enough; if he bought codfish or cotton at the proper time, may he not purchase foreign titles for his daughters,— encumbered, perhaps, but empty-headed and bankrupt roues who should have been pilloried or hanged years ago -but titles just the same; enabling him henceforth to speak of "me daughter, the Marchioness Macaroni," or "the Lady Bullhead?" Ordinary Americans, for whom no oil spouts, to whom no Fortunatus' purse has been vouchsafed, must content themselves with the titles of "judge," "major," or even "captain " which is some distinction, a barrier though frail, that separates them from the common herd, the proletarian rabble that wags along with plain "Mr." or " Squire." It would not be a bad idea to amend the constitution and put titles of nobility up for sale to the highest bidder, as some states now do United States Senatorships. So hungry are the shoddies for titular distinction that, to secure it, they would readily pay off the national debt, and perhaps leave a surplus to be divided among the middleaged orphan children of the " veterans " who made money out of the war. By laying a tax on coat-of-arms and liveried lackays, we could easily dispense with the internal revenue tax. Really it were preferable to have a few indifferent lords rather than so much bad whiskey. Let our statesmen think of this. *** INGERSOLL'S TEXAS ITINERARY. "PAGAN BOB' 99 recently toured Texas with his great moral show, and the ministers have been "answering " him ever since in the pulpit and the press. Just what Ingersoll said that demanded a ministerial rebuke I am unable to imagine. He apostrophized liberty, eulogized woman and insisted that religion should not be exempt from the law of evolution-nothing very alarming or original. I would as soon think of having a controversy with an æolian harp as with Col. Ingersoll. His brain is simply a music-box, his lectures prose poems, in which ideas are subordinated to euphony. He says nothing, but does it so entertainingly that we long to hear him say it again. Listening to him is like drinking Weiss beer-there's not the slightest danger of becoming overloaded. I know of nothing equal in restfulness to the Ingersollian oration-you don't even have to think that you are thinking. You drop one-fifty in the slot and he does the rest. It is grateful to the tired brain after a wearisome day as bromo-soda to the stomach after a rapid night. You simply drift in a gilded bark on a placid sea to an intellectual nowhere, while the band plays 66 Floating in a dreamy waltz." Ingersoll imagines that he is an agnostic; but he is mistaken. He hasn't sufficient mental virility to be an original kicker. Had not others raised the flag of revolt, he would probably have been a Presbyterian preacher. He is unquestionably great in his way; but he wasn't put up for a pioneer. He is the musical mouthpiece of agnosticism, the flute through which passes the breath of brainier men. Ingersoll is the jeweler of the intellect. Given gold and pearls he'll build a resplendent crown; but he cannot bring the orients from the bottom of the sea nor rip the refractory metal from the bowels of the earth. That labor must be performed by sterner hearts and stronger hands. He reminds me of a machine once planned by a Connecticut yankee. He proposed to drive geese into it and have them come out pate de foie gras on one side and feather pillows on the other. The ideas of the great dissenters are poured into Col. Ingersoll and they come out Orpheus music and eau de cologne. Ingersoll is as guiltless of original ideas as a rabbit, but is an expert at putting old wine into new bottles. He can transform the veriest scare-crow into a dress suit. He can warble "Ben Bolt so that it is mistaken for the melody of the spheres. Read three of Ingersoll's lecture and you get all he ever said—and every bit of it was borrowed. Put into the mouth of a common man it would pass without remark; but chanted by the great prose poet the world pauses to wonder. I have no desire to belittle Col. Ingersoll,-I would give to every man his due. That he is an exemplary citizen, an indulgent father and a model husband I freely admit; but as much may be said of many ministers who preach foreordination and infant damnation. The social virtues are not indicative of genius, are usually monopolized by mediocrity. Ingersoll is great in his way, but it is a greatness that will not appeal strongly to posterity. His fame will not outlast his life. He is an entertainer rather than an orator, an adapter instead of a thinker. His speeches are "finished" rather than foreful, his writing "pretty" rather than profound. He is the chief exponent of literary luxuriousness, facile princeps of oratorical decadents. Upon everything that he has written or uttered is stamped in capital letters," I strive to please." I do not mean that Col. Ingersoll panders to popular prejudice in religion or politics, but that he seeks to gratify the effeminate tastes of literary Sybarites. His lectures and speeches are carefully memorized, every word weighed, every look and gesture foreordained, hence his oratory rises little above perfect elocution. When a speaker hath the art to conceal his art such oratory is pleasing, but it can never possess that weird power that enabled Burke Cockran to hold 20, 000 enemies of Tammany spellbound at the midnight hour while he plead the cause of the execrated "tiger." There is nothing magnetic, nothing volcanic in Ingersoll's happiest efforts-none of that dominating personal power by which the old masters melted their auditors to tears, or wrought them to frenzy, then hurled them against pretty flowers; but they lack perfume. There's not one cape jasmine to drown the soul in sensuous ecstasy. There are a thousand petty darts that sting like pismires, but not one Toledo blade, driven like a thunderbolt through a coat of mail. Were Ingersoll a really wise man he would discourse of the philosophy of religion instead of wrangling with foolish secretaries anent its non-essentials. Who the devil cares what barbarians thought about the creation, or what their idea of the Creator? Are we never to hear the last of the inquisitorial thumbscrews and old John Calvin's crime? Shall we be preterists ever and turn our faces to the dead past instead of to the dawn? Religion has been subject to the law of evolution. It has evoluted from the Mumbo Jumbo and the wooden idols of Arabywith "flies on them "-to a God of infinite love. To be consistent, Col. Ingersoll should decry all government because tyrants have enslaved their subjects and ruled them with a rod of iron. He should mock at science because the world's wisest once thought the earth supported by a monster tortoise. He should condemn the Copernican theory because the Ptolemaic was proven fatuous. He should decry love because it was born of lust, and condemn marriage because it began in slavery. Col. Ingersoll lectures on Shakespeare sometimes, and declares, if I mistake not, that the Bard of Avon was the wisest man that ever adorned the world. If that be true it may be true to ponder these words, which sound like an echo of the voice. of Solomon: "Ignorance is the curse of God, Knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to Heaven.” *** POLITICAL POT-POURRI. "NAPOLEON" MCKINLEY appears to be well in the lead for the presidential persimmon, which will be awarded this year by the Republican party. He's the man of destiny. The stars in their course fight for McKinley. Politically, geographically and intellectually, he's all that could be desired-in a presidential probability. Bill McKinley resembles Bonaparte-and so do the First Consul's plasterof-Paris busts. Shakespeare intimates that a fool may pass for a philosopher by looking wise as an owl and sawing wood; and McKinley has profited by the hint. He's the Napoleonic sphynx. He stands "wrapt in the solitude of his own originality," and says nothing. It is impossible in these latter days to elect a really brainy man chief magistrate. Intellect and industry are correlatives, and activity in politics means a horde of enemies who will climb your collar at the national convention. No man of superior mental powers has attained the presidency since the death of Lincoln, and his elevation was a political accident. The Websters and Clays, the Blaines and Shermans, these are not the men who are available; " it is the Hayeses and Harrisons, the Buchanans and Clevelands who keno. "A fool for luck," says the wise man, and the proverb applies with peculiar force to politics. Intellectual giants are defeated for county judgeships, while mediocrity reaches the chief magistracy. We Democrats may dislike to admit it, but Tom Reed's the brainiest American on earth to-day. He knows more in a minute 66 |