ing the example of their illustrious predecessors, we are liable to have "civil war widows" on our hands a century hence some of whom have not yet been born! Sentiment is all right; but it should be tempered with reason. Grant declared the pension expenditure should not exceed 50 millions per annum a quarter of a century after the close of the war, and should then rapidly decline, but Grant was a soldier rather than a "statesman," a patriot instead of a politician. It never occurred to him to give the "old soldier" the country in part payment for saving it, and let the people work out the remainder. Make it an issue in this campaign that no man able to earn journeyman's wages, no person of either sex possessing health and strength, or an income of $500 per annum, shall be quartered on the people—that the pension expenditure be cut to the figure given as the maximum by General Grant.

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BRO. EARLY'S BAZOO.

THE FOREIGN MISSION FAKE.

I AM always discovering something new and strange. While Prof. Roentgen is experimenting with the X-ray and Dr. Depew is unearthing ante-diluvian almanac jokes, I am bringing to the garish light of day wonderful differentiations of the intellectual doddlebug. I am not wont to boast over-much of my services to science; still it is but fair that I be accorded due credit for having discovered Dr. Jehovah Boanerges Cranfill, where he lay buried in the sub-stratum of the azoic period by the antiprohibition majority, and the Hon. Whoopee Kalamity Homan, of Dallas, after he had been trodden into the

quicksands by the political bull elephant. And now patient research in the field of micrology has been rewarded by the addition to my cabinet of curios of Rev. M. D. Early, superintendent of missions for the State of Texas. He is also managing editor of a Baptist periodical whose name I disremember. My discovery of Early was purely an accident. He was out on my "Katy " road, giving the ICONOCLAST a "roast" that made the paint on the car-ceiling curl. He lamented that people persisted in purchasing such a paper, while that into which he poured his sacred lucubrations would not sell. As he talked his indignation grew until he was telling his troubles to the entire car. The tearful lamentations of Jeremiah and the uncanny yodel of Jonah were as nothing to the heartache which Supt. Early poured forth because of the literary perversity of the American people. He insisted that he had never read a copy of the ICONOCLAST and would not do so, yet declared it awfully immoral, which proves that Early is a great man. He does not have to acquire knowledge by a patient industry like other people, but takes it by absorption as the sponge does stale beer on a mahogany bar, and when he wants to leak it he has only to squeeze his nice soft head. Like the patient ox and the megalophanous ass, Early is guided by instinct.

I regret that the good man cannot secure patrons for his paper. If the copy I have seen be a fair sample, the public is missing much by giving it the frozen face. It is almost as interesting and equally as coherent as the sermons of Sin-Killer Griffin, or the editorial page of the Houston Post. Reading it were like standing in the vortex of chaos and trying to size up the phenomena. It is the province of intellectual topsy-turvy, where the living lie dormant and the dead do gibber in the streets. When the

writers are serious the reader is convulsed, and when they uncork their wit the wooden tobacco signs weep. It is a journalistic rara avis that none with a taste for the bizarre should let go by. Now is the time to subscribe. I am determined to work up such a circulation for the Missionary Mistake that Supt. Early need no longer subsist on pennies torn from the toy savings banks of babes. It may be well enough for small-fry preachers to fill their lank bellies with candy money coaxed from kids in the name of Christ; but a man calling himself a journalist should be above such shameful business. Of the hundreds of thousands of dollars collected annually in this country for the ostensible purpose of informing the Ahkoond of Swat that Christ is dead, by far the greater part comes from the thin purse of poverty and the chubby hand of childhood. What becomes of this cash? I am told that $2,500 per annum goes to pay the salary of this one State Superintendent. That represents 250,000 pennies per year taken from children's pockets. If each state has a missionary superintendent and Early's is the average salary, here is a snug item of $112,500 per annum paid men by the very poor to ride about the country and advertise the ICONOCLAST. Then there is the national organization, the secretaries and other salaried officers, not to mention the money appropriated to the support of missionary journals guiltless of readers, and to pay pet publishing houses for the printing of tracts and other utterly useless tommyrot. Think of the little tin savings banks despoiled to supply the missionary fund! And not one dollar in three collected ever gets east of Castle Garden, while the small percentage that does sift abroad might just as well be squandered here at home, for the so-called labors of our foreign missionaries have had about as little effect on paganism as Bro. Early's paper on the public. It

has been estimated by men who have spent much time abroad, that it cost $14,000 to convert a Buddhist to Protestant Christianity, and nearly double that sum to pull a Mussulman loose from his prophet. Yet while we are peddling high-priced saving grace in pagan lands, our own country is cursed with godless heathen and reeking with crime, and in the garrets of our great cities starving mothers give the withered breast to dying babes. It will be time enough to carry bibles to barbarians when our own children are provided with bread.

The Protestant missionaries have made precious little progress in their attempt to convert the "heathen,” but they have done much to engender bitterness and precipitate fanatical outbreaks, such as those recently witnessed in China, and now making a hell of Armenia. As a rule the Catholic missionaries adapt themselves to the customs of the country and win the respect of the people. They have sufficient tact to appeal to the taste of barbarians by impressive ceremonies, and aid their understanding by the use of religious symbols, while others attempt to cram into the heads of intellectual infants abstruse tenets that puzzled even the scholastics. They substitute the host for heathen charms, the crucifix for the caaba-stone, and, by teaching savage people the gentle arts of peace, bring them gradually to a full realization of the love and power of God. How far" the plotting Jesuit stoops to conquer," what "unholy compromises he makes with heathendom " I do not know; but experience has amply proven that the Catholic missionary is, while his Protestant brother is not, capable of combating successfully the dark superstitions of semi-savagery. The former can go alone among the most murderous tribes and win his way; the latter must be protected from outrage by the double-shotted guns of his government. A Catholic mission makes for peace; a

Protestant mission is a storm-center of physical strife. I am not a Catholic-all my education and environments make for Protestantism; but the whole truth should be told, however, it may hurt. The reformer, like the surgeon, must sometimes be cruel in order to be kind. The Protestant missionaries begin wrong. They denounce as crass heathendom everything that runs counter to their creed, whether it be paganism or a differentiation of their own religious cult. They affect a superiority to the people they are sent to serve, insult their holiest traditions, and when this brutish folly and unbridled insolence result in violence to themselves, appeal to their home government for protection and preach a war of extermination. They are usually forced upon barbarous nations as was opium upon "Pagan China" by "Christian England," and protected by ships of war while they denounce people who dissent from their religious dogma.

About two years ago a Baptist missionary stationed in Mexico and living on the fat of the land by the same means that Dr. Early receives his $2,500 salary-issued a pamphlet grossly insulting to the people of that Republic. He was mobbed by the outraged populace and sentenced by the courts to acquire the art of courtesy in the penitentiary. Of course a tremendous roar anent this "Mexican atrocity 99 was made to the American government, and the consul-general succeeded in securing his release. He protected him from the mob and landed him safely on the soil of Uncle Sam, when Mr. Missionary at once began a tirade of abuse of Catholics in general and Mexicans in particular. The diplomat said quietly: "Had Mexico given you your just deserts she would have shot you as a professional mischief-maker or caged you for life as a malicious damphool. I extricated you from the penitentiary and protected you when you were scared to