You go to the city hall in St. Louis, the old one, which looks like a rickety tobacco warehouse, or the new one, which is a realization in material of a bad dream consequent upon too much rarebit, and you might as well be in Berlin. You are lost without an interpreter. You must talk German or a Joe Emmet dialect, to make yourself understood. Money only doesn't have to talk German at the city hall. That is transferred without being translated. The mayor of the town talks, in his public addresses, a lingo that would make the fortune of a vaudeville comedian of the Dutch Daly stripe; and his son, who is his secretary, has the physiognomical symptoms of intellectuality that you might expect in a dude who eats with his knife, or any Brummel of "the bad lands." The lower branch of the municipal legislature is a bedlam. Its sessions are eruptions of obscenity. Talk is indulged in that would cause the ejectment of the talker from a bawdy- house parlor. The august body never rouses into activity save over some measure with "stuff" in it. The combine will take as low as twenty-five dollars to beat or pass a bill. They introduce bills to induce the franchise holding syndicates to put up money to kill them, and business is at its best when two or three street railroad bosses can be led into bidding against each other for the passage or defeat of some measure. The St. Louis house of delegates is as fine a gang of rapacious ruffians as ever invited mob law in an American city.

Politics in St. Louis is practiced by the pimps and pothouse habitues, just as in other cities. Two of the best known office holders in the city have been accused publicly of stealing $1,200 that was given them to support a measure for capitol removal at the last general election. They got the money to divide among the members of the city committee, and no member of that body ever saw a copper of it. The check was cashed, however. The governor appointed to their present offices the men who got the money.

It costs more to conduct the city government of St. Louis than it costs proportionately to govern New York. The town is overrun with an army of men drawing salaries, and few sober breaths, but doing nothing else. The present head of government when he left the office of city collector, lost or destroyed his books, that they might tell no tale of the monstrous malfeasance of his administration. Corporations were held up for sums that never appeared on the books. Instead of paying licenses and taxes, merchants, manufacturers, saloon keepers, brewers and others paid tribute to the then subordinates of the present mayor. Corruption is rampant all through the city government. Every one knows it; but no one feels like expressing it for the reason that such exposures are "chestnuts" to the St. Louisan. There have been reform waves in every large city in the Union, now and then. In St. Louis, never. The syndicate of snappers that holds the franchises won't have it. Reform doesn't go. They want the old gang they have been dealing with, in power. No matter which gang dominates, Democrat or Republican, the syndicate owns them. It doesn't like the prospect of dealing with strangers. It likes to buy over and over again the same old crowd to enact or defeat certain bills. When the gang in power is Democratic, Ed Butler does the buying. When the gang is Republican, Chauncey I. Filley takes the money and dictates what his creatures shall do. Butler disgorges something; Filley nothing. Butler deals with Filley when Filley has fooled the people into electing his men, and vice versa. It is Croker and Platt over again on a smaller scale. These two men have all the corporations by their throats. They are both men of genius in their line, commanding an insane devotion among the slums and a certain amount of admiration and awe, from among the wealthy, if not the respectable, of that city.

The St. Louis police force is demoralized by politics. Robberies and burglaries multiply. Purse-snatching from women by white and black ruffians is sunk to a mere commonplace in the daily newspaper reports. Thieves flourish, and are protected by petty politicians. Real estate dealers work the police department about once a year to chase the prostitutes out of one section of town into another. It's all a job. The prostitutes pay big rents, $60 per month for a house that would rent to decent people for $25. One crowd of agents gets the upper hand and starts an agitation to get the "girls" out of the district they occupy into another, in which the agents interested have a great many empty houses. After a time another real estate combination is made, and the poor bawds have to move again. Result of this? Many of the women open assignation houses in the West End, or go "living decent" under some man's care in that quarter, make the acquaintance of good women, and innocent girls, and collect a "maiden tribute" from among the latter for numerous old rakes who prefer the sexually initiative to the referendum in the case of women in the territory known as "tamale town." Kept women, the mistresses of men driven from downtown, have been known to ingratiate themselves, in the West End, with women moving in the very best society. And all this to enable a few real estate men to rent at exorbitant figures a few ramshackle houses to the women who must stay "on the town."

St. Louis society is not so bad and vulgar as society in some other cities. The city is so much like a village that no opportunity is afforded for intrigue or depravity among the swell set. Every one in St. Louis knows the business of every one else. A woman cannot "go wrong" without being discovered. Most of the details that you hear about the corruption of St. Louis society are imagination wholly. There is a great deal of excessive drinking at functions among women, but it is said that this is notable rather because of the amount the girls can stand without showing it than because of its prompting them to ribald Terpsichorean evolutions. The world outside the swell set hears occasionally of some girl who patronizes the punch bowl until she falls into hysterics, but as a rule the up-to-date St. Louis girl can "carry a load" with much dignity and grace.

St. Louis society is cheap and garish in spots. Some of the newly rich are unbearably snobbish. The Granite Mountain set carries its nose in the air most heinously and its chief female representative is celebrated for her absurd malapropisms. There is but one "fast" set in the town and that "fast" set is looked down upon quite generally and quite sincerely. It is composed of gay young married women who affect the Bohemian by drinking cocktails in public and cutting up at the Jockey Club. One of the members of this last set is the daughter-in-law of a Missouri senator and a very pretty woman. Another of this set is the woman who was voted the best dressed woman at the horse show in a newspaper scheme. Her father is a millionaire doctor and her husband is a thoroughbred. It cannot be said even of this set, however, that it is fast in the immoral sense in which that word usually is employed. It is gay and the women are only unfortunate in having nothing to do and in dispelling weariness by silly and flashy pranks in a social way.

There are some awfully funny society people in St. Louis. For instance, I am told that one of the women who has recently blossomed into the society columns is the wife of a millionaire lumber man who lives in a swell place and whose stinginess is peculiar in that it applies to everything but the feeing of the reporters who write up his wife and daughter. There is another woman whose burst into society has occasioned a great deal of comment of late. She is the wife of a cattleman and certainly not well trained in the graces, but she has her name in the papers continually by virtue of presents of such things as bolts of silk to society editresses. The wife of one of the police commissioners, who used to be the widow of a former mayor, is a fearful and wonderful matron in her methods of attaining distinction. She dresses gorgeously at all public occasions and has more color than a spectacular show at the theater. St. Louis society is dull and unintellectual. As a rule, however, it does not mask any corruption. There are not enough men in society to give opportunity for corruption. Nowhere in the country are there so many pretty girls without admirers. They have to go to the theaters with their own fathers and brothers. The few men in society are a lot of "cheap skates" who can not repay their social obligations in the fashion supposed to prevail among them. The St. Louis society belle has no good time of it. She doesn't get rushed to any great extent at any time, and this is the more remarkable because the wealthy girls are as much neglected as the poor but pretty ones. St. Louis is the finest field in the world for a man with nothing who wants to marry money. St. Louis society doesn't patronize the theaters extensively. It is not appreciative of music. It doesn't care for art. It is hopelessly unaesthetical as a whole. The picture dealers, music dealers and book sellers declare that their patrons come mostly from the people who are not in the swell set. A peculiarity of St. Louis society is that its members are as a rule procreative. There is no suppression of increase and multiplication such as prevail in the swell mob in other cities. A woman in St. Louis is not disgraced by having three or four babies. As a rule also St. Louis society women are not disposed to set up a rigid standard of exclusiveness. They have taken up recently the wife of a young man who was a singer with the Bostonians and it is the fad at present to rave over her. The whole world knows, of course, that a St. Louis girl insulted the Prince of Wales by refusing to meet him, when he never had asked to have her presented. That, however, was the most glaring effort ever made by a St. Louis girl to get a lot of newspaper notoriety and at a cheap rate. To the credit of the local high society it must be said that it does not cultivate the newspaper habit of exploitation. It tolerates the journalistic abuses of papers and write-ups. To be perfectly just to society in St. Louis, about all that can be said of it is that it is dull, principally, because it is decent. A man who is an authority upon such matters tells me that there is not in real society in St. Louis one woman of whom there has ever been any scandal. The very highest society in St. Louis—the old families are all Catholics, and very strict Catholics at that, and so there is not the taint of animalism about it that you find else where in the realm of the high flyers.

St. Louis cannot be said to be a moral city. It is as immoral as any in the country. I am told that the professional Social Evil in St. Louis is an unprofitable occupation "because of amateur competition." I am quoting a gentleman who is interested in sociological questions very largely. From what he said I deduce the conclusion that the daughters of the poor are preyed upon by the men so successfully as to account for the prevalence of virtue in the wealthier circles. Fearful stories are current of the immorality of the working girls, but these, I suppose, may be discounted to a certain extent. I hesitate to tell you some things I have heard about the tribute exacted of the girls in some of the big dry goods emporiums. Suffice it to say that these stories are told of three of the great merchant princes. One of them is said to make it a rule that no girl shall be employed who fails to understand that she is liable to his advances. Another merchant prince, portly and domineering, who gained unenviable notoriety because of his attempt at political coercion of his employes, had a bad reputation in this same line. Still another merchant prince who runs a strictly cash store, had one of his girls arrested for stealing goods and refused to prosecute her when she threatened to tell all she knew about how girls held their places in his establishment. As I say, these stories should be discounted, in all probability, but where there is smoke there is fire and most of the stories come from the girls in the big stores.

The city of St. Louis is hopelessly monotonous. It is a big place. A great business is carried on there, but it seems to be done by people somnambulistically. The soporific atmosphere that the readers feel when perusing the "Globe-Democrat" or "Republic" is characteristic of the town. The great majority of the people seem unable to arouse themselves to any action, even of viciousness. The crowd just lives as if it were soaked and sodden in the city's vast beer output. It is content to let a few men and a few big concerns monopolize all the business. It scarcely has energy enough to try to amuse itself. It goes to bed at half past nine, and never thoroughly wakes up. The town is sleepy, notwithstanding its size and its boasted progress. It grows because it can't help itself. The people appear to be good because they've not energy enough to be otherwise. St. Louis, Mo., November 10.

* * * THE STAGE AND STAGE DEGENERATES.

BY ROBERT LEE WYCHE.

Here and there in the big and little towns of America cranks are busily working for the elevation of the stage. Every 2 x 4 newspaper man who thinks he has a mission, every preacher who desires to make a sensation in the pulpit, every maiden novelist whose feminine mind battens in pruriency, every old maid who has missed her opportunity to be manhandled and wishes to reform a race she has done nothing to increase, every two-for-a-quarter evangelist between Bangor and Los Angeles is talking a lung out for the public on the subject of making the stage higher and better. When Col. Hercules, not of Herculaneum, viewed the Augean stables he may have thought that he had a considerable job on hand, but he tackled it with a man's strength and brain. By the help of his good right arm and a river or two he got rid of some thousands of tons of filth which went to enrich the levels lower down. Col. Hercules died in time to save his reputation. If required to cleanse the modern stage, he would pull his beaver over his brows and sneak out of town. Col. Hercules was a man who knew when he was over-weighted. He entered the ring only with such opponents as he stood a chance to best.

Once upon a time I boarded in a little German hotel in this city. Near it was the great Madison Square Garden. In consequence, the little hotel, which was very German—that is to say, clean and cheap,—was patronized by many actors and actresses. They had little rooms upstairs, got their morning coffee in the little restaurant and after the evening's performance sat in the little apartment off the bar, where the floor was sanded and drank beer until the small hours. These men were representatives of their profession so far as America is concerned. There were no stars among them and none of the lowest stratum. They were of the middle class of the people of the footlights. Nearly all of them were married and a few of them had children. They had the small ambitions and the small amusements of their class.

At that time I worked upon one of New York's yellow journals. I reached the hotel each morning between 12 and 1 o'clock, and always found the theatrical symposium in full blast. I was with these people for three months for an hour or two each night and think that I formed a fair idea of what the American stage is like. In those months I heard just two general subjects discussed—grease-paint and copulation. That was all of it. No science, no literature, no art in its higher sense, no news of the day, no politics, no sports, no history, no travel, not anything that goes to make up the intellectual life of the ordinary man. From first to last it was the business of acting, the demerits of some actor not present, the merits of those present, the pursuit of woman and the unholy pleasures of indiscriminate sexual lust. The dominating passion of these people was a petty jealousy. I never heard from them a good word for a successful brother artist. I never heard them breathe one generous hope that other men or women would grow happy and prosperous. I never heard them speak a kindly sentence for one of their ranks who had fallen upon evil days. They were selfish, they were brutally abusive, they were ridiculously conceited, they were all geniuses held down by a conspiracy of managers, they were card and dice sharpers, they were willing at any time to act the part of procurer or procuress for a consideration of drinks and suppers. I was rejoiced at the opportunity to study a type that was new to me, and when I got enough of it I moved out.

I have met these people and their kind many times since then. I have seen them in Philadelphia, Boston, Washington, Chicago, New Orleans and San Francisco. They are everywhere the same. They do not differ in any degree. On the road they are slightly more restrained, for fear of corporal punishment or jail, but the impulse of gluttony and lechery is always there. Any keeper of a second or third-class hotel in a town that is on one of the big circuits is apt to grow eloquent upon the subject of theatrical folk if given the chance. They are noted for a brazen effrontery in demanding everything that is in sight and the laxity with which they regard a debt incurred. I have no doubt that the first man to let his valise down from the second-story window of a hotel, slide down the rope himself and thus square his bill was the leading comedian of that sterling bit of humor, "Hot Times in the Tenderloin." Meantime his soubrette, who was another man's wife, was waiting for him outside, and they went away together.

I do not know that the baleful fire of unchaste amour runs more fiercely in the veins of stage people. I only know that they give it more of a free field. You sometimes hear some bar-room comedian and booze recitationist, who draws a hamfatter's salary in a continuous vaudeville, declare to half drunken listeners that there are good women on the stage. So there are—some. But they are so rare that when they are found they shine like the jewel in the Ethiop's ear. It would be within the bounds of truth to say that for every virtuous woman behind the foot-lights there are ten prostitutes. Even those who try to keep their feet from the mire and succeed are given no credit for chastity by their fellow professionals. One night, in my never to be forgotten German hotel, I was assured in a thing in loud-patterned trousers and a snow-white overcoat with deep black collar and cuffs, that he knew Emma Abbott, then dead, was unfaithful to her husband, Eugene Wetherell, also dead. This was spoken of "honest little Emma." A purer woman never lived. I knew that he was lying and told him so, but he was ready with a tale of time, place and circumstance and brazened it out. In like manner I have been told tales of Mary Anderson and Modjeska and Viola Allen—all of them lies. They were the tributes which my gentle friends, male and female, paid to success in their beautiful but risky profession.

It is not to be wondered that women who go on the stage lose their virtue. The wonder is that some of them preserve it, in spite of the life they lead and the company they are forced to keep. The very talents they possess render them susceptible to adulation and applause. They keep late hours. They are thrown constantly with conscienceless males. They breathe an atmosphere of excitement. If they display unusual capabilities, they are intoxicated nightly with the deep, rich, moving roar of high acclaim. Their nerves need bracing and they take to late suppers and champagne with absinthe in the mornings. From the woman who drinks to the woman who falls is not a far cry. I once asked Lizzie Annandale, the contralto, to tell me why so many stage girls surrendered their most precious possession within a year after their first night behind the scenes. She was a frank old party, willing to talk to a friend:

"Aw," she said, "that's easy. Women are only human. The girls are cut off from association with decent people. They have to live with stage folks. Society is barred to them. Stage men marry only when they can't help it. The girl must have somebody to look after her, some man to see that her trunks are checked, that she gets a decent seat in a crowded train, that she doesn't get the worst of it all around. A man expects pay of some kind and she hasn't anything to give except herself. That is what he wants. Take our own company, for instance. We are carrying twenty chorus girls. We are bound for the southern circuit. After we play New Orleans we play Texas. After we leave Texas we make a jump straight across the continent to 'Frisco. The girls don't get wages enough to enable them to take berths in the sleepers. They will be forced to herd day and night in the other coaches with the men. You will see the chorus people, male and female, asleep two and two on the seats. The exhausted woman's head rests on the shoulder of her companion, the man's arm around her to hold her steady. What do you suppose happens when a thing like that is kept up for awhile? Aw! W'at t'ell."

Despite the constant efforts of the classes mentioned in the opening paragraph of this story, the American stage is not being elevated to any extent. It is steadily sinking lower. Year after year its plays grow worse, its players more reckless and debased. This, it has been said, is the fault of the public and, to a great extent, this is so. The managers are in the business for money. They give the people that which the people will pay to see. Nobody cares anything for tragedy any longer. Stage classics have become stage stalenesses. Shakespeare is out of date. "The Gaiety Girls," "In Gay New York," "The Merry World," Hoyt's buffooneries, "Problem Plays," social eraticisms have become the rage. Translations from the French, with all of the French immorality reduced to English grossness, pack the theaters. In New York a manager named Doris put on a pantomime which represented the scene in a bridal chamber. The police closed it up after half the bald-headed men and nearly all the boys in town had seen it. That pantomime, I understand, is now drawing crowded houses in Chicago, having been introduced to the citizens of the western metropolis by Sam Jack of "Adamless Eden" game. Continuous performances are proving mines of gold for their conductors and in the continuous performance the vulgar song and ribald jest meet with readiest applause. Your wife or your daughter, who goes down town for her morning shopping, gets lunch with a glass of absinthe, drops into the continuous show for an hour and comes home with memories in her little head of a song which should be interdicted by law, or of a dialogue that ought to land the speakers in jail, or of Hope Booth, posing in imitation nudity as Venus Aphrodite, or some beefy actor, also an imitation nude, as Ajax defying the lightning, or Antinous, facing the audience full front without a stitch of clothing on him. This is pleasant for the wife and daughter, but how about you? You do not look anything like Ajax and your daughter's brothers bear no resemblance to Antinous.

Thousands of men and women are actors and actresses, but they do not differ in type. They are to be recognized anywhere in any crowd. Hundreds of thousands of dollars are invested in the business, and it is the business of the owners to make them pay. The public wants filth and it gets it. The plays given to patrons have only the purpose to make money. They are not written to educate, to uplift, to ennoble. The men who make them look only to the collection of their royalties. The best play of the year is Gillette's "Secret Service." It is trifling. It does not teach anything. It inculcates no moral. It does not deviate in any way from the well known "war play." In these days there is always some snipe of a federal lieutenant, who gets shot in the heel, or under his coat tail, or somewhere behind, and is quartered on the family of a southern planter, and the daughter falls in love with him, and her brother is in the Confederate army, and there is a whole lot of trouble and everything comes out all right in the end. Gillette's hero is a Federal spy instead of a lieutenant, but that is about the only difference. I imagine that he must have been many times to see Bronson Howard's "Shenandoah," whose favorite novelist in turn, I think, must have been E. P. Roe, of "Barriers Burned Away." The next success, it is supposed, will be something in the line of Mr. Howard's "Aristocracy." This play, its author assures us, was written to demonstrate the danger that lies in an American girl marrying an European nobleman. Instead, it administers a solar plexus blow to American womanhood. The heroine marries a German prince, merely because he is a Prince, discarding her honest and true lover in a scoundrelly fashion, while her beautiful stepmother comes within an ace of surrendering her person to her son- in-law, and is prevented only by the inopportune arrival of her idiotic husband. It is all very "elevating," and a good thing to take your wife and daughter to see.

We arrive at this formula: The American stage is debasing; American stage people are dead beats and women of scarlet. There are exceptions, but they prove the rule. The business is Jew-ridden. They do not act, but they handle the dollars. Everybody knows that your Jew drummer and your Jew theatrical manager are incapable of anything sexually wrong. The big syndicate which has its home in this city and is endeavoring to control the theatrical business of more than half the country is composed of Jews. One of them is an undersized Silenus named Erlanger, who used to be a pensioner upon the personal and mental abilities of the ill-fated Louise Balfe and repaid her for her bread and favors by brutally assaulting her in Arkansas.

Yes, Brother Iconoclast, the 2 x 4 newspaper men and the sensational preachers and the prurient prudes who write novels and the unfructified old maids and the narrow-beamed self-elected evangelists are talking, but they do not elevate the American stage to any great extent. It bids fair to remain the same excellent school of preparation for the penitentiary and the bagnio. New York, November 20, 1897.

"THE CHRISTIAN."

BY JULIA TRUITT BISHOP.

If one may judge by the effect it has produced in arousing a storm of criticism, the book of the year is undoubtedly "The Christian," by Hall Caine. Not only the book of the year, perhaps, but of more years than one cares to count, for of books worth reading or remembering, there has been the fewest number within these latter days. And it must be conceded, in the beginning, that Hall Caine has written a book—a live book—and that no one will dissect it without finding blood on his rapier's point.

As for the critics themselves, they have had much to say, after their fashions, and have wasted vast quantities of good ink in giving the author of "The Christian" meanings which he never meant. One of them has found that John Storm was intended to represent Christ himself, come back to earth in this most unbelieving Nineteenth century; a construction which seems to have been as far as possible from anything that was in the novelist's thought. Another finds the plot weak and the motif—it is the custom to use French in this connection—strained; and can endure nothing in the book but Glory, who is "altogether delightful." Still another is furious because of the "nurses' ball," and thinks it is reflection upon the whole sisterhood of trained nurses; and there are others who cannot recover from that still further insult to the sisterhood conveyed in the fact that Polly was a nurse.

I have read the criticisms—all I could find—with weariness of spirit, and have felt that the real meaning of the author lay deeper than any of these shallow comments could reach. What difference does it make whether Polly was or was not a trained nurse? The real thing at issue was this—that she was a woman, ruined and played with and tossed aside. For this book is, above all, an earnest book, with bitter protest and lofty purpose running through it, and in such a light as this the paltry errors sink into nothingness. Hall Caine has had something to say to the world, and has said it. The world has waited long enough for a writer with a message. When it comes, let the space-writers and all the horde of small spirits retire for a little while, or go on sounding the praises of this or that "society novel" by Mrs. Van Kortland Van Kordtland, or other of that ilk.

And while there may be lay-figures in the book, as has been charged, the people around whom the interest centers are so terribly real that they cannot stay in the book. They come out of it, and become part of our lives. Glory is a vivid creature, with her moods and fancies, her dual nature, with the one side of her in love with John Storm and his work, and the other side—and so much the stronger side, alas! in love with the world, and filled with merry, buoyant life. One follows her through every step of her course, and feels the moral deterioration coming upon her so gradually and yet so surely. Splendid, wholesome, Glory, pure-eyed and frank-hearted, going through the wild rout of music-halls and theatrical successes, suggestive songs, Derby days and midnight suppers; one follows her with dread as though she were the child of a loved friend, and finds the smell of fire gathering upon her garments. Nothing could so show Hall Caine's art as this. If he had written nothing else worth reading, Glory should make him immortal, for this sweet, wild nature is more a living being to us than many whom we meet every day.

But the real character of the book is John Storm, one of the finest portrayals that the English language has yet given to fiction; a Christian, but not Christ. Nothing could be more human than this man, full of faults, and yet so earnest, so brave, so intense. His love for Glory is the dominant feeling that leads him into many strange paths, for he loves as intensely as he works; but above even this he is a Christian, and trying to do the work of Christ. How natural it is that a man like this, filled with enthusiasm and eager to begin work among the poor and the suffering, should find the shallow hypocrisies and shams of a fashionable church abhorrent to his soul. And the asceticism of the Brotherhood was as far from the possibilities of this man as long-faced and comfortable hypocrisy would have been. It was the fall of poor, ignorant Polly that gave him his life-work; and the discharge of the girl from her position in the hospital, while the man who had accomplished her ruin remained a member of the Board which presided over the destinies of that same hospital.

And Hall Caine could have given no more conclusive proof of his courage and his earnestness of purpose than in selecting as the motif of this book that outrage upon justice, that travesty on morality; the condemnation of woman for a crime that is readily ignored or as readily forgiven in man. It is really such an outworn theme that the very mention of it is greeted with smiles or supercilious shrugs, and even lovers of their kind have grown apologetic about it. If any man like John Storm, fired with the best and truest principles of Christianity, steady of eye and bold of heart and fearless of speech, dared to utter such principles as his in any social circle of any one of our cities, what a consternation he would create; and here as in London he would be called a madman and avoided as an outcast. Yet what was his creed? "Let him that is without sin amongst you cast the first stone at her." We have heard it before, have we not?—but in leaving it out of our Revised Version we have taken care to leave it out of our practice as well, and are very busy casting stones, though in truth not one of us is without sin.

The author of "The Christian" has loosed many a shaft that will surely pierce between the joints of the armor; and not the least of these is the story of a young girl's marriage to the abandoned young lord, the man who had dragged Polly to ruin which ended in suicide. We see such things every day, and it is not polite to call them by their names. For that is the bitterness of it; that ruin and disgrace and the swift downward road to hell are set by society before the feet of the woman who errs, while for the man who was at least her equal partner in crime, there are cordial greetings, and a thousand doors, opened by women, alas!—and he may have some pure girl for a wife, if he likes, and go serenely every evening to a happy home, untroubled by remorse. Is it any wonder, with the scales so unevenly balanced as this, with a premium put on corruption among men, that new and ever new recruits from womanhood are marching down into the infected quarter of our cities, and that the wretched army grows and will grow?

True, there are good women, here and there, making earnest effort to "rescue" some of this miserable horde; and here and there one is gathered into some house of refuge, and is helped to give up her evil life. But even there, are the hopes held out before them such brilliant hopes? One goes back to her old home and her mother, and is thenceforward a marked creature among all the people who have known her, doomed to cold avoidance or impudent familiarity. One succeeds in getting work, of some menial kind, and must live a life of utter subjection of self and utter abnegation of pleasure, or will be suspected that she has a secret longing for the old life. Many hide themselves in convent walls, knowing what kind of welcome the world would have for them if they went forth. If they could look over those walls, and could be gifted with some far-seeing vision, they could see the men who helped them to become criminals, abroad and at ease, riding or driving in the free sunlight, bending over jeweled fingers or whispering pretty nothings into dainty ears, as much approved by all the world as though their records were as pure as snow. Servitude or convent walls for one, even after she has repented; the world and its gaieties for the other, to whom remorse is unknown. No doubt the woman should be punished, and her punishment should be as great as her sin has been; but one would like to see the man who was guilty, equally with her, at least avoided a little; at least made to know that there were circles of society sufficiently refined to shut him out.

"The first stone." Many of these women have fallen through their adoring love for men, for whom they would willingly have given life itself, and would have counted it well lost. Wretched, sinful women, no doubt, but is that any less a prostitution which leads a woman to marry a man she does not love, whose very presence is repulsive to her? Yet that is done every day, to the music of the wedding march, with all the world there to see. If there be any justice in heaven, the unfortunate who falls through love is less a criminal than is the silk-robed bride who became a prostitute under the holy cloak of marriage.

The first stone! The workers of all our large cities have among them hundreds of girls who are doing their faithful best to earn an honest living; who work long hours and endure fatigue, and wear poor clothes, and surrender all girlish pleasures for the simple right to exist. Once in a while comes a lull in business, and scores of these girls are turned off. The employer makes no effort to learn how they will live, meanwhile. "Am I my brother's keeper?"—the old cry, many times repeated in these latter days. How subtle, how alluring are the temptations that come in the weeks and months of idleness; how inexorable seems the choice held out to these helpless working girls—starvation or infamy. It takes so long to starve, and life, after all, is sweet; so they make their choice, shirking from death while age is still so far away, and hope is bounding in the pulses; and having so chosen are shut out from hope forever more. Yet there are items in the society columns of the morning papers only too often, which, if the truth could stand out through the flattering lines, would tell how this or that fashionable girl has sold herself for money, her mother standing by well-pleased, and all her five hundred friends sending presents to commemorate the occasion. There was no bitter hunger urging her to the sacrifice—there was not the slightest excuse or necessity for it in any way. Which was the greater prostitution?

And yet, women who have sinned these gilded sins of society, or who have at least condoned the offense in their friends and intimates, unite in shutting the fallen unfortunate away from light and hope; and women of blameless life and pure name stretch welcoming hands to men who have helped to recruit the army of the fallen and make them outcasts and pariahs in the earth.

An outworn theme, doubtless; but there is enough in it still to thrill the heart and bring tears to the eyes. It is well for the world that a Christian, even in a book, has stood up among men and told them of their crimes, and has told it face to face, in the old Apostolic way; for we have come upon a Christianity, in these latter days, which is silent when the Magdalene is brought out for stoning if it casts no stones itself. New Orleans, La., November 14.

* * * SALMAGUNDI.

Bishop Wilyum Doane hath an abiding place at Albany, N. Y., a village on the Hudson where the peons of the political bosses most do congregate to leg for bribes. In his recent annual address to the clergy the Bish. lamented bitterly that the American "jingo" was provoking dear patient Christian England to put on her war-paint. "The English press," quoth he, "has been most patient." Yea, it hath—in the optic of ye animal yclept the hog. For two years past nearly every English paper, large and small, has systematically insulted Uncle Sam—has belched upon him all the feculent bile it could rake from its putrid bowels, all the moldy mucus it could snort from its beefy brain. Even the press of Canada—that Christ-forsaken land of bow-legged half-breeds which continues to lick the No. 7 goloshes of old Gilly Brown's leavings because it lacks sufficient sand to set up for itself—barks across the border like a mangy fleabitten fice yawping at a St. Bernard. But Doane would have America swallow it all—just as the Thibetans swallow pastiles made of the excrement of their Dalai Lama. The Bish. evidently has John Bull's trademark branded on the rear elevation of his architecture. So Hingland is growing blawsted tired of our Hawmewikan himpudence. Aw! Vewy likely, don-cherknow. But we shoved it down the old harlot's throat twice with the business end of a bayonet, and we'll fill her pod again with the same provender whenever she passes her plate. Doane ought to amputate his ears and send them to the British monarch to be used as door-mats.

. . .

My old friend, Major-General Whistletrigger Vanderhurst, of the Amazonian Guard, minister plenipotentiary of the Gal-Dal News, has just run a superb "scoop" on all his contemporaries. He rustled out one morning all by his lone self and discovered that prosperity had arrived—that every Texan afflicted with chronic hustle hath greenbacks to burn, and blue yarn socks galore stuffed to the bursting point with "yellow boys," while ye farmer simply slings the silver dollar of our sires at marauding blackbirds. Whistletrigger turns up his patrician nose at all "pessimists" and broadly intimates that the man who hasn't a new silk cady, seventeen pair o' tailor-made "pants," a silken nightshirt and sufficient provender in his pantry to run a Methodist camp-meeting for a month, would starve to death in a Paradise whose springs run Pomery Sec, and whose trees grew pumpkin pies, hot weinerwurst and pate de foie gras. Texas, according to this Columbus of prosperity, is a veritable Klondyke bowered with roses instead of imbedded in snowbanks—a place where every financial prospect pleases and only the popocrat is vile. But I note with pained surprise that the farmers are still selling middling cotton below six cents, buying bacon and wearing pea-green patches on the bust of their blue jeans two-dollar hand-me-downs; that I can hire all the common labor I want at 75 cents a day despite the advance in flour; that scores of mechanics are idle; that there is no longer a wage rate in any trade; that the streets are full of able-bodied beggers, while merchants offer me 2 per cent a month for the use of a little money. I note that in every Texas city realty is being cast upon the bargain counter, while great newspapers are cutting down the pay of their employees. There's prosperity and prosperity. Perhaps Whistletrigger has been talking to the agent of some mortgage company or to Colonel Hogg—who's making so much money compromising railroad cases with the Chollie Boy Culberson administration and suppressing prize-fights for $2,500 fees that he really cannot afford to serve Texas in the United States Senate.

. . .

Now that Henry George is dead, those papers and politicians that were wont to abuse and misrepresent him most brutally are fairly falling over each other to do him honor. The post-mortem gush is sickening because of its insincerity. If Henry George was not a great man living he is not a great man dead. If his economic views were fatuous while he was among us they are folly forevermore. I am not of those jackasses that delight in kicking dead lions; I insist that simple justice be done a man while he is in the land of the living—that we should not hound him to the grave with gross misrepresentation then try to make restitution by placing him among the stars. Henry George was a good man, but he was not great. He was an advocate, not an originator. He created no new epoch; he added nothing of importance to the world's knowledge; but he did stimulate most wonderfully economic investigation. He was a thought-compeller. He brushed the mold of prejudice and the cobwebs of partisanship from many a brain. By so doing he rendered the world invaluable service and is entitled to its profoundest gratitude. So long as men can be induced to THINK there is hope for the race. Although his Single Tax theorem will perish, it has served a good purpose.

. . .

A Denver party wants to know if I would KNEEL if given an audience by the Pope of Rome. I would be pretty apt to do so if such action on my part was expected. I would ascertain beforehand what conduct was required, then prove myself a gentlemen by either observing the proprieties or declining the audience. What would the Denver man do? Waltz up to the august head of the Catholic church, slap him on the back and offer to shake him for the drinks? Novalis says: "There is but one temple in the world and that is the body of man. Nothing is holier than this form. Bending before men is a reverence done to this revelation in the flesh." We, whose ancestors for so many centuries bowed, not only to the Pope, but to 2 x 4 kings and petty princelings, should not unduly exalt our Ebenezer—should not become so stiff in the joints that we prove ourselves boors by declining when in Rome to do as the Romans do. Were I to seek the presence of Queen Victoria I would observe all the court etiquette.

. . .

It is said that Miss Rebecca Merlindy Johnson, editress of the Houston Post, and winner of the ICONOCLAST'S $500 prize as the most beautiful woman in the world, will be a candidate for the office of lieutenant-governor. If this be true she can depend on the unswerving support of the ICONOCLAST. If there be constitutional objections to her holding the office with both lily-white hands we will amend that remarkable instrument. I will take it upon myself to elect Rebecca and ask no other reward than the privilege of dancing with her at the inaugural ball. She was my first, if not my only love; and although she threw me over for Pinkie Hill, by whose effulgent aurora borealis she was hypnotized, and took to wearing pantaloons in public despite my protest, she has since repented and given all her maidenly heart to me; hence it will be my duty and my pleasure to manage her campaign. Rebecca may safely consider herself elected and discount her salary whenever the Post gets into a pinch. I am willing to do anything for Rebecca except pay off the mortgage on her paper.

. . .

Because a young man was killed while playing football, the lower house of the Georgia legislature passed a bill prohibiting that game under severe penalties. To be consistent the same body should now prohibit swimming because some boys are drowned, and possum hunting because some nocturnal sportsmen are killed. Georgia appears to take it for granted that nature makes no mistake—when she finds a man who's good for nothing else in the universe she sends him to the legislature to make laws. There's an element of danger in foot-ball as in all other athletic exercises; but that is no reason why we should confine the youngsters to croquet, mumble-peg and finger-billiards, and allow the race to degenerate into a lobeliaceous aggregation of lollipops. That Georgia legislature is full o' goobers and red lemonade.

. . .

I am rejoiced to learn that the two factions of Texas Baptists, after having for months past denounced each other in language that smelled of sulphur and would have disgraced opposing parties of Parisian gamins—after resorting to all the petty meanness of peanut politics to control the flesh-pots—have kissed and hugged, slobbered and boohooed each on the other's brisket. "How sweet it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!" That's whatever. I'm glad the ruction is over, for it was becoming a rank stench in the nostrils of the Protestant religion. It was enough to drive an intelligent man to Atheism, to make him not only suspicious of religion but ashamed of his race. It seems to me that the ICONOCLAST should have had a reserved seat at the love-feast—should have been forguv and slobbered over with the rest of the sinners, for it had not said nearly as hard things about its dear brethren in Christ as they had urged against each other. It might at least have been permitted to collect the tears of the penitents. That flood of brine, if carefully evaporated, would have supplied Scholtz's Garden with beer salt for a century. And it all went to waste! Doc Hayden and myself were the only Baptist parsons who didn't get hugged. Hayden was made a scape-goat for the sins of both factions and sent to wander in the wilderness, and it was decided to no longer recognize the ICONOCLAST as the official organ of the Baptist faith. It looks as though Hayden and I would have to start a little Baptist hell of our own.

. . .

J. Sterling Morton of Nebraska, one of those "village Hampdens" whom G. Cleveland discovered when raking the country with a fine-tooth comb in a frantic search for intellectual insects even smaller than himself, says the Bryan Democracy is composed of fanatics, bigots and idiots. He must have seen that brilliant bon mot in the Chicago Inter-Ocean. Poor J. Sterling Morton. Not being born great, nor having the ability to achieve greatness, it was his misfortune to have it driven into him with a maul. And he's never gotten over it. Had Cleveland done naught else evil he would have damned himself everlastingly by pulling this intumescent jay out of a Nebraska turnip- patch to make him a cabinet clerk. I say cabinet-clerk, for the so-called secretaries of the Cleveland regime were merely stool-pigeons for the Stuffed-Prophet. And now this erstwhile seneschal of the Buffalo Beast, this pitiful stool-hopper for the d—est fool that ever disgraced the presidency, turns up his beefy proboscis at the intellectuality of the Bryanites. If J. Sterling Morton would only shave his head he could get four dollars a day for playing What-Is-It in a dime museum. As an anthropological curio Oofty-Gofty or the Wild Man of Borneo wouldn't be "in it."

. . .

The committee sent to Europe by McKinley to talk a little twaddle about international bi-metallism has completed its alleged labors, and the net product is nothing—just as the people knew it would be when saddled with the expense of this high-fly junketing trip to enable the administration to make a pretense of redeeming the kangaroo promise of the Republican platform. The silver problem is not at present the burthen of my song—I simply rise to remark that the American people have been buncoed by this commission business. It was sent abroad at great outlay of boodle to ascertain what is perfectly well-known to every man outside the insane asylum, viz.: that England, being a creditor nation, would not consent to the remonetization of silver. Now let us send a commission to Europe to see if the water over there is wet. O Lord! how long will Uncle Sam consent to enact the role of a long-eared, pie-bald ass?

. . .

I wonder, O I wonder who that "prominent lawyer and sound money Democrat" was who got drunk at Charlie Cortizio's in Austin the other day and toasted Chollie Boy Culberson as "Texas' most distinguished son, the man who has done most to distinguish his state abroad"—just a bummy little boost for Chollie Boy's anaemic senatorial boom? I cannot imagine who he may be, but I was pleased to see his toast followed in my pet daily by an "ad" for a tansy compound warranted to "give relief from painful and irregular periods regardless of cause." I hope that the "sound money Democrat" aforesaid did not overlook the "ad," as he was evidently having a painful period and much in need of relief. I sincerely hope that he doesn't get that way often. It is a trifle difficult to determine whether he was pregnant with a great idea or full o' prunes—whether he needed a tansy compound or a cathartic. Poor Chollie Boy! His senatorial boom must indeed be in a bad way when he must fill old boozers with beer to induce them to boost it. But it is quite true he has been heard of outside the state—the ICONOCLAST has mentioned him several times.

. . .

I noticed in one of the local papers that "Dallas wants Baylor," $50,000 to $75,000 worth. Doubtless I'm a hopeless heretic, but I don't believe a d—n word of it. If anybody thinks that Dallas will put up $25,000 cash to secure the removal thither of Baylor, he can find a man about these premises who will make him a 2 to 1 game that his believer is 'way of his base. Dallas doesn't want Baylor even a little bit. There isn't a town in this world that wants it except Waco. It is simply another Frankenstein monster that has destroyed its architect. Baylor spends no money here worth mentioning. Its students are chiefly forks-of-the-creek yaps who curry horses or run errands for their board and wear the same undershirt the year round. They take but two baths during their lifetime—one when they are born, the other when they are baptized. The institution is worth less than nothing to any town. It is what Ingersoll would call a storm-center of misinformation. It is the Alma Mater of mob violence. It is a chronic breeder of bigotry and bile. As a small Waco property owner, I will give it $1,000 any time to move to Dallas, and double that amount if it will go to Honolulu or hell. There is no bitterness in this, no desire to offend; it is simply a business proposition by a business man who realizes that Baylor is a disgrace to the community, is playing Old Man of the Sea to Waco's Sinbad. The town could well afford to give it $100,000 to "pull its freight."

* * * SOME ECONOMIC IDIOCY.

A correspondent calls my attention to the recommendation of a commission appointed by the governor of Massachusetts, to the effect that "all taxes on intangible property be abolished." He adds that, "as much of the wealth of Massachusetts is in stocks, bonds and mortgages this would relieve the rich at the expense of the poor." I could recommend that my correspondent be placed in a well-padded cell in a lunatic asylum and fed on Ladies Home Journal literature. The idea that what he calls "intangible property" should be taxed is quite prevalent among the ignorant and a perfect hobby with the half-educated. No writer distinguished for economic erudition recommends laying a tax on notes, stocks, bonds and other such evidence of wealth. Such a tax should never be laid by a government guaranteeing equal right. It is class legislation—it is DOUBLE TAXATION. This statement may not be at all palatable to the West and South, but the proposition is impregnable. It taxes both the lender and the borrower on the same property and the latter has to pay for both. It must be remembered that such securities are not wealth per se, any more than a cook-book is a square meal—they are merely evidences of ownership. Let us say that I hold $10,000 worth of stock in the Illinois Central railroad: The road is my property to the extent of my stock—I am a small partner in the enterprise. It pays taxes to the State of Illinois and to every county and municipality through which it passes. Having paid taxes upon my property in Illinois, where it is located, must I pay taxes upon it again in Texas, where it has no existence? If I must pay taxes upon my railway property, then pay it again upon the certificate that I own it and am entitled to its usufruct, why not compel me to pay taxes on my business block, then pay it again on the deed thereto in my possession. My certificate of railway ownership and my certificate of realty ownership are on an exact parity from an economic standpoint. Each is evidence that I possess tangible property upon which I am paying taxes, and I emphatically object to a double dose. Exactly the same principle applies to promissory notes and bonds. A bond is nothing more nor less than a note. Suppose that I hold Illinois Central bonds to the extent of $10,000 instead of stock: The corporation has borrowed the money of me and invested it. It is paying taxes as well as interest on my property in consideration of use. As the corporation is using the property it must earn all the taxes, by whosoever directly paid, for I can earn nothing with property not in my possession. If I am taxed on my bonds, I must "put it in the bill," just as the merchant puts rent, interest and insurance. If Massachusetts owns ten million dollars of Texas securities she has simply transferred that much tangible wealth to this state for us to tax. If the paper evidence that this property is located here be taxed in Massachusetts, Texas must pay the piper. Let it never be forgotten that a tax is but a toll and can only be taken of something tangible. You cannot get blood out of a ghost or wealth out of a paper evidence of property. The blood must come from real veins and the tax must be drawn from something tangible. It is a contravention of justice and a violation of economic law to tax this man's property once and that man's twice. That the one is rich and the other poor does not mitigate the infamy—it is a fundamental principle of this republic that all men shall be equal before the law. Some years ago a howl was raised that reached high heaven that Jay Gould was worth 50 millions and paid taxes on but 75 thousand. Economic idiots gnawed a file because the ex-house-trap maker objected to paying his taxes twice, and charging his patrons on both the amount and the cost of collection. There are many abnormal fortunes in this country, but confiscation through taxation is not the proper remedy. If the government toll be an ounce in the pound let it BE an ounce in the pound, whether the citizen possess ten pounds or ten million. Let every citizen contribute to the support of government in exact proportion to his means. To exempt the man who makes $500 a year and place the entire burden upon the man who earns $1,000 a year and upwards is to make of the first a political pauper. The graduated income tax, so-called is wrong to one class of citizens and an insult to the other. Let us tax all property once and only once; but let us see to it that unctuous old hypocrites like Rockefeller are not permitted to rob the public—that they do not build collegiate monuments to their own memory with other people's money.

* * * AN EPISCOPALIAN MISTAKE.

Sometime ago a correspondent sent the ICONOCLAST a newspaper report of the "jubilee sermon" of a Rev. Mr. Reed, rector of a Protestant Episcopal church, and inquired if the statements contained therein were true. The clipping has been mislaid, and I do not now remember where Rector Reed is located; but I do know that his statements, so far as I have investigated them, are arrant falsehoods. He affirms that the American Republic is the handiwork of Episcopalian patriots; that more than two-thirds of the signers of the Declaration of Independence and an equal proportion of our generals, statesmen and presidents have been members of that denomination. As the sources of information regarding the religious views of most prominent Americans are shamefully meagre, I was inclined to regard Rector Reed's sermon as a historical document of inestimable value. Being prone, however, to act upon the advice of St. Paul and "prove all things," I began a cursory investigation. Rector Reed neglected to give the source of his information, and to save me I could find but seven presidents, including Washington, who were Episcopalians, and now Col. Patrick Ford, of the Irish World calls my attention to Jared Spark's statement that the Father of his country "withdrew himself from the communion service." Jefferson, whom Rector Reed claims as an Episcopalian, was, as every school-boy knows, an avowed free-thinker. The Adamses were Unitarians, Garfield was a Campbellite, Jackson, Buchanan, Cleveland and Ben Harrison were Presbyterians, Lincoln was non-sectrian, Grant and Hayes were Methodists, as is McKinley, while the religion of several others is unknown. Rector Reed's other statements stand examination as poorly as that relating to the presidents. It is pretty safe to judge a church by its clergy, and the clergy of the Anglo-American or Episcopal church were tory almost to a man. As I have made this statement before, and it has been flatly denied in the Chicago press by an Episcopalian bishop, it may be well to quote a few paragraphs from an article by Rev. Chas. Inglis, entitled "State of the Anglo-American Church in 1776." Inglish was at the time Rector of Trinity Church, New York, and afterwards bishop of Nova Scotia. His article may be found in Vol. 3, O'Callaghan's "Documentary History of the State of New York." Inglis says under date of October 31st, 1776:

Reverend Sir: The confusions which have prevailed in North America for some time past must have necessarily interrupted the correspondence of the missionaries with the society. A short authentic account of them, and of the Church of England in general, in this and the adjacent colonies, may be acceptable to the society at this most critical period. The success of his majesty's arms in reducing the city, and driving out the rebels, the 15th of last month, affords me an opportunity of doing this, as packets are now again established between this port and England. I have the pleasure to assure you that all the society's missionaries, without excepting one, in New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, and, so far as I can learn, in the other New England colonies, have proved themselves faithful, loyal subjects in these trying times; and have to the uttermost of their power opposed the spirit of disaffection and rebellion which has involved this continent in the greatest calamities. I must add that all the other clergy of our church in the above colonies, though not in the society's service, have observed the same line of conduct; and although their joint endeavors could not wholly prevent the rebellion, yet they checked it considerably for some time, and prevented many thousands from plunging into it who otherwise would certainly have done so. . . . The present rebellion is certainly one of the most causeless, unprovoked and unnatural that ever disgraced any country; a rebellion marked with peculiarly aggravated circumstances of guilt and ingratitude. . . . About the middle of April, Mr. Washington—commander-in-chief of the rebel forces, came to town with a large reinforcement. Animated by his presences, and I suppose, encouraged by him, the rebel committees very much harassed the loyal inhabitants here on Long Island. Soon after Washington's arrival he attended our church; but on the Sunday morning, before divine services began, one of the rebel generals called at the rector's house (supposing the latter was in town) and, not finding him, left word that he came to inform the rector that "General Washington would be at church, and would be glad if the violent prayers for the king and royal family were omitted." This message was brought to me, and, as you may suppose, I paid no regard to it. Things being thus situated, I shut up the churches. Even this was attended with great hazard; for it was declaring, in the strongest manner, our disapprobation of independency, and that under the eye of Washington and his army. I have not a doubt but, with the blessing of Providence, his majesty's arms will be successful and finally crush this unnatural rebellion."

The ICONOCLAST is indebted to Col. Patrick Ford for a transcript of Rev. Inglis' ebulition. It fully substantiates the statement made by this journal some time ago that the Episcopal churches were, during the revolution, "nests of tories and traitors."

* * * GLORY OF THE NEW GARTER.

BY JOHN A. MORRIS.

A few seasons ago when Audrey Beardsleyism was the rage and Oscar Wilde a lion in "sassiety" gay plaid stockings in Persian or Audrey Beardsley designs sold as high as $7.50 a pair, enough I should say to enable a poor devil like me to live a week. But this is not all. For spring or June brides of the "swell London sassiety set," fine white silk stockings cost $22.50 a pair must go with a wedding gown and trousseau equally as extravagant, the climax of fashion's freakish ways being the rose-made garter worn over said stockings. Parisian society which smells to heaven in fashionable odors has now originated garters made of primroses, harebells, narcissus, violets and lillies, the same being worn by the ladies at balls and receptions in Paris. Knots of blossoms are caught among the thick flouncings and ruches of the petticoats; and even the embroidered corset has its little bouquet attachment. The inside flounce of the most delicate evening gowns is made entirely of flowers, and the newest garter is simply made to conform to the general harmony of fragrance and color.

The appropriateness of a flower for garter-wearing purposes is considered according to the degree and strength of its perfume, the most highly perfumed being the most highly appropriate. Violets are in great favor, and are used for garters worn with lilac, lavander, delicate green or white costumes. Again, as American women love to ape the fashionable society of gay Paris it may not be very long before in the great cities of the country we may not only have the American morphine fiend and cologne-drinker, but also the perfume faddist. Not long ago a Paris druggist communicated to a few French "sassiety" women the plan of perfuming the skin by means of hypodermic injections. The favorite distilled odors are violet and lavender. I know not how true it is, but I heard that this fashion is already being taken up by some of New York city's fashionable freaks of "sassiety" women.

I have recently been engaged in reading two very interesting histories, the one of the rose, the other of perfume, in reading which I was deeply impressed with the fact that all the civilizations of the past, previous to their downfall, had their rose fetes, their festivals of flowers where luxury and license ruled, where effeminacy ruled supreme, their perfumed halls and extravagant balls and soirees. Before the fall of the Roman Empire, the wealthy abandoned themselves to pleasure, luxury and licentiousness and such expressions as "living in the midst of roses," and "sleeping on roses" had a deep and tragic meaning. Seneca speaks of Smyndiride who could not sleep if one of the rose petals with which his bed was spread happened to be curled. Cicero alludes to the then prevailing custom among the Romans of reclining at the table on couches covered with roses. Ah, my jeweled buddies, there were Adonises in those days!

When Cleopatra, the perfumed serpent of the Nile, went into Cilicia to meet Mark Antony, she gave him for several days a festival such as the gods themselves would not blush to participate in. She had placed in the banqueting hall twelve couches large enough to hold three guests. Purple tapestry interwoven with gold covered the walls, golden vases admirably executed and enriched with precious stones stood on a magnificent gold floor. On the fourth day the queen carried her sumptuousness so far as to pay a talent ($600.00 in our money) for a quantity of roses, with which she caused the floor of the hall to be covered to a depth of eighteen inches. These flowers were retained in a very fine net, to allow the guests to walk over them. According to Suetonius, Nero (the fiddler of burning Rome and the tyrant par excellence of the ancient day) gave a fete at one time on the Gulf of Baiae when inns were established on the banks, and ladies of noble blood played hostesses to the occasion, the roses alone costing more than four million of sesterces, or $100,000. As the hag Tofana was the inventor of a new and deadly poison, so Lucius Aurelius Verus was the inventor of a new species of luxury. He had a most magnificent couch made, on which four raised cushions closed in on all sides by a very thin net, and made of leaves of roses. Heliogabalus, celebrated for every kind of vice and luxury, caused roses to be crushed with the kernels of the pine (pinus maritima) in order to increase the perfume. Roses were, by the order of this same emperor, scattered over the couches, halls and even the portierres of the palaces were decorated with the same. A profusion of flowers of every kind, lilies, violets, hyacinths, narcissus, etc., filled great quantities of space. Gallien, another cruel and luxurious princeling, lay under arbors of roses sometimes varying the performance by reclining on beds of roses. Before her downfall Rome could spend millions on her royal tables, support the dignity of a single senator at $80,000 a year, employ courts of sycophants and flatterers, impose taxes at the pleasure of her ruler, declare any complaint treason, marry her daughters for money and title, employ notaries to attest the fatness of her banquet fowls, punish a servant for disobedience and trivial offenses with death, while letting the monied thief and murderer go free with a mild reprimand, and making slaves and menials of the profoundest philosophers. The dancer and the buffoon received the homage and the adoration which in the golden age of Greece under the reign of Pericles only scholars, philosophers and artists received. Poverty in those days was crime, so in ours! Augustine of Rome was utterly ignored. "In exact proportion to the sum of money a man keeps in his chest," says Juvenal, "is the credit given to his oath." Verily, reader, these days at the end of the nineteenth century are greatly similar to those last days of Rome. Yvette Gilbert, the songstress of the vile, the recitationist of the vulgar, and Le Loie Fuller, the dancer of the serpentine, live off the fat of the land every day. The songstress and the kickeress get their thousands of dollars per week, while "the poor devil of a workingman" must be satisfied with a dollar a day cash and barrels of unlimited confidence. Caligula's horse wore a collar of pearls and drank from an ivory trough. Nero fiddled while Rome was burning. Cleveland when president drank his morning coffee from a cup worth $100 at least, and went fishing at Buzzard's Bay while the ship of state was plunging among the rocks and breakers of bonded indebtedness. Conde spent three thousand crowns to deck his palace at Chantilly. The Duke of Albuquerque had forty silver ladders. The expression then, as now, was often heard, "the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer." San Pedro, Cal., November 11.

* * * TWO OF A KIND. BY H. S. C.

The McKinley administration has been in power long enough to show that the only material distinction between it and the Cleveland administration lies in the fact that it is slightly more extravagant. That is the characteristic of the Republican party and no one is surprised. In addition to being the party of violence, bigotry and fraud, it is also the party of gay liberality with other people's money. In the matter of directing the destinies of this country towards a higher and better national existence, there is really nothing to choose between Republicanism and Democracy. Both are equally unwilling and incompetent, both, despite the prating of civil service snobs and snivellers are dominated by spoils, and the managers of both regard a campaign not as a battle for the betterment of America but as a battle for boodle. The McKinley administration has appointed some Negro postmasters in the South. This the Democratic administration would not have done. The McKinley administration has played openly into the hands of the trust. This the Democratic administration would have done secretly. The McKinley administration enacted a tariff law which robs the people openly for the benefit of a few. This the Democratic administration would have done in sly paragraphs here and there, in the meanwhile declaiming loudly against the unrighteousness of tariff barons. The McKinley administration has based its contracted currency solely upon the gold product. This the Democratic administration would have based, with almost equal fatuity, upon the silver product. McKinleyism and the Democracy with which the country has been cursed on two occasions since the war, are six of one and half a dozen of the other. Practically considered, the main difference between Republicanism and Democracy, is the difference between the highwayman and the sneak thief. This being so, the question naturally arises: What are we going to do about it? Nothing. That is, not yet. The time may come when the people will choose public servants for fitness, and will demand that they keep the pledges made as a condition precedent to election, but it is far from us. In many of the years to come we will continue to build up an office- holding class that is now so utterly idle, incompetent, impudent and corrupt that the history of the world can show nothing like it. This will be always so with universal suffrage. A government which permits the ballot of a man who has not a dollar's interest in the good conduct of the government, who can neither read nor write, who cannot speak the English language, who is permitted to vote merely upon the declaration that he intends at some time to become a citizen, will continue to be a rotten government. The wonder is not that the United States has had war internecine and otherwise, but that it has existed at all. It carries within itself the elements of its own damnation. It has within itself the seeds of decay. Unless they are dug out, that which is now one of the worst governments under the sun will be no government at all.

* * * THE SAW-MILL CHECK SYSTEM.

The ICONOCLAST receives frequent complaints from laboring people in the lumber districts of Texas and Louisiana, that their employers are robbing them by compelling them to accept orders on mill stores, where they are charged exorbitant prices for all they purchase. I have been unable to visit the lumber districts and make personal investigation of these complaints, while letters of inquiry have elicited conflicted evidence. The following statement by a disinterested party, a gentleman of unusual intelligence who has traveled extensively in the lumber districts of the two states, is doubtless a fairly correct account:

The system of issuing checks to saw-mill employees, as practiced in some places, is, in my opinion, an advantage to the laborer. Each mill has a pay-day, monthly, and the checks issued at intervals between pay-days, redeemable in merchandise, pass current among merchants at par. You can buy a big glass of beer for a 5-cent check as you can for a nickel, and buy it anywhere it is sold. You can, in fact, buy anything at any place in these towns for mill checks. The merchants either use them in trading at the mill stores, which are large and complete, or sell them, at a discount of 5 per cent. to parties who engage in building and who use them in paying for lumber, which is sold at the same price for checks as for cash. No one is required to take these checks, which are merely in the nature of an advance payment on wages. Each employee can wait until pay-day and get all that is due him in cash. Many of the mills are large concerns with A1 credit, and being able to buy as cheaply as anybody, can, and I believe do, sell as cheaply. Such is the case with the Beaumont mills and the mills on the Sabine and East Texas road owned by Beaumont parties; but as much cannot be said for saw-mills at some other points. There are some saw-mills in Texas that never have a pay-day; they issue checks on the commissary and charge enormous profits, so that the people who work at these mills are virtually peons. A party told me some time ago that on the H. E. & W. T. railway mill checks of reputable institutions can be bought for 20 cents, 30 cents and 40 cents on the dollar. I do not know that this is so, but I believe it. As for the mills at Orange and Lake Charles, they have no commissaries attached, but I have been told that certain merchants in those towns pay the mill owners 10 per cent. on all orders sent them, and the mills go so far as to turn in each evening to the merchant the time made by each employee to govern them in giving credit. This looks like a fraud on the employee and it is wrong for the employer to pocket money which should rightfully go to his employee. But he reasons that he has an established pay-day, and if his employees will insist on demanding money or its equivalent every evening, and thus force him to retain an extra man to attend to the check-issuing business it is right that the employees should bear that expense. I believe the mills at Westlake have commissaries, but I know the mill-owners and do not believe they practice any extortion. They pay off in checks. They have a monthly pay-day, and if, like railway employees, these should wait until the first Saturday after the 5th or 10th of each month they could draw their wages in cash. No mill at either place mentioned pays off in checks. You might roast such mills as those on the H. E. & W. T. referred to, as they rob not only their employees, but, by thus being able to manufacture lumber cheaper than those who pay wages, force down the price in the open market and compel the honest manufacturer to meet it."

* * * LOVE AS AN INTOXICANT?

Seymour, Texas, Nov. 4, 1897.

MR. BRANN: Will you please answer the following question and thereby settle a dispute in Seymour: Is love intoxicating? CHAS. E. RUPE.

My correspondent neglects to state whether Seymour is a Prohibition town. Of course if it is and love is listed as an intoxicant, the blind god will be expatriated for the benefit of the makers of Peruna, Hostetter's Bitters and and other palate ticklers, popular only at blind tigers. Why the deuce didn't the Seymourites set to work and settle this vexatious problem for themselves? Must I undertake a system of scientific experiments in order to obtain this information for the citizens of Seymour? Suppose that I do so, find that love makes drunk come, and am run in by the patrol wagon while supercharged with the tender passion: don't you see that this would militate against my usefulness as a Baptist minister? How the hell could I explain to my congregation that I was full of love instead of licker? Clearly I cannot afford to offer myself as a sacrifice upon the altar of science. Should I proceed to fall in love just to see if it would go to my head, and should it do so, my Dulcina del Toboso might marry me before I recovered my mental equipoise, and I would awaken to find my liberty a has-been and my night-key non est. Of course I should mind it ever so little, but it would be awfully hard on the lady. I have been baptized just to see if it would soak out any original sin; I've gone up in a balloon and down in a coal mine in the interest of science; I've ridden on the pilot of a locomotive for the sake of the sensation; I've permitted myself to be inoculated with the virus of Christian charity just to see if it would "take"; I've tampered with almost every known intoxicant, from the insidious mescal of the erstwhile Montezumas to the mountain nectar of Eastern Tennessee, but I draw the line at love. Will it intoxicate? Prithee, good sirs, I positively decline to experiment. However, if hearsay evidence be admissible I'm willing to take the stand. To the best of my knowledge and belief love will pick a man up quicker and throw him down harder than even the double-distilled brand of prohibition busthead. Like champagne at 2 a.m., it is good to look upon and pleasant to the palate; but at last it biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an able-bodied bumble-bee in a pair of blue-jean pants. Like alcoholism, love lies in wait for the young and unwary—approaches the victim so insidiously that ere he is aware of danger he's a gone sucker. The young man goeth forth in the early evening and his patent leathers. His coat-tail pockets bulge with caramels and his one silk handkerchief, perfumed with attar of roses, reposeth with studied negligence in his bosom. He saith unto himself, "I will sip the nectar of the blind deity but I will not become drunken, for verily I know when to ring myself down." He calleth upon the innocent damosel with soft eyes and lips like unto a cleft cherry when purple with its own sweetness, and she singeth unto him with a voice that hath the low sweet melody of an aeolian harp, and squozeth his hand in the gloaming, sigheth just a wee sigh that endeth in a blush. And behold it cometh to pass that when the gay young man doth stagger down the door-steps of her dear father's domicile he knoweth not whether he is hoofing it to Klondyke or riding an erratic mustang into Mexico. He is drunken with the sweetness of it all and glad of it. And she? Oh she lets him down easy—sends him an engraved invitation to her marriage with some guy with oodles of the long green whom her parent on her mother's side has corraled at the matrimonial bargain counter. Then the young man has a case of what we Chermans call Katzenjammer, and swears an almighty swore never to do so any more. But he does. When a man once contracts the habit of being in love there's no help for him. It is a strange stimulant which acts upon the blood like the oenanthic of old wine, upon the soul like the perfume of jasmine buds. He has felt its mighty spell, more potent than the poppy's juice or the distillation of yellow corn that has waved its golden bannerets on Kentucky's sun-kissed hills—more strangely sweet than music heard at minight across a moonlit lake or the soul-sensuous dream of the lotus eaters' land. For the spell of the poppy's dreamy drug and the charm of the yellow corn whose spirit breeds dangerous lightnings in the blood, the skill of man has provided a panacea; but "love is strong as death," says David's wisest son. Will love intoxicate? Rather! I should say that Solomon was drunk with love when he wrote the Canticles:

"Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth, for thy love is better than wine."

When a man is drunken he sees strange varieties of serpents. That's what ailed Adam and Eve. They kept intoxicated with their own primordial sweetness until they got the jimmies and saw a talking snake prancing around the evergreen aisles of Eden with legs like unto a prima donna. At least I suppose the Edenic serpent was built that way, for the Lord cursed it and compelled it to go on its belly all the days of its life. Hence the Lord must have pulled its leg. So to speak, or words to that effect. As an intoxicant love affects one differently from liquor. A man drunk on bourbon wants to trail his coat-tails down the middle of the plank turnpike and advise the natives that he is in town. The man drunk on love yearns to hide away from the busy haunts of men and write poetry for the magazines. The one is sentenced to ten days in the bat-cave and the other to pay some woman's board. Verily the way of the transgressor is hard. Some people manage to worry through life without ever becoming drunken on either liquor or love. They marry for money, or to secure housekeepers, and drink pink lemonade and iced buttermilk until there's clabber in their blood. They "like" their mates, but do not love them, and their watery babes grow up and become Baptists. Their affections are to the real article what dengue is to yellow fever. Temperance is a good thing in its way; but the man who is temperate in love is not to be trusted. The true man or woman can no more love moderately than a powder magazine can explode on the installment plan. When the cup once touches their lips it is drained to the very dregs. The chalice is not passed by human hands—the gods give and the gods withhold. Hence it is that we ever find Love's bacchanals beating against the social bars. We laugh at the man who flushed with wine disregards the peace and dignity of the state; but we frown upon the woman who drunk with love sins against our social laws. Man's brewed enchantments may be set aside by acts of human will; but the wine of love creeps like a subtle perfume through all the senses whether we will or no, filling the brain with madness, the heart with fire.

* * * THE SWORD AND THE CROSS.

A correspondent asks "whether the great nations owe most to the sword or the cross." That were much like asking whether the usefulness of a watch be due most to the case or the works. Religion has ever been the heart of the body social, the dynamics of civilization. A great nation of Atheists is a practical impossibility, because the basic principle of such a society must needs be selfishness, and from such a foundation no mighty superstructure can ever rise. "Ye cannot gather grapes of thorns nor figs of thistles." War is but an incident in the history of a nation, while religion is its very life. In the latter it moves and breathes and has its being. From the standpoint of a statesman it makes little difference what the religion of a people may be so long as most of them believe it. History abundantly demonstrates that when a nation begins to doubt its gods, it begins to lose its glory. Without religion the contract social is simply a rope of sand. "No union of church and state" is simply a protest against the union of body and soul. The greatest rulers of ancient and modern times regarded religion as the palladium of national power. True it is that religion has time and again strengthened the hands of the tyrant and stoned the prophets of progress; but every good gift bequeathed to man has been at times abused. The sword has been wielded by the assassin; it has been employed to enslave and despoil the people; yet we dare not break the blade. Men of narrow minds, seeing many warring cults, imagine them to be disturbing factors in the human brotherhood—that if they could be eliminated, the body politic would have peace. They cannot understand that the discords of the finite make the harmony of the infinite. They fail to see that these warring creeds are but the necessary differentiations of a common faith. Lay the winds, still the tides, and old ocean, that perennial fount of health, becomes a stagnant pool of putrefaction—a malodorous "mother of dead dogs." Force presupposes friction. Let the sectaries fight, each doing valiant battle for his own dogma, for when they all agree religion will be dead and progress at an end. It is not necessary that you and I should stand close enough to be stifled with the dust of conflict, to taste all the bitterness of sectarian controversy—we may mount above it all and watch it beat like the convolutions of a mighty brain. We may take refuge in the philosophy of religion and say that all are right in conception and wrong in expression; we may call it blind superstition if we will; but if we mount high enough to obtain a clear vision we must confess that religion has ever been the dominant factor in the forging of mighty peoples. Were I required to give a reason for this fact I would say it is because man is not altogether a machine—because he is not content to eat and sleep and propagate his kind like the lower animals. Despite his thick veneer of selfishness, man is at heart a creature of sentiment, and religion is the poetry of the common people. Crude it may be, but its tendency is toward the stars, while all else in man is animalistic and of the earth. Strike the religion, the poetry, out of a people, and you reduce them to the level of educated animals. Annul the power that draws them upward and they must sink back to primordial savagery. The individual may accept logic as a substitute for sentiment, but a nation cannot do so. The masses are not swayed through the head, but through the heart. Sentiment is the divine perfume of the soul. Of sentiment was born the dream of immortality. It is the efficient cause of every sacrifice which man makes for his fellow man. It is the parent duty, and duty pre-supposes the Divine. Could the materialists inaugurate their belauded age of reason, sentiment would perish utterly in that pitiless atmosphere, and the world be reduced to a basis of brute selfishness. The word duty would disappear, for why should man die for man in a world whose one sole god was the dollar. Why should a Damien sacrifice himself if selfish ease be the only divinity? If there be no Fatherhood of God there can be no Brotherhood of Man—we are but accidents, spawn of the sun and slime, each an Ishmel considering only himself. Atheism means universal anarchy. It means a kingdom without a king, laws without a legislator, a machine without a master. An Atheist is a public enemy. He would not only destroy the state but wreck society. He would render life not worth the living. He would rob us of our garden roses and fill our hands with artificial flowers. And why? Because, forsooth, he finds that some articles of religious faith are impossible fables. He sits down with a microscope to examine the tables of the law for tracks of the finger of him whose sentences are astral fire. He finds a foolish contradiction in some so-called sacred book and imagines that he has proven either that man's a fool or God's a fraud. "By geometric scale he takes the measure of pots of ale." He calls himself a "liberal," while fanatically intolerant of the honest opinions of others. He is forever mistaking shadow for substance, the accidental for the essential. He "disproves" religion without in the least comprehending it. He hammers away at the Immaculate Conception and the miracles with a vigor that amuses those who realize that cults and creeds are but ephemeral, while faith in the Almighty endures forever. And of all the Atheists and Agnostics Bob Ingersoll is the most insupportable. He is but a mouthful of sweetened wind, a painted echo, an oratorical hurdy-gurdy that plays the music of others. He's as innocent of original ideas as a Mexican fice of feathers. He gets down on the muddy pave and wrangles with the "locus" preachers. He's a theological shyster lawyer who takes advantage of technicalities. He is not a philosopher—he's emphatically "a critic fly." He examines the Christian cult inch by inch, just as Gulliver did the cuticle of the Brobdingnagian maid who sat him astride her nipple. He never contemplates the tout ensemble. He learns absolutely nothing from the cumulative wisdom of the world. He doesn't even appreciate the fact that the dominant religions of the world to-day are couched in the language of oriental poetry. He wastes his nervo-muscular energy demolishing the miracles. When he gets through with the Bible I presume that he'll take a fall out of aesop's Fables. He doesn't understand that the soul of man has never learned a language—that all sacred books are but an outward evidence of an inward grace. He doesn't know that religion, like love, cannot be analyzed. Because the orient pearls are imbedded in ocean slime he denies their existence. Ingersoll and the "plenary inspiration" people are welcome to fight it out—it's none of my funeral. You may prove Zoroaster a myth, Moses a mountebank, Gautama a priestly grafter and Christ the prototype of Francis Schlatter and other half-witted frauds; but adoration of a superior power will remain a living, pulsing thing in the hearts of the people. It is this poetry, this sentiment, this sense of duty, which transcends the dollar that constitutes the adhesive principle of society and makes civilization possible.



A COUPLE OF UNCLEAN COYOTES.

There are times when language seems made, as Talleyrand would say, to conceal thought; times when in no known tongue can one body forth his indignation or express a tithe of his contempt—he gropes in vain for invectives that bear upon their sulphurous wings an adumbration of his anger. One must sometimes stand speechless before a subject, else burn his lips with blasphemy or befoul them with billingsgate. Two months ago my attention was called to a precious pair of attorneys at San Antonio, Texas, who seem to have not only touched the profoundest depths of subter-brutish degradation, but to have wallowed there like swine in an open sewer, proud of their own dishonor, infatuated with their rank disgrace. Time and again I have been requested to hold them up to the scorn of human-kind, and time and again I have essayed the subject only to find the product of my pen unprintable—it would have melted the type and burned a hole in an asbestos mailbag. But indignation cools as the days run, philosophy asserts itself, and perchance I can speak of these offenders in language sufficiently polite to escape the attention of the police. The facts may be summarized as follows: A modest, well-behaved German girl named Wulff was brutally assaulted and raped on a lonely road by a negro named Robinson, who decoyed her to the place of her undoing by telling her mother that he had been commissioned by a reputable white woman to secure a serving-maid. His victim dragged herself back to her mother's door, and, half dead with grief and fright, related the awful story of her despoilment. The lying coon was apprehended and tried for his hellish crime. There could not be the slightest doubt regarding his guilt. He was fully identified. His general bad character was amply proven. The doctors declared that the child had been forcibly despoiled. The neighbors testified that she had returned to her home with torn and muddy clothing, half strangled and crying. The good character of plaintiff was demonstrated beyond peradventure of a doubt. Yet in San Antonio, that Mecca of Southern chivalry, there stood forth two white-skinned lawyers to defend the lecher. These were McAnderson and E. D. Henry. Do not forget these names—they represent the sum and crown of infamy. They are names with which to conjure evil spirits. By one shameful act they have been "damned to everlasting fame." Henceforth when babes are naughty their mothers will affright them with these foul bogey-men. In almighty Milton's catalogue of unclean demons there is naught so damnable. These two champions of a rape-fiend first attempted to establish an alibi, to prove that the girl was lying about their sweet-scented protege—that she was laying claim to a sexual distinction which she did not deserve. That having failed miserably, the attorneys changed their tactics. They knew that their client was guilty, yet were anxious to turn the black son of Perdition loose upon society. They admitted that he had debauched the girl, but insisted that it was with her consent—that this modest little German maid was the black brute's mistress. They scared up a brace of worthless brutes who testified to having seen plaintiff bathing naked in a creek with the prisoner at the bar. It was quickly demonstrated that these fellows were guilty of deliberate falsehood. The perjured witnesses were impeached. To say that defendant's attorneys did not know when they placed these witnesses on the stand that they would exploit a foul calumny cooked up for the occasion, were to brand them as hopeless fools. If they did know it they were knaves—and they are welcome to impale themselves on either horn of the dilemma they like. They next attempted to badger and browbeat the poor girl into an admission that she had made an assignation with the Senegambian. The local papers in reporting the case said the language used by these chivalrous (?) Southern gentlemen to the plaintiff was unprintable. They secured no admission of guilt—not one word that could be distorted to her discredit; but they did succeed in driving the child into hysterics with their brutal insults and damnable innuendos. Remember that this was not Muckle-Mouth Meg who was thus publicly accused of criminal intimacy with a coon, but a 16-year old maid of respectable family who was seeking a situation as housemaid to assist her mother. But the foul-mouthed and foul-minded creatures who had undertaken to save the neck of the ravisher cared naught for a young girl's reputation. The villain Robinson was given a life-term in the penitentiary—and his attorneys expressed themselves as "satisfied with the verdict." Why were they satisfied? Because they knew that their client deserved to hang like a sheep-stealing hound. It was a brutal confession that in questioning the good name of Miss Wulff, in branding her as the mistress of a black, they were guilty of a more heinous crime than the beast who defiled her body. And this actually happened in San Antonio, a city whose very name thrills every fibre of American manhood—a city from whose turrets the flags of five nations have proudly fluttered—a city whose every foot of soil has been time and again baptised with the blood of the brave—a city that twice within the century has put Thermopylae to shame! Yet I am told that these unclean birds, who befoul so fair a nest are allowed to live in San Antonio, to walk her streets, to elbow her proud sons and look her proud daughters in the face! How have the mighty fallen! There was a time when to have breathed a word against the good name of an honest girl, howsoever humble, would have meant the bowie-knife's fearful plunge and a dead face staring at the stars. It were curious to reflect what would have happened had the victim of Ethiopian lust been Lady Vere de Vere instead of a scullery maid! What would have happened? Why, the brute would have been torn limb from limb and his carcass fed to the buzzards, while any man who dared hint that she was his paramour would have been hanged higher than Haman. "The trail of the serpent is over us all," the golden calf has become our supreme god, and even in the South it now matters much whether a woman seeking justice be clothed in gowns of Worth or linsey-wolsey.

I once discovered in Massachusetts what I considered to be the world's meanest man. It was Rev. Spenser B. Meeser, engineer of a Worcester gospel-mill. He was a beggar's brat who had been clothed, fed and educated by old Stephen Girard's bounty, but when he grew to manhood—or doghood—he puked on the grave of his benefactor because the latter elected to be an Atheist instead of a bigoted Baptist. I could not at the time conceive of anything meaner wearing the name of man, of a crime blacker than base ingratitude, of aught more damnable than calumniation of the honored dead; but Massachusetts will have to surrender the pennant of infamy to the South. Texas has succeeded in producing two men, either of whom is infinitely meaner than Meeser. The latter did no more than insult the memory of the man whose bread he had broken, and he did this as an excuse for not contributing a little money towards building him a monument. The meanness of Meeser was solely mercenary—he found it easier to slander the dead than to give up a dollar. The San Antonio lawyers sought to turn a black rape-fiend loose to defile the women of the South, to endanger their own daughters; and to perpetrate this crime strove with tooth and nail to commit one even more damnable.