t or hesitate. 
 Condemned toflPCB^ TO failur ^ and woe, 
 Seek me in vaitfTnd uselessly *mplore. 
 I answer not, and I return no more." 
 
 Opportunities for patriotism are as com- 
 mon as the ebb and flow of the tide, and 
 come to all in various ways; but how many 
 
 129 
 
130 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 seize them to the glory of the race and gran- 
 deur of their country? 
 
 Some people are so nervously constituted 
 that they consider every incident an accident 
 and every accident a calamity. In times of 
 war they pass from camp to camp according 
 to the caprices of victory. The volcanoes 
 of the American Revolution brought many 
 such men to the surface, and some of them 
 were so weak-kneed they remind us of the 
 man who was so knock-kneed that whenever 
 he went for a walk one leg seemed to say to 
 the other, " You please let me pass this time 
 and I'll let you pass the next." But among 
 such men General Joseph Read could not 
 be classed, for when the British Commis- 
 sioner, Johnstone, offered him fifty thousand 
 dollars and high civil position if he would 
 aid in compelling a speedy submission of the 
 colonies to Great Britain, he spumed the 
 bribe by these immortal words, " I am not 
 worth purchasing ; but such as I am the King 
 of England is not rich enough to buy me." 
 
 When disaster came with its chilling blasts 
 to Washington, and the friends of yesterday 
 fell fast away from him, Robert Morris, the 
 great financier of the Revolution, stood stead- 
 fastly by the heroic commander with his 
 rnoney and his mind. In a moment of great 
 
JVho Broke the Tie? 131 
 
 emergency one of Morris' privateers arrived 
 with ninety tons of lead. Morris gave the 
 lead to Washington in bulk, and Washing- 
 ton gave it promptly to Comwallis in molded 
 chunks, and Cornwallis returned the compli- 
 ment by unconditional surrender. 
 
 When chicken-hearted men were quailing 
 at the threatening shadows of defeat, the 
 chivalrous Captain Biddle of the ill-starred 
 Randolph remained undismayed. While in 
 deadly contact with the British ship Yar- 
 mouth he was wounded in the thigh, but he 
 kept his place upon the deck amidst the blaze 
 of battle, and as his life-blood was oozing 
 fast away he told his men to stand by their 
 guns, and he issued orders with calmness and 
 decision until his ship was blown to atoms 
 and he and his brave men went down to un- 
 known graves. 
 
 When Patrick Henry, standing in the Vir- 
 ginia House of Delegates, surrounded by 
 brave men who wanted to be free, but who 
 could not discern the way, proclaimed in the 
 spell-words of his eloquence, " We are not 
 weak if we but make a proper use of the 
 means which the God of Nature has placed 
 in our power. Three millions of people 
 armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in 
 such a land as that which we possess, are in- 
 
132 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 vincible to any force our enemy may send 
 against us." When he said that, he awoke 
 the sleeping patriotism of the colonies, and 
 the tide of human events was turned with 
 mighty impetus toward liberty and national 
 progress. 
 
 Thomas Jefferson invented the Declara- 
 tion of Independence and Washington issued 
 the patent by force of arms, and issued it 
 on such broad grounds that no nation can in- 
 fringe it; but it is not generally known that 
 one man secured its adoption in one of the 
 most dramatic scenes recorded in history. 
 
 When the crisis came in the Continental 
 Congress for glory or for shame, for history 
 or for the halter, a man was needed to stand 
 by the honor of Pennsylvania like the rock 
 that stands stirigss amid the conflictmg agi- 
 tation o f thejwayeSj and that man was found 
 and Kis name was John Morton, and he 
 hailed from Delaware County. On the 
 Fourth of July in 1776, the day and the hour 
 of the great crisis came. Eleven colonies had 
 already voted for the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence, but Pennsylvania and Delaware 
 came last, and Pennsylvania and Delaware 
 were doubtful. The opposition of a single 
 State at this thrilling moment would have de- 
 feated the immortal resolution and changed 
 
Who Broke the Tie? 133 
 
 the whole trend of this nation's life. Dela- 
 ware had three delegates and Delaware came 
 first. Thomas McKean, true as the dial to 
 the sun, voted " Aye," but George Read 
 hesitated, and then voted " No," and Caesar 
 Rodney, the third delegate, was absent. 
 There was a tie and the clerk was about to 
 call the roll for Pennsylvania. At this junc- 
 ture the clatter of horses' hoofs was heard 
 in front of the state house. Booted, spurred, 
 and breathless, Caesar Rodney, having ridden 
 eighty miles from the County of Kent through 
 swamp and marsh, rushed into the assembly 
 and voted " Aye " just in time to save little 
 Delaware for the Declaration. Now Pennsyl- 
 vania was called upon to record her pon- 
 derous but uncertain vote. Her delegation 
 consisted of seven members. They were Ben- 
 jamin Franklin, John Dickinson, John Mor- 
 ton, Robert Morris, James Wilson, Thomas 
 Willing, and Charles Humphries. Dickinson 
 and Morris were not in their official places 
 during roll-call and did not vote. One 
 of the other five was absent, but for what 
 reason no one seemed to know. President 
 Hancock anxiously awaited his coming, but 
 he came not, and delay was no longer pos- 
 sible. Once more the sound of the Presi- 
 dent's gavel rang through the assembly hall. 
 
134 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 and Pennsylvania, the queen of the colonies, 
 was called upon to record her vote. 
 
 The muteness of the tomb reigned in In- 
 dependence Hall and in an instant all eyes 
 were turned toward Pennsylvania's delega- 
 tion, and the pulsation of anxious hearts could 
 almost be heard in the profound quiet of the 
 place. The roll call began. Franklin voted 
 " Aye." Humphries voted " No." Wilson 
 voted "Aye" and Willing voted "No." 
 There was a tie and for an instant the Dec- 
 laration of Independence seemed lost. At 
 this decisive moment, a moment, my friends, 
 which may prove to be the mother of Ages 
 of Freedom, John Morton of Delaware 
 County entered this hall. With pallid face, 
 and quivering lips, and clenched hands, he 
 sank nervously into his chair. All the in- 
 fluence of a tory lobby, all the bribes of an 
 intriguing diplomacy, all the ostracizing 
 threats of relatives, friends, and neighbors 
 had been brought to bear upon him to control 
 his vote. 
 
 The time had now come to test the courage 
 of this Pennsylvania patriot. The clerk 
 called the name of John Morton. At once 
 he became the focus of all eyes. He arose 
 slowly from his chair. His face was no longer 
 pallid. His lips quivered no more, but his 
 
Who Broke the Tie? 135 
 
 hand still remained clenched, and with a 
 strong and steady voice he answered, " Aye," 
 and that word confirmed the Declaration of 
 Independence, and kingly tyranny on the 
 Western continent was forever and forever 
 dethroned. From that hour a manifesto 
 went forth to all the world that the Western 
 Hemisphere was dedicated to freedom, to 
 self-government, to the sovereignty of the in- 
 dividual, and equal rights to all who might 
 seek its shores. 
 
 To-day that manifesto has been in force 
 for one hundred and thirty years, and to- 
 night we can say without reserve that those 
 thirteen stripes and five-pointed stars have 
 kept their sacred word. And in the keeping 
 of all true Americans that flag still invites 
 the great Republic to a lofty and splendid 
 destiny. In their keeping it will " dissolve 
 the clouds of national danger, warm the 
 frozen limbs of national indifference, and 
 gild every national hope with the pure and 
 genial splendor of its stars." In the beauti- 
 ful words of Major Scanlon: 
 
 "Oh, flag of Light; oh, flag of Hope, 
 Heaven guide our hearts that we 
 May guard the sacred heritage 
 Bequeathed to us in thee. 
 The faith of old must have inflamed 
 
136 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 Our fathers when they rose, 
 
 The Davids of the newer law 
 
 Against their vaunting foes. 
 
 Yea broke their boasted pride and power, 
 
 And, by inspired command. 
 
 Proclaimed the gospel and the creed 
 
 Of love throughout the land ; 
 
 Then springing from their grateful breasts, 
 
 A soul-embodied prayer, 
 
 That flag appeared and threw its light 
 
 Across the world's despair, 
 
 By godly hands 'twas first unfurled 
 
 In dark but godly days. 
 
 And godly hands must bear it on 
 
 In freedom's godly ways." 
 
WOMAN 
 
 An extract from " A Tribute to Woman," 
 delivered by Jack Stanley at a banquet in the 
 Bellevue-Stratford, Philadelphia. 
 
 In a moment of mental and moral stag- 
 nation an old bachelor once said that woman's 
 sphere of usefulness has a well defined limit; 
 but I know that every brave man within the 
 sound of my voice will endorse my words 
 when I say, 
 
 There is no thing in earth or heaven, 
 There is no task to mankind given, 
 There is no blessing and no woe, 
 There is no whispered yes or no, 
 There is no earthly thing on earth 
 That has a feather's weight of worth 
 Without a woman in it. 
 
 And If she belongs to that noble group of 
 women whom we call the Daughters of the 
 American Revolution, it makes the element 
 of worth all the more vital because the glow 
 and glory of patriotism so much needed to- 
 day falls like a splendid sheen over all her 
 works. 
 
 That good old poet was everlastingly right 
 137 
 
13 S Pun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 when he said, " Woman is the fairest work 
 of the Great Author and no decent man 
 should be without a copy." 
 
 He might have added, and the state- 
 ment would have come within the juris- 
 diction of reasonable veracity, that if he 
 studies that copy well, and takes it with 
 him wherever he goes, he will avoid 
 many pitfalls in the shape of gold 
 bricks, Chadwicks, and other unpleasant sit- 
 uations. 
 
 The truth is, compatriots, when in the long 
 ago some beautiful goddess of the Western 
 world breathed this prayer in the words of 
 the poet: 
 
 Bring me men to match my mountains, 
 Bring me men to match my plains, 
 Men with Empires in their purpose 
 And new eras in their brains; 
 Pioneers to clear thought's marshlands 
 And to cleanse old error's fens, 
 Bring me men to match my mountains. 
 Bring me men. 
 
 I say when the beautiful goddess breathed 
 that prayer, she should have caught added 
 inspiration from the god of song and 
 sung: 
 
 Bring me queens to match my lilies, 
 Bring me queens to match my skies, 
 
Woman 139 
 
 Queens with love-songs in their bosoms 
 And with love-Iight in their eyes; 
 Queenly forms to cheer life's pathway 
 And to guide man's faltering soul; 
 Bring me queens to match my lilies, 
 Bring me queens with hearts of gold. 
 
 For whether that prayer was uttered or 
 not the queenly American woman came. She 
 came, 
 
 More lovely than a vision brought 
 From out the fairy realms of thought, 
 Serene and silent with a grace 
 Divinely breathed o'er form and face. 
 In full array of love and light 
 That dazzled man's adoring sight. 
 
 She came, the same kind, civil, obliging, 
 humane, tender, gay and lovely being we find 
 her now. 
 
 She came, and man was mighty glad to 
 come with her, and if she should go away 
 man would tramp the pathless realms of earth 
 to find her and bring her back. 
 
 She came, and when she came the angel 
 of the world appeared, and a brighter sun- 
 light fell upon the earth, and a sweeter 
 fragrance filled the air, and a softer hue 
 mantled the gentle rose and the modest 
 hyacinth. 
 
 She came, and love and mercy found a 
 sanctuary in our homes, and any man who 
 
140 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 fails to appreciate her coming would find 
 more room for his shriveled soul in a grain 
 of mustard seed than a lonely terrapin 
 would find in the depths of the deep Dead 
 Sea. 
 
 She came, and that is why we are here, and 
 that is why we want to stay here, and any 
 man who don't would make an uncommonly 
 sour apple if he had been born in that station 
 in life. 
 
 She came, born with a master mind; that 
 is, with a mind to be master if she can, as 
 well as with a mind to be forever young, God 
 bless her, for she was never known to reach 
 the age of forty whe^the world depended 
 \)n her for longevity information. 
 
 She came to garden the earth with the 
 roses of heaven, and yet that man is a hi- 
 larious non compos mentis who thinks by 
 force or skill to turn the current of her 
 firm set will; for if she will she will, 
 and if she won't, why a man is simply up 
 against it. 
 
 She came to temper our first ancestor 
 Adam, and she came singly, and it is fortu- 
 nate that she did come singly, for if two had 
 come at the same time there would have been 
 some very warm weather in the Garden of 
 Eden. 
 
 She came, and 
 
Woman 141 
 
 Each orb a loving anthem sang, 
 While angel faces wondrous bright 
 Gazed down from heaven with new delight, 
 When first our earth a woman trod 
 Just moulded by the hand of God. 
 
 Yes, woman came, and one of the noblest 
 of them all gave to us that flag which, with 
 its thirteen stripes and five-pointed stars, has 
 never known defeat. 
 
 Oh, flag of Light; oh, flag of Hope, 
 Heaven guide our hearts that we 
 May guard the sacred heritage 
 Bequeathed to us by thee. 
 
 Compatriots, let us arise and drink in si- 
 lence to the memory of Betsy Ross, the 
 " Mother of our Flag." 
 
THE SOVEREIGN SHAD 
 
 The following tribute to " the Sovereign 
 Shad " was delivered at a shad-bake on the 
 banks of the Potomac River: 
 
 The origin of the shad dates back several 
 centuries, when, according to an Indian 
 legend, a great medicine-man, angered' by 
 something a porcupine did, seized it by the 
 scruff of the neck, turned it outside in, and 
 cast it into a southern estuary, where, luckily 
 for mankind, it has been swimming and 
 spawning, and multiplying to this day. The 
 truth is, when we contemplate this luscious 
 and likely fish it seems as if in the long ago 
 some epicurean goddess of the Western 
 World must have breathed this prayer: 
 
 "Bring us shad to fill our rivers, 
 Bring us shad to feed our brains, 
 Shads with roe pads in their bosoms, 
 And fat tissues around their manes." 
 For that prayer was heard and answered, 
 And the sons of U. Sam are glad, 
 Because two gems of this broad river, 
 Are Marshall Hall and its planked shad. 
 
 I say that prayer was answered. The shad 
 142 
 
The Sovereign Shad 143 
 
 came. They filled our rivers. They sported 
 in the estuaries of the Southland. They fed 
 upon the succulent seaweeds of Albemarle 
 and Pamlico sounds; with flashing fins and 
 waving tails they shot the rapids of the Roa- 
 noke, and stemmed the tide of the Great Pee 
 Dee; they wandered up the Chickahominy, 
 and sailed the placid waters of the York, 
 and passing northward, unchecked by the tur- 
 bulent waves of the Chesapeake, they fat- 
 tened on the products of the intermediate 
 bays, and finally reached the gentle waters of 
 the Potomac, plump and pinguid, a perfect 
 type of the sovereign shad. A perfect type 
 of the sovereign shad in which we find the 
 silvery glow of the fighting bass, the tender 
 tissues of the royal sheepshead, the succulent 
 flavor of the Spanish mackerel, the graceful 
 form of the land-locked salmon, the sprightly 
 ways of the swift barracuda, and the gentle 
 modesty of the Spanish lady-fish, and to-day 
 the epicurean world is exalted, lifted up as 
 it were, by the lusciousness of this queen of 
 all the queenly fish that grace our southern 
 waters. And every springtime when the 
 shad-bush blossoms, and the shad-frog sings 
 his tender luUabys, the shad-fiend raises his 
 ebenezer and cries, " Behold the long-looked- 
 for coming shad has arrived and is planked 
 at Marshall Hall." 
 
144 P^^ ^^d Pathos of One Life 
 
 So to thee we'll drink, to thee we'll sing; 
 
 Our voices silent never, 
 
 For thee we'll pray each coming May, 
 
 The Potomac shad forever. 
 
 For that shad was born in a southern clime. 
 
 Which is sweet with the breath of the fragment thyme, 
 
 While these men were born by the northern tide. 
 
 With an appetite fit for a cannibal's bride; 
 
 They met to-day and the shad is inside. 
 
 And when you depart to-night and leave the 
 shad bones behind that you have not swal- 
 lowed, may you feel as the ancient member 
 of the Board of Trade did, who made these 
 shad excursions for thirty years. He attended 
 prayer-meeting some time ago, and during 
 the service the minister said, " Is there any 
 one present who knows of a perfect thing in 
 this imperfect life of ours?" There was an 
 impressive silence for a moment, then the 
 ancient member of the Board of Trade arose 
 and said, " Yes, brother, I know of a per- 
 fect thing." And the minister, rubbing his 
 hands in apparent glee, cried out, " Brothers 
 and sisters, here we have a brother who knows 
 of a perfect thing in this imperfect world, 
 perhaps he will tell us what it is." And the 
 old man drawled out, " Yes, I'll tell you what 
 it is, and I don't want you to forget it. It's 
 planked shad at Marshall Hall." 
 
RAISING PIGS IN MARYLAND 
 
 The following is taken from a speech de- 
 livered by Jack Stanley at a banquet given to 
 the Maryland Editorial Association in Wash- 
 ington : 
 
 I own about seven hundred acres on the 
 Patuxent, in Ann Arundel County. The un- 
 fortunate parties who bought the farm with 
 me got cold feet. The result was this prop- 
 erty, with all of its responsibilities, fell into 
 my charge with one of those indescribably 
 dull thuds which all experience during the 
 battle of life. 
 
 I have been experimenting with that prop- 
 erty. I started a pig ranch on it about two 
 years ago, and I did this in spite of my 
 knowledge of the fact that one of John Ran- 
 dolph's friends started a pig ranch down in 
 Charles County, and after two years' experi- 
 ence summed the result up as follows: The 
 negroes raised the corn and fed the com to 
 the pigs, the pigs ate the corn and the negroes 
 ate the pigs, and left me to pay the taxes. 
 I4S 
 
146 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 But I went into the business notwithstand- 
 ing the experience of John Randolph's friend. 
 I bought up all the pigs for five miles around, 
 sometimes unsight and unseen. As soon as 
 any one heard that I wanted a pig he promptly 
 put a fanq^ price on him and kindly delivered 
 him at my ranch. One day a wagon loaded 
 with four negroes and one of my unsight and 
 unseen purchases bound up in about two rods 
 of rope arrived on the scene. After the 
 brute had been safely landed in the lot my 
 partner and I took a look at him. 
 
 He had all the prominent points of an 
 African hyena, but it turned out that he 
 was only half hyena, and the other half was 
 just razor-back pig, for he had been captured 
 wild in the bottom lands of the Patuxent. 
 He was thinner than a free-trade theory, and 
 he was uglier than the deadest donkey you 
 ever saw. My partner quietly climbed over 
 the fence, into the lot where he was, and said 
 in a soft and gentle voice, " Come, piggie, 
 pig, pig, pig," and the brute came with nose 
 down and back up and mouth wide open. 
 My partner made a double-back handspring, 
 and landed on the other side of the fence. 
 I said to him, " Captain, why In the world 
 did you jump ? " and he replied, with con- 
 siderable agitation, " My dear sir, simply be- 
 
Raising Pigs in Maryland 147 
 
 cause I hadn't any wings to soar." We soon 
 turned the brute into our general lot, with 
 fifty fine, sleek, fat pigs. At feeding time 
 he took his place at the head of the long 
 trough, and marched up and down it, a veri- 
 table hog of all he surveyed. The fifty fine 
 pigs grew to shadows in less than a month, 
 but the razor-back hyena never gained a 
 single pound except at meal times. 
 
 One day my partner said to me, " My dear 
 sir, this will never do. We must bring a 
 prize pig from New York State that will lick 
 the bacon out of that thing and build up our 
 herd." The prize pig was ordered and ar- 
 rived in the spring. He was a gentlemanly 
 brute, with an aristocratic carriage, and a 
 pedigree as long as the line of oifice seekers 
 at the White House. He had a retrousse 
 nose, and a real hair-spring curl to his tail. 
 He was as plump as a peach, and was al- 
 together lovely for a pig. 
 
 We finally turned him in to mix up in a 
 general way with the group, and soon there- 
 after my partner left to spend the summer 
 in the north, on Lake Cayuga, and I quietly 
 retired to my farm of rocks and rattle-snakes 
 in Pennsylvania. 
 
 In the fall we went down to the ranch to- 
 gether, fairly wriggling with anticipation. 
 
148 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 The keeper called in the herd from the bot- 
 tom land and the first thing that appeared 
 was the hyena of the Patuxent. He trotted 
 into the inclosure as proud and as thin, and 
 as hungry and as ugly as ever, and he 
 promptly took his place at the head of the 
 big feeding trough. Ten other shadows of 
 pigs, all there were left of the fine drove of 
 fifty, came staggering slowly toward the 
 feeding place like a case of tuberculosis on 
 its last legs. 
 
 My partner, with a spasm of pain twisting 
 about his mouth, turned to the keeper. 
 " Where is our New York prize pig? " The 
 keeper winced a little and said nervously, 
 " There he is, over there." Gentleman, it 
 was a sight to stop a clock or scare a trolley. 
 There he stood, that once pride and glory 
 of the New York State agricultural fairs; 
 his aristocratic carriage all out of gear. The 
 charming hair-spring curl to his tail had van- 
 ished, his beautiful retrousse nose looked like 
 the point of a sixteenth-century shoe, and his 
 plump and pinguid form had dwindled to a 
 bunch of bones, covered with widely scat- 
 tered hair, and it would have taken two of 
 his kind to make an ordinary shadow. My 
 partner turned in a dazed condition and flung 
 a pathetic glance at me, and commenced talk- 
 
Raising Pigs in Maryland 149 
 
 ing like a theatrical manager who was suf- 
 fering from contracting box receipts. 
 
 He said in a languid tone of voice : " My 
 friend, once upon a time a negro caught an 
 immense fish. He fastened it securely to 
 the bank of the river, and hurried off to fetch 
 some friends to see it. While he was gone 
 another fisherman came with a measly little 
 fish, about three inches long, and substituted 
 it for the big one. The negro soon returned 
 with his friends, and full of expectant pride 
 he reached down into the water and pulled 
 up the measly substitute, and holding it aloft 
 with an expression of surprise and amaze- 
 ment he cried, ' Lord a massy, boys, how dat 
 dar fish has shrunk! ' " 
 
 The next day my partner left for his home 
 in central New York, but before he departed 
 he nailed onto the largest pig pen on the ranch 
 the following placard, " Corn won't grow 
 fast enough for wind-splitters and razor- 
 backs on this ranch. There is no place like 
 home. I have gone north to live with my 
 mother-in-law." 
 
 But, gentlemen, I persistently and patiently 
 stayed, and I still own the seven hundred 
 acres in Ann Arundel County, and notwith- 
 standing the fact that the soil is very fair, 
 the only thing I have succeeded in raising 
 
150 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 down there is an umbrella and a disturbance 
 with the county commissioners. And that is 
 probably because they have succeeded so well 
 in raising outrageous taxes out of me during 
 the past four years. My friends, I want to 
 say one serious word to you on this point and 
 I am done. Maryland is a great State, and 
 full of promise, and you and I and all in- 
 terested in that splendid commonwealth are 
 anxious to help make it strong, prosperous, 
 and glorious. And I am personally convinced 
 that one of the quickest ways to accomplish 
 that end is to do away with the system of 
 discrimination in regard to taxation now ex- 
 isting, especially in the agricultural districts 
 of the State. 
 
 For instance, I paid four thousand dollars 
 for my seven hundred acres, and I have been 
 assessed seven thousand dollars ever since, 
 which is 40 per cent, more than it cost and 
 sixty per cent, more than it is worth. I 
 bought at public sale the adjoining farm of 
 four hundred acres for one thousand two 
 hundred and fifty dollars, and I sold it for 
 the same sum to a well-known fruit-grower, 
 whom I desired to interest in experimenting 
 and in helping to develop the fruit-growing 
 interests of the State. And he has been 
 assessed three thousand nine hundred dol- 
 
Raising Pigs in Maryland 151 
 
 lars ever since, which is more than three 
 times what it cost him. We are both 
 new comers and strangers in Maryland. 
 Now here is the difference: Adjoining 
 our farms is a tract containing one hundred 
 acres, just as good land as ours, which was 
 sold at public sale to a native of Maryland 
 for one hundred dollars, and he has been as- 
 sessed for only one hundred dollars ever 
 since, or eight hundred per cent, less an acre 
 than my land is assessed. Now we have ap- 
 pealed time and again to the county commis- 
 sioners for justice and redress, but we never 
 have received even so much as the courtesy 
 of a reply. 
 
 If you should ask me why they don't reply, 
 I would simply say that I can't answer that 
 question any more than the little boy who 
 stuttered could answer the question of the 
 stranger who met him on the public highway 
 and asked him how far it was up to Jones's. 
 The little boy said: " M-m-m-mister, it's a-a- 
 
 a-a-bout f-f-f-f-five D-d-darn it, go o-on, 
 
 for you'll get there before I can tell you." 
 
 Maryland is a great State, and with fair 
 treatment capital and industry will come into 
 it and help develop its splendid agricultural 
 resources and place it where It rightfully be- 
 longs among the mighty commonwealths of 
 
152 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 the Republic. And I earnestly urge you to 
 fight persistently and bravely for an honest 
 and fair adjustment of this unfortunate con- 
 dition of things in regard to taxation, and 
 thus help us and help all who desire to make 
 the beautiful State of Maryland a strong, a 
 prosperous, a happy, and a glorious common- 
 wealth. And if you do not succeed in re- 
 forming your commissioners at first remem- 
 ber the prayer of the little girl whose mother 
 told her to always ask the Lord to try and 
 make her a good little girl, and when she 
 prayed she said, " Good Lord, bless dear 
 papa and dear mamma and try to make me 
 a good little girl, and if at first you don't suc- 
 ceed try, try again." 
 
THE SPIRIT OF A NATION'S SONG 
 
 At a Pennsylvania Society banquet held in 
 the Hotel Waldorf Astoria, In answer to the 
 toast, " The Spirit of a Nation's Song," Jack 
 said: 
 
 Very appropriately there has been placed 
 upon this beautiful program the first stanza 
 of the great song which glorifies that flag 
 which a Pennsylvania woman, by an inspira- 
 tion of almost miraculous power, made and 
 gave to this nation as an ensign for the State 
 where man is Law and Law is King, and God 
 alone is great. 
 
 And to-day, after one hundred and thirty 
 years, the Northern stars and the Southern 
 stars, and the stars of the East and the West, 
 lie side by side. In peace and pride, on that 
 fair flag's mother breast, and yet I firmly be- 
 lieve that within the confines of this banquet 
 hall there are not two Americans in one hun- 
 dred who know the words of the great song 
 that glorifies that flag, and if they do the 
 probabilities are they can not sing them. And 
 this belief harmonizes perfectly with the fol- 
 lowing experience: 
 
 153 
 
154 Fun ^nd Pathos of One Life 
 
 Some time ago, while crossing the Atlantic 
 Ocean coming westward, a grand entertain- 
 ment was given in the dining-saloon of the 
 steamer, and during the entertainment some 
 patriot suggested we sing " The Star Span- 
 gled Banner." It was tried, but it was a 
 complete and dismal failure. The only per- 
 son present who seemed to know all the words 
 of the song was the daughter of a naturalized 
 American who had married an Englishman, 
 and, unfortunately, she belonged to that class 
 who always keep quiet during thunderstorms, 
 because of their metallic voices, and of 
 course she did not sing long. Finally her 
 husband, to relieve the embarrassment, arose 
 and said : " Ladies and Gentlemen : America 
 is the child of England, and England is proud 
 of her offspring. Now, it is apparent that 
 you can not sing the song of the child, there- 
 fore let us sing the song of the mother; let 
 us sing ' God Save the King.' " And there, 
 on that American ship, built by American 
 labor, flying the American flag and thronged 
 with American citizens, " God Save the 
 King " was sung to perfection, while, only a 
 few moments before, an effort to sing " The 
 Star Spangled Banner," that song which glori- 
 fies the fairest and the fastest flag that floats, 
 was a complete and humiliating failure. 
 
The Spirit of a Nation's Song 155 
 
 Well, to express it moderately, many of 
 us found as little comfort in that incident as 
 I did several years ago, when the chairman 
 of your Committee of Arrangements anni- 
 hilated a normal Republican majority of 
 5,000 in eastern Pennsylvania, and became the 
 youngest and one of the most popular Demo- 
 cratic members of the House. At that time 
 some of my over-enthusiastic friends thought 
 I ought to stand for Congress as a Republican 
 in the same district. One day an old gentle- 
 man who knew a great deal more about po- 
 litical wire-pulling than he did about the use 
 and application of words, came to me and 
 said, " Now the boys want you to run to 
 Congress and you ought to run." I said, 
 " My dear sir, I have no ability or qualifi- 
 cations for Congress and I don't want to 
 run." " Oh," said he, " ability and quali- 
 fications ain't got nothing to do with it. We 
 often send very ordinary and common men to 
 Congress, and now is just as good a time for 
 you to run as any." 
 
 Under the spell of that pitiful ocean inci- 
 dent I some time .later entered a great con- 
 gress of patriots, held in one of the New 
 England States, and offered the following 
 resolution for consideration : 
 
 " Whereas, as less than two per cent, of 
 
156 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 the American people know the words of their 
 National anthem, 
 
 " Therefore be it Resolved, That this So- 
 ciety, in congress assembled, earnestly request 
 that at least one stanza of that song be sung 
 by all of our local and State societies at the 
 opening of all their meetings," 
 
 As soon as the resolution was read, a half 
 dozen patriots sprang to their feet protesting 
 that it would be a positive disgrace for the 
 largest organized body of patriots in the 
 United States to sanction a resolution telling 
 the whole world that less than two per cent, 
 of the American people know the words of 
 their own National song. Well, any blind 
 man could see that a robust danger stood 
 knocking at the door of the author of that 
 resolution, but finally he secured recognition 
 and said: 
 
 " Gentlemen, sixty per cent, of the men 
 and women of England can sing, ' God Save 
 the King,' a large majority of the Ger- 
 man people have learned to sing ' Lieb Vater- 
 land, magst ruhig sein, fest steht und treu 
 die Wacht-am-Rhein.' And a great majority 
 of the French people can voice in ringing 
 notes their ' Marseillaise,' ' AUons, enfants 
 de la patrie, le jour de gloire est arrive, Aux 
 armes citoyens, formez vos bataillons. Mar- 
 
The Spirit of a Nation's Song 157 
 
 chons, Marchons.' Nearly all of the little 
 brown soldiers of Japan, who, with monster 
 heroism, stormed the bloody angles on 
 Dragon Hill, chanted with enthusiasm their 
 national anthem : 
 
 " ' May Our Lord's dominion last, 
 Till a thousand years have passed ; 
 Twice four thousand times o'er told, 
 Firm as rock of earth, deep-rooted, 
 Moss of ages uncomputed 
 Grow upon it green and old.' 
 
 " But," continued the author of the reso- 
 lution, " I will wager a very large congres- 
 sional appropriation if you will get it passed, 
 that not two Americans in one hundred know 
 the words of their own National anthem, and 
 if they do, the probabilities are they can not 
 sing them." 
 
 Well, of course, this outburst brought an- 
 other tidal wave of trouble to the author of 
 the resolution. Immediately a dozen men 
 sprang to their feet, and a delegate from 
 Connecticut, where the stone fences do not 
 turn out for anything but schoolhouses, in- 
 sisted that the people of New England had 
 learned that song in the public schools, and 
 nearly all could sing it. In reply to this the 
 author said, " Gentlemen, with all due re- 
 spect for this august body of patriots, I will 
 
158 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 give one hundred dollars to the National 
 Fund of this Society if two per cent, of the 
 New England delegation know the words of 
 and can sing ' The Star Spangled Banner.' " 
 Instantly a score of New Englanders rose to 
 their feet for the purpose of protesting, but 
 the presiding officer, in order to quiet mat- 
 ters, requested that the resolution be with- 
 drawn and presented in a more acceptable 
 form the next morning. This was agreed to, 
 and the patriots, apparently relieved, pro- 
 ceeded with the regular order of business, 
 but evidently they felt something as the 
 father did who received the following tele- 
 gram from his boy in college: 
 
 " Dear Father : I have just had my fresh- 
 man examinations, and the professors are so 
 delighted they want me to try again." 
 
 Now the most uncomfortable feature of 
 the incident, I am sorry to say, was the fact 
 that the author of the resolution did not know 
 the words of the song himself, which he dis- 
 covered, to his utter amazement, when he 
 tried to repeat them to himself, and if some 
 clever deletyate had risen in that Congress 
 and asked him to repeat the first stanza of 
 the song he would have felt as embarrassed 
 as the man did who went into a restaurant 
 one day and sat down at a table and found a 
 
The Spirit of a Nation's Song 159 
 
 plate of honey there and ate it and went 
 home. 
 
 Some time afterward he took his wife to 
 this same restaurant and sat down at the 
 same table, but there was no honey there. 
 Presently the colored waiter came to take the 
 order, and the man said, " John, where is 
 my honey?" and John paralyzed him with 
 this reply, " She don't work here no mo', 
 boss; she's done got a job in de silk mill." 
 
 Conscious that he had placed himself in 
 jeopardy before that great congress, the au- 
 thor started out early next morning to buy 
 the song and practice what he was preaching 
 by learning the words. The first book store 
 he entered the clerk smiled and said, " We 
 had a great run on ' Star Spangled Banner ' 
 songs last night, and sold out." He turned 
 to go, when the clerk stopped him, saying, 
 " Perhaps we may find it in a collection of 
 college songs we have." And the collection 
 of college songs was examined, but the words 
 of our National anthem were not there. 
 Shades of Washington, and Greene, and Lee, 
 and Marion, and all of that band of heroes 
 who helped to make the flag that song glori- 
 fies a possibility; and shades of Lincoln, and 
 Grant, and Sheridan, and Sherman, and 
 Meade, and all of that grand army which 
 
i6o Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 preserved to us an " unbroken brotherhood 
 from sea to sea," in a collection of college 
 songs, found within the shadows of one of 
 the greatest institutions of learning in this 
 country, which is sending thousands of young 
 men into the active life of this nation to help 
 make and administer our laws, the words 
 of our National anthem could not be 
 found ! 
 
 Think of it ! Disturbed and chagrined, the 
 author turned to go, when the clerk stopped 
 him again, saying, " Perhaps we may find it 
 in a collection of Miscellaneous Songs we 
 have just received," and this collection was 
 examined, and there, near the front page, as 
 bold as triumph, was " God Save the King." 
 Then came those two ringing songs of the 
 Southland, " Maryland, my Maryland," and 
 " Dixie." Then " Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, 
 the Boys are Marching," and " The Girl I 
 left Behind Me," and " There'll be a Hot 
 Time in the Old Town To-night," and 
 " Who'll Care for Mother Now," and " Ev- 
 erybody Works but Father," and " Bedelia." 
 And finally, away in the back part of the 
 book, in rather small type, was found the 
 glorious anthem that sprang to life amid the 
 weird cries of the stormy petrel of human 
 strife to glorify that flag whose influence to- 
 
The Spirit of a Nation's Song i6i 
 
 day is so earth-wide that whenever the Presi- 
 dent of the United States voices, through his 
 great Secretary of State, sentiments in favor 
 of international rights, his words are listened 
 to with profound respect and attention in the 
 council chambers of the world. The author 
 of the resolution bought the book, he com- 
 mitted the song to memory, and he entered 
 that great congress with these words upon 
 his lips : 
 
 " Oh, say, can you see by the dawn's early light 
 What so proudly we haii'd at the twilight's last 
 gleaming." 
 
 And as he sat down, to his utter surprise, 
 the entire audience arose and sang the first 
 verse of " The Star Spangled Banner," and 
 sang it well. 
 
 As soon as the singing ceased, a delegate 
 from Boston said, " Now that we have dem- 
 onstrated we can sing ' The Star Spangled 
 Banner,' it is time for the gentleman from 
 Pennsylvania to pay his one hundred dollars 
 into the fund of this Society." Here was a 
 moment that was not the happiest of the au- 
 thor's life, and at first he found as little com- 
 fort in the situation as the teacher did who 
 sent a small boy home from school one day 
 with a card upon which was written, " Your 
 
1 62 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 boy talks too much," and when his father 
 read it he smiled and sent the card back to 
 the teacher with these words upon it, " Great 
 Caesar, you should hear his mother." Finally 
 the author found himself and said, " Gen- 
 tlemen, the reported run on the book stores 
 last night is true. You have sung the first 
 stanza of the song out of the books you have 
 purchased, and have sung it well. My propo- 
 sition was that if two per cent, of the New 
 England delegation know the words of, and 
 can sing ' The Star Spangled Banner,' I 
 would give one hundred dollars to the fund 
 of this Society. Now, if you will close the 
 books and sing the second stanza I'll double 
 the gift." But they did not try; they knew 
 better, for, in that aggregation of five hun- 
 dred patriots, there were not ten persons who 
 knew the words of their National song, and 
 in order to relieve the embarrassment, the 
 original resolution, modified to meet the de- 
 mands of New England pride, was offered 
 and adopted with the compliment of a rising 
 vote. 
 
 But, gentlemen, that concession to New 
 England pride did not change one iota the 
 deplorable fact that less than two per cent, 
 of the American people know the words of 
 their National hymn. 
 
The Spirit of a Nation's Song 163 
 
 In conclusion, permit me to say, that song 
 sings of 
 
 Your flag and my flag, and oh how much it holds, 
 Your land and my land secure within its folds; 
 Your hearts and my heart beat quicker at the sight, 
 Sun-kissed and wind-tossed, the red, the blue and the 
 
 white. 
 The one flag, the great flag, the flag for me and you, 
 Pennsylvania's birthright pride, the red, the white, the 
 
 blue. 
 
 And you who are proud that our great 
 State has given it birth, if you knew the 
 magic of any given form of speech or action 
 that would place the song that glorifies that 
 flag in the hearts of our people, the patriotic 
 spirit that would spring from that act would 
 mean more to this country in times of need 
 than battalions and armed battlements, and 
 mighty ships of war. For at the sound of 
 the bugle call it would give to this nation 
 an army of patriots mightier than Rome was 
 able to summon behind her golden eagles, 
 and that spirit would baiBe every foe, at 
 home and abroad, and invite the great Re- 
 public to a lofty and splendid destiny. 
 
JACK BREAKS INTO THE CONSU- 
 LAR SERVICE 
 
 One night Jack attended a meeting at 
 which an address upon consular reform was 
 delivered and he was deeply impressed. The 
 speaker said in part: 
 
 " I hold that the day for commercial op- 
 timism in this country has passed away and 
 the hour for commercial opportunism has 
 come. Up to now our export system has 
 been in the kindergarten class compared to 
 those of Germany and England. Our ex- 
 porters have simply supplied the voluntary 
 demands. In the near future they will be 
 struggling anxiously for foreign markets in 
 order to rid themselves of a troublesome sur- 
 plus, and they must succeed if American 
 labor is to be employed at fair wages. 
 
 " The Government will dig the Panama 
 Canal, but the Government is not itself an 
 exporter, and when the canal is in operation 
 you will find the finished products of the 
 Orient floating more easily and freely this 
 way than the finished products of the Occi- 
 dent will float toward the Japan Sea. You 
 will find many things coming our way natu- 
 164 
 
Jack Breaks into the Consular Service 165 
 
 rally, and without the least exertion on our 
 part, but you will not find many things going 
 the other way unless we push them. 
 
 " To do this the American consular corps 
 must be deployed along the commercial 
 picket lines of the world's trade, under a 
 control and discipline as rigid as that of the 
 army and navy. This being the case the 
 question arises, ' How can we improve the 
 consular service to meet this task?' And 
 right here permit me to say that the subject 
 is too important, the needed reforms too 
 varied and pressing, and the best means to 
 obtain all of the ends are still too undeter- 
 mined to be explained in the time limit of 
 this address; and yet in the presence of this 
 intelligent audience I am willing to say that 
 if Congress will do four things and do them 
 thoroughly, the American consular service 
 will soon become the best in the world, and 
 these four things are as follows : 
 
 " First. A proper classification of all of 
 the positions, a thing which has never been 
 done. Then readjust and pay reasonable 
 salaries to all of the incumbents and place the 
 entire service under a rigid inspection by 
 able, energetic, and impartial consuls-general. 
 Congress must arrange for this. 
 
 " Second. Cover all fees, official and un- 
 
1 66 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 official, into the Treasury of the United 
 States, every dollar of them. Congress must 
 legislate for this. 
 
 " Third. Construct and pass a law that no 
 man holding an American consular commis- 
 sion, who does his duty, can be catapulted 
 out of the service like a tramp, without warn- 
 ing and without cause, upon the political 
 change of an administration; and for that 
 matter, at any other time. Congress can pre- 
 vent this. 
 
 "Fourth. Beneath every American con- 
 sular shield place a worthy and repre- 
 sentative American citizen to care for the 
 interests of the American people. Congress 
 must help to do this. 
 
 " And if Congress will do these four 
 things the patriotic Chief Magistrate of this 
 nation and his great Secretary of State will 
 certainly do the rest and do it well. If Con- 
 gress will make those four propositions 
 operative the commercial interests of this 
 country will realize what they have long and 
 earnestly sought, a perfectly organized, well 
 disciplined and efficient consular corps. 
 
 " And right here permit me to state that 
 when these things obtain : 
 
 " The invalid in search of a benign climate 
 near some comfortable sanitarium; 
 
Jack Breaks into the Consular Service 167 
 
 " The man who has special business in- 
 terests in the consular district to which he 
 wishes to be assigned; 
 
 " The specialist who wants to make a 
 special study in conjunction with consular 
 work; 
 
 " The man who feels that he has rendered 
 sufficient political services at home to make 
 him immune from any exertion abroad; 
 
 " The man who wants to go to Europe to 
 obtain a social standing which he cannot get 
 at home; 
 
 " The retired tired business or profes- 
 sional man who desires to go abroad at gov- 
 ernment expense for travel or for rest; 
 
 " The American father who wants to go 
 to Europe at government expense in order 
 to give his American children a foreign edu- 
 cation ; 
 
 " And above all, the citizen of a foreign 
 power who wants to hang the American con- 
 sular shield and flag above his shop for what 
 ' there is in it,' need no longer apply for 
 positions in the American consular service, 
 for the Government, aroused to the impor- 
 tance of its task, will, under this new order 
 of things, bar all cheap, impractical, alien, 
 and useless material from the American con- 
 sular corps. 
 
1 68 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 " Practical work, intelligent and well-di- 
 rected industry, patriotic impulse, and clean 
 personal and official records are what the 
 service needs. To get these things the Gov- 
 ernment must pay for them, and to pay for 
 them right, the Congress of the United 
 States must give fair salaries to representa- 
 tive American citizens for honest consular 
 work. 
 
 " The next step," said the speaker, " is 
 the complete abolition of the present per- 
 nicious unofficial fee system. It is one of the 
 most formidable barriers that now confronts 
 an improvement of the service. It tempts to 
 the falsification of returns. It leads to ex- 
 tortion. It makes easy the invasion of a col- 
 league's territory. It creates friction among 
 consuls. It sometimes wrongs the American 
 citizen. It often burdens the foreign sub- 
 ject, and it has been, and always and forever 
 will be if maintained, a fertile mother of 
 graft. Every dollar collected by the unoffi- 
 cial fee system should be covered into the 
 Treasury of the United States, just as every 
 official fee is supposed to be, and any failure 
 to make full and honest returns should be 
 followed by swift recall and quick dismissal. 
 Then — and this, after careful consideration 
 of the subject, I feel is a very important thing 
 
Jack Breaks into the Consular Service 169 
 
 — remove all subjects of foreign powers now 
 holding American consular commissions. I 
 mean the five hundred and sixty odd citizens 
 of foreign powers who now occupy our vice- 
 consulships, consular agencies, and clerkships 
 to consuls, and who are a constant and in- 
 creasing irritation to foreign shippers, as well 
 as positive barriers to the expansion of Amer- 
 ican trade, for while we must have a foreign 
 service, there is no valid reason why we 
 should have a sub-service of foreigners. 
 Americanize the American Consular service 
 and keep it American. Remove these gentle- 
 men courteously, on the ground of public 
 policy, and fill their places with worthy and 
 capable young Americans, not upon a fee in- 
 come system such as now exists, but upon a 
 salary basis and make these places training 
 schools from which the capables may be ad- 
 vanced to higher grades in the service and the 
 incapables recalled and dismissed. 
 
 " And when these men, and all other men 
 of the American consular corps, do their 
 whole duty, throw the protecting shield of a 
 reasonable tenure of office about them so 
 that the hungry political axmen cannot, 
 without warning and without cause, strike 
 their unjust and hurtful blows. 
 
 " I know there are some patriotic public 
 
170 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 men who fear that the application of the 
 civil service law to the consular service might 
 create dry rot in the consular corps, but un- 
 der the present system we find evidences of 
 dry rot. For instance, a consular agent in 
 writing about his office, said: 
 
 " ' My office as consular agent and my pri- 
 vate pursuit as hotel keeper combined has 
 always been a puzzle to the queer notions on 
 man's dignity in this aristocratic East, and 
 I cannot tell if they understand me when I 
 explain them. 
 
 " ' Though distinct as to their duties, the 
 Consul and the Landlord are one in person 
 and heart and guided by one motto appli- 
 cable as well to an Office-room as to a 
 Kitchen : 
 
 " ' Biblical simplicity and Evangelical 
 cleanliness.' 
 
 "Another wrote: 'Social condiction — 
 Low, owing to the poorness condiction of the 
 majority; number of american citizens re- 
 side in this City — none, general cost of leav- 
 ing expensive. Only one public hotel at this 
 city.' 
 
 "Another said: 'I give informs often 
 to those american manufacturers that are in 
 the possibility to sel? their goods in this 
 town.' 
 
Jack Breaks into the Consular Service 171 
 
 " Another writes : ' This town has a 
 great number of villages and detached dwell- 
 ings engaged in agricultural pursuits and 
 employed on sugar estates.' 
 
 " From Canada came this screed : ' My 
 vice-consul is a practical farmer, a hotel 
 man, a marine engineer, and a Niagara river 
 pilot.' 
 
 " One wrote a letter to his sweetheart 
 in which he tells her that he loves her with 
 his whole heart and he spells it, ' hole harte.' 
 You hear of another full consul — I do not 
 mean a consul that is full, but a principal offi- 
 cer — who rises uninvited at a Fourth of July 
 banquet, which was attended by over two 
 hundred distinguished Americans and for- 
 eigners, and you hear him say, ' Come, boys, 
 let us rise our glasses to the ladies and 
 upon this anniversity of our nation's birth let 
 us drink to the health of George Washing- 
 ton, who was the fundament of his country.' 
 
 " From these examples you will see that 
 some dry rot prevails under the present sys- 
 tem of breaking into the consular service 
 through political pulls. 
 
 " Now if the Congress will classify all 
 positions, readjust salaries, cover all fees into 
 the Treasury, give a reasonable tenure of 
 office, and put none but representative Ameri- 
 
172 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 can citizens on guard, a simple, easy, and 
 practical reform of the consular service will 
 have been accomplished. 
 
 " If a memorial along these lines were pre- 
 sented to Congress by the great trade organ- 
 izations it would instantly attract the atten- 
 tion of that great body of men, who stand 
 to-day pre-eminent among the law-makers of 
 the earth and who are always ready to do 
 anything that is practical and helpful for the 
 expansion of American commerce on all sides 
 of the seas. And if they should consider 
 such a memorial favorably the commercial 
 interests of this nation would have a well- 
 trained army of commercial soldiers to help 
 fight and win the battles that must be fought 
 and won by the survival of the fittest in the 
 irrepressible contest for the over-sea trade." 
 
 For some time Jack Stanley had longed 
 to become a member of that ever increasing 
 throng who yearn to break into the consular 
 service. This speech served to whet that de- 
 sire, but, notwithstanding his wide acquaint- 
 ance with politicians he found the undertak- 
 ing bristling with difficulties. He found that 
 the age of a woman is not more doubtful 
 than a dead sure thing in a struggle for con- 
 sular appointment. He found too much " by- 
 
Jack Breaks into the Consular Service 173 
 
 and-by " and too little " now-now " realized 
 from political promises. He found that en- 
 dorsements on applications and letters of 
 recommendation are as helpless as the seventh 
 commandment in a den of thieves, unless they 
 are supported by the personal efforts of the 
 men who sign them, and that most of these 
 men must be in position, politically, to give 
 something in return. He also found that the 
 most important step is to discover a vacancy, 
 or a prospective one, get the appointing 
 power to agree to appoint, and then sit tight 
 and hope. 
 
 Jack decided to enter the service if possi- 
 ble. He had heard that it was the lack of 
 push that keeps a man back, but in seeking 
 a public position he discovered that the neces- 
 sary requisites are political pulls and power 
 to pull them. During his journalistic career 
 he had won favor with several political 
 leaders, and one day he took the ablest of 
 his pulls over to the Department of State to 
 find out from the chief of the Consular 
 Bureau how he could most expeditiously get 
 into the foreign service. Some one was ahead 
 of them, as is usually the case at this mecca 
 of applicants. It was an American business 
 man who had a friend he was urging for ap- 
 pointment to a certain position in a land of 
 
174 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 one of the dead languages, because of the 
 peculiar unfitness of the incumbent. This 
 consul had gone abroad at government ex- 
 pense to make a special archeological study 
 in connection with consular work, and the 
 merchant having business at the consulate 
 called to transact it, and was giving the chief 
 of the Consular Bureau his experience. Said 
 he: 
 
 " One day I went to the consulate to get 
 some invoice forms. The memoranda of the 
 archeological book had crowded the blanks 
 to the floor, and taken possession of the table 
 and desk and several of the chairs. The con- 
 sul got down on his knees and crawled among 
 the scattered invoice forms of various kinds, 
 some for ' purchasers,' some for * consignors,' 
 and some for ' personal effects,' and after 
 rummaging about a long time, he stood erect 
 and said, * Call again; things are so mixed up 
 I can't find the blankety blanks you want.' 
 His memoranda was well assorted and care- 
 fully arranged, but the invoice forms — ^well, 
 what does such a small matter as invoice 
 forms have to do with an American consulate 
 any way? " 
 
 As Jack's Political Pull was on the point 
 of disclosing to the chief the object of his 
 call, a gentleman with an oriental cast of 
 
Jack Breaks into the Consular Service 175 
 
 vision, and an occidental cast of cheek, 
 pushed in between them and said: 
 
 " Veil, mister Shief, how about dot fa- 
 cancy in Shermany. Dot would fit me yust 
 like noddings." 
 
 " I am sorry, Mr. Jacobson," said the 
 chief, "but the President appointed Mr. 
 Smith Jones to that place yesterday." 
 
 "Vat," cried Mr. Jacobson, "Vat! Smith 
 Shones abbointed to Shermany? Gott in 
 himmel, vat is dot Smith Shones going to do 
 in Shermany, he's no Sherman. Dot Mr. 
 Bresident makes von grad pig plunder ven 
 he sends dose Shones to Shermany." And 
 picking up his hat he walked out in high 
 dudgeon. 
 
 Jack's Political Pull, finding an oppor- 
 tunity, made a frank appeal to the chief for 
 information as to the swiftest way of hurry- 
 ing Jack into the service. The chief wrin- 
 kled one of those frozen diplomatic smiles 
 for which he is famous, and observed that 
 the Secretary of State might know. They 
 went to see that great man. Others were 
 ahead of 'them, and all wanted to go abroad 
 at Government expense. While waiting a 
 card was brought to the Secretary by the 
 head messenger, who was flashing a merry 
 twinkle from his eyes. It was the card of 
 
176 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 one of the greatest statesmen and most per- 
 sistent bores in public life. As soon as the 
 Secretary saw the card his face became sol- 
 emn. He arose quickly, and stepping hur- 
 riedly to the hat rack, put on his cylinder, 
 buttoned up his Prince Albert, and started for 
 the door, reaching it just as the distinguished 
 bore entered. 
 
 " Oh, I see you are going out, Mr. Secre- 
 tary," said the statesman. 
 
 " Yes," replied the Secretary, " I have an 
 important engagement and must keep it. I 
 will see you later." And walking out 
 through the corridor, he descended the stairs, 
 passed through another corridor slowly, to 
 give the eminent bore time to depart, then up 
 stairs he went and back to his office, doffed 
 his hat, sat down at his desk, and took up 
 the thread of conversation where it had been 
 broken off, as calmly as though nothing had 
 happened. 
 
 Whenever this Secretary of State was 
 through with a visitor he had a peculiar way 
 of rising from his seat which seemed to lift 
 everybody about him to an erect posture. As 
 soon as he was ready to dismiss the parties 
 to whom he was giving audience he arose 
 and they all stood as though they were con- 
 nected to him by some unseen tie. When 
 
Jack Breaks into the Consular Service 177 
 
 they were gone the Secretary turned to Jack's 
 Political Pull and inquired what he could do 
 for him. 
 
 " To be frank with you, Mr. Secretary," 
 said the Political Pull, " I have a young man 
 here who would fit into a consular vacancy 
 without a particle of alteration, and if there 
 is no vacancy you might suggest how one 
 could be created." 
 
 The Secretary said he had learned from 
 experience that consular vacancies were 
 created in two ways — by death and at 
 the White House, but seldom by voluntary 
 resignation, and that, on the subject of 
 appointments, the President was the sole au- 
 thority. Saying this he arose in his accus- 
 tomed way, a way that brought the Political 
 Pull and Jack to an upright, and informed 
 them by a simple glance that he was willing 
 to let them go. 
 
 The next step was in the direction of that 
 great white building where so many hopes 
 are realized or blighted. Jack accompanied 
 his Political Pull to the Executive Office. 
 There they found the Chief Magistrate sur- 
 rounded by a group of placemen from a 
 Western State, who were trying to make or 
 fill a vacancy. As they passed into the re- 
 ception room they paused in a far corner, and 
 
178 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 while waiting for an audience, their ears 
 caught the following: 
 
 " Gentlemen," said the President to the 
 delegation, " your candidate for consular 
 honors may be all you say, but I have found 
 that while exaggeration belongs to fishermen, 
 it very often affiliates with men who endorse 
 candidates for office. I desire to send good 
 men abroad, but as I cannot know all of 
 them personally I depend upon the assur- 
 ances of their supporters, and this has led 
 me into some deplorable selections. A mem- 
 ber of this delegation once recommended a 
 young man very highly to me, and I sent him 
 abroad, but the government to which he was 
 accredited refused him an exequatur on the 
 ground that he was an embezzler." 
 
 At this moment a distinguished statesman 
 entered and the President said, " Here comes 
 another political leader from your common- 
 wealth who urged the appointment of a con- 
 stituent, with the solemn assurance that he 
 was only a little below the angel class, but 
 the government to which he was assigned re- 
 fused to receive him because he had swin- 
 dled one of its citizens during a great ex- 
 position in this country." At this the dis- 
 tinguished newcomer turned to the Chief 
 Magistrate and laconically said: 
 
Jack Breaks into the Consular Service 179 
 
 "Well, Mr. President, the candidate of 
 my colleague was a little worse than mine, 
 wasn't he? " 
 
 " I don't think," said the President, 
 " there was much difference between them, 
 and I desire to emphasize the fact that this 
 reckless way of recommending persons for 
 places of public trust is the bane of the ap- 
 pointing power and the most persistent evil 
 with which it has to contend." 
 
 " But, Mr. President," said the Political 
 Angel of the candidate, " our man is A No. 
 I, pure gold, 24 carats fine, and just the per- 
 son you need in the consular business." 
 
 The President: " Is he a gentleman?" 
 
 Political Angel: " Mr. President, he will 
 never be put to the trouble of trying to be a 
 gentleman, the Lord did that job for him. I 
 never associated with a more perfect one. 
 He is noted for it in my section. He is very 
 strict on this point. I have seen him get up 
 and beg his own pardon after falling down. 
 He is politeness in the concrete, so to speak." 
 
 The President: "Has he had any reli- 
 gious training? " 
 
 Political Angel: " He has. He absorbed 
 religion at his mother's breast. He can 
 quote Scriptures like a deacon, and doesn't 
 confine himself to ' Now I lay me down to 
 
i8o Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 sleep ' in times of supplication. He's a para- 
 gon in moral philosophy and an expert in 
 practical Christianity." 
 
 The President: "The length of a man's 
 prayers are not always a safe test of his real 
 life. How are his morals ? " 
 
 Political Angel: "Morals, Mr. Presi- 
 dent, are among his conspicuous virtues. He 
 can nip sin in the bud with remarkable ease. 
 He never trifles with the mercy of God, and 
 would not trample on the principles of sal- 
 vation if he could avoid it. It is as natural 
 for him to be moral as it is for a cat to have 
 twins. He never has to put himself out to 
 be good. It is as easy for him as it is for 
 some men to complicate things like ten in a 
 bed." 
 
 The President: "Is he industrious?" 
 
 Political Angel: " I am glad you asked 
 me that, Mr. President. Industry is his 
 badge of honor. He will work sixteen hours 
 on a holiday and insist it is pleasant pastime. 
 An increase of office hours always decorates 
 his face with smiles. He would leave a sofa 
 in a back parlor with his best girl on it to 
 tackle a hard job. He always hustled for 
 business and worked it with both hands. 
 That's the do-things he is, and he never seems 
 
Jack Breaks into the Consular Service i8i 
 
 The President: "Is he capable?" 
 
 Political Angel: "I think he is capable 
 of doing almost anything. He will seize 
 hold of the first thing that turns up, and turn 
 up the next thing if he wants it. He believes 
 that God helps him who helps himself to 
 what he needs. He is strong on this point 
 and never misses an opportunity." 
 
 The President: "Has he ever studied 
 law?" 
 
 Political Angel: " Yes, Mr. President, he 
 is an attorney-at-law ; has also been a coroner, 
 and can sit on a trial or an inquest with equal 
 facility. He has also studied dentistry and 
 can draw a molar as well as a deed, and has 
 a smattering of Christian Science." 
 
 The President: "Does he drink, smoke, 
 or chew? " 
 
 Political Angel: " It is fortunate that you 
 asked that question, for it gives a chance to 
 voice one of his prime virtues. He organized 
 the first ' Anti-Chew and Smoke Club ' in my 
 section, and I never knew him to have any- 
 thing stronger than a buttermilk-breath in 
 my hfe." 
 
 The President: "Does he swear?" 
 
 Political Angel : " Never heard him say 
 anything worse than ' Gotterdammerung ' 
 and ' Godfrey's cordial.' The truth is, Mr. 
 
1 82 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 President, he is so sensitive on the subject of 
 profanity that they have to affirm him in 
 court," 
 
 The President: "You seem to have an 
 ideal candidate; none of the vices and nearly 
 all of the virtues, something rarely found in 
 those seeking public office. By the way, 
 Judge, how long have you known this man ? " 
 
 The Political Angel hesitated, and the un- 
 expected happened. In this moment of hesi- 
 tation, a member of the delegation naively 
 broke the silence with, " Why, Mr. Presi- 
 dent, I Introduced him to the Judge in the 
 waiting-room just before we entered." 
 
 The President gave the Judge a look that 
 would have withered a man with a con- 
 science, and said: 
 
 " I thought as much. File the papers of 
 your ideal young man in the Department of 
 State, Judge, and when you get on speaking 
 terms advise him that any business bird he 
 may have in hand is better than a flyer in the 
 consular bush and he should hold it tight, 
 for he stands about as much chance of filling 
 a consular vacancy as he does of going 
 abroad by pontoon or tunnel. 
 
 The audience was over. The Political 
 Angel with his protege and friends walked 
 out with smiles as though they were suffering. 
 
Jack Breaks into the Consular Service 183 
 
 The President did not say, "What's your 
 hurry," he let them go, and, turning to Jack's 
 Political Pull, greeted him with a cordial 
 hand grasp and said, "What can I do for 
 you?" 
 
 Political Pull : " Mr. President, the Sec- 
 retary of State informs me that all vacancies 
 in the consular service are created by death 
 or the Presidential ax, and here is a candi- 
 date who would like to occupy a creation." 
 
 The President : "Did you hear what 
 the Judge said about his candidate? How 
 does your man measure up to that descrip- 
 tion?" 
 
 Political Pull: "I don't think he is as 
 much of an all-around angel. He certainly 
 would not break into a church with ' No ad- 
 mission,' posted on the front door, or strug- 
 gle to get into heaven before the Lord sent 
 for him." 
 
 The President : " I take it for granted 
 that this young man is a gentleman." 
 
 Political Pull: "Well, Mr. President, he 
 may lack the superficial polish of Europe, 
 but he has more natural humanity. He does 
 not belong to that class of young bloods who 
 bleed the old man, and he doesn't hiunt the 
 church and theater fronts to ogle the girls 
 and make remarks. He never wears his 
 
184 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 trousers rolled up on dry days, nor does he 
 stay longer than business requires at an in- 
 terview. He does know when to use a tooth- 
 pick, and how to sit on a chair in the presence 
 of ladies, and also the right time to break 
 in on a general conversation." 
 
 The President: "That is encouraging. 
 How are his morals? " 
 
 Political Pull: "Well, Mr. President, 
 I've never seen him try to do the sacred per- 
 son act. He isn't perfect, we have a few in 
 our town who think they are, but they don't 
 get on extra well. This young man is rather 
 natural in his morals. He tempers his holy 
 zeal with a little holy common sense. If any 
 one treads on his toes intentionally and he 
 knows it, he will raise a hot disturbance, but 
 I think he would do the square thing in a 
 meeting-house, and I am sure he doesn't feel 
 that he could write a better book than the 
 Bible." 
 
 The President : " That is reassuring. Is 
 he industrious? " 
 
 Political Pull: "I don't know just how 
 to answer that. I've heard him say he could 
 do everything but ' saw wood and work,' yet 
 I've known him to get up before daylight 
 with the thermometer below zero and build 
 the kitchen fire, put the kettle on, and arrange 
 
Jack Breaks into the Consular Service 185 
 
 everything for breakfast, before he would 
 wake his good old mother." 
 
 The President : " Any young man of 
 ability, who is kind to his mother, will make 
 good wherever you put him. Has your can- 
 didate ability? " 
 
 Political Pull: "I never saw him eat 
 enough for three and look wiser than the 
 whole Carnegie Institute, but I think he has 
 a saving amount of ability and sense. I have 
 seen him, while freshman at college, submit 
 to the usual restrictions of the upper class- 
 men, but when it came to a rush he went 
 through a solid phalanx of sophomores like 
 a telegram. He is a success on a football 
 team and a mighty stepper in a cross-country 
 run, and can split the wind in a hundred-yard 
 dash that beats the best." 
 
 The President (interested): "He seems 
 to be quite a boy. Does he drink, smoke, or 
 chew?" 
 
 Political Pull: "He always rides in the 
 smoking-car, not because it is the only place 
 disinfected on the train, but because he wants 
 to smoke. As for drinking, I would say that 
 cocktails don't ooze out of his skin on warm 
 days, and yet he can drink a glass with a big 
 stick in it, when thirsty, but he does it with 
 discretion." 
 
1 86 Fun and Pathos of One Life 
 
 The President: "Does he swear?" 
 
 Political Pull : " I think he has one of the 
 choicest vocabularies in that line I ever 
 heard, but he shows real genius in selecting 
 the time and place. I am satisfied that he 
 could, if occasion called for it, swear at an 
 ' invoice-as-you-please ' shipper in three dif- 
 ferent languages, and on a pinch make him- 
 self understood in four; but he would use 
 judgment, for he knows that the time to 
 strike the iron is when it can be hit." 
 
 The President: "Has he had any ex- 
 perience in trade and commerce ? " 
 
 Political Pull: "I think he has some 
 ability in that line. It's in the blood. His 
 father started out with a small grocery in my 
 town and in less than ten years he had one 
 on nearly every main street comer in the 
 county. The boy inherited a talent for 
 trade. If, in his early days, he tackled a 
 group of boys loaded with jack knives, mar- 
 bles, and tops, you would find the choicest 
 assortment in his pocket in the evening." 
 
 The President: " He seems to be a likely 
 lad. By the way, how long have you known 
 him?" 
 
 Political Pull: "Why, Mr. President, I 
 heard him split the air with his first yell. I 
 was the family doctor." 
 
Jack Breaks into the Consular Service 187 
 
 The President: "Good. My O. K. will 
 go on his application paper for the first va- 
 cancy and my initials will go under the O. K., 
 and that counts at the Department of State. 
 While your candidate may not be a paragon 
 of goodness, I will know what I am getting 
 if I appoint him, and that rarely happens 
 when I depend on the average politician for 
 truth about candidates." 
 
 Jack walked out of the White House as 
 brave as a victory. Within three weeks he 
 received his commission as consul at a trade 
 center in Germany, took the oath of office, 
 was allowed thirty days for instructions with 
 pay, at the end of which time he was on 
 board a fast steamer bound for the Old 
 World, where his busy life for eleven years 
 was full of fun and pathos.