The ^ame Old Fool. 
 
 By MAXIMUS. 
 
 - WHAT FOOLS THESE MORTALS BE." 
 
 1 ;^-'-^ 29 189b 
 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, 
 
INDEX. 
 
 PART FIRST. 
 
 PAGE 
 Title 1 
 
 Preface 3 
 
 First Old Fool 5 
 
 Second Old Fool 7 
 
 Literary Infldel 9 
 
 The Critical Old Fool 14 
 
 PART SECOND. 
 
 The Same Old Fool in Society.....:. '... 17 
 
 The Witty Old Fool 19 
 
 The Solid Old Fool 22 
 
 The Ancestral Old Fool 32 
 
 The Foreign Traveled Old Fool 35 
 
 The Untraveled Old Fool...^..'. 38 
 
 The Worldly- Wise Old Fool 41 
 
 The Money-Loving Old Fool 43 
 
 The Punctilious Old Fool 47 
 
 The 0])tiinistic Old Fool 50 
 
 The Pessimistic Old Fool 53 
 
 The Self-Made Old Fool 56 
 
 The Fashionable Old Fool 59 
 
 The Curious Old Fool 64 
 
 The Officious Old Fool 66 
 
 The Sensitive Old Fool 69 
 
 The Conscientious Old Fool 70 
 
 PART THIRD. 
 
 The Mechanical Old Fool 72 
 
 The Agricultural Old Fool 76 
 
 The Medical Old Fool 78 
 
 The Legal Old Fool 80 
 
 The Literary Old Fool 82 
 
PART FOURTH. 
 
 The Prophetic Old Fool ^ 
 
 The Weather-Wise Old Fool 88 
 
 The Practical Old Fool 91 
 
 The Strictly Business Old Fool 95 
 
 The Business-Hating Old Fool 97 
 
 The Common-Sense Old Fool 100 
 
 The Editorial Old Fool 102 
 
 The Impecunious Old Fool 10* 
 
 The Materialistic Old Fool 108 
 
 The Opposite Old Fool HI 
 
 The Woman-Hating Old Fool H^ 
 
 The Man-Hating Old Fool H^ 
 
 The Mathematical Old Fool 119 
 
 The Financial Old Fool 121 
 
 PART FIFTH. 
 
 The Political Old Fool 124 
 
 PART SIXTH. 
 
 The Sectional Old Fools 130 
 
 The Central Old Fool 150 
 
 The Western Old Fool 151 
 
 The Pacific Old Fool 15* 
 
 The Southern Old Fool 156 
 
 The European Old Fool 165 
 
 PART SEVENTH. 
 
 The Clerical Old Fool • I'^l 
 
 The Ignorant Old Fool 1'''3 
 
 The Learned Old Fool : 1"* 
 
 The Strict Construction Old Fool v. 1'^'*' 
 
 The Easy-Going Old Fool 1"9 
 
 The Monopolistic Old Fool ^..181 
 
 The Compromising Old Fool 183 
 
 The Uncompromising Old Fool 187 
 
 The Controversial Old Fool 189 
 
 The Sensational Old Fool 191 
 
 The Superstitious Old Fool 196 
 
 The Sceptical Old Fool 205 
 
 The Progressive Old Fool 208 
 
 The Sanctified Old Fool 210 
 
 The Last Old Fool 214 
 
The Same Old Fool 
 
 BY 
 
 ^ MAXIMUS. 
 
 <^,^1 OF CO^^ 
 
 ^^-'^ 29 1895 
 
 "What Fools These Mortals Be."— PUCK. Aj^ 
 
 FIRST EDITION. 
 
 1895. 
 
 

PREFACE. 
 
 It is said that short payments make long friends. We 
 are not sure, however, that brief prefaces make long 
 books, for we have seen books in which the preface was 
 everything and the book nothing. But to characterize: 
 There are books with long prefaces, short prefaces, and 
 others with none at all. Extent, then, in this matter, is 
 purely a question of judgment and taste on the part of 
 the writer. We may observe, however, that nearly all 
 biographers indulge in long prefaces for reasons quite 
 manifest to a discerning person. When bread is plenti- 
 ful and butt«r scarce, the latter is made to spread 
 over as much of the surface of the staff of life as possi- 
 ble. When an orator is not sure of an audience he in- 
 dulges in much prefatory skirmishing in order to dis- 
 cover the strong or weak points of the opposition, as the 
 case may be, or at least prepare their minds for unpleas- 
 ant truths by advancing gradually until the frown of 
 prejudice is chased away by the smile of approval. 
 
 As we are dealing with a very sensitive individual in 
 the present instance, prudence suggests that we pursue 
 the same conciliatory policy. But we are met with the 
 gratifying reflection that not one of our readers will 
 imagine for a moment that we have any reference to 
 him, but to the other fellow. In consequence we ap- 
 proach the citadel of our subject with a great deal more 
 boldness than we otherwise would. 
 
 First, then, as to our subject. It has been said that 
 ^'history repeats itself." Whoever made that assertion 
 might have gone a great deal further without doing 
 violence to either truth or experience. Why, nearly 
 everything in the universe repeats itself, and along with 
 the rest (only a thousand fold more so than anything 
 else), the Same Old Fool repeats himself. And we are 
 
eorry to add that each succeeding edition is worse than 
 the first. 
 
 Observant people have noticed the tendency of scien- 
 tists, linguists, moralists and theologians to reduce every- 
 thing to unity or to origin in their respective spheres. 
 The scientist would reduce all the phenomena of the 
 material universe to the promise and potency of Matter, 
 the linguist every language to one parent stock, while all 
 orthodox theologians contend for the Trinity in unity. 
 Determined not to be outdone by our scientific, linguistic 
 and theological brethren in the treatment of our subject, 
 we, too, shall endeavor to show that every species of Old 
 Fool now extant belongs to the same parent. In order 
 to establish this proposition, we found it necessary to 
 search past records with unusual diligence, and the re- 
 sult may be seen in the first chapter of this veracious 
 history. 
 
PART FIRST. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE FIRST OLD FOOL. 
 
 Before giving the history of the First Old Fool, and 
 going into the analysis of his character, it seems the cor- 
 rect thing to define what we mean by the term "Fool." 
 To begin, then: Fools are divided into three great classes, 
 to-wit: Natural-born fools, circumstantial fools, and 
 artificial fools. It is with the class last mentioned that 
 we shall deal in this volume. And we may add that 
 while our definition of the term may be a departure from 
 Webster and Worcester, we have eminent authority on 
 our side, being no less than the Word of God itself, for 
 does not St. Paul say, "Professing themselves wise, they 
 became fools." This, then, is the kind of a fool we are 
 after in these pages — the one who imagines he knows it 
 all. And we shall be so impartial in the treatment of 
 our subject as to give each Old Fool the benefit of a 
 whole chapter devoted exclusively to himself or herself. 
 
 Being of an inquiring turn of mind, especially as re- 
 gards the early history of distinguished men and women, 
 and realizing that such a noted character as the Same 
 Old Fool must have had an ancestry reaching backwards 
 almost to the Garden of Eden, for history, ancient as 
 well as modern is far, from being silent concerning the 
 doings of his descendants, we could never rest until we 
 had found out all about the original of such an illustri- 
 ous family. And we might as well add here that our 
 researches, compared with the similar labors of others, 
 have been crowned with eminent success. We have not 
 only discovered who the First Old Fool was, but even 
 had the good fortune to learn what manner of man he 
 was. When we take into account that. notwithstanding 
 
the fact that Homer was one of the greatest of poets, 
 and yet all we know of him is, that he is the reputed au- 
 thor of his own poems, and notwithstanding all that has 
 been written of Shakespeare, all we know is, that he shot 
 Sir Lucy's deer in his youth, and planted a mulberry 
 tree in his old age, we are inclined to flatter ourselves 
 upon the completeness of ourwork. 
 
 The manner in which we made our discovery of the 
 First Old Fool was a mere accident, after all. After 
 having exhausted the texts of all tie profane manu- 
 scripts of antiquity, many of which were written by him- 
 self, but i^hich, unfortunately, threw no light on his 
 family history, in sheer desperation we began a perusal 
 of the Old Testament. Imagine our surprise, as well as 
 joy, when, opening the book one fine morning, the 
 first sentence that met our eyes was this: "The fool 
 hath said in his heart, there is no God." We could 
 hardly credit our own eyesight. Surely the First Old 
 Fool recorded in history was not an atheist, and that, 
 too, in spite of the fact that the atheist of to-day claims 
 all the knowledge going, claims to have solved all the 
 problems of the universe, and now shown to be the First 
 Old Fool on record. But there it was in cold type, in 
 one of the oldest books in the world, without one miti- 
 gating line about it. It was too bad ! 
 
 There is no use, however, in our atheistic friends of 
 to-day trying to deny it. They might as well own up. 
 Their very speech betrayeth them, for it bears the ear- 
 marks of their original. They still say, "There is no 
 God." 
 
 Now, some people are so weak as to believe there is 
 much wisdom in saying "There is no God." King 
 David, who was acquainted with the First Old Fool, was 
 of a different opinion, for after trying to reason with 
 
him he discovered he had no head to speak of, and ex- 
 claimed, "The fool hath said in his heart (not his head) 
 ther« is no God." Oh, no; it does not require any brains 
 to say "There is no God." Only meanness, and % 
 sight of it. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE SECOND OLD FOOL. 
 
 The next Old Fool to which we invite your attention 
 is the Scientific Infidel. This specimen is a younger 
 brother of the atheist. He does not, like his older 
 brother, deny the existence of God without rhyme or 
 reason, but claims to be in possession of certain facts 
 which enable mankind to get along very well without 
 one. Like the fox which had lost his tail and then 
 tried to persuade all the other foxes to cut off theirs as 
 a useless appendage, so he, having lost all respect for 
 himself, as well as his Maker, and being lonesome, would 
 fain persuade all men to believe as he does. 
 
 One of the greatest lights in the kingdom of Scienti- 
 fic Fools, Professor Tyndall says that matter has the 
 promise as well as the potency of all things terrestrial 
 as well as heavenly, which is the same thing as saying 
 that Matter has all power in heaven as well as earth. 
 As this is all any christian ever claimed for the Al- 
 mighty, all the difference anyone can see, who has any 
 common sense, is one of mere names. If the christian 
 chooses to call his God Jehovah, and the Scientific Infi- 
 del to denominate his, Matter, and they possess the 
 same attributes, what right has the Scientific Infidel to 
 accuse the enlightened christian of "superstition ?" The 
 superstition is all on the other side. 
 
The materialist is like the sculptor of Greek history. 
 Moved by the genius of his own nature and the aspira- 
 tion of his own nation, he embodied in spotless marble, 
 ideal beauty, strength and grace. He gave the statue to 
 his country-men, and they, alas ! worshiped it as a god. 
 Materialists find Matter impressed by certain laws, ar- 
 ranged in beautiful forms, and they set it up with energy 
 and space and worship it as a god, having the promise 
 as well as the potency of all things terrestrial as well as 
 heavenly. Not the truly great minds of the world do 
 this; not the profound thinkers of our day do this, but 
 partial thinkers — men devoid of intuition — men, im- 
 pervious to the noblest conceptions who thus empty God 
 of divinity, of intellect, of emotion, and put in place 
 thereof "physical properties." 
 
 True science, however, is the hand-maid of religion 
 and a foe to superstition. The Apostle Paul, whom all 
 Scientific Infidels hate, ^vas one of its ablest expounders, 
 and first enunciated its principles in the very seat of so- 
 called philosophy itself. His speech delivered on Mar's 
 Hill at Athens nearly 2,000 years ago, was one of the 
 most masterful appeals for the existence of God from 
 the standpoint of human reason that ever fell from the 
 lips of man. In it he says nothing of protoplasmic 
 cells, of embryonic life, of Philosophic Evolution, but 
 speaks of the unknown God of Greece as one in whom 
 we live and move, and have our being, as the gracious 
 sender of the fruitful shower, and concerning whom 
 their own poets had claimed them to be his own off- 
 spring. That speech has never been answered and never 
 will be. It has survived the sophistry of Hume, the 
 cynicism of Voltaire, the rhetoric of Gibbon, the vul- 
 garity of Paine, and it will Outlive the blasphemy of In- 
 gersoll. In comparison to it, Darwin's "Descent of 
 

 
 Man" is as mud to marble, "Hyperion to a Satyr," or a 
 chattering monkey to a "myriad-minded" Shakspeare. 
 Never was a book better named than Darwin's. The 
 "Descent of Man" is the tendency of all modern infi- 
 delity. Having denied God, its next step is to degrade 
 man. If any one can hesitate as to whether God 
 made man in his own image, or whether he evoluted 
 from a monkey, with all due deference to such a man, 
 whether a Scientific Infidel or any other fool, we give it 
 as our deliberate opinion, if he should finally decide in 
 favor of the monkey, that his remote ancestor was the 
 more sensible of the two. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 The next Old Fool is the literary infidel: He is a 
 twin brother to the Scientific, occupying the same posi- 
 tion in the world of letters that his brother does in the 
 field of science. As the scientific "Old Fool" regards 
 every scientist, who still adheres to the word of God as 
 fossil of a pre-scientific age, so the literary one looks 
 upon all writers who still believe in its inspiration, as 
 poor, weak mortals deserving their pity, if not their con- 
 tempt. 
 
 One of the most eminent instances of the literary and 
 oratorical fools combined, is Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll. 
 The nineteenth century has been one pre-eminently of 
 invention and innovation, and the Colonel was bent on 
 keeping up with the procession. He thinks he has 
 made two wonderful discoveries. The first he entitles 
 "The Mistakes of Moses," and the other, "There is no 
 God." 
 
10 
 
 We have not learned whether he has applied for a 
 patent or not, but we are persuaded they will both be re- 
 jected on the grounds of "previous discovery," as a syn- 
 dicate of inventors, consisting of Korah, Dathan and 
 Abiram laid claim to the first discovery of the "Mis- 
 takes of Moses." We are sorry to add that they did not 
 discover their own until too late. Although we have 
 already shown that the first "Old Fool" recorded in his- 
 tory said **there was no God," yet, wishing to learn the 
 merits of the Colonel's invention, we have examined it 
 thoroughly and find the following claims set forth by 
 Robert. He says that what has heretofore been con- 
 sidered a master- wheel in the machinery of the universe, 
 and which, for want of a better name, we call God, is 
 only a clog or fifth wheel to the wagon, and should be 
 dispensed with. He claims that the elimination of this 
 useless piece of machinery will reduce the cost of living 
 to a minimun. We believe this, for in all countries 
 where it has been tried, houses and clothing have been 
 discarded and every one replenishes his larder with 
 the flesh of his enemy. As fat men in those coun- 
 tries are preferred to lean, and as the Colonel inclines to 
 emhonnepoint, he would no doubt meet the fate he covets 
 by becoming a martyr to his principles It is true he is 
 old and is a tough subject, but perhaps after boiling 
 him a couple of days they might get most of the agnas- 
 ticism out of him. Ah, Yes ! We believe his invention 
 under favorable conditions would be a great success, and 
 we trust Congress may pass an appropriation sufficient 
 to pay the expenses of Colonel Ingersoll and his friends 
 to the Cannibal Islands that they may witness the full 
 effects of the discovery that there is no God. 
 
 As to the "Mistakes of Moses," we have no doubt that 
 "Bob" is the man to point them out. It requires one 
 
11 
 
 great man to criticise another, especially when lie ha« 
 had experiences similar to his subject. Moses was a 
 soldier, lawyer and prophet. So is Robert. Thelatter's 
 military career, however, was much briefer and more 
 brilliant than that of Moses. The gallant Colonel com- 
 manded a cavalry regiment during the late war, was 
 taken prisoner by General Forrest and exchanged for an 
 army mule. Moses, on the other hand, did nothing ex- 
 cept to lead an army of three millions of men, women 
 and children through the deserts of Arabia where food 
 and water were scarce. And even this little job took 
 him forty years, whereas could the dashing Robert have 
 been in command, rather than fail, he would have swap- 
 ped off his entire host for an army mule and ridden in- 
 to Canaan, solitary and alone. We have no doubt of 
 this, for Bob generally "gets there" whenever there is an 
 inducement to do so. 
 
 There has been an unbroken succession in the line of 
 the Literary Old Fools. Some of this line have been 
 quite famous, and in their day and time, had quite a fol- 
 lowing. But they, one and all, show by their lives, no 
 less. than by their language, that they are of a common 
 origin. The conceit of the moderw specimen, however, 
 is almost fabulous. They not only believe they possess 
 a monopoly of all the truths in the universe, but regard 
 it as one of their sole missions on earth to impart it to 
 others. Sometimes it is delivered to mankind in the 
 guise of a novel, sometimes in the shape of a lecture, 
 but most frequently in the form of an abandoned life in 
 which all decency is thrown to the winds. We have 
 already noticed that the first Old Fool on record said 
 there was no God. But since an infidel will believe 
 nothing handed down, in every age his brethien have 
 claimed "There is no God" as an original discovery. 
 
12 
 
 And this, by the way, small as it is, the only piece of 
 originality that infidelity has ever been accused of. 
 While Christianity has discovered that there is a God, and 
 in consequence, has erected hospitals for the sick in body, 
 churches for the sick of soul, while it gives sight to the 
 blind and life to the dead, and while it has carried light 
 and immortality to such as sat in darkness and the 
 shadow of death, while it has sweetened every life that 
 ever embraced it, and in the hour of dissolution robbed 
 death of its terrors, what has infidelity done in the past 
 and what is it doing to day but to sub^rt faith in God 
 and man, to impair the sacredness of marriage by try- 
 ing to prove it a failure, to impair the value of life by 
 trying to prove it not worth living. Their inner-con- 
 sciousness no doubt, causes them to come to this conclu- 
 sion, for if ever any one made a complete failure in life 
 it is an infidel. What an Old Fool he is to be sure ! 
 You may always tell one of these Old Fools by the fol- 
 lowing ear-marks: If educated, he imagines there is 
 not another such direful word in the language as "super- 
 stition." And yet, strange as it might seem to one un- 
 acquainted with such frauds as he is, he will not con- 
 tribute one cent towards getting it out of the world by 
 the only method which has ever proved successful, 
 Another ear-mark is his pretended disbelief in anything 
 supernatual except himself. This follows of course, as 
 he considers himself no ordinary mortal. Well, he is 
 hardly an ordinary mortal. Quite frequently he pub- 
 lishes a book with some new scheme of the univ( rse, 
 (each one always has a new scheme, for none of the old 
 ones will work,) in which such high-sounding words as 
 protoplasmic cells. Philosophic Evolution occur, and 
 which are about as intelligible to the majority of their 
 readers as the hieroglyphic inscriptions to be found upon 
 
13 
 
 an Assyrian monument would be. Or perhaps he essays 
 the role of fiction (his legitimate sphere) and evolves 
 from his inner consciousness a lot of cranks, male and 
 female, who go poking their noses through all the 
 pages of the Bible, into every mystery of redemption, 
 while ignoring the exalted morality of the New Testa- 
 ment. They get along swimmingly until they come to 
 something they cacnot understand, and then, good-bye 
 inspiration. Inspiration is to blame for it all. Any- 
 thing they cannot understand is incomprehensible of 
 course. But the beauty of the whole thing is, the world 
 is full of just such fools who buy the book; the chris- 
 tian does the same in order to see what sort of an egg 
 this new cockatrice has hatched out. And so between 
 the two he feathers his own nest, which was the object 
 he had in view when he began. 
 
 These are the usual concomitants of the Literary In- 
 fidel. Sometimes, as in the <"ase of Ingersoll, he mounts 
 the lecture platform and descants at so much a head on 
 the "Mistakes of Moses." No christian would, however, 
 attempt to point out the Mistakes of Ingersoll. That 
 would be a task beyond his powers, and so he concludes 
 to let the Mistakes of Moses take care of themselves as 
 they have been doing for about 4,000 years and will con- 
 tinue to do until the end of time. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE CRITICAL OLD POOL. 
 
 We enter into a wide field when we step into that oc- 
 cupied by the Critical Old Fool. In fact, he will not 
 content himself with a field. He wants the earth. Of 
 all the Old Fools, he is the most wide-spread and numer- 
 ous. You will find him everywhere, and no matter 
 where you find him, you will at once recognize him as a 
 chip from the same block. He knows it all. If he is a 
 believer in Revelation, the passage therein, which reads, 
 "Let us make man in our own image," he considers as re- 
 ferring especially to himself, as the man meant. And it 
 must be confessed on the score of omniscience and ubi- 
 quity, he does bear a striking resemblance to his Maker. 
 As a judge of history, science, literature, art, religion, 
 morals, manners and taste, he is pre-eminent. Let a 
 historian by patient research and enormous literary la- 
 bor endeavor to give his fellowmen the benefit of facts, 
 culled from every available source, and the Critical Old 
 Fool will at once "smell a mouse," and set his little rat- 
 trap of a brain to catch it. If the historian inadvertent- 
 ly makes a mistake as to a date or some other inconse- 
 quential fact, this "smart Aleck" of a critic will at once 
 proceed to make a mountain out of a mole hill. On the 
 other hand should the dates and facts be correct, why 
 then he will say, "the author's style is execrable." But 
 if facts, dates and style all be correct, why in that case 
 he will say nothing at all, implying thereby, that any- 
 
15 
 
 thins; with which he cannot find fault is not worthy of 
 notice. Indeed, he so demeans himself, as if he thought 
 the most distinguished of mankind should esteem it a 
 personal favor, on his part, as well as a great compli- 
 ment to themselves, to be noticed by him at all. I am 
 sorry to add that some people do seem to consider it a 
 compliment sure enough to get a "vicious dig in the 
 ribs" from these gentry. They are like the Irishman, 
 who went over to London, and being asked if he saw the 
 Queen, replied, "Faix and be sure I did ! Why bless me 
 sowl, and didn't her Gracious Majesty spake to me." 
 Being questioned as to the words addressed to him by 
 her Majesty, he replied with every evidence of pleasure, 
 "Why she axed me to git out of her way." 
 
 In Science, the Critical Old Fool disputes the data of 
 men, who have devoted their lives to it, while only 
 possessing a smattering of it himself. 
 
 In Literature, it is the same thing. If an infidel, he 
 can write a better book than the Bible. If not, he can 
 write a better play than Shakspeare, a better poem than 
 Milton, a better history than Macaulay. And yet, he 
 never writes one. He can preach a better sermon than 
 Doddridge or Barrow, compose a more meritorious ora- 
 tioD than Demosthenes. And yet he never opens his 
 mouth in the pulpit or upon the rostrum, except for 
 pay. What a pity that so much perfection should be 
 lost to mankind on account of other people's poverty. 
 Oh ! the immeasurable conceit required to constitute a 
 first-class Critical Old Fool ! Although producing noth- 
 ing, he is capable of all things. In theology he not only 
 points out the "Mistakes of Moses" himself, but knows 
 more about divinity in one short hour than Augustine, 
 John Calvin, James Arminius, Martin Luther or John 
 Wesley ever dreamed of. In medicine, although never 
 
16 
 
 inside of a medical college or a dissecting room, he yet 
 knows more about materia medica and anatomy than the 
 most eminent practitioner or surgeon in the land. In 
 business he is an adept. He knows why this man suc- 
 ceeds and that one fails much better than they know it 
 themselves. As to newspapers, he is a born editor, and 
 criticises the poor devil who edits one, without mercy. 
 In art, although he cannot draw the outlines of a coffee- 
 pot correctly, he yet points out to admiring dunces the 
 defects of Michael Angelo, Da Viuei and Rafael and 
 Rubens with ease in "words of learned length and thun- 
 derous sound." As to education generally, he is im- 
 mense, knowing everything intuitively. If a teacher 
 makes haste slowly in adopting new methods, he calls 
 him an old fogy. On the other hand, should he seek to 
 improve upon former methods, he rails at him for adopt- 
 ing what he terms "new-fangled notions." But the 
 Critical Old Fool is just simply inexhaustible, and we 
 drop him. 
 
PART SECOND. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE SAME OLD FOOL IN SOCIETY. 
 
 It was Lord Bjron, we believe, who wrote that "Fools 
 rush in where angels fear to tread." Now, any one not 
 acquainted with the peculiar characteristics that consti- 
 tute the Same Old Fool would imagine, perhaps, that in 
 society at least, he would not dare to show his face, 
 much less open his mouth. Sad mistake! He is not 
 only there in full force, but aspires to leadership like he 
 does everywhere else. He cuts so many different capers 
 and assumes so many different roles that it is a difficult 
 matter to recognize him as one and the Same Old Fool 
 you have encountered elsewhere. But he is though. 
 Sometimes he is seen in the person of one newly rich. 
 You may always know him when you are in his presence 
 by his opening remarks. He is generally open in this 
 respect at all hours, except when asleep, and we incline 
 to the opinion that his mouth, even then, is wide open 
 and that he talks about himself. Before giving you a 
 catalogue of his goods and chattels, financial standing 
 and splendid social position, he always prefaces all this 
 by saying, "Sir, I am a self-made man." If the old 
 "pudding-head" had not conceived the idea he was 
 "some pumpkins" he would never make such a remark 
 as that, for instead of creating the impression he covets 
 
18 
 
 he does just the reverse, enabling all sensible people to 
 see at once that he is telling the truth. He is utterly 
 unmmdful, however, of the only meritorious part of his 
 declaration, for in boasting of his own creation he re- 
 lieves the Lord of a fearful responsibility. 
 
 This specimen verily believes that money will pur- 
 chase everything, including brains, respectability and 
 social position. In consequence of this, if any one shows 
 a disposition to shun him, he imagines they do so for 
 want of sufficient sense to appreciate him, and not for 
 any lack of engaging qualities on his part. Now, we 
 we do not mean to imply that the newly-rich Old Fool 
 is without a plausible reason for entertaining such an 
 exalted opinion of himself. He is unable to perceive 
 that his acquaintances worship his money instead of 
 himself. That is where the joke comes in. But the 
 Old Fool is ambitious. He supplies his sons, if he has 
 any, with plenty of money and fast horses, and his 
 "gals" with each and every recurring fad of the season. 
 And we may add that the children of a newly-rich Old 
 Fool always improve upon the parental edition, and 
 carry the example set by '^pappy" and "mammy" to the 
 most ridiculous extent. Although he began his own ca- 
 reer by sleeping in a hay-loft and living on ash-cake and 
 buttermilk, he brings up his children in idleness and 
 luxury. And why? That he may obtain recognition 
 from people who really think less of him now than when 
 he was poor. Then he did have a little sense and some 
 honest pride about him. Now, with all his wealth, he 
 is nothing but a lick-spittle and a sycophant. We have 
 heard much and read much in derision of Southern 
 aristocracy, but we have never encountered such an Old 
 Fool among them as this. Their exclusiveness was based 
 on very valid reasons in most instances, and the efforts 
 
19 
 
 put fortb by such an "old goose" as we are describing, 
 to get within what he considers their charmed circle, is 
 not the least among them. It requires an amount of 
 conceit that is colossal, and a lack of sense that is phe- 
 nomenal for any one to suppose that he will be welcome 
 where he is not wanted. 
 
 But we said the newly-rich Old Fool is under the im- 
 pression that money will purchase brains also. It can 
 and does procure their employment, but never their be- 
 fitowment. You may give a man an idea, but God alone 
 can give him the power to comprehend it. But like all 
 the rest of the Old Fools, the Newly-Rich knows it all, 
 and will not listen to you when you try to advise him. 
 
 CHAPTER 11. 
 
 THE WITTY OLD FOOL. 
 
 While we are well aware that Dullness rolls the maxim 
 ''All that glitters is not gold" as a sweet morsel under 
 its tongue for obvious reasons, still at the same time we 
 -find it to be true that men of wit are not usually pro- 
 found. Neither are close observers of human na- 
 ture, as a general rule, ever burdened with the task of 
 originality or invention. Genius, whenever serviceable 
 to the world, has the heart of a child and the head of a 
 Titan. They are nearly always ignorant of human na- 
 ture, these "divine sons and daughters of genius," and 
 this, in a great measure, accounts for their failure to 
 succeed as the world rates success. 
 
 A man who has eaten of "the insane root that takes 
 the reason prisoner," who has caught strains of "the 
 eternal melodies," who is content to have plain living in 
 order that he may €njoy high thinking, lives apart from 
 
20 
 
 the "madding crowds," "ignoble strife," the great 
 school of human nature, which he that is of the earth 
 earthy finds so congenial a field. 
 
 There are, however, some notable exceptions to this. 
 There have been wits who were also wise. But as a rule 
 the flash of wit and the ray of wisdom seem incompatible. 
 
 But there is a species of humanity who, on account of 
 certain characteristics, well deserve, the title of the 
 Witty Old Fool. This Old Fool has been called a wit 
 so often by greater fools than himself, that he really be- 
 lieves he is one sure enough. Now, we venture the as- 
 sertion without the fear of successful contradiction that 
 not one in a hundred of them knows what wit really is. 
 They are under the impression that wit makes people 
 laugh. But wit does nothing of the kind. 
 
 But there is a bastard species of mechanical humor 
 which always produces that effect, and hence their hal- 
 lucination. One of the most eminent instances of a 
 mechanical humorist is Mark Twain. He has minimized 
 what is truly great^ and maximized what is really small, 
 until the American head is as flat where the bump of 
 veneration ought to be as a pancake. It is the pro- 
 vince of genuine humor to laugh man out of his foU 
 lies and vices, as did Cervantes and Fielding and Charles 
 Dickens, and not to destroy all reverence for men worthy 
 of veneration. 
 
 We dare, say that such men as Twain, et id omne 
 genus, have done more real harm to the people of the 
 United States than all the dime novels ever published. 
 The only genuine humorists our country has so far pro- 
 duced, are Artemus Ward, Bill Nye, Judge Long- 
 street and Joel Chandler Harris. There is an expansion 
 in their humor that takes it quite out of the category of 
 mechanical contrivances. As to "Bill Arp*" while pos- 
 
21 
 
 sessing wit and humor, he cannot in justice be called 
 either a wit or a humorist. He has neither the expan- 
 jiveness of a genuine humorist, nor the brilliance of a 
 true wit. But he has what is superior to both — the ro- 
 bust genius of saving, common sense. His scorn of 
 shams is too great to be content with the weapons of 
 ridicule, and will stop nothing short of denunciation. 
 His love for his fellowman is too deep for parodies on 
 bis achievements. To read after such a man is to love 
 him. 
 
 But the Witty Old Fool whom we wish to put on ex- 
 hibition in these pages belongs to the universal tribe. 
 He has fired his little pop-gun at every genius the world 
 has ever seen. He has no reverence for anything in 
 Heaven or Earth. He ridiculed Moses and parodized 
 Paradise Lost. He can weep at the tomb of Adam, 
 caricature George Washington. He has but one am- 
 bition — to create a laugh at somebody else's expense. 
 He cannot take a joke himself, and "gets as mad as a 
 hornet'' when you "turn the tables" on him. In com- 
 pany he ( ssays the role, and becomes as great a nuisance 
 as a black gnat or a mosquito, which are never in rap- 
 tures except when drawing blood Good, plain, pious 
 and worthy people seem to be the special objects of his 
 shafts, and to raise a laugh by ridiculing some peculiar- 
 ity of their dress or manner of speaking, whether in the 
 pulpit or out of it (if we may judge by outward signs), 
 gives him more real pleasure than anything else. Al- 
 though the earth is full of frauds, shams and cheats of 
 every description, he yet forsakes this legitimate field 
 for the exercise of wit for the forbidden one of things 
 that should be held up as models for imitation. In 
 short he is 
 
22 
 
 A member of that petty clan 
 
 Who must be witty when they can, 
 
 Not when they should; and therefore strike 
 
 At foes and bosom friends alike. 
 
 So as a general rule they are always loaded to the gun- 
 wales with puns, innuendoes and double entendres — the 
 light artillery of the Devil himself, for if there be a uni- 
 versal language in Hell, it is that of sarcasm. 
 
 Such is the Witty Old Fool — an exact antithesis of 
 the one constituting the subject of the next chapter. 
 
 CHAPTER m. 
 
 THE SOLID OLD FOOL. 
 
 What is termed success in life has evidently engaged 
 the profoundest minds in all ages of men who were, or 
 professed to be, worldly wise. But it is well enough to 
 state at the very outset that the word "success" has had 
 many meanings since the history of man began. In the 
 days of Solomon it meant the Lumber of wives a man 
 could afford to have. For instance, the Good Book no- 
 where tells us that King Solomon was worth a million 
 of dollars, but it states very explicitly that he had three 
 hundred wives and seven hundred concubines, and that 
 he was "a success" in the wife-getting line admits of no 
 dispute. The next fad in the way of success was mili- 
 tary glory. The fellow who, by dint of much fighting 
 and physical strength, had knocked on the head the 
 greater number of his enemies, was considered the most 
 successful man. Religious success was the next craze. 
 The lazy, and alas too often lousy, bare-footed priest, 
 who pretended to subsist on acorns and water, in order 
 to keep his own body lean, but who had no scruples in 
 
23 
 
 "frying the fat" out of a heretic, was considered as the 
 most successful man of the age. And he was, too, as 
 the world rated success at that time, for he was idolized 
 during life and canonized as a saint after death. Then 
 came the revival of letters, and the man or woman who 
 was most thoroughly acquainted with "Heathen Myth- 
 ology" and could quote most glibly in the tongues by 
 which it has been handed down, was considered a prodi- 
 gy. In short, success and pedantry meant one and the 
 same thing. Who cared anything for an ignoramus 
 then, even if he was worth a million ? But as civiliza- 
 tion advanced and multiplied the necessities of man, the 
 word "success" took another meaning, which it has held 
 ever since. And that word is "money." When you ask 
 after an absent friend nowadays, and the answer comes 
 that "he is very successful," you never hear anyone say 
 "in what way." That is well understood. When some- 
 one informs you that "Miss So-and-so has married well," 
 that is understood too, although she may have married 
 some old miser, eighty years old, without a tooth in his 
 head, half blind and deaf as a post. It is true the young 
 prostitute shows some twinges of a conscience, which 
 she tries to soothe by quoting the well-known phrase, 
 that "it is better to be an old man's darling than a 
 young man's slave," which phrase was no doubt in- 
 vented by some other young prostitute in a similar situa- 
 tion, and which has proven a God-send to the whole 
 tribe ever since. No doubt the reason of its invention, 
 in the first instance, was owing to the fact that it was 
 considered marrying well at one time if the >oung man 
 was worthy, though he may have been poor. 
 
 It was once the custom in writing marriage notices to 
 conclude with some verses appropriate to the occasion. 
 How would this sound at the conclusion of a notice of a 
 
24 
 
 marriage between an old fool eighty years old, and a 
 young woman only eighteen or twenty ? 
 
 "Hymen, thy brightest torch prepare, 
 
 Gild with light the nuptial bower, 
 With garlands crown this lovely pair. 
 
 On them thy choicest blessings shower. 
 Cupids lightly sport and play, 
 Hymen crowns the happy day. 
 Sprightly graces too descend, 
 And the beauteous bride attend. 
 Here no sordid interests binds, (It don't) 
 
 But purest innocence and love, (Great Heavens !) 
 Combined unite their spotless minds, 
 
 And seal their vowi above." (Below more likely) 
 
 If Hymen prepared any torch at all on this occasion 
 to gild the nuptial bower it would be simply to prevent 
 the half-blind old fool from stumbling over a chair and 
 breaking his neck, a consummation no doubt devoutly 
 wished for by the "beauteous bride," as her sole pur- 
 pose in marrying the old soft head was his money, and 
 the sooner he dieg, the sooner she gets it, that is all. 
 
 So then, we think the point is established that success 
 and money mean one and the same thing, and whether 
 you really think so or not you would better keep your 
 mouth shut unless you wish to be set down as a crank 
 of the worst description. 
 
 Since the advent of the money era the language itself 
 has undergone a complete change, for whereas when 
 David Garrick over one hundred years ago was playing 
 to "crowded houses" in London, if he were doing the 
 same thing to-day. he would be reported as "playing to 
 one thousand" or "two thousand dollar houses," as the 
 case might be. It is true the phrase to a citizen of the 
 last century might be a little ambigious, as he might be 
 led to infer that the house in which the play was going 
 
. 25 
 
 on cost two thousand dollars. But no one in this day 
 and generation, when humanity itself is merged into th« 
 unit of a dollar, would ever make such a mistake as 
 that. 
 
 "Responsible" is another word which the Money Era 
 has wrenched from its moorings. When you ask whether 
 such and such a man is "responsible," it would be con- 
 sidered an evidence of intense ignorance or softening of 
 the brain were you to reply that "he was an honest 
 man," instead of saying that he has property. 
 
 These two instances are sufficient to show the com- 
 plete transformation which words have undergone since 
 the advent of the Money Era. But as our object is to 
 point out a peculiar species of Old Fool which the 
 Money Age has produced, we will omit further illustra- 
 tion, although we could fill a volume with them alone. 
 
 We have just said this a^e has produced a peculiar 
 species of Old Fool, and although he may have the ap- 
 pearance of being the originator of his line, yet upon ex- 
 amination, he will be found a member of the universal 
 family, having all the ear-marks of his ancestors to any 
 discerning person. We refer to the Solid Old Fool. 
 This specimen by virtue of certain maxims, such as a 
 "still tongue makes a wise head," "still waters run deep," 
 and such like, which have been handed down from one 
 generation of Solid Old Fools to another as a precious 
 heir-loom in the family, has adopted them as covering 
 his case exactly. 
 
 We dislike an iconoclastic reputation, dislike to ex- 
 pose the spoiled darlings of the human imagination as 
 cheats and frauds. In consequence of our feelings in 
 this regard we hate to inform the Solid Old Fool that 
 all these phrases to which we have alluded aud to which 
 he pins his faith never had their origin in the barren in- 
 
26 
 
 tellect of any of his tribe. They were written by men 
 of wit in sheer desperation. Some Solid Old Fool was 
 boring them to death with: relentless platitudes, and 
 having tried eyery other means of making him hold his 
 tongue, determined to flatter him into doing so, and 
 so, said: *'A still tongue makes a wise head." The Old 
 Fool caught at it as eagerly as a duck would at a June- 
 bug, and from that remote day to this it has constituted 
 a stock phrase in the Court Language of solid Old Fools 
 everywhere. So firmly were they persuaded of its vir- 
 tues that they took a mortgage upon thr first edition and 
 foreclosed it as soon as possible. And to-day, to show 
 how it has grown in popular favor, it is being retailed 
 in every public school-house in tho United States, by 
 every numb-skull of a teacher from Maine to Mexico. 
 
 And the success of the thing has been wonderful. 
 The Solid Old Fools have captured everything. Do you 
 find a wit, a humorist, a writer or a poet, as president 
 of a bank or a railroad ? Not one. The Solid Old 
 Fools hare them all. And why should they not? The 
 idea of wit and humor running a bank or a railroad is 
 ridiculous. Every dog has his day, and the Solid Old 
 Fool has his to-day. In the days of Swift and Addison, 
 Pope and Steele and Goldsmith the wits had it all their 
 own way. But that day is past. 
 
 When a vote is about to be taken now-a-c'ays for a 
 president, a man's brilliance is against him every time. 
 Oh, how the brilliant man wishes he could swap places 
 about that time with the Solid Old Fool, who knows 
 just enough of the theory of our government to recog- 
 nize the fact that he is eligible to the presidency. Look 
 at these poor brilliant men. Clay, Webster, Calhoun and 
 James G. Blaine, left at home to die of broken hearts as 
 they beheld the Great American Ass — the voters, bear- 
 
27 
 
 ing in triumph to Washington, men who never originat- 
 ed a national sentiment, much less a national measure. 
 
 Look at the field of literature. See the Solid Old 
 Fool who never wrote a line in his life, owning the best 
 magazines in the country, and making hundreds of 
 thousands of dollars per year, only paying the poor devil 
 of a genius enough to keep soul and body together. 
 
 Look at your manufacturing enterprises headed by 
 Solid Old Fools, who in some cases, hardly "have sense 
 enough to carry food to a bear," while the brilliant 
 mechanical genius who supervises thousands of spindles 
 and wheels and pulleys, is happy to earn in a lifetime as 
 much as the profits accruing to the Solid Old Fool, 
 who owns it, amounts to in a single year. 
 
 Look at the church. See the brilliant preacher — the 
 idol of the people, criticised by every Solid Old Fool of 
 a preacher in the Conference. Debarred from every of- 
 ficial position of honor, trust or profit, because they say- 
 "he is not a safe man." The Lord help these Old 
 "Safes" in the church. The whole Jewish-Sanhedrim 
 was composed of "safe men." They were too "safe" 
 for Jesus, and to make themselves still safer they put 
 him to death. They were too safe for the Apostles also, 
 and would have treated them in the same way if possi. 
 ble. 
 
 To end this branch of the subject, it may as well be 
 conceded first as last, that the "Solid Old Fool is on 
 top, and we will now proceed to show how he got there. 
 
 Any pursuit which requires no extraordinary powers 
 of mind, is of course the one capable of being followed 
 by the great majority of mankind. And when thi« pur- 
 suit takes precedence of all others in point of honor and 
 esteem, it follows as a matter of course that every other 
 avocation or even profession must sink more or less in 
 
38 
 
 public estimation. For instance, before the advent of 
 the Money Age, the trades which men followed determ- 
 ined their social status. The blacksmith was a little 
 lower than the shoemaker, unless the latter was a cob- 
 bler. The carpenter was one degree removed from the 
 shoemaker, unless the former was what is known as a 
 "jackleg." The machinist took precedence of the car- 
 penter and the mason, while the merchant and the farm- 
 er, when the latter came under the category of a planter, 
 took precedence of all the rest. In the learned profes- 
 sions it was much the same. The statesman took pre- 
 cedence of the politician, the politician of the lawyer, 
 the lawyer of the doctor, the doctor of the preacher, and 
 the preacher of the pedagogue. 
 
 Now, it mattered not how much money the black- 
 smith made, he could not break down the social barriers 
 until he quit the business of sl blacksmith. Until he 
 took off his leather apron and quit prizing grit and peb- 
 bles out of a mule's foot, and got the cinders out of his 
 hair and the soot from his face and hands, he was not 
 eligible to take a step higher in the social scale. Neither 
 could the carpenter's son associate with the merchant's 
 daughter until he had gotten the sawdust and shavings 
 out of his hair and eye-brows. Neither could the ma- 
 chinist until he had gotten rid of his grease and over- 
 alls, pay court to the planter's daughter. 
 
 In the learned professions a similar unwritten law 
 was observed. The poor devil of a school-master stood 
 no show with the banker's daughter. The preacher, 
 when he could gain the hand of an heiress, was con- 
 sidered as having in advance given assurance to the 
 young lady's family that he would abandon his calling 
 or so alter the manner of his discourses as to give no 
 further offence to her rich friends. In those days the 
 
29 
 
 M. D. bade defiauce to the quack with his bogus certifi- 
 cates. The statesman eyed with lofty disdain the pot- 
 house politician. 
 
 But with the advent of the Money Age, all these social 
 distinctions vanished. "The almighty dollar" has broken 
 down the last barrier between the trades and professions. 
 The soap-boiler and the statesman shake hands across 
 the greasy chasm. The wealthy scavenger scarce deigns 
 to notice the seedy litterateur as he passes him on the 
 street. Were he rich, he would fairly devour him. To 
 make a long matter short, the Solid Old Fool saw that 
 his hour had come, and embraced it. He saw that any 
 fool could make money, and that any fool who had it 
 was considered a fool no longer. That genius and wit 
 and talent would combine to sing his praises — and get 
 his money. They would hang upon his every utterance 
 as upon an oracle — for money. If what he said had no 
 sense in it, they would put sense in it — for money. If 
 he wished to go to Congress he could go — by money. 
 Just look on the Solid Old FooFs sitting in the Senate 
 of the United States, in seats once filled by Clay, Web- 
 ster and Calhoun. Some of them have been sitting 
 there for ten years, and if their mouths have ever opened 
 except to yawn when some motion in the interest of the 
 people was being made, we cannot recall it. Look at 
 that brilliant man — a, survival of a past senatorial age — 
 sitting over there. He is poor, and has about as much 
 weight and influence in shaping legislation as a feather. 
 Look at that squat-figured, low-browed, stolid specimen 
 of humanity sitting over there fast asleep. He is worth 
 millions, and so is his vote. 
 
 Oh, ye little men with a pile of gray matter in your 
 brain-boxes! It is no use to kick. You sold yourselves 
 to the Devil, when for the sake of a few paltry dollars 
 
you puffed the Solid Old Fool in the newspaper — when 
 you sang his praises in the magazine and thundered 
 them on the hustings. It is no use to squirm. He has 
 his heel upon you and will crush the life out of you. 
 Oh, ye aristocrats! Growing small by degrees and 
 beautifully less ! Turn up your noses no longer at com- 
 mon folks, 'x'here are no common folks nowadays, but 
 poor folks, and you must continue to do as you have 
 done ever since the war — fall down at the feet of mam- 
 mon and worship him, or become common folks your- 
 selves. "A fig for family, but millions for fortune," 
 henceforth be your motto. "Get into the swim." Throw 
 yourselves prostrate in the dust before the image of the 
 modern Nebucbadnezer, which is gold, gold, gold. Pro- 
 pitiate the modern Croesus, invite him to your houses, 
 throw your daughters into his arms. Let money cause 
 to commingle your patrician with his plebeian blood, as 
 you have dene, and prate no more of "quality." The 
 salt has lost its savour, and the word its meaning. 
 
 Hurrah, for the reign of the Solid Old Fool, 
 When the dollar alone is the ultima Thule, 
 When brains and high lineage are not worth a fig, 
 When minus a fortune or bank-account big, 
 No longer it pays my proud Cavalier 
 To turn up your nose or utter a sneer, 
 The Pleb. is on top, and the Solid Old Fool 
 Is the cock of the walk — acknowledge his rule. 
 Let Pleb. and Patrician unitedly sing. 
 The praise of the Nineteenth Century King. 
 
 We conclude the subject of "The Solid Old Fool" 
 with one more observation. He has two redeeming 
 qualities. The first is that he is frequently made such 
 as he is by a mother's love. She has, say, four sons — 
 John, Tom, Dick and Harry. John, Tom and Dick are 
 as brilliant as may be. Harry is a dunce. John, Dick 
 
31 
 
 and Tom leave him far in the rear at school. Mother 
 tells the teacher, and all her neighbors, where little 
 Harry can hear it : "Harry is not bright like John, 
 Dick and Tom, but he is mighty solid." His "solidity" 
 becomes the virtue of the family. Brilliance is at a 
 discount. Grenius, for want of sympathy at home, seeks 
 it abroad. It is thrown into bad company for want of 
 good. The Solid Little Dunce at home is coddled and 
 petted and given every opportunity for material ad- 
 vancement. He assumes the air of a monarch when in 
 the presence of his brethren. They leave home. He 
 remains, and by virtue of every opportunity freely given 
 him, becomes the richest boy in the whole family, while 
 perhaps in far-away Texas or distant California the 
 brilliant John, the ready Richard, or the Titanic Tom 
 are burning midnight oil in an uncongenial age to keep 
 body and soul together. Meanwhile Harry, with just 
 sense enough to say his brothers are "smart," is at home, 
 the idol of every other Solid Old Fool for miles arouud. 
 Eligible to a seat in the Legislature, in Congress — eligi- 
 ble to anything, except having sense enough to be edu- 
 cated. 
 
 The other redeeming quality of the Solid Old Fool is 
 his power to produce sleep. When all other agencies 
 fail, he succeeds. Your own brilliance upon him has 
 about the same effect as pouring water upon a duck's 
 back. You could no more impress one of your brilliant 
 fancies upon his dull brain than you could raise the 
 dead. You know this. You give him the floor, and in 
 ten minutes you are so sound asleep yourself, that noth- 
 ing short of a cannon would rouse you. Sancho Panza 
 says, "God bless the man who first invented sleep. The 
 Solid Old Fool is the man. 
 
32 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE ANCESTRAL OLD FOOL. 
 
 Nearly everything in this world has its opposite. In 
 fact nearly all our ideas are derived in this way. We 
 must know Uuo things in order to comprehend one. If 
 we had no knowledge of light we could have no concep- 
 tion of darkness. Without such duality of ideas and 
 objects it would be impossible to think correctly. It 
 follows as a matter of course, then, that the Newly Rich 
 Old Fool has his counterpart. He is seen in the An- 
 cestral Old Fool. This dilapidated specimen of the hu- 
 man race is as much of a nuisance in his way as the 
 Newly Rich is in his. If the one bores you to death 
 about his money, the other does the same about his an- 
 cestors. Pride of ancestry is very commendable when 
 one's ancestry is worthy of remembrance. But nine 
 times in ten when you hear a man eternally talking 
 about his ancestry, you at once infer they do not amount 
 to much. When your ancestry is illustrious it always 
 speaks for itself. The Ancestral Old Fool forgets that 
 old people very geLerally have retentive memories of 
 men and things of the long ago, and very often conclude 
 when this specimen has blown his horn for all it is 
 worth, that "a frog cannot remember when he was a 
 tadpole, but other people do." As for ourselves, on such 
 occasions we feel sorry for his ancestors (if he has any), 
 and do not doubt, could they hear the glib tongues of 
 some of their descendants, they would lament ever hav- 
 ing sent such a specimen down to posterity to misrepre- 
 sent them. These self-constituted spokesmen of illus- 
 trious families are generally the most complete failures 
 on earth. Their gardens are usually chock-full of 
 weeds, their farms "gone to wreck," their houses (if they 
 
33 
 
 have any) look like a cyclone of poverty has struck 
 them, the windows crammed with old rags, and even 
 the dogs, for want of food, are almost too lean to bark 
 at you. The Old Fool is out at the elbows himself, 
 with patches on the seat of his pants large enough to 
 cover the whole map of the United States. And yet it 
 is very often the case that he is offered employment that 
 would support himself and family, and yet refuses it, 
 preferring to sponge upon his neighbors, and pay them 
 back with a dish of chat about his ancestors, who, like 
 himself, were aristocrats, of course. Poor Old Fool! 
 to delude him&elf with the idea that we have any aris- 
 tocracy in this country, except the aristocracy of praise- 
 worthy achievement — the aristocracy of virtue and tal- 
 ent. Talk about such a thing in a country where no 
 titles are allowable in times of peace, except the uni- 
 versal "Colonel," and the ubiqnitons judge. Talk about 
 an aristocracy where butchers, shoemakers and scaven- 
 gers are as good as anyone else, when rich. 
 
 The old t3lockhead is over one hundred years behind 
 the times. The last vestige of aristocracy was utterly 
 wiped out in this country by statute in the year 1777. 
 The Old Fool knows no difference, however, between 
 nobility and aristocracy. God creates the first and man 
 the latter, and so imperfect is the work of the latter, 
 that he must give it a title before any one would be able 
 to decide by outward signs whether it was "fish, flesh, 
 fowl or good red-herring. Owners of swine have certain 
 marks, such as slits, holes, forks and crops in the ear, 
 in order to distinguish their own from other people's 
 hogs. But so far as we are acquainted, the aristocracy 
 so-called of this country have no distinguishing marks 
 about them, except, perhaps, "the big-head," super- 
 
M 
 
 induced by an abundance of water in that member where 
 their brains ought to be. 
 
 But the Ancestral Old Fool is unmindful of all these 
 things. It is a thousand pities such people as he have 
 any ancestors. And we have no doubt their ancestors 
 would regret, if they could, that they ever had any de- 
 scendants, if they all turn oat like this one. 
 
 But there is one consolation, if not compensation, 
 left us. If we cannot have a titled aristocracy like 
 England, nearly every American can have a Normandy 
 poplar, a weeping willow, and a peacock, and that is all 
 that is necessary to make an American aristocrat. 
 
 Poor Old Fool! Three-fourths dunce and one-fourth 
 fraud, we bid you adieu, and "bring in another" — ass. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE FOREIGK-TRAVELLED OLD FOOL. 
 
 During the better days of the Republic, when Grod 
 was above gold, mind above matter and manhood above 
 money, it was the custom of Northern and Southern 
 gentlemen, when they retired from politics or business, 
 to visit foreign countries in order to better understand 
 the workings of our own system of government, and im- 
 prove their minds by visual contact with historic scenes. 
 Some of our best American literature resulted from such 
 visits. But since the advent of the Money Eia this is 
 all changed. Thousands of men and women not know- 
 ing B from a bull's foot crowd .the piazzas of every con- 
 tinental hotel, where their swaggering, "pursified" de- 
 meanor has brought contempt upon the whole of North 
 America. They spend their money in the most lavish 
 manner, and impress the economical denizens of the Old 
 World as being the biggest set of fools in existence. 
 They give swell entertainments, to which some old 
 broken-down roue of a count, who has been tabooed by 
 all decent society in his own country, is invited. Here 
 this dilapidated specimen of decayed royalty is intro- 
 duced to the American millionaire flunky's daughter, 
 and ere long the whole kingdom of female fools in the 
 United States is thrilled by the announcement of the 
 engagement of the wealthy heiress of Porkopolis or 
 Ootham to this needy matrimonial adventurer. There 
 is but one redeeming feature in the whole disgraceful 
 business, and that is its candor. There is no pretence 
 of love on either side. The sordid daughter of the Re- 
 public went over to buy a title, the old roue had one to 
 sell, and the bargain was soon struck. The young 
 woman was conscious, no doubt, that her only road to 
 
36 
 
 nobility was to buy a title, and her husband, who Uad 
 been trying to sell it for the past twenty years to every 
 eligible young lady in Europe, thanks his stars, no 
 doubt, that the Giueat WepuMic has come to his rescue 
 in the shape of a big enough fool to buy it, and thereby 
 save him a trip to Australia to avoid his creditors. 
 
 But if the Foreign-Travelled Old Fool is a standing 
 rebuke to us in Europe for his want of taste, his ill- 
 manners, and the lavish display of his wealth, his ig- 
 norance, is laughable. He visits Stratford-on-Avon, 
 perhaps, and by consulting his guide-books, learns that 
 this was the birthplace of Shakespeare. But who in 
 thunder was Shakespeare ? is what troubles him. It is 
 true that when he was a soap-boiler in Cincinnati, a 
 butcher in Chicago, or a saddler in New York, he may 
 have heard that Shakespeare was a great dramatic genius. 
 But what in the name of Old Nick is a dramatic genius? 
 There is the rub. So.i.etimes the Old Fool will pur- 
 chase an old castle and take up his winter residence in 
 it. But he has no more idea of its history than a hog 
 has about holiday. 
 
 As a proof of this, it is related of an American mil- 
 lionaire who bought a castle on the Rhine, that one cold 
 day his daughter found him w^arming his hands at a fire 
 which he had kindled in a suit of plate armor. "Oh, 
 papa, what have you been doing?" she cried. "The fel- 
 ler that patented that stove," replied the lord of the cas- 
 tle, "must have been crazy, but I've got the old thing 
 heated up at last." 
 
 But if you wish to see the Foreign-Travelled Old Fool 
 in all his glory, just wait until he gets back once more 
 upon his native heath. With what gusto [goose-toe] he 
 relates how he was introduced to my Lord Broken- 
 staff and her ladyship; of how his daughters, Polly and 
 
37 
 
 Betsy Ann, were waited upon by gentlemen of titles, as 
 if they had been queen's daughters ; of how the aristo- 
 cratic world of London society thronged his drawing- 
 rooms, when his other daughter, Belinda, married the 
 renowned Count Stickinthemud. And then to hear him 
 -descant on the splendid society to be found only in Eu- 
 rope, where dukes, earls, barons, counts and lords are as 
 plentiful as colonels and judges in Old Virginia. 
 
 Poor Old Fool. If he had any eense about him he 
 would know that to be a cultivated, patriotic American 
 citizen is a greater honor than nine-tenths of the titles 
 in Europe. As if he did not know that swell society of 
 aristocrats in London is one mass of corruption and con- 
 ceit from head to foot, a social ulcer, drawing the life 
 out of the honest workmen of Great Britain, Scotland 
 and Ireland to maintain its pretensions. To that select 
 circle of statesmen who guide the destinies of Europe ; 
 to the pure men and pure women who constitute the best 
 society in the Old World, the Old Fool was never ad- 
 mitted. Snobbing and sychophancy, gold lace and tin- 
 sel, spurious lords and bastard counts the Old Fool has 
 mistaken for royalty. There is not a decent man in 
 America who would not kick the whole lot out of his 
 house should he find them in it. 
 
 But the Foreign-Travelled Old Fool knows it all now, 
 and no doubt when he reads this, will simply say, "Poor 
 fellow ! "He ought to travel as I have done, and then he 
 would know better." Our inability to comply with his 
 advice is mitigated by one reflection, and that is seeing 
 that every average American who sjoes to Europe comes 
 back a greater fool than he was before he went. We do 
 not care to take the risk. 
 
 But as every kind of a fool, as we have repeatedly ob- 
 
38 
 
 served, has his opposite, our next chapter will treat of 
 the one opposed to the Foreign-Travelled specimen. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE UNTRAVELLED OLD FOOL. 
 
 Variety iu unity and unity in variety constitutes the 
 chief and greatest charm in nature. While no one will 
 mistake a tree for a flower or a plant for a poplar, yet all 
 of them put together furnish one pleasing picture. Sa 
 it is with the Same Old Fool. No matter what his 
 name may be, he will be found belonging to the uni- 
 versal family. For instance, the Un travelled Old Fool 
 thinks he knows it all, although he has never been over 
 fifty miles from home in his whole life. As the religi- 
 ous bigot never gets beyond the little circle of his own 
 creed, and esteems every one else who does as little short 
 of a heathen or a heietic, so the Untravelled Old Fool 
 has the utmost contempt for "furrin parts." He be- 
 lieves that where the tree-tops intercept the horizon is- 
 the end of the world, and hence anything pretending 
 to come from beyond that is an invader of his territory. 
 
 He has also the most inveterate prejudices against- 
 any one leaving his own section to seek his fortune else- 
 where. To prevent this he has invented a most plausi- 
 ble maxim, which is that "a rolling stone gathers no- 
 moss." Well, he ought to be an authority on the subject 
 of moss, as he generally stays in one place so long that 
 he becomes moss-covered himself. Common sense, how- 
 ever, would seem to suggest that the stone should never 
 cease to roll until it struck a mossy place. Besides thaty 
 all useful stones never have any moss on them, so that 
 its presence on stones is like a kink in a pig's tail — 
 more for ornament than use. 
 
39 
 
 That the foregoing is true will appear from the fol- 
 lowing incident as related by Daniel Webster himself: 
 As is well known, the god-like Daniel first saw the 
 light amid the barren hills of N^w Hampshire. As 
 soon as he was old enough to know better, he left the 
 State. Years afterwards, when a Senator in Congress 
 from Massachusetts, and when his fame was at its 
 zenith, he concluded to astonish the natives by a visit to 
 his old neighborhood. In order to make their amaze- 
 ment greater, he did not give his real name, but con- 
 cluded he would find out what they thought of him first. 
 Approaching an old man — one of those Untravelled Old 
 Fools to be found everywhere — and one whom he knew, 
 he asked him if a family by the name of Webster did 
 not once live near him. '*0h, yes," replied the old man. 
 "Well," says Daniel, "can you tell me what went with 
 the boys ?" "Yes," says he, "Zekiel turned out mon- 
 strous well. He stayed to 'hum' and married and was 
 respected by everybody." "But what about the other 
 children ? Did he have another son ?" "Oh, yes," re- 
 plied the old man. "He had another trifling son by the 
 name of Daniel. He got a notion to travel, and as he 
 has never been hearn of since, it's mor 'n likely he went 
 out West and was hung for horse-stealing." After such 
 a colloquy it is needless to add that Daniel did not make 
 himself known. 
 
 That the Untravelled Old Fool is as full of conceit 
 and prejudice as a weed is of sap in the spring goes 
 without saying. The mind, like tte body, grows by 
 what it feeds upon, and as this Old Fool has never fed 
 his mind on anything except bis own conceit, of 
 course it partakes of the nature of the diet on which it 
 is nourished. 
 
 The Untravelled Old Fool is utterly oblivious of the 
 
40 
 
 fact that contact with strangers, inspection of customs 
 foreign to our own, and intercourse with the great 
 world, has a tendency to alleviate local prejudices, lib- 
 eralize the mind, and give us greater toleration for the 
 shortcomings of our own neighbors. 
 
 But the Untravelled Old Fool does not believe in the 
 brotherhood of man, and only partially in the father- 
 hood of God, that august paternity not embracing any 
 one outside of his own community. 
 
 But when the Untravelled Old Fool, as is sometimes 
 the case, is forced by stress of ciscumstances to leave 
 home, when he returns you may expect a marvellous 
 narration of strange adventures. For instance, during 
 the late war one of them, an old colored man, was taken 
 by General Sheridan and carried to City Point. After 
 an imprisonment of about two months he was set at 
 liberty, and he at once returned home. Of course he 
 had a miraculous yarn to tell, and it was soon told. 
 In response to the query of his mistress as to where he 
 had been, he replied: "Miss Nervry, Ise been every- 
 whar. Ise been to City Pint, and I seed men dar from 
 all parts. Why, Miss Nervry, dar was men dar from 
 Spain and Specie too. And would you believe it, I saw 
 great big black niggers sitting down dar luroting to ther 
 parrimts jes as natchul as life." 
 
 As a matter of course, the Untravelled Old Fool never 
 wants his wife to put her foot out of the yard. He is a 
 great believer in woman's rights, being fully persuaded 
 she has a perfect right to cook, wash, scrub the floor, 
 and when he is short of a hand, to hoe her own row 
 in the corn-field. Is it not a little singular that every 
 Old Fool has such a poor opinion of woman. 
 
 Leaving the reader with this intricate conundrum, we 
 will now proceed to the next chapter. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE WORLDLY-WISE OLD FOOL. 
 
 Because the Scriptures say that the children of this 
 world are wiser in their day and generation than the 
 children Light, some people labor under the mistaken 
 impression that Grod commends the wisdom of this 
 world, notwithstanding that the Word of God is not 
 at all complimentary to mundane sapiency in a half 
 dozen plain passages. The Worldly- Wise Old Fool still 
 thinks he possesses a monopoly of all the knowledge 
 worth having, and that all beyond this horizon of his is 
 the region of pure fools. With him the god-like imagi- 
 nation of a Milton which endows the creation of his 
 fancy with life, beauty and sublimity, the sweep of 
 whose seraphic wings embraces heaven, earth and hell, 
 is unadulterated nonsense. Whether calves should be 
 salted before they are weaned, or potatoes planted on the 
 dark of the moon, possesses far more fascination for the 
 Worldly- Wise Old Fool than all the creations of human 
 genius, however great or noble they may be, however 
 much they may exalt, refine and purify the human 
 heart 
 
 The Worldly- Wise Old Fool is always short-sighted. 
 In politics his motto is "Expediency," and he rolls the 
 "phrase," "practical politics" as a sweet morsel under 
 his tongue. His idea of a statesman, who originates and 
 formulates policies and measures not only for his own, 
 but for future generations is that he is a confirmed 
 crank. In the church it is the same way. He is so 
 carried away by his zeal for numbers, and wealthy mem- 
 bers in particular as additions to the sect to which he 
 belongs, that he does not care a bawbee whether they 
 are converted or not. If he is a member of a committee 
 
42 
 
 to call a new pastor he always favors one who can 
 "draw," even though he use the enticing words of man's 
 wisdom to do so instead of relying upon the power of the 
 Holy Ghost. 
 
 But if you would hear wisdom fall from his lips sure 
 enough, get him started on the subject of matrimony. 
 He does not believe in love and to hear him tell it, he 
 never knew a so-called love match to turn out well. 
 To hear him talk one would imagine the sole object of 
 matrimony is to make money. He talks of jointures 
 and contracts as much as a lawyer would in a court room. 
 With him the noblest pursuit under heaven is that of 
 gain. Should he attempt to edit a newspaper, instead of 
 trying to improve the morals of the people he devotes 
 the whole of his editorial space advocating "booms" of 
 any description from a bucket factory to a railroad as if 
 the road to heaven was along the line of railway. 
 
 But a day is coming in which the Worldly- Wise Old 
 Foci is to be pitied. It is the day of his death. Hav- 
 ing spent his whole life scheming, contriving and plan- 
 ning, having all his life been too busy to prepare for 
 death, he is compelled at last to face the grim monster. 
 Of what avail is all his worldly wisdom then? Ashe 
 hears in his dying moments a voice saying: "Friend, how 
 comest thou in hither not having on a wedding garment," 
 what comfort will it afford him to reflect upon his' 
 funeral, his senseless body attended by men of wealth, 
 honor and prominence to its last resting place when he 
 knows his soul is in hell ? What consolation will then 
 be afforded the Worldly-Wise Old Fool as he reflects 
 that in yonder world he was a complete success, that- 
 his bank account was fat, that his credit was A No. 1, 
 that all the rest of the Worldly-Wise Old Fools regard- 
 ed him as a king bee, that others praised his worldly 
 
43 
 
 wisdom and sagacity ? What consolation will all this 
 afford him in hell ? Realizing that he was not wise unto 
 salvation but a fool, with what remorse of conscience 
 must he recall his treatment of men of whom the world 
 was not worthy; men who in order to gain Heaven coun- 
 ted all earthly gain but loss, who looked upon his mil- 
 lions as so many millstones which the Devil hung 
 around his neck to drown him in perdition. How the 
 Worldly-Wise Old Fool laughed at such godly people 
 calling them cranks, visionaries and enthusiasts, while 
 he lay the flattering unction to his own soul that he was 
 all he should be and a little more besides. Poor fool ! 
 **What shall it profit a man to gain the whole world and 
 lose his own soul." 
 
 CHAPTER Vm. 
 
 THE MONEY-LOVING OLD FOOL. 
 
 Every civilized nation has not only a system of 
 weights and measures but also a standard of value. And 
 this is not only true of civilized, but even barbarous 
 people have some accepted standard of measurement and 
 valuation. Among the North American Indians what 
 school boy has not read of "wampum," among the 
 Arabs of fine horses, and so of all. But as a nation is 
 only a collection of families living under one govern- 
 ment, the rule holds good with these also. All families 
 have their standards of value. Some have theirs in 
 "blood," some in distinctions, while the vast majority 
 place theirs in money. And as a family is only a collec- 
 tion of individuals living under the same roof or at 
 least sharing a common parentage, the rule also holds 
 equally good with the individuals composing them. 
 One child perhaps makes pleasure its standard of value, 
 
44 
 
 and can see nothing valuable beyond that. Another 
 makes "business" his, and contemns everything else, 
 while the third makes money his and will not stop until 
 at last he cannot see anything worth having beyond it. 
 In fact the Money Loving Old Fool in trying to reduce 
 the world to the dimensions of a dollar, so contracts and 
 dries up his own nature that the Devil himself would 
 not give iiine pence a quart for such men to kindle his 
 fires with. Any lover of his species who will calmly 
 survey this subject will see that two-thirds of the 
 miseries of the human family flow from this source. 
 Whence come all these law suits in our courts but from 
 Money-Loving Old Fools trying to grab what does not 
 belong to them ? Why all these divorce suits but from 
 money-loving young fools, who in order to get money 
 have cast themselves away upon some old doting, decripit 
 dizzard, half dead with rheumatism or gout, with per- 
 haps but one eye, and that always full of white wax, no 
 hair on the outside of his head and no brains on the in- 
 side. Although provided with all the means to matri- 
 mony by Nature itself, yet in the absence of money these 
 are not considered means at all. These things are less 
 frequtnt among the poor than those who pretend to be 
 some body. 
 
 It very frequently happens thai one of these Money- 
 Loving Old Fools is what is known as a Fortune Hun- 
 ter, and when such is the case, no heiress in the whole 
 country where he lives need despair, for though she 
 be an old crone without a natural tooth in her mouth, 
 her whole neck a mass of strings, her head in the ab- 
 sence of a wig as innocent of hair as a new-born babe's, 
 yet this Fortune Hunting Old Fool whose stomach is 
 dead to everything' else but money will marry her if he 
 can. Sometimes this Fortune Hunting Old Fool, which 
 
45 
 
 is only one branch of the Money-Loving Old Fool, al- 
 though as poor as a church mouse, utterly destitute of 
 talent and as ugly as sin, has the "cheek" to lay siege 
 to the richest and prettiest young woman in the whole 
 neighborhood. As it is already out of the question for 
 such fellows to pretend love, what inducemens they can 
 possibly offer the young lady is a mystery. Unless she 
 thinks, perhaps, she may outlive him and can then erect 
 a monument of brass to his memory, we are at a loss to 
 know for what purpose she consents to marry such as he. 
 
 Sometimes the Money-Loving Old Fool is found in 
 the pulpit. When such is the case, if his salary be 
 small, he is under the impression all the time that he 
 mistook his calling. But if on the other hand, he is 
 already making twice as much as far abler men can in 
 secular professions, and the stewards conclude to give 
 him a thousand more, he soars to the Seventh Heaven in 
 an in instant. But such instances are rare. As a gen- 
 eral rule there are so many Money-Loving Old Fools on 
 the Board of Stewards that they will hardly allow him 
 to pray for an increase much less shout over its accep- 
 tance as they keep him so busy scratching around to 
 make "buckle and tongue meet" that he has no time to 
 do so. 
 
 But of all the Money-Loving Old Fools in the uni- 
 verse there is none meaner than that parent, man or 
 woman, who will deliberately murder all the happiness 
 of his own children in order to obtain it. There are 
 men in society, yes women in society, who pass for gen- 
 tlemen and ladies, who sell their daughters as truly as a 
 Oircassion does his to the Sultan of Turkey. Collegi- 
 ate, musical education, lessons in art, everything that 
 has a tendency to liberalize the mind, enabling it to 
 sodr above and beyond the sordid things of sense, and 
 
46 
 
 time they freely bestow. But when it comes to that 
 step in life, around which concentres all her future 
 happiness or woe, she is allowed no voice, and if she re- 
 fuses to barter her bliss for a mess of filthy lucre she 
 is disinherited. Yes, there are men and women whose 
 names are on the church registers who do this and yet 
 when they die expect to go to Heaven. Of all the fools 
 they are they are the most illustrious. When people be- 
 come as mean as this, dying (except physically,) is out 
 of the question. They are dead already. 
 
 But perhaps some Money-Loving Old Fool will con- 
 clude that the reasons for this chapter on his tribe is 
 owing to the fact that the "grapes are sour." Allow 
 us then here to state, Oh, Money-Making Old Fool, that 
 while we recognize the necessity of having money, we 
 are yet strangers to the passion of loving it. We would 
 as soon grieve over our old suit of clothes, which has 
 done us good service, and which we lay aside for a new 
 one, as we would over money spent in a good cause. We 
 have many sins to answer for, but the one of loving 
 money can never be laid to our charge. We have en- 
 vied Demosthenes arraigning Philip of Macedon, Cicero 
 accusing Cataline and Edmund Burke persecuting War- 
 ren Hastings, but so help me God, all the wealth of 
 Croesus, the bonds of a Vanderbilt, and the stocks of a 
 Gould have never created within our bosoms even a 
 passing emotion of envy. 
 
47 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE PUNCTILIOUS OLD FOOL. 
 
 Sturdy if Eot surly, Samuel Johnson could not bear 
 the sight of a young woman weeping over the demise of 
 a pet canary or lapdog. A man who in the earlier stages 
 of his career shivered in the day time in a London gar- 
 ret and prowled about in the night time poking into 
 ash-heaps in search of bread crusts and potato parings 
 in order to keep soul and body together, might not be 
 expected to give vent to lamentations at the loss of tri- 
 fles. Indeed, seeing that lapdogs, and canaries especial- 
 ly, had fared much better than himself during the short 
 time of their natural lives, he may have viewed their de- 
 parture with complacency, if not satisfaction. Indeed 
 a man who has really suffered intensely, while he may 
 be kind to the dumb brutes, never makes pets of them, 
 unless his sufferings have made him a misanthrope, and 
 even then he does so, not because he loves the animal 
 but hates man. 
 
 Then again, the same Samuel Johnson, who was a 
 close observer of the moral law, paid but little deference 
 to minor morals, such as correct table etiquette, the 
 limitations of conges, bows and nods, whether the hair 
 should be parted in the middle or along the side, and 
 many other mooted and tremenduous problems which 
 have agitated light heads and polite society ever since 
 society began. 
 
 Of course, then, seeing that so many people are occu- 
 pied with the study of good manners in society, devoting 
 their whole lives to find out all the proper capers, it is 
 but natural that the Punctilious Old Fool should come 
 forth fully armed as Minerva from the brain of Jove to 
 set all things right- He ofcourse has all the ear-marks 
 
48 
 
 of his tribe. He hnoius it all. He has long since es- 
 tablished the point that good manners are better than 
 good morals. That, although some graceless rascal, 
 whose insinuating address, fascinating manner and 
 fashionable finery has proven the ruin of some innocent 
 and unsuspecting maiden, still he is such a nice gentle- 
 man that society cannot dispense with him. Such little 
 gaucheries as these are of no importance, but should be 
 in a moment of abstraction, or absent-mindedness, in- 
 advertently convey his food to his mouth on the point 
 of his knife, he commits thereby one of the unpardona- 
 ble sins against society and may henceforth consider 
 himself as a heathen man and publican and an alien to 
 the commonwealth of etiquette. 
 
 Again, when the Fashionable Old Fool has instituted 
 some new craze in dress, the Punctilious Old Fool is the 
 first to don it and gauges society by the number who 
 follow suit. And at this present time woe be to the 
 luckless wight, ambitious of social honors, who fails to 
 appear in "yaller" alligator shoes and a silk belly-band. 
 He might as well throw up the sponge at once and ac- 
 knov/ledge himself whipped, for the social referee — the 
 Punctilious Old Fool — will not even allow him the 
 empty honor of calling it a "draw." 
 
 In all matters pertaining to that grade of society in 
 which the Punctilious Old Fool is found, he is a com- 
 plete success, although a failure everywhere else. The 
 reasons for such success are easily found. It does not 
 require brains but nerve to be a leader in society, and 
 he or she who has nerve enough to be the first who shall 
 adopt some absurd or even immodest style of dress is, of 
 course, the leader, and as the greatest fool goes first all 
 the other fools follow, and when the last fool enters the 
 social stockyard, the gate is shut and all that poor out- 
 
49 
 
 siders can do is to climb the fence and look at the me- 
 nagerie that way. 
 
 But in many departments of life, requiring brains 
 and energy and courage, the Punctilious Old Fool is a 
 complete failure. In war he is a martinet. Old Wurm- 
 ser, when beaten by Xapoleon in Italy, complained that 
 the latter violated all the rules of war in order to do so. 
 The Virginia Buckskin won all the honors as the Punc- 
 tilious British general lost them at Braddock's defeat. 
 The Punctilious Old Fool of a politician has his scruples 
 about the passage of a bill, which nine-tenths of the 
 people demand, and is laid on the shelf on account of 
 his scruples. The Punctilious Old Fool of honor has 
 caused the death of brave men by insisting upon some 
 trifling point, whose lives were worth more to the world 
 than all the lives of all the Punctilious Old Fools who 
 ever lived since the world began. 
 
 In literature the Punctilious Old Fools is so precise 
 that he will leave nothing to be imagined, and hence 
 would destroy all the charm of poetry, the magic of 
 eloquence and the delight of history. At the dinner 
 table he is such a terror that the meal is eaten by his 
 family in fear and trembling and by his guests (if he 
 have any) with heaviness of heart. In short he is a 
 nuisance of the worst possible description. We will 
 leave him for the present but will return to him again 
 later on. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE OPTIMISTIC OLD FOOL. 
 
 Of course, as might have been expected, seeing the 
 condition of society, the Same Old Fool would be on 
 hand to either mend it or mar it, according to his own 
 peculiar notions. Now, it is manifest to every right- 
 minded person that society, or humanity rather, is far 
 from an ideal state of happiness, and a great many very 
 wise persons are under the impression that the case will 
 never be otherwise while human nature continues the 
 same. There are others, however, of a different opinion, 
 and among them is the Optimistic Old Fool. The first 
 account we have of this species of the universal gemcs is 
 in the Old Testament. There he appeared before kings 
 and prince^, as a prophet, and it was his characteristic 
 then as to-day, to prophesy good things altogether, 
 which of course proved the reverse. There were some 
 mitigating circumstances, however, connected with this 
 ancient humbug, which his modern cousin escapes. The 
 old one very often paid the forfeit of his life for lying, 
 whereas, in modern times, owing to freedom of speech, 
 which is tantamount to liberty of lying, he may prog- 
 nosticate good tidings the livelong day, and the only 
 loss of life for so doing will be your own, if you cannot 
 make your escape from him. 
 
 But the Optimistic Old Fool, as a talker, is not a cir- 
 cumstance compared to what he is as an author. There 
 he comes forth like Minerva from the brain of Jupiter, 
 fully armed with theories for the extirpation of evil, 
 and the consequent advent of the millenium. Not one 
 of the whole tribe, as far as I have read, believes in the 
 efficacy of revelation to effect this, but nearly all of them 
 
51 
 
 believe in the perfectibility of human nature unassisted 
 by the gospel of Jesus Christ. 
 
 Plato first set the ball in motion over 2,000 years ago 
 by the publication of his Ideal Republic, and from that 
 day to this there has regularly appeared a successor in 
 the same line. Sir Thomas Moore, with his Utopia, the 
 Grand Model of John Locke, and last, but not least. 
 Looking Backward, by Edward Bellamy. The means of 
 attaining the result were different, but the end was the 
 same. But "Looking Backward" is only the culmination 
 of the Puritanic idea of his own section, and from which 
 it seems impossible to divert the New England intellect. 
 The Oromwellian idea of remedying one evil by the com- 
 mission of a thousand others, before which the original 
 one complained of, sinks into utter insignificance, still 
 dominates the descendants of Plymouth Pock. A State 
 decree for the elimination of any evil, great or small, is 
 their dominant idea. The paternal idea of government, 
 as outlined in Bellamy's book, need not wait until the 
 year 2000 in order to witness its workings. The history 
 of the past forty years has fully proven its absurdity. 
 It was taught by the earlier abolitionists that slavery 
 was the sum of all villainies, and when that was re- 
 moved, the North and South would live like brothers. 
 It was removed, and they live less like brothers than 
 they did before. Mr. Bellamy's section has dictated the 
 legislation of the Uniied States ever since the war. Be- 
 hold the result. Seciionalism and anarchism are lam- 
 pant. Forces unheard of in America before threaten 
 the life of the government. The industrial revolution 
 of Bellamy would excite as much violent opposition as 
 the autocracy of Reed. 
 
 No, Mr. Bellamy, the evils of society do not spring 
 from political and social institutions, but from a corrupt 
 
52 
 
 heart. And as soon as you and Joseph Cook, who pre- 
 tends to criticise your book, and Eobert G. Ingersoll, 
 who approves it, realize that fact, the better for you all. 
 Oh, no. All your inventions for multiplying creature 
 comforts do not better human nature at all; if anything^ 
 they make men worse by the increase of idleness, for an 
 idle man's brain will be as much the Devil's work-shop 
 in the year 2000 as it is to-day. The grace of God alone 
 in any human heart could make "Looking Backward" 
 possible in the year you name or at any other time. 
 
 But perhaps some Optimistic Old Fool will say, 
 ^'Surely this is a better age than the one preceding." 
 Certainly. But why so ? Is it because we have tele- 
 graph, railways, telephones, electric lights, and the 
 thousand and one methods of alleviating physical dis- 
 comforts? Do these things change human nature and 
 make it better? If so, railway men, telegraph operators 
 and telephone men should be angels. Are they? If 
 the railway affects the moral nature of man, what is the 
 meaning of a Sunday train? On, no. That hypothesis 
 will not answer. "Well, but," says the Optimistic Old 
 Fool, "you cannot deny that there is no such thing as 
 persecution for opinion's sake, no burning at the stake 
 and no inquisition." Certainly this is so; and to what 
 are we indebted for all this ? To material progress ? 
 Certainly not. What then ? To the fact of the better 
 understanding of the Word of God ; to the prevalence 
 of Christian principles and bettes laws in consequence 
 of such knowledge. This is the whole and only expla- 
 nation, not that human nature of itself has undergone 
 any change. Men who do not acknowledge Christ, 
 curse, violate the Sabbath, commit adultery, theft and 
 murder as they always did, in spite of all the Optimistic 
 Qld Fools in existence, and will continue to do so until 
 
53 
 
 the end of time, under the same conditions. 
 
 But if ever, at any time, the whole world should em- 
 brace Christianity and live up to its teachings, which 
 will never be, then indeed such books as "Looking 
 Backward" would come within the realm of possibilities. 
 
 But as long as human nature continues the same, all 
 the creature comforts and appliances that could be piled 
 up to Heaven, all the State enactments that could be 
 written from now until doom's day will never affect it. 
 
 But with all his faults, which chiefly concern his 
 head, and not his heart, we much prefer the Optimistic 
 Old Fool to the one which is the subject of the next 
 chapter. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THE PESSIMISTIC OLD FOOL. 
 
 The connection between a torpid liver and sour god- 
 liness like that between mind and matter is one of the 
 unsolved problems of physical science. That they are 
 united and that closely, does not admit of a doubt. In 
 fact the serious aspect of true piety bears such a striking 
 resemblance to its counterfeit pre&entment — sour godli- 
 ness — that it would puzzle the wis* st and most observ- 
 ant physiognomist to detect the difference in facial ex- 
 pression that characterizes each. The only way is this, 
 that whereas the truly pious man mourns over his own 
 depravity, tte sour godly man, while confident of his 
 own uprightness, laments the wickedness of others. 
 And the same rule will apply to all torpid livers whether 
 in the church or out of it. Those bilious old cranks 
 would feel insulted if you mildly suggested at the close 
 of one of their outbursts against the degeneracy of 
 modern times that a few bottles of Simmon's Liver 
 
54 
 
 Kegulator would improve the aspect of things, and 
 would at once set you down as a heathen man and a 
 publican of the deepest dye. Some good-natured men, 
 however, say you should make allowance for a man with 
 a disordered liver. Inasmuch as drug stores and physi- 
 cians abound, and as the latter especially pride them- 
 selves on their ability to cure all disorders of the liver, 
 they are without excuse in our humble opinion. Just 
 to think that a small doctor's bill would save mankind 
 from such a terrible infiction as one of these Pessimis- 
 tic Old Fools and that he will not incur it, contending 
 all the time that his soul is spotless; that the wicked- 
 ness of other men causes him to inveigh as he does. It 
 is too bad. We almost feel like going back to the 
 "good old days" that he is so fond of talking about, 
 when it would have been allowable to have bled him to 
 death without judge or jury. 
 
 The Pessimistic Old Fool generally selects a rainy 
 day to call upon you. The gloom without, the lowering 
 clouds, all Nature in mourning as it were, is just suited 
 to his genius. The down-pour of rain prevents your es- 
 cape. He has you in his grip. If you broach the sub- 
 ject of the weather you might as well set back and pre- 
 pare for the infliction that is to follow for he never stops 
 short of the prediction of a great flood which will de- 
 stroy all the lowland crops and wash all the bridges 
 away, but continues to inveigh again&t the climate of his 
 own country until a stranger, if present, would imagine 
 he was in Patagonia instead of being in one of the most 
 highly favored countries on earth. 
 
 Having at last exhausted the weather, which consti- 
 tutes his opening lemarks, as the reporter would say, he 
 is now ready for business, and before he leaves, which is 
 generally late in the evening, he has damned everything 
 
55 
 
 m existence except himself, more worthy nine times out 
 of ten than any thing he has touched upon during the 
 whole day. During the delivery of this infliction per- 
 haps the laughter of fun-loving children may be heard 
 in the next room and the music of their happy voices 
 makes you feel as if you were in perdition itself by con- 
 trast. 
 
 If one of these Pessimistic Old Fools could only be 
 relegated to ''the good old times" of which he is so 
 enamoured and be threatened with the stake for expres- 
 sing his opinions so freely, and then brought back to 
 the present and have his liver thoroughly regulated, per- 
 haps his ideas would flow in another channel. Or, if he 
 were compelled to ride in the dead of winter from Rich- 
 mond to New York in a stick gig through snow and 
 wind, and could exchange it as he can now for a Pull- 
 man Palace Oar, provided with every comfort, perhaps 
 he might thank his stars that he lived in the nineteenth 
 century. I say, perhaps, for there are some such incor- 
 rigible old fools that nothing but hard times and sorrow- 
 ful subjects give them any delight in conversation. 
 
 But enough of the Pessimistic Old Fool. His very 
 idea diies up all the sources of inspiration, and we leave 
 him where he always will be — bringing np the rear — 
 cursing his luck, not that he cannot keep up with the 
 procession, but that he is even compelled to follow it. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE SELF-MADE MAN^ OF AN OLD FOOL. 
 
 In a former chapter of this veracious chrouicle, we 
 took occasion, in describing the Newly-Rich Old Fool, 
 to say that he always lays especial emphasis on the fact 
 that he is "a self-made man." This, of course, has ref- 
 erence to himself and not his money, to hear him tell it. 
 But any man with three grains of sense in his cranium 
 perceives in a two-minutes' conversation with the old 
 goose, that but for his money he could never rightfully 
 claim an} thing except that he was a ninny, and we do 
 not believe that even a defeated politician would deny 
 this claim to be fully borne out by the returns. 
 
 But every man has his audience, and the Self-Made 
 Man of an Old Fool has his. As every claim in the 
 world, however absurd, has some one to put it forth, so 
 in like manner he will always find some other Old Fool 
 to allow this as genuine. Even down to the youngest 
 juvenile going this is so. Let one of these 
 
 Precious youths from Heaven sent, 
 Perpetual motion to invent, 
 Or make another president, 
 
 but tell one of his marvellous yarns as to the great num- 
 ber of big dogs his little bob-tailed fice has whipped, 
 aud another in the person of little Tom, Dick, or Harry 
 will confirm it in every particular, even down to making 
 out that he '-seed it hisself." Just so when the Self- 
 Made Old Fool claims that unaided he has done this, 
 that or th@ other great thing, there is always another 
 Old Fool ready to confirm every word of it. It is the 
 natural tendency of human nature to exaggerate, and to 
 
57 
 
 claim everything after the fact. Take the case of a 
 genius, for instance. At the first exhibition of his pow- 
 ers every common-sense Old Fool in his neighborhood 
 will whisper it around the fireside that the boy has either 
 gone daft, or will turn out bad. But when he succeeds 
 — becomes famous and wins the applause of a wondering 
 world, how proud they are to let tbe public know that 
 they wpre the very first to detect his genius. They did 
 nothing of the kind. They opposed him — nay, worse, 
 they poured contumely upon him, they laughed at him. 
 
 The child of genius, when unknown, 
 In asking bread receives a stone, 
 And yet the world in fame complete 
 Will pour its honors at his feet. 
 
 Now the Self-Made Old Fool never thinks of this, and 
 hence believes all that his flatterers tell him. In conse- 
 quence his vanity becomes so abnormal that he tells every 
 person whom he meets that he is a self-made man. We 
 have in our day and time met thousands of just such 
 Old Fools, and we always have wondered that not one 
 had modesty enough to at least keep his mouth shut, 
 for any man with ordinary powers of observation can 
 spot a Self-Made Man of an Old Fool without his saying 
 a solitary word. There is a self-importance and suffi- 
 ciency about them that points them out as Self-Made 
 Old Fools as unerringly as the needle points to the pole. 
 
 We were puzzled until we read Rabelais, to know upon 
 what diet the Self-Made Old Fool subsisted. That im- 
 mense genius gratified our curiosity by a description of 
 a certain island whose inhabitants lived upon the ivind. 
 A stranger passing through this wonderful island, and 
 being an hungered, went to an inn to get his dinner. 
 To his surprise there was not a dish to be seen upon the 
 
58 
 
 table, and yet it was surrounded with guests. Pretty 
 soon one of them gave his order, which was to the fol- 
 lowing effect: "Waiter, bring me some northeast," upon 
 which the servant pulled a string attached to a fan on 
 the northeast corner of the table, the guest inserted a 
 funnel in his mouth, and was pumped full of his airy 
 dish. Others called for southeast, northwest, and in 
 fact every point of the compass was utilized according 
 to the appetite of each quest. 
 
 The Self-Made Old Fool lives in the same way. It is 
 true he generally has a plenty of victuals to eat, but he 
 lives, you understand, upon the wind of flattery, and 
 that he never suffers from the colic of self-conceit is 
 proof positive that his digestive apparatus is so perfect 
 that if you were to call him a Solomon he would man- 
 age to assimilate it. 
 
 But seriously. There is no such thing on God's green 
 earth as a self-made man. There are men, it is true, 
 who, by raking advantages of opportunities, achieve 
 wonderful results. There are other men who, in the 
 absence of opportunity, do T^onders. But no man, un- 
 endowed by his Creator with brains to start with, ever 
 did anything out of the common. And what is more to 
 the purpose, he i ever will. Hence all this talk about 
 self-made men is all bosh and stuff o' nonsense. But 
 the term "self-made" is hardly ever used except in refer- 
 ence to somebody who has acquired money, and it re- 
 quires no extraordinary sense to do that. In fact, the 
 brainier men of all ages have generally been poor, while 
 it is equally true that as a rule wealthy men leave noth- 
 ing to show they ever existed except their property, and 
 they would not leave that if they could carry it away. 
 
 The moral. Do the best you can, and never for one 
 moment be led astray with such nonsense as we have 
 
59 
 
 pointed out. Self-made men! Fiddle-sticks! Every- 
 one is the creature of circumstances. Your man of 
 genius, travelling tracks before unknown, opening new 
 vistas for the human mind, cracking the skull of com- 
 mon sense with his mighty idea, is acted upon himself 
 by unseen forces. The poor hod-carrier, bearing his 
 burden of brick, and singing as he goes, fulfills the law 
 of his being, and is as much of a self-made man in his 
 way as any one else in theirs. Do not be a fool. If 
 Cincinatus had done nothing else but guide the plough, 
 you would have never heard of him. Every ploughman 
 is not a Cincinatus. Neither is every Cincinatus a 
 ploughman. Don't forget that. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THE FASHION"ABLE OLD FOOL. 
 
 This species of Old Fool, like all the rest of his breth- 
 ren, is of ancient lineage. While those already enumera- 
 ted knew it all in their respective spheres, he "fills the 
 bill" in his. When he lives in the country, which is 
 seldom the case since the extinction of slavery, he can 
 only contrive to hang on to the fag end of the proces- 
 sion of fools. He occasionally takes an airing, but most 
 frequently he shuts himself up in his house like the 
 Mikado of Japan or the Grand Typhoon, being evidently 
 under the impression that if he shows himself in pul lie 
 he will become too common. He is not out in this cal- 
 culation for it is very probable that should he show 
 himself too frequently, the edge of his gentility would 
 be dulled. Unlike his city brother, he does not consult 
 the tailor so often, and in consequence catches on to the 
 latest "agony" in dress just as another is coming in. 
 
60 
 
 This always gives him an outre, not to say bizarre ap- 
 pearance among his fellows. They all, however, give 
 him the right hand of fellowship and invite him and 
 his to all their select gatherings, where Charles Augus- 
 tus, redolent of cologne, clad in faultless attire with his 
 hair done up a la mode, may be seen, and where Miss 
 Dashabout, as beautiful as Venus and nearly as naked, 
 may be found. Having sniffed the delectable atmos- 
 phere of swell society until near day break, he departs 
 to recuperate for the i ext round of genteel dissipation. 
 And so he lives from one year's end to another only 
 varying the monotony by a trip to some summer resort 
 to repair his anatomy for the next season's gayety. 
 Well, every man to his humor, as the play goes. 
 
 But would you see the Fashionable Old Fool in all 
 his glory you must go to the city, for there he blooms 
 out in full perfection. But he enacts a curious role and 
 far otherwise than that of his country cousin. He real- 
 izes that butchers and grocers have no respect for per- 
 sons, and so in order to prevent their plebeian feet from 
 soiling his carpets he toils like a slave at his counting 
 room all day in order to defray expenses. He leads a 
 sort of Jekyll and Hyde life. On the market he con- 
 tends for a reduction of the last fraction of a cent in the 
 cost of a beefsteak. He damns the butcher, berates the 
 tailor, and would in a business transaction "skin a flea 
 for his hide and tallow." Later he is at home — a beau- 
 tiful one — situated in the very heart of the creme de la 
 creine. Rich lace curtains adorn the windows, costly 
 carpets cover the floors. A piano costing $2,000 stands 
 in the parlor, at which a dainty young creature too 
 too sweet and ethereal for this world, and yet his daugh- 
 ter nevertheless, is sitting, and as her beautiful fingers 
 evoke some soul-stirring chords, she breaks forth into 
 
61 
 
 that enchanting strain "Home sweet home, be it ever so 
 lowly, there's no place like home." Pretty soon guests 
 begin to arrive. Carriages roll up in front of the door, 
 and out of their sides pour the swells and belles of the 
 fashionable world. The whole building is ablaze with 
 light. Soon is heard the sound of music and the ryth- 
 mic clatter of merry feet as gay couple after gay couple 
 prepare to go whirling through the mazes of the dance. 
 Then comes a lull. A few moments afterwards and the 
 whole room echoes to the lascivious melody of the Ger- 
 man, or the voluptuous strains of the Avaltz. "On with 
 the dance, let joy be uncon fined." "No sleep till morn 
 when youth and pleasure meet." Of course not. That 
 is why they meet. At midnight perhaps, the supper is 
 spread costly, inviting and rare. Gotten up regardless. 
 No splendid poverty tiere. No counting of noses there. 
 That was done beforehand. "Birds of a feather flock 
 together." 
 
 Here may be seen the effete civilization of the modern 
 world running to waste. Here the young dude with a 
 pair of gold rimmed spectacles astride his nose may be 
 seen simpering and twanging his little nonsense into 
 the ear of the banker's daughter — that sweet ethereal 
 creature, too frail and delicate for this mean and every 
 day world. Mrs. Cashier, ablaze with jewels, is chape- 
 roning the gay throng. But where is the banker ? He 
 has disappeared. "Indisposed and tired," say the 
 family. 'I'he party at last worn out, breaks up at a late 
 hour — an hour when most christian people are awakened 
 by Chanticleer'e muffled crow. When the revellers 
 awake the sun is high in the heavens. But alas, that 
 "on night so sweet such awful morn should rise." 
 Tnere is an omnious sound in the street. They open 
 the blinds. They see an immense crowd in front of the 
 
62 
 
 National Bank. The newsboys are howling in the 
 streets at the top of their voices, ^'Here's your Daily 
 Echo with an account of the Great Bank Robbery." 
 They purchase the paper and the following startling 
 head-lines as a prelude to what follows, makes their 
 blood run cold: 
 
 "STARTLII^G ANNOUNCEMENT — THE NATIONAL 
 BANK ROBBED — FLIGHT OF THE CASHIER." 
 
 "Our whole city was thrown into the wildest state of 
 excitement this morning by the terrible discovery that 
 the National Bank had been robbed by the cashier, Mr. 
 "Howling" Swell. The exact amount of Mr. Swell's 
 embezzlement has not yet been determined, but it will 
 reach fully $100,000. Until yesteidaj evening not a 
 breath of suspicion had ever been uttered in regard to 
 Mr. Swell, but it having been observed for several 
 days past that he seemed to be unusually reticent, which 
 was quite contrary to his wont, a meeting of the presi- 
 dent and directors was held in the bank and an inspec- 
 tion made, when to their consternation the board dis- 
 covered the crookedness of the cashier. It was resolved 
 to keep this a secret until this morning and confront 
 the guilty officer with his crime, but by some means he 
 found out what was going on and is now doubtless on 
 his way to Canada. 
 
 "Previous to this discovery no man stood higher in 
 the community than Mr. Swell. He occupied the high- 
 est social position and his family were leaders in our 
 most fashionable society, and no longer than last even- 
 ing one of the most select gatherings in the city Avas 
 held at his house." 
 
 Poor Old Fool, to lose character, honesty and true 
 social position. And for what? To please other fools 
 
63 
 
 like himself, to keep in and up with a select lot of sim- 
 ple idiots, who constitute the greater portion of the 
 brainless '^upper ten," the "top of the pot," the efferve- 
 scence, the scum which all sensible people know to be 
 utterly worthless. An aggregregation of parvenus, lick- 
 spittles and sychophants, who despairing of any merito- 
 rioi:s fame, seek the cheap notoriety that is the twin 
 product of conceit aud excluiveness — a lot of social 
 pariahs, claiming the divine right to snub well born and 
 well bred people simply because they are poor. Loose 
 in living, lax in morals, living on the suburbs of Hell, 
 and yet self -constituted arbiters of elegance. With all 
 their brains in their feet, all their hearts in their pocket- 
 books and all their souls — they haven't got any. 
 
 Sad substitute indeed for that peerless society of by 
 gone days in which every honest man was a gentleman 
 and evfry virtuous woman was a lady. Phew I The 
 Fashionable Old Fool of to-day is disgusting. 
 
 Strange as it may seem this same Old Fool is some- 
 times seen in the person of a fashionable young lady. 
 This tender specimen is not only the first to follow the 
 latest agony in dress, but always contrives to go a bow- 
 shot beyond it. She uses slang so frequently you would 
 conclude she took a diploma in the school where it is 
 taught. She smokes cigarettes, and cuts up so many 
 capers before high heaven as makes the angels weep. 
 And yet she imagines her high social position, the dis- 
 tinction of her family ,and her wealth will permit her 
 to do all these things and still be considered a fine 
 young lady. Her idea of fineness is so thin that no 
 sensible person could see it through a microscope that 
 magnified 600 times. Of all the fools young or old to 
 be met within society so-called, she is the most illustri- 
 ous. Compared to her, that other little social green 
 
64 
 
 horn who throws herself away ou some drunken wretch 
 in order to reclaim him, is an angel. Both of them, 
 however, know it all. The first regards her mother — 
 unless she is an Old Fool also — as an antiquated fossil 
 of the pre-social age, while the latter looks upon hers as 
 entirely too mercenary to advise such a romantic piece 
 of humanity as her daughter. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE CURIOUS OLD FOOL. 
 
 Curiosity is said to be the mother of knowledge, and 
 there can be no objection to this phrase being used as an 
 incentive to non-studious children, when it is explained 
 at the same time that there is a curiosity that is laud- 
 able, but another just the reverse. There are thousands 
 of things in this world like the Irishman's horse, which 
 he said had but two faults. These were, firstly, he was 
 hard to catch, and secondly, he was of no account when 
 caught. A great majority of people, especially when 
 young, are over-curious, but as they advance in life they 
 learn better, and seek to know only what is allowable, 
 comprehensive and useful. But the Curious Old Fool 
 must know it all. He is a little more modest than the 
 rest of his brethren, however, for while they know it all, 
 he wants to know it, and will leave no stone unturned to 
 accomplish his end. Although we are told in Holy 
 Writ that the plan of salvation is so plain that a fool 
 need not err therein, yet since he is not one of the fools, 
 when his pastor calls he opens his battery of questions 
 upon the preacher concerning the Trinity, the resurrec- 
 tion, election, predestination, reprobation, how many to 
 be saved, how many to be damned, and worries the poor 
 
65 
 
 man so that he wishes the Curious Old Fool were either 
 saved or damned already, in order that he might be rid 
 of him. His industry, while prodigious, amounts to 
 nothing. If he studied philosophy, instead of discard- 
 ing the chaff in order to retain the wheat, he must have 
 both. If he study chemistry and learn everything that 
 may be useful, he is perfectly miserable because he can- 
 not discover the philosopher's stone. If he study me- 
 chanics, instead of contenting himself with useful ma- 
 chinery, he wears himself and everybody else out trying 
 to invent perpetual motion. 
 
 The Curious Old Fool met Paul on his arrival at 
 Athens and plied him with questions. He went to hear 
 some new thing and to tell it. But when the apostle 
 told him something useful he would not hear to it. 
 
 The Curious Old Fool will sell his own land and spend 
 all the money seeing other people's. 
 
 When the Curious Old Fool appears in a female form, 
 which is often the case, she is unbearable. When you 
 dine away from home she must know every dish your 
 neighbor put upon the table. If she stays away from 
 church she must know how every lady in the whole con- 
 gregation was dressed. If she has a husband, she fre- 
 quently wonders if any other poor woman has one as 
 sorry as hers — as stupid, dull and listless, and all be- 
 cause her own is pulling his beard and wondering how 
 in the name of common sense he will be able to pay that 
 store account run up by bis wife last month. If her 
 children talk, she wonders if Mrs. 8o-and-So's children 
 are as bad as hers. If Mrs. Smith has a new hat, she 
 will walk three miles in summer's heat or winter's cold 
 to see it. But we might go on until doom's day and the 
 half would not be told. Hence an end to the Curious 
 Old Fool. 
 
OHAPTEK XV. 
 
 THE OFFICIOUS OLD FOOL. 
 
 The list of Old Fools to be met with in society would 
 not be complete without an account of the greatest one 
 to be seen there. And so before closing this branch of 
 the subject we will endeavor to the best of our ability 
 to smoke him out, and if possible bring the "old coon" 
 down. We confess, however, to some misgivings on the 
 subject, as many, more capable than ourselves, have es- 
 sayed the bame task and failed. 
 
 This Old Fool is the most universally despised of the 
 whole tribe. The reason of this is quite plain. In him 
 the distinguishing trait of the Same Old Fool is especi- 
 ally exemplified. He not only knows it all, but even 
 goes a bow-shot beyond the rest of his asinine tribe, and 
 knows how to do it all. 
 
 If a carpenter is building a house he is always on 
 hand, and, although he has never worked an hour at the 
 trade in his life, he feels fully competent to give in- 
 structions not only to the workmen, but the head car- 
 penter himself. Should that benighted functionary dis- 
 regard his advice and fail to build the house according 
 tojhis idea, the Officious Old Fool will say, "It was all 
 owing to his not taking my advice." And should the 
 carpenter, on the other hand, succeed, the Officious Old 
 Fool will claim all the credit by saying, "He stole my 
 idea at last." 
 
 But where the joke comes in with most telling effect 
 is when some great « nterprise, i\ quiring talent of far 
 more than ordinary nature, such as the construction of 
 a suspension bridge, mapping out the plan of a military 
 campaign, the conduct of a navy. Ordinary mortals 
 would be appalled if called upon to give advice even 
 
67 
 
 concerning such gigantic undertakings. Not so with 
 the Officious Old Fool. He knows all about the bridge 
 business, although he never built one. He knows more 
 about military affairs than Caesar cr Napoleon ever 
 dreamed of, while as to a navy he lakes as naturally to 
 that as a duck does to water. But while in his nati^e 
 element in affairs of great pith and moment, he is equally 
 at home in minor matters. He can pick a chicken bet- 
 ter than the cook, ^nd bake better 'bread, although the 
 only evidence to that effect is his own declaration. In 
 fact, we would not swear to it that he has ever conceded, 
 that he could not throw a rock like a wumtui. 
 
 In the social circle be is equally immense. He can 
 tell a joke so much better than anyone else, that he 
 makes a point to interrupt anyone else who tries, in or- 
 der to give the correct version. In argument he is so 
 invincible that all who know him yield the point 
 without a murmur, leaving I'avv and inexperiem ( d 
 strangers to tussle with him. Lastly, he knows how to 
 run a hotel. It has been said a little conceit is allow- 
 able, a little more is insufferable, but to be filled with it 
 from head to heel until the person in whom it reigns 
 becomes pop-ejed, is perfectly sublime. 
 
 The Officious Old Fool cannot be spared just yet. He 
 is the subject of more practical jokes and affords more 
 fun to the "boys" than any other one source in creation, 
 even if we do despise him. Theie is nothing so pleas- 
 urable as making a man the dupe of his own conceit. 
 On one occasion one of these smart Alecks was seen ap- 
 proaching a group of men sitting in a porch facing an 
 orchard. Knowing his style, the owner of the orchard 
 sang out, ''I am glad to see you, Mr. Aleck. I have just 
 asked every gentleman present why that particular tree 
 (at the same time pointing ii out) has no apples on it, 
 
68 
 
 while every other one near it is loaded. Can you tell me 
 why?" "just wait a minute," said x\leck, as he lifted 
 himself over the fence, "and I will tell you." Return- 
 ing in a few minutes he exhibited a piece of the apple 
 tree covered with black spots. "There's the cause," re- 
 plied he, pointing to the spots. "Wrong," says the 
 owner, "that tree was loaded with apples like the rest, 
 but I gathered them yesterday." 
 
 Sometimes the Officious Old Fool takes it into his 
 head to study medicine, and when he does, woe be to the 
 rest of the fraternity. Every man who dies in the whole 
 community while in the care of another physician, was 
 wrongly treated, and might have been saved had he been 
 called in. Sometimes, nay, oftentimes, the Officious 
 Old Fool is seen in the person of a mid- wife, and gives 
 the physician in charge "a piece of her mind," and the 
 whole cloth of her tongue. Horses have flies and dogs 
 have fleas to sting them and bite, and so is the Officious 
 Old Fool, whether in the form of a man or woman, 
 compelled to endure the slings and arrows of this walk- 
 ing and palpitating nuisance. 
 
 As the fly and the flea, the cockroach and the black 
 gnat, no doubt have their uses, so has the Officious Old 
 Fool. But what it is God only knows. 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 THE SENSITIVE OLD FOOL. 
 
 The Science of Botany has a rare fascination for a cer- 
 tain class of minds, and of those who won world-wide 
 fame in its pursuit was Linnaeus. His classification of 
 plants w^as simply wonderful. But it is not so much 
 with the science of botany we wish to deal in this chap- 
 ter as it is to call attention to the fact that there are 
 certain resemblances between some plants and members 
 of rhe human family. For instance, there is the Sensi- 
 tive plant, which, upoi- a mere touch will close its pet- 
 als and remain so until the dews of evening begin to 
 fall. And this foolish little green thing always recalls 
 to the mind another something equally as green in the 
 human family. We refer of course to the Sensitive 
 Old Fool. It does not matter whether this specimen be 
 male or female, you feel as if you were handling dyna- 
 mite all the time you are talking to them. Why, if you 
 try to make yourself pleasant by telling a joke, he (and 
 especially she) will begin to grow red in the face and 
 believe for all the world the point of the jest was aimed 
 entirely at them, and wind up by refusing to say another 
 word the rest of the evening. Again, if some one dis- 
 dlstinguisbes himself, and you allude to it in terms de- 
 servedely flattering, the Sensitive Old Fool will consider 
 all you have said as a reflection on himself. If the Sen- 
 sitive Old Fool is a young woman who has some reputa- 
 tion for beauty, woe to that man who praises another's 
 charms. She will get as mad as a hornet and "cut" 
 him dead the next time she meets him in the company 
 of others. The Sensitive Old Fool is very often a liter- 
 ary person, and should some article of his be rejected by 
 
70 
 
 a magazine or review because it is of no possible interest 
 to any one except himself, he becomes as unconsolable 
 as a woman of forty when her last old beau goes off and 
 marries some one else, and vows the whole literary world 
 is a consp racy against him. Now the truth of the 
 whole matter is just simply this. The Sensitive Old 
 Fool like all the rest of his tribe imagines that he knows 
 it all and that he is perfection itself, and anything that 
 crosses that cheris; ed conviction of his wounds him to 
 the quick. See ! 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 THE CONSCIENTIOUS OLD FOOL. 
 
 Beware of the man who has too much conscience or 
 you will rue the day you formed his acquaintance. We 
 would as soon trust the honesty of a man whose fa\orite 
 method of beginning any conversation is "Now, to be 
 perfectly honest with you," as we would the other. 
 When we ask him to assist us in something which bet- 
 ter men than he practice all their lives, and the old ras- 
 cal refuses to do so for some hidden, selfish reason, and 
 yet tries to cover up his meanness by saying: "I would 
 gladly do so but for conscientious reasons." Consci- 
 ence! fiddlesticks. He never knows he has any until 
 the Devil is about to seize him. 
 
 But seriously, ti e harm the Conscientious Old Fool 
 has done in this world is fearful to contemplate. Look 
 at the long line of martyrs burnt at the stake. Look at 
 the deluge of blood it has caused. Look at the massa- 
 cre of St. Bertholomew, the trail of the Duke of Alva 
 and see. Of all the Old Fools the Conscientious is the 
 most dangerous and the moct dreadful. Such a senti- 
 
71 
 
 ment as pity is utterly unknown to him. You might 
 as well appeal to the mercy of a Bengal tiger as to such 
 as he, where that conscience of his is involved. In 
 short, nothing in this world is better than an enlightened 
 conscience, and nothing is worse than an unenligntened 
 one, and to this latter category the Conscientious Old 
 Fool belongs. Beware of all such. 
 
PART THIRD. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE MECHANICAL OLD FOOL. 
 
 As might be infenvd such a large and intelligent body 
 of American artisans would not escape such an infliction 
 as the Same Old Fool. Nor do they. He is there in 
 full force. He generally manifests his early genius by 
 the invention of a rat-trap or a wind-mill, and his destiny 
 is assured. The whole family unite in praises of his 
 great mechanical genus, and by the time he is fourteen 
 years old he is a confirmed crank. Instead of seeking to 
 add improvements to some machines already in existence, 
 or inventing a new one which would be of some practi- 
 cal use to the world, his whole soul is bent upon invent- 
 ing something which every other Mechanical Old Fool 
 has been tinkering over ever since the world began, and 
 failed. As a general thing perpetual motion is his main 
 hobby, as it has been from time immemorial of all the 
 rest of his tribe. To this subject he devotes days and 
 nights to develope his idea, and then goes to work to 
 construct a model. This proving a failure, he lays it 
 aside, and again goes a setting to hatch out anothtridea 
 with the same result. It wont work. And so it goes 
 on from year to year until his whole bouse is so filled 
 with gim-cracks and models that it would be dangerous 
 to walk across the floor in the dark, for just as like as 
 not you would stumble over a model and crack your 
 skull in doing so. 
 
 Meanwhile his family (if he is so lucky as to have one) 
 mnst work like galley slaves to keep him and themselves 
 
73 
 
 from going to the poor-house. If the efforts of the old 
 goose were not so ridiculous his patience would be 
 sublime. By the time that unfortunate creature — his 
 wife — has lived with him five or six years, she is com- 
 pletely cured of the hallucination that her husband is 
 anything but an Old Fool, and "makes no bones" of 
 telling him so. Such little trifles as these, however, do 
 not deter him in the least. It only confirms him in an 
 opinion he has long maintained, and which for pruden- 
 tial reasons he has kept secret, "that women have very 
 little sense anyhow." Such a trifle as an empty meal- 
 tub, which is the normal state of his household, never 
 troubles him in the least, and although the good old- 
 fashioned gate to his yard is off its hinges, and the cows 
 are devouring his wife's flowers and the pigs I'ooting up 
 his yard, still it is beneath the notice of a great inventor, 
 such as he, to pay the least attention to such minor mat- 
 ters. As a general thing he is very illiterate,'as he has 
 no time to devote to such a frivolty as education. In 
 fact, in most cases he has a contempt for a fellow with 
 ^^book larninJ^ In his personal habits he discards the 
 idea, or perhaps never thought of it, that cleanliness is 
 next to godliness. It may be even doubted whether he 
 even knew there were two such words in the dictionary. 
 As a result of this his face and hands would generally 
 furnish a capital sign for a real estate agency. 
 
 As to advising him. if you should insinuate that he 
 had mistaken his talents, he would set you down as a 
 confiimed idiot, or his very worst enemy. He knows it 
 all. Of course he does. And so he goes on from year 
 to year, pegging away at perpetual motion, until at last 
 he pegs out himself, and leaves the job to bis successor, 
 the next Mechanical Old Fool. 
 
 Some years ago there lived in one of the counties of 
 
74 
 
 Piedmont Virginia one of these old cranks, who had set 
 his mind upon inventing a flying-machine, which he 
 termed artis avis — bird of art. He devoted years to it, 
 spending thousands of dollars experimenting upon it. 
 Meanwhile the war broke out, and a grand idea seized 
 the poor old man. He conceived the plan of attaching, 
 a bomb-basket to it, and proposed to clean out the Yan- 
 kees by dropping shells upon them from the sky. In 
 order to c^rry his idea into practical operation, he visited 
 the Confederate army around Richmond, and made 
 speeches to the soldiers in behalf of his invention, which 
 was as follows: Having perfected his machine, he would 
 sail over Dutch Gap, arid dropping a bomb or two from 
 the sky, would knock Ben Butler into the middle of next 
 week. Having done this, he would set his valves and 
 compound blow-pipes to work and sail over to Wilming- 
 ton, raise the blockade there, ditto Charleston. Then, 
 pluming "his wings for a still longer flight, he would 
 navigate the air until he stood over New Orleans. This 
 would be his grand coup. Having knocked Farragutt 
 and his whole fleet clear out of the Avater, and freed the 
 Crescent City, he would strike a bee-line for Richmond, 
 where he would hold a g'and pyrotechnic disp''ay in 
 honor of this victory and the achievement of Confederate 
 independence. In order to do this, he would load his 
 bomb-basket with sky-rockets, and shoot them downward 
 instead of upward. Poor old fellow. The Confederacy 
 *^went up" and the rockets r^ever came down. The last 
 we ever heard of him was to the effect that having con- 
 structed his machine, he built a high scaffold, flew off, 
 struck the ground and neatly killed himself He made 
 no further efforts after this. 
 
 We have in mind another even more ridiculous still. 
 An old crank of an inventor, whom we will call "Uncle 
 
■ 75 
 
 Joe," had conceived a plan for raising "horses and cattle 
 on the lift." This machine consisted of a long beam, 
 say sixty feet long, supported at one end by two forks 
 and through which it projected sutficiently to allow a 
 rope to be fastened to it, the ends of which were to en- 
 circle the fallen animal and be tied securely. The 
 power, of course, was applied at the other end of the 
 lever by bearing it down. 
 
 Well, on one occasion one of his oxen was on the sick- 
 list and unable to rise. It was in vain that the old man's 
 family tried to dissuade him from experimenting with 
 the sick steer. But nothing else would do, and so, hav- 
 ing procured a blanket instead of a rope, it was passed 
 around the body of the animal and fastened to the end 
 of the pole. Then "Uncle Joe," a stout negro man and 
 the writer, a mere boy, lay hold of the lever. They 
 pulled away with all of their might, raised the steer 
 from the ground, and just as they had him swinging be- 
 tween heaven and earth one of the forks gave way. 
 Down went the steer, up flew the pole, and the whole 
 crowd rushed pell mellfrom the scene for fear of having 
 their skulls cracked by the fall of the pole. As to the 
 poor old ox, what little breath he had in him before was 
 knocked out of him then and" there. This was "Uncle 
 Joe's" last. And this is the last we shall say concern- 
 ing the Mechanical Old Fool. 
 
76 
 CHAPTER 11. 
 
 THE AGRICULTURAL OLD FOOL. 
 
 There are certain plants indigenous to one soil, cer- 
 tain animals to one clime, but the Same Old Fool is 
 neither cribbed, cabined nor confined within such limi- 
 tations. No pent-up Utica confines his powers. At 
 home and abroad, at sea and on land, in the blacksmith's 
 dusky shop, in the elegant studio of the artist, in the 
 hovel of the poor and in the palace of the rich he is 
 equally at home. 
 
 This being the case it follows, as a matter of course, 
 that such a great body as the agriculturists of our coun- 
 try cannot escape the poetry of his presence. The Ag- 
 ricultural Old Fool is found in every neighborhood. 
 He is a regular contributor to some weekly newspaper, 
 and the caption of his article is generally, "Why farm- 
 ing does not pay." He gives various reasons for such a 
 state of things, all of which are plausible enough, but 
 if the reader wishes to know why it does not pay in his 
 case he should pay him a visit ' He will gen. rally find 
 him too lazy to work, and as farming is work the whole 
 thing is explained at once. If you tell him as much, he 
 will set you down at once as a consummate ass, belonging 
 to that ignoble herd who eat breakfast before sun up 
 and supper after dark. In his opinion brain work is 
 what makes farming pay, not industry, economy and 
 good management, and as he has the brains he ought to 
 know. We have seen several of these gentry in our day 
 and time, and we have never known one who would not 
 have landed in the pcor-house but for the labor and 
 capital of others. 
 
 Like all the rest of the Old Fools the Agricultural has 
 a poor opinion of his fellow mortals engaged in the 
 
77 
 
 same biisicess as himself. Presuming upon this igno- 
 rance he sometimes gets at the head of any organization 
 they may have and dictates policies for them which if 
 pur>>ued would prove ruinous to them, but which in the 
 end feathers his own nest. But as a general rule the 
 Agricultural Old Fool is the greatest nuisance going. 
 He prides himself on doing his own thinking, and al- 
 though this is all he does, his thought crop never yields 
 an idea worth having to an acre of foolscap. He is a 
 great theorizer, (you never saw an Old Fool who wasn't) 
 and if there be one supremely blissful moment in his 
 whole existence it is when he can find some one silly 
 enough to act in accordance with his ideas. Nothing on 
 earth will convince him of his error. Although his 
 corn crib is burglar-proof from lack of temptation and 
 his stock so lean that they hardly cast a shadow, and al- 
 though his prosperous neighbor, Mr. A, who never theo- 
 rized an hour in his life, makes tobacco that sells for 
 forty cents a pound, and although his own wife, contend- 
 ing with an empty meal tub and a meatless smoke house 
 two-thirds of her time, has again and again informed 
 him that he is tho most good-for-nothing man in the 
 whole neighborhood, he is unmoved. The only thing he 
 designs to answer is that "woman should keep in her 
 speer." 
 
 Oh, yes. We have seen the poor old fellow with a 
 pair of pants on that had been patched to often by his 
 wife that it would puzzle a tailor to decide as to the 
 original color and texture of the cloth, still theorizing. 
 We have seen him theorizing as to the best way to keep 
 rats out of his corn house, when it had not held an ear 
 of corn for six months. But singular to say, we never 
 yet saw one theorize so as to keep his wife from doing all 
 the work on the place. Like all the rest of the Old 
 
78 
 
 Fools he has a poor opinion of woman, especially of his 
 wife. AqcI this, by the way, is the only good piece of 
 property he has, and the only one he despises. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE MEDICAL OLD FOOL. 
 
 Of all the practical sciences that of medicine affords 
 the widest field for the Same Old Fool to exercise his 
 peculiar functions. It is very complicated to begin with, 
 and this of it elf is a tremens nous weap n in his Lands. 
 Secondly, the gullibility of mankind is just in his line. 
 They know nothing of the composition of their own 
 bodies, and as to the best manner of its preservation they 
 are even behind the beas^ s of the field. Take the • tomach 
 for instance. One -half, yes, two-thirds of mankind 
 think the only office of that important organ is to re- 
 ceive food. As to assimilation and digestion, they do 
 not even know there are such words in the dictionary, 
 much less their meaning. Gluttony kills more than the 
 sword. And yet the world is run mad on eating and 
 drinking. The ghost of Lucullus is still walking. 
 Costly banquets are all the rage. A cook in ancient 
 times was but one remove from a scullion, but now he is 
 a great man in request. Cookery has become an art, a 
 noble science. Cooks are gentlemen. It is true they 
 wear their brains in their bellies and their guts in their 
 heads. But what of that? Do not our gentry flock to 
 the taverns as if born to no other end but eating and 
 drinking ? Their bodies have become storage warehouses 
 for edible and drinkable plunder of every kind. Is it 
 any wonder the Medical Old Fools are abroad in the land 
 when the field is white with the harvest? He sees his 
 day and is glad. 
 
79 
 
 As we have already noted the fact that the science of 
 medicine is complicated and therefore difficult, to be a 
 successful physician one must be a master of three king- 
 doms, the animal, vegetable and mineral, for man is re- 
 lated to all three. Tt requires years to obtr*in this neces- 
 sary knowledge, and yet the Medical Old Fool, who never 
 put his foot inside of a medical college or learned enough 
 about anatomy to carve a chicken, sets all the doctors 
 down in the land as a set of frauds and ignoramuses, 
 while he of course, like all the rest of the Old Fools, 
 knows it all. If he gets sick he will physic himself 
 nearly to death on outlandish roots and herbs, and then 
 in despair send for the doctor as a dernier resort. Should 
 he die after doing so all the other Medical Old Fools in 
 the conjmunity are unanimous in the opinion that the 
 disciple of Galen finished him. On the other hand, 
 should ths physician cure him he denies it in toto coelo 
 and vows that his own decoction was at the bottom of 
 his restoration. 
 
 The scriptures tell us of certain men who believe a 
 lie that they may be damned. The Medical Old Fool 
 is much in the same category. He will not believe in a 
 regular practitioner, nor a tried and well known medi- 
 cine, but will go his whole length on a nostrum com- 
 pounded by a quack and be killed. And this, by the 
 Avay, is one good thing effected by patent medicines. 
 They serve to thin out fools. 
 
 But the Medical Old Fool knows it all. He has tried 
 this, that and the other and never knew it to fail. Al- 
 though a dunce he knowe all about anatomy, physiology, 
 pa'hology and Materia Medica by intuition. Away with 
 your musty treatises on the virtues of calomel, quinine 
 and mercury wh^n hf can go out into his garden and 
 pull up a weed or go into the woods and dig a root that 
 
80 
 
 has more virtue than all three of them. 
 
 Nothing is created in vain, and so the Medical Old 
 Fool has his mission in life. But for him our doctors, 
 like Othello, would find their occupation gone. The 
 medical fraternity should erect a marble monument over 
 the grave of each one that dies, and inscribe thereon, 
 
 Sacred to the Memory of Our Best Friend. 
 CHAPTFR IV. 
 
 THE LEGAL OLD FOOL. 
 
 The science of law is another complicated affair, re- 
 quiring the most painstaking study in its acquisition, 
 the most profound reason and searching analysis in or- 
 der to its proper interpretation. It has employed, and 
 ever will engage the full strens^th of the most gigantic 
 intellects to pursue it, and yet the Legal Old Fool who 
 whittles sticks and chews tobacco every summer after- 
 noon at the village grocery to admiring rustics, thinks 
 he knows it all from Justinian's Pandects to Henning's 
 Justice, although he never heard in his life of either. 
 He is as "full of wise saws and modern instances" as any 
 Shakespearean Dogberry who ever lived. Blackstone 
 may err in Common LaAv, Ohitty on Contracts, Starkie 
 on Evidence, or Stephens on Pleading, but he is infalli- 
 ble in everything. He has no hesitancy in demurring 
 to the decisions of his county or corporation judge, but 
 goes a bow-shot beyond all this, and disputes the acc-u 
 racy of the chief justice of the United States himself. 
 If his knowledge is profound his cheek is colossal. 
 
 The Legal Old Fool may sometimes be found editing 
 a newspaper, and when this is the case every quid-nunc 
 in the county or town wishing to cheat a lawyer out of 
 
81 
 
 the meagre price of a consultation, consults him through 
 the columns of the daily or weekly Headlight, as the 
 case may be. His answers to such questions are as in- 
 fallible as those said to have emanated from the oracle 
 of Delphos, and we may add, just about as lucid also. It 
 frequently happens that the Legal Old Fool becomes a 
 politician, and when he does so, he invariably pitches 
 into the lawyers as having framed the most foolish set 
 of laws that ever disgraced a statute-book, and promises 
 the voters when he gets to the Legislature or Congress 
 to have every one of them expunged and sensible ones 
 enacted instead. Poor Old Foo: ! Should he ever get 
 to either place and assert his personality, he would be- 
 come a laughing-stock for the whole body. 
 
 Sometimes he turns author, and writes a book entitled 
 *'Every Man His Own Lawyer," which he contrives to 
 sell to every stingy curmudgeon in the land for fifty 
 cents or a dollar, and although the book is dear at any 
 price, yet as all the natural-born fools are not dead yet, 
 he reaps a rich harvest. 
 
 Such is a faint outline of the Legal Old Fool. Like 
 all the rest of his tribe, he is composed of about equal 
 parts of conceit, knavery and superficiality. You need 
 not expect to discover a profound Old Fool, for he no- 
 where exists, and although the Legal Old Fool sets up 
 that claim for himself, it has no foundation except in 
 his own conceit. 
 
 Occasionally he may be found in the ranks of the 
 lawyers themselves, but that quick-witted fraternity soon 
 remand him to the rear, from which he emerges as a 
 candidate for office, as we have already said. Failing in 
 clients to support him, he falls back upon constituents 
 to do so, and as nine-tenths of them are bigger fools 
 than he is himself, he often succeeds. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE LITERARY OLD FOOL. 
 
 What man or woman who ever attended school has 
 not either read or declaimed, or heard read or declaimed 
 that little bit of doggeral beginning : 
 Tall trees from little acorns grow : 
 Great streams from little fountains flow — etc. 
 
 Kow, we daresay, without fear of successful contradic- 
 tion, that this little bit of prosy commonplace has been 
 the means of flooding the world with more fools than 
 anything else in the universe. Every little dunce in the 
 community knows it by heart, and, worst of all, believes 
 that he is the individual acorn that is going to produce 
 this great tree named. In consequence, he takes up the 
 absurd idea that all that is essential to true greatness is 
 perseverence at whatever calling he may undertake. 
 Should he be gifted with an abnormal memory, and thus 
 be able, parrot-like to repeat other men's ideas in their 
 own language, his silly excuse of a teacher or doting 
 parents will give it out that he is a great literary 
 "genus," and as soon as the boy hears of this, he be- 
 comes ever afterward a confirmed crank. He begins his 
 literary career by launching out into rhyme, containing 
 neither measure, sense nor reason, and the whole family 
 clap their hands at having a great poet in it. 
 
 The little Homer is petted, carressed and coddled 
 until he imagines old Milton, "ain't nowhere," while 
 such nondescripts as Wordsworth, Byron and Shelley 
 must not be named in his presence. His ode on " Spring'^ 
 is taken to the nearest weekly newspaper office and sub- 
 mitted to the editor. That keen-witted and hungry 
 functionary, always on the alert for an "ad" or a new 
 
83 
 
 subscriber, and knowing that all the poet's cousins, 
 uncles, and aunts will enter their names on his books, 
 and that out of the whole lot the prospect for a bushel 
 of potatoes or a cord of wood is reasonably certain, takes 
 pleasure in giving his readers the benefit of this effusion 
 of genius. 
 
 It is needless to say that after that the boy is ruined for 
 life. You might as well be singing a psalm to a dead 
 horse as trying to get him to follow any pursuit other 
 than literature. He goes from bad to worse. When he 
 has ground out a sufficiency of rhymes for the purpose, 
 he publishes a book. The book sells for two reasons. 
 People that never did believe he had sense enough to 
 write one, buy it out of pure curiosity, while all his 
 friends that never knew any difference between a con- 
 ceited ape and a genius, take him for the latter, and of 
 course, buy it, and thus between the two he sells the 
 whole edition. 
 
 But somehow or other the Literary Old Fool never has 
 any money. One would suppose this would put a stop 
 to his foolishness. Not a bit of it. Has he not read that 
 Homer was a beggar, Milton as poor as a church mouse, 
 Goldsmith a never-do-well ? And is it to be supposed 
 that while he is in such illustrious company, he ever 
 envies the double-chinned sons of filthy lucre, who in a 
 few years will return 
 
 To the vile dust from which they sprung, 
 Unwept, unhonored and unsung! 
 
 In nearly all cases the Literary Old Fool has a wife. 
 Her career is a sad one. The only things with which 
 she is supplied are brats and candle-lighters, and her 
 whole time is employed in sewing up rents, not which 
 the envious Casca made, but in the trousers of five or six 
 young Miltons in embryo. Could she sell her candle- 
 
84 
 
 lighters at a cent a hundred, she would realize more 
 than her inspired husband does on the rest of his manu- 
 scripts. 
 
 The Literary Old Fool will not be advised by anybody. 
 He generally selects for his subject something of neither 
 interest nor profit to any one, and treats it in such a dry 
 and formal manner that no live publisher in the land 
 would give a dollar for a ton of it. Thus he goes 
 through life, trying with the wings of a bat to imitate 
 the soaring of an eagle, and dies at last a complete fail- 
 ure in everything but one — perseverance. 
 
 What a pity that so many valuable rail-splitters are 
 lost to the world because one with an abundance of 
 brains succeeded in becoming President of the United 
 States. 
 
PART FOURTH 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE PROPHETIC OLD FOOL. 
 
 It may seem a little singular that in tracing the rami- 
 fications of the various Old Fools which have one com- 
 mon origin, that we should feel called upon to specify 
 any one of the lot as the Prophetic Old Fool, seeing that 
 the last mother's son of them claim the power of fore- 
 seeing future events. But there is one of them, how- 
 ever, who has been, and is now, so much in evidence that 
 we feel we should be derelict in our duty to a long-suf- 
 fering public not to expose him by giving him the bene- 
 fit of a whole chapter. 
 
 That the Prophetic Old Fool is a false prophet goes 
 without saying. But there is a marked difference be- 
 tween the ancient and modern specimen. The former 
 always claimed illumination from a Superior Being as a 
 basis for his vaticinations. The modern, however, will 
 not allow that there is any being superior to himself, 
 and hence claims to furnish his own oil that gives him 
 light to foresee future events. Oh, no ! The Prophetic 
 Old Fool is too jealous of his reputation to divide honors 
 with his Maker or the Devil. He never begs the ques- 
 tion in any such puerile manner ; never. Again. Every- 
 Prophetic Old Fool has his specialty. The ancient 
 specimen confined himself mainly to famine and the is- 
 sues of war, and he generally took a rose-colored view of 
 
86 
 
 the future. The reason the old rascal did this was be- 
 cause they were employed by princes and rulers, and 
 fearing the loss of "backsheesh" if they told the king 
 anything unpleasant, they chose lines of prophesy agree- 
 able to the ruler's wish and the welfare of their own 
 bellies. 
 
 The modern specimen, however, is generally a pessi- 
 mist, and never seems to be completely happy until every 
 one else is made miserable by his own predictions, for if 
 they are unhappy from any other cause he is never satis- 
 fied until he has made them still more so through his 
 own agency. His hobby is generally the weather and 
 earthquakes, and the worst of storms and the most ter- 
 rible seismic disturbances alone seem to inspire his pro- 
 phetic soul. He fairly revels in coming cyclones and 
 chimeras dire. Occasionally he hits the nail on the 
 head, aud his reputation is made. As an ir stance read 
 what follows: 
 
 "Herr Falb, the earthquake prophet of Vienna, sud- 
 denly achieved fame last spring. He said Greece would 
 be shaken by an earthquake on April 20th, and the event 
 actually came off according to Falb's programme. There 
 was a slipping of the unstable rocks underlying the At- 
 lantic Channel. A terrible shock buried some hun- 
 dreds of Phocians in the ruins of their homes, shops, or 
 churches. All Greece was shaken, Italy felt the tremors, 
 and seismic instruments as far away as southern Eng- 
 land recorded the disturbance. It w^as a sad day for 
 Greece and a great day for Falb. The prophet had hit 
 the nail exactly on the head. The chance that he would 
 do so was rather less than that he would draw a prize in 
 a lottery, but he did it. 
 
 If Herr Falb had now retired on his laurels they would 
 not have faded so rapidly, and he would have saved 
 
87 
 
 Greece no end of anxiety and distress. Unfortunately 
 the spirit of prophesy was upon him and could not be 
 suppressed. The Viennese seer opened his mouth again 
 and told the world that on May 5th, Greece would once 
 more be shaken, and Athens would be destroyed. 
 
 *-Poor Greece had not yet buried all the dead who had 
 been crushed under the falling walls of April 20th, and 
 Herr Falb's new prophesy sounded in her ears like the 
 crack of doom. Not only ignorant people, but also men 
 ^nd women of intelligence and education, were over- 
 w^helmed with nervous apprehension. In his report on 
 the earthquakes in Greece in 1893 and 1894, which 
 Prof. Mitzopulos, of Athens, has just published, he gives 
 a short but graphic account of the needless suffering 
 which Falb's words inflicted upon the people of the 
 capital. 
 
 "Twelve days before the date fixed by Falb for his 
 next earthquake, the details of his prophecy were tele- 
 graphed to Athens. Every effort of scientific men to 
 reassure the public was in vain. They wrote to the 
 newspapers that Falb's alleged omniscience as to seismic 
 phenomena was pure humbug, and that his prophecy 
 was based upon no knowledge or theories that entitled it 
 to consideration. They might as well have talked to 
 the winds, for one stubborn fact overtopped all other 
 considerations in the public mind. Herr Falb had pre- 
 dicted the earthquake of April 20th, and what he had 
 done once he might do again. 
 
 "Business was largely suspended some days before the 
 dreaded May 5th. On the night before the expected 
 catastrophe few people in Athens and Piraeus slept. 
 Most of the people had abandoned their houses and were 
 in the streets and fields. Many others took refuge in the 
 barks and ships, and waited from minute to minute the 
 
88 
 
 expected destruction. Many were frightened into sick- 
 ness, some died, and a number of panic-stricken women 
 suffered from premature childbirth. The scare did not 
 entirely subside for days after Falb had been proved to 
 be a false prophet. A great earthquake is usually fol- 
 lowed by a period of frequent earth tremors until equili- 
 brium is restored among the disturbed rock strata. As 
 long as these tremors continued, thousands of people be- 
 lieved that Falb's second earthquake had been only de- 
 layed, and was sure to come." 
 
 To conclude with one more observation : The Pro- 
 phetic Old Fool of the past was generally put to death 
 for his failure to realize rose-colored predictions. The 
 modern, however, has been discounted so often that peo- 
 ple look for better times ahead whenever he begins to 
 vaticinate, and hence he escapes. Like all the rest of 
 his tribe, however, "he knows it all." 
 
 CHAPTER 11. 
 
 THE WEATHEK-WISE OLD FOOL. 
 
 Considering that the state of the weather, present and 
 future, is the prelude to nearly all polite conversation^ 
 and that moreover, it is a subject of sui passing interest, 
 it is no wonder that the Weather-Wise Old Fool should 
 bob up serenely with his fore casts. 
 
 This species is confined almost exclusively to the 
 rural districts, where he occupies an enviable position 
 in society in the triple role of ''guide, philosopher and 
 friend." The reason of his operations being confined to 
 the country is owing to the advent of the weather-bu- 
 reau with its concomitants of flags and signals, denoting 
 the advance of hot and cold waves, of sunshine and 
 
89 
 
 storm to the denizens of cities. And it may be added 
 that the weather signal has the same effect upon the 
 Weather- Wise Old Fool that a red flag has upon a bull. 
 And why should it not? No man can bear to have the 
 ground swept from under him, or see his occupation 
 gone. And that is just what science is doing for the 
 Weather- Wise Old Fool in the cities. Now it goes with- 
 out saying that in the country where such innovations 
 are unknown, the old fellow is still cock of the weather, 
 if not of the walk, and has an undisputed empire over 
 the atmosphere and the clouds. 
 
 Like all true philanthrophists he makes no charge for 
 his services except a tribute to his foresight and an ac- 
 knowledgement of his prophetic genius. There are said 
 to be " tricks " in all trades, and the Weather- Wise Old 
 Fool is as full of them as an egg is of meat. He has 
 hundreds of "signs" which he never knew to fail. For 
 instance: "If the wind blows from the south for 48 
 hours you may certainly expect rain." "If it clears off 
 cold after a rain, expect frost." "If the moon changes 
 in the .morning before 7 o'clock, look for a change in 
 the weather." 
 
 The observant reader will please notice that he inserts 
 an "if" before each prediction. This reservation afford- 
 ed by that little word "if" is the loop-hole through 
 which he always escapes in case of failure. He is too 
 sharp to be found indulging in such a rare luxury as a 
 clear-cut prophecy. He is not to be caught napping in 
 that way. Were he, for instance, to say: "To-morrow it 
 will rain, then clear off, and bring a killing frost," and 
 he should slip up, farewell all reverence for the Weather- 
 Wise Old Fool. We would have no more respect for him 
 than for a sucked orange or a played out politition. 
 This Old Fool has been in existence like the rest of his 
 
90 
 
 tribe from time immemorial. Even the Savior of man- 
 kind, over 1800 years ago pointed him out by way of 
 rebuke when he quoted him as follows: "When it is 
 evening, ye say it will be fair weather, for the sky is 
 red." "And in the morning, it will be foul weather 
 to-day, for the sky is red and lowering." 
 
 Of course we do not mean to intimate that the Weather- 
 Wise Old Fool is not sometimes right in his fore casts. 
 How can a man who is always guessing fail to "hit it 
 sometimes/' especially in such a changeful thing as the 
 weather ? But the beauty of it for the Old Fool is, that 
 people always remember his predictions which come true 
 and forget those which are false, although I he latter con- 
 stitute an overwhelming majority of his vaticinations. 
 There is a class of weather, however, which defies all the 
 predictions of this rural philosopher, and that is dry 
 weather. Knowing this, the whole tribe of them have 
 united on a maxim covering this emergency exactly, and 
 that is, that "all signs fail in dry weather." Eecogniz- 
 ing this, the Weather-Wise Old Fool is as coy in giving 
 an opinion at such times as a young miss in saying "yes," 
 when she has a half dozen suitors. 
 
 Still we have a grateful appreciation of the Weather- 
 Wise Old Fool. In our young days when invited to so- 
 cial gatherings a day off, we always consulted him, and 
 when he predicted a rainy night we consoled ourselves 
 with the rellection that the Old Fool did not know what 
 he was talking about, and nearly always failed, and 
 when he "struck it right" it made no difference. Then 
 again, he has his uses. He supplies a long felt want in 
 fashionable circles. One-half the people you meet there 
 have'nt got sense enough to talk about anything else, 
 and the -weather is lugged in to fill that aching void. 
 Indeed it is quite refreshing to hear some fashionable 
 
91 
 
 young debutant declare upon her word it is the coldest 
 weather she ever felt, on her way to the party, although 
 wrapped from head to foot in the warmest of furs, and 
 when after she has goti en there and appears in ball room 
 dress, almost equivalent to no clothes at all, she again 
 declares that it is the most delightful evening she ever 
 spent. 
 
 We could say more concerning the Weather-Wise Old 
 Fool, but as the reader, no doubt, is blessing him for 
 having fooled him or her so often, we will allow them to 
 conclude the chapter without further assistance from us. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE PRACTICAL OLD FOOL. 
 
 Such a thing as an absolutely prideless man is not to 
 be found. It matters not if he be as ugly as the devil 
 is reputed to be; as mean as sin, as ignorant as the aver- 
 age politician, still he is proud of something. We knew 
 a man once who had contracted a habit of moving his 
 nose as much as his lips in ordinary conversation, and 
 when reminded of it, replied, that "all great men 
 had their peculiarities," and left us to infer that this 
 was his. 
 
 Just so with the Practical Old Fool. Wliile the vast 
 majority of mankind are carried away with the charms 
 of genuine eloquence, gaze with rapt emotion upon the 
 masterpiece of a great artist, while the poet's eye, in a 
 fine frenzy, rolling glances from heaven to earth and 
 from earth to heaven, and sees more devils than vast 
 Hell can hold, the Practical Old Fool sees and hears 
 nothing. A fine oration to him is not worth the time 
 consumed in its delivery ; the masterpiece of painting 
 
92 
 
 not worth the canvas on which it is drawn, while as to 
 poetry it is "plumb" foolishness. Although the Creator 
 has studded the heavens with stars and beautified the 
 earth with flowers, he holds star-gazers and flower-lovers 
 as little less thau lunatics. 
 
 And yet he thinks it a sign of true greatness to con- 
 demn all these things. The old goose ! As if any 
 great man from Adam's day to this was not endowed 
 with an imperial imagination. As if the true test of 
 human greatness were not creation and invention, and 
 that without imagination nothing great, humanly speak- 
 ing, lias ever been evolved. Look at Homer, Virgil and 
 Milton. Look at Demosthenes, Cicero and Henry. Look 
 at Alexander, C^sar and Napoleon. Look at Archime- 
 des, Newton and Kepler. Look at Phidias, Apelles, 
 Leonardo, Raphael and Rubens. Look at all the world's 
 immortals, all gifted with godlike imaginations; devotees 
 at the shrine of what was considered the impractical. 
 Look at these things, Practical Old Fool ! and learn 
 that you do not know it all. 
 
 The Practical Old Fool prides himself furthermore 
 upon the idea that he alone pursues what is useful. 
 Sordid wretch that he is. As if the power that helps to 
 restore fallen man to the image of his Maker ; as if the 
 charm of Beauty did not give one a foretaste of Heaven ; 
 as if the poet's song and the orator's plea have not 
 breathed courage into souls ready to sink with despair. 
 *' Turnips and potatoes, dollars and cents !"' " Beef, 
 beef !" cries the Practical Old Fool, while the land rings 
 with patriotic rejoicings. 
 
 But the Practical Old Fool has his uses, and if he did 
 not pretend to know it all no one would complain. Some 
 one must feed the hogs and salt the cows, and as he 
 is fond of this employment and no one objects to his 
 
93 
 
 doing so, what right has he to set in judgment upon 
 others. It is always honorable for a man or woman to 
 fulfill the design of their Creator, but when they arro- 
 gate to themselves that the Maker sets a special pre- 
 mium upon the occupation of dunces the conceit of the 
 thing becomes colossal. One thing well done is better 
 than a thousand partly done. One great idea, developed 
 by a master mind, outweighs all the crudities of all the 
 Practical Old Fools who ever lived. 
 
 Again, the Practical Old Fool prides himself on " get- 
 ting there." Getting where ? To the warmest seat at 
 the fire, to the best bed in the house, the advantage in a 
 horse trade, the last word in a quarrel, the first blow in 
 a fight. Oh, yes, in all things selfish he is easily first. 
 Your great man, your divine man, is above such mean- 
 ness. If an inventor, he labors for man, unknown in the 
 recesses of poverty, whilst every Practical Old Fool in 
 the whole neighborhood is taunting him with the idea 
 that his machine is not practical. So it was in the 
 beginning, is now and ever shall be to the end. The 
 Practical Old Fools have stood and will stand around 
 men of whom they and the world are not worthy, and 
 hoot at them as "impracticable," and just as soon as the 
 invention or idea has been fully developed, seized it and 
 rode it to death. Out with such barren and graceless 
 rascals 
 
 The Practical Old Fool has one or two peculiarities 
 which we must notice before we dismiss him. He always 
 begins his conversation by saying " I am a very practical 
 sort of a man." He labors under the impression that 
 these cabalistic words will either give you an idea that 
 he is " some pumpkins," or else it is a gentle reminder 
 that he wants no " flourishes " in what you are about to 
 tell him. Now, we have noticed that a man who talks 
 
94 
 
 that way generally has less sense as to what is really 
 practicable than anybody else. If it were not so he 
 would adopt what was practicable and discard the rest. 
 But as he wishes to get the idea of utility from you and 
 then claim it as his own, he starts out as we have out- 
 lined. 
 
 But that the Practical Old Fool may see his absurd- 
 ity in the strongest possible light, we will give him the 
 benefit of an illustration. 
 
 One of his tribe was taken sick. He sent for the doc- 
 tor, and as soon as he arrived he informed the man of 
 medicine that he was a very practical man, and that he 
 wished him to make a thorough diagnosis of his case, 
 and should he come to the conclusion after such exami- 
 nation that he must die, to let him know. The doctor 
 did so and informed him that there were nine chances 
 that he would die to one that he would get well. He 
 then asked the physician for his bill. The latter was 
 dumbfounded, but the old fellow informed him that he 
 was a very practical sort of a man and never invested 
 in any business where the chances were so much against 
 him, and as this was his last business transaction, he 
 wished, as he had always done, not to sink any money 
 with such a small margin in his favor. Having paid 
 his bill for one visit, he then asked the doctor about 
 how long he would live. Being informed that he would 
 probably die on Thursday, he called his wife and said : 
 " Mirandy, the Doctor says I'll die a-Thursday. If so, I 
 want you to bury me Friday evening, kill the hogs Satur- 
 day morning, and don't go moping about the house and 
 forget your business, but salt 'em down good. Do you 
 hear!" 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE STRICTLY BUSINESS OLD FOOL. 
 
 While the hypothesis of the evolution of man from the 
 lower animals is a proposition so ridiculous, that only a 
 few leading fools have been led to adopt it, yet the evo- 
 lution of certain Old Fools from certain conditions of 
 society is not an open question. In fact, it is so self- 
 evident as to admit of no argument. Take for instance 
 the Strictly Business Old Fool. When the Money Era 
 came upon the boards of time, it just as surely developed 
 the Strictly Business Old Fool as did the Warlike Age 
 produce such men as Hannibal, Caesar and Napoleon. 
 
 The Stiictly Business Old Fool always has existed, 
 but during other than the Money Era he was sternly re- 
 pressed when his characteristics became manifest. x\s 
 an evidence of this we need only cite your attention to 
 the fact that the literature of all nations, and the re- 
 sources of all the greatest writers, ancient or modern 
 (the present time excepted), have been exhausted to find 
 the most horrible adjectives with which to characterize 
 misers, bribe-takers and such. Nowadays, however, a 
 miser is an economical, prudent citizen, the bribe-taker 
 is a capitalist on small means, and a thief is whittled 
 down to an embezzler. 
 
 Now, the Strictly Business Old Fool is not one of these 
 exactly. He is the victim of his early environment — 
 the product of circumstances. Beginning life generally 
 in poverty, in his first game of marbles he contrives to 
 cheat his playmates in every game, and when he is 
 praised for so doing by his parents, considers himself a 
 little hero, in spite of his juvenile rascality. A little 
 later, being too stingy to eat, he is praised by his parents 
 
96 
 
 for his frugality, and still later on, having accumulated 
 a little money, while his brothers have not, he is pub- 
 licly held up before them as "the coming man of the 
 family." Thenceforth his destiny is assured. He is 
 given precedence on all occasions, and by the time he is 
 twenty- one years of age every old mammon- worshipping 
 mamma in the whole neighborhood is telling her cimb- 
 ling-headed daughters that he is the nicest }Oung man 
 going. No wonder his head is turned. Even the par- 
 son himself is piously inclined that way, and pronounces 
 him a very promising young man. "Promising," as ap- 
 plied to young men, once included powers of mind that 
 might lead to fame and usefulness. Now it means noth- 
 ing but the possibilities of wealth. 
 
 Seeing the success of his policy, the Strictly Business 
 Young Fool copies the manners of speech and dress of 
 the Strictly Business Old Fool, and they become so en- 
 amored of each other's abilities that they constitute a 
 sort of mutual admiration society. 
 
 But the worst remains to be told. The Strictly Busi- 
 ness Old Fools having as a general rnle never read any- 
 thing but day-books and ledgers, finally come to the 
 conclusion that there is nothing else to be learnt of any 
 account, and so despise all polite learning. In conse- 
 quence, he has developed a new language — one as devoid 
 of sentiment, soul and poetry as a meat-axe. Instead of 
 saying, for instance, when he is recovering from a spell 
 of sickness that he is "convalescing," he will tell the 
 asker that he feels ten per cent, or twenty per cent, bet- 
 ter as the case may be. When you do him a service, in- 
 stead of making acknowledgement in correct English, he 
 will blurt out, "Thanks" — a word which would make 
 John Randolph turn over in his grave could he hear it. 
 This is strictly business, however. When one of these 
 
97 
 
 S trictly BusiDess Old Fools of a man marries a Strictly 
 Business Old Fool of a woman there is hardly su fficient 
 sentiment between the two to sweeten a cup of coffee. 
 There is a close resemblance between the Solid Old Fool 
 and the Strictly Business Old Fool. There is a differ- 
 ence, however, in degree but not in kind. The Solid 
 Old Fool is in station and the other in business. The 
 Strictly Business Old Fool is in the chrysalis state, but 
 the Solid Old Fool is the full blown butterfly. 
 
 We are indebted to this class of Old Fools for one 
 word at least, and that is the word "crank." Having 
 no appreciation of such things as history, science, litera- 
 ture, painting and music; having no sympathy with 
 philanthropists and philosophers, unless those who are 
 making piles of money, they designate them as cranks. 
 ]S[o man who is making money, hand over fist, is ever 
 visited with this terrible denunciation. That is reserved 
 for those who are toiling without fee or reward for the 
 souls and bodies of their unfortunate fellow-men, who 
 are not too strictly business to lend a helping hand to 
 the poor drunkard and the fallen woman. 
 
 We mean no disparagement by what we have written 
 of the strictly business man. He is no kin to the Strictly 
 Business Old Fool. As the just-too-sweet- to-live young 
 man is the dude of the social world, so the just-too-mean- 
 to live Old Fool is the dude of the business world. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE BUSINESS-HATING OLD FOOL. 
 
 This Old Fool is the exact opposite of the other. 
 While the former is an example of business-run-mad, the 
 latter veers to the other extreme and hates any busines 
 
98 
 
 at all. Now, it is really surprising how many fools of this 
 sort there are in these United States, both old and young. 
 Among the young women of the country especially the 
 number is especially large. They not only have no busi- 
 ness themselves, but absolutely turn up their noses at 
 young men who have. Owing to a false education, pre- 
 conceived notions, and a woful lack of good, hard sense^ 
 they are under the impression that no man can be a gen- 
 tleman who is compelled to work for his living. Tender 
 idiots! As if any man who contrives to live without Ja- 
 ber of some sort is not only a nuisance, but a thief and 
 a robber. Your fine gentlemen and ladies of leisure, as 
 a general thing, are not worth as much to the communi- 
 ty as the poorest excuse of a carpenter or cobbler to be 
 found in it. Captain John Smith, at Jamestown, in 
 1607, had a lot of these "gentlemen of leisure" to con- 
 tend with, and never got anything out of them until he 
 established the rule that those who did not work should 
 not eat. 
 
 But if anything on this earth could furnish complete 
 proof that all the fools are not dead yet, it is afforded by 
 the number of people who believe that labor is degrad- 
 ing. Why, even down your little fledgling of an orator 
 would have us believe that his greatest effort cost him 
 no labor at all; that he just got right up and spoke it 
 by inspiration. And strange to say, there are thousands 
 of fools in the world who believe every word he says, 
 when if the truth were told, he has been pegging away 
 at it for the last three months. Had he continued doing 
 so for three months longer, it would not have beert 
 amiss, and had he never spoken it at all it would have 
 been all the better. Oh, no ! The windy little goose 
 believes there is great merit in asserting that his effort 
 cost him no labor, especially when we are reminded that 
 
99 
 
 such men as Demosthenes, Cicero and Gladstone never 
 mounted the rostrum until they were masters of their 
 subjects, requiring the most extensive research, profound 
 thought, and any amount of hard mental labor to bring 
 it to perfection. If labor is degrading, such men as St. 
 Paul, Milton, Washington, and every other really great 
 man who ever lived, was the most degraded of the race. 
 To hear them tell it, the evidence of a gentleman is his 
 soft hands, tender feet, and the amount of time of which 
 he robs his Maker and his fellowman, while lounging 
 about, reading dime novels, and inculcating false ideas 
 of the true nobility of life. 
 
 The truth of the whole matter is, the w^hole country 
 is cursed with Labor-Hating Old Fools who are not worth 
 the ammunition required to put them out of the way, to 
 say nothing of the amount of food and clothing they 
 manage to consume, for every one of them eats, bless 
 you, and even if he does despise the laborer, he is always 
 on hand at meal-times, and eats what someone's labor 
 has procured, with all the appetite of a quarter- horse. 
 
 We have seen some of these Old Fools who hated labor 
 so much, and looked upon it as so degrading, that they 
 would lie abed of a morning until their wives had gotten 
 up, kindled all the fires in the house, and even gone to 
 the wood-pile in a blinding snow-storm and chopped 
 stove-wood with which to get the Labor-Hating Old 
 Fool his breakfast. But this specimen is of ancient 
 date, and has a plenty of company to sustain him in his 
 belief, as all savages, ancient or modern, have believed, 
 and yet believe that labor is degrading, so much so that 
 they seldom indulge in enough of it to get the dirt off 
 themselves. And the same may be said of the thief and 
 the robber. He, too, believes that labor is degrading, 
 and hence, like the Labor-Hating Old Fools elsewhere, 
 
100 
 
 makes his living from the labor of others. We do not 
 imagine the Labor-Hating Old Fool will like his picture 
 much. But whether he does or not, here it is, and if 
 this is treason, make the most of it. 
 
 VI. 
 
 THE COMMON-SENSE OLD FOOL. 
 
 That man is an idolater by nature is evident from 
 several considerations. In the lower stages of his wor- 
 ship, the object of his adoration is just as likely to be a 
 snake or sonne other loathsome object in nature as any- 
 thing else. If he is a little higher in the scale of being, 
 bis god is an image or a stone. And then comes hero- 
 worship after death as well as before. Lastly, after hav- 
 ing been emancipated from these dumb idols and dead 
 men, we have hi our day another set of worshipers, whom 
 for want of a better word we will call Theory worship- 
 ers. And we may add, the more absurd the theory 
 the more devoted the worshiper. The patent medicine 
 man for instance, not content with saying his nostrum is 
 a specific, lays claim to a panacea for all the ills that 
 flesh is heir to. In keeping with this idea certain theo- 
 rizers claim that their ideas if carried out would revolu- 
 tionize the world. Prominent among these is the Com- 
 mon-Sense Old Fool. Although common sense never 
 invented anything, yet after something has been invented, 
 the Common-Sense Old Fool always gives it as his 
 opinion that had the man of uncommon sense listened 
 to him it would have been a great deal better. As every 
 species of Old Fool in the universe is bottomed on some- 
 thing, so that of the Common Sense order is based on 
 selfishness and conceit. An old miser, with thousands 
 
101 
 
 of dollars, hidden away, and who yet shivers in rags in 
 winter, and starves himself to death in summer, is only 
 common-sense rnn mad. Every stingy person has the 
 credit of having lots of common sense, while the gener- 
 ous one, however talented he may be, is said to lack it. 
 Who says so? Why the Common-Sense Old Fool to be 
 sure. His AmrZ-sight is remarkable. He can always tell 
 to a hair where Napoleon, Grant or Lee made a mistake 
 after they made it. Oh, yes ! Common Sense can sit be- 
 fore a comfortable fire and criticise the genius who in- 
 vented the axe that cut the wood that makes the fire. 
 If a young lady, rightly divining the true intent of mar- 
 riage and weds the man of her choice, poor though he 
 may be, instead of marrying some rich Old Fool whom 
 she cannot love, she is condemned by every Common- 
 Sense Old Fool in the neighborhood. If a young man 
 feels the kindlings of genius warming his soul for high 
 emprise, every Common-Sense Old Fool feels a special 
 call to advise that young man. He did his best to dis- 
 suade Columbus from navigation, Newton from mathe- 
 matics, Milton from poetry ond Napoleon from war- 
 fare. Genius must always crack the skull of common- 
 sense before one of its ideas can find admittance therein. 
 By the way, what is common-sense but ordinary sense ? 
 Does it possess some secret charm by which it distances 
 genius in the race of life? None, except that of mean- 
 ness: genius is unselfish, common-sense nearly always so. 
 Genius is heavenly, common-sense of the earth earthy. 
 It hardly ever looks beyond a full smokehouse and corn- 
 crib. It lives for a day, not for all time. It believes 
 more in the immortality of the body than it does in that 
 of the soul. Gentle reader, do not mistake our meaning. 
 A common-sense man and a Common-Sense Old Fool are 
 not one and the same, for the foi'mer is content with his 
 
102 
 
 endowment, but the latter imagines that common-sense 
 is a panacea for all the ills that genius is heir to, and by 
 special dispensation from on high he is the man to ad- 
 minister it. But to end the matter. If common sense 
 is a good thing is not uncommon-sense a better? Com- 
 mon-sense enjoys the good things of this life, but genius 
 creates them and has foretastes of the life to come. 
 
 CHAPTEE VII. 
 
 THE EDITOKIAL OLD FOOL. 
 
 The Gypsies have been and are now the conundrum 
 of the ages. Their first appearance upon the continent 
 of Europe dates so far back that it cannot be stated pos- 
 itively. Then, as now, they were a nomadic people, and 
 to what i:ationality they belonged was unknown. All 
 that is positively known now concerning them is they 
 are human beings, that they have laws peculiar to them- 
 selves, and that the great majority of them are thieves. 
 But that they do belong to some nationality is certain; 
 no man or woman exists upon earth who does not. 
 
 Just so in the kingdom of Fools. There are the great 
 nations of Fools, the petty republics of Fools and there 
 are Fools, and many of them too, who seem to defy 
 classification. The only thing certain about them at all 
 is that they are Fools, and beloug to the great army of 
 know-it-all. 
 
 For instance, there is the Editorial Old Fool. He does 
 not belong to the thoroughbred Literary Old Fool. He 
 is not always, though very often, an Ignorant Old Fool, 
 neither does the classification of the Learned Old Fool 
 always include him. In many respects he defies classifi- 
 cation, and about as near as one can get at the true idea 
 
103 
 
 of what he is may be compassed by saying he is an Old 
 Fool with a hobby. Now we do not mean to say that all 
 the other Old Fools are without this apparently neces- 
 sary appendage, but that the hobby of the Editorial Old 
 Fool is peculiar, and while any other one rides his hobby 
 to death, he makes you ride his to death instead, 
 and not a week passes — we say week, for none of his 
 class are allowed to edit a daily — but what he has some- 
 thing to say on this all -important subject. It does not 
 matter on which side of the controversy he may be, he 
 always goes to the extrem^e. If his brother crank favors 
 restriction and would endeavor to make man moral by 
 legislation, he advocates personal liberty so loudly that 
 one would imagine he preferred going to Hell drunk on 
 his own accord rather than be forced to go to Heaven 
 sober. In politics he is equally extreme. He cannot 
 for the life of him imagine how any man should take 
 other views than his own, and when they do it is primia 
 facia evidence that he is a dishonest man. How could it 
 be otherwise. He knows it all, and tells you all, and 
 when you will not heed what he says you are a scoun- 
 drel of course. 
 
 There is one trait, however, that he has in common 
 with every other Old Fool in the universe. Recognizing 
 that mankind, somehow or another, will not acc-pt him 
 as a general oracle, and consult him as such, he affects 
 the " trick of singularity " and endeavors to become 
 famous that way. Why we have known one of these 
 Editorial Old Fools to devote a whole column to the 
 death of an office cat, when he would only give a "stick" 
 concerning the demise of the most eminent man in the 
 State. 
 
 We have said that he did not belong to the category 
 of the Literary Old Fools, but occasionally he essays that 
 
104 
 
 difficult role also, and when he does, if you wish to make 
 him howl, you have but is criticize his production. Then 
 indeed there is a tempest in his little teapot of a brain^ 
 and one would imagine in reading his comments on your 
 honest opinion that you had committed one of the seven 
 deadly sins. 
 
 Another weakness of the Editorial Old Fool is his 
 fondness for taffy. Mischievous brother editors, cogni- 
 zant of this fact, frequently stuff the old goose so full 
 of it that he can scarcely contain himself, and while the 
 mischievous editor aforesaid is nearly dying with sup- 
 pressed laughter, the conceited victim of his blarney i& 
 ready to die with joy. 
 
 Poor Old Fool! Too often the tool of his inordinate 
 vanity, he carries his head high, values his opinion im- 
 mensely and imagines the whole town is ready to do him 
 honor, when, if the truth were known, they look upon 
 him as the most complete crank in the whole corpora- 
 tion, if not in the entire State. If he should ever read 
 these lines, which are written for his benefit, we trust he 
 will lay them to heart and profit accordingly. But this 
 is a vain hope, we fear, as he will be sure to imagine 
 we are describing an editor other than himself, and so 
 we might as well leave bim and pass on to the next. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE IMPECUNIOUS OLD FOOL. 
 
 That most people are sensitive as regards any bodily 
 defect of th^-ir own is quite evident to any observant 
 person. Indeed, it frequently happens that one will in- 
 cur the displeasure of such person by even inquiring if 
 such be not the case. The following incident will il- 
 
105 
 
 lustrate this fact: Two men, the one with defective 
 eye-sight and the other with impaired hearing, were 
 walking along the street together. "A fellow-feeling" 
 makes us congenial, if not wondrous kind, and so quite 
 naturally their ideas flowed in the same channel. At 
 last, just as they were approaching a fine city church 
 with a steeple one hundred and fifty feet high surmount- 
 ing it, the deaf man said to the other: "Don't you 
 despise for people to be always telling you that you can't 
 see good ?" "Certainly I do," replied the other. "Why, 
 I can see as good as anybody. For instance," says he, 
 casting his eye to the "^ top of the steeple, "I see a fly 
 crawling about on the top of that steeple." The other 
 old fellow clapped his hands to his ear and replied, "I 
 can't see him, but I hear him crawling about up there." 
 
 Just so with any other shortcoming whatsoever. Now, 
 poverty, nine times out of ten, is the result of one of 
 two causes: extravagance, or want of judgment; but 
 the Impecunious Old Fool cannot be convinced of this, 
 but like all the rest, he knows it all. He imagines the 
 whole world is in a conspiracy to keep him down. And 
 such is his opinion of his own powers, that he imagines 
 it takes the whole world to repress such a Titan as him- 
 self. Some even go a bow-shot beyond this, and say not 
 man but fate is against them, thereby intimating that 
 but for supernatural power they would rise anyhow. 
 
 If the Impecunious Old Fool had more sense and less 
 conceit, he would never imagine such things as these. 
 So far is the world from conspiring against him, it does 
 not even so much as think of him. Another ignis fatuis 
 which he follows is the belief that true merit will always 
 be recognized, and inasmuch as he presumes that he 
 possesses an abundance of that virtue, that he will finally 
 be patronized and become either famous or rich, or both. 
 
106 
 
 Poor Old Fool ! As if he did not know that nearly every 
 real genius who ever lived, died of a broken heart, on 
 account of the neglect and want of appreciation by a 
 sordid, gain-seeking world. For a conceited ass like 
 himself to turn cynic is ridiculous. Has he not seen the 
 maimed soldier "begging bitter bread through realms his 
 valor saved." Has he not seen the soldier's widow and 
 his children in rags, while extortioners, who grew rich 
 on army contracts, living in palaces, faring like princes, 
 and surrounded by parasites and flatterers, worshipped 
 as a demi-god in life and canonized as a saint after 
 death? Poor Old Fool! As if mankind did not prefer 
 to stake their chances of squeezing into Heaven through 
 a needle's eye, rather than to be poor and go in with am- 
 ple room. As if he did not know that two-thirds of the 
 clergy even, are never convinced they have a call to 
 another church, unless the salary is greater than the one 
 they already receive. Poor Old Fool ! He prates of 
 honorable poverty. Honorable po\erty indeed I "To 
 fivoid which mankind take any pains, leave no haven, 
 no coast, no creek in the world unsearched, although to 
 the hazard of limb and life itself. To shun it men dive 
 to the bottom of the sea, to the bowels of the earth in 
 every zone. To escape it men become parasites, women 
 prostitutes, swear, lie and damn their souls and bodies, 
 forsake God, adjure religion, steal, rob and murder, 
 rather than bear its intolerable yoke." 
 
 Poor Old Fool ! Would you be honored, get rich. 
 No matter if your brain would rattle in a mustard seed 
 shell, no matter if you are gizzard-footed, blear-eyed and 
 bandy-legged, you will be held in honor. No matter if 
 in attaining it you plucked the last rag from the back of 
 shivering infancy, or snatched the last crust from the 
 teeth of starving childhood; no matter if you be a pagan, 
 
107 
 
 a barbarian, a wretch, there will be myriads to bend the 
 pregnant hinges of the knee, that thrift may follow 
 fawning. You will be called a gracious lord, a Macaenas, 
 a benefactor, a wise man. Your voice, like that of Her- 
 od's, will be Vox Dei, non hominis — the voice of a god, 
 not of man. Honorable poverty indeed "though he be 
 honest, wise, learned, well-deserving, noble by birth, of 
 excellent parts, yet in that he is poor, unlikely to rise, 
 to come to honor or to office, he is contemned, neglected, 
 despised; if he speaks, "What babbler is this? To 
 be poor is to be a knave, a fool, a wretch, a villain. Say 
 poor and say all." But of what avail is all that has been 
 said. Impecuniosity is a disease to which no medi- 
 cine can minister, and the Impecunious Old Fool lays 
 the flattering unction to his soul, that only great men 
 are subject to it, and that he himself is one of the most 
 illustrious patients in all history. We have prescribed 
 for him, but we have no idea our medicine will do him 
 any good. His case is chronic and past all physic. The 
 only thing to be dreaded is that he will leave a lot of 
 young impecunious fools who will take up their father's 
 grievance where he left it off. 
 
 But it would be unjust to a great many good people to 
 create the idea that there is no such thing as "honest 
 poverty." But humanly speaking there is no such thing 
 as "honorable poverty." "Poor but honest," not poor 
 but honorable, may do. God's poor are few and far be- 
 tween, but I he name of the Devil's paupers is legion. 
 Poverty is generally the road to heaven. But a man suf- 
 fering the pangs of hunger and cold and nakedness is 
 more concerned about the Bitter Now than he is about 
 the Sweet Bye and Bye. As "an empty meal sack will 
 not stand upright," nothing but the grace of God can 
 keep a poverty stricken man from falling into sin. If 
 
108 
 
 he depends upon the appreciation of the world to sustain 
 him, he will have his opinion only for his pains. We 
 have no doubt there are millions of saints in Heaven, 
 who thank God they were born poor, lived poor and died 
 poor, nor that there are millions of rich men in Hell, 
 who will wail through all eternity because they were 
 born rich, lived rich and died rich. But the Impecuni- 
 ous Old Fool will neither go to Paradise on account of 
 his poverty, nor to Hell on account of his riches. He 
 did not take his poverty as a blessing in disguise, but as 
 a curse specially resting on a very great man, and which 
 filled him with bitterness. Nor on the other hand would 
 he have taken riches as the gift of God, but have at- 
 tributed their possession to his own unaided genius, as 
 many just such fools as he are doing every day, living 
 like hogs and dying as they have lived. Their torment 
 in a future state will be like that of Tantalus. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE MATERIALISTIC OLD FOOL. 
 
 When Drummond wrote his treatise entitled "Natural 
 Law in the Spiritual World," although tracing much of 
 correspondence and coincidence existing between the 
 realm of Sense and the World of Spirit, yet to our way 
 of thinking, he merely hinted at instead of discussed the 
 proposition. For instance, instead of co-incidence there 
 is co-relation. Physical objects are not the culmination 
 but the types, not the realities but merely the shadows 
 of things spiritual. '' What shadows we are and what 
 shadows we pursue," when us:ed without reference to the 
 things of time and sense can have no meaning. This is 
 the realm of shadows, the life to come the realm of real- 
 
109 
 
 ities. As as example, language is given us to express 
 our ideas. Nature is the alphabet of creation, and when 
 we become at all proficient in that, we are prepared for 
 our first lesson in reading the language of the spiritual 
 world. But we reverse the process, and instead of reason- 
 ing from the known to the unknown, we put the cart 
 before the horse and try to reason without a premise, and 
 yet expect a just conclusion. And just see how many 
 illustrious Old Fools we have from this very cause. Men 
 who pretend to know everything about the Natural 
 World, and scout the idea of the supernatural. What 
 he calls " the Supernatural is all he does know, and his 
 vaunted knowledge of the material world is a pure 
 assumption. Take for illustration the idea of number. 
 Ere a child is capable of reasoning, if you put a figure 
 upon the board and ask him what it is, he will at once 
 answer that it is the number which the figure in ques- 
 tion is supposed to represent. If you then rub it out 
 and ask him if the number has ceased to be, he will in 
 all probability answer you in the affirmative, which you 
 know is an absurdity. And yet the Materialistic Old 
 Fool is not one whit better or wiser, for he reasons pre- 
 cisely the same way in reference to any displacement in 
 Nature. Let us illustrate still further on the same line. 
 Place the letters C-A-T on the board and ask the child 
 what it is, and he will at once, if sufficiently advanced, 
 pronounce the word correctly. Eub it out as before, and 
 ask him if the cat has ceased to be, and the answer will 
 be the same as in the numerical proposition. Is the Ma- 
 terialistic Old Fool one jot wiser than the child ? God 
 has given us not only his own word as to the existence 
 of a Spiritual World, he has given us Nature — the alpha- 
 bet — the language of the spiritual world, and yet the 
 Materialist, like the child, stops at the sign instead of 
 
110 
 
 the thing signified, clings to the shadow instead of the 
 substance, and yet calls himself a philosopher. From 
 all such philosophy, Good Lord deliver us ! 
 
 '• Know thyself " is one of the injunctions of Holy 
 Writ. " Thyself " means the spirit, not thy body. If 
 this were not possible the command would never have 
 been given. If you know the nature of your own spirit, 
 you are in a fair way to know the nature of any other 
 spirit in the universe, as they are all related, and the 
 same law governs the existence of each. 
 
 But this is not the fact in nature. Knowing the 
 nature of one plant is not knowing the nature of 
 all. We often hear the expression " human nature is 
 the same." Did you ever hear one silly enough to say 
 that all natural objects are the same? It would be just 
 as relevant to say that all the letters of the alphabet, or 
 all numerical figures were the same. Everything in 
 nature is merely the manifestation of an idea, emanating 
 from Spirit, for apart from that what possible value 
 could it have ? There is nothing in the material world 
 valuable in itself. Its sole worth is the relation it bears 
 to something else. If man had no idea of number, of 
 what possible value to him were signs and symbols to 
 represent it ? If man were not spiritual, of what avail 
 to him were sun, moon and stars ? They could convey 
 no idea to him of a spiritual world. And if they be not 
 signs and symbols of a spiritual world, will the Mate- 
 rialistic Old Fool explain the reasons for and of their 
 existence ? They either stand for something or nothing. 
 If for something, what else but an evidence of creative 
 spirit ? If for nothing, what reason can be assigned for 
 their creation and existence ? To sum up the whole mat- 
 ter in a nutshell, the man who believes in spirit as apart 
 from and above matter is a reasonable being. He who 
 
Ill 
 
 does not is either in his childhood or dotage. And of 
 such is the Materialistic Old Fool. 
 
 CHAPTEE X. 
 
 THE OPPOSITE OLD FOOL. 
 
 The inventor of a new science always exercises the 
 right to his own nomenclature in defining it. Take the 
 science of botany for instance. Before the advent of 
 Linnaeus, the Avorld knew comparatively nothing of the 
 vocabulary of plants and flowers. Since his day, how- 
 ever, it is flooded with polysyllables, descriptive of the 
 simplest herb. Most of these verbal curiosities are tor- 
 tured out of the Greek and Latin languages. It is the 
 same with the science of medicine. There is a fitness, 
 however, in the medical fraternity choosing a dead lan- 
 guage, as their medium of communication, seeing the 
 numbers of people they kill every year with their death- 
 dealing compounds of Greek and Latin. 
 
 We claim for ourselves the same right, having been 
 the very first to classify, if not create the science of 
 fools, we claim the right to label our own specimens, 
 taking care, however, to make our meaning so plain 
 "that a wayfaring man, though a fool, shall not err 
 therein." 
 
 In deciding, however, to describe the Opposite Old 
 Fool, we were at a loss for some time what would be his 
 legitimate title, but finally decided on the one made use 
 of for the following reasons : The Opposite Old Fools, 
 male and female, are exceptions to every general rule. 
 They do not affect the trick of singularity for the pur- 
 pose of notoriety, but like all the rest of the Old Fools, 
 they think they know it all, and hence all they do is 
 perfectly right and proper. 
 
112 
 
 For instance, the Opposite Old Fool loves the opposite 
 better than he does his own sex. He professes to find 
 more real enjoyment in the company of un-ideaed,giggling 
 young misses than he does in that of the most sensible 
 and intelligent gentlemen. If the Old Fool would only 
 acknowledge that such fondness on his part arose from 
 his own lack of sense, nobody perhaps would blame him. 
 But when he asserts that others fail to imitate his ex- 
 ample because they cannot appreciate the fair sex, his 
 conceit becomes insufferable. As a biting frost, how- 
 ever, nips every green thing, so does a really sensible 
 woman always paralyze one of these greenhorns of the 
 masculine gender, and when he leaves her company he 
 is like the old negro's fish — so ^^stounk up" that he 
 hardly knows himself. Oh, no I These chattering idiots, 
 young and old, who love the opposite sex better than 
 they do their own, are not to be trusted. 
 
 To love one woman, who is wise and sensible and good, 
 above every one else, is noble, commendable and honor- 
 able. But to love all women better than you do any 
 man, instead of being a virtue is a vice. The world does 
 not need another Sardanapulus. One is sufficient. 
 
 On the other hand, the Opposite Old Fool of the 
 feminine gender is still worse. May the Lord help the 
 man who marries a woman who is fonder of the opposite 
 sex than she is of her own. This fondness never termi- 
 nates at matrimony, as many weak-minded, sap-headed 
 young men suppose, but grows worse, and there is gen- 
 erally the devil to pay afterwards, and people who know 
 no better wonder why Mr. A or Mr. B looks so wrinkled 
 and careworn. We never knew an instance of a man who 
 loved women better than he did men, who ever made a 
 good husband, or a woman who loved men more than 
 she did her own sex, who ever made a good wife. Such 
 
113 - 
 
 cattle' are not built that way. A true man loves a real 
 womanly woman. A true woman loves a real manly 
 man. Such fools as the Opposite Old Fool are much 
 more numerous than most people imagine, and like all 
 the balance of the tribe, they are trying to sail under 
 false colors. For instance, how often do we hear that 
 "Mr. So-and-so is a great ladies' man?" Nine times in 
 every ten when we hear it we feel sorry for the ladies, 
 for we are well aware what suffering is in store for them 
 should any one of them ever be foolish enough to marry 
 him. Such a man hardly ever has any heart, and gen- 
 erally regards his wife as the poorest selection he could 
 have made, and always looks upon her more as a captive 
 thon a conqueror. 
 
 But the dear, delightful little fools will not listen to 
 us, and will move heaven and earth to catch one of the 
 Opposite Old Fools, and when they have caught him, 
 will find that he is like the Irishman's horse, which had 
 but two faults — hard to catch and of no account when 
 caught. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THE WOMEN-HATIKG OLD FOOLS. 
 
 Strange as it may seem there is very little difference 
 in kind between love and hate : in essence they are the 
 very same. We love people without being able to assign 
 any proper reason for so doing, and we too often hate 
 them in the same indefinite way. It is a well-known 
 chemical fact, familiar to every dairy-maid in the coun- 
 try, that milk or cream which was sweet before a thun- 
 der shower, becomes sour immediately afterwards. Some 
 
114 
 
 change in the mind of man must be kindred to this, for 
 hate is only love turned sour. This explains the seem- 
 ing paradox that we so often witness, of people loving 
 each other so passionately one year and hating each 
 other so vehemently the next. For this very reason old 
 people have their misgivings concerning newly-married 
 couples who are too fond of each other at first. They 
 know what usually follows, for it is said that the man 
 who is so fond of his wife at first that he could eat her 
 up, as a usual thing wishes a few years afterwards that 
 he had done so. 
 
 Having laid these facts before the reader as a prelim- 
 inary, we as well as himself, are both better able to esti- 
 mate the subject of the chapter, The Woman-Hating 
 Old Fool, at his true value. In spite of all his sarcasm 
 and jibes concerning the " fair sex," we know the old 
 rascal at one time was her veriest slave, danced attend- 
 ance upon her and ransacked the pages of every senti- 
 mental poet to cull verses expressive of her beauty and 
 his own deathless love. Now look at the poor old goose, 
 gloating over the effusions he has committed to memory 
 from some sour old misanthrope of a writer, who has 
 had an experience similar to his own, or who, in other 
 words, like himself, has been sat down upon, and that 
 heavily. But there is no doubt that the Old Fool hates 
 them sincerely. He once loved them with all his soul. 
 That explains it. 
 
 But the most amusing part of the whole subject lies 
 in the fact that the Woman-Hating Old Fool thinks he 
 understands female human nature thoroughly, when the 
 wisest men who have ever lived have one and all given 
 it up as a conundrum past finding out. But, like the 
 balance of his brethren, he knows it all. 
 
115 
 
 Now, I would not have my readers imagine for one 
 moment that the woman-hater is always a single man. 
 In fact, the reverse is nearly always true, sad as it may 
 appear, and in nearly every case the old lascal of a ben- 
 edict was the most affectionate creature going for the 
 first few years of married life. But finding his wife has 
 a will of her own as well as he has, and as he cannot at 
 all times have his own \\ay, he finally concludes that all 
 women are fools, more or less, and that he has gotten the 
 most complete specimen in the whole lot. The old goose 
 never seems to consider the fact that when he so thinks 
 and says that it is a reflection upon himself, for if he 
 had any sense himself he certainly put it to a very poor 
 use in selecting the biggest fool in the world for a wife. 
 In the course of time he begins to let his wife know his 
 opinion of her, and from that time until he is a widower 
 he '' makes no bones '^ in including the whcle sex in the 
 same category. He will not even allow her to share in 
 any of the honors that may fall to his lot as an Ameri- 
 can citizen, as the following incident will show. 
 
 On one occasion, one of these Women-Hating Old 
 Eools went to a militia muster, where he was elected to 
 the rank of corporal. Returning home highly elated with 
 this new distinction, he found his wife and his affection- 
 ate mother-in-law with the rest of the family seated at 
 the supper table. Upon informing them of his good for- 
 tune, his poor wife timidly inquired, " Old man, ain't I 
 corporal too?" " No," said he, "you are the same blamed 
 old fool you always were." 
 
 Anybody in the world ought to be able to decide who 
 was the greater fool of the two in this case. Any man 
 who has no more sense than to call his wife a " blamed 
 old fool " in the presence of his mother-in-law should be 
 
116 
 
 sent to the Legislature, or to the lunatic asylum without 
 running the county to the expense of an election or a- 
 committee of inquirendo de lunatico. The next chapter 
 will however show that the Woman-Hating Old Fool has 
 one mitigating circumstance in his favor in the person 
 of the Man-Hating Old Fool. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE MAN-HATING OLD FOOL. 
 
 There are two ways, figuratively speaking, by which 
 men's toes may be trod upon — the one unintentional;, 
 the other premeditated and with malice aforethought. 
 It has been said of genius that it always makes a noise 
 in the world. And, it may be added that genius always^ 
 though unintentionally, treads upon some one's toes. 
 We mean by this to say that it is the office of genius to 
 create, and in creating you always run counter to some 
 one's prejudices, which is equivalent to treading upon 
 some one's toes. Life is a battle, and so long as the 
 fight continues we may expect a list of casualties greater 
 or less. Consequently, genius has a right to wage war 
 upon pre-conceived follies, and should the fools thrust 
 their pedal extremities in the way, or even not take them 
 out of the way, as for that matter, if they get them 
 mashed they have no one to blame but themselves. 
 
 But as we have already said this, on the part of 
 genius, is purely unintentional. There is a class of Old 
 Fools, however, both male and female, whose sole occu- 
 pation and seeming delight is to give others all the pain 
 and all the trouble they possibly can. They profess to- 
 be perfectly candid in all they say and do, and when in 
 the presence of such people and a witness of their petty 
 
117 
 
 spites and meanness, we can scarce refrain from exclaim- 
 ing about Candour as did Madam Roland about Liberty. 
 Oh Candour! How many crimes are committed in thy 
 name. In the august name of Candour, one of these 
 spiteful old scoundrels or jealous old hags will mar the 
 pleasure of a whole company. Let some gentleman ad- 
 vance the idea that a certain young man in the neighbor- 
 hood is a promising one, aud this base creature will at 
 once remark: "If you knew him as well as I do, you would 
 not say so." Or let a young lady speak in commenda- 
 tory terms of some friend of hers, and the female hag 
 will at once cut her short by saying loud enough to be 
 heard all over the room: "Silly Gosling! When she 
 has seen as much of the world as I have she will talk in 
 quite another key." Now it goes withv)ut saying that 
 the world has seen as much of them as they have of the 
 world, and has pretty much the same opinion of these 
 Old Fools as they have of it. "Verily, I say iinto you, 
 they have their reward," is not a threat but a fact, and 
 a most distressing one it would be and a most wholesome 
 one too, if it were possible for the Man-Hatiiig Old Fool 
 to realize it. 
 
 But no. They have a mission on earth to perform, 
 they imagine, and have long since persuaded themselves 
 as to what that mission is — to rail at mankind. Some- 
 times, however, the disease brings its own punishment 
 in this life, for they dote, if not gloat upon their scorn 
 of mankind until they withdraw from it and become 
 hermits. The chief reason for doing this is based on the 
 idea that by so doing they show their contempt for their 
 species. Now this is a game that both can play at, and 
 we have never known an instance where mankind did 
 not sooner forget them" than they did mankind. If the 
 
118 
 
 poof old fool only had sense enough to know it, the 
 world congratulates itself when he ceases altogether to 
 appear in public, in having gotten rid of a great nui- 
 sance. 
 
 As for ourselves, while there may possibly be a great 
 deal of poetry in renouncing the world after this fashion, 
 we have always inclined to the opinion that there is more 
 meanness at the bottom of it all than poetry or goodness 
 either. 
 
 Should one of these long-haired, acorn-eating old 
 scamps ever encounter in his lonely rambles that em- 
 bodiment of the most ideal happiness to be found on 
 this earth — a girl or a boy, how it delights the old fraud 
 to lure the child to rest upon his knee, and as he crushes 
 the heaven in his or her young heart by his recitals of 
 the meanness of mankind, the eye of the old wretch 
 glows with the fires of perdition itself. 
 
 Quite frequently this Man-Hating Old Fool calls him- 
 self or herself a Christian. How any man or woman 
 who ever saw a real Christian, read a line in the Word 
 of God, or ever felt the love of God shed abroad in his 
 heart, and yet substitutes hate for love in his creed 
 could imagine they were Christlttns is past comprehen- 
 sion, except upon our theory, that they are the Same Old 
 Fools along with the rest, knowing it all and hence 
 listening to nobody. 
 
 We did intend speaking of the Man-Hating Old Fool 
 of a woman, but when we came to that branch of the 
 subject we could not find a solitary one of the fair sex 
 who did not like some man better than she did the rest. 
 Hence her omission from the category of Man-Hating 
 Old Fools. 
 
119 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THE MATHEMATICAL OLD FOOL. 
 
 The Mathematical Old Fool is of a piece with the 
 rest. Like all the balance in his particular field, he 
 knows it all. AVhile not quite so numerous as the rest, 
 yet every neighborhood, we dare say, in the whole world 
 contains one or two fully developed specimens. He 
 always contrives in every company in which he may 
 chance to be to make the mathematics of his presence 
 felt. As a general rule he knows about as much about 
 the noble science of mathematics as an average politician 
 about statesmanship. H« is nearly always deficient even 
 in common sense, but has a wonderful knack for conun- 
 drums and usually carries a greasy wallet chock full of 
 problems, (" sums " he calls them) concerning the meas- 
 urement of lumber, the height of church steeples and 
 that old worm eaten "chestnut" of a hound in pursuit 
 of a hare, and the time required to catch it. 
 
 We have already said he hardly has enough common 
 sense to go into the house when it rains. And yet he 
 contrives to impress other fools with the idea that New- 
 ton was not a "patching "to him. The greatest Old 
 Mathematical Fool we ever knew lived in Virginia. 
 Without putting pencil to paper, he could solve in his 
 head the most difficult problems. And yet he not only 
 knew nothing of the science of numbers, but did not 
 even have sense enough to charge anything for labor- 
 ing in the fields along with a gang of well-paid 
 negroes. Something to eat and an old hat or coat would 
 fully satisfy him. But he bordered so near to the natu- 
 
120 
 
 ral-born fool that he is hardly in the line of illustrating 
 the genuine Mathematical Old Fool. This specimen is 
 usually the product of circumstances, and overweening 
 self-conceit, which his foolish parents mistook for ambi- 
 tion in his youth, and ruined him in the start. 
 
 Some years ago the writer of these sketches was en- 
 gaged in school teaching. One fine morning there rode 
 up to the school house door a gentleman about forty 
 five years of age, bringing his son about ten years old to 
 have him "entered" at school. Dismounting, he signi- 
 fied to the teacher that he wished to see liim privately 
 for a few moments. Here he confided to him the infor- 
 mation that his son was a great mathematical genius, 
 and that he wished us, as far as lay in our power, to 
 curb him in that direction and push him in Latin as 
 much as possible. We agreed to do so. When his father 
 had departed we called him up. A sensation of having 
 before us an embryonic Xewton, Kepler or Laplace stole 
 over us. We felt all the responsibilities of directing a 
 genius. We took up his books, among the rest Davies' 
 Common School Arithmetic. We asked him how far he 
 had progressed in it. He said, " a long ways." We 
 asked him had he gotten to the Eule of Three. " I've 
 gone further than that sir," he replied, " I've ciphered 
 to the Rule of Eight." We informed him he was ahead 
 of his teacher, but would he be so kind as to show us 
 the Rule of Eight? The little genius took his arithme- 
 tic, and turning backward until he struck long division, 
 and pointing to eight special rules as a complement to 
 the general one, exclaimed triumphantly, " There it is 
 sir !" We were floored. Explanation was a mere waste 
 of words. 
 
 But oh, the trouble that little mathematical genius 
 
121 
 
 gave lis. He was the dullest boy in figures in the whole 
 school. There was no need of "reining him in." Oh, 
 no. We did our best to "rein him out" and failed. 
 
 From just such material as this boy comes most of 
 our Mathematical Old Fools. Ten to one he is poking 
 around now with his pocket-book full of conundrums, 
 astonishing the natives of his native heath by his solu- 
 tions. The Mathematical Old Fool has one trick how- 
 ever, which is his " winning card." He always gets the 
 drop on you by proposing his conundrums first. What 
 an insufferable old bore, and what a parody on a noble 
 science he is to be sure. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE FINANCIAL OLD FOOL. 
 
 Some men are born fools, some achieve foolishness 
 and some have foolishness thrust upon them. To one 
 or the other of these classes the Financial Old Fools, 
 both great and small, all belong. Notwithstanding that 
 in all the world's history you may count the number of 
 born financiers on the fingers of your right hand, still 
 every neighborhood and hamlet in these United States 
 has its financial "genuses," each with a system of his 
 own to restore the public credit, and calculated to bring 
 untold prosperity to the American people. Although 
 they have no credit of their own, not enough even to 
 get a bushel of meal or a pint of pine top on "tick" at 
 the home grocery, they all know how to deal with the 
 disordered finances of a great nation. Singular isn't it? 
 But we said above that some achieve foolishness and 
 some have foolishness thrust upon them. 
 
 To this class belong the banking fraternity. And yet 
 
122 
 
 truth to say no one is so ignorant of finance as a banker. 
 Accustomed all his life to taking a microscopic view of 
 money, calculating to a hair the petty amounts of inter- 
 est and discount, he becomes a mere financial automaton, 
 incapable of generalization. Any fool can dig a ditch, 
 but it requires an engineering genius to fertilize a coun- 
 try by irrigation. Taught suspicion from the time he 
 was a bank runner, he becomes so narrowed by the time 
 he is forty years old that a broad idea would split his 
 head open. And yet this is the Old Fool who is sup- 
 posed to know everything of finance. 
 
 A hen probably knows how many chickens she hatches 
 out, but has no idea whatever how many it will take to 
 supply the market, and so Financial Old Fool Number 
 One knows how great a dividend he will be able to de- 
 clare at the specified time. And to make the dividend 
 as large as possible is the summit of his ambition. Be- 
 cause he does this by a skillful use of other people's 
 money, furnished him almost free of charge, he gets the 
 "big head," financially, and allows his favorites at the 
 bank who are bought up with "renewed notes" to call 
 him the Napoleon of Finance. Shades of Bonaparte I 
 Is it not a fact that of Americans three greatest finan- 
 financiers, we might say, three only financiers, only one 
 was a banker — Kobert Morris, while the other two, Ham- 
 ilton and Sherman, were never behind a bank counter 
 in their lives. And Tet in the face of all history bank- 
 ers now-a days are Avorshiped as masters of finance. 
 Every railway engineer knows how to operate an engine, 
 whether it is a good one or a bad one, knows what parts 
 are to be oiled, how to start it as well as stop it, and yet 
 not one in ten thousand could invent one. Any numb- 
 scull can use money, invest it and reap returns, but only 
 
123 
 
 a financial genius can regulate the currency of a whole 
 country. 
 
 The next consideration is the Financial Old Fool tvho 
 knows better, but has his foolishness thrust upon upon 
 him. He is generally a politician, and while believing 
 in his inmost soul that the people are wrong on the fi- 
 nancial question, yet as that which he disbelieves in is 
 so popular, he swallows his convictions and essays the 
 role of leader among financial fools. Sometimes, how- 
 ever, he inherits the dollars of his "daddy," who had 
 real financial ability, and the young Financial Fool steps 
 into the old man's shoes, and comes full-fledged like 
 Minerva. His foolishness is thrust upon him like the 
 logic of a situation. 
 
 The last Financial Old Fool is the one born so. Hav- 
 ing, however, purposely refrained in this veracious his- 
 tory from dealing with natural born fools, we will only 
 say of the born Financial Old Fool that he always de- 
 velops into a complete miser in after life, whose only re- 
 gret was the time lost from making money while he was 
 at his mother's breast and in trying to learn how to walk. 
 And yet there are other fools who think he is a great 
 financial genius, and all because lie has cheated his back 
 out of decent clothing and his belly out of civilized food 
 to make a little money. Poor Humanity I 
 
PART FIFTH 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE POLITICAL OLD FOOLS. 
 
 In keeping with the plan of this book, which Avas to 
 classify each Old Fool with the department to which he 
 naturally belonged, we now enter another and wider field 
 than any perhaps we have hitherto done. The reasons 
 for its being the most extensive is quite obvious, for 
 there is no subject which hag engaged and still engages 
 more men than politics. It has been a perplexing prob- 
 lem in all ages, and will still continue to be so in the 
 ages to come. And the reasons for this are quite obvious 
 also, for the same Old Fool has been and ever Avill be 
 one of its concomitants, and his malign influence has 
 ever been at work Especially is he powerful in a repub- 
 lic like ours, whose theory, "the majority must rule," 
 gives him unlimited, if not undisputed leadership, as it 
 is well known the fools are always in the majority, 
 and they generally select as their leader the greatest one 
 in the whole lot, which is perfectly natural as well as 
 constitutional. 
 
 This being the true state of the case, as might have 
 been expected, the Same Old Fool would appear here in 
 all his glory. And so he does. He has assumed so many 
 aliases that it is often difficult to recosfnize him. But 
 
125 
 
 as has been said, that when you scratch a Russian you 
 will find a Tartar, so it may be said that under whatever 
 guise the Political Old Fool may appear, when you come 
 to analyze him you will find him the Same Old Fool 
 after all, and differing in no essential particulars from 
 the universal tribe. This then is the duty before us, 
 and we will nOw call your attention to him. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE INDEPE:N^DEi;rT OLD FOOL. 
 
 This specimen of the universal tribe, like all the rest 
 of his brethren, not only knows it all, but even* ventures 
 a bowshot beyond that amazing limit of human great- 
 ness and assumes that he is the best of all. He professes 
 to believe that all the old parties are in error and their 
 methods so corrupt that such a wise and self-respecting 
 citizen as himself can neither get the consent of his 
 mind nor the sacrifice of his personal self-respect to 
 affiliate with them He has no desire for office (oh, no) 
 but is entirely moved by patriotic considerations to im- 
 molate such a spotless victim as himself upon the politi- 
 cal altar. He has a perfect horror of political conven- 
 tions, especially when he is in a minority, and hates a 
 duly nominated candidate worse than the Devil does 
 holy water. He will stand on no platform except his 
 own, which is generally no broader than a fence-rail at 
 first, but which he usually forsakes when he ascertains 
 which is the winning side. Of the birds of the forest 
 he much resembles the owl in his assumption of pro- 
 found wisdom, and like him does his most effective 
 work in the dark, after having hooted loudly at the 
 political henroost which he designs to rob. 
 
126 
 
 He sometimes succeed in his deceptions and is elected. 
 But he has hardly gotten warm in his seat before he sells 
 out to the higest bidder, in order to obtain the empty 
 honor of a chairmanship in some committee or else the 
 control of the patronage of his district. Claiming to 
 represent the people, and not a party, as soon as he 
 betrays his constituents by throwing off the mask, like 
 all true renegades, he becomes a bitterer enemy than a 
 professed partisan. 
 
 When he is too honest to do this, he is compelled to 
 flock to himself in either Legislative or Congressional 
 halls and has, in consequence, about as much influence 
 in shaping legislation as a Hottentot would in the Brit- 
 ish parliament. Whatever weight he has is entirely cor- 
 poreal, and the same number of pounds of beef or pork 
 contributed by his district to the support of Congress or 
 the Legislature would do more good, as a legislator 
 could eat that, while he, even were he eatable, is gener- 
 ally so tough that it would require a whole season to 
 make him tender enough to be devoured. In order to 
 succeed he frequently subsidizes some newspaper already 
 on its last legs, pays the poor devil of a scribe, who 
 descants upon the beauties of non-partisan politics, just 
 money enough to keep his concern from going to pieces 
 until after the election. Should he succeed, the shaky 
 concern aforesaid becomes his organ and loads its 
 columns down with wooden speeches, that never had a 
 listener in Congress, and which are destined to have no 
 readers at home. 
 
 Such is the Lidependent Old Fool at home and abroad, 
 a misnomer and a nuisance, and only to be compared in 
 influence and characteristics to the Partisan Old Fool, 
 who comes next. 
 
127 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE STEICTLY PARTISAN^ OLD FOOL. 
 
 Rightly applied there is no word in the English lan- 
 guage which conveys a more noble idea than the^word 
 Fealty. Taken in connection with its synonym Loyalty, 
 they constitute the main pillars on which the temples of 
 Honor, Love and Friendship stand. 
 
 Apart from this honorable connection, however, no 
 other two words imply gi eater debasement of thought 
 and association. Yet, even in their perversion, by asso- 
 ciation with evil company they still retain, like Satan in 
 Paradise Lost, sad evidences of former greatness and 
 glory. For instance, there is said to be honor among 
 thieves, honor here being synonymous with Loyalty and 
 Fealty, and the word Honor in this connection is recog- 
 nized at once as being in the worst company imagin- 
 able. 
 
 All evil, as we take it, is only the perversion of some 
 good, and so when theologasters speak of the origin of 
 evil, they are out of their reckoning, unless the correlated 
 idea of the creation of good is implied. There is then 
 no such thing as the creation of evil, unless the Persian 
 theory of devil creators is admitted. For to say that 
 God created all things and to say that he is infinitely 
 good and yet to say he is the author of something not 
 good is a flat contradiction, in short, an utter absurdity. 
 But this by the way. We are not engaged in writing a 
 theological or metaphysical treatise. Do not be alarmed. 
 We do not intend to poach upon another man's preserves 
 nor to handle straw from which the wheat has been 
 threshed for a thousand years. We have been led into 
 
128 
 
 this train of thought in order to give you a proper defi- 
 nition of a very common and yet very peculiar kind of 
 an Old Fool, to-wit, the Strictly Partisan Old Fool. 
 
 Correctly speaking, the Strictly Partisan Old Fool 
 occupies the same position in politics as the Bigoted Old 
 Fool does in the church. As the latter not only knows 
 his particular sect is right but also that yours is wrong, 
 so the Strictly Partisan Old Fool is so fully persuaded 
 that his own political party is right that he cannot con- 
 ceive that yours has a right to exist, much less to pre- 
 vail. In consequence of this feeling on his part, he 
 has become a political Jesuit, being fully convinced 
 that the ends justify the means in all cases. He has no 
 sciuples against creating a political inquisition within 
 the ranks of his own party, where men, whose convictions 
 coincide with his in the main, and yet deny or oppose 
 resolutions which they deem hurtful to the party, shall 
 be put upon the rack and tortured out of their heresies. 
 But some of his apologists will say, " The Old Fool 
 means well." The deuce he does. So, no doubt, did the 
 Duke of Alva, so no doubt did Catherina de Medicis. 
 Bosh ! The idea of one's meaning well while doing the 
 devil's work ! 
 
 Sometimes the Strictly Partisan Old Fool edits the 
 organ of his party, and when he does, woe to the luckless 
 knight of the inkhorn who takes a milder view or to the 
 rash man who protests against his course. If they are 
 not whipped in or kicked out they are made of sterner 
 stuff than men usually are. Sometimes a non-partisan 
 organization exists in his district, and when such is the 
 case the amount of friendly advice given him by the 
 Strictly Partisan Old Fool not to sacrifice their great 
 organization by meddling with politics is phenomenal. 
 
129 
 
 He means of course, not to meddle with his politics, for 
 just as soon as he sees it disposed to oppose the politics 
 of the other party he changes his tune, and grows very- 
 complimentary indeed touching the organization in ques- 
 tion. 
 
 This is a great world we live in aud no doubt the 
 Strictly Partisan Old Fool has his uses, one of which is 
 to point a moral and adorn a tale. For instance, it has 
 been truly said that prosperity makes friends but adver- 
 sity tries them. Then it is that when the political 
 party to which the Strictly Partisan Old Fool be- 
 longs is in the ascendancy he is the " boss, " but 
 when adversity comes there are none so poor as to 
 do him reverence. This course also is an illustration of 
 the truth of Scripture, which says, that what a man sow- 
 eth that shall he also reap, and inasmuch as he sows 
 proscription he always reaps it sooner or later. 
 
 To analyze the constituent elements of a Strictly Par- 
 tisan Old Fool is to discover an amount of conceit and 
 meanness that is simply colossal. To think that in a 
 supposedly free country, where every man has an inalien- 
 able right to his own opinion, there could exist one 
 man or set of men, who shall dictate what another man 
 or set of men shall choose to entertain in regard to the 
 best course to be pursued for the public welfare, is one 
 of the most amazing propositions of the age. When we 
 further consider that this man or set of men who thus 
 dictate are very frequen.ly a set of political as well as 
 business blockheads, it is enough to make one lose his 
 breath with sheer astonishment, to say nothing of indig- 
 nation. But the idea is to excruciating to pursue it fur- 
 ther, and we drop it as well as the subject that called it 
 forth. 
 
PART SIXTH. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE SECTIONAL OLD FOOLS. 
 
 Geographically the United States is divided into five 
 great sections : The Eastern, Central, Southern and 
 Pacific. Each of these subdivisions has products pecu- 
 liar to itself. The Eastern, one class of Old Fools, the 
 Central, another and so on with all the rest. As we 
 are impartial on nothing we shall deal with them in the 
 order in which they occur. The first Sectional Old 
 Fool then to which we invite your attention is the New 
 England Old Fool. 
 
 The first significant appearance of this Old Fool oc- 
 curs in Jewish history about 1900 hundred years ago. 
 At that time he was called a Pharisee. He was then as 
 now, a very great stickler for the observance to the letter 
 of the moral law, although he "made no bones whatever 
 of violating its spirit. The best read man of his time, 
 he was the most narrow. His favorite text was, "The 
 earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof," to which 
 he added the following post-script: We are the "Lord's, 
 therefore the earth and its fullness are ours." Traces 
 of this remarkable disposition are still extant in the 
 modern edition for they still want "the earth." 
 
 Having been overwhelmed for the time being he dis- 
 appeared as a ruling force in society for over sixteen 
 
131 
 
 hundred years. But in 1640 he again came to the sur- 
 face, this time in England. The same traits which 
 characterized his ajicestors in the remote past again 
 manifested themselves in pristine vigor. As before, they 
 insisted on the observance of the moral law to the letter, 
 however much they may have violated its spirit. They 
 prescribed certain rules for the happiness of mankind, 
 and if one refused to enjoy himself that way he was 
 made to do so or suffer the penalty. Like their ancestors 
 they claimed "the earth," and for a season took posses- 
 sion of it. But at last having been dislodged in Eng- 
 England, they sought refuge in the wilds of North 
 America. Tbey came hither in the dead of winter, and 
 their posterity seem never to have rt covered from the 
 coldness of their ancestors. They alleged as the reason 
 of their coming hither that they desired to worship God 
 according to the dictates of their own consciences. This 
 was doubtless correct, and as no one except themselves 
 was supposed to possess such a luxury, they proposed to 
 furnish mankind with one and then of course dictate as 
 to the manner of its use. As a result of this we see one 
 of their number, Roger Williams, who happened to have 
 brought his over the ocean, leaving them in the dead of 
 winter to make his abode with the Indians. The Red 
 man, although a savage, was maguaminus enough to 
 allow him religious liberty. As the country became 
 more settled, the New England Old Fool became more 
 potential in its affairs. He knew it all, and hence ac- 
 cording to his idea, the poor Indian who would not em- 
 brace Christianity and give up his lands for a string of 
 beads or a tin whistle was exterminated. 
 
 In fact, the most horrible idea the New England Old 
 Fool ever had of Hell was that it was a place where 
 every one was compelh d to attend to his own business. 
 
132 
 
 The subsequent career of the New England Old Fool 
 is best told in a poem written in Hudibrastic style which 
 we read several years ago, and as it is germane to the 
 subject now under consideration, we give it in full: 
 
 "THE ELEPHANT.' 
 
 AN HISTORICAL SKETCH. 
 
 li^ TWO PARTS. 
 
 Part First. 
 
 About two hundred years ago, 
 
 As old colonial records show, 
 
 There sprung in these remoter ages. 
 
 One of the wisest of the sages. 
 
 Who ever at a venture drew 
 
 A plan of State or kingdom new. 
 
 Yet ere his story must be told, 
 
 Some patent truths shoCild be unroll'd. 
 
 Which greatly will elucidate 
 
 His policy as to the State. 
 
 This first, then, must be borne in mind, 
 
 By those, who wish to serve mankind. 
 
 That no invention can compete 
 
 With those producing bread aud meat. 
 
 In ev'ry age, as well as this. 
 
 One's rations never came amiss ; 
 
 E'en mighty Jupiter, is said 
 
 On Hybla's honey to have fed. 
 
 Each heathen god, all readers know, 
 
 Were famous all for " eating crow," 
 
133 
 
 'Nov should one for a moment think 
 
 Oreat Csesar did not eat and drink, 
 
 And be assur'd he did not slight 
 
 His own imperial appetite; 
 
 And hist'ry tells us Cicero, 
 
 Soon after Pompey's overthrow. 
 
 Ate greedily " Csesarian crow." 
 
 In short, we've not a grain of doubt. 
 
 Could all the facts be written out. 
 
 That empires rise or " go to rot " 
 
 According as they are fed or not. 
 
 ^N'or science, letters, skill or learning 
 
 One's stomach ever kept from yearning, 
 
 Unless, embracing in their plan, 
 
 A way to soothe the inner man. 
 
 This organ empty will excite 
 
 The poet to his highest flight. 
 
 Lend eloquence to lips all mute 
 
 Before, of either man or brute, 
 
 Whilst wit and wi.ne, all mortals know. 
 
 Invariably together flow. 
 
 But to return : our hero knew, 
 
 In street parlance, a thing or two ; 
 
 That fame was only a gewgaw 
 
 To one who has an empty maw, 
 
 Tho' it should bear one to the skies," 
 
 Yet none so bent to win the prize 
 
 As set out with an empty belly 
 
 To run the risk of cake and jelly. 
 
 And so a sudden change was wrought 
 
 In all our statesman's train of thought; 
 
 No more to be a doctrinaire 
 
 To point a moral, split a hair ; 
 
 Another thought supplied him food 
 
134 
 
 Than hero of his neighborhood. 
 
 By some contrivance he had found 
 
 The earth, not square, but nearly round. 
 
 Was never known to try to prove 
 
 By Scripture that " The Sun Do Move." 
 
 He talked about antipodes 
 
 Because he thought, no doubt, that these 
 
 High-sounding words would make belief 
 
 Of all wise men he w^as the chief. 
 
 From one extreme into another 
 
 He ran, since he could run no further. 
 
 Political economy 
 
 His next employment, but he 
 
 No treatise ever read or saw. 
 
 But intuition gave him law. 
 
 Instead of books he bore instead 
 
 " The Wealth of Nations" in his head. 
 
 This lead him into speculation 
 
 Both for himself and for the nation, 
 
 And sooth to suy, this latter^spirit 
 
 His pushing offspring all inherit; 
 
 Prefer to manage all affairs 
 
 Except their own, aye run on shares 
 
 The world itself, provided they, 
 
 In their own parlance, " make it pay !" 
 
 A Problem. 
 
 Our Solon saw, with much distress. 
 The land a howling wilderness. 
 Not even mighty Hercules, 
 Could clear the land of monster trees, 
 And drag them off and make it fit 
 For cultivation ; so his wit 
 
135 
 
 Was set to work to hatch a way 
 To have it done, and make it pay. 
 Erelong he hit upon a plan, 
 (In keeping with the very man). 
 To solve a problem which just now 
 Had wrinkles wrought upon his brow. 
 This was the plan he'd recommend 
 In working the desired end: 
 By putting powder 'neath their trunks, 
 And blowing them at once to chunks. 
 So like all other innovators. 
 He tried the first his apparatus. 
 A white oak large before his door. 
 Whose height was sixty feet or more. 
 Whose girth when measured at its base 
 Some twenty feet or more of space 
 Oontriv'd to hide; we are minute 
 On points admitting of dispute. 
 Beneath this tree he dug a hole, 
 And therein did a barrel roll, 
 With powder full, enough to blow 
 The forest king to Jericho. 
 Then pours his fuse along the ground, 
 Applies a match and makes a bound 
 Within his hut and shuts the door, 
 Stops up his ears and waits the roar. 
 
 As if two worlds had knocked together. 
 With fell design to crush each other. 
 Was that report, which seemed to shake 
 The pillars of this globe opaque. 
 One limb was blown against the door. 
 And knocked him sprawling on the floor; 
 Another on his roof was thrown 
 
136 
 
 And madly kick'd his chimney down. 
 
 The statesman scrambled out, — he saw 
 
 A scene of ruin and of awe, 
 
 For all the trees, for yards around. 
 
 Were pil'd, or scattered on the ground. 
 
 A week it took him, labor hard. 
 
 To get the rubbish from the yard ; 
 
 And then, it took a month or more 
 
 To get his '^hicm" as 'twas before. 
 
 As to the plan of felling trees. 
 
 One would have thought he'd stop with these; 
 
 Yet ere he had the trial made, 
 
 A mightier one posses'd his head. 
 
 Thus, genius never can be spent. 
 
 Save thro' its own, its native bent, 
 
 Tho' wa<-er never runs up hill, 
 
 Yet genius does, and ever will ; 
 
 One yields to force of nature blind, 
 
 The other to the laws of mind, 
 
 For genius craves and must inherit 
 
 The higher altitudes of spirit. 
 
 The New Idea. 
 
 On Afric's coast he had been told. 
 
 That "elephants" were bought with gold. 
 
 Whose trunks alone contain'd the key 
 
 To all of labor's mystery : 
 
 Yet as his wealth would not suffice 
 
 To purchase one, an old device 
 
 He hit upon, co-operation, 
 
 The beau-ideal of his nation. 
 
 And truth to say, they all agreed 
 
 That elephants would serve their need. 
 
137 
 
 So he was authorized to buy 
 Enough for all the colony. 
 At once he hasten'd to the coast, 
 Where Dutchmen traders frequent most, 
 And made at once a stipulation 
 For elephants for all the nation. 
 Now, whilst the trader seeks the coast 
 Of Africa, at home they boast, 
 "How soon the trees will disappear 
 When we receive the cargo here ;" 
 They dreamed the elephantine snout 
 Could pull up trees and drag them out. 
 
 At length the mighty cargo came 
 
 Of elephants, the wild and tame. 
 
 It seem'd at first the scheme would pay, 
 
 Experience drove such hopes away; 
 
 The climate was too cold and bleak, 
 
 The elephants grew lean and weak. 
 
 What should they do? not send them back 
 
 To roam again their native track. 
 
 On, no, that scheme would never pay, 
 
 Appear however good it may. 
 
 Besides, it would not suit a school 
 
 Where ev'ry good man's thought a fool. 
 
 Necessity. 
 
 "Necessity can have no law," 
 Was uttered by some luckless "saw," 
 Who found himself within a place 
 Which had no outlet but disgrace. 
 And us'd it as a valid plea. 
 To get out of his villainy. 
 
138 
 
 If right and wrong can have a meaning, 
 
 If they are but the idle gleaning 
 
 Of men whose smooth and easy fate 
 
 Was never put to such a strait, 
 
 Then may we use it in the day — 
 
 When honesty has ceas'd to pay. 
 
 Some witty fellow tells ns, too, 
 
 (We only wonder how he knew,) 
 
 She is the mother of invention. 
 
 And other things we may not mention. 
 
 Well, if a time had ever been, 
 
 That called for all the wit of men. 
 
 That time was this, to free the nation 
 
 From this animal creation. 
 
 The good philosopher was dead 
 
 Who put this notion in their head, 
 
 And if he now had been about. 
 
 Would found that time had pnt it out. 
 
 But his descendants did inherit 
 
 The whole of his inventive spirit. 
 
 And quickly did they turn about 
 
 And find a way to get them out. 
 
 They shipped them southward "in a trice,' 
 
 And sold them off at a good price. 
 
 AVhat next? for verily it seems 
 
 Their meat and drink consist in schemes 
 
 Of self-advancement, while pretending 
 
 Another's rights to be defending. 
 
 Turn God, if possible to pelf. 
 
 And traffic make of Hell itself. 
 
 All this, and many other things 
 
 To notice, the next chapter brings. 
 
139 
 Chapter Seco:n^d. 
 
 It happeD'd in the course of time — 
 (Not Pollok's, that is too sublime), 
 That all the facts I herein pen 
 Were seen and known of living men ; 
 For 'tis our purpose in this place 
 To deal in facts, nor s ek to trace 
 Man's future misery or grace, — 
 How he is sav'd or how he's lost. 
 But chief concerns that mighty host 
 Of elephants, the wild and tame, 
 Whicli Ave have said from Afric came. 
 But in so doing we must trace 
 The darker outlines that deface 
 A lineage sprung alone in schism. 
 And muddled now with ev'ry "ism" 
 That men or devils could invent 
 To keep from telling what they meant. 
 And so we will reiterate. 
 That prior chapter did relate 
 To an unique and novel trade 
 That Modern Saints and Sinners made. 
 In chapter number two we tell 
 What to these "elephants" befell 
 Within a more congenial place — 
 The home of all the dusky race. 
 So, therefore, without more ado, 
 His hist'ry there is brought to view. 
 Know, then, the animal creation. 
 Like man, has power of propagation, 
 Like him in many other senses. 
 Without regard to consequences. 
 They, therefore, like the human species, 
 
140 
 
 In consequence the owners grew 
 Immenseley rich, as would ensue 
 To all who mind their own affairs, 
 Nor say all things, except their prayers. 
 
 Saintly Jealousy. 
 
 Became as numerous as the fishes. 
 
 But still their owners found a way 
 
 To make the dusky creatures "pay;" 
 
 Found him, beside, to be withal. 
 
 Well treated — a good animal. 
 
 The Devil's workshop, it is said, 
 
 Is found in ev'ry idler's head; 
 
 No doubt Old Nick there often dwells. 
 
 And makes a thousand little hells 
 
 Of petty spites and jealousies. 
 
 Of envy at another's ease. 
 
 Indeed, no sore was ever found 
 
 Like that immedicable wound, 
 
 Inflicted when a hated rival 
 
 Contrives to rise by no contrival 
 
 Or help of ours, overleaping 
 
 The bounds we set for his safe-keeping. 
 
 Thus was it, as the sequel shows, 
 
 With those who bought and traded those 
 
 Gigantic animals, which found 
 
 No sustenance on saintly ground. 
 
 An animal, forsooth, till sold 
 
 His value down in dollars told. 
 
 Now found, when others made them pay. 
 
 Their equals almost ev'ry way 
 
 Except in goodness, for the earth 
 
 Trac'd backward to its very birth, 
 
141 
 
 Thro' countless ages, never knew 
 A race so spotless and so true. 
 
 The Philai^thropic Tribe. 
 
 Next came a philanthropic tribe, 
 Which beggars language to describe, 
 Long, lank and lean, and hollow-eyed, 
 Tho' indigestion long had vied 
 With death itself, and left within 
 An aching void, where bile and sin 
 In equal parts contrived to stay 
 And keep grim death alone at bay. 
 Dyspepsia, too, their minds had seiz'd, 
 And both were equally diseas'd. 
 Their mental eyelids hung within. 
 And not without, and hid the sin 
 That others saw, yet they could see 
 The mote, the smallest that could be, 
 That swam within a brother's eye. 
 And rais'd at once a hue and cry. 
 As if "the devil were to pay," 
 Unless said mote were moved away. 
 The beam that ever blurr'd their own 
 They ne'er so much as thought upon; 
 So great a blindness doth possess 
 Believers in self- righteousness, 
 That microscopes cannot detect 
 A single flaw in God's elect. 
 Altho' the Devil in his sleeves, 
 While looking thro' the web he weaves, 
 Is laughing at them, yet they go 
 As if old Mother Earth below 
 would not exist another day 
 Should Providence take them away. 
 
142 
 
 They soon began to agitate 
 On what they termed "the social state" 
 Of those, which on a former day, 
 They bargain'd for and sold away. 
 They fiU'd the land with wind and rant, 
 With stuff and sanctimonious cant, 
 About this self-same elephant. 
 Meanwhile, the elephant, content, 
 Perform'd the task that he was sent. 
 And never dream'd the world without 
 Was getting into grief about 
 Himself; 'twas pity thrown away; 
 Oh, no, have they not made it pay ? 
 
 The Elephant Aforetime. 
 
 Oft where the Nile, or Niger flows 
 Thro' sunny wastes, and brii^htly throws 
 The gleaming sunlight from its Ijreast, 
 His memoy, at times, in quest 
 Of some near object, deign'd to go. 
 But where it was he did not know. 
 He saw the dark and dismal day 
 When he was seized and brought away 
 Across the deep and rolling sea, 
 Ne'er seen before by such as he. 
 Next of the cold and sterile soil, 
 Where first he was inui'd to toil. 
 The stinging and relentless snow. 
 The bitter, biting winds that blow 
 Remorselessly through winters long, 
 When even birds refuse to song. 
 Now, in a hospitable clime, 
 Where all the -^ear was summer-time, 
 
us 
 
 Where lark and linnet sweetly sung, 
 Where field and farm with music rung ; 
 Where, when the sun its course had run. 
 And all their daily work was done, 
 Beneath some tall and stately tree. 
 Their keepers sharing in the glee. 
 Unto the music of banjo 
 They "tripp'd the light fantastic toe." 
 
 The Si:n'ners. 
 
 But best of all, their owners were 
 
 Their keepers, they could love and fear; 
 
 No prating fools who went around 
 
 To fill the earth with empty sound ; 
 
 No vowing that their souls would melt 
 
 With pity they had never felt; 
 
 No turning systems inside out. 
 
 No social surgeon 's mad to flout 
 
 Their placards in the face af men. 
 
 No more commandments than "The Ten ;" 
 
 No civilization that eschews 
 
 All that is good for the refuse 
 
 And dregs of plutocratic snobs, 
 
 Of one who daily wrings and robs 
 
 Ill-got' en gains from sadder slaves 
 
 Than those the nation pets and saves. 
 
 A daring and inpulsUe race. 
 
 Which dreaded but one thing— disgrace. 
 
 By nature prone to ridicule 
 
 The cant of puritanic school. 
 
 Or trash of transcendental fool; 
 
 No cold and philosophic breed. 
 
 Dispensing virtues that they need ; 
 
144 
 
 No straight-laced ministers, whose shelves 
 Preach hell to all except themselves. 
 
 The Saints. 
 
 But volumes it would take to trace 
 
 The humors of the saintly race, 
 
 For since Pere Adam first began 
 
 To people this wide world with man, 
 
 There never has before existed 
 
 A people so perverse and twisted 
 
 With vices, virtues, both so blended, 
 
 Where one began, the other ended. 
 
 No one could tell, and we despair 
 
 Of telling mankind what they are. 
 
 Eed, brown and black, (in chief the latter). 
 
 Seemed mingled in social platter. 
 
 All things in Heaven, earth or hell, 
 
 (If they but serve their purpose well). 
 
 They use without the least dismay. 
 
 Provided, always, that it pay. 
 
 We have been told their first appearance 
 
 Upon this earth was interference 
 
 With things established long ago. 
 
 And which they tried to overthrow. 
 
 But in their turn were driv'n out 
 
 For being rather too devout. 
 
 Their deep abhorrence, too, of witches, 
 
 Of luxury and handsome breeches ; 
 
 Their gloomy love and sour looks, 
 
 Their deep antiphanies to books. 
 
 Save of the heavy solemn kind. 
 
 Which treat of all to hell consign'd, 
 
 Except themselves; their moral law. 
 
145 
 
 Worse than Egyptian " bricks and straw ; " 
 
 Their solemn, sanctimonious airs, 
 
 Their fondness for the longest prayers ; 
 
 The rueful cant and nasal twang, 
 
 With which they either spoke or sang ; 
 
 Their loud piofession in all places 
 
 To sanctity, the very traces. 
 
 The Devil wrote upon their faces, 
 
 To mark them always as his own, 
 
 No matter where they might have gone. 
 
 Yet all their cunning and conceit 
 
 Can never cover up the cheat. 
 
 For "wooden nutmegs" will betray 
 
 A leaning not to Virtue's way/ 
 
 Philosophers Amo:n"gst the Saints. 
 
 Now came a philosophic race 
 With full abilities to trace 
 The source of ev'ry ill or good, 
 BefalFn mankind since the flood. 
 These deep philosophers were giv'n 
 To speculate on em'th as Heav'n. 
 Saw universal love pervading 
 The paths to glory, they were grading ; 
 Saw all peoples, kindreds, tongues 
 Mix and Nature do no wrongs ; 
 Saw all prejudice and passion 
 Of natures foreign, in one fashion ; 
 Saw white and smutty Hottentot 
 Both boiling in a common pot, 
 And what one never reads in fable, 
 Both eating at a common table ; 
 Saw Dutchman and his liehe hier 
 
146 
 
 Dissolve and part for water clear ; 
 
 Saw Erin and her sons forsake 
 
 Their hate of Britain and partake 
 
 Of British cheer at British boards, 
 
 And even toast the House of Lords ; 
 
 Saw valet and her queenly "marm" 
 
 In public, walking arm in arm ; 
 
 Saw mistress and her slutty maid. 
 
 The genius and the worthless jade 
 
 All on a level and a grade 
 
 Hence, Gentle Header, do not doubt 
 
 There's aught impossible, without 
 
 Some sudden freak shall mar the plan, 
 
 They'll prove that man is more than man, 
 
 And that ere long the brute creation 
 
 Will occupy your former station. 
 
 Conclusion. 
 
 'Tis well to recapitulate 
 At times, and thus more clearly state 
 What has been written once before. 
 For explanation's sake, no more, 
 Or else the story will be stale. 
 And " tedious as a twice-told tale." 
 Be it remembered then, the trade 
 The Modern Saints with Sinners made. 
 Concerning elephants, wherein 
 The Saint's abhorrence of the sin 
 Of selling those which later day 
 They found their equals ev'ry way 
 Does not appear; but now began 
 A war of words that puzzled man. 
 For, strange as it may seem, they strove 
 
147 
 
 By e\'ry argument to prove 
 
 That lines alone of latitude 
 
 Did separate the bad from good, 
 
 And that the Devil never strolled 
 
 In countries where the climate's cold ; 
 
 The modern earthly paradise 
 
 Were hedg'd about with snow and ice ; 
 
 Frost-bitten piety the sort, 
 
 Admitting one to Heaven's Court 
 
 Or frozen goodliness alone, 
 
 Were in demand around the throne: 
 
 That sin and shame are never found 
 
 Where snow and ice and frost abound ; 
 
 That wickedness has its retreat 
 
 Alone in climes of warmth and heat ; 
 
 That each and every age displays 
 
 Some vice peculiar to its days 
 
 They did admit, but 'twas before 
 
 Their race had trod the earthly floor, 
 
 That men would cheat and lie and steal 
 
 And cloak it with religious zeal ; 
 
 That even Quakers had been maim'd 
 
 Whipt at cart's tails when they nam'd 
 
 Religious freedom, Williams sent 
 
 Thro' pathless woods in banishment 
 
 To find in hearts of savage chiefs 
 
 A home and solace for his griefs. 
 
 Caligula drive his furious steeds 
 
 Thro' streets where his near kinsman bleeds; 
 
 Sylla and Marius proscribe 
 
 Rome's noblest for the meanest bribe ; 
 
 Robespierre for the horrid store 
 
 That he had shed of human gore 
 
148 
 
 Might find forgiveness for those crimes 
 Defenseless even in those times, 
 But pardon never will they grant 
 To one who own'd an elephant. 
 
 A nos 7)iouto7is, we now return 
 
 Where heroes for the conflict burn 
 
 Each lesser saint to greater bow'd, 
 
 Horse, foot, dragoons, a motley crowd, 
 
 Until Utopia became 
 
 Confusion worse than a Bedlam. 
 
 Ye gods ! how wind and thunder roll'd 
 
 From such as lately bought and sold, 
 
 With what pathetic frenzy told. 
 
 How " elephants " from day to day 
 
 In sighs and tears groaned life away. 
 
 At times the saintly billingsgate 
 
 Was measureless, invoking fate. 
 
 And all the furies out of hell 
 
 To come at once the curse to quell : 
 
 Pronounc'd the "Writ" that gave them breath, 
 
 " A league and covenant with death," 
 
 And leaving all the means they saw, 
 
 Began to preach the " Higher Law," 
 
 Tho' it should ruin fabric rear'd 
 
 By patriots whom the world rever'd. 
 
 For that alone which time would damn 
 
 Without recourse to cant or sham, 
 
 Great souls there were on either side. 
 
 Who sought to stem the dreadful tide, 
 
 One who in prophetic awe. 
 
 His country's desolation saw ; 
 
 He warn'd them of their coming fate, 
 
149 
 
 His sole reward — his coimtry's hate.* 
 Another prayed the beauteous Sun, 
 AVhose beams he last might gaze upon, 
 Might never shine upon a State 
 Drench'd in fraternal blood, but fate 
 Took his capacious soul away 
 Before the horrors of that day.* 
 
 It came, alas, the dreadful day, 
 A million homes in mourning lay. 
 As fire and. sword in fury swept 
 O'er fields that late with harvests slept. 
 And sow'd the earth, above, beneath, 
 With Hell's own idea, dragons' teeth. 
 "Truth crushed to earth will rise again," 
 Will rise superior ty her pain, 
 The nations of the earth will know 
 Who struck the fratricidal blow 
 When heroes of the Blue and Gray 
 Shall each to each due homage pay. 
 And scorn with all their martial souls 
 The cowards base and venal ghouls. 
 Who shunned the conflict they had bred. 
 And lived but to malign the dead. 
 'Tis done, the elephant is free. 
 His master slave instead of he. 
 
 *Calhoun. 
 *Webster. 
 
150 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE CEI^TRAL OLD FOOL. 
 
 Shakspeare says some men are born great, some achieve 
 greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them. 
 In like manner, some men are born fools, some become 
 fools, and some have foolishness thrust upon them. The 
 Central Old Fool belongs to the latter category. By vir- 
 tue of commercial situation, his section became the finan- 
 cial center of the Union. In consequence of this the 
 Central Old Fool soon distanced in a material sense the 
 other less favored sections of the country. As a result 
 of this combination of circumstances in his favor, and 
 with which he had no more to do than he did in the 
 creation of the globe, he became a first-class fool, arro- 
 gating to himself, like any other Old Fool in the uni- 
 verse, all the wisdom of certain kinds going. For instance^ 
 he pretends to believe that outside of Wall Street, no one 
 knows anything about finance at all. In consequence, 
 he dictates the financial policy of the government with 
 all the assurance of a town cow eating hay out of the 
 hind gate of a countryman's wagon. He dictates to that 
 little puppet who dwells in the White House what he 
 shall say in his message concerning the free coinage of 
 silver and other financial matters with the air of a com- 
 plete master. He tells Congress whom to place at the 
 head of the Ways and Means Committee. His finger is 
 felt in the Appropriations Committee also, and should 
 it fail to pony up a couple of millions for the annual 
 blowing out of Hell Gate, he raises " Cain " at home. 
 
151 
 
 He is also possessed with the idea that there is but one 
 city and State in the Union, and that is New York, and 
 woe be to the sap-headed politician who thinks other- 
 wise. Although always fighting each other like a lot of 
 Kilkenny cats, they dictate terms as to political policies 
 to the other States, and even go further and try to create 
 the idea that without taking a candidate from New York 
 for the Presidency is to invite defeat. Of course the 
 Central Old Fool pretends to believe this, but he doesn't. 
 He thinks he is the lion, and wants the lion's share, that 
 is the milk in the political cocoanut. 
 
 But the vanity of the Central Old Fool now and then 
 gets a rap which is calculated to teach him a little mod- 
 esty if nothing else. A few years ago he demanded the 
 World's Fair and expected Congress would tender it to 
 the great city of New York in a silver card basket, 
 accompanied with a resolution of thanks from that sub- 
 servient body for the honor conferred upon it by merely 
 asking for it. When it Avas refused the wrath of the 
 Central Old Fool exploded so loudly that Manhattan 
 Island was shaken as if with an earthquake, and the 
 denizens of Gotham have been fighting mad ever since. 
 
 Still the Central Old Fool has one or two things to 
 console him for this irreparable loss. He has the white 
 elephant of the Democratic party, Grover Cleveland ; 
 the black sheep of the Republican party, Tom Piatt, and 
 Rev. Dr. Park hurst. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE WESTERN" OLD FOOL. 
 
 The general impression concerning a hypocrite as to 
 his personal appearance is that he is lean, lank, lanthorn- 
 
152 
 
 jawed and hoUowed-eyed, with an affected little cough 
 which seems to convey the idea "I am not long for this 
 sinful world." It always has been amazing to me that 
 so good a judge of human nature as Charles Dickens 
 should have made such an egregious blunder as to draw 
 Pecksniff as he did. Why, all your genuine hypocrites 
 are fat. And why should they not be ? A man who re- 
 gards himself as perfection itself in his calling, of all 
 men, is best calculated to take on an extra amount of 
 adipose tissue. Look at that sly old rogue, Jack Fall- 
 staff, the greatest of hypocrites, "larding the lean earth 
 as he walks along." Look at Parson Trulliber, one of 
 Fielding's masterpieces, as fat as any porker in his pen. 
 
 Oh, no ! The lean idea of a hypocrite, although the 
 conventional one, is all wrong. The hypocrite in re- 
 ligion, as usually drawn, is no hypocrite at all. He is 
 only a poor fellow-mortal suffering from an acute attack 
 of piety caused by a disordered liver. Why, the greatest 
 hypociite this writer ever knew was as fat as Falstaff, 
 and a member of the Methodist church at that. He was 
 one of the jolliest old coons in the whole church. You 
 could hear him laugh a half a mile on a frosty morning. 
 And yet a more covetous, grasping old rascal never pressed 
 the earth with a number ten shoe. He was the personi- 
 fication of good humor, when it cost him nothing. But 
 when the stewards of the church, by way of a joke, called 
 on him for quarterage, he became as sad and solemn as 
 an obelisk, and put up such a pitiful cry of distress as 
 would have drawn tears from an Egyptian crocodile. 
 He was a fair sample of the whole tribe of hypocrites 
 in the church or out of it. 
 
 This is, we confess, a rather round-about way to get 
 at the Western Old Fool, but there are so many points of 
 
153 
 
 resemblance between them that we could not well pro- 
 ceed without having taken the course we have. 
 
 Your genuine Western Old Fool is noisy to begin with. 
 His lung power is terrific, and when he opens his mouth 
 in Congress, which is as often as he gets a chance, the 
 vast building rocks with the volume of sound, as if an 
 earthquake was passing. His favorite topic is the tariff, 
 of which he is a complete master, and the way he makes 
 the fur fly from the protective tariff barons of the East 
 is a sight to behold. He poses as the farmer's friend, 
 and yet the latter has no use for him, and will not even 
 admit him into his order. He is the most prolific mem- 
 ber of either House or Senate, and his "wooden" speeches 
 are piled breast high in the lumber room of the govern- 
 ment printing office. 
 
 His own having produced Abraham Lincoln, he looks 
 with disdain upon the pigmy politicians of the other sec- 
 tions. Possessing the Mississippi river, he scarcely deigns 
 to look out of his window as the train crosses the insig- 
 nificant streams of the East. From that region of vast- 
 ness, velocity and vice, when he gets to Washington he 
 is cramped. And yet the poor old 2^oose, who has never 
 been inside the Capitol of the nation before, struts down 
 Pennsylvania avenue to the White House with all the 
 complacency of a future occupant. He is shown into 
 the gree7i room, and after cooling his heels for a couple 
 of hours without having obtained an audience of His 
 Majesty, leaves there a sadder if not a wiser man. 
 
 He is a born financier, and would long since have 
 flooded the whole country with an irredeemable paper 
 currency could he have had his way. 
 
 But the Western Old Fool has one redeeming trait. 
 He can be convinced of his error and become a wiser 
 
154 
 
 man. Eecognizing this fact, we commend to him the 
 following wise suggestion, which lately came into our 
 possession — it does not matter how : 
 
 "He who thinks he knows it all, 
 Is sure upon his nose to fall, 
 But he who sometimes has a doubt 
 Of this, will thereby save his snout." 
 
 CHAPTEK V. 
 
 THE PACIFIC OLD FOOL. 
 
 Every schoolboy or girl in the United States and 
 Europe to as for that matter, has heard of the mammoth 
 trees of California,but not one, we dare say, in a hundred 
 ever read a line of the mammoth Old Fools who flourish 
 in the same highly-favored and gigantic region. 
 
 As the conceit of the Same Old Fool is always in keep- 
 ing with the amount of his ignorance, we might expect 
 to encounter some of the biggest fools in the United 
 States on the Pacific Slope. Nor have we been disap- 
 pointed. To establish this fact let us examine his out- 
 put and judge the mine of his foolishness by that prac- 
 tical test. In the first place, he brags of having the 
 finest climate in the world. Does that show that he has 
 any more sense than anybody else? Did he invent the 
 climate ? No. He has less sense in proportion to cli- 
 mate than any other fool under the sun. Then he claims 
 that it is the richest portion of the globe. Well, what 
 of that ? Did he make it rich ? No ; but on the con- 
 trary it has been getting poorer ever since he set foot 
 in it. 
 
 But he says it is the "free-est" country in the world. 
 We admit that, for the devil and his satellites, the hood- 
 lums of San Francisco have thrown God and morality to 
 
155 
 
 the winds, and in consequence they have no Sabbath, and 
 the cowboy who has bagged the most game, that is, assas- 
 sinated the most men is their ideal of a hero and a gen- 
 tleman. The Pacific Old Fool has a perfect contempt 
 for an Eastern gentleman, and calls him a "tenderfoot," 
 evidently oblivious of the fact that a tender foot is much 
 to be preferred to a tender head. Their conceit in dress 
 is abnormal, and in consequence their "get up" is cal- 
 culated to frighten children and nervous women out of 
 their wits. Their favorite pose for a picture is sitting 
 astride of a Texas pony, with a pair of boots reaching 
 nearly to the waist, the heels of which are ornamented 
 with savage looking spurs, which at this distance appear 
 to be a foot long. As we climb their anatomy, we find 
 their bodies encased in a hunting-shirt, and the belt 
 which confines it is studded so thick with pistols as to 
 lead one to believe he is the veriest coward on earth. 
 Indeed his favorite expression is " getting the drop " on 
 his antagonist, and killing him without giving him the 
 ghost of a chance. But, if his bodily environment is 
 unique, his head gfar is sui generis. It generally con- 
 sists of an immense shock of hair, reaching half way 
 down his back, and which appears as if it had not known 
 the civilizing influences of a comb for six months. An 
 exception, however, must be made in favor of his miis- 
 tarhios, which are evidently well oiled and curled, to 
 give him as ferocious an aspect as possible. Indeed fero- 
 city seems to be his idea as to gentility. Surmounting 
 all this mass of hair and whiskers comes the crowning 
 piece in the shape of an immense Mexican sombrero, 
 which throws, as it were, all his other perfections in the 
 shade. And this is a faithful picture of the Pacific Old 
 Fool, whose conceit causes him to speak with contempt 
 
156 
 
 of the effete civilization of the East. A pretty specimen 
 indeed to view with contempt anything — except him- 
 self. 
 
 But we have already given him much more space than 
 he deserves, and at this point we drop him and leave him 
 alone in his glory. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE SOUTHERIS^ OLD FOOL. 
 
 It is a well-known fact that all warm countries, when 
 well watered, are noted for their rank, luxuriant and 
 abundant vegetation. But whether the climate of a 
 country or section has anything to do with the rankness 
 of its typical fools we are not prepared to say. Be this 
 as it may, of all the fools extant the, Southern Old Fool 
 takes the cake. They are divided into two great south- 
 ern classes, which, by way of distinction, we shall call 
 the ante-bellum and the post-bellum species. We will 
 begin with the ante-bellum tirst. This species of Old 
 Fool lives almost wholly in the past. He cannot accom- 
 modate himself to his modern environments, and as he 
 cannot persuade the rest of his progressive fellow-citizens 
 to revert to the effete customs of the past, he thereby be- 
 comes solitary as well as singular. His favorite topic in 
 conversation or in print is, "The good old times before 
 the war." Of course he claims cavalier descent. This 
 specimen first appeared in history as a distinct species 
 during the Crusades. Richard Cour de Lion was the 
 most shining example of the tribe in his day. He is 
 then seen for several centuries flitting over Europe, and 
 calling himself a "Knight in the days of chivalry." But 
 when chivalry was shivered by Cervantes in Spain, he 
 
157 
 
 disappeared as a distinct class for a century or two, but 
 reappeared in England during the reign of Charles I. 
 Being again overthrown, he disappeared from public life 
 during the Protectorate. But when the Kestoration came 
 he was once more to the fore, and has held the reins of 
 power in England ever since, and is there known as an 
 aristocrat, which he is in law, though not always in fact. 
 Well, it so happened about the year 1607 that the Eng- 
 lish government began to colonize America, and among 
 the rest along came the ancestors of the Ante-Bellum Old 
 Fool. A lazier set never set foot on any shore. They 
 called themselves of "gentle blood," to which many of 
 them had a right from being the natural sons of aristo- 
 cratic scape-graces and libertines in England. From the 
 very first he was sensitive and lazy, so much so that 
 Captain John Smith, who had to contend with him at 
 Jamestown, found him so much opposed to manual labor 
 that he was compelled to declare as the law of the colony 
 that those who would not work should not eat. He was 
 then, as now, too much of a cavalier to work, but none 
 too much of a gentleman to live upon the unpaid labor 
 of another. 
 
 Being a prime favorite as a matter of course with the 
 select circle in England, he found no difficulty in ob- 
 taining immense grants of land in the w'lds of the South, 
 and having erected a house thereon, procured a lot of ne- 
 groes, and gotten a pack of hounds, set himself up as an 
 aristocrat of the most approved order. This farce lasted 
 until after the Kevolutionary war, when by the adoption 
 of the Federal Constitution, his aristocracy existed only 
 in his own conceit, as that instrument expressly forbade 
 any titles significant of classes, and as an aristocracy 
 cannot exist without this, it disappeared. The Ante- 
 
158 
 
 Bellum Old Fool still kept up the farce, however, and 
 does so until this day, notwithstanding the last prop that 
 supported it — negro slavery — was knocked from under it. 
 This last resource being gone, the efforts of the Ante- 
 Bellum Old Fool to keep up appearances, were they not 
 so ludicrous, would be pitiable. For a long time after 
 the late war they called themselves "the best people," 
 but as the main body of the people could not be brought 
 to believe it on their own testimony, and refused to give 
 them all public positions, they were compelled to take off 
 their coats (a horrible thing for a cavalier to do) and go 
 to work, or starve. Those who had the grit to do so soon 
 bettered their fortunes, but the Ante-Bellum Old Fool, 
 proud of his glorious ancestry, whose glory (if they had 
 any) consisted in chiefly horse-racing and fox-hunting, 
 would listen to nothing of the kind. He was born a 
 gentleman, and would live like one, even if he died in 
 the poor-house. This is his motto, and unless he changes 
 it he is very likely to exemplify it. 
 
 The traits of the Ante-Bellum Old Fool are peculiar. 
 He is a Bourbon to begin with wherever you find him, 
 and he is generally to be found at the corner grocery, 
 whittling sticks and discussing politics. The sight of 
 one in a corn-field, tobacco-patch or work-shop would be 
 a curiosity. As the keeper of a museum is wont to name 
 his curiosities to visitors, so does the groceryman intro- 
 duce the Ante-Bellum Old Fool by saying, "Allow me 
 to introduce you to [Judge or Colonel] So and so." He 
 is too much of a gentleman himself to wound the sensi- 
 tive Old Fool's feelings by calling him Mr. Smith or Mr. 
 Jones. 
 
 Socially he is very exclusive as regards his own race, 
 when poor, much preferring to have negroes around him 
 
159 
 
 than "poor white trash." Indeed, during slavery days 
 he encouraged his slaves with the idea of their superior- 
 ity to a Caucasian who chanced to be poor, Since the 
 war not a few of them have gone into literature to dispel 
 the charge of cruelty to their servants, and their pictures 
 of a "Southern Planter's Home" is true to the letter. A 
 fine house, surrounded by nice cottages for well-fed, well- 
 clad and jolly negroes ; undeniable friendships existing 
 on the entire place between the happy pickaninnies and 
 the children of the "great house," associating and eating 
 together like brothers and sisters, while the child of a 
 poor white was afraid to put his foot on the place, and 
 in some instances had the dogs set after him by the ne- 
 gro chaps when he attempted to do so. Useless to try to 
 prove the negro was well treated in slavery in order to 
 appease northern fanatics. Better try to explain away 
 your unfeeling conduct towards members of your own 
 race. 
 
 The poor whites are the people to whom the issue of 
 the war meant freedom from the most galling social 
 ostracism and slavery the world ever saw. Even now, 
 when sensible people, foreseemg the fearful possibilities 
 of a race conflict in the future, are urging the deporta- 
 tion of the negroes to Africa or elsewhere, The Ante- 
 Bellum Old Fool and negrophobist opposes it. It still 
 delights his foolish heart to be surrounded by negroes 
 and be called " Master." It may be in the course of time 
 he will ascertain that the war is over, slavery dead, aris- 
 tocracy dead and that peace, liberty and manhood are 
 recognized as greater blessings to the individual man, as 
 well as to the nation at large, than strife, servitude and 
 descent from a suppositious great man in England or else- 
 where, who for all he can prove to the contrary, may 
 
160 
 
 have been the greatest rascal living in his day, and who 
 only escaped exposure through the partiality or clemency 
 of his sovereign. The great bulk of the Southern people 
 are well descended from well-defined families in the old 
 countries, and pot only treated their slaves well but their 
 poor white neighbors justly. But the Ante-Bellum Old 
 Fool would rather be the bastard son of a scoundrelly 
 duke than the legitimate son of an honest carpenter. His 
 obscure pretensions to "gentle blood" is unadulterated 
 presumption and nonsense. And their conduct proves, 
 that even if so descended, that we are mistaken in the 
 honor that gentle blood is supposed to confer. No true 
 Southern gentleman ever was, or never will be a flunky, 
 nor claim descent from an inferior stock, whether it 
 bears the king's brand or not. He is a gentleman by 
 instinct as well as descent, while the parvenue is neither. 
 Every neighborhood, however, has a Southern Old Fool 
 in it, claiming descent from some old robber baron or 
 cut throat count in Europe who accompanied that old 
 marauder William III to England in the year 1100, and 
 who by virtue of having destroyed the liberties of Eng- 
 land, was ennobled by the title of Conqueror. 
 
 But, with all his shortcomings, we much prefer his 
 society to that of his opposite, the Post-Bellum variety, 
 whose lineaments we now propose to draw as a companion 
 picture. 
 
 THE POST BELLUM OLD FOOL. 
 
 Whether man ascended from the lower animals or 
 not is a vexed question among scientists, and while there 
 are many coincidences which seem to support it, yet 
 there are so many conclusions which can be logically 
 drawn against it, that it may be still set down as an un- 
 
161 
 
 verified hypothesis. One great drawback to its full 
 acceptance is what is known as "The Missing Link," a 
 term first invented by Darwin himself. 
 
 The highest order of ape has much more in common 
 with the lowest order of its own species than it has with 
 the lowest type of man. Whereas, were the hypothesis 
 of Evolution true, it should more nearly approach the 
 latter. 
 
 But the theory of Evolution aside, the Post-Bellum 
 Old Fool comes more nearly supplying " The Missing 
 Link " than any other animal which has been so far dis- 
 covered. In many respects he is an ape of the first water. 
 One of his most noted characteristics is his attempted 
 imitatian of wisdom. Because a few great intellects, 
 such as John 0. Calhoun, John Minor Botts and Daniel 
 Webster saw the shadows before of coming events, he 
 turns prophet after the fact, and when one of the most 
 doubtful wars in all history as to its final results closed 
 adversely to his section, nothing on earth gave him more 
 solid comfort than saying "I told you so." But we shall 
 deal with him under present environments. His great 
 hobby is what he calls "adapting himself to circum- 
 stances." Eealizing that the social fabric of the South 
 has been hopelessly overthrow]], he conceives the idea 
 that the best possible course for his section to pursue is 
 a servile concession that the South was wrong and the 
 North was right. Lacking in true nobility of mind, he 
 cannot appreciate the beauties of the highest type of 
 civilization that ever existed in this or any other coun- 
 try. In consequence, nothing delights more his sordid 
 soul than in seeing Yankee notions prevail. Being a 
 social nobody, as a general thing, nothing gives him 
 more comfort than the poverty and humiliation of his 
 
162 
 
 superiors in every worthy respect, and yet, strange to say, 
 such is his inconsistency and apish tendencies that he 
 would endeavor to create an aristocracy of money in place 
 of that of descent and merit. Imbibing to the full the 
 Yanked idea of progress, he has a contempt for such 
 pursuits as have no tendency towards mere utility and 
 money making. Denied in early life an opportunity of 
 receiving a classical education himself, he has a con- 
 tempt for it in others, and the only reason the old goose 
 educates his children, if he has any, at all, is because he 
 imagines it will add somewhat to his social status. He 
 believes at heart that all book learning is a useless 
 appendage, and not at all necessary to business. Should 
 one of his tribe have sense enough to have an article 
 accepted in one of our Northern reviews, it is generally 
 written in such a spirit of abject flattery of ' Northern 
 civilization as to nauseate all sensible people. North or 
 South. Believing, as he does, that all Southern- states- 
 men are more or less fools like himself, he has but one 
 theory of finance, that of Wall Street ; one system of 
 political action, that of Massachusetts; and one idea of 
 government, centralization. The old imbecile thinks 
 these ideas are original in himself, whereas, they have 
 only lodged in his dull brain by persistent reading of 
 of his only source of information — the Northern news- 
 papers. 
 
 Strange to say, the Post-Bellum Old Fool is a decided 
 business success, and the duller he is the more success- 
 ful he seems to be. You will find him installed as presi- 
 dent of our City Councils, our Boards of Trade, and 
 enterprises of large pith and moment where his owl-like 
 gravity passes for supreme wisdom. He is frequently 
 called upon in his official capacity to deliver a few re- 
 
163 
 
 marks, and in so doing, nn]ess he is a man of more than 
 ordinary common sense, he puts his foot into it every- 
 time. As a general thing, however, on such occasions he 
 employs the talents of some other man to give him a 
 send-off. It is an old saying that every dog has his day, 
 and with all due apology to the canine species, which as 
 a general thing has sagacity enough to keep its mouth 
 shut at the proper time, the Post-Bellum Old Fool has 
 his "innings." Especially is this true in our cities where 
 hustling, sharp practice and ill manners are considered 
 good business traits, while book-learning, refinement, 
 courtesy, politeness, conscientious dealing and fair play 
 generally, are regarded as not giving much promise of 
 success, and where success alone hides every fault and 
 too often in many instances even proven knavery. 
 Such being the case, of course the Post-Bellum Old Fool, 
 who has neither the reputation of illustrious ancestors to 
 sustain and whose chief memory of the past is when he 
 lived on ash-cake and butter milk, is held in honor in 
 urban society where he is the king bee on account of his 
 wealth. No wonder that society in our cities as a gen- 
 eral thing turns up its plebeian nose at culture without 
 cash. No wonder that Miss Low-born, who has been 
 taught by her "pappy" and "mammy" that she is better 
 than well-bred people who are poor, regards it as a capi- 
 tal joke when anyone in her "set is waited upon by a 
 poor gentleman. No wonder that a soiree, composed of 
 old as well as young Post-Bellum Fools, is a social me- 
 nagerie, worth far more to a student of natural history 
 than the most elaborate circus that travels through the 
 land, for herein may be found birds of every feather 
 from the vulture to the torn-tit. While this is true of 
 many of our cities wherethe Ante-Bellum Old Fool, who 
 
164 
 
 whatever else may be said about his idiosyncrasies, was 
 was every inch a gentleman, has been "snowed under."" 
 It does not hold as good yet in the country, for here the 
 Post-Bellum Old Fool is in a minority. He is fast com- 
 ing to the front, however, for the power of pelf is fast 
 gaining ground, and in a few years we shall see the de- 
 scendants of overseers, blacJc-smiths, tanners and rum 
 sellers constituting our very best society. In fact, in 
 neighborhoods this is already virtually the case, and the 
 chief man in it, one who before the war was nothing but 
 "poor white trash," so ignorant that he didn't know B 
 from a bull's foot. What a miserable substitute for that 
 splendid society, which developed character that felt » 
 stain like a wound, which gave to its country such 
 names as Washington, Calhoun and Lee in the days 
 when honor, statesmanship and purity was the rule and 
 not the exception in public life. That the reign of the 
 Post Bellum Old Fool, south of Mason's and Dixon's 
 line at least may be shot, is our sincere prayer. 
 
 But would you know the ideal modern Southern man 
 read the life of Henry W. Grady, of whose untimely 
 death the poet sang: 
 
 HENRY W. GRADY. 
 
 Ah ! He is dead the wires say, 
 Fit medium if such news be true, 
 A soul electric, born to sway, 
 He is not dead but lost to view. 
 
 He is not dead, he cannot die 
 So long as eloquence shall move. 
 The human heart or dim the eye. 
 With thoughts of power, words of love. 
 
 Mourn Empire State, thy peerless one, 
 Thy grief, a mighty nation-shares, 
 Weeps with Thee o'er thy matchless son. 
 And feels with Thee the loss it bears. 
 
165 
 
 Thank God, that to the South He gave 
 This mighty heart, this master mind — 
 This gulf-stream warming ev'ry wave, 
 Of feeling by His love of kind. 
 
 Upon New England's sterile shore, 
 Or in his own lov'd southern clime, 
 In witching words he ne'er forebore, 
 To plead with eloquence sublime. 
 
 For peace and harmony between 
 The sections torn by mutual hate. 
 God grant his hope may yet be seen, 
 The glorious sisterhood of states. 
 
 The legacy he has left outweighs 
 The glory of an Austerlitz, 
 
 For peace and love and willing praise. 
 Support the throne on which he sits. 
 
 No meanness marred his master mind, 
 Clear as the noonday sun he shone, 
 And e'en in dying, left behind, 
 A li.o-ht that must shine on and on. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE EUROPEAN OLD FOOL. 
 
 The average flunkey who dwells in a city indulges in 
 much asinine amusement over what he calls the green- 
 ness of people living in the country. He imagines that 
 wisdom, when he shuffles of this mortal coil, will die 
 with him. If the little sap-headed, spindle-shanked 
 manikin could only see himself as he really is, he would 
 perceive that he was only the parody of a man, and a 
 poor one at that. As a matter of fact a typical inhabi- 
 tant of a town will not begin to compare in profound in- 
 formation with his country cousin. His whole object 
 
166 
 
 in life, if a merchant, is to keep pace with his rivals and 
 and watch the market. If a society man or woman, to 
 cater to all the whims of fools as silly as himself, and 
 even should he begin this wretched business, with a good 
 mind and a well trained intellect, yet a few years contact 
 with people whose whole stock of conversation is un- 
 adulterated nonsense, will make him or her as complete 
 a fool as the rest, and you hear nothing from him or her 
 but "dress," "good or bad form," and other choice bi<s of 
 criticism concerning the last assembly of dunces which 
 was graced by his presence. 
 
 Ministers, even, who preach to city audiences in any 
 other than a plain, practical way, might as well be sing- 
 ing psalms to a dead iiorse so far as effecting any good i& 
 concerned. If you wish to see ignorance, not only of 
 God's Word, but of science, philosophy and art, go to 
 the city, and you will find it in perfection. Why, nearly 
 everybody in a city is simply a hustler after money, and 
 if he wishes to stay there, must continue to do so, or 
 leave. Beyond "posting" ledgers, weighing coffee, sugar^ 
 meat and lard, or measuring cloth and gazing at cost- 
 marks to ascertain the very last cent at which it can be 
 sold to make any profit at all, what time has a poor 
 wight living in a city to cultivate his mind? It is true 
 he makes a pretence of reading the morning paper 
 while eating his breakfast, but what he gets out of that 
 is generally such sorry stuff that a good healthy intellect 
 would starve to death on it in less than twelve months. 
 Now, these are the people who profess to find so much 
 amusement over country people. The truth of the 
 whole matter is, no class of people on the face of the 
 globe can compare with American farmers on the score 
 of intelligence and honesty as a class. He is not only a 
 
167 
 
 natural philosopher, by having an almost unrestricted 
 range for observing natural phenomena of the earth and 
 skies, but it is to his interest to do so. No pent up 
 Utica in the shape of a little patch of sky to be seen from 
 the back-yard of a city residence, or overhead from a 
 crowded thoroughfare, confines his powers of observa- 
 tion, but the whole heaven, from horizon to horizon, 
 blazing with jewels, is his by night, while animated na- 
 ture, ''from early morn until dewy eve," with all of its 
 sights and sounds, the music of birds, the roar of water- 
 falls, the vast clouds piled upon each other, like Pelion 
 upon Ossa, all these, too, are his, and thousands of others. 
 Nor must we omit the coup de grace — the evening fire- 
 side. Around these sacred altars are gathered children 
 — future men and women — who are not only the hope of 
 our' country, but almost the sole reliance for the perpe- 
 tuity of our republic. From these come our statesmen, 
 our orators and our poets; from these come our Lucre- 
 tias and Portias, our Maryland Martha Washiijgtons. 
 
 One more observation. The farmer takes time for the 
 cultivation of his mind. Corn and tobacco grow while 
 it rains, but a tradesman's crop needs continual cultiva- 
 tion, and so while the latter is at his shop on the look- 
 out for stray customers, the latter is sitting upon a split- 
 bottomed chair, with a cheerful log fire in front of him, 
 reading some masterpiece of the human mind, or per- 
 haps still better, making himself yet more familiar with 
 the marvelous story of the Son of Mary. 
 
 But it is high time we were coming to the point of 
 this article. We set out to describe a set of Old Fools 
 with which all our American readers are more or less fa- 
 miliar. We mean the European Old Fool. There is 
 so much in common between him and the City Old Fool 
 
168 
 
 that we could not resist the temptation to give the latter 
 a whack by way of preface. 
 
 We will now endeavor to show to an enlightened but 
 appreciative American public that the man whom they 
 have heretofore so much delighted to honor, because 
 "he's English, you know," is simply the same Old Fool 
 whom we have been describing all along. He has every 
 trait of the universal tribe, only his "knowing it all" has 
 more cock-su redness about it than all the rest put to- 
 gether, while his insolence is perfectly sublime. He 
 generally hails from Britain, but to make sure, we shall 
 call him the European Old Fool. In nearly every case 
 he has written a book before coming hither, and when 
 he has gotten about all the American dollars he ever ex- 
 pects to get, he pays us a visit. His reception is most 
 flattering. All the Anglo-maniacs in the country honor 
 him by wining and dining and monocles. His journey 
 through the country is like a triumphal procession. In 
 due course of time he leaves us. Hardly has he gotten 
 back to "Luunun" before he is out in a publication, in- 
 tended to be sarcastic, in which he endeavors to belittle 
 everything he either saw, heard, felt or smelt. And if 
 we may judge from the stress he lays upon the latter 
 sensation, we would infer that American odors possessed 
 an irresistible attraction for him while on this side of 
 the Atlantic. He professes to have discovered that every 
 American city has a smell peculiar to itself. From 
 whence we may conclude that even if lacking in anything 
 else, he is certainly an authority on foul odors, and we 
 believe our government would do well to present him 
 with a medal setting forth his nasal achievements. 
 
 But we might put up with the European Old Fool if 
 he would confine himself to smelling our cities, but when 
 
169 
 
 he goes to criticising our government, the thing is insuf- 
 ferable. Just to think of an European Old Fool coming 
 over here and criticising "the best government the world 
 over saw"— a government of the people, for the people, 
 and bv the people, when the people of his own country 
 never had sense enough to govern themselves, and are 
 compelled to pay a ruler (and a woman at that) several 
 millions of dollars a year to do it for them. Just to 
 think of an European Old Fool coming over here and 
 criticising our railways, when even a lady is not safe 
 from brutal assault in a first-class car in his own immac- 
 ulate clime. Just to think of an European Old Fool com- 
 ing over here and criticising our hotels, warmed through- 
 out, and lighted by electricity free of charge, when the 
 landlords of his own, charge extra for every two-inch 
 tallow dip the traveller finds it necessary to use, besides 
 turning loose his no-pay servants to eke out a living by 
 "tips" upon each guest. Just to think of an European 
 Old Fool coming over here and criticising our social 
 system, when his own is so ratten that the jails of his 
 own country are insufficient to hold its criminals, and 
 who are sent over by the ship-load. Just to think of an 
 European Old Fool criticising our women, when his own 
 are compelled to work in the fields, like beasts of bur- 
 den, or stand behind bar-counters and hand out "distilled 
 damnation," while listening to the coarse and loud jests 
 of men besotted by liquor. Just to think of an European 
 Old Fool coming over here and criticising a country 
 which in less than one hundred years has so far out- 
 stripped his own (a thousand years "^old) in the science of 
 invention, that mankind has censed to expect a new idea 
 in Europe, and instinctively turn to America as humani- 
 ty's best hope. 
 
170 
 
 But all the fools on this side are not dead yet, and so 
 in spite of all we have written, the European Old Fool 
 will continue to come oyer here, criticise and ridicule us, 
 and find a plenty of other Old Fools over here to agree 
 with him. Verbum sat. 
 
171 
 
 PART SEVENTH. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE CLERICAL OLD FOOL. 
 
 "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread," and 
 although prepared to encounter the Same Old Fool every- 
 where else, we must confess that when we came in upon 
 him behind the sacred desk we were surprised not a lit- 
 tle. That he should aspire to the leadership of a polit- 
 ical party, know it all in society and be a boss in litera- 
 ture, science and business was a thing to be expected by 
 any one acquainted with his characteristics. But that 
 he should be found expounding the Word of God, and 
 pointing the way to salvation is enough to make one 
 weep. And yet it is so. That they are not called of 
 God is evident from the fact that He does not call fools 
 to preach the gospel. A man may be considered a fool 
 by the world for doing so, and the gospel may seem to 
 be foolishness to such as are wise in their own conceit, 
 yet all the same the Scriptures give no account of any 
 such being called to preach. 
 
 Now, the Same Old Fool in the pulpit assumes as 
 many shapes there as he does elsewhere, and the reason 
 of this is also plain, for every Old Fool in the universe is 
 the product of his own conceit and vanity. This being 
 so, it necessarily follows that there are many kinds en- 
 gaged in the sacred calling, and in order to label them 
 
172 
 
 properly, we shall be compelled, as we have been hitherto, 
 to give each one the benefit of a whole chapter to 
 himself. The first then to which we invite your atten- 
 tion is 
 
 THE IGNORANT OLD FOOL. 
 
 This specimen, while not so numerous as the rest, is 
 still extant. He professes to have a great contempt for 
 human "larnin','' as being especially wicked as well as 
 worthless from a ministerial standpoint. Because, for- 
 sooth, he reads in the New Testament that the Apostles 
 were told not to premeditate what they should say, but 
 would have the assistance of Divine power, they mount 
 the stand unprepared, and in consequence such rambling 
 discourses are uttered that no one out of Bedlam ever 
 heard the like before. To say the Lord directs them to 
 utter such nonsense would be blasphemy if the Old Fool 
 had sense enough to commit such a sin. We have a bet- 
 ter opinion of the Lord than to believe he inspires such 
 foolishness. Owing to the inspiration of the founders 
 of Christianity, many things in the present day are sad- 
 dled upon the Lord, without the least warrant in Scrip- 
 ture or anywhere else except in the conceit of addlepates, 
 dunces and ignoramuses. Samuel Davis, one of the 
 greatest of preachers, said, when asked if he ever preached 
 extemporaneously, "No; for I think it is a fearful thing 
 to talk nonsense before the Lord." But the Ignorant 
 Old Fool has a horror in the other direction. He talks 
 as though he thought it a fearful thing to speak good 
 English before his Maker. The Old Fool has never 
 heard of, much less read Shakspeare, and in consequence 
 repeats himself whenever he opens his mouth in public. 
 His style of speaking, which is sing-song, has one ben- 
 eficial effect however ; it is conducive to sleep, and the 
 
173 
 
 world needs sleep much more than it does this kind of 
 preaching. But occasionally he touches upon a tender 
 chord, as the following anecdote will show. 
 
 One of those Heavenly-Whine Old Fellows was peg- 
 ging away one day, when an old sister who sat just in 
 front of him began to weep. Noting this, the old man 
 raised his voice an octave higher and preached the Ever- 
 lasting Gospel — which is generally the case when he 
 starts. At the conclusion he came down to where the 
 old lady was, and said to her : " Sister, during the dis- 
 course I saw you er-weepin'. I've been preachin' the 
 Gawspel for nigh onto fifty year, and I don't know as 
 I've been the means of savin' one soul, and if I have 
 saved your soul I am willin' to die." The old woman 
 made no reply but wept the louder. Seeing which the 
 old man resumed : " Well, sister, if I have not saved your 
 soul, will you not tell me what part of the discourse 
 affected you so ?" " Well," said the old lady, ^'If I must 
 I will. About thirty years ago, I had an old cow and 
 her name was Kose. And she used to come up just as 
 regular as clockwork. One evening she didn't come up, 
 and I went out to look fur 'er. And I said to her ' sir 
 dan,' Rose! And she give me one look, and ah, that 
 look ! And then she lowed, and when she lowed she 
 lueiit exactly the luay you preach ! " Poor old woman, the 
 great deep of affectionate memories had been broken up 
 by the old man. We do not wonder that she wept. It 
 was enough to make angels weep. 
 
 But if the Ignorant Old Fool is ridiculous, the Learn- 
 ed Old Fool, which will be the subject of the next divis- 
 ion, is equally so, and we will now drop this one and 
 proceed to pay our respects to him. 
 
174 
 
 THE LEARNED OLD FOOL. 
 
 It is customary in England when a man has several 
 sons, to designate one for the Army, another for the 
 Navy, and still another for the Church. It is manifest 
 from this that he regards the calling of a clergyman 
 solely from a professional standpoint, and that he is the 
 sole judge of his son's fitness for it. Now, it frequently 
 happens that the son he designates for the Church is the 
 least inclined or adapted to that profession of all three, 
 and hence, that he proves a flat failure, so far as accom- 
 plishing any good is concerned, goes without saying. At 
 the proper age he is trunked off to Oxford, where after 
 studying divinity and philosophy under men whose views 
 touching such things accord with his father's, he takes 
 orders and becomes, as the phrase goes, a candidate for 
 a " living," which is generally at the disposal of some 
 duke or earl, who knows no more about the religion of 
 the New Testament than a hog does about holiday. 
 
 We are sorry to say that the same idea is gaining 
 ground in this country. Whenever a boy manifests a 
 tendency to book learning the very first view some people 
 have is to educate him for the ministry. This notion 
 once in the boy's head, he at once assumes that his Maker 
 stands in need of his services, and he rather likes the 
 idea of complimenting the Almighty by a tender of the 
 same. In order, however, to insure success in a scheme 
 in which only two parties have been consulted — his fam- 
 ily and his friends — he too is trundled off to some theo- 
 logical seminary or college, where, in the course of a few 
 years, he graduates with all the honors, except one — a 
 genuine conversion — and is ready for a call, not from on 
 high, but below. 
 
 Having accepted the same, usually some wealthy city 
 
175 
 
 church, and been duly installed, he is ready for business. 
 Great crowds of fashionable and cultivated worldlings 
 go out every Sabbath to hear him discuss the Atomic 
 Theory, discourse about Darwinianism and the Evolu- 
 tion of Man, or descant upon the condition of the globe 
 during the post-tertiary age. As his congregations are 
 composed of the elite of tl;e city, who when not at 
 church are at the theater, in the ballroom or at the card 
 table, he is too much of a gentleman to discuss such 
 things, as it would be the height of ill-breeding to do 
 so. It is true that John the Baptist told King Herod 
 to his face that he was an adulterer. But John, you 
 know, was no gentleman, aud, least of all, a learned 
 preacher in a fashionable church. In fact, his church 
 was the most unfashionable the world had ever seen. It 
 is also true that St. Paul spoke so plainly of righteous- 
 ness, temperance and a judgment to come that he made 
 Felix tremble. But then Paul, you know, was an out- 
 cast, having quitted the most aristocratic church of his 
 day for one of no repute. So it will never do to cite such 
 instances as these to the intellectual giants of our day, 
 men capable of meeting the Titans of infidelity with 
 their own weapons ; men capable of preaching the gos- 
 pel without Christ and Him crucified ; men capable of 
 showing a way to Heaven without repentance and regen- 
 eration. 
 
 Of course, then, who but some idiot or outcast, who 
 has felt the love of God shed abroad in his heart, who 
 has been shown the exceeding sinfulness of sin in his 
 own case, is capable of discussing such trite and thread- 
 bare themes in the pulpit. As for the Intellectual Giant 
 who discusses the lofty themes alluded to, such weak 
 men are beneath his notice. "For the outlying, country 
 
176 
 
 districts, where men and women are yet in theological 
 infancy, such things are perhaps allowable." But to dis- 
 turb the refined sensibilities of saints in satin and broad- 
 cloth with such shocking themes as human frailty and 
 wickedness are not to be thought of, and even if they 
 are, by no means uttered. They would at once destroy 
 that sweet entente cordiale existing between the fashion- 
 able preacher and his select congregation. 
 
 Now, to speak seriously, it would be a hard matter to 
 decide which is the greater fool, the Learned Old Fool 
 in the pulpit or the silly fools who come out to his 
 essays. They, poor and blind and naked know nothing 
 of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and they, worldly-minded, 
 carnal, sold under sin, will never discover their mistake 
 this side of Hell unless some divine son of the Gospel 
 shall preach to them with the power and demonstration 
 of the Spirit. 
 
 Oh, no ! It can never be done. Human learning can 
 never supplant the Gospel of our Lord. The world by 
 wisdom knew not God. Sanctified learning and a sanc- 
 tified life alone will avail. Paul may plant and Apollos 
 may water, but God alone gives the increase. When God 
 calls a man to preach the gospel, he calls him loud 
 enough for him to hear. To feel your unfitness to obey 
 that call, strange as it may seem, is one of the best evi- 
 dences of your fitness, for not one who feels his fitness is 
 fit. Do not be uneasy, however ; if you are not fit in 
 reality the Lord will will never call you. God makes no 
 mistakes. There are no accidents with him. If you are 
 called, no matter how learned you may be, rely upon 
 Him for power, not upon yourself. If you are unlearned, 
 the call is a preparation to preach at the proper time 
 when you have learned the way of the Lord more perfectly. 
 
177 
 
 But do not, oh young man, covet the empty honor of 
 being a Learned Old Fool in the pulpit. You may think 
 he is happy. Not so, No man acting a false part ever 
 was so. Even an actor in a theater, who acts a part con- 
 trary to his own conception as to the proper way is never 
 happy. For the sake of your own soul and the souls of 
 others, do not juggle with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, 
 and put it like its author to an open shame. 
 
 CHAPTER 11. 
 
 THE STRICT CONSTRUCTION OLD FOOL. 
 
 Mr. Townsend, of New York, at one time a member of 
 Congress, during a debate in that body concerning some 
 constitutional question, said that he had always observed 
 that when a Congressman wanted anything right much, 
 it was constitutional, and when he did not want it, it 
 was unconstitutional. The same state of affairs is found 
 in every religious denomination. 
 
 There is for instance, the Strict Construction Old 
 Fool, contending for the faith once delivered to the 
 saints, under the mistaken impression that he is one of 
 the saints. He believes the whole Bible should not only 
 be taken literally, but followed in the same way. Be- 
 cause St. Paul was in perils by sea and land, in perils by 
 robbers and his own countrymen, in perils in the wilder- 
 ness and in the city, he seems to be exceedingly sorrow- 
 ful that preachers now-a-days do not have these perils to 
 contend with. This Old Fool is under the impression 
 that if St. Paul were alive to-day he would be too pious 
 to ride on a railway train, to say nothing of a Pullman 
 palace car, and prefer walking from Jerusalem to Joppa, 
 begging his food in the day time, as he trudged along, 
 
178 
 
 and sleeping in the woods at night. The theology of 
 such an Old Fool as this is composed of about nine 
 parts of Hell to one of Heaven. Because the Bible says 
 that the heathen shall be turned into Hell with all the 
 nations that forget God, he will not give a cent towards 
 the enlightenment of savages. In fact he is like the late 
 Sam Ward, who when asked for a contribution for mis- 
 sions, replied that people who ought to go to the Devil, 
 were not going fast enough, and he did not propose to 
 stave off their just deserts in that way. The Strict 
 Construction Old Fool is a Pharisee to begin with, and 
 like them he erects standards for the outward conduct 
 impossible of fulfillment. To illustrate their idea of 
 righteousness, the following is a case in point: A minis- 
 ter had been recently called to a new charge. As is 
 customary with the clergy under such circumstances, he 
 called upon the members of his church each in his or 
 her turn, in order to make their acquaintance and put 
 himself on a friendly footing. Having called upon 
 most of them during the week, he concluded to finish 
 the good work by visiting an old sister whose name was 
 on the church register, but who was not present to hear 
 his Sunday discourse. Having eaten his dinner, he set 
 out for her house, some two miles distant, in the after- 
 noon. Upon his arrival, instead of being received with 
 sisterly kindness, as he had a right to expect, he met 
 with scant courtesy. He had not long to wait for an 
 explanation. She was informed by the good man that 
 he missed her at church service, "Yes" I says she, "and 
 you'll continue to miss me there on the Sabbath day, as 
 I believe in keeping that day holy." She further in- 
 formed him in the same vein that she thought he might 
 have chosen another day than the Sabbath to have called 
 
179 
 
 upon her. The good man, now being put upon his 
 mettle, began to reason with her, and in order to justify 
 his visit, related the fact of our Lord's having walked 
 through the wheat field on the Sabbath day with His 
 disciples. "Yes ! I know he did," says she, "and I 
 would have thought a good deal more of Him if he 
 hadn't done it." This is the idea in a nutshell. Fur- 
 ther comment is unnecessary. 
 
 OIIJ^PTER III. 
 
 THE EASY-GOi:NrG OLD FOOL. 
 
 Every department of hyman activity has its catch- 
 words and phrases. The Democratic party has for its 
 shibboleth, "taxes for revenue only, sufficient to run the 
 government, economically administrated." The Repub- 
 lican party has for its motto, "protection," and claims 
 also to be a party of high moral ideas. But its "ideas" 
 are so high and its morals so low that no honest political 
 student has ever yet been able to strike an average be- 
 tween them. 
 
 There is just such another Old Fool in religion. His 
 idea of religion is so high and his conduct in daily life 
 so low, that no one knows exactly where he stands or 
 what he is. He is not "all things unto all men" 
 that he may gain some, but in order to be popular. 
 Having early in life noticed that it was easy to swim 
 with the stream, and hard work to do so against it, he 
 has pursued a time-serving policy through life. He gen- 
 ■erally joins the church during some wide- spread religi- 
 ous interest when every one else is doing so, as he thinks 
 it is the popular way, and he dislikes to be lonesome. 
 Having "jined," the Easy- Going Old Fool at once pro- 
 
180 
 
 ceeds to make himself "solid" with all the other denom- 
 inations by saying he considers one church as good as 
 another, anjd that he would not give a nickel for the 
 flifference. When you take into account that his opin- 
 ion of them all, including his own, is not worth a cop- 
 per in the theological market , it will be learned how 
 valuable his opinion really is. 
 
 He ridicules theology and imagines that pure and un- 
 defiled religion is to allow every man to interpret the 
 Scriptures to suit himself, and in consequence, blames 
 his own minister for ever preaching the doctrines of his 
 own church. On the other hand were he to disparage 
 his own and praise the tenets of some other sect, the 
 Easy-Going Fool would be in raptures. 
 
 Although life is a perpetual fight from the cradle to 
 the grave, and is plainly taught in the Word of God that 
 such as live godly in Christ Jesus must suffer persecu- 
 tion, and although the Christian's life therein is pro- 
 nounced by inspired men, to be one of perpetual warfare 
 against the world, the flesh and the Devil, still the Easy- 
 Going Old Fool knows it all and will have his way. We 
 have already showed how he will sacrifice his religious 
 views in order to be popular witw his brethren in the 
 other sects, and then in order to convince the worlds 
 the flesh and the Devil that he is not straight-laced, he 
 is as often found in the ball-room and the theatre as at 
 the church. Perhaps a little oftener. There is an 
 animal which has ears like a rat's and wings like leather^ 
 partaking of the dual nature of a beast and a fowl of 
 the air. His time for action is neither night nor day, 
 but twilight. The Easy-Going Old Fool is the bat of 
 the religious world. Poor Old Fool ! Should he ever 
 get to heaven he will be confined to its outskirts, unable 
 to realize the abounding joy of the battle-scarred vete- 
 
181 
 
 rans of the Cross, who in this lower world suffered the 
 loss of all things, when required to do so, in order to 
 bring no reproach upon the cause of their Master. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE SAME OLD FOOL IN KELIGION. 
 
 Mine host, when he would entertain his friends at a 
 feast, always reserves the best course for the last, in or- 
 der, no doubt, to tempt the already cloyed appetite to 
 fitill further conquests. We would do likewise, and 
 hence now invite your attention to the greatest nuisances 
 in the whole catalogue of fools. It is almost needless to 
 add that we have reference to the Same Old Fools in 
 Beligion. 
 
 Now, it might have been thought that he would not 
 bob up in religion too. But he does, though. As the 
 mathematician would say, he "differentiates." That is 
 to say, there are many different species of the same genus. 
 In order to define them more accurately, we shall attempt 
 to describe each one separately. In doing this, as we 
 have hitherto done, we may use terms whose applicability 
 may not be apparent at first, but we trust that as we 
 proceed to unfold his characteristics, that our meaning 
 will become as plain as the noonday sun, or the nose on 
 a drunkard's face. To begin then without farther pre- 
 face, there is 
 
 THE MONOPOLISTIC OLD FOOL. 
 
 This Old Fool believes that the church or sect to 
 which he happens to belong, possesses the divine right to 
 freeze out every other denomination, so that no passport 
 to Heaven can be obtained except through its agency. 
 All the little sects throughout the country who have 
 
182 
 
 been retailing salvation to their respective neighbor- 
 hoods, must cease to do business on their own account, 
 and take stock in the Great Religious Trust, or be crushed 
 out of existence. The Monopolistic Old Fool is some- 
 times a bear, but his favorite role is a bull, as he much 
 prefers goring to hugging. But he does not hesitate to 
 use any means in order to "corner" the religious market. 
 In fact, one of his favorite maxims is that the ends 
 justify the means. That he has practiced what he 
 preaches all history verifies. In consequence he has not 
 hesitated to burn a heretic whenever he imagined his re- 
 ligious monopoly was in danger of reform. As it would 
 never do for a monopoly to fail to honor all the drafts 
 of credulity which it has issued, the Monopolistic Old 
 Fool also claims infallibility. He is not all singular in 
 this, however, as every other Old Fool who ever lived 
 claimed the same thing. He also claims that he is the 
 vice-gerent of God on earth. There is no denying the 
 fact that many of them have had vice enough to be 
 gerents of the Devil, but whether one ever existed who 
 had goodness enough to stand in God's stead, history 
 does not record. But all these assumptions are of a 
 piece, as witness the following order of his qualities,, 
 which for the sake of lucidity we will put in a syllogistic 
 form : 
 
 I am the vice-gerent of God on earth. 
 
 God cannot err. 
 
 Therefore, I am infallible. 
 But he does not stop here. He says that he is the 
 vicar of Jesus Christ on earth, and as Christ was holy, 
 so is he, and hence he permits himself to be called His 
 Holiness. How shall we characterize the conceit of such 
 an Old Fool as this^ The English, as well as every 
 
183 
 
 other language, stands bankrupt before it. There is no 
 word for it. It is untranslatable. To estimate the harm 
 he has done is beyond all calculation also. He has done 
 more to bring the Christian religion into contempt and 
 ridicule than all the sceptics, atheists, agnostics and in- 
 fidels who ever lived or ever will live to the end of time. 
 Possessing a grain of truth to a bushel of chaff, he has 
 caused earnest souls in all the ages since he first appeared 
 on earth, to embrace a whole mass of superstition in or- 
 der to come at it, and although shorn of his power to-day 
 to do harm by force, and yet allowed to do good without 
 restriction, he still calls for the secular arm. Were he 
 infallible he would not need it nor ask for it. Hence he 
 is a sham and a humbug of the earth earthy. Hia 
 Holiness ! Bosh ! 
 
 CHAPTEK V. 
 
 THE COMPROMISING OLD FOOL. 
 
 A straight line is defined by mathematicians as the 
 shortest distance between two points. In keeping with 
 this definition there are other ideas in connection with it 
 which the bare axiom overlooks, but which nevertheless 
 enables one to draw some very correct as well as far- 
 reaching conclusions. For instance, a straight line is 
 the most illiberal, inflexible, and therefore uncompro- 
 mising thing in the universe. It bends neither to the 
 right nor the left, neither curves upward nor bends 
 downward. It goes straight from one point to the other. 
 Should even a mountain intervene, it must either be got- 
 ten out of the way or tunneled through its interior. 
 Owing to its nature it is a symbol of Justice, of Truth, 
 of Kectitude. Of justice that will not swerve, though 
 the heavens fall. Of truth that will not compromise, 
 
184 
 
 but swear, if need be, to its own hurt. Of rectitude 
 that would oppose a world in arms, rather than "bend 
 the pregnant hinges of the knee that thrift might follow 
 fawning." 
 
 This introduction is sufficient to indicate the peculiar 
 kind of an Old Fool we are after in this chapter. 
 
 In order to come at him at once, it will be best to 
 draw a pen and ink sketch of his features or character- 
 istics first, and then examine his work afterwards. In 
 the first place, then, realizing that his life is "crooked" 
 and devious, and being aware of the fact that the word 
 "compromising" is in bad odor as applied to character, 
 he has euphemized it by using in its stead that other 
 more genteel term, "liberal." Hence he would be kno.vn 
 as a liberal-minded man, as that definition is very pleas- 
 ing to all his fellow-fools, and makes him decidedly 
 popular with sceptics, worldlings and shallow thinkers 
 in the church as well as out of it. 
 
 When the Compromising Old Fool is a minister (we 
 will not say of the gospel of Jesus Christ, for that is a 
 misnomer), he is so latitudinarian in his views that he is 
 always a great favorite with that class of church mem- 
 bers who see no harm in visiting theatres, horse-races 
 and ball-rooms, and whose leisure hours at home are 
 spent in poring over trashy novels, or playing whist and 
 progressive euchre, when not engaged in the more agree- 
 able recreation of ridiculing the really pious people of 
 their own denomination. 
 
 This Old Fool is also a great favorite with sceptics, as 
 he has eliminated Hell from the Scriptures, and that 
 was the only difficulty which scepticism wished to see 
 overcome in the Word of God. Henceforth, while listen- 
 ing to his little essays on "the moralities," they can 
 either go to sleep or pursue some favorite train of thought 
 
185 
 
 touching "The Missing Link in Darwin's System of 
 Evolution" without being in the least disturbed, as was 
 that old Roman barbarian, Felix, who heard and trem- 
 bled, as Paul reasoned of righteousness, temperance and 
 a judgment to come. 
 
 This Old Fool is also very popular with that highly 
 cultured portion of the female population who, it would 
 seem, prefer going to Hell to having the word used in 
 the pulpit. Nor is he less popular with all those moral 
 Old Fools who have substituted their own immaculate 
 perfections for the blood of Jesus Christ. This indeed 
 is quite natural, seeing that the Compromising Old Fool 
 makes moral perfection possible to man without the as- 
 sisting grace of God. In theology he concedes the 
 Fatherhood of God, but has his doubts concerning the 
 brotherhood of man. In this he is consistent with him- 
 self, as he is half inclined to Darwinism, and imagines 
 no doubt he is a lineal descendant of a higher order of 
 Simian ancestry than the ignoble progeny of common 
 monkeys. It goes without saying that he has so com- 
 promised the Scriptures that were he to give us a new 
 translation there would be so much "sweetness and light" 
 in his new version that Oscar himself would go Wilde 
 over it. All those terrible passages which tell of the 
 doom of the finally impenitent would be eliminated, and 
 in their stead a chapter on "Probation After Death" 
 would be inserted. But to speak seiiously, the harm 
 this old compromiser has done and is still doing is be- 
 yond the power of man to estimate. At one time God's 
 people were peculiar. Now they are so much like the 
 common run of respectable sinners that no one can tell 
 the difference. All this is the work of the Compromising 
 Old Fool. In his zeal for numbers he has so tortured 
 the Word of God, that hand-shaking has superseded 
 
186 
 
 heart-shaking nearly altogether as a sign of repentance 
 and Godly sorrow. Those old ministers of the gospel 
 who have for years declared the whole counsel of God, 
 and beneath whose powerful appeals men and women 
 fell, as if shot dead with a rifle, are no more in honor 
 nor in demand, and are compelled to take back seats. 
 God bless their dear old souls. Their very peculiarities 
 convince us there are some who have not bowed their 
 knees to the modern Baal, nor made shipwreck of a good 
 conscience by making merchandise of the Word of God. 
 All honor to them, and shame to the clerical mounte- 
 banks who, as men-pleasers, have made the Word of God 
 of none effect. 
 
 Very often the Compromising Old Fool essays the role 
 of a statesman and enters the political arena. But he 
 never enters there as a combatant, but a trimmer. The 
 only issue between the two old parties, to hear him tell 
 it, is one of men, not of measures, and he is one of the 
 men. He has no positive convictions on any subject, 
 except that good men should hold office, and that he is 
 one of the best. When once in power, he will always 
 placate an enemy at the expense of a friend in order to 
 retain office. When accused of treachery to his party, 
 he has always some compromising reply at hand. In 
 short, he more resembles a bat than anything else in his 
 make-up, trimming between darkness and light, and 
 puzzling naturalists to decide whether he is really a 
 beast of the field or a fowl of the air. 
 
 We could say a great deal more concerning the Com- 
 promising Old Fool as a judge or a lawyer, but knowing 
 that that keen-witted fraternity will anticipate anything 
 we might say of him in that relation, we turn him over 
 to them at this juncture, and will now proceed to pay 
 
187 
 
 our best respects to his opposite— the Uncompromising 
 Old Fool. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE Ui^COMPROMISIKG OLD FOOL. 
 
 If Abraham Lincoln had done or said nothing else to 
 transmit his greatness to generations yet unborn, his 
 Gettysburg speech alone would have shown him to be 
 one of the greatest men of his age. Among other things 
 which he uttered on that memorial occasion was this: 
 "In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty, and in 
 all things charity." This is a short but comprehensive 
 statement of the whole duty of a man in respect to all 
 other men as regards the exercise of his mental as well 
 as moral powers. In this mighty sentence is the whole 
 problem of human liberty set forth and demonstrated. 
 It is applicable to every crisis in human affairs, and 
 points out not only the pathway of safety but of duty 
 and wisdom also. 
 
 And yet notwithstanding the science of government 
 itself is only a compromise between a state of nature 
 and a state of law, in which each individual citizen sur- 
 renders some of his natural in order that all may enjoy 
 their legal rights, yet there are fools in the world and 
 plenty of them, who are so bent on carrying their own 
 points that they would reduce society and government to 
 a state of absolute chaos rather than see their pet pro- 
 jects miscarried. Take the United States for an illus- 
 tration. No two sections of it have interests which are 
 identical; the one is engrossed in manufactures, another 
 in mining, and a third in agriculture. And yet the 
 
188 
 
 Uncompromising Old Fool of a politician would legis- 
 late altogether in the interest of his own section and 
 allow all the others to go to to Guinea. 
 
 It goes without saying that the Uncompromising Old 
 Fool is always a sectional one. If he had his habitation 
 in the moon, he would deny the Sun as a source of light 
 and substituted his own gas for that luminary. Utterly 
 unable it seems to make any allowances for differences 
 arising from early associations and present environments, 
 he would make, if he could, Hayti of one section of the 
 Union and a Caucasia of the rest, provided he is included 
 in the rest. 
 
 In the domain of morals he is equally intolerant, 
 imagining that he is a saint and that his peculiar species 
 of holiness should be the rule of life, he forbids the read- 
 ing of even Shakspeare, while as to Henry Fielding, he 
 would not touch him for anything in reason. Although 
 all talent is Heaven-sent and God-given, he would repress 
 it unless it was exercised in channels that suit his own 
 notions. He would rather hear some other Uncompro- 
 mising Old Fool twanging psalms through his nose than 
 the most entrancing operatic music that ever flowed from 
 the lips of a Jenny Lind, Adelina Patti or a Christine 
 Nilsson. He would rather hear the drawling of some 
 Uncompromising Old Fool of a preacher than to listen 
 to the matchless eloquence of Demosthenes on a secular 
 subject. And yet this Old Fool is lacking in the one 
 thing needful — love. The Lord himself encountered 
 him here on earth, and addressed him as follows : " Woe 
 unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ! for you pay 
 tithes of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted 
 the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy and 
 faith ; these ought ye to have done and not to leave the 
 
189 
 
 other undone. Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat 
 and swallow a camel." 
 
 . In theology, it is the same way. Instead of trying to 
 make his creed harmonize with the Bible, he endeavors 
 to make the Bible support his belief. In consequence, 
 he will always quote one text which may seem to support 
 his theory and pass by a dozen which flatly contra- 
 dict it. 
 
 When the Uncompromising Old Fool is a fashionable 
 worldling, he would sacrifice Heaven itself rather than 
 compromise his social position. And so he is through 
 the whole catalogue of human life. And yet you might 
 as well try to reason with a stock or a stone. AH we can 
 do for such an Old Fool is to recommend the following 
 lines of sage advice, if not good poetry. 
 
 " A thankless task has he who tries 
 To chip and model 
 The world to just the form and size 
 Of his own noddle. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE CONTROVERSIAL OLD FOOL. 
 
 When Ahab exclaimed, " Oh, that mine enemy would 
 write a book," he little dreamed his wish would be 
 quoted in all ages as a master stroke of revenge. But 
 the satisfaction of having your enemy write a book has 
 its limitations, and one of the principle ones is that you 
 do not write one in reply. If you do, that at once knocks 
 all the "fat in the fire," and you go in with it. Silence 
 is the most complete, the most terrific revenge. Nothing 
 hurts an assailant so bad as to be utterly ignored. It is 
 a complete assassination of his proudest hopes. No fow- 
 ler ever spread his net for a bird and saw it fly away, no 
 
190 
 
 spider ever wove its cunning web to entangle a fly and 
 saw it escape its meshes with more chagrin than does the 
 Controversial Old Fool when nobody will notice him: 
 But alas ! All the fools are not dead, and Controversial 
 Old Fool Number Two replies to Controversial Old Fool 
 Number One, and soon the whole reading public is in a 
 great stir to see the issue. Sometimes two ministers of 
 the Gospel, both professed followers of the meek and 
 lowly Jesus, both Protestants, will maul each other un- 
 mercifully for weeks at a time, and as the boys say, make 
 " the fur fly " at every round. Speaking of " fur," the 
 Controversial Old Fool very much resembles a cat any- 
 way, as the latter is armed with just such weapons as are 
 sufficient for small and defenseless game, and is more- 
 over said to possess nine li\es. Just so with the Contro- 
 versial Old Fool. His claws are only long enough to 
 scratch or to enable him to "climb a tree "when he 
 scents danger, while he has as many if not more lives 
 than the cat A dead Controversial Old Fool is not to 
 be found. As long as the hinges of his jawbones are in 
 working order, or he can manage to set pen to paper he 
 will be found pelting somebody or something. Like the 
 typical Irishman at Donnj brook Fair, with shillalah in 
 hand, he will hit a head whenever he sees one. Now, 
 what on earth, but a conceit that he knows it all could 
 ever prompt him. But he will perhaps reply, "I must 
 defend the truth." All we have to say in regard to this 
 is that if Truth could speak she would no doubt say : 
 ^' Save me from my friends." And well she might, for 
 generally before he is done defending here, her garments 
 are deflled with mud from head to foot. Not one man 
 in a million is competent to be a controversialist, and 
 yet the name of the Controversial Old Fool is Legion. 
 
191 
 
 If he edits a newspaper, he 's forever and eternally knock- 
 ing chips off somebody's head, and trying to stir up 
 strife. If a preacher, he is always harping on the dis- 
 tinctive doctrines of some church other than his own. If 
 a doctor, at a consultation of five physicians, he will be 
 the first man to controvert the opinions of the other four 
 and will debate the point, if necessary, until the patient 
 dies, before he will give in. If a politician, no matter 
 what other policy the leaders may adopt, he will have 
 one of his own. If he has a wife, she would better be 
 in — Heaven than to dispute his words as to the best way 
 to bake bread, raise an infant, or darn old socks, even if 
 at the same time he does not buy a pound of lard, pro- 
 vide a cow, nor have a sheep or pound of wool to his 
 name. 
 
 But to follow him in all his ramifications were impos- 
 sible. Were it only possible to tolerate him for the sake 
 of amusement, there would be the same excuse for him as 
 gamecocks, bulldogs and pugilists. But to pet him and 
 inflate his already prodigious vanity by calling him a 
 Champion of the Truth is monstrous. Sometimes this 
 P. T. D. (Professional Truth Defender) is an LL. D., 
 but not often. More frequently he is what he terms 
 himself, "a self-made man," and this in a great measure 
 accounts for his phenomenal vanity, for of all vain men, 
 whose conceit is insufferable, that of the so-called " self- 
 made man" is the worst. So bad, in fact, that it re- 
 quired a whole chapter to describe him, which we have 
 already done. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE SE]!?^SATIONAL OLD FOOL. 
 
 The historian of the future will undoubtedly pro- 
 nounce the 19th century one of invention. In no other 
 
192 
 
 country of the world has the inventive genius of man 
 been so alert and its efforts so signally rewarded as in 
 this. Telephones, phonographs, sewing and knitting 
 and weaving machines, and thousands of others, are in 
 operation for shortening distance, making work easier, 
 and life more comfortable, and still invention goes on. 
 
 But as in the rear of e^reat armies there is always a 
 multitude of calones or camp-followers who are on hand 
 promptly at the dose of the battle to plunder, and who, 
 during the time of danger, are conspicuous by their ab- 
 sence, so in the great march of invention there is always 
 a hungry contingent ready to seize upon the spoils of the 
 mind and appropriate them to their own use. But not 
 to be led away from the main idea by any digression, 
 however pleasing or inviting, we will take one case as an 
 illustration. When Mrs. Galvani, whose husband, as 
 well as herself, was fond of frog-legs, was preparing 
 their favorite dish in her husband's laboratory, and when 
 by accident the frog, which had been skinned, came in 
 contact with an electric wire, and at once proceeded to 
 hop around in the most approved fashion, she, although 
 a philosopher's wife, was nearly frightened out of her 
 wits. Her husband, hearing her call, at once ran to the 
 house to see what was the matter, and was scarcely less 
 astonished than she was when he beheld this singular 
 spectacle. This singular accident revealed a new science 
 known as galvanism. As soon as it was firmly estab- 
 lished, a device known as a "shocking machine" was in- 
 vented, and from that day to this the virtues of "shocks" 
 for certain classes of diseases have been steadily advo- 
 cated. As a machine must be good for something, and 
 as there was nothing else in sight to which it could be 
 turned, it was relegated to that terra incognita, nervous 
 affections, and pronounced a specific. As the hair of a 
 
193 
 
 dog is said to be good foi its bite, which is the ruling 
 axiom of that select body of cranks miscalled homoepaths, 
 of course a nervous person must be shocked in order to 
 quiet him. 
 
 Now, although it may seem a little singular, yet it is 
 a fact, that the intellectual and moral worlds have their 
 "shocking machines" also, and the effects produced are 
 almost identical with those in the physical world. As 
 in the case of the dead frog hopping around under the 
 touch of a galvanic wire, so have we seen men and women 
 who were as dead, spiritually, as the frog physically^ 
 moving about and giving every evidence of being alive. 
 That only the mechanical nature of the mind, and not 
 the spiritual life of the soul, had been awakened, was 
 proven by the fact that as soon as the "shocking ma- 
 chine" was removed, they at once relapsed into their nor- 
 mal state of moral deadness. 
 
 To go into an analysis of the causes by which this ef- 
 fect is produced, would necessarily carry us into the do- 
 main of psychology and metaphysics, and as we are not 
 engaged at present in writing a treatise on those fasci- 
 nating subjects, we forbear making any extended obser- 
 vations in that direction, and will content ourselves by 
 calling attention to a few well-known facts. For in- 
 stance, in witnessing results which bear no seeming re- 
 lation to their causes, but which seem a flat contradic- 
 tion to them, the human mind is not only perplexed, but 
 astonished. All men are cognizant of this fact, and 
 hence every people has its wonder-workers. In the far 
 East the juggler and the snake charmer are to be found; 
 in Africa the voodoo doctor and the conjurer; among the 
 Indians the medicine man, and among Americans, Euro- 
 peans and other civilized nations the prestidigitateur. 
 
194 
 
 They are all of a feather, and their ability is rated by 
 the amount of astonishmeDt and consequent sensation 
 each one is able to produce. Have we one in the moral 
 world anything akin to all this. Horrible to relate we 
 have. It is the Sensational Old Fool in the pulpit. 
 
 This species of the Same Old Fool is as ancient as the 
 rest. He is not the product of circumstances as many un- 
 thinking people suppose, but the result of an art, which 
 none understand better than himself. Having thoroughly 
 studied and mastered the science of sensations ha is ready 
 for business at the old stand, vacated by his predecessor, 
 whose reason for vacation will be given in the proper 
 place. Let us examine his mode of proceedure before 
 describing him in detail. Having at the outset of his 
 career, perceived that people who preached the gospel in 
 the good old-fashioned way were unsuccessful from his 
 point of view, and as success outweighs every other con- 
 sideration, he deliberately mapped out in his own mind 
 his plan of campaign. Being too ambitious to preach 
 without fame, he sets his wits to work as to the best 
 methods of procuring it. Realizing that he lacks the 
 matter to make him great, he contrives a method to make 
 himself notorious, and it may be remarked that notoriety 
 is the same thing to a vulgar mind as just fame is to a 
 great one. Some men glory as much in shame as others 
 do in honor. This point being decided he formulates 
 his method. AVell knowing that the unthinking multi- 
 tude knows no difference between mechanical life and 
 genuine, and unable to draw the line between sensations 
 produced through mechanical agency, and deep feeling 
 wrought by the Divine Spirit, he usually begins his 
 campaign by selecting some obscure passage of Scripture, 
 which apart from the context, may be made to mean 
 
195 
 
 anything or nothing. This is Shock Number One. The 
 interpretation he gives of it is so singular as to consti- 
 tute Shock Number Two. His manner is Shock Num- 
 ber Three, and his language, facial play and absurd 
 gestures constitute three additional shocks, and before he 
 is done he has achieved the reputation of being a very 
 shocking pnacher. Then the battle begins in earnest. 
 The truly converted and therefore conservative members 
 of the church, who do not endorse his methods, and 
 who through fear of hindering what may be God's 
 work, keep silent, the worldly minded Athenians in the 
 church sound the praises of this modern wonder-worker. 
 The sinners crowd with church members to hear him; 
 vast choirs are arranged to give him a vocal lift; all the 
 pastors of the city and country for miles around gather to 
 see him give the Devil a black eye; the sinners come out 
 to hear him excoriate the saints and wallop the hypocrites, 
 iind for the time being, no circus ever struck the town with 
 such force as the Sensational Old Fool. Amenable to no 
 body in particular, he becomes a privileged character 
 and fays what he pleases. He is the ring master as well 
 as the clown of the whole performance, and cracks his 
 whip as well as his jokes after the most approved circus 
 fashion. The performance is repeated all over the coun- 
 try and by the time he makes his round no man in the 
 United States, with possibly the exception of P. T. Bar- 
 num or Benjamin F. Butler, was ever better advertised. 
 But violent things never last long and so he soon be- 
 gins either to wane or else in order to sustain himself, 
 becomes so shocking that his most devout worshipers 
 lose faith in him and forsake him and soon he falls be- 
 hind some new star in the Sensational firmament and is 
 forgotten. Poor Fool. For the Circean draught of fool- 
 
196 
 
 ish and sinful popular applause he ruins the dignity of 
 his high calling, compromises the church of God, jeopar- 
 dizes the salvation of his own soul, puts his friends in a 
 false position, and ends his own career by realizing that 
 he is the greatest fraud of the century. But he deserves 
 no pity. Having trifled with the holiest affections of 
 the human heart, having made the gospel of Jesus the 
 slang of the street, having ridiculed almost out of exist- 
 ence the barriers, which have hitherto encircled as with 
 a halo of glory, the humble ministers of Jesus Christ let 
 him eat the Dead Sea apples of his misspent life in ob- 
 livion with none so poor as to do him reverence. 
 
 CHAPTEK IX. 
 
 THE SUPERSTITIOUS OLD FOOL. 
 
 It has been said that man is a religious animal. Now, 
 strange as it may appear, this is nearer true in propor- 
 tion as he is a savage than at any subsequent period, 
 with this marked difference, or qualification rather, that 
 the word "Religion," in his case, is only another name 
 for Superstition. We will not, however, single out the 
 Superstitious Old Fool of a heathen, as the subject of 
 the present chapter, for he has some excuse for his folly, 
 Neither are we writing anything to amuse the Sceptical 
 Old Fool, who may chance to read it, for he has less ex- 
 cuse for being irreligious than the Superstitious Old 
 Fool has for being too superstitious. Having too much 
 religion is bad ; having too little is worse, but having 
 none at all is infamous. But we may as well say now 
 as later on, that we have never seen that man or woman 
 who had too much genuine religion. They are not to be 
 found. There is a class of people, amid all the light of 
 
197 
 
 gospel liberty, who still believe in fables, are wise above 
 what is written, and will not listen to reason. This 
 kind of an Old Fool is capable of believing anything in 
 one direction, and utterly incapable of accepting the 
 plainest dictates of common sense in another. When 
 the Superstitious Old Fool is in the majority, he is a 
 dangerous creature, as history fully attests. The only 
 reason he is harmless now is because he is in a minority. 
 J3ut to show to what absurdities the Superstitious Old 
 Fool can lead his followers, a fine example, culled from 
 a million will be sufficient. 
 
 A well-known writer of the sixteenth century says : 
 ^* Jews are next to Gentiles for antiquity and supersti- 
 tion. I presume no nation under heaven can be more 
 sottish, ignorant, blind, superstitious, willful, obstinate 
 and peevish, tiring themselves with vain ceremonies to 
 no purpose. He that shall but read their Rabbin's ridi- 
 culous comments, their strange interpretations of Scrip- 
 tures, their absurd ceremonies, fables, childish tales 
 which they steadfastly believe, will hardly think they 
 are rational human beings. Their foolish customs when 
 they rise in the morning ; how they prepare themselves 
 for prayer, for meat, with what superstitious washing. 
 Last of all their expectation of their Messiah, and those 
 figments, miracles, vain earthly pomp that shall attend 
 Him, as how He shall terrify the Gentiles, and overcome 
 them by new diseases, how Michael, the archangel, shall 
 sound his trumpet, how he shall gather the Jews in the 
 Holy Land and there make them a great banquet, 
 wherein shall be served all the beasts, birds and fishes 
 that ever God made, as well as a cup of wine that grew 
 in Paradise, and which has been kept in Adam's cellar 
 €ver since. At the first course shall be served that o^reat 
 
198 
 
 ox named in the 4th chapter of Job, 10th verse, that 
 feeds every day on a thousand hills ; that great leviathan 
 mentioned by David in Psalms, 1st chapter, .1st verse^ 
 and a great bird that laid an egg so big that by chance^ 
 tumbling out of the nest, it knocked down three hun- 
 dred tali cedars, and breaking as it fell, drowned one 
 hundred and sixty villages. This bird stood up to the 
 knees in the sea, and the sea was so deep a hatchet would 
 not fall to the bottom in seven years. Of their Messiah's 
 wives and children, because 'tis written in the Psalm^ 
 '•Kings' daughters shall attend him, and that one stu- 
 pendious fiction among the rest. 
 
 AVhen a Roman prince asked of Rabbi Jehosua 
 Ben Hanania ' Why the Jews' God was compared to a 
 lion,' he made answer, ' He was compared to no ordinary 
 lion, but to one in the wood, Ela, which when the priest 
 desired to iee, the Rabbin, prayed he might, and forth- 
 with the lion set forward. Bat when he was four hun- 
 dred miles from Rome he roared, and all the pregnant 
 women in Rome miscarried with fright, and all the walls 
 of the city fell down, and when he came a hundred 
 miles ner.rer, and roared the second time, their teeth fell 
 out of their heads, and the emperor fell dead.'" 
 
 This one instance of a past age will suffice. We are 
 dealing with the Superstitious Old Fool of to-day — the 
 lineal descendant of this grimy monster. But some one 
 will say, " Where is the Superstitious Old Fool of to- 
 day ?" To which, by way of answer, we ask. What is 
 the Romish heresy but one vast mass of superstition^ 
 compounded of equal parts of ignorance, credulity, pa- 
 ganism and intellectual babyhood, as to the laity, and of 
 cunning ambition, self-seeking politics and Machiavel- 
 lian morals en the part of its leaders, from the Pope 
 
199 
 
 down to the lazy, Christless monk, who lives in luxury 
 upon the hard earnings of a superstitious peasantry? 
 
 Has she changed not ? Yea, verily, in her methods, 
 but not in her principles. Can the leopard change his 
 spots or the Ethiopian his skin ? Can a man repent, un- 
 less he recant his errors and implore forgiveness? Has 
 the Church of Rome ever done so ? Has she ever done 
 so much as Judas in the way of reparation, for even he 
 admitted that he had sinned in betraying the "innocent 
 blood." Has the Modern Babylon ever condemned by 
 council or otherwise, the doings of Catherine de Medici 
 or the Duke of Alva? Has Leo renounced the right to 
 burn heretics under certain contingencies ? Not much. 
 On the contrary, what do we see to-day? Three hundred 
 years ago. Let us look on that picture first, and then 
 on this. What were they doing then ? Let anothrr an- 
 swer : " That high priest of Rome, the dam of that mon- 
 strous and superstitious brood, the bull-bellowing Pope, 
 which now rages in the West, that thne-headed Cer- 
 berus hath played his part. Whose religion is mere pol- 
 icy, a state wholly composed of superstition and wit, and 
 wants nothing but wit and superstitisn to maintain it; 
 that uses colleges and religious houses to as good pur- 
 pose as forts and castles, and does more by a company of 
 scribbling parasites, fiery-spirited friars, zealous anchor- 
 ites, hypocritical professors, and those pretorian cohorts, 
 his Janizary Jesuits, and that dissolute society as Long- 
 in us terms it, ^Postremos diaboli co7iatus et sacculi ex cre- 
 /ne7itu7)i,' that now stand in the forefront of the battle, 
 will have a monopoly of and engross all other learning, 
 in divinity, and fight alone almost, (for the rest are but 
 his dromedaries and asses) than he ever could have done 
 by garrison and armies. What power of prince or penal 
 
200 
 
 law could enforce men to do that which for conscience 
 sake they will voluntary undergo. They fast from flesh, 
 abstain from marriage, rise to their prayers at midnight, 
 whip themselves, abandon the world, incur willful pov- 
 erty, perform canonical and blind obedience, prostrate 
 their goods, fortunes, bodies, lives and offer up them- 
 selves at their superior's feet at his command. What so 
 powerful an engine as superstition ! Which they (the 
 leaders, well knowing) are of no religion at all them- 
 selves, for as Calvin rightly suspects, the tenor and prac- 
 tice of their lives prove they hold there is no God, and 
 Leo X did, Hildebrand the magician, Julian II, were athe- 
 ists, and which the common proverb among them proves, 
 to-wit, the worst Christians of Italy are the Romans, of 
 the Romans the priests are the most worthless, and the 
 most worthless among the priests are chosen cardinals, 
 and the worst of the cardinals is chosen Pope, and he is 
 generally an epicurean as most of the Popes are infidels 
 and Lucianists, for so they think and believe, and what 
 is said of Christ to be fables nnd impostures; Heayen 
 and Hell, Day of Judgment are all dreams, toys and old 
 wives' tales. Yet they use them as so many whetstones 
 to make their tools (the inferior priests and laity) yet 
 cut not themselves. Of no religion at all themselves, 
 they will make all others most devout and superstitious. 
 By promises and threats they compel, enforce and lead 
 their devotees by their noses, like so many bears in a 
 line, while at the same time their object is not to advance 
 God's kingdom, seek his glory, but to enlarge, enrich 
 and advance themselves, and thus compel all nations to 
 stand in awe and live in subjection to the See of Rome. 
 For what else do they care ? If the world wishes to be 
 deceived, let it be deceived. There are some things true, 
 
201 
 
 others false, which they will not have the commoDalty 
 take note of. As proof, witness their intolerable forge- 
 ries, poperies, fooleries, unrighteous subtleties, impos- 
 tures, illusions, new doctrine?, paradoxes, traditions, 
 false miracles, which they have forged to enthrall, cir- 
 cumvent and subjugate them, to maintain their own 
 estates. At one time by bulls, pardons, indulgences and 
 their doctrine of good works, that by promising their 
 superstitious followers a happy life hereafter they may 
 fleece him out of everything they have now, and so spur 
 on this superstitious horse, he runs himself blind and is 
 an ass to carry burdens. They have so amplified Peter's 
 Pence that from a poor bishop he is become king of 
 kings and lord of lords, a demigod, as canonists make 
 him (Felinus and the rest) above God himself. And for 
 his wealth, he is not inferior to kings. His cardinals 
 are companions of princes, and in every kingdom almost 
 his abbotts, pious monks, friars and clergy have almost 
 eaten the laity out of house and home, and gotten nearly 
 all their money besides. In France, as Bcdin gives us 
 to understand, their revenues are 12,300,000 pounds, and 
 of twelve parts of revenue the church possesses seven. 
 The Jesuits, a new sect, begun in this century, [16th] 
 have three or four hundred colleges in Europe, and more 
 revenue than many a princess. How many towns in 
 every kingdom hath superstition enriched ! What a 
 deal of money by musty relicts, images, idolatry, have 
 their mass-priests engaossed, and what sums have they 
 scraped by their other tricks! Now if any of these, their 
 juggling, tricks or impositions be exposed or called in 
 question ; if a magnanimous or zealous Luther, an "hero- 
 ical Luther," as Dithmarus calls him, dare touch the 
 monk's bellies, all is in a combustion, all is in an uproar. 
 
202 
 
 Demetrius and his associates are ready to pull him to 
 pieces to keep up their trades, and the air again resounds 
 as in the beginning of Christianity, "Great is Diana of 
 the Ephesians !" 
 
 " Now for their authority. What by auricular con- 
 fession, satisfaction, penances, Peter's Keys, thunderings, 
 excommunications and roaring bulls, this high-priest of 
 Eome, shaking his Gorgon's head, hath so terrified the 
 souls of men, insulted majesty itself, and swag- 
 gered generally over all Europe for many ages, 
 has contrived to hold all in slavish subjection, 
 Avhile living, and cast a baleful shadow even upon 
 their departed ghosts. The Bishop of Rome, saith 8ta- 
 pleton, one of his parasites, hath done that without arms 
 which Roman emperors could not have done with forty 
 legions of soldiers, deposed kings and crowned them 
 again with his foot. * 'Tis a wonder,' says Machiavel, 
 in his history of Florence, 'what slaving King Henry II 
 endured for the death of Thomas a Becket, what things 
 were required by the Pope, and how he submitted to 
 indignities that even a private man would not endure, 
 all through superstition.' Henry IV disposed of his em- 
 pire, stood barefooted with his wife at the gates 
 of Canossa. The Emperor Frederick was trodden 
 on by Pope Alexander III; another held Adrian's 
 stirrup. King John kissed the knees of Pandolphus, 
 the Pope's legate. What impelled the Crusades, led by 
 that Superstitious Old Fool, " Peter the Hermit, " but 
 His Holiness. What makes them so freely venture their 
 lives, leave their native land, seek martyrdom, but super- 
 stition ! AVhat makes them assassins, to meet death, to 
 murder kings, but a false persuasion of merit of canon- 
 ical or blind obedience which they instil into them and 
 
203 
 
 animate them by strange illusions, hope of being mar- 
 tyrs and saints ? Such pretty feats does the devil work 
 by priests." 
 
 Such was the position of the Superstitious Old Fool 
 less than three hundred years ago. How is he to-day ? 
 We answer, substantially the same, with this exception : 
 The Superstititious Old Fool is shorn of the greater part 
 of his temporal power, and as he has never had enough 
 of spiritual since the 6th century — the beginning of 
 Roman usurpation of the supreme power in things tem- 
 poral — he is not so dangerous as formerly, though he 
 still does business at the same old &tand in a modified 
 way. Owing to a combination of circumstances, such 
 as an open Bible, scientific liberty and the spread of 
 truth generally, all of which he did his best to retard, 
 superstition has ceased to be rampant in professedly 
 Christain countries, and as Romanism can only thrive 
 where ignorance prevails the claws of the papal tiger 
 have been drawn in until the world imagines that the 
 beast of the Apocalypse had become a lamb in gentle- 
 ness. All of this is only shamming, however. Human 
 policy may change, but human nature without God's 
 grace never does. Why only a few years ago a few scien- 
 tific and patriotic Italians proposed to commemorate the 
 anniversary of Bruno, a distinguished countryman of 
 theirs, by erecting a monument to his memory, and His 
 Holiness nearly went into hysterics over it, because 
 Bruno had dared to diit'er from the Antichrist of his 
 day. Leo's wrath, impotent as it was, nevertheless was 
 an echo from the past, when men of science were throt- 
 tled like so many monsters. Why, even Copernicus, the 
 colossus of the world in his day, was afraid to let his 
 great work, the "System of the Stellar Universe," see 
 
204 
 
 the light until after he was dead, for fear that he him- 
 self would be burnt at the stake; and to-day, while 
 admitting Science and Protestantism by compulsion, yet 
 at heart she hates both. How does she live? Are all 
 the fools dead ? Look at her laity still bowing and 
 scraping at the priest, look at the priest, making obei- 
 sance to the cardinal, look at the cardinal cringing and 
 crouching before the pope. Were St. Peter alive to-day 
 he would doubtless cry out, as did his co-workers, Barna- 
 bas and Paul, under similar circumstances at Lystra, 
 " Sirs ! Why do ye these things? For we are men of like 
 passions with you, and preach unto you that you should 
 turn from these vanities to the living God, which made 
 Heaven and earth, and the sea and all things that are 
 therein." Now, what has been the result of such con- 
 duct on the part of the Superstitious Old Fool ? It has 
 either compelled the intellectual giants within its own 
 fold in all ages either to recant their most positive con- 
 victions, as in the case of Galileo, or else leave the church 
 and suffer persecution while living, and be denied sepul- 
 ture in the cemeteries of their Catholic ancestors. Super- 
 stition on the one hand and hypocrisy on the other have 
 thus made more infidels and sceptics than all the Vol- 
 neys, V^oltaires and IngersoUs who ever lived. Nay more, 
 we veaily believe that if Volney, V'oltaire, Des Cartes and 
 D'Alembert offer any plea in the day of judgment why 
 sentence should not be passed upon them, that plea will 
 be the Papacy and the corrupt Christianity it blazoned 
 forth to the world as the truth in their day. Science 
 and true religion can no more exist with the papacy than 
 light with darkness. Let no one imagine, however, that 
 there have not been and still are good Catholics. There 
 have been thousands. But at the same time, there is 
 
205 
 
 nothing good in Roman Catholicism ^jer se. Apart from 
 a modicum of truth, which it is compelled to admit in 
 order to be distinguished from paganism pure and sim- 
 ple, it is simply a system of idolatry and hero-worship of 
 heathen ages, so modified by necessity as to include cer- 
 tain rational Nineteenth Century ideas to prevent it from, 
 becoming the laughing-stock of the age. 
 
 But some one may ask, "Why, since it survives and 
 manifests so much subtilty, should it be called the 
 Superstitious Old Fool ?'■ For the best of reasons. Have 
 we not stated time and again in this veracious catalogue 
 that the fool thinks he knows it all, and has not His 
 Holiness proclaimed himself infallible? Have you ever 
 seen an old fool in your life who did not claim the same 
 thing ? Admitting this to be true in the case of every 
 other old fool, why deny it in the most conspicuous in- 
 stance of all. But having paid our respects at length 
 to the Superstitious Old Fool, we will now proceed to do 
 the same for the Sceptical Old Fool. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE SCEPTICAL OLD FOOL. 
 
 To scepticism in its best sense the world is indebted 
 for nearly all of its greatest discoveries. It is doubtless 
 owing to this fact that The Sceptical Old Fool has come 
 to the front in the present age as the acme of human 
 perfection. Because the Superistitious Old Fools in past 
 ages frowned upon daring investigators in science, who 
 have since been classed antong "the immortals," the 
 Sceptical Old Fool of to-day imagines that a hundred 
 years hence he too will shine as a bright star in that 
 constellation of genius, which now contains the names 
 
206 
 
 of men whom "the world will not willingly let die." 
 Poor Old Fool ! As all the planets receive their light 
 from the sun, so he only shines in a borrowed one. Be- 
 cause Galileo dared to promulgate scientific truth in his 
 day when priestly superstition was rampant, he imagines 
 that by assaulting the church of God to-day that a cen- 
 tury hence some one will write a history of his. life and 
 claim for him that he demolished superistition. The 
 Old Goose ! He forgets that he is one of the most 
 superistitious men of the day to imagine such a thing 
 concerning himself. 
 
 But it is not the Sceptical Old Fool as to religion alone 
 whom we are after. It is our intention, as one whose 
 object is truth, the whole truth and nothing but the 
 truth, to correct a very common mistake in regard to 
 scepticism generally, and when we have done so to the 
 best of our ability we will again return to our mutton, as 
 the phrase goes. A great many people are under the 
 amazing error that it requires considerable natural 
 ability as well as learning to become a sceptic. How 
 such an absurd idea ever got abroad in the world, es- 
 pecially when it is contrary to the experience of nearly 
 all intelligent people, is indeed a mystery. Where one 
 genuine man exists who is sceptically inclined, and who, 
 after doubting, never rests satisfied until something con- 
 sonant to reason or something better is attained in place 
 of that concerning which the doubt arose, there are at 
 least one hundred Sceptical Old Fools who hoot at the 
 idea of the possibility of inventing anything better than 
 ts'hat we now have, or disco versng any truths in the fu- 
 ture. 'I'hey have doubted about everything until that 
 faculty of the human mind which admits moral evidence 
 has become atrophied as it were and is no longer capable 
 
207 
 
 of furnisning proof to their darkened understandings. 
 And yet a great many silly people are under the impres- 
 sion that it is an evidence of brains to be one of these 
 Sceptical Old Fools. Such scepticism as this and want 
 of sense go hand in hand. We have one in our mind's 
 eye now, who could gather all the fools in his neighbor- 
 hood together on Sunday to hear him tear Revelation 
 to pieces, and yet on that very subject he was one of the 
 most ignorant of men. He attacked the morality of the 
 Bible and yet at the same time was so lax in his own as 
 to live in open adultry. Still all the other fools thought 
 he had lots of sense. They made a very common mis- 
 take, for a great many people think sense and meanness 
 are the same. Even when one of these Sceptical Old 
 Fools becomes converted and joins the church he seldom 
 amounts to anything. The first one that ever did, 
 Thomas Didymus, was never heard from afterwards as 
 he left no gospel behind him and if he is mentioned by 
 the other apostles, except cursorily, we cannot recall it. 
 And so it has always been. The daring investigator 
 may doubt, but he leaves something better than that to 
 posterity. The Sceptical Old Fool holds one end of the 
 rope and the Superstitious Old Fool holds the other, 
 and as they are about equally matched in folly, to say 
 the least, neither the one or the other will yield an inch. 
 The truth of the business is they should both be yoked 
 together, and perhaps in the course of time one might be 
 persuaded to believe a little more, and the other a little 
 less and thereby establish thi^t harmony which should 
 exist between true yoke-fellows. 
 
208 
 OHAPTEE XL 
 
 THE PROGRESSIVE THEOLOGY OLD FOOL. 
 
 While it is conceded that humanly speaking there is 
 nothing absolutely true, yet the principles from which 
 truth is declared must be so, or there would be no such 
 thing as right reasoning possible to man. For in- 
 stance we are told that God cannot lie. This being so, 
 it would follow that anything He chooses to communi- 
 cate to us in His Word is necessarily true. Not true be- 
 cause consonant to human reason. Not even true be- 
 cause a logical sequence follows the premise laid down, 
 not true because it is handed down from antiquity. But 
 as we have already said it is true because it cannot be 
 false, unless God is false, which is impossible. Now 
 certain plain and undeniable propositions are laid down 
 in the Word of God, which will admit of but one inter- 
 pretation. To say they will admit of two would destroy 
 their entire force as a commandment or doctrine, as in 
 that case no one could absolutely decide as to what was 
 commanded or taught. These are the plan of salvation, 
 the system of rewards and punishment and the final 
 judgment. But God, as if mindful of the perversion of 
 the human intellect, seeing how it would distort or 
 explain away these great truths, has communicated not 
 once, but all through the Scriptures these essential 
 truths in language which can have but one meaning. 
 
 And yet the progressive Theology Old Fool, wi^h his 
 higher criticism and the like professes to have discovered 
 to have read between the lines as it were, of the Word of 
 God itself, and to have divined the mind of God, con- 
 trary to his own expressed declaration contained in that 
 Word. We are not aware that this Old Fool claims to 
 
209 
 
 have had an illumination by the Spirit of God, by which 
 we are informed in the Scriptures he can alone know the 
 mind of God, but on the contrary to have made his dis- 
 covery by a merely human agency, which he is pleased 
 to term The Higher Criticism. If one were to judge by 
 the literature of the present time, and had no acquain- 
 tance with that of the past, he would very likely con- 
 clude that the Progressive Theology Old Fool was a 
 brand new specimen. A sad mistake, however, this 
 would be, as it is on evidence that St. Paul encountered 
 him at Ephesus and Corinth over 1800 years ago, and he 
 was trying then precisely what he attempts now — to 
 establish another gospel in place of the true one. And 
 although their point of attack may have been different, 
 the purpose was the same. If we judge correctly he is 
 contending to-day for the idea that Hell is not endless, 
 neither is Heaven, for the same language applied to ex- 
 press the endless duration of the one is used with refer- 
 ence to the other. As the logicians would say he would 
 prove too much. 
 
 We have always noticed thet when a man begins to 
 realize that he deserves to go to Hell, he does one of two 
 things. He either repents of his sins, and thereby flees 
 from the wrath to come, or else he goes to arguing with 
 every one he meets and tries to prove there is no hell to 
 shun. Being miserable himself he wents all the com- 
 pany he can get. But these Progressive Theology Old 
 Fools are afraid to go as far as that and try to compro- 
 mise the matter by saying that while there is such a 
 thing as future punishment, it is not endless, but length- 
 ened or shortened in proportion to one's guilt. Kealiz- 
 ing that the idea of endless punishment is distasteful to 
 sinners in the church as well as out of it, and having 
 
210 
 
 some respect for the Word of God, despite his Higher 
 Criticism, he strikes a happy medium by inculcating 
 the modified interpretation of humanity who believe in 
 salvation by works. We are told in the Scriptures that 
 Christ was an all sufficient propitiation for our sins, but 
 these Old Fools prefer it would seem to expiate their 
 guilt themselves in Hell rather than to have had it done 
 on Calvary by another. 
 
 But to follow this Old Fool through all his dreary, 
 transcendental nonsense is a wearying task, and we will 
 conclude the subject by saying that while he is progres- 
 sive as to his theology, he is generally the reverse as to 
 growth in grace and holy living, and while exceedingly 
 liberal as to his opinions, yet as a general rule he is ex- 
 ceedingly orthodox as to his pocket book. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE SAlfCTIFIED OLD FOOL. 
 
 As might be expected, seeing that the Same Old Fool 
 knows it all, that another class of the same genus would 
 feel it all, and while Christians admit religious feeling 
 as an evidence of spiritual life, in the same way that 
 bodily feeling is an evidence of physical life, yet no one 
 with any sense at all keeps his hand upon his pulse all 
 the time to see whether he is alive or not. The fact 
 that he is able to move, labor, eat and sleep is sufficient 
 evidence that the body is not dead. 
 
 The Sanctified Old Fool, however, discards all exter- 
 nal evidence such as doing good to the poor, living 
 soberly and righteously in this present evil world, grow- 
 ing in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and 
 Saviour, Jesus Christ, denies any conflict whatsoever 
 
211 
 
 with the world, the flesh, and the Devil, and claims to 
 have an internal evidence that none of these things move 
 him. He has an instantaneous process which eliminates 
 every carnal desire and makes him holy at once. Al- 
 though the injunction is, "Grow is grace," he believes in 
 jumping in. 
 
 Now the only trouble with The Sanctified Old Fcol is 
 that his belief on this point is contrary to the express 
 testimony of the Word of God in a hundred places, 
 while only a far-fetched interpretation of a few obscure 
 passages of Scripture can be distorted in favor of his po- 
 sition. But as he substitutes feeling for fact, the only 
 way to get a true conclusion of the whole matter is to 
 watch him. Now it would seem that if there were an in- 
 dividual on the globe who could bear watching it would 
 be a sanctified person. And yet we have known one of 
 these Old Fools who professed entire sanctification to lie 
 abed every morning until his wife had kindled the fire, 
 fed the stock, and gotten his breakfast. He was abso- 
 lutely too pious to treat the wife of his bosom with com- 
 mon courtesy. But when descanting on his favorite 
 topic, he grew eloquent if not sublime, and to hear him 
 bragging on the blessedness of his soul one would wonder 
 that a chariot of fire did not descend and take him to 
 the Seventh Heaven at once. 
 
 Several years ago the writer of these sketches was a 
 resident of one of our great cities. He heard of this 
 sanctification craze and determined to investigate it. A 
 large tent capable of holding 1500 people had been 
 erected on one of the public squares in which Holiness 
 Meetings, so-called, were being held nightly. He failed 
 to attend these meetings, but seeing a notice in an even- 
 ing paper of one of this kind to be held at the house of 
 
212 
 
 a friend, he attended. Imagine his surprise when he 
 entered the room to find the Mercnrins of the meeting 
 one N , a voluble Irishman whom he had encounter- 
 ed some time previous prowling through the Post Office 
 Department, seeking a government clerkship with the 
 endorsement of one of the most profane Congressmen 
 
 then in Washington. N was a squat, heavy set, 
 
 beefy looking fellow, and as far from the idea of a 
 sanctified person as one could imagine. In fact the idea 
 of a sanctified Irishman is of itself sufficient to tickle 
 the midriff of a miser. He had just risen as we entered 
 the room and spoke as follows: 
 
 "Me brithrin and sisters. I landed in this coonthre 
 only six months ago with fifteen cints in me pocket and 
 the gerrace of God in me heart. I knew nothing of 
 this second blissing, and now bless me sowl I know all 
 about it. And what is more me brithren and sisters, I 
 want you to know all about it too." He then invited 
 all those present who wished to be sanctified to come 
 forward. To the writer's great surprise all except two, 
 a red- headed and freckle-faced Scotchman and himself, 
 accepted the invitation. Having knelt a short time in 
 silent prayer, first one and then another arose and pro- 
 fessed to be sanctified. But we had not escaped obser- 
 vation, and pretty soon a delegation of elderly sisters ap- 
 proached us, and wished to know why we had not come 
 forward. Upon being informed that we did not believe 
 in it, one of them addressing the writer, exclaimed: "I 
 am afraid brother you will be lost." Upon being in- 
 formed that I knew I knew I was lost as soon as I got 
 in that crowd she turned on her heel and left. 
 
 But the end was not yet. As soon as the sanctification 
 racket was over, some brother, a little more sanctified 
 
213 
 
 perhaps than the rest, opened his guns on the sin of 
 using tobacco. First one old brother and then another 
 gave his experience as to how he had been set free by the 
 grace of God from this wickedness, until at last an old 
 woman whose peculiar headgear, of a fashion forty years 
 ago, arose. Her chin had an upward curve, and nearly 
 came in conjunction with her nose. Her eyes, which 
 were small and deep-set were piercing. Her whole frame 
 was in a state of agitation. We expected a novel scene 
 and were not disappointed. She began : " When I was 
 down in Ann-a-Randle [She meant Anne Arundel] 
 county, I had my pie-ip in my mowth all the time. Some- 
 times I wanted to praise the Lord, and there was that 
 old pie-ip in my mowth, and I could not do it. I prayed 
 to the good Lord to take that pie-ip outen my mowth, 
 an' he hearn my cry, and he took that pie-ip outen my 
 mowth and flung it away, and from that day to this it 
 has been glory halleluiah!" 
 
 When the old lady had concluded this remarable 
 speech there was a general hand clapping and shouting 
 of "Glory" all over the house. As for my unsanctilied 
 Scotch friend, who like myself was a tobacco chewer, he 
 was so overcome that he dropped upon his knees and be- 
 gan praying: " Lord I Take the taste of tobacco out 
 of my mouth!" "OLord! Take the taste of tobacco 
 out of my mouth!" which he continued repeating until 
 he arose and declared the taste was gone. This closed 
 the meeting. We may add that a few days afterwards 
 we saw him on Pennsylvania avenue chewing the weed 
 with as much gusto as a billygoat would a circus poster. 
 We exclaimed, " Why, old fellow, I thought, you were 
 converted the other night ?" " I was," said he, " but I 
 fell from grace." As for N — , he wound up the per- 
 
214 
 
 formance by selling sanctification songs of his own com- 
 posing for ten cents apiece, and realized quite a snug 
 sum therefrom. 
 
 We have written this chapter concerning the Sanctified 
 Old Fool more in pity than in anger, being fully per- 
 suaded that a great majority of those who profess sanc- 
 tification are simply the dupes of their own feelings. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THE LAST OLD FOOL. 
 
 The reader of this book must have been struck with 
 the tenderness of its style. Why, nearly all of his liter- 
 ary children are given the most endearing of pet names by 
 their fond parent. And we will add that in concluding 
 this veracious chronicle, for fear of hurting his feelings, 
 we will not call the name of the Last Old Fool at all. 
 Neither will we attempt to describe him, and we will 
 give our reasons for not doing so. Here they are: First, 
 as to his name. We never use "cuss words," and even if 
 we did, he is such a confounded old cuss that it would 
 beggar the objurgatory portion of the English language 
 to do him justice. We will not attempt to describe him,, 
 as we have a due regard for the pleasures of the imagi- 
 nation in nearly every human being, and hence will allow 
 our readers both to give him a name and a character. 
 Suffice it to say were you to take every other Old Fool 
 in this book and roll them into one, you might have a 
 faint conception of what sort of an animal the Last Old 
 Fool really is. 
 
 ^D 225 
 
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