An Unpleasant Process.
“What a horrible humiliation!" exclaimed the Shirt as it lay in the clothes-basket. It belonged to the evening dress of a very fine gentleman, and as it was a new shirt it was passing through a novel experience.
"All these dirty clothes!" sniffed the Shirt. "And to be crowded in with common apparel in this way!" The Shirt did not realize that it also was soiled, and so was on a level with the rest.
Then came a horrible plunge into hot water. Then came a cruel pounding and rubbing that almost took the life out of the Shirt. Then it was put through a fearful pair of rollers that nearly finished it. Then it was hung out on a line, and the wind flapped it insultingly for several hours. Last of all it was laid on a board and pressed by an excruciatingly hot iron. This was the crowning agony. The Shirt swooned away!
When it recovered consciousness it was to find itself clothing its master, and shining in the very center of a brilliant company. Vastly pleased, it began to relate its experiences to its friends, the Pearl Studs; but they interrupted it with a hearty laugh.
"Why, you simpleton!" they exclaimed. "That was only the process of getting clean. Did you expect it to be as easy as getting dirty?"
Stop! Proceed!
A Cleveland experiment in the management of street crowds interests me.
The policeman, who heretofore has stood at the intersection of the streets, is placed in a booth on the sidewalk. There he controls red and green lights placed where all street-cars, automobiles, and other vehicles can see them.
When the red light is displayed it means "Stop!" The green light means "Proceed!" The system is so interlocked that when the right to proceed is given to the up-and-down traffic the right-and-left traffic is automatically stopped.
The policeman is not exposed to the weather. He can give information to inquirers without keeping them in a dangerous place. When an instrument in the booth sounds warning of an approaching fire-engine, the policeman throws in an emergency switch which flashes red at all corners and rings a bell. Then the policeman steps out into the street and keeps people out of the way.
The plan is said to speed up traffic twenty per cent. It must be a great convenience to the public and satisfaction to the police.
How fine it would be if the system could be applied to society, giving now one set of reformers and other good folks the right of way, and now another set! Is anything beyond the possibility of electricity?
Changed Views.
"It's all cranky nonsense, this everlasting harping on temperance, in the public schools, and the Sunday schools, and the young people's society, and the church prayer meetings."
Fifteen years later: He is a rabid Prohibitionist and Anti-Saloon Leaguer and Good Templar.
(Reason: His own son has become a drunkard.)
"It's abominable, the way our papers and magazines and even our preachers are talking about matters of sex. I shall keep my girl innocent of such contaminating information as long as I can."
Fifteen years later: She is urging at a women's club, with tears in her eyes, that all mothers should teach their children about their sex life before evil-minded persons or base books can get at them.
(Reason: Her own daughter became a profligate for lack of the knowledge her mother kept from her.)
"What absurdity, all this talk about chewing your food, and eating this, that, and the other health stuff, and hygienic this and hygienic that! I eat what I want, and when I want, and as I want, and look at me: sound as a nut, and never sick a day!"
Fifteen years later: He is a vegetarian, one-meal-a-day, no-butter, forty-chew, dyed-in-the-wool Fletcherite.
(Reason: Dyspepsia, rheumatism, and insomnia till he's a wreck.)
The Reformers.
"I will reform the earth!" cried the Earthquake. Thereupon he proceeded to give the earth a well-deserved shaking. Houses were hurled down, great public buildings were overthrown, and thousands of poor people were buried in the ruins. But the world went on just as before.
"I will reform the earth!" cried the Tornado. Forthwith he also tore down hundreds of homes, and cut a wide swath through the very heart of a great city. But the world went on as before.
"I will reform the earth!" cried the Fire; "I will purify it by a vast conflagration." At once he proceeded to do so, and the holocaust was more terrible than any ever before known, destroying the world's largest city and bankrupting a score of great insurance companies. But the world went on as before.
Then a loving, thoughtful man, deeply in earnest and moved by the Spirit of the Most High, wrote a book. It was a small book, and it was sent forth without the author's name and by an obscure publisher; but it breathed so much of the divine love, and it had so much of the New Testament spirit and words, and it got so close to the hearts and consciences of men, that gradually the world grew better; and then it began to grow better with a rush; and then the world was reformed. Nor did anyone ever learn who wrote that book.
A Little Lesson for Reformers.
Some processes cure, but it is harder to cure the cure than the original disease.
This remark is prompted by an account I have read of a little experience some folks in South Boston once had.
There was a dump near Marine Park from which arose an odor so vile that the citizens of the locality petitioned the board of health for relief. Thereupon the board sent a man with a lot of chemicals to kill the odor.
Well, that particular odor was killed, but a still more disagreeable odor, arising from the chemicals, was substituted. Worse than that, the chemicals turned the paint of half a dozen houses black and injured the woodwork, so that claims for damages have been filed against the city.
Let all reformers heed the parable. Let them be sure that their reform does not introduce more evils than it remedies.
Recasting Men's Heads.
The municipal council of Rome abolished religious teaching in the schools under its care, and the Pope very naturally deplored the action. In discussing the matter he said: "Some men's heads need changing. When a bell is cracked we recast it, making it sound properly again. It is a pity some men's heads cannot be treated in the same manner." At least that is what the New York Sun's cablegram made the Pope say.
I, for one, agree with the Pope, the only difference between us probably being that he would like to furnish the mold in which men's heads are to be recast, and I should like to have the furnishing of that mold myself.
Perhaps no two persons in all the world could agree on the shape of the mold into which men's heads are to be run when they get cracked and need recasting. I am not sure that even my wife and I could settle upon a mold of the same shape. I know that often we cannot agree upon the shape of a hat that shall cover the head, and how could we be expected to agree upon the head itself?
Probably this peculiarity of human nature, this preference for our own molds, affords the reason why the Maker of men's heads has not given mankind the power of recasting them when they get cracked. At any rate, when I am tempted, as I often am tempted, to indulge in the Pope's desire, it will be good for me to remember that if men's heads could be recast, it is barely possible that I should not be the man selected by universal suffrage to furnish the mold. Perhaps it is as well, then, that men's heads should wag on as they are, cracks and all.
Sabotage.
Workmen have employers at their mercy if they choose to make war. Here is a man who has a grievance against a manufacturer. He is in charge of delicate machinery. He has only to throw a few specks of metallic dust into the oil cups and the machinery will be ruined and the whole mill compelled to shut down. Any workman knows how to cripple the machines and tools with which he works, and it may be done so easily and secretly that conviction is practically impossible.
This is called "sabotage," and the extremists among the labor agitators deliberately recommend it, on the ground that labor is in a state of war against capital and that capital does not hesitate to do all in its power to injure the laborer.
It is the doctrine of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life, for which Christ substituted the better doctrine of meekness and love.
Sabotage in any calling—and it is by no means confined to the laboring classes—is unchristian, unmanly, cowardly, and degrading. If it is warfare, it is a skulking, disreputable kind, unworthy of honorable soldiers. Injury never balances injury. Wrongs are never righted by other wrongs. The ultimate reliance must be upon reason, justice, conscience, and love, and the sooner the appeal is made to these the sooner will the desired end be reached.
Prison or University?
It was an extreme statement, but often extreme statements err body fundamental truths. Dean George W. Kirchwey of the Law School of Columbia University, for six months warden of Sing Sing Prison, once said in a public gathering that the time will come when a degree from Sing Sing Prison will be worth as much as a degree from Harvard University.
By that statement of course Dean Kirchwey did not mean to advise young men to matriculate in Sing Sing Prison. He did not intend to imply anything less than utter abhorrence of crime, or to say that the direful consequences of sin can ever be completely undone. A clean life remains a clean life, while for all eternity it will remain true that a sinner, even a forgiven sinner, has been a sinner.
But Dean Kirchwey meant that if prisoners follow along the lines laid down by Osborne, then warden of Sing Sing, if they really seek to develop the manhood of their inmates, their bodies, minds, and souls, then they may succeed in accomplishing work comparable to that done by the most efficient and famous university. For, after all, a degree is worth no more than the man behind it.
Not to Be Turned off.
An ingenious man in Illinois has invented a system of electric lights that can be switched on from a bed whenever the head of the household wishes to examine the premises for a suspected burglar. Every light in the house can be instantly turned on, a terrifying flood of illumination, sufficient in itself to put to flight anyone who prefers darkness to light because his deeds are evil. Moreover,—and this is the feature of special ingeniousness,—the lights thus turned on cannot be turned off at the individual switches within reach of the burglar. His only recourse is to smash all the globes.
I hope that Illinois inventor will turn his attention to the electric currents of social and political life. It is comparatively easy to turn on the light, when we suspect political or social wrong-doing; but the rascals, alas! are swift adepts at turning it off again!
The Consistent Reformer.
The Reformer wrote to the editor of The Christian Exemplar, saying, in effect: "The Slimy Magazine is doing vast harm with its indecent stories. I am sending you the latest number with forty-five marked passages, all of them unfit for entrance into a Christian home; yet The Slimy Monthly circulates by the million. Now I demand of you, as a religious editor, to ask your subscribers to write to the editor of The Slimy Monthly and tell him they will stop his magazine if he does not clean it up."
Thereupon the editor of The Christian Exemplar wrote to the Reformer, in substance, as follows: "I thoroughly agree with you in regard to The Slimy Magazine, but do not wish to advertise it by mentioning it in our columns, still less by urging our readers to write to its editor implying that they read the stuff. I have written many editorials condemning such periodicals in general terms. Unfortunately, the editors of The Slimy Magazine are well aware of the loyalty of their readers,—far stronger, I fear, than the loyalty of many Christians to their religious periodicals."
The correspondence was closed by the following missive from the Reformer to the editor of The Christian Exemplar: "I always thought you hadn't the courage of a flea, and I have stopped my subscription to your weak-kneed paper."
But the Reformer still takes The Slimy Magazine, that he may have something to reform.
Smoke Bombs.
The Great War has developed many novel contrivances, among them the smoke bomb. This bomb is dropped from an airplane upon a battery which it is desired to destroy. The bomb itself is harmless, but when it bursts it emits a very black smoke, which lasts for a long time. The enemy's gunners use the smoke as a guide for their fire, which they direct against the battery with ruinous effect.
Whatever may be said about the use of smoke bombs in material war, there is no doubt that in spiritual warfare they would be a fine thing. It would be a fine idea to send aloft an airplane to drop them upon every saloon, every low theater, every gambling-hell, every other place of foulness and sin. There are numerous newspaper offices and magazine offices and book-publishing houses on which these bombs should be dropped. There are, some lecture platforms that should receive them, and certain political headquarters. Indeed, there are even a few pulpits upon which the aviator might suitably let fall his shells of smoke.
Then, as the black cloud rose, the batteries of all lovers of good should be directed that way, massed in strenuous opposition, violent indignation, fiery rage. As the black smoke scattered in the thin air, if the plague center is not shattered another smoke bomb should descend upon it, and another black column should ascend, pointing it out for a renewed and still more violent attack.
We are too easy with evil. We forget the devil and his doings. We become complacent with wicked men. This terrible war will do one good thing if it puts fresh stamina into men's blood; if they cease, in time, to fire their guns against good men, and turn them in irresistible power against the rulers of the darkness of this world.
The Wrecking Business.
Wrecking, in our day, is no longer a disreputable business. Men boldly advertise that they engage in it. "Old Buildings Torn Down," they offer. In our great cities they are at work all the time, demolishing in a few weeks structures that required months to erect, and that cost many hundred thousand dollars. The work looks easy, but often it is very difficult, and sometimes it is really dangerous.
"What vandals they are!" we exclaim as we see the destruction they effect. But stay! Let us remember that a better building is sure to rise in place of that which they tear down. They are agents of progress, their picks and prying levers symbols of a bigger, busier and more useful city.
In this sense, every Christian is to be a wrecker. Re is to tear down old customs, old ideas, old organizations, much that is worn out in his life and the lives of others. Only, let him see to it that wherever he plies his pick, something nobler and more useful rises to replace what he has overthrown.
"Cafés" and "Servers."
"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet." Yes, and a skunk-cabbage would smell just the same if called a rose.
In Jersey City, N. J., the county liquor-dealers' association once voted that thereafter their saloons should be called cafes, and the bartenders called "servers."
But getting rid of two bad names does not get rid of two bad things. Calling a saloon a "café" does not make it a whit less an entrance to the pit. Calling a bartender a "server" does not in the least remove him from the awful Bible curse upon "him that giveth his neighbor drink."
Let us do away with the evil thing and then the evil names will be forgotten; not until.
One reform set on foot in connection with this whitewashed nomenclature is certainly to be commended: the prohibition of profanity on the part of the "servers." A saloon without pro fanity would be almost worthy to be called a café.
Detoxication.
"Intoxication" means literally a poisoning with arrow poison.
Someone has coined the corresponding word, "detoxication," which means the getting rid of poison.
The drunkard sleeps off the poison of alcohol. The weary man sleeps off the fatigue poisons. Sleep is a most efficient detoxicator.
The envious man, the covetous man, are intoxicated, filled with the poison of greed. Contentment is a detoxicator.
Many men are intoxicated with sport. The detoxicator is earnestness.
Others are intoxicated with vanity. The detoxicator is self-knowledge.
Alcoholic intoxication will soon be a horror of the past, but detoxicators will still be needed. Lay in a good supply.