Brann the Iconoclast Volume 1 Part 9

Nick is the greatest monarch "what they is." He is the divinely ordained Chief Gyasticutus of that motley aggregation of tallow-munchers and unwashed ignorami whose very existence is a menace to modern civilization.

The Goths and Visigoths were models of cleanliness and avatars of intelligence compared with a majority of the seventy different breeds of bipedal brutes who acknowledge the rule of the Romanoffs. A Russian peasant smells like the Chicago river on a summer's day, or Tolstoi's "Kreutzer Sonata." He's more disagreeable to the olfactories than old John Jacob Astor's hide house, from whose effluvia sprung the master spirits of Gotham's Four Hundred. He will eat what would send a coyote howling out of the country. To him a jug of train-oil were as angel-food, a keg of stale soap-grease a ferial feast. During his entire life he enjoys but two baths--one when he is born, the other when he's buried. A religious fanatic, he obeys but one scriptural injunction--"Be fruitful and multiply." Even the Russian ladies wash only to suit the dresses they wear--high-necked or decollete. The average Slav is as stupidly ignorant as any Agency Indian. He respects no law but that of blind force. His Magna Charta is the dynamite bomb. He is courageous with the bravery of the brute, which has no conception of life's sacredness. Doubtless the rule of the bayonet is the only government possible for such a barbarous people--and the Romanoffs have not allowed it to rust.

The Czar is the immediate ruler of nearly 130,000,000 semi-savages, his lightest word their supreme law, while the chiefs of the robber hordes of Central Asia acknowledge him their official head. Such tremendous power in the hands of a weak-minded, vacillating monarch like Nicholas II--descended from Catherine the Courtesan, and having in his veins the blood of cranks--may well cause western Europe to lie awake.

Bonaparte declared that in a hundred years the continent would be all Russian or all Republican--by which he meant that unless this nation of savages in esse and Vandals in posse were stamped out it would imitate the example of Alaric and Attila and precipitate such another intellectual night as that known as the Dark Ages. In western Europe Republicanism is making but slight progress, while in the East the power of the Great White Khan is rapidly increasing. In a struggle between the semi-savagery of the East and the civilization of the West, China and Turkey would be the natural and inevitable allies of the Czar.

Small wonder that the Great First Consul trudged home from Moscow with a heavy heart!

Some faint idea of the savage ignorance of Russia may be had from the history of the Siberian exiles and the fiendish persecutions of the Jewish people. Siberia is the Ice h.e.l.l of the old Norse mythologists, into which men, women and children have been indiscriminately cast on the bare suspicion of desiring to better the wretched condition of the Russian people. Its horrors, which have long been a hideous nightmare to civilized men, need no description here. The very name of Siberia causes humanity to shudder--it casts a shadow on the sun! The experience of the Jews in Russia was akin to that of the early settlers in America, who were exposed to the unbridled ferocity of the Aborigines; yet the so-called Christian nations dared do no more than pet.i.tion the Czar that these savage atrocities should cease--futile prayers to the hog-headed G.o.d of the Ammonites!

The young man who has just been crowned at Moscow at an expense of some millions, and whose emblem of authority is ornamented with rubies as large as eggs and ablaze with 2,564 costly diamonds--while half his people are feeding on fetid offal--is a weak-faced pigmy who would probably be peddling Russia's favorite drunk promoter over a pine bar had he not chanced to be born in the purple.

Having been sp.a.w.ned in a royal bed--perchance the same in which his great gran'dame Catherine was wont to receive her paramours--he becomes the most powerful of princes-- haloed with "that divinity which doth behedge a king"--and all the earth rejoices to do him honor.

For months past wealthy Americans have been hastening to Moscow to enjoy the barbaric fete and perchance pick up a greasy count or s...o...b..tic duke for their daughters. They were not permitted to witness the coronation, but they could look at the Kremlin, stand in the street and watch the Czar and his wooden-faced wife sail by in their chariot of gold, and perhaps be cuffed out of the way by a court chamberlain. Surely that were felicity enough for fools! Our boasted Republican government, whose shibboleth has ever been the equality of all men-- that the harvester of the lowly hoop-pole stands on a parity with a prince swinging a gilded scepter and robbing a poverty-stricken people--considered that its paid representatives in Russia would be unequal to the task of spilling sufficient s...o...b..r over the chief representative of "divine right," the great arch-enemy of human liberty, and sent special envoys to a.s.sist at the ceremony. These haughty American sovereigns were not permitted, however, to enter the sacred presence of the Czar attired in their regal robes--the dress of American gentlemen; but were required to dike out like English flunkeys at a fancy feed.

"Evening coat with plain metal b.u.t.tons, white vest, knee-breeches, black silk stockings, no ornaments"--such was the ukase issued to the envoys of Uncle Sam by the royal seneschal. They "obeyed with alacrity." Of course they did. Had they been ordered to appear in their shirt- tails, one flap dyed green and the other yellow, their legs painted like barber-poles and wearing a.s.ses' ears, they would have "obeyed with alacrity"--without ever a thought of advising the seneschal to go to Siberia. The rear admiral in command of the Mediterranean fleet was ordered to Kronstadt with his flagship; sent to attend the coronation "as the naval envoy of the United States"--a journey of some thousands of miles at a minimum expense of $1,000 a day, to watch a young dude stick a million-dollar dog muzzle on his own foolish pate, while his female running mate cavorted around with a dozen dudines supporting her tail-feathers! And "Jones he pays the freight"--puts up for this egregious folly. It has cost the American tax-payers a quarter of a million dollars to have their mis-representatives prancing around the Kremlin in short-stop pants and silk stockings, bowing and sc.r.a.ping like a Pullman porter who has just received a dollar tip from some reckless Tezsan.

We have nothing in common with Russia. One government is the ant.i.thesis of the other. They are "on friendly terms"

because they have practically no intercourse. Russia has no American possessions upon which we can pull the foolish manifesto of the erstwhile Monroe. There's no trade between the two countries--hasn't been since Russia unloaded her Alaskan glaciers upon us at a fancy price. It would have been eminently proper had Minister Breckinridge presented himself--togged out in his best Arkansas jeans instead of being attired like a troubadour--to wish Nick exemption from the Nihilists and express the hope that the occasion wouldn't swell his head; but there was absolutely no excuse for sending warships on an expensive cruise, and special envoys 5,000 miles to make unmitigated a.s.ses of themselves.

The unpalatable fact is that we are a nation of toad-eaters.

President Cleveland is, in this respect at least, eminently representative of the American people. The axiom that "like takes to like" accounts for his popularity. It was that which enabled him to beat Jim Blaine. When the Grand Duke Alexis was in this country, upper-tendom slopped over him so persistently and offensively that the young man incontinently fled. The adulation he received from American belles made him such a misogynist that he never got married. The girl who got an introduction to the Duke was pointed out for years thereafter as an especial favorite of fortune. The obituary of a Louisville lady who died a short time ago contained the startling announcement that she had actually danced with the Duke. Every chappie who was permitted to pay for a mint julep absorbed by this subject of a crack-brained Czar secured a certificate to that effect and had it framed.

In 1892, when more than the usual number of Russians were going hungry to bed, America undertook to abrogate the law of the survival of the fittest by sending the starving wretches a ship-load of provisions. Dr. T. DeWitt Talmage, Dr. Louis Klopsch and other prominent Americans were sent over as commissioners to give out the grub. While in Russia they were permitted, as a special concession, to speak to the Caesarovitch, who afterwards succeeded to the crown. Of course these American Sovereigns were "overcome with such condescension," could "hardly get their breath"--even in short pants. They all wrote it up for the American press, and now Dr. Klopsch is rehearsing every detail of that important event--the crowning felicity of his life. He tells us how the commissioners "received full instructions as to dress"; what a "bountiful repast" they enjoyed with the crown prince's servants--while millions were starving to death; how they cooled their heels in the hall for an hour or two while their invisible host finished his cigar; how their "hearts fluttered"

when the seneschal gave them their final instructions in court etiquette--not to expectorate on the carpet or scratch the furniture--then trotted them in; how the crown prince graciously permitted them to stand with uncovered heads for a few moments in his august presence, and then managed to get rid of them without actually kicking them down stairs! He "shook hands" with the party as a signal for them to pull their freight. And to this good day Drs.

Talmage and Klopsch will not use toilet paper with the hand that has been pressed by royalty! But the charity commissioners wreaked a terrible revenge on the crown prince--whose starving people they were feeding--for thus insulting American manhood; they sent him a handsomely bound copy of Talmage's book! The fact that he has not broken off diplomatic relations with the United States may be accepted, however, as prima facie evidence that he has not yet read it. Perhaps he added insult to injury by sending it to the Siberian exiles. The Czaritza, or Empress, is a grand-daughter of Queen Victoria. She is rather handsome, but her face, like that of all those born to the house of Hanover is expressionless as a clothing store dummy, hard as a blue-steel hatchet. Princess Alice, as she was known in England, was a very devout Protestant; but she promptly abjured the religion in which she was raised and changed her name to Alexandra Theodorovna for the blessed privilege of sharing an emperor's bed and board. Thrift is a characteristic of Queen Victoria's kids, and their religious scruples count for naught when weighed against a crown.

THROWING STONES AT CHRIST.

Are you throwing stones at Christ and the Christian Cause?

Pause, reflect before you answer. Not all the stones are thrown by the Atheist, the Agnostic, the Infidel. No, the most cruel stones, the ones that wound most deeply, are thrown from the pulpit itself.

The kiss of Judas strikes deeper than the spear of the Roman legionary; the denial of Peter is more cruel than the Crown of Thorns.

Are you Throwing Stones at Christ and the Christian Cause?

You in the Amen Corner stand forth and answer me. Drop that catechism! release that credo! take your lips from that crucifix! Now look me in the eye and speak the words of truth and soberness: Are you a property owner? Have you buildings rented to keepers of dives and bagnios? Do you come here on Sunday and pray the Lord to protect the young from temptation while you are the silent partner of criminals? Have you ever contributed to send missionaries to Madagascar money that was received from people whose business it is to debauch your neighbor's sons and, if possible, degrade his daughters? No? Thank G.o.d for that. Do you know of any member of this church who is so guilty? You suspect as much? Then why do you not go on your knees to him and beg him to turn from his evil ways?

Do you not know that by keeping silent you tacitly endorse his infamy--that you bring the Christian cause into contempt; that you make it a byword and a reproach--that you are Throwing Stones at Christ?

No; do not sit down yet. What are your worldly possessions? How much did that diamond in your shirt- front cost? What was the expense of that costume worn by the woman who worships at your side? You surprise me!

Worth fifty, a thousand dollars!--wearing diamonds, buying $1,000 dresses--for what? To wear to church--in which to worship Him who had not where to lay his head! And a thousand people in this one city alone in abject poverty-- "And the greatest of these is Charity." What a cruel stone is Selfishness to Throw at Christ!

Is that your minister in immaculate broadcloth and shiny boots, turning the leaves of his Bible with lily-fingers?

Pardon me that I did not recognize him. You see I have been reading of John the Baptist with his raiment of camel's hair,--of Christ with his single garment, tramping barefoot, unshaven and unshorn over Judea's blazing hills.

Stand up, thou vicegerent of the Hebrew carpenter, and let me question thee: You will not? I have no authority? Yet publicans and sinners questioned thy Master, and He answered freely and with all gentleness. Art thou greater than He?

Are you Throwing Stones at Christ and the Christian Cause?

Be careful,--think well before you answer. In a minister of G.o.d a mistake in this matter were little better than a crime.

Are you inculcating the spirit of Christ or Belial--of Love or Hate? What do ye when mocked, reviled, your purposes called in question? Do you go to the mocker, extend to him a brother's hand and strive by moral suasion to lead him out of the depths of everlasting darkness into the bright effulgence of heavenly Day? Do you turn the other cheek to the smiter and pray, "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do"? Or do you mount the pulpit with a splenetic heart and, with frantic gestures and a voice hoa.r.s.e with pa.s.sion denounce the criticism as "infernal rubbish"?

Are you seeking the salvation of souls or notoriety? Are you striving to foment discord in your community or cast oil upon the troubled waters? Are you striving to establish on earth the universal brotherhood of Man and common fatherhood of G.o.d, or Throwing Stones at Christ and the Christian Cause from the cover of a canting hypocrisy?

Do you strive when criticised to transfer the criticism from yourself to the Savior? Do you brand men who dare to differ from you as blasphemers,--as though you were one with G.o.d and that to question your superior wisdom and goodness were equal to deny the Almighty? Do you, by presumption where you should be meek, by belligerency where you should act the peacemaker, by dogmatism where you should humbly seek the light, by denunciation where you should propitiate, call down the world's contempt on the cause you profess to serve--Cast Stones at Christ?

It is Written, "Judge not lest ye be judged." Do you Always heed the law?--carefully refrain from resolving yourself into an inquisitorial court,--becoming both prosecutor and judge and condemning those who chance to differ from you?

"Why so hot, little man?" The world rolled on, oh so many weary years before the Fates kindly sent thee to set it right; it will go on much in the same old way after both thee and thy work have been forgotten.

To the stones cast at Christ by professed unbelievers we need give but little heed. They rain harmless as Parthian shafts on the shield of Achilles. Never was atheistical book written, never was infidel argument penned that touched the core of any religion, Christian or Pagan.

They but serve as driving sand of the desert to scour the eating rust from the Christian armor. Seldom indeed does the avowed infidel cast a stone at Christ,--he contents himself with holding up to the world's scorn the mummeries in which dogmatizers have invested the teachings of the grandest man that ever died for truth. G.o.d created nothing in vain. Even the atheist has his uses; nay, even the splenetic preacher may fill an important niche in the great world's economy--may be a real blessing in disguise.

Very remarkable is it that Christ's holy cause best prospered, was purest, most powerful for good when most persecuted, "The blood of the martyrs was the seed of the church." From the auto da fe arose the anthem that thrilled the Pagan heart. From prison cells poured forth paeans of praise that caused princes to kiss the cross.

From the outlawed conventicle went forth a holy zeal that carried millions to the throne of grace,--from the gloomy midnight meeting there burst a light that illumed the world.

The stones cast by avowed enemies were the steps by which the Cause of Christ mounted from poverty and obscurity to thrones and wealth, to name and fame,--the wings with which it encircled the great round globe, the power that enabled it to break down the barriers of the most obdurate hearts.

It is the stones cast by professed friends--the stones of Selfishness and Pride, of Intolerance and Vain-glory,--of Hate and Discord masquerading in the garb of Love and Law--that cause the wounds on Calvary to bleed afresh, the tears in Gethsemane to flow anew, the Crown of Thorns to once more burn the throbbing brow, the scourge to fall across the naked shoulders of the Son of G.o.d.

Are you Throwing Stones at Christ and His Cause?

LOOKING BACKWARD.

When it comes to "Looking Backward," Bellamy isn't in it a little bit with Prof. Herman V. Hilprecht. The retrospective glance of the latter covers a period of at least 11,000 years; and what is of infinitely more importance, it is that of a learned paleologist instead of a sensation-mongering empiric. The Professor has succeeded in lifting a corner of that black veil which hangs between the prehistoric and the present, in affording us a fleeting glimpse of our fellow man as he appeared long ages before the birth of Abraham. He has demonstrated that man has been a civilized animal much longer than is popularly supposed--that at least 5,000 years before the supposed advent of Adam he not only lived sociably in cities and had G.o.ds and kings, but was able to read and write! For eight years past the Professor and his co-laborers, under the patronage of the University of Pennsylvania, have been carrying on their explorations.

The site of Nippur, the ancient capital of Kengi, later known as Babylonia, is the scene of their labors. Hitherto Nippur has been supposed to have been the world's oldest city; but the excavations made not only prove that it rose upon the ruins of others, but affords some knowledge of a long line of kings who lived so long ago that their very names were forgotten before the flight of the Israelites from Egypt, or even the building of the Tower of Babel.

"What is the story of this buried past?

Were all its doors flung wide, For us to search its rooms?

And we to see the race, from first to last, And how they lived and died."

Sargon is the most ancient Chaldean monarch mentioned in the Bible, and hitherto archaeologists have agreed that he was a fiction; but the Professor has not only proven that he had a habitation as well as a name, but has catalogued some thirty of his predecessors. Science has amply demonstrated the existence of man upon the earth long before the psychozoic era of the Biblical cosmogony; but Prof. Hilprecht is the first to demonstrate the high antiquity of his civilization. To the average man this will appear neither more interesting nor profitable than a two-headed calf or petrified corpse; but to the philosophic mind it affords much food for reflection. We have presumed that we could trace the history of man back to the time when he began to practice the art of writing, as distinguished from the transference of thought by crude pictorials--that our prehistoric progenitor was simply a savage. It now appears that people may build indestructible temples, and kings and priests write intelligently on imperishable material, and the nation be as utterly forgotten as though it had never existed. With these facts in mind, it were curious to speculate on what the world 11,000 years hence will know of our now famous men--such, for instance, as Cleveland and McKinley! What will the historian of that faraway time have to say of Mark Hanna? Printing has been called "the art preservative"; but is it? Suppose the priests of Bel--that deity who antedates by so many centuries the Jewish Jehovah--had committed the history of their temples to "cold type" instead of graving it upon sacred vases: Would Prof. Hilprecht and other a.s.syriologists be deciphering it to-day? Printing has subst.i.tuted flimsy paper for parchment just as the pen subst.i.tuted parchment for waxen tablets, as the stylus subst.i.tuted the latter for the far more enduring leaflet of torrified clay. Imagine the effect of 11,000 years upon a modern library! Where will the archaeologist of the year 12,896 turn for the history of our time--where search for those "few immortal names that were not born to die"? Oral transmission of historic data, such as prevails among savages, such as prevailed among the h.e.l.lenes in the age of Homer, has been supplanted by the press. Long before Macaulay's New Zealander stands on a broken arch of London bridge to sketch the ruins of St.

Paul's, every book now extant will have perished. Will they be continuously reproduced, and thus, like the human race itself, run ever on? Quien sabey? Eras of barbarism have overtaken civilizations as pretentious as our own-- intellectual nights in which the patiently acquired learning of ages was lost. Petrifaction as in China, retrogression begotten of luxury as in Athens, submersion beneath an avalanche of human debris as in Rome, ignorance-breeding despoliation as in Ireland--these be the lions in the path of civilization. No race or nation of which we have any record has avoided a recrudescence of barbarism for an hundred generations. A few centuries of our wasting climate obliterates inscriptions on bra.s.s and wrecks the proudest monuments of marble. The recently imported Egyptian obelisk, which stood for ages on Nilus' plain, is already falling into ruins. We can scarce decipher the deep-cut epitaphs of the Pilgrim Fathers. The mansion of the sire is uninhabitable for the son. The history of McKinley's promised era of "Progress and Prosperity" will be written by the press reporter, that busy litterateur who has neither yesterday nor to-morrow. Some subsidized biographer may bind McKinley up in calf, and chance preserve a stray copy for some centuries--then good-by to all his greatness! The mighty Washington has not been dead a hundred years, yet has already become--as R. G.

Ingersoll informs us--"merely a steel engraving." Adams and Hanc.o.c.k and Franklin are paling stars, despite our printing-presses, have become little more than idle words in the school-boy's lexicon. Our proud Republic, our boasted civilization will pa.s.s, for change is the order of the universe.

What records will they leave behind? What is to prevent them being as utterly forgotten as were Sargon's predecessors? Here and there the delver of far years will find the fragment of a wall, perchance an inscription carved in stone and protected by chance from the gnawing tooth of time. And from these posterity will construct for us a history in which we will appear, perhaps, as the straggling vanguard of civilization instead of heirs of all the ages.

They may dig up a petrified dude and figure out that we were a species of anthropoid ape--learnedly proclaim us as "the missing link!" Suppose that by some mischance a picture of the new woman in bloomers and bestride a bike should be preserved: Would posterity accept her as its progenitor, or cla.s.s her as a lusus naturae--perchance an hermaphrodite? A few coins will doubtless be discovered--if the excavators avoid the Texas treasury--and triumphant Populism take it for granted that 'twas on these curious disks that our "infant industry" cut its teeth. The "In G.o.d We Trust" inscription may be regarded as a barbaric hoodoo to prevent infantile bellyache or the evil eye, but the dollar mark will be entirely unintelligible to a people so many thousand years removed from the savage superst.i.tion of metallic money. Of course woman will have ruled the world so long that "tyrant man" will be regarded as a sun myth, and the G.o.ddess of Liberty on our coins be mistaken for portraits of our female monarchs.

Thus will Cleveland and McKinley, like Hippolyta and other amazons of old, be pa.s.sed down to remote posterity in petticoats. If the electrotype from which the New York Journal prints its portraits of Mark Hanna should be found among the tumuli of Manhattan Island, it were well worth remaining alive until that time to hear the curious speculation of craniological cranks. Should the paleologists unearth the World building, they will find in the bas.e.m.e.nt an imperishable object about the size of a bushel-basket, which will puzzle them not a little, but which his contemporaries could readily inform them was the gall-bag of Josef Phewlitzer's circulation liar. The discovery of Editor Dana's office cat nicely embalmed may get us accredited with the worship of felis domestica alias cream-canner, as a "judgment" for our persistent slander of the ancient Egyptians. But seriously, is it not a trifle startling to reflect of how little real importance all our feverish work and worry is, and how small a s.p.a.ce it is ordained to occupy in the mighty epic of mankind! Here we have been fretting, fuming, and even fighting for months past to "save the country," only to learn that it will in nowise stay saved--is hastening rapidly on to the tomb of the world's history, will pa.s.s in turn through that gloomy sepulcher of countless nations into the great inane, the eternal void, the all-embracing night of utter nothingness!

With all our patriotism and scannel-piping, our boasting and our battlefields, our solemn Declarations and labored Const.i.tutions, we are but constructing a house of cards.

"The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, And like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made of, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep."

We devote our energies to the propagation of a religion which Reason, that pitiless monarch of the mind, tells us must as inevitably pa.s.s as did those of Isis and Bel and Cybele, leaving in the earth's all-absorbing bosom only a few shattered altars and broken fanes. We are striving to win and wear the immortelles, only to be told that mighty empires have pa.s.sed from the memory of mankind, and proud kings who may have ruled the world, sunk into the far depths of Time and been forgotten. We divide into cla.s.ses industrial and sets social and give Pride free rein to vaunt herself, knowing that the hour will surely come when not even a Hilprecht can distinguish between the prince's ashes and the pauper's dust--can e'en so much as say, "This cold dead earth, o'er which lizards crawl and from which springs the poisonous worm and noxious weed, once lived and loved." We busy ourselves about the style of a coat or the cut of a corsage; we dispute anent our faiths and plan new follies; we struggle for wealth that we may flaunt a petty opulence in our fellows' faces and win the envy of fools--and the span of Life but three score and ten, while a thousand years are but as one tick of the horologe of Time! We quarrel about our political creeds and religious cults, as though it made any difference whether we wore white or yellow badges, sacrificed at the shrine of Jupiter or worshiped in the temples of Jehovah. Why so hot, little man? Look up! Thou seest that sun? 'Tis the same that shone on this debris when it was the throbbing metropolis of a world. The self-same moon that looks so peacefully down smiled on the midnight tryst in Nippur's scented groves or Babylon's hanging gardens; the same stars that now fret Heaven's black vault with astral fire winked and blinked 11,000 years ago while the sandaled feet of youth, on polished cedar floors, beat out the rhythmic pa.s.sion of its blood. There too were the Heaven of requited love and the h.e.l.l of breaking hearts; there too were women beauteous as the dawn and ambitious men, grasping with eager hands at what they fondly thought the ever-fadeless bays; there too were crowned kings and fashion's sumptuous courts, chanting priests and tearful penitents--the same farce tragedy of Life and Death. And now an unsightly heap of rubbish marks this once bright theater in which prince and pauper each played his part-- marks it, and nothing more. But the sun shines on, and the stars, and the silver moon still draws the restless wave around a rolling world. How small we are, how ephemeral, how helpless in G.o.d's great hand! Is it not strange that we do not cling, each to the others, like shipwrecked mariners riding the stormy waters on some frail raft and looking with dilating eyes into the black abyss?--that we waste our little lives in wild wars and civic strife?--that all our souls are concentrated in that one word, selfishness?--that we have time to hate? If History be Philosophy teaching by example, what lesson does Prof. Hilprecht bring us from the chronicles of those kings who died 5,000 years before that garden was planted "eastward in Eden!"

ARE WOMEN DEVOID OF DESIRE?