UC-NRLF 
 
LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 Class 
 
The World of Suckers 
 
THE WORLD 
 
 OF 
 SUCKERS 
 
 by 
 LIONEL JOSAPHARE 
 
 Author of "The Man Who Wanted a Bungalow.") 
 
 THE. DANNER PUBLISHING CO. 
 
 1508 POLK ST., SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 1909 
 
Copyright 1 909 by 
 LIONEL J05APHARE 
 
Preface 
 
 Men judge their acts by a standard of good and 
 evil. Yet the steam of their emotions is not con- 
 sciously a product of either. Virtue is a mood which 
 man has reduced to writing; it is a logical mood, caused 
 by a tranquility of the mind and body. In action 
 man is impelled by the force of his nature, and such 
 force is singular, or selfish, not logical nor pervaded 
 with his faculty of justice. 
 
 Some readers will not understand this book, because 
 it does not deal with right and wrong. If the reader 
 will take a retrospect of all philosophy, both religious 
 and scientific, he will notice one theory that mankind 
 is good and evil, and another theory that mankind 
 is a mass of energy. This is as much as to say that 
 men are going towards Heaven and Hell, from one 
 standpoint; from another, that they may, as wilful 
 creatures, disregard both. Men do disregard both, 
 while pretending to fear them. Otherwise he could 
 not succeed in the uproarious prosperity of this age. 
 Herein I am concerned with what man does, not what 
 he thinks he does nor what he piously ought to do. 
 
 Today the world has not the same appearance that 
 it had in the first century A. D. The ideals are the 
 ideals that were promulgated then, but the magnifi- 
 cent structures of civilization are the elaboration of 
 something else. The First Century did not give us 
 working directions for the Twentieth. Something un- 
 expressed was in man that he did what he has done. 
 In fact, most of the important events in history were 
 accomplished in rupture of ideal action. 
 
 What has actuated man, I need not say. I watch 
 the pageant of external things, called Progress. And 
 that is my standpoint herein. Others may solve the 
 
 222472 
 
II PREFACE 
 
 inspiration of Progress. I take it as a well-known 
 habit of the powerful race to which we belong. I in- 
 sist upon it as the standpoint of practical philosophy, 
 not for its merit but because of its presence. The 
 world, from once upon a time until now, has pro- 
 gressed. The spirit of Progress has given us the 
 world as it is. I do not moralize here on what should, 
 would, could, must, or might be in a world of differ- 
 ent principles which anybody else may have in view. 
 
 Philosophers, critics and public men write for the 
 purpose of establishing something or undoing it. 
 Each tries to read the prescription upon which this 
 world was carefully compounded. With them it is 
 either belief or analysis. Thereunto, some people look 
 upon the killing of a human being as evil ; some, as 
 symbolic of our human constitution. I look upon it 
 as a factor which Progress has used whenever oc- 
 casion demanded. You cannot reconcile a battle-field 
 with religion. You cannot explain why a protoplas- 
 mic man should slaughter others for God's sake. But 
 you are sure that, in setting up his civilizations, man 
 has made use of war. Prophets have seen things and 
 exhorted people against letting the vision go to waste. 
 Philosophers, in their own way, have scanned the ce- 
 lestial fireworks of the soul. Scientists have smitten 
 the fiery horse-shoe of the unknown and lugubriously 
 watched it cool to the same old iron. 
 
 The trouble with all these men is that they did too 
 much thinking; not that thought is an illicit pastime 
 when a body is feeling lonesome, but it seems to me 
 that meditation gives man a false opinion of himself 
 false because action, though preceded and followed 
 by thought, is not related to it. The human race is 
 fond of the prehistoric and the ultrahistoric, to know 
 what it has been and what it might become. And it 
 has always interpreted its conduct by a belief in these 
 
PREFACE III 
 
 two unknowns. So there are many that look upon life 
 as a drama whose last act is technically built on the 
 first. Their idea of creation is melodramatic; which 
 is no imputation of error. Therefore, people custom- 
 arily desire a book that will "work out" according 
 to some rule or thesis or moral. The principle of this 
 book is, as was said, Progress. In this, I am judging 
 man by his accomplishments, not by his statement 
 of the case. His nature shows in what he does, not 
 in that which he, in his hours of rest, fabricates for 
 himself. If you do not admire such Progress as we 
 have, you may say, "It is wrong; I will not progress 
 with the others." 
 
 We have been told that human nature is unchange- 
 able ; yet no one has gone into particulars and re- 
 lated them to the ever-changing panorama of human 
 achievement. Progress is a word frequently heard 
 nowadays. Formerly one had but to flourish this 
 magic weapon to paralyze all opposition. Subse- 
 quently the opposition learned the trick itself. Capi- 
 tal and labor both term their encroachments Prog- 
 ress; so that the term is now flashed back and forth. 
 One has merely to be sure that he is progressive, and 
 then at least he can claim to be traveling along an 
 ancient and honorable road. 
 
 Progress is an improved system adapted to an in- 
 creased number, giving the minority an easier con- 
 trol of the majority and the places which the majority 
 inhabit. Some of its rotundas are open to everybody ;; 
 some are so costly as to be for a few. The more 
 picturesque the outside the more are they that are- 
 excluded from within. Altogether Progress beauti- 
 fies, heightens and complicates our possessions, with 
 a rapidity against which only a cynic would protest. 
 He would be a sordid soul indeed who would not 
 
IV PREFACE 
 
 spare a few moments to marvel over wireless tele- 
 graphy, even though he could not afford to use it. 
 
 Again, Progress improves the mind, and necessarily 
 causes some mental retrogression. Today many of 
 our works are so complex that few men understand 
 them. Perhaps no one understands all. The major- 
 ity of people have come to take most things for 
 granted, and do not examine the wonders of daily 
 use. The mentality becomes casual and incurious. 
 Thus people use the incandescent light with no more 
 concern than formerly they lit a tallow candle ; and a 
 gas-burning stove, as inconsequentially as once they 
 kindled the logs. It might be said that their minds 
 are now even less alert to the action, as the later 
 facilities in operation require less thought. Devoting 
 less thought to a more intricate apparatus does not 
 improve the mind. The uneducated person now sees 
 less than he ever did. The ordinary man moves in 
 a world of keys and switches, buttons and wheels, 
 pipes and wires that have sudden brilliant effects ; and 
 that is all he knows about it. His mind becomes a 
 series of automatic impulses ; reason is neglected. 
 
 It must be noted that the more effective is an in- 
 vention, the fewer are they that can afford its use. 
 Therefore, in the course of time, these few will be- 
 come the very demons of ingenuity and power. Their 
 powers will increase and their numbers lessen con- 
 tinually. They will eventually be in absolute con- 
 trol, as so many supernatural beings, genii with domin- 
 ion over all. 
 
 There could be no objection to such a condition, 
 if one is looking for instruction and amusement. 
 Anybody who would assist Progress toward such a 
 climax, without remuneration, nay, with the toil of 
 his whole heart and body, must be a valuable citizen. 
 And he is none the less valuable because he has been 
 
PREFACE V 
 
 lured to his task. His motive, whether sentiment or 
 avarice or cowardice, does not affect his utility. Of 
 course, he enjoys himself apart from the particular 
 project in which he is a sucker. Progress extorts a 
 small part of his individuality from him. 
 
 This book deals with Progress and the sentiment 
 that goes with it, in public and in private life. It 
 shows that even the lover with his mistress has not 
 the simple heroism of old in attempting her emotions. 
 Her pleasures fit into the scheme of Progress, toward 
 which the lover must contribute. Slowly, at first, 
 this book, in presenting the conventions of the day, 
 will at length be considered the most conventional book 
 ever written. It is a veracious account of the ordin- 
 nary man. 
 
 We can imagine what science will do; we know 
 what will become of the degenerate. We cannot tell 
 what the ordinary man will do in time to come. The 
 ordinary man does not know what he is doing now. 
 If John Smith is informed that he is descended from 
 an anthropoid ape, and is also told that he can become 
 an angel, John Smith may take such an interest in 
 the angel and the ape that he does not observe what 
 use the world is making of him in these days. Poor 
 John, he is the legitimate subject of every man with 
 a philosophic thumb or a grand theory; and yet as 
 he has come up through the ages, he is, as we have 
 read of him and know him, the same grinning little 
 Johnny. 
 
 As men are, in a sense, all brothers, if we accept 
 Nature as our mother, we are all johnsmiths, with 
 different names for practical purposes. Some one, 
 casting aside the circumstantial evidence of the past 
 and the supernatural sight of the future, waiving all 
 censure and flattery, should divulge this human be- 
 ing as he is. 
 
VI PREFACE 
 
 Now I do not say that there are no exceptions to 
 what I have to set forth; but I do say that the excep- 
 tional case is what has been magnified as the main 
 action. Thus I give new meaning to the proverb 
 that the exception proves the rule. The exception 
 will prove TO BE the rule. The ordinary man is 
 misled by his greed and sentiment, and does not know 
 what he is about. In his public life and most of his 
 private life, he is merely a cheated customer of Prog- 
 ress and a disappointed customer of every sentiment. 
 
 The reader is requested to understand that the 
 writer is not involved with any spirit of criticism. 
 Accustomed as the reader is to literature that is either 
 an attack or a vindication, cynicism or enthusiasm, 
 the blood-red face of the agitator or the pallid excuses 
 of wealth, he will be perplexed at first by the simple 
 observations of these chapters. When he has en- 
 dured viewing each institution of life from the stand- 
 point of Progress, he will see that sentiment for any- 
 thing else is a fiction and a pretext. When his ser- 
 vices are wanted, he is met with sentiment; to ob- 
 tain sentiment, he must hoist the flag of gold. 
 
Index 
 
 Page 
 
 Definition of the Word I 
 
 Absolute Necessity for Suckers 3 
 
 Remarks on the Growth of Suckerism 6 
 
 The Biped with the Coin 8 
 
 The Sucker Who Wants To Get Rich Quickly.. 12 
 
 The Voter 19 
 
 The Man Who Wants To Go to Heaven 27 
 
 The New Thought Sucker 34 
 
 The Soldier 39 
 
 The Lover 42 
 
 The Girl With the Demon Lover 50 
 
 The Sucker in Search of Happiness 57 
 
 The Optimist and the Pessimist. . 58 
 
 The Sucker Who Fears Public Opinion 61 
 
 The Sucker Who Tells the Truth 68 
 
 The Sucker Who Takes Advice on a Certan Im- 
 portant Question 7 1 
 
 Reformers and Their Followers 77 
 
 The Greatest Sucker of All 85 
 
 Something for the Future 87 
 
 The Idealist and Reader of Fiction 90 
 
 The Astonished Sucker 96 
 
 A Sucker to Whom We Owe a Great Responsi- 
 bility 99 
 
 An Ordinary Day in the Life of a Sucker 102 
 
 The Sucker's Holiday 108 
 
THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 
 
 Definition of the Word 
 
 It has been suggested that the word "sucker" arose 
 from the name of a sweet and unsophisticated fish that 
 skips through the waters of the Great Lakes and in- 
 flowing streams. Its aptitude for the hook was first 
 the delight and then the ridicule of its captors, who 
 were, perhaps like many good folks, looking for some- 
 thing at once delightful and ridiculous. 
 
 The pedigree of words is as unreliable as that of 
 men. Most men like to say they come of good fam- 
 ily J good families indulge in a genealogy from lords 
 and ladies ; the latter relate themselves to kings ; and 
 it is not unheard of for kings to claim descent from 
 gods. There is too much formality in this. Words 
 and men should be judged by their faces, not by 
 searching the records. Few of us have fished in the 
 Great Lakes, anyway, and so could not appreciate 
 such derivation ; but we do appreciate a sucker. 
 
 "Sucker," then, on the face of it, means one who 
 sucks obviously at an idea. Ideas are the milk of 
 the mind, the nourishment of the soul, the food of 
 national greatness. And even as a cow, or any female 
 animal, unless soft hands or mouths take the milk, 
 would corrupt its product, so would great ideas drivel 
 over and dry without suckers. 
 
 Those who fished in the Great Lakes for the etym- 
 ology of the word argued that prior to the discovery 
 of the New World, there were no suckers in the so- 
 cial system. True, some were here and there, under 
 
2 THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 
 
 other names ; but there were no traits of identification 
 running through the various groups of suckerism. 
 A thing is not fully known until it is named. It is not 
 popular until it is named in slang. There were no 
 suckers until the word "sucker" appropriately ap- 
 peared. The classical terms of "dupe" and "laughing- 
 stock" attest the regard that was paid to the unim- 
 proved sucker of ancient times. Still, the laughing- 
 stock, while having some of the characteristics of our 
 subject herein, was not a true sucker. He did not 
 possess the commanding presence nor the theories 
 nor the spirit of self-sacrifice that we require of suck- 
 ers nowadays. And there is another point: the fact 
 that he was laughed at shows him spurious. For we 
 shall maintain and prove that the sucker of today is 
 never ridiculed ; on the contrary, he is praised, coaxed, 
 fondled and maltreated. He is the majority of civili- 
 zation. He has been called the blood and backbone 
 of Progress ; and looks it, after the horses and wheels 
 of prosperity have passed over him. The sucker, al- 
 ways belonging to a powerful class, and being ruled 
 by the weak, is feared ; the laughing-stock was not. 
 
 Thus, we are informed that the Romans laughed at 
 the barbarians that were being dragged through the 
 streets, while, as a serious matter, they needed the 
 barbarians' town lots and money in order to conduct 
 that piece of high finance known as Immortal Rome. 
 There was, it must be admitted, something akin to 
 suckerdom in the victims ; yet the student will mark 
 that the most important element was lacking: that 
 is : the consent of the barbarians. They were captives, 
 while suckers are kind enough to follow the chariots 
 of their own will. They are captivated by ideas, not 
 captured with force. 
 
 Hence, our investigations will take us into the ques- 
 
THE WORLD OP SUCKERS 3 
 
 tion of what are those ideas that cause the world, all 
 and singular, each and every one in his proper place, 
 to suck as aforesaid. 
 
 These ideas may be divided into two classes; to 
 wit: first, in which the sucker takes in his mouth the 
 nipple of some noble sentiment whereby somebody 
 else openly profits; and second, where the sucker's 
 greed allows the somebody else to profit dishonestly. 
 The result in both cases, as may be surmised, is utter 
 frustration, downfall and curses, followed by nau- 
 sea, convalescence, recovery, and resumption of the 
 sucking. 
 
 And the beauty of this is that everybody is a sucker 
 in one sense or another, and nobody is inflicted with 
 the worst of it. Some get their reward in money, 
 some in honor, some in wisdom, some in nobler in- 
 spirations and each is altogether free to choose his 
 own milk-bottle. Oft, indeed, this bottle contains 
 just what was expected; sometimes what is disap- 
 pointing; and sometimes there is not even a nipple 
 behind the bottle, the sucker merely having had a 
 ninny put between his lips ; which was a compliment 
 to his imagination. 
 
 Absolute Necessity for Suckers 
 
 In order that civilization progress and partake of 
 poetic grandeur continuously or now and then, there 
 must be, ready and willing at all times, a predomi- 
 nance of joyful and high-spirited fools. These supply 
 the hurrah and sentiment, money and labor: Make 
 no mistake ; these are not fools of the brain, but fools 
 
4 THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 
 
 of the world. In themselves they are good, law-abid- 
 ing, tax-paying, intelligent men; virtuous or avari- 
 cious, as they are wanted. Their other traits will be 
 exposed later. 
 
 Here is a simple and harmless, even edifying, in- 
 stance of the sucker's many uses. A hero, or a high 
 official, or a foreign dignitary is expected on a visit 
 to a large city. A few talkative citizens will greet 
 him and ask him to predict a wonderful future for 
 their city, or their climate, or their life insurance com- 
 panies, their women or their presidential candidate. 
 They wish to do this at a banquet that will burst the 
 bladder of good cheer. How do they proceed? Meet 
 and pool the expenses? No indeed. They mobilize 
 themselves into a committee and inform the news- 
 papers that accomodations will hardly be had for those 
 who would like to attend. Then they send out invi- 
 tations to a select few, that are to enter free, and to 
 about 500 suckers, who are to respond with $20 each 
 for the honor of the dinner ; and until the date thereof, 
 the suckers go about with an R. S. V. P. smile that is 
 unmistakable. 
 
 Here is $10,000 in the hands of the committee ; and 
 their first act is to draw on said amount their ex- 
 penses for a prior dinner, at which they test the vint- 
 ages of the coming testimonial, debate the arrange- 
 ments, pound the table with their fistfuls of opinion, 
 calculate the cost of the entertainment, hire a flock 
 of musicians, set aside appropriations for the florist 
 and the hotel-man, and see that none of the surplus 
 falls through a crack in the floor. 
 
 One concession is made to the vanity of the suck- 
 ers, and that is recording the entertainment with a 
 flashlight picture. Of course, the camera is focussed 
 at the committee and the guest of honor. At each 
 side of their perfect composure, the picture will show 
 
THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 5 
 
 about two hundred faces lopsided in one direction and 
 two hundred sloped in the other, the points of facial 
 interest in dignity, statesmanship, philanthropy, pride, 
 satisfaction and modesty being equally lopsided and 
 misfocussed right and left. 
 
 At the Flashlight Dinner, the suckers will get about 
 $7 worth of food and wine for their twenty-dollar 
 piece, and are placed where they must strain and con- 
 tort every little while to observe how the guest of 
 honor is getting along. 
 
 The particular brand of milk used to tempt these 
 suckers is Society. On the next day, they buy 
 copies of the newspapers, which may contain a pic- 
 ture of the Flashlight Tables, and they write to_the 
 photographer for a photographic print. 
 
 There is naught distressing in this. If a few hun- 
 dred men cocker up once in a while to pay for dining 
 with aristocracy, why not? It should not cause an 
 anarchist shoe-maker to belch garlic and sarcasm. To 
 disdain these men as individuals would be narrow- 
 mindedness; they are necessary as a mass, a sort of 
 living scenery adding a wealth of animation around the 
 confabs of the committee, the invited guests and the 
 great visitor. 
 
 Without these suckers, what would become of our 
 civic pride? What would the people of other cities 
 blab if a metropolis could not muster five hundred 
 of its metropolitans to metropolate each with $20? 
 And this is but one of the many uses to which a sucker 
 can be put. 
 
6 THE WORLD OP SUCKERS 
 
 Remarks on the Growth of 
 Suckerism 
 
 We are led to believe that the vitality of ancient 
 nations depended upon war. At the heart of every 
 ruler was a desire to cut out the hearts of his ene- 
 mies. This may have been wicked, yet it makes good 
 reading now. It is the ambition of greatness to 
 become historic, or, as we say nowadays, get into 
 print. Unless it get into print, and is interesting be- 
 sides, it dies is lost with the mortality of its generation, 
 or, to speak technically, sinks into oblivion, a place, 
 by the way, that is full of good people ; and a number 
 of well-meaning others might advisedly go there. 
 
 When governments rested from war, the descend- 
 ants of heroes formed themselves into an aristocracy. 
 They were having a good time when the church 
 pushed its way to the front, being dressed up for the 
 occasion with money it had collected in the rear. 
 When men were not fighting or praying, they en- 
 joyed the riches they had fought and prayed for. The 
 church and the state proceeded to collect money as 
 fast as they could with good conscience and good col- 
 lectors. In the course of centuries a wonderful thing 
 happened ; or rather, it had been going on quietly for 
 a long time before the wonder of it was noticed ; 
 some obscure creatures were making money faster 
 than their betters were taxing it. There was no way 
 of gouging the gold from the possessors, as they were 
 already backed up with laws and principles for which 
 innumerable poor suckers had fought and bled. Wars 
 had become memories, and miracles forgotten. More- 
 over, there was a popular distrust of both. Peace 
 had given rise to men who accumulated their wealth 
 
THE WORLD OP SUCKERS 7 
 
 on peaceful theories known as profits. They multi- 
 plied unmolested. As men no longer went to war 
 for revenue, and miracles having become an invest- 
 ment of decreasing value, and treasures being bought 
 and sold instead of being taken by force, the Biped 
 with the Coin was found cockawhoop on the places 
 of advantage. He stamped Liberty on his golden 
 coins, and bought as relics the antique emblems of 
 power. 
 
 So now we behold the world reorganized on a finan- 
 cial basis. Our population is so numerous we have 
 conditions unknown to the classic states from which 
 we have drawn our philosophy, religion, art and ideals. 
 It is therefore with money and the purchasable things 
 thereof that the moderner exhibits his claims to dis- 
 tinction. Yet the old, classic ideals are still with us, 
 and the mixture of the old and the new continuously 
 holds forth to make men suckers in one way or an- 
 other. 
 
 To utilize these suckers, one has merely to promise 
 something or ask something. This is too simple for 
 understanding. Let us amplify. The idea is to prom- 
 ise a large and not necessarily performable result for 
 a moderate payment; this works upon evil and greed. 
 Or, one may demand, in behalf of some worthy cause, 
 gifts or any assistance, and manage the proceeds to 
 suit himself. With suckers all around him, he has 
 a special consistency as large as the population of 
 Greece or Rome at the time of their climax. 
 
 In this way, there has become, in our country, a 
 number of inbeing governments, classes, creeds, clans, 
 clubs, societies, companies, and the like, sometimes 
 compact, sometimes extending over the states. There- 
 fore, the innovator has merely to evolve some scheme, 
 investment, land promotion, stock speculation, char- 
 ity, boom, celebration, adventure, corporation any 
 
8 THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 
 
 means of expending or expediting riches, and he has 
 an immediate following. He takes the statistics of 
 probable suckers with affinity for this or that, calcu- 
 lates on catching a certain percentage of them, and 
 publishes his doctrine. If the avowed object of the 
 undertaking does not burgeon with richness as prom- 
 ised, the suckers are nevertheless, during their hot 
 enthusiasm, boiled out for the salaries and expenses 
 of the promoters ; in case of success, they are frozen 
 out of the dividends. All these enterprises develop 
 the resources, the energy and the virtue of the coun- 
 try, the wealth of the directors, and several other 
 things, and could never be accomplished without 
 suckers. 
 
 Every man is fumbling in all directions for money. 
 Every man with money is compelled to do some 
 amount of good. Every man has an ideal. From the 
 three emotions, arise all the glories of society. 
 
 If there be any one who imagines that these lines 
 are meant sarcastically, or as the expression of a poli- 
 tical opinion, may the Devil take him. A number of 
 matters other than politics are discussed herein, such 
 as marriage, religion, philosophy, romance ; and 
 therein man proves to be as interesting a sucker as 
 in public life. Some of the most distinguished suck- 
 ers are called heroes, martyrs, pioneers, enthusiasts, 
 and the like. Let us proceed with our subjects. 
 
 The Biped With the Coin 
 
 Everybody knows that a biped is a living creature 
 with two feet. But not everybody knows how many 
 corns the human biped has on each foot. The corn 
 
THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 9 
 
 is a pressure of that realistic circumstance termed civ- 
 ilization, and is frequently used metaphorically for 
 discomfort; while warts are a gift from splendid Na- 
 ture. So we may infer that fingers and toes, whether 
 meddling with frog-pools or toddling through city 
 streets, should neither point too proudly nor kick too 
 vigorously at natural or artificial beauties. For the 
 present it suffices to say that the biped with full 
 pockets is civilization's masterpiece ; the naked biped, 
 without a cent in his hand, is merely a work of God. 
 
 Now, the two legs of the male biped must have been 
 given him primarily for the purpose of wearing 
 trousers, in which are two pockets especially adapted 
 for the distribution of coin. 
 
 In all society, the most estimable biped is the father 
 of the family, sometimes referred to as Paterfamilias. 
 
 When most characteristic and attentive to his du- 
 ties, the Paterfamilias has very little brilliance and 
 strut. He is not given much to laughter, as any dis- 
 play of geniality on his part will immediately be op- 
 portunitied by some one looking for a long-time loan. 
 He criticises many customs of the folks and is al- 
 lowed to apologize and do penance on a cash basis. 
 When he cannot have his way, he goes to sleep. This 
 gives him a moony rather than a sunny disposition; 
 and, while he may be the head of a firm, he is the 
 sorehead of the family. Occasionally some of the 
 family allow Paterfamilias to accompany them to 
 the theater, if he pays for the tickets. 
 
 On election days, Paterfamilias votes for men whom 
 he has never seen, and who have no wish to see him. 
 On election night, he shouts himself stiff in the neck 
 while the precincts are being counted ; then he returns 
 home like a person that has witnessed a very sad and 
 moral drama. 
 
 On Christmas, he is presented with some fancy 
 
10 THE WORLD OP SUCKERS 
 
 socks, fancy slippers and fancy sentiments, all of 
 which he has needed for months. These gifts repre- 
 sent the dregs of the many dollars Paterfamilias has 
 allowed his family for the holidays, and were bought 
 just as the stores were closing up. 
 
 The Biped with the Coin arises in the morning when 
 the rest of the family are perfuming their pillows with 
 the breath of dreams. He arrives downtown on 
 schedule time, for which he assumes high credit. Just 
 what Paterfamilias does downtown, how he induces 
 people to part with their money, and how he man- 
 ages to insinuate himself into the good graces of busi- 
 ness associates, is a mystery to his family. Yet there 
 he is, every week, with the coin, handing it out like 
 a conjurer to all the yearning giraffes at home, and 
 fearful of tellin- them that he has seen a tobacco 
 that costs somewhat more than the old brand. 
 
 At the thrilling moment after dinner, the eldest 
 daughter circumfluctuates herself about his chair, 
 clears her larynx and gurgles into the subject of 
 frowns. The younger powder-puff artist languishes 
 with the blues until Artful Dad elicits the fact that 
 last season's hat might disturb the Peace of God on 
 the coming sabbath. The boys grapple their share; 
 and the lady-wife puts in a resolution for the Pater's 
 payment of another bill at his office instead of her 
 defraying the same from her weekly stipend. 
 
 Throughout the month, Paterfamilias has no lack 
 of manual exercise with the coin. Come pink and 
 green tickets for benefit performances of pink and 
 green ladies who sing, Louis XIV bouquets for brides 
 and graduates, presents for departing friends, boxes 
 of candy for hungry ones, donations to charity-bazaars, 
 silver sprinkling for the church's velvet-lined basket, 
 money for books, music, repairs, treats, and many other 
 
THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 11 
 
 oddities of importance to the general public aad the 
 improvement of the family. 
 
 To have beheld him in the days of his courtship 
 ambitious and vain, and even flattered (think of it. 
 flattered) by those who knew him one could hardly 
 have foreseen that he would become nothing more 
 than a Paterfamilias. And yet, perhaps at that time, 
 he stepped on the wrong standpoint and was, as a 
 lover too, a Biped with the Coin. He may have made 
 love to avoirdupois and fancied he was getting some- 
 thing in troy weight. Not every youth looks or feels 
 the part he is to fill in later life. And so the change 
 from lover to Paterfamilias is one of those comicali- 
 ties that Fate loves to paint when she sends valen- 
 tines. 
 
 What strange things happen to standpoints ! We 
 imagine we are soaring through the clouds, until the 
 sores on our feet remind us that we have been walk- 
 in^. Admiration makes mistakes and cruelty cor- 
 rects them. A man will change until he does not 
 seem fit to be his own brother. The same with many 
 things. It may be that a pig, for a contrary example, 
 looks to be the most appropriate animal that could 
 be made into a sausage; and there is, about the sau- 
 sage, an impalpable suggestion that it will or ought 
 to be eaten by a German. On the other hand, behold 
 a fair field of flax in the sunlight; who, uninformed, 
 could predict that that unconcealed and quite men- 
 tionable verdure would go to make a woman's gar- 
 ment the very name of whose use or place might be 
 a breach of good form? There is in man a certain 
 youthful flax that disappears in obscure manhood. 
 
 The question remains, How has the proud youth 
 grown into a middle-aged sucker that he lets his wife 
 and daughters go hot-pressed and fragrant through 
 the avenues while he toils in a deckel-edged collar 
 
12 THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 
 
 and sees pin-wheels whenever he wishes to spend on 
 himself five dollars that will not give anybody else 
 pleasure? How has society hypnotized this handsome 
 unit of population into cowardly self-sacrifice? The 
 easiest possible way. The world lauds generosity. 
 Everybody that has a heart-felt or a stomach-felt 
 want in presence of the Biped with the Coin talks 
 generosity and the nobility thereof, and the compound 
 generosity and nobility of other bipeds. Therefore, 
 that he might not be called a stingy, gouty, crabbed, 
 miserly, dry old piece of salt pork, the sucker gives 
 away all his money. Notwithstanding, it is a matter 
 of mystification with him, when he does think, that 
 the world does not applaud all that it lauds. 
 
 Now, if the Biped with the Coin were not a sucker, 
 how could his daughters embellish themselves with 
 all those glittering things that are advertised in the 
 newspapers? If she should not buy, the merchants 
 could not afford to advertise, and the newspapers 
 could not give us all the costly news, and we should 
 be almost as ignorant as Aristotle and Socrates, who 
 had no newspapers. 
 
 And that is but one utility of the Biped with the 
 Coin. As he figures in many other scenes, let us 
 proceed further. 
 
 The Sucker Who WantsTo 
 Get Rich Quickly 
 
 We must have men who want to be Bipeds with 
 the Coin as soon as possible. Hazardous undertak- 
 ing are to be encouraged in all matters ; and money 
 signifies all. 
 
THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 13 
 
 Money has a bad reputation. Should a man be 
 judged by the money he keeps, he would not have 
 many flatterers. Judged by the money he lavishes, the 
 case is reversed. This improves the status of lucre 
 immediately. It is not going too far to state that 
 wealth has been slandered by persons unfamiliar with 
 it. A million dollars is a pretty thing to look at; the 
 pauper is the filthy looker. Still, money has its short- 
 comings. 
 
 Wealth, like unto every form of organic and in- 
 organic life, is subject to disease. The pomegranate, 
 the water-lily and the lady are subject to discrepan- 
 cies from the facts which poets love. Beyond this, 
 even abstract ideas have their defects and swellings. 
 Meditation may have, so to speak, enlargement of 
 the liver; reason, softening of the brain; love may 
 develop a mania; morality, become eccentric; justice, 
 become ossified, mercy, burst into tears ; religion, bite 
 the thunders in fanaticism ; sorrow, drink itself to 
 death; and charity may have to swim after the bread 
 cast upon the waters. Likewise, money, the medium 
 of exchange, circulating among all these evils, is liable 
 to become infected with fraud. The methods that 
 pulsate to a vast national wealth suffer from excess. 
 Trade becomes irregular. Here and there business 
 will do itself to a bad purpose. Opulence has fatty 
 degeneration of the egotism. Speculation becomes de- 
 lirious. 
 
 We have ever within view fortunes made by art- 
 ful exploit. Nothing more logical than that the way 
 is open to innovators and improvers. 
 
 A sudden and extemporaneous desire for wealth 
 sometimes overtakes a community with all the fervor 
 of a revival meeting. There seems to be a sort of 
 Renaissance, an enthusiastic afflatus, as if the popu- 
 lace were conscience-stricken for wasted days, eager 
 
14 THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 
 
 to quit laborious livelihoods and become millionaires 
 through an act of faith. 
 
 The cause is not hard to find. Upon a day, news- 
 papers publish the advent of a large, friendly person, 
 eating extravagant breakfasts and star-pointed with 
 diamonds like the constellation of Orion. He has a 
 happy, hobnobulous laughter that causes his club- 
 fed paunch to heave on the bounding main of admira- 
 tion. Every surface inch of him seems to carouse with 
 success and good nature. And Talk! He can blow, 
 tattle and blurt like all vaudeville. And every time 
 he dynamites the atmosphere with a joke, the bar- 
 keeper jumps aboard and cries Hold-fast, so that no- 
 body may fall off on the turn. 
 
 Somehow there transpires the idea that the man 
 has come amongst us with glad tidings of wealth ; 
 he seems to be the angelic herald of something con- 
 nected with money. 
 
 In the show-window of a notary public appear a 
 pile of nuggets and a few bars of gold bullion. The 
 exhibition is viewed by such multitudes that the air 
 in the neighborhood becomes unsanitary. Men make 
 witty remarks at the expense of the golJ, without 
 lessening its quantity, and tell what they would do 
 with it were it some of theirs. 
 
 The man with the sizzling diamonds issues a state- 
 ment. He has, up in the mountains, more gold than 
 he can use. He needs money to get it. The stock 
 of his company is listed on Exchange. The impres- 
 sion he gives is, Buy some of my shares and you will 
 soon be able to garrul and bubble like me in pro- 
 portion to the number of shares you buy. Of course, 
 I have the controlling interest, and I'll control it for 
 your benefit. 
 
 Then is heard the tale of a poor washerwoman, to 
 whom the original owner gave 10,000 shares for wash- 
 
THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 15 
 
 ing his blue shirt and making him a sandwich when 
 he was a prospector. Now she owns a hotel and au- 
 tomobiles and is opposed to the income tax, and the 
 common people fear that she will corrupt the legis- 
 lature. The 10,000 shares are in Licketysplit Con- 
 solidated. 
 
 On a direct line south of Licketysplit, is the Epi- 
 leptic Dog Mine. This sounds as good as if the gold 
 were known to have taken the same direction. Sud- 
 denly arrives a whiff of news that the Epileptic Dog 
 is about to have a fit. Men buy it because Lickety- 
 split is too high-priced. The Lousy Kate is next to 
 Licketysplit, but she has not the mother lode ; still, 
 she is bought. The Wormy Cheese Extension, the 
 Azure Ass, the Consolidated Blanche all take turns 
 with the investors. 
 
 Some of these subterranean treasure vaults have 
 no deeper openings than a mountain poet would make 
 to search for Spanish doubloons or bury some of his 
 own. Any one of them might have been incorporated 
 by a faro-dealer and promoted by an ex-convict. 
 These trifles do not bother the sucker. Only his 
 imagination bothers him. Not to take advantage of 
 the offers would be to lose all self-respect, to feel 
 vapid, inane and jejune. He gets the fantods when- 
 ever his wife urges prudence. Before he makes up his 
 mind, some one comes along with a hyperdermic sy- 
 rin.ee of information that starts more golden dreams 
 and fevers with honey-dew. And the sucker empties 
 his wallet and cools his brow in another direction of 
 the compass. It is when he cannot buy every avail- 
 able rumor that he trembles in all his ball-and-socket 
 joints lest he has missed the right one. 
 
 He buys all he can, and waits for prices to revise 
 themselves upwards. Everything is ready. He is im- 
 natient for the band to play and the big trombone 
 
16 THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 
 
 blow a boom. Presently the prices go up a little. 
 He gives a leap of satisfaction and stops with one leg 
 in the air. The stocks, having leapt to their own sat- 
 isfaction, fall again. Anon they rise, promisingly but 
 not recklessly. Yet he does not dispose of his cer- 
 tificates, for he observes that the insiders are not sell- 
 ing a share. That the insiders are not selling is 
 printed in all the newspapers ; the sucker thinks he 
 was the only one to notice it. Upon which, he learns 
 that the man with the diamonds did not own Lickety- 
 split, but was promoting it for a friend. However, 
 some eastern capitalists are looking over the scene ; 
 and hope wings forth again like a chicken tamale in 
 full flight. 
 
 The largest gold mine ever discovered is sucker- 
 dom. Suckers average more gold per ton and yield 
 more consistently than any hill of ore. Besides, the 
 same old machinery can be used to smelt them. The 
 suckers do not buy an interest in the gold that is 
 taken from the mine ; they buy printed shares ; they 
 raise prices on one another to dispute the right to a 
 small and inadequate dividend or no dividend at all. 
 When millions of dollars-worth are taken from the 
 mines, the suckers get little more than interest on 
 their money. When the directors issue no dividends, 
 the suckers still compete for the shares. The owners 
 take the profit on the ore, and the suckers gain or 
 lose on the market excitement. 
 
 And yet, the mining-stock sucker is more intelli- 
 gent than the experimenter that sends $500 to a man 
 far away who has a scheme for returning the $500 in 
 six months with $1000 more. Contrary to expert opin- 
 ion, this most interesting and characteristic form of 
 suckerism will never die out. It has been in existence 
 for centuries. It may have cessation, but will re- 
 appear in another form. The money will be sent. The 
 
THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 17 
 
 performer will have improved his act. The sucker, 
 even as of yore, will not quite grasp the scheme be- 
 tween the ears. He knows that 500 per cent has been 
 made and can be made again. He meditates more 
 keenly about it when his savings for years is tinkling 
 sweet and sad in the distance, like cowbells at twi- 
 light. The game has been operated on a plan for lend- 
 ing money on real estate and pooling for vast con- 
 trol of corporation stock. The action is businesslike 
 and ordinary on its face. The man far away adver- 
 tises himself as President of the National Loan, Cre- 
 dit and Fiduciary System, which has hit upon a new 
 principle of finance, new and remarkable as anything 
 in this remarkable and inventive age, yet so simple 
 that one can but wonder how it escaped the minds 
 of other great financiers. Goldseal certificates and 
 voluminous encouragement are returned to the sub- 
 scriber, who is vain over the numerals and signatures, 
 and dreams of dividends walking in like geese at sun- 
 set. Now it must be remembered that while, in some 
 cases, the signatures are of obscure men with no 
 assets but an office in a large building, in other cases 
 the signatures are of well known men led by a re- 
 spected citizen who may some day be in the prison- 
 er's dock. In the worst instance, not having heard 
 from the President of the National Loan, Credit and 
 Fiduciary System for some time, the sucker writes 
 a letter. Next month, he writes another; again in 
 two weeks ; and, in an accumulation of fury the very 
 next day, another strong as a naval salute. The lat- 
 ter ought to make the millionaire feel cheap as rag- 
 bottle-sacks, if he has any manhood left in him. Yet 
 the fiduciary president replies not nor wines, and all 
 is mystery, until one day there appears a newspaper 
 story to the effect that United States Secret Service 
 Agents have found the fiduciary man in Florida, and 
 
18 THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 
 
 there is trouble with the extradition papers. He was 
 a sucker himself, for he tarried too long at his post. 
 He could not bear to leave while the checks, money 
 orders and currency were brought in with every mail. 
 The result was that he stayed to the last moment 
 and spanked away only one train ahead of the de- 
 tectives. Truly, he is the one to be pitied, for he is 
 the only one to go to jail. Why not, may be asked. 
 
 Answer : Every man connected with a fake is a faker. 
 This may sound harsh ; nevertheless a swindler is 
 mentally incapable of appealing to any but a dis- 
 honest mind. He is always a rapid, swivel-jointed fel- 
 low glowing with large, Marco Polo dreams for sud- 
 den sale ; he cannot dawdle with men that are accus- 
 tomed to pay what a thing is worth. The man who 
 buys a stolen gold-brick for half what he considers 
 its worth, is dishonest. He who bets on a horse race 
 and curses his luck because the race was prearranged 
 against him, was running ahead of his conscience. 
 He who finances any questionable game is a rogue. 
 He who buys stock in a ship that sails for sunken 
 treasure is partner in a nefarious pursuit. There may 
 seem nothing wrong in it ; yet the captain will prove 
 to be an irresponsible adventurer, a dreamer of con- 
 traband dreams ; his owners are suckers. They have 
 outfitted a tawdry tale, and not for the first time. 
 The sucker who enters a gambling house, does so 
 with the intention of winning from thieves. He who 
 buys railroad stock or future wheat knows that his 
 only hope of welfare lies in being on the side of the 
 shrewdest and shiftiest manipulators. 
 
 It may have been noticed that the more stupend- 
 ous a swindle, the higher is the class of its victims. 
 The prime swindler victimizes even his aristocratic 
 accomplices. When this arch-fiend of a fraud begins 
 without a single resource other than his auroral prom- 
 
THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 19 
 
 ises, and escapes with a trophy of $100,000, his work is 
 first-class and so are his suckers. They will include 
 the unpaid landlords of his apartments and offices, the 
 dealer who expected installments on sumptuous fur- 
 niture, the lawyer who advanced money to become 
 the legal representative and a partner, the solicitors 
 who put up a cash bond, the typewriter who took her 
 pay in kisses and candy. All the friends of the con- 
 cern are left, with stock certificates, to mourn a sad- 
 ending masterpiece of deception. It must be very 
 fine melodrama when even the musicians weep. 
 
 However, all these affairs are the diseases of money. 
 He who claims to have a remedy for them is an im- 
 poster. 
 
 The Voter 
 
 Voters are essential to the peace of a country, so 
 that they may blame themselves, and not their rulers 
 for mismanagement. 
 
 If the majority of voters were not suckers, they 
 could not be trusted with the theoretical power of 
 government. Should the majority make laws for the 
 good of the majority, the nation would suffer, and 
 national credit look like a second-hand vegetable store. 
 
 The politician is a merry devil. He shovels fire 
 with the common people and gets into hot water with 
 the rich. Jumping in and out of these two difficul- 
 ties is the hardest work he does ; yet he calls the 
 workingman brother. At an inaugural ball, he wears 
 his fashionables, and is jealous of his rank. Ming- 
 ling with the voters, he leaves his diamonds home, 
 and says, "Plain people such as you and I." When 
 he dines with a Sugar King, he takes a lump of sugar ; 
 
20 THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 
 
 when he eats with a farmer, he picks his teeth with 
 straw. 
 
 At election time, he appears in the cities, a fat, fat- 
 tening, bright-nosed angel of light, jerking the skies 
 for liberty in behalf of people that are supposed to be 
 sovereign and govern themselves. 
 
 It might be mentioned that a Republic is merely a 
 nominal form of government. Most voters do not 
 know what they want, and therefore cannot legislate. 
 The man with an income knows that he does not de- 
 sire an income tax. The man without an income does 
 not know whether he desires it or not. As long as 
 the incomeless man is not decided about it, the poli- 
 tician will prove that the tax is worthless. When 
 there is a popular demand, the politician must speak 
 to please the demanding majority. As soon as the 
 law is passed, it is handled and interpreted by the 
 class that were previously hostile to it. 
 
 Monev is more powerful than votes, because money 
 knows its own mind, and, in a large country, has 
 means of interchange and communication which votes 
 have not. Votes are too cumbrous to act unani- 
 mously. We are now in the Reign of Gold. We 
 might call it the Golden Rule. 
 
 The politician is a poet. The poet does not betray 
 his real life in verse. The official statements of his 
 soul are ideal. Thus the politician. He is a dual 
 personality with a lily in his hand and a tapeworm 
 in his ambition. Half of his life is spent in explain- 
 ing and concealing the other half. 
 
 When he goes down to meet the people, he pre- 
 pares for their reception the most impractical, non- 
 sensical, irrelevant and cheapest-looking place in the 
 world. The salute of his unphrenological honesty is 
 well related to the flimsy-flamsy decorations, which 
 make the hall fitter-looking for a rag-pickers' mas- 
 
THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 21 
 
 querade than the solemn duties of statesmanship. 
 Everything that looks like coarse reality is twined 
 with bunting, stuck with paper shields, dabbed with 
 rosettes, and mottoed with prosperity. 
 
 Amid this, the haranguer uses the language of the 
 poet, the idealist, the lover. He goes into ankle- 
 spraining furor, disbowels the opposition, and dis- 
 places the landscape in a rumpus of rhetoric. He 
 promises, upon election, to jugulate the apparition 
 that is over-shadowing his audience and threatening 
 the fair land with warlike destruction. Call upon 
 him in his official capacity, and you behold the real 
 man. He does not mention liberty. He does not 
 sloganize equal rights for all. 
 
 And still on the next demonstration, rainbow upon 
 rainbow looms in the foam of his passion. He raves 
 with popular wonders and palpitates impossibilities. 
 Still has he the manner of the lover with his mistress. 
 Ambition is his wife. Periodically he returns to the 
 crowd, petting and flattering and honeysuckling it 
 for favors. 
 
 The politician makes a fictitious appeal to the in- 
 tellects of his audience. His one aim is to prevent 
 the suckers from thinking. He gushes with the ir- 
 relevant waters of eloquence, rumbles with melo- 
 drama, and endeavors to make the suckers believe 
 that this extravagance is in some way connected with 
 what the butcher and baker will charge next year. 
 
 As good an example as can be had of political suck- 
 erism that was carefully nursed year after year, is the 
 protective tariff. The protective tariff was perhaps 
 the finest piece of statecraft ever foisted upon a few 
 million suckers. It made them not only support the 
 government but pay a subsidy to the factories as 
 well. It not only swept national taxes from the earth 
 to the kitchen and bedroom but allowed the factory 
 
22 THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 
 
 to tax the disinterested citizen. It centered all the 
 pride and activities of the country upon commerce. 
 It favored the industry at the cost of the industrious. 
 Instead of taxing a livelihood, it laid usury on the 
 necessaries of life. Instead of taxing worldly pos- 
 sessions, it made the human being pay a toll for walk- 
 ing through the gates of necessity. It taxes the man 
 whose taxable property consisted of little more than 
 his love of life. A tariff was imposed on the infant 
 brought into the country from the port of mother- 
 hood; a percentage was levied on its infantile needs. 
 The homeless laborer, emerged from the ditch, was 
 taxed the moment he bought an undershirt. Instead 
 of being taxed once a year, the sucker ransomed him- 
 self from commerce whenever he made a purchase. 
 
 He may be consoled with the statement that sup- 
 porting the Land of Freedom by taxing the land of the 
 free might be fair but unconstitutional. He is to be- 
 lieve that the constitution is a sacred thing, and any 
 word against it the foul act of a man without a coun- 
 try. The constitution is the country ; criticism of it, 
 unpatriotic. And yet a glaring criticism of one part 
 of this inspired document is another part, at this time 
 known as the Fifteen Amendments. 
 
 The idea that it is difficult for a new country to pay 
 a profit to its manufacturers was a magnificent one 
 in the history of suckerism. It is one of those 
 thoughts that from its very mystery convinces a 
 sucker, who likes to be mystified, always. 
 
 When there were opportunities to vote on the meas- 
 ure, orators came and shouted, Rally round the flag, 
 boys. They also brought a few statistics, with 
 which they posed as the very fulness and hot springs 
 of logic. 
 
 The method of making the suckers rally against 
 themselves is something like this : at election times, 
 
THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 23 
 
 the speakers go into the pavilions and talk 
 patriotism ; patriotism having nothing to do with 
 law. The speaker's platform is draped with red, 
 white and blue ; colors that do not corroborate 
 his statistics. His band plays the national airs, 
 and his quartet sings. Wherever there is in- 
 cidental music there is fraud, and all the rest of 
 the performance is music in disguise. The hall is 
 hung with portraits of George Washington, Thomas 
 Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln, framed with red- 
 white-and-blue fly-paper. It is well for the speaker 
 that the pictures cannot come to life. He says, Our 
 party will give you great enterprises and at the same 
 time make life easy for you. Our term of office will 
 be a blessing unto the majority of you. And then, 
 with lubricated gesture, he points to the Grand Old 
 Flag, and bursts the shells of enthusiasm over the 
 masses. 
 
 It must be a sorry mass of humanity that would 
 not respond with cheers (which mean votes) to patri- 
 otism and the flag. Such a mass would be useless 
 in peace and in war. It would not support industries 
 nor meet an invasion of the enemy. Poor suckers, 
 they wish to vote for themselves and the flag, and 
 are not quite sure how this can be done simultane- 
 ously. Being generous, they give the benefit of the 
 doubt to the star-spangled banner. What matters it 
 that the flag has no relation to the issues of the cam- 
 paign, except to shed its glory over the candidate who 
 talks patriotism and wields power. The star-spangled 
 banner is not mentioned frequently on the floors of 
 Congress. 
 
 The main characteristic of the political sucker, as 
 of others, is that he desires something for nothing. 
 While we have the greatest nation that ever waved 
 a flag on this terrestrial sphere, the basis of the politi- 
 
24 THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 
 
 cian's and the reformer's argument is the roistering 
 idea that world supremacy can be had without cost 
 and can return a premium to the wage-earners be- 
 sides. The truth is that supremacy cannot exist with- 
 out suckers. A nation without suckers, a nation such 
 as the Socialists demand, would be the sucker of the 
 world. It would be divided up as soon as the for- 
 eigners could come to an agreement over the division. 
 It would have no army nor navy. It would be happy, 
 if the other nations would let it alone, even as they 
 let the American Indians alone. 
 
 After listening with erected wonder to the political 
 showman, the sucker votes. During the next few 
 years he forgets what happened and what did not 
 happen. There are also some things that happened 
 without his knowledge. Yet it is good, at election 
 time, to be palavered and slavered with the senti- 
 ment that he is a sovereign making his own laws. 
 
 All the blessings of the universe, and in this coun- 
 try, rest with the Unknown. The Unknown of the 
 universe is God; in a republic, it is called the Major- 
 ity. No one ever knows what the Majority will do. 
 nor does itself know. And it is because the Major- 
 ity has no method of communing with itself that it 
 must listen to the voice of the orator and then suck 
 at his sentiment. 
 
 There must be, after all, some reflex sense of hu- 
 mor, some sweetbread of satisfaction in the abdomen 
 of the sucker, exuding a joyful pancreatic juice over 
 his abdominal efforts to reason. Such functional 
 thing would account for his cordiality as it does for 
 the laughter of the man that falls into a puddle. 
 
 He believes that he is a sovereign in a republic, 
 aptly because it is not called an absolute monarchy, 
 a form of government that never existed anywhere. 
 There never was an absolute republic nor an absolute 
 
THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 25 
 
 despotism. The most despotic of rulers have done most 
 to glorify their countries, sometimes externally, some- 
 times internally. And those of our presidents that 
 were least sympathetic towards the Common People 
 were most terrifying to the foreigner on the throne. 
 It takes a prince to frighten a prince. The friend of 
 the people is always bluffed abroad. 
 
 Republic? As if eighty-five million people could be 
 a republic ! New York City is a monarchy. The United 
 States always has been an empire, and once waged 
 a five-year war with a section of the country that 
 thought otherwise. True, there is no right of suc- 
 cession, no princes of royal blood. But royal blood 
 is not the worst thing in a kingdom. Nor is a 
 political boss the best thing in a republic. A royal 
 family is a costly aggregation. So is a Senate. And 
 why should suckers have a Senate if the representa- 
 tives represent the will of the people? 
 
 Another fluffy notion in the brain of suckers is that 
 they can be safeguarded with laws. If they were not 
 suckers they would not have to be safeguarded. A 
 sturdy man would have naught to do with a mis- 
 creant corporation. He would withdraw his patron- 
 age, and the corporation would starve to death. In- 
 stead of that, the sucker pleads with his public offi- 
 cers to keep a few brainy men from defrauding him. 
 Very little can be done, and this for a curious rea- 
 son : the sucker has been flattered by the Declaration 
 of Independence into believing that all men are free 
 and equal. A corporation is a person and is also free 
 and equal. All the sucker's constitutions forbid him 
 from making a law that would not apply equally to 
 the largest corporation and meanest beggar. So that 
 laws of state are as intangible as the politicians who 
 made them. And constitutions that are summits of 
 liberty in one age do serve as ambushes and obstruc- 
 
26 THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 
 
 tions in another. This comes of being free and equal 
 with a corporation. The Constitution of the United 
 States was gotten up to defeat what was then the 
 ordinary practices of royalty. It will not defeat the 
 ordinary practices of money. Evil cannot be quashed 
 for more than a little while. It has a thousand phases, 
 each ready to spring up at unguarded places. The 
 only advice is that every man remain on guard. Suck- 
 ers will not do so. 
 
 The sucker believes in himself; he is credulous of 
 his ability to select honest men. And yet, when an 
 honest man gets into office, it is not because he is 
 able to convince the people that he is honest but is 
 able to sneak past the bosses while causing them to 
 believe that he is not. 
 
 The sucker also believes that the man who opposes 
 a scoundrel is, to be sure, altogether honorable. A 
 scoundrel may be wrought to anger by the act of an- 
 other scoundrel. History is full of men that began 
 in purity and ended in the dregs. Even an honor- 
 able act is not proof of honor. If we are to judge 
 by the way some of them vilified Washington, there 
 were some rogues among the signers of the Declara- 
 tion of Independence. If Abe Lincoln had lived in 
 Washington's time, Abe might not have considered 
 it advisable to emancipate ; or we might have had a 
 civil war with the Great Emancipator on one side, 
 and the Father of his Country, a Virginia slave- 
 owner, on the other. 
 
 The only reason why we have had no royal family 
 in the United States is that George Washington re- 
 fused to accept the crown. And the reason why 
 George refused a third term was that he knew he 
 would not get it. The people already complained 
 with a tired feeling for an honest man. 
 
 Another trait of political suckers is that they are 
 
THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 27 
 
 afraid to hear themselves talk when the government 
 disappoints them. Modestly they leave politics to 
 the professional politicians. The people at large are 
 timid about appearing in public. Ridiculously they 
 listen to the cry of reformers. The suckers want a 
 new system. Imagine inventing new rules In a card- 
 game to prevent the opponent from cheating. The 
 more rules there are, the easier is it to cheat a fool. 
 No; we do not need a new system. We but need a 
 way of recognizing honest men before they become 
 tainted with cynicism. 
 
 As to revolutions, they are a disgrace and the sur- 
 est sign of suckerdom. Riots are acts of weakness. 
 It is a wretched community that must resort to blood- 
 shed for what it cannot get by character. Think of 
 ten men saying to one, You have treated us so miser- 
 ably that we propose to kill you. A confession of 
 abject and contemptible life on the part of ten. 
 
 The ordinary man thinks that by going to the polls, 
 he is doing his duty as a citizen. But it is then too 
 late. On election day he can merely do his duty as 
 a sucker. 
 
 The Man Who Wants To Go 
 to Heaven 
 
 It is extremely important that some of mankind go 
 to Heaven ; they improve the earthly paths as far 
 as we can see them go. 
 
 Verily this world as it is known would be an un- 
 reliable place were it not made steadfast with the un- 
 knowable. This inspires man to the heights of hero- 
 ism, to the profundities of hell, to the raptures of 
 
28 THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 
 
 martyrdom, and to the revels of imagination. Without 
 our appetite for the unknowable, our coarser thoughts 
 would not assimilate to any purpose. Religion tries 
 us out, forces us away from sluggish mediocrity, and 
 wafts us to that mysterious air where the last vesti- 
 ges of reality are analyzed and dissipated and blown 
 away, but not forgotten. For the games of the flesh 
 are sweet, and man will not go to Heaven until he 
 cannot go anywhere else. 
 
 Be that as it may, the fact is that many sagacious 
 investors can be sold an estate which nobody has ever 
 seen, whose whereabouts are not known, and upon 
 which the buyers cannot enter until they are dead. 
 Heaven and Hell are awesome places. It is a daring 
 man that coins them into profit; he is a far-seeing 
 promoter that can turn the Future into cash; he is 
 a shrewd galoot that can sell tickets for an entertain- 
 ment that is to take place on Doomsday. 
 
 At first sight, it would seem that the man who 
 wants to go to Heaven must be a pessimist; he does 
 not esteem this world as up to the standard of an Om- 
 nipotent's handiwork, and desires other evidence of 
 divinity. On second thought, we sadly remember 
 that we are mortal ; and, it appears, that when the 
 poison of the years will have shriveled our bodies and 
 we are put into the coffin, it would be no more than 
 right that the cargo be shipped to another place pre- 
 pared for us. Everybody likes to be immortal. There 
 are even those who say they would rather go to Hell 
 and be damned than go nowhere and be nothing. 
 
 The general view is that the more we forego in this 
 world, the more we will deserve in the next. This 
 seems plausible, and would be a commonsense, busi- 
 ness-like arrangement with Nature. It is quid pro 
 quo, one thing for another, tit for tat. The wonder 
 of it is that any man should be willing to pay for 
 
THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 29 
 
 such obvious information ; and not only that but, hav- 
 ing paid for it once, he should continue paying for 
 it year after year. 
 
 It being entirely a matter of faith, the question is, 
 What is that? Faith is prejudice rampant, when all 
 evidence is to the contrary. The prejudice (or de- 
 sire) has been held to be evidence of a fulfillment com- 
 ing. When all is said and done, this faith, this desire 
 for immortality is the only light we have on the fu- 
 ture. And the best reverence to it is joining with 
 sacred voice in the anthem, Don't blow out the light. 
 
 As soon as man had the first pain, he began to 
 think. He asked himself why he was created. He 
 may have felt that he could not go on until he should 
 know why. Fortunately there were at hand other 
 men ready to answer the divine question in fine, poeti- 
 cal language. Most of them did not go into details. 
 They were wise. The more they went into details, 
 the less they were believed. Mankind will always 
 have faith in its Maker. It will backslide at the name 
 of an angel. Man has always longed for Heaven, been 
 willing to acknowledge his sin, liquidate the damages 
 in coin of the current standard, and pay all the costs 
 of court, for redemption. A man may have hoaxed 
 the sentiment of suckers, and developed their greed, 
 and become rich thereby ; yet a sight of the aristocratic 
 charlatan himself, seated in a fashionable church, dis- 
 gorging his gold on the same unsubstantial prom- 
 ises that he has used on others, is the true meeting 
 of the sublime and the ridiculous. Heaven the unseen 
 sublime, and earth the staring ridiculous. 
 
 It must be said that of recent years, religion has 
 spared the rod and mankind has become a spoiled 
 child. Gradually yet not imperceptibly, churchdom is 
 letting go the tenets of the Middle Ages. Yet, if there 
 is anything that orthodoxy cannot slur over, it is the 
 
30 THE WORLD OP SUCKERS 
 
 doctrine of Thou shalt not sin. Formerly the sacred 
 powers took a decisive stand on this topic, and there 
 was much authorized cursing over it. Nowadays at- 
 tention is directed mainly towards securing a large 
 church attendance. The successful church, not the 
 successful creed, is fought for. The pulpit is prone 
 to flatter the vanity of the pews rather than enforce 
 the command of Thou shalt not. 
 
 The New Testament is a roof garden built upon 
 the Old. If the Old is falling, the New must become 
 a castle in the air, not to fall with it. Men have lost 
 faith in the little discontented tribe that seemed to 
 have a genius for religion and the slaughtering of 
 an ox. The Biped with the Coin has captured 
 politics and bought religion. He entertains kings and 
 keeps priests in hire : The devout man in black is apt 
 to assert, Believe or be damned; but he no longer 
 dares to say, Obey or be damned. He would lose his 
 situation. So the Biped with the Coin pats the 
 preacher on the back, pats himself over the heart, 
 and does not forget how to kick a sucker in the ver- 
 tex. The Biped with the Coin assumes that Heaven 
 is keeping pace with the age. 
 
 Eliminate money from the world, and what would 
 become of religion? Preachers would be almost as 
 scarce as saints. Yea; not only of religion but of 
 other things, quite a few lovely branches would wither 
 and disappear from the tree, if the root of all evil were 
 cut out. 
 
 Religion is philosophy in the imperative mood. 
 Philosophy is blunder thinking it over, finding the 
 scientific name for a broken heart. And all our bet- 
 ter thoughts are but an indecisive combat between 
 the infinite and the infinitesimal. 
 
 Reverting to faith, there is a thriving suspicion that 
 half the clergy are agnostics. The clergyman, like the 
 
THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 31 
 
 politician, when met in the streets, does not seem 
 the same skylark that lured us to the empyrean a 
 while before. He does not seem to have any more 
 faith than is necessary to forget a sad tale or laugh 
 ?* ? joke 
 
 Take the common case of an honest clergyman. 
 He is, say, thirty-five years of age. He looks human ; 
 he is called a divine. "He relishes good gravy as well 
 as grace. He does not boast the mustardseed of a 
 miracle. Thirty-six years ago, he was not much to 
 mention. He did not flutter down from the pearly 
 gates. As a physiological specimen, he was, at birth, 
 nothing extraordinary nor astonishing. He brought 
 with him no recollections of spaces beyond. And yet, 
 in the thirty-fifth year of his age, he sprawls above a 
 pulpit and explains the universe. He administers in- 
 vective and solace in the proper place. He shouts 
 creation and doom with equal facility. 
 
 Whatever may be the preacher's knowledge of di- 
 vinity, whatever may be his influence in the next 
 world, the listener has no way of satisfying himself. 
 Flattered and exhorted, his soul goes to an assigna- 
 tion of beauty, miraculous windows, incense exalting 
 and artful music. He is buying something he knows 
 not what, nor if the seller be entitled to sell. 
 
 The peccadilloes of the church may cause the skep- 
 tic to deem religion the greatest graft that ever ex- 
 isted on earth. This would be a pestiferous state of 
 mind should it become widespread ; for it is of the 
 greatest importance that there be among the people 
 a number of men continually pleading in behalf of 
 virtue. 
 
 The fact is that many a fault of the church is caused 
 by the vicious tyranny of the congregations. They 
 demand too much for too little effort on their part. 
 Just as women require bombastic phrases from their 
 
32 THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 
 
 lovers, and voters from their politicians, so has the 
 soul of the sinner demanded of the priest, fantasy, 
 rapture and bliss. And these blessings must be fore- 
 told; though the priest specifies no time for the ful- 
 fillment of his promises, and does not hold himself 
 accountable for anything that goes wrong on earth 
 in the meantime. 
 
 The old pagans were such suckers that they would 
 not heed a wise man's advise, nor take a medicine 
 man's herbs, unless he could prove his wisdom by 
 performing a miracle. The barbaric religions did not 
 let off their priests lightly, but did hold them account- 
 able for changes of the weather, success in war, af- 
 flictions and healings and events generally. 
 
 All present-day creeds are originated in miracle, yet 
 the ministers thereof do not so exercise their hands 
 now. Very sensibly do they refrain from meddling 
 offhand with the supernatural. And because the 
 priests do not pretend unearthly powers, there are 
 millions of suckers who see no reason or motive for 
 being good. There are also millions of suckers that 
 would rather believe in a dream than in a plain, logi- 
 cal statement of honor. Dreams were once a power- 
 ful adjunct in divination. They will be again. Far 
 from the religion of the future being founded on rea- 
 son, it will, as others have done, take its beginning 
 from the necromantic nocturn following a welsh rab- 
 bit. It will begin with terror and mystery, and end 
 in salvation for cash. It will perform miracles, build 
 cathedrals, and end on the streets with hallelujah and 
 a nickel in my little tambourine. One spiritualistic 
 medium, bolder and sweeter than the others, will 
 do it. 
 
 But this is getting far from Paradise and far from 
 the question. The vital point is that the poor, be- 
 wildered sucker, saturated with a thousand frauds on 
 
THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 33 
 
 earth, wants to go to Heaven. He wants to be happy 
 not only during lifetime but after he is dead. He is 
 desperate now and then and willing to support the 
 professional blessers in luxury if they will help him 
 to be saved. 
 
 Remember, this is the same sucker that wants to 
 get rich quick, and that votes for a politician he has 
 never seen, and enters many transactions that prove 
 him to be a fool, a coward and a knave. The cause 
 of all this organized prayer and general disturbance 
 of the skies is that the sucker knows in his heart that 
 he does not deserve to go to Heaven, according to the 
 rules. He knows what the rules are. It is because 
 he has broken them that he is periodically alarmed. 
 And he pays the priest because he imagines the priest 
 fitter to pray. The sinner is afraid to transact the 
 whole business with Heaven. He craves the aid of 
 a professional, as if he fears there might be some 
 trick that he does not understand in the way. He is 
 still a coward and a knave. He slips a few coins into 
 the hand of the dominie and confuses religion with 
 politics. 
 
 It is a matter of responsibility. If the sucker does 
 not feel responsible for his own soul, there is no rea- 
 son why some one else should not assume the task 
 and be paid for it. What good it all does may be be- 
 held upon arrival in Heaven. If the priest has done 
 well, he should be congratulated. Should the meet- 
 ing occur in Another Place, the disappointed spirit 
 should not be hard on the reverend man but acknowl- 
 edge itself for a sucker. Of course, if the meeting 
 does not occur any place, nothing can be done. 
 
34 THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 
 
 The New Thought Sucker 
 
 There is considerable demand for persons that can- 
 not distinguish between the abstract and concrete. 
 
 Men of the old religions pray to God and wait for 
 a miracle. The Newthoughter prays to himself, and 
 considers his prayer granted by taking it for granted 
 that he already possessed everything by divine right. 
 The true believer moves the Infinite to concede a 
 wish. The Newthoughter removes the wish and con- 
 ceives the Infinite. 
 
 The newthought person's achievement is a meta- 
 physical catastrophe. He turns his mind inside out, 
 and behold, the void has becomes riches. He not 
 only pretends that his wish is already granted within 
 him but that he himself is the answer. Poverty has 
 only to desire wealth and immediately present the 
 gold to itself. He says, "I am wealth, I am happi- 
 ness, I am freedom, I am health, I am the All Good, 
 I am love." The error is more grammatical than 
 philosophical. Truly, the extreme pretension of new 
 thought is nothing more than a grammatical error. 
 When the thinker sees that he is not free, he asserts, 
 "I am freedom." So that he becomes person, God, 
 wisher and thing wished for. It is a monopoly. It 
 is not fair. Say that two men are working for a cor- 
 poration. One pure-minded fellow prays in the good 
 old way for an extension of salary. The other is a New- 
 thoughter, and affirms, "I am myself, eternal and 
 everlasting, also infinite ; I am the corporation ; I am 
 the salary ; I am $200 a month ; (a damned lie) ; I 
 am prosperity ; I am love ; I am happiness." One 
 fault in his theory is that the Assistant Secretary, 
 for whom he toils, is too busy to think about it. The 
 Secretary might be willing to believe that the New- 
 
THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 35 
 
 thoughter is God, but does not wish that the divinity 
 be paid more than $75 a month, and tells him to work 
 faster if indeed he be divine. 
 
 This is not the worst of the Newthoughter's in- 
 finite egotism. Remember, he is everlasting^ back and 
 forth. He not only possesses the universe in its 
 present condition (with the exceptions of the evils 
 thereof which he does not care for) but is everything 
 that ever was. He can quote the Bible to prove it. 
 He claims to be all the great warriors, the poets, the 
 architects, painters and musicians all the good ones. 
 Instead of praising a thing ordinarily, he states, "It 
 is sublime; it is I." He built the pyramids. He can 
 prove that by that transcendental snollygoster, Ralph 
 Waldo Emerson. He painted madonnas centuries 
 ago. When he attempts to prove that he is Michael 
 Angelo by designing a scene that resembles nothing 
 under the sun, he calls it a spirit-picture. 
 
 Any New Thought society, for $25, will guarantee 
 to award the student infinite power, and cure him 
 of constipation. This is a low price for infinity 
 alone. It is, though, more than was charged for mak- 
 ing the sun stand still in Gideon. Still, the latter 
 miracle was inferior to the gift of infinite power; and 
 being cured of constipation were much more delecta- 
 ble than having the sun stand still. 
 
 The man who buys infinity for $25 would not be a 
 sucker if he should refuse to pay for it in advance. 
 
 Orthodox religion is based on questions that man 
 cannot answer. New Thought excels in this: it is 
 based on that which one-third of the Triune God did 
 not define ; that is truth. New Thought is Truth. If 
 Professor Hoffsnacker Vosniak had stood before Pil- 
 ate, the answer would have been, "Join our Mystic 
 Breathing Circle for $10, which can be paid in two in- 
 stallments of $5 each, and we will show you, brother 
 
36 THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 
 
 Pilate, the marvelous simplicity of Truth." It is 
 quite likely that Pilate would have pungled out the 
 ten. The only way to convince a man of anything 
 is to make him pay for it in advance. 
 
 Some persons take to New Thought because they 
 are tired of the old ; some, because they have lost 
 faith in palmistry. New Thought, Theosophy, palm- 
 istry, spiritualism, card-reading, crystal-gazing, as- 
 trology, mind-reading, fortune-telling, find peaceful 
 accomodation in the one mind. There must IDC some 
 connective idea running through all these occultisms. 
 A more discreet occultist will disclaim card-reading; 
 but in general they all love to peek into the future, 
 whether through a crystal ball, a pack of cards, the 
 planets, or any symbolic ornament of the impossible. 
 Whatever is told for the good is Truth ; and that is 
 New Thought. It affirms that which is desired, and 
 denies that which is unpleasant. The principle is that 
 the disciple, being Truth, cannot tell a lie. 
 
 It is readily seen what attracts the suckers to this 
 cult. Behold the program. A more aggrandizing bill 
 of extravaganzas is not to be imagined. It works on 
 the practical trait of human nature that the greater the 
 offer the greater the belief, temporarily. If a vial of 
 linament that cures lumbago is worth 25 cents, is not a 
 medicine that drives the gargoyling lumbago out of cre- 
 ation worth many times more? 
 
 What chance of escape has the sucker when he is 
 promised the following: Success, Health, Personal At- 
 tractiveness, Power, Realization, Love, Riches, Blessed 
 Peace, Eternal Life, a Greater Career, Freedom, Happi- 
 piness, Youth, Magnetism, Holy Light, Good Appetite, 
 Mystic Use ofthe Passions, Power to see spirits and re- 
 ceive their messages, Joy, Peace, Admiration, Identity 
 with God, etc. ? 
 
 Imagine a sallow, slack and weary, flat-breasted, for- 
 
THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 37 
 
 lorn and sour-stomached woman reading that list of 
 miracles. She would give $25 for any one of them. 
 And then to obtain all, with magazines, books, life- 
 readings, and personal questions answered by the 
 Inner Circle of the Brotherhood. Very soon, she is 
 talking vibrations, astral bodies and health biscuits; 
 meets a book agent that is living on a peanut diet 
 and studying astrology. They hold hands in the dark- 
 ness for table-rappings and materializations. The 
 table doesn't rap for a rap, and the materialization is 
 perceived to be a reflection from a window across the 
 street. They pull down the blinds and hold hands 
 again. Their patience gives out, but he does not let 
 go her hands. Subsequently he borrows money from 
 her, and a medium tells her that she will receive it 
 back in due time. The unfortunate one points to her 
 forehead and says, "God is here." 
 
 No one can refute any statement about God. 
 
 The subject should not be left without mentioning 
 a curious hostility existing in creeds and thoughts; 
 that is, the closer two of them are related the more 
 unfriendly they are. The tie that binds is their main 
 controversy. Christian Science avers that New 
 Thought is not science, and orthodoxy says that 
 Christian Science is not Christian. Every dogma is 
 the universe measured in few mystic words. Every 
 creed has a word that is antagonistic to its synonym 
 in another creed. Religious beliefs are doubts of other 
 beliefs. In telling of his aspirations, a certain tall, 
 stoop-shouldered man once declared, "and there is one 
 thing that I shall do before I die, and that is smash 
 those damned Christian Scientists." "How?" he was 
 asked. And he replied, "Astrology." The sun and 
 the planets were not foretelling a new prophet in that 
 century. 
 
 Spiritualism is a phase of New Thought; not that 
 
38 THE WORLD OP SUCKERS 
 
 phantoms are new, but the present generation of phan- 
 toms are somewhat disassociated with the true creeds. 
 In the olden days were prophets and sorcerers. The 
 Prophets, on account of their virtue, were supposedly 
 given authorized rights in the supernatural. The sor- 
 serers carried on an illicit trade with the unknown; 
 they were spiritual filibusters. The orthodoxies of 
 today, while necessarily believing in souls, condemn 
 and ignore intercourse with souls through spirit me- 
 diums. So, there are a number of people who, when 
 supping at the supernatural, are prone to mix their 
 own salad, waive all dogmas, and subject themselves to 
 the wonders of experience. This is called New 
 Thought because the ancients meddled with the same 
 forces without thinking. 
 
 Far be it from our purpose to reflect the ghost of a 
 doubt over that spirit-land that lies so accessible on 
 the other side of the medium's curtain. One should 
 have extreme delicacy in asserting what is not. 
 Should a person of imagination deny the existence of 
 ghosts he is immediately confronted with infinity, 
 which is full of a number of things. Sometimes, 
 though, our skeptical nature makes us despise the 
 ghost that would leave Heaven to take part in a fifty- 
 cent performance; and our esthetic soul sours to a 
 ghost with talcum powder on its nose and an odor 
 of perspiration about its armpits. But that is a mat- 
 ter of taste, not argument. The thing that we have 
 in mind, with reference to suckers, is the so-called 
 materialized spirit which in the dark cannot be dis- 
 tinguished from a living person, does nothing that a 
 living person could not do, speaks nothing that a 
 feeble fancy coud not invent. The performance being 
 quite human, there is only the word of the medium to 
 the effect that the obscured figure is a ghost. In order 
 to substantiate the existence of spirits, she exhibits 
 
THE WORLD OP SUCKERS 39 
 
 a substantial shape of worldly flesh, weight the same 
 as that of the average farmer's daughter. 
 
 There is a missing link between what we know and 
 what we do not know. Imagination does the best it 
 can to fill the space. If a man will accept flesh for 
 spirit he but gives the partisans of spirit another ex- 
 cuse to evade the missing link of evidence. The me- 
 dium has but skipped over the evidence and not added 
 to it. The demand is for a spirit; this is answered 
 by a real body and an argument that the body is a 
 spirit materialized. Body and argument existed 
 aplenty before. Every spirit manifestation is a com- 
 pound of circumstances that are congenial to fraud. 
 The sucker is fascinated by the nullification of logic. 
 The two most interesting things in the world are 
 bgic and the absence of it. As the latter is to be had 
 without effort, the sucker gets his pleasure without 
 rrental exercise ; this is true pleasure, which ends in 
 disappointment. 
 
 The Soldier 
 
 Tkere is one divinity in real life before whom we 
 hesitate to lay the sordid term of sucker. Neverthe- 
 less, in sooth, yet soothingly as possible, sucker he 
 must be said to be, and the more so in that he must 
 continue so, or his nation would continue not. In all 
 due reverence, with sob at heart and moisture in eye, 
 we mu;t tag with "sucker" the wreath that we humbly 
 lay at .he feet of the soldier. 
 
 Consider what we owe him. Without his death, 
 we shotld have neither national dignity nor peaceful 
 inspiration. Without his death, our every-day achieve- 
 
40 THE WORLD OP SUCKERS 
 
 ments would sink back into cringing commercialism. 
 Without his death, we should be skulking, peering 
 hypocrites. Our pompous blood would become stale, 
 and unaspiring in its veins, without his death. 
 
 Statesmen make history; the soldier is history. The 
 nation has no life until the soldier's life overflows the 
 battlefield. What can be greater than patriotism that 
 causes men to march proudly in thousands that leads 
 the image of God to breast the bullet-waves of war. 
 The gift of the Infinite and Eternal is resigned to the 
 uses of the flag. Love of life is forgotten in the 
 sweetness of a patriotic wound. The love of woman 
 is lost in the sublimity of death. 
 
 Courage is the heart of all things. Etymologically, 
 "heart" and "courage" are the same. Courage is nec- 
 essary to achievement. But then, even as a man may 
 be bold in one way and timid otherwise, so does i 
 nation thrive on the basis of maintaining its courage 
 in one department and its cowardice in another. Ths 
 is necessary, as far as the nation is concerned. And in 
 this, the soldier must be regarded as no more hum-in 
 than the gun in his hands. Could a gun be invented 
 to obey orders, the soldier would be useless. His 
 business is to kill and be killed. He relinquishes all 
 claims to his own person. He is not only courageous, 
 he constitutes the courage of that part of the nation 
 that does not fight. Should he survive, he may be per- 
 mitted to share the good that he has won. Ht has 
 taken a thrilling chance and should have a thrilling re- 
 ward. Should he die, his blood and glory g* into 
 the peace and good will of the non-combatant^ into 
 their security, their oratory, their politics, art, /cience 
 and poetry, their wealth and their honor. 
 
 There is no avoidance of such conditions eicept in 
 a military government, where every man, serring his 
 time as a soldier and taking chance of beirg called 
 
THE WORLD OP SUCKERS 41 
 
 upon, could reasonably enjoy the victory won by suc- 
 ceeding takers of the chance. A republic does not 
 abide such expensive routine. A republic thrusts its 
 uniformed heroes out of itself, out of republican in- 
 stitutions into army life, the army being a nomadic 
 despotism. Whatever the theory of a republican gov- 
 ernment it could not be maintained without an army, 
 which is the most unrepublican government known to 
 man. During his term, the soldier is a slave. 
 
 It is not unsurmisable therefore that the soldier 
 may recoil vengefully against his country, capture and 
 make a despotism of it. Almost every country has at 
 one time or another become politically involved with 
 its own captains, and surrendered to them. The vic- 
 torious soldier has not a high regard for the men who 
 send his rations. 
 
 There is than patriotism no sentiment more to the 
 internal welfare of mankind. Atheism, intemperance, 
 laxity of marriage laws, injustice, gambling and sen- 
 sation may exist in a country, and even be glorified 
 by art; but unto the country itself, there must be the 
 virtue of patriotism. To that extent, the heroes are 
 put into the most beautiful surroundings where man 
 and Nature combine their energies. The arrayed 
 steel, the mystic power of the weapons, the wonder- 
 thumping of cavalry, the terrific tramp of embellished 
 ranks, the bugles, the music, the flag in the wind, are 
 a sumptuous enclosure, lighting the sucker with a sense 
 of magnificence, converting him from a man of pru- 
 dence to a thing of wild imagination. In the pro- 
 tected territory, within the circling warriors, the war 
 is financed, and diplomatic relations are felt for future 
 commerce. Those that remain at home contribute 
 their loud-bursting rhetoric, the thanks of history, and 
 the plaudits of a soldier's grave. These poetic touches 
 
42 THE WORLD OP SUCKERS 
 
 are held out to the soldier in exchange for his life, 
 which must be used. 
 
 A man is not a man, he can have no full realization 
 of life, until he has faced death in some form. It is 
 probable that one does not know what life is until 
 he has been at least once in battle. Peradventure, 
 after such experience, he may know far less than he 
 did before. 
 
 War is the critical point of racial advance. What 
 could better conduce to the noblest form of life than 
 the noblest form of death? For the suckers that sur- 
 vive this duty, there can be no adequate reward. Con- 
 cerning those that have been slaughtered, we can but 
 honor ourselves by weeping for them. The soldier 
 with his haversack of glory and the workingman with 
 full dinner-pail are but objects for meditation rather 
 than reform. In time, both take their revenge. 
 
 The Lover 
 
 Should men make love as seldom as they marry, 
 the world would not do a tenth of the business it now 
 does. All the world sells to a lover. 
 
 This is a very sentimental chapter, and is intended 
 to prove that folly is an inspiration of much honor. 
 Love is a search for happiness ; and when the blood- 
 hounds of disappointment are keen on the scent, the 
 chase is awe-inspiring. What is so beautiful and nec- 
 essary on earth as a ruined castle with a fool sobbing 
 in the moonlight? 
 
 There is no such thing as loving wisely. Wisdom 
 does not love. We know things for what they are, 
 and love them for what we wish them to be. 
 
 A man does not know himself until he is exhausted. 
 
THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 43 
 
 Only by emptying his heart to the dregs does he mark 
 its full measure. To be true to creation, we must 
 overwork ourselves and our passions, even though we 
 give all and receive nothing. That is angelic. What 
 would be the good of an unforgiving angel? The 
 Devil does no more than his duty. 
 
 Now, in a just and equitable world, such as our 
 own, it is not the duty of any man to be greater than 
 his fellows; for greatness cannot be cpmpensated. 
 From that standpoint, the great man is a sucker. At 
 the outset, he looked forward to honors and gratitude 
 that were impossible. When he has construed the 
 inscrutible and found fame worthless, he still goes on. 
 That is greatness. 
 
 Extraordinary sentiment over anything is likely to 
 make a man a sucker. The lover is, in a way, a great 
 man, and, of course, a sucker in general when he per- 
 ceives that the mystery with long hair has a mania for 
 shop-windows ; and, in particular when, at his expense 
 she wantons with his fires to test her tempered steel. 
 
 No man can do justice to himself and to a wo- 
 man's beauty at the same time. To treat her accord- 
 ing to her merits as a plain human being, which, in the 
 majority of cases, she is, would satisfy neither her 
 vanity of what she is nor his of what he is getting. 
 Still, the majority of persons cannot believe that they 
 belong to the majority of cases. 
 
 When he spends six months of his income vainly 
 trying to ascertain whether she loves him or not, he 
 is a sucker. For when his money is gone, he ascer- 
 tains without cost. He is a sucker when he allows 
 her to persuade him that her companionship has a 
 high monetary value which he must meet continu- 
 ally. He is doubly a sucker when she conceals from 
 him the fact that he is but half a sucker in conjunc- 
 tion with a rival. 
 
44 THE WORLD OP SUCKERS 
 
 Suppose that, after a few preliminary sessions in 
 the parlor, seizing the outrageous glory of a kiss, ex- 
 changing of books and conceits, conquest of blushes, 
 posturing at piano, watching the heavenly stars be- 
 come dots of lovers' fires, the lovesick orator should 
 ask her does she love him. She herself would be a 
 sucker if she give him a plain answer. She would 
 have to go without many comfortable hesitations, that 
 seem but passionate falterings, until the actual hus- 
 bandman arrives on the scene. The suitor is given, 
 at least, a fair opportunity to show his utmost; nor 
 could she weigh him accurately until his extravagance 
 has nothing left to be weighed and he has taken back 
 his wit's end in despair. 
 
 He is no longer so young that he will be content to 
 play in the sands of love. She must take him out into 
 a sensual tempest, or he will not be interested. If 
 not fondled until he extends and empassions himself, 
 he will stretch himself and yawn. He loves; and it 
 would be wrong of her, it would be a spurned bless- 
 ing, if she rebuff him immediately. Forasmuch, it 
 may be that she will fall in love with him later on. 
 Love, the great scene-shifter, stands near. At any 
 moment he may change a private dining-room to a 
 bower of idolatrous bliss ; or turn sublimity to a tear- 
 soaked handkerchief for one or the other. It is gam- 
 bling with the gods, and the Biped with the Coin puts 
 up the stakes. Every act of spending is a wrger any- 
 way : you bet that you get your money's worth. This 
 the supplicant must discover for himself. Just as in 
 a school of stage-acting, some instructions are in the 
 manner of falling to the floor without injuring the 
 backbone, so in real romance the sucker must learn 
 to fall from his ideal without hurting his heart. 
 
 It is not improbable that we have been in error as 
 to romance. We were misled )jy the books and 
 
THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 45 
 
 poems. From these we have drawn a belief that Jack 
 the Kisser goes into places of moonlight, and into 
 parlor with gas turned low in the moon of frosted 
 glass, and through leafy lanes, hand in hand with the 
 luminous damsel who does not know whether she is 
 walking on sanctified clouds or plain ordinary roses; 
 whether his arm is a human arm or a jeweled serpent 
 of sin. This is a slight suggestion of the mere scenic 
 illusions of love, as related in the story-books. 
 
 Try it, any one who would stare at vacancy like 
 an owl. Try it, to wit: to woo the maid with silver 
 moon, dim parlor and leafy lane. The girl that would 
 agree to such a courtship would be an impractical na- 
 ture, or maybe weary of life, or she may not have 
 awakened to the advantages of this epoch ; and it 
 would not do to have some other affectionist awake 
 her, later. In short, she is behind the times, and in 
 all probability, so far behind that she is not born yet. 
 
 The model girl would feel that the gallant who is 
 courting her by the aid of silver moon is buying in- 
 candescent pleasures for another. Leafy lanes are 
 occasionally welcome when the overflowing elegance 
 of a summer night floods the soul, and the fragrance 
 of earth overcomes the earthiness of the fragrance, or 
 the laundry is late. But the animated girl the tall, 
 stately, tilt-hatted, voluptuous, wide-eyed, purse- 
 dangling, fascinating, fault-finding, aristocratic honey- 
 cooler, is not to be duped with moonshine. It there 
 is to be dupery, it must be something expensive and 
 worth yarning about next day. 
 
 Women are aware of the sucker's two traits pre- 
 viously mentioned: that he is a coward and a knave, 
 and they treat him as he deserves ; transform him into 
 a pleasure resort ; which is the best thing that may be 
 done with him. 
 
 In purchasing the follies and inventions of his time, 
 
46 THE WORLD OP SUCKERS 
 
 and in the debt that every man owes to the general 
 good, there is nothing more joyous than liquidating 
 his liabilities with a woman. But only a sucker would 
 believe that he is buying love that way. Love can- 
 not be bought with either moon or money ; which is a 
 pity, for the moon seems easily to be got by a lover 
 for his sweetheart. Love cannot be bought, it ap- 
 pears; like a rainbow, it just comes and truly, in 
 all its gorgeous expanse, just as seldom. 
 
 These conditions are brilliant phases of life to a 
 brilliant mind; for if every sucker could buy love, the 
 one perfect woman in the world would be sought by 
 these Bipeds with the Coin, and the ideal man could 
 never pretend to have found her. Imagine rainbows 
 purchasable ! Why, the idealist would never get 
 sight of one. Then it is evident that in romance, as 
 in other difficulties, the suckers perform a vast service 
 to humanity. They gather up all the mercenary wo- 
 men, leaving the sincere others quite conspicuous and 
 so neglected that they study politics and reforms for 
 the nation and ethics for everybody. 
 
 There are strange and plutocratish things, whose 
 cost is hung with golden spangles, and which the 
 sucker has seldom if ever purchased. The lady prat- 
 tles of them as if they were common as hairpins to 
 her. And he, to impress her that he is a very hell- 
 bender of a spendthrift, promises them one after an- 
 other. She has a way of foreclosing those promises 
 while seemingly thinking of other matters more to 
 his liking. And yet she does not often thank him en- 
 thusiastically, fearing lest he deem her unaccustomed 
 to luxury. So he might have begun as a romantic, 
 moon-storming lover, but sees himself eventually 
 nothing more than our old friend and sucker, the Bi- 
 ped with the Coin. 
 
 In the course of time, passion-face concludes that if 
 
THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 47 
 
 he cannot have the woman's love he might as well 
 take the woman. It is the sucker that fancies in the 
 beginning that buying the woman is buying her love. 
 
 He told her that he was intoxicated with the wine 
 of her lips; and he himself does not appreciate the 
 truth of this at once, nor that she took advantage of 
 his intoxication. However, no one is more sober than 
 the man who emerges from a drunken sleep or a lov- 
 er's dream. He wants something for footing the bills 
 of her procrastinated refusal ; and, if he does not lose 
 his head, he may redeem himself. Her object was not 
 matrimony; yet, after her expensive negative, she may 
 not be averse to glimpses of honeymoon. What he 
 yearned for was a simple Yes; what he got was a 
 $1000 or a $10,000 No, according to his coin. So he 
 steadies himself, investigates the pampered beauty 
 without illusion, wearies himself not with Yes and 
 No, but applies himself to the subtle paradoxical 
 charms between and around. 
 
 Frequently the lover has a lady whose wealth is his 
 tenfold; still he acts as the Biped with the Coin, lead- 
 ing her through the mazes of luxury at night, and 
 worrying through his flourishing maze of creditors in 
 the daytime. A woman with one-fourth the income 
 of a man is wealthier than he, for her pleasures cost 
 her nothing. She keeps herself alive to be amused by 
 others. In order to have pleasure, all that a woman 
 need do is to resist gently. Her lover, his rival and 
 her platonic friend furnish her with the gaieties. 
 There is no- better established rule than that a woman 
 should not pay her own way. That is why she is so 
 fond of having it. 
 
 The unaccepted lover, having declared his passion 
 in every form of language, from infant's google to 
 blank verse, oft succeeds in doing naught save exag- 
 gerate the lady's ego. A woman's exaggerated ego is 
 
48 THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 
 
 a most costly piece of spirtuality to handle. It if be 
 true that the old-fashioned swain began his love-mak- 
 ing" with the question, Can you cook, he might have 
 been unpoetic ; his practical nature may have lost him 
 a bride now and then; but he did not exaggerate the 
 lady's ego nor watch the regiment of his dollars pass 
 with muffled drums into the gloom. 
 
 The business affairs of a lover are now and then 
 in such a state that his income is frosted over for sev- 
 eral months. He must go to his savings to continue 
 acquaintance with the ego he has exaggerated. He 
 flattered her up to the tantrums of extravagance, dili- 
 gently impressed her with the fact that she was un- 
 reasonably attractive to his heart, and then expected 
 her to listen to reason at what he considers a time 
 for it. 
 
 In the leisure moments of his wooing, the sucker 
 is not as idle as is supposed. He acts as a rival and 
 as a platonic friend to two other women, disbursing 
 his minor cash to their escapades. He must do this 
 in self protection ; for when my-pretty-maid takes to 
 quarreling and will not see him, he must go elsewhere 
 with his passion. And should she relinquish him al- 
 together, he must have some other latent love affair 
 so well procreated that it can be resorted to without 
 a melancholy interval. We are well aware that in the 
 books and poems, he does otherwise. But in the sort 
 of life we have known, he takes to the next girl. Now 
 and then he drowns his sorrow in matrimony with her. 
 
 These are not rare cases ; the theaters and restau- 
 rants are full of them. Singleness of purpose is a 
 fine thing; beauty is plural. Man has one heart; but 
 it has four compartments, all of them busy. He has 
 also a brain with many wrinkles ; he has five senses 
 in his flesh, with a love of variety; he has seven days 
 in his week. A little multiplication would be appro- 
 
THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 49 
 
 priate here. Suffice to say, though, a man is not, 
 throughout his many fibers, multitudinously asleep 
 whenever his lady love has the blues. Why, the or- 
 dinary sentimental sucker, leading a broad life on 
 $150 a month, must have all his interests and his 
 every faculty psychologized. For and unto this, he 
 has a merry-go-round of women consisting of the girl 
 to whom he is engaged, and the girl to whom some 
 other sucker is engaged, and the girl to whom he was 
 engaged hitherto (and who perhaps thinks he is yet), 
 and a widow, and a married lady suing for a divorce; 
 not to count the clumsy gfrl in the old dress. When 
 they interfere, he borrows money on the day before 
 payday, and on the second day before the next pay- 
 day, and on the third day before the next, and so on, 
 until two paydays are required to pay his debts. Then, 
 he loses his position and must sit in the moonlight 
 with the clumsy girl in the old dress. Eventually he 
 reappears on the glad streets with money obtained, 
 nobody knows how and the girl to whom he is en- 
 gaged, who accuses him of having passed the interim 
 with the widow. His money gone, he again retires 
 to seclusion ; returns for three days and a good time 
 with the other sucker's bethrothed, who charges him 
 with having spent his time with the lady suing for 
 divorce. Missed for a while again, he suddenly 
 swoops down upon civilization with a dollar and fif- 
 teen cents, takes his old love to a cheap show, sits 
 her down to ice cream (how he scowls at the restau- 
 rants now) and then it is, O romantic reader, that, 
 with his coin gone, said biped ruminates upon study 
 and work and long walks. 
 
 He did love one of those girls ; he cannot remember 
 which, for he hates them all now. Each one, in turn, 
 he had gazed upon as his life's mate, told her that she 
 had more influence on his life than had any other wo- 
 
50 THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 
 
 man. Each one he now remembers as merely a good- 
 time girl. 
 
 The Girl with the Demon Lover 
 
 Nature has laid a painful trap for women, and made 
 her carry it. Of the fruit of good and evil, woman 
 must take the seeds with the sweetness. 
 
 What entitles the girl to a chapter in the book of 
 suckers occupies a little place just below love, and is 
 known as flirtation. In her excitement she may fail to 
 distinguish between flirtation and love. As love leads 
 logically to marriage, and flirtation only unexpectedly 
 so, it is plain that when the girl supplies the logical 
 connection where nothing serious was intended, she 
 is playing the reformers game, Leaping at Conclu- 
 sions. Marriage is a subject upon which women are 
 presumed expert. Experts are not sentimental. As 
 long as a woman lets her wisdom hold, she is on solid 
 footing; when she is gladdened by sentiment, she is 
 apt to take a long, oblique, downward course, featly 
 as a fairy gliding down a moonbeam. The moment 
 any one surrenders to sentiment, he or she is in the 
 hands of the enemy. 
 
 Who has read most about ghosts is the most likely 
 person to see one, and be credulous of a counterfeit. 
 She who meditates most on marriage is most apt to 
 be misled by an illusion, especially in regard to a pro- 
 posal of marriage. Frequently she does not know 
 what is Not a Proposal. 
 
 She ought to be suspicious when she is called upon 
 to interpret. She may be a very compatible girl and 
 allow the casual kiss-beggar to operate upon her emo- 
 
THE WORLD OP SUCKERS 51 
 
 way he should, and wonder if it be love. If he makes 
 her guess his purpose, he is making a sucker of her. 
 There is no mystery about a sincere person. The 
 question of insincerity should always be answered in 
 the affirmative, unless there be mitigating circum- 
 stances; and these the trickster usually contrives to 
 have ready. 
 
 If there is one bit of deception in a woman that re- 
 acts upon her with deadly effect, it is her apparent 
 disinclination toward marriage ; this attracts the lip- 
 smith and libertine. Few men would care to climb a 
 lightning-rod when the flashes are overhead. The 
 house of love has many queer entrances. Few adven- 
 turers would be so quick at the rod if the air were sur- 
 charged with direct and expressive ideas flashing mat- 
 rimony. The crafty ones look to fair weather and 
 soft, unalarming skies for their climb. 
 
 Of this, one may be sure : the man that is about 
 to propose marriage is solemn as a soldier in the im- 
 minence of his first battle. This is the mood of any- 
 body about to do anything for the first time. And he 
 is not altogether sprightly on the second occasion. 
 The lover, if sincere, in sight of wedlock's preliminary 
 splendors, is deeply marvelous. He desires to bear 
 himself well, and will not rest until absolutely under- 
 stood and until he gets an unequivocal answer. He 
 goes into important details and a thousand others, 
 with exquisite variety. He feels quite ceremonious. 
 He does not propose during a waltz, nor in a crowded 
 street-car, nor over a gin fizz, nor introduces the sub- 
 ject with indecent stories, nor dawdles through the 
 months in a way that at once tickles the neck of cu- 
 riosity and scratches the head of doubt. Nor will he 
 woo her in slang, predicting with flippant hypothesis, 
 If vou'll be mv hot ootato I'll be vour ootato-masher. 
 
52 THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 
 
 that guise. Furthermore, he has no unorthodox the- 
 ory of something just as good as matrimony. The 
 libertine, the anarchist, the free-lover, the socialist, the 
 voluptuary, the individualist, the affinity, the soul- 
 mate, the reincarnated lover, and who not, have their 
 special forms of amorous plea. When they desire a 
 wife, they are all one. The true lover is a Puritan, 
 no matter what his previous philosophy. 
 
 Perhaps every woman has memory of a number of 
 men who made momentous love without seeming to 
 be aware of such a thing as a wedding. These men 
 used all the poetry, eloquence, calisthenics and 
 clutches that might have been thought indivisible 
 from the idea of wedlock, such as "forever," "my 
 own," "my first and only love," "my happiness," "my 
 harbinger of heaven" ; but they miraculously avoided 
 the two words, "wife" and "marriage." These did not 
 seem to come within their purview of Heaven and 
 earth. There was a tacit intimation that marriage is 
 Hell. With their minds on the horizon of forever, 
 they forgot to ask her to name the day in the center. 
 
 Perhaps there are many women not fond of wed- 
 ding-cake ; do not esteem the frosted decoration much 
 of a grace to the fruity goodness. Cupid is not as 
 young as he was, and the maidenly art of self de- 
 fence may have undergone modifications in modern 
 years. There is, on the other hand, many a young 
 woman, who, meeting with a likely looking chap, feels 
 the fragrant marital breezes ventilate her windows. 
 She may be so modest as to deny her expectations, 
 relying on his ; also on her monopolizable person. She 
 may be a girl of many charms, that dangle on silver 
 chains. She may have many moods (principally an 
 interrogative) and tenses, containing a past, as they 
 say in books. She overhauls her wardrobe, performs 
 
THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 53 
 
 transfigurations on her complexion, and freaks up her 
 hair. She yields to the heart-snatcher in bacchanalian 
 kisses and receives the brunt of his passion with a 
 timid gasp. After months of wonderment and inter- 
 pretation, she may hear him use the words "wife" and 
 "marriage," in an indirect way; and she is sucker 
 enough to relate those words to his previous florid ex- 
 pression, merely because she has found that he actu- 
 ally has those two words in his vocabulary. She as- 
 sumes they portend to her. 
 
 Then and there she may have good cause to hold 
 him at bay before those two words. Now comes the 
 downfall. At first, he will pretend not to understand. 
 When the matter is thoroughly and painfully ex- 
 plained to him, he will go into a little reverie, consult 
 with his inner consciousness, darkly hint that there 
 is something on his mind, arouse her interrogative 
 mood on the subject, and then slowly will he extrava- 
 sate something of the following fluid melancholy, 
 which may be entitled, Eight Good Methods for 
 Quieting a Misinterpreted Proposal. He says: 
 
 That recently he has been very much annoyed by 
 a certain married woman who is much in love with 
 him and jealous and who threatens to throw off dis- 
 cretion and cause a scandal should he announce his 
 engagement to another. Or, 
 
 That his mother has chosen an heiress for him, a 
 good enough young woman but for whom he cares 
 nothing, yet for whose sake his mother would disin- 
 herit him for refusing, and therefore he had better be 
 careful and wait an opportunity for pleasing himself. 
 Or, 
 
 That there is a certain widow, with whom he has 
 never been in love, but who, sad to say, infatuated 
 him a little when he was young; that she has loaned 
 
54 THE WORLD OP SUCKERS 
 
 him several sums of money, and for the sake of her 
 generosity he does not wish to tell her that he never 
 loved her; moreover, although she has been persever- 
 ing with his heart for a long time, she herself is com- 
 ing to realize the true state of affairs and in time will 
 gradually quitclaim herself. So it were wise to await 
 the future. Or, 
 
 That he is about to make some important business 
 arrangements wherein (modestly) he implies that not 
 only his business qualifications but his personality has 
 something to do with the case, there being a certain 
 woman who has much influence in the matter; that he 
 has met her a few times, and though he has not made 
 love to her, nor she to him, she being married, yet an 
 announcement of his engagement might spoil the 
 chance of his life. So he had better be silent for a 
 while. Or, 
 
 That a month ago he received the surprise of his 
 life in the shape of a letter from a young woman he 
 knew last year, and to whom he had never made love, 
 but herself had proposed to him, and, at that time, for 
 the sake of not hurting the girl's feelings, he had not 
 refused her offer in language sufficiently strong, 
 though he thought then that he had expressed himself 
 to the understanding of any intelligent woman, but 
 now she seems to assume that he had accepted her. 
 and he must take time to correspond with her and 
 show her the mistake. Or, 
 
 That a certain friend of his, one of the best men he 
 had ever known, made a little error with some money 
 that had been entrusted to him, there being no crimi- 
 nal intent, but the world would not understand, and 
 the friend had come to him in an awful fright, and 
 for the sake of this man he had taken all the responsi- 
 bility upon himself, and might have to take a trip out 
 
THE WORLD OP SUCKERS 55 
 
 of town shortly to straighten matters out, and what- 
 ever he does he hopes she will always believe in his 
 innocence, because she is the only outsider that knows 
 all the facts; so that they had better postpone any 
 formal announcement. Or, 
 
 That he has to support his mother, and his brother 
 is sick and out of work, and there have been so many 
 emergencies and unforseen expenses that marriage for 
 him for a time would be quite out of the question. Or, 
 
 That for some time he has been troubled in mind, 
 not with her but with himself, for he has be- 
 come alarmed at slowly having to recognize the fact 
 that he is not good enough for her. Why marry her 
 only to make her unhappy. 
 
 Many a girl will be able to check off these eight 
 good rules, and mayhap recall some crank that in- 
 vented a ninth. But originality in love affairs has 
 never been known to succeed. The good old tricks, 
 the good old songs and the good old jokes never lose 
 their power to thrill. Conservatism is the largest part 
 of man ; it is entirely without defense to a conserva- 
 tive attack. 
 
 But all this does not explain the title to this chap- 
 ter, The Girl with the Demon Lover. It is this : The 
 amorous desperado who is suddenly beset with cir- 
 cumstances where he must use violent strategy to 
 elude the subject of marriage, does act as if possessed 
 with a demon. The lady perhaps fears she may labor 
 too realistically under an illusion, and inquires : All 
 joking aside, when is this first and only gambol 
 through passionate infinity going to have a public 
 celebration ? 
 
 His reasons and motives thus excavated, the demon 
 lover has abruptions of the intellect, fits of depress- 
 ion and longings for solitude. He arises in a havoc, 
 
5 THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 
 
 paces the floor, and returns to a caress. He makes 
 appointments and breaks them unaccountably. He 
 leaves early in the evening on mysterious errands; 
 swears that it is not to see another woman; writes 
 wild and incoherent letters that hint of terrible mat- 
 ters; mutters sentences that he can neither explain 
 nor remember; alludes to blood-curdling events in the 
 past; takes the girl to an entertainment and, without 
 warning, leads her away ; claims to be the victim of a 
 conspiracy ; recites deeds of heroism that he fears will 
 bring punishment upon him, though at the time he 
 acted entirely within his conscience ; disappears for 
 periods long and short; returns with a changed man- 
 ner, appearance and conversation ; acknowledges 
 blowholes in his memory; tells her not to be afraid if 
 something weird should happen to him. Merely wish- 
 ing to divert her attention from marriage, he has her 
 expectation tormented to death, while he writhes lest 
 her anxious thoughts take the form of jealousy. In 
 short, he so works on her apprehensions that the poor 
 sucker of a girl thinks he is bewitched, or that some 
 god or devil wooed her in the guise of a man whose 
 unearthly familiars are harassing him for his return 
 to elfland. 
 
 He was only an ordinary chap with a lady-bug on 
 the brain. His sincerity was burlesque ; his sorrow, 
 nonsensical. His was the kind of diabolical sorrow that 
 wipes its nose with a monkey-wrench and then gives 
 the scrap-iron laugh. And she, she, perhaps gulped 
 her misery, went to bed early and sang her heart a 
 lullaby. 
 
 She remembers when he coaxed and stroked her 
 reluctant sweetness and whispered with the voice of 
 untutored angels at her ear. 
 
 Now and then the demon is caught in the net she 
 
THE WORLD OP SUCKERS 57 
 
 has woven around him and his own toils; and in his 
 struggles he learns that when a woman sees herself 
 a sucker she can make it hot even for a devil. This 
 should not be astonishing, after the devil has warmed 
 her up. 
 
 The Sucker in Search of Happiness 
 
 The failure of the confessed seeker of happiness is 
 indispensible to our content. 
 
 The prospector of gold mines is admirable; he aims 
 to acquire riches in the simplest way possible. He is 
 businesslike and scientific. The man who searches for 
 happiness is looking for that which no one ever found. 
 
 Love, riches, ambition, philosophy, opium, travels, 
 charity, lust, Nature, art, science, drink, books are 
 some of the places where man has sought happiness. 
 Give me such and such, he exclaims, and I will be 
 happy. This kind of sucker certainly is the coward 
 and knave that we have noticed of all the breed. How 
 could a man be happy protected from everything that 
 is unbeautiful to others? What a knave would be 
 the happy man that stands a while on a street corner. 
 A sardonic Providence does not allow the existence 
 of such a creature. Without ever having been happy 
 for a minute (full sixty seconds) the sucker looks for 
 something that will felicitate him for all time. 
 
 The sucker who desires happiness is better off as 
 he is. He would be a greater sucker were he happy. 
 He would be a conceited, idiotic monstrosity, and 
 hated. Even in order to be approximately pleased, he 
 would have to possess a dozen things of which few 
 men attain one. Health, wealth and love might be 
 a good beginning. At that he must possess an amount 
 
58 THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 
 
 of discipline to prevent his wealth from buying too 
 much food for his health. He might have health, 
 wealth and love, and still be a fool. Well then, give 
 him brains. Then the trouble begins. With brains, 
 it seems that he would have to think. Thought is 
 not a bird of epicurean beak. It is rather of flock of 
 various wings, with as many carrion crows as hum- 
 ming-birds. Besides, an appreciation of the sorrows 
 brings about the acuter joys. 
 
 However, this is all off the line. This sucker muses 
 on something of which he has read in books, and is 
 angered when he finds that life is lacking in stage 
 technic. He finds that people are envious, treacher- 
 ous, cross, businesslike. His wife makes him jeal- 
 ous ; wealthier men try to absorb his fortune ; the 
 poor criminal attempts to steal it; life is bad for the 
 health. Ambition brings flatterers and slanderers ; 
 philosophy takes him to the unattainable ; Nature is 
 full of bugs. Altogether, he is in the world, with a 
 myriad people and a myriad things encroaching upon 
 the objects which he considered sacred to his own 
 use. 
 
 There are said to be mechanical ways of feeling 
 happy. Cultivate the lungs and muscles of the jaw; 
 then laugh. Laugh loud and long at everything and 
 everybody. Gurgle while eating and drinking. Give 
 the glorious guffaw to everything living and dead. 
 Try it first on a sucker. 
 
 The Optimist and the Pessimist 
 
 There are times for each of these men, to distract 
 our attention from the feelings of the other. 
 
 The optimist and the pessimist live in the same 
 
THE WORLD OP SUCKERS 59 
 
 castle; one points out the banners above the tower; 
 the other, the dungeons within. The optimist leads 
 Progress by the ear; the pessimist hangs on to its 
 tail. The clever man sits on its back. The optimist 
 and the pessimist are suckers, for reasons that will 
 appear anon. In the mean time, a fable : 
 
 An optimist and a pessimist, both members of a 
 Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, 
 went into the jungle ; the optimist wishing to pho- 
 tograph a giraffe. The pessimist carried a gun, ac- 
 ceding to the conventions in that part of the coun- 
 try. After wandering for two days, their provisions 
 gave out. They lost their way and became hungry, 
 optimist and pessimist. The pessimist cursed his 
 luck, and the optimist prayed for food. At that mo- 
 ment, two gentle and inoffensive antelopes came 
 sprinting opportunely along, and the pessimist shot 
 one of them. He wore three medals for shooting at a 
 target, and carried in his pocket a box of wind- 
 matches, with which he built a fire around a choice 
 piece of antelope steak, after the optimist's last sul- 
 phur match had blown out. Having partaken of their 
 meal, they again waited for giraffe. Presently a 
 large, ferocious and ill-natured lion, attracted by the 
 smell of venison, approached. It was owing entirely 
 to the untameability and threatening manner of this 
 beast that the pessimistic member of the Society for 
 the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was obliged 
 to send a bullet through its heart, thereby saving 
 not only his own life but that of the optimist, least- 
 wise for a time. They were admiring the deceased 
 king of beasts with a sad, the-king-is-dead look in their 
 eyes, when another lion, with a long-live-the-king 
 roar, attacked the optimist from the rear, and pro- 
 ceeded to eat him. This gave the pessimist the op- 
 
60 THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 
 
 portunity of escape, of which he made free use, hav- 
 ing no other cartridge on his person and being unable 
 to reach another, as the optimist was being devoured 
 over the ammunition-box. Arriving at the village, 
 the pessimist, who was not a wealthy man, interested 
 some capitalists in a relief expedition to recover the 
 optimist's skull, which was subsequently found in- 
 tact and clean. This the pessimist took back with 
 him to his native land. With the surplus of the re- 
 lief expedition and money accrued from the sale of 
 savage implements, he married an interesting young 
 woman, who quarreled with him upon uncovering 
 some old love letters in his trunk; and, the pessimist 
 using some coarse and abusive language full pessi- 
 mistic of the lady's earthly past and spiritual future, 
 she sued him for divorce. Afterwards he did a num- 
 ber of things, the last of which was to die. 
 
 Moral : What we greatly desire is pure reason un- 
 polluted with fact. 
 
 The optimist does not look on the bad side; he is 
 afraid of it. The pessimist looks on the bad side, 
 being fascinated with fear. One eats the bride's first 
 biscuits in a sentimental fear of the bride; the other 
 refuses in fantastic fear of the biscuits. Both are 
 cowards to some degree, the pessimist in the main. 
 He is afraid of everything but an optimist. 
 
 The damnable traits of these two gentlemen is their 
 habit of appearing at the wrong time. When we are 
 trying to drill the money market with a brilliant 
 scheme, and are engaged over the hypothetical profits, 
 the pessimist pays us a visit. When we have not a 
 cent or a scheme in the world, the optimist comes and 
 confides in us a scheme of his own. Moreover, the 
 one man is sometimes found fulfilling the office of 
 good and evil prophet. We often have cause to won- 
 
THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 61 
 
 der why on one occasion we behold a man shaking 
 the sleigh-bells at folly, and on another smashing the 
 windows of honest mirth. The reason is that the 
 sleigh-bells are his own, but the windows are not. 
 
 He is a sucker who thinks too much about matters 
 which do not concern him, as, for instance, the meaning 
 of life. Cowardice nags him to interpret it; knavery 
 impels him to boast of interpreting it right. Infinity 
 still keeps us aguessing. Why trust a man who 
 judges pleasure by the way it makes him feel next 
 day, or by the way it will make him feel after he is 
 dead? 
 
 It behooves us to consider, therefore, whether or 
 not there are such persons as optimist and pessimist, 
 and if there be, whether they are two persons or one. 
 Go eat a roll of butter and think it over. 
 
 As a matter of fact, without cavil, quibble or cir- 
 cumbendibus, an optimist talks about himself; you 
 talk to a pessimist. One man. The optimist is a 
 sucker for believing in everybody ; the pessimist is a 
 sucker for believing in himself. If the optimist were 
 not a coward, he would gaily poison a few persons 
 to show that there is nothing calamitous in the trag- 
 edy either for the victims or himself. If the pessi- 
 mist were not a coward, he would kill the optimist, and 
 thus gain our esteem, or commit suicide and let us 
 prove that we are noble enough to forgive the dead. 
 
 The Sucker Who Fears Public 
 Opinion 
 
 It is imperative that people act in accordance with 
 one another's wishes. We could not get along with- 
 out the sucker who fears the others. He is necessary 
 
62 THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 
 
 to the peace of the state. Imagine a man brave 
 enough to think for himself. He would be a genius; 
 and prithee consider a country populated with ge- 
 niuses. Each would be a nation, a religion, a philoso- 
 phy and set of customs unto himself. Children think 
 for themselves and care naught for public opinion. 
 Fortunately they are small and can be easily flogged 
 into submission. 
 
 Public Opinion is the dame to whom even a king 
 must take off his hat, even though he blacken her 
 eyes once in a while. Hence the observation that 
 whatever is done in public is a matter of opinion; 
 what is not done in public is a matter of conscience. 
 The distinction is not quite clear yet, but is readily 
 made so by the old conundrum, When is a door not 
 a door? The answer being, When somebody is peek- 
 ing through the keyhole. All sorts of performances 
 may go on within the door, provided it is a door; that 
 is, if it constitutes an effective barrier to the vision. 
 A man's duty to himself is to be an egotist; his duty 
 to the public is to keep the fact to himself. He is a 
 fool for complying with the public ; he is a fool for 
 letting the public know he doesn't. He owes it to the 
 public to use the finest precaution against becoming 
 notorious. Wherefore, we have the moral : After 
 locking the door, hang your hat over the keyhole. 
 Thus no one is offended ; which is all that Public 
 Opinion demands. As the sentry at the fort says, 
 You can pluck those flowers ; but don't let me see you. 
 
 You may not, but you can ; and if you do, seem 
 to not. That is as far as Public Opinion goes pro- 
 priety. Morality is something else. Most people fail 
 to distinguish between the two. Good taste confuses 
 
THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 63 
 
 of pumpkin pie, and leaves the room for a few min- 
 utes. If, during- such absence, Paul should clandes- 
 tinely acquire Peter's pie and eat it, the act would be 
 theftous and immoral. If, however, Paul should 'sub- 
 jugate the pie boisterously, as a good practical joke 
 on Peter, and consume said pastry with boasts and 
 laughter, he would add impropriety to the misdeed. 
 Whenas, eating Peter's pie with Paul's carving knife 
 would be a breach of good taste, to say nothing of 
 the bad manners involved. Public Opinion would 
 concern itself with the second and third cases. For. 
 in the first instance, Paul could have slyly replaced 
 Peter's full plate with an empty one, and, on subse- 
 quent inquiry as to the pie, could maintain that Peter 
 himself had eaten it before leaving the room. If Peter 
 is not satisfied with this explanation, but should pur- 
 sue an investigation among the other guests, then he 
 is acting in bad taste ; and if he expostulate obstrep- 
 erously, impropriety is on him. Then, if Paul turn to 
 him, and in kindly voice adjure him, "My dear sir, I 
 am as deeply grieved as yourself over this unfortu- 
 nate question. Believe me, it is not guiltily but only 
 to promote good will, that I offer you ten cents with 
 which to get yourself another piece of pie. If that 
 does not content you, I can only say that I am ready 
 to defend my honor with my life," public opinion 
 will shift to Paul's side, already wavering at the others 
 inadvisable conduct. Public Opinion cares not who 
 ate the pie, but rather admires a gracious manner of 
 avoiding the subject. 
 
 With these differentiations in mind, it is easily seen 
 that Public Opinion is a complex Lady with rings on 
 her fingers and her skirt over her toes. She does not 
 condemn a gentleman for having a little mystery 
 about him. Within that mystery, he may do what 
 
64 THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 
 
 Both the punishment and the reward of PUDHC 
 Opinion is an uncertain thing known as Talk. It Is 
 the private opinion of some persons that Talk is 
 cheap. But this applies only to the Talk of cheap 
 men. Other Talk is very expensive. Millions of dol- 
 lars are required to cause Talk in fashionable circles 
 and ovals, and prevent it in others. A nation will 
 spend large sums of money in fleet maneuvers to 
 cause Talk among other nations. Agricultural cc-un- 
 ties subscribe money to cause Talk. Mammonitish 
 women wear diamonds to cause Talk. Poets buy 
 fancy wines for their friends to cause Talk. In all 
 these cases of purchased Public Opinion, the dainty 
 skill is in not causing people to talk too much. Cal- 
 amity is ever hunting for suckers. Pleasing everybody 
 is unsubstantial work. Private Opinion may ingra- 
 tiate Public Opinion for years ; then suddenly, a s-ip 
 of the tongue and a slap in the face. 
 
 A nation spends millions of money in diplomatic 
 relations, then forgets to salute another's flag, and 
 there is war-talk. A banquet is given to the belles 
 and bullvboys of skyhigh society, and for a while the 
 small-talk is so witty that fig-leaves turn to 
 glass, when to the consternation of all, some- 
 body blushes at the wrong time; and then the 
 big talk. A Merchants' Municipal Club is entertain- 
 ing a politician; platitudes and sandwiches pass 
 blithely in opposite directions, when one grocer calls 
 another Dutchman ; and then there is frog-jumping 
 back to the puddle. 
 
 All these little contingencies the sucker must look 
 to, if he would succeed in a world of Public Opinion. 
 The process is, evade the facts and avoid argument 
 Everybody wishes to rise in the world; there are f^w 
 who like to tell truthfully how they have arisen. To 
 
THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 65 
 
 sympathize with the past is to retard Progress. The 
 sucker must therefore change with the times and 
 Public Opinion. He is not to boast of the old eter- 
 nal things, nor of anything that is out of accord with 
 public acclaim, even though he rejoice privately in 
 the coarser deeds of that classic thing, the hu :\m 
 body. The following facts are known to all and 
 should never be mentioned in society : hats may 
 change in style, but foreheads are much as they were. 
 Ostentation may vary from time to time, but sim- 
 plicity is always the same. Love in a cottage may 
 lose its sentiment, but love in a barn will go on for- 
 ever. And the blessing of this is that worthless 
 bawbles are, by Public Opinion magically transformed 
 into strenuous treasures, while the commonplaces of 
 life are made private, personal, obscure, mystic and 
 sacred. 
 
 There is a funny little fellow who lives in a mag- 
 nificent home, into which he sneaks every day after 
 business hours. He is a low comedian in the comedy 
 of wealth, and differs from the common Biped with 
 the Coin in that he does not even understand what 
 luxury is and what use his family makes of it. He 
 does not understand why he must sit in an uncom- 
 fortable chair after dinner or keep awake for visitors. 
 He has never studied Public Opinion. His wife has 
 done so in French, and translates for him. Once he 
 was a contended shop-keeper growing a double chin 
 on $10,000 a year. Now he is nervous and saggy on 
 $100,000. Perhaps he does not wish to make $100,- 
 ooo a year. In his heart he is still an ignorant little 
 shop-keeper dreaming of the old homestead in Penn- 
 sylvania and the old fashioned ways of his mother. 
 His wife and daughter having noticed him doing busi- 
 ness on the $100,000 basis, temporarily as he thought, 
 
<J THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 
 
 compelled him to stay there, allowing him about $1000 
 for himself. And he acquires indigestion, insomnia 
 and softening of the brain amid the alarms of his in- 
 come. It is almost a compliment to call him a sucker. 
 
 Then there is a sucker that can just afford to exist. 
 Public Opinion causes him to leave cheaply on the 
 sly during the odd moments, that he may appear ex- 
 travagant at others. He belongs to a club, but can- 
 not go there often, cause its whiskey has raised the 
 price of conversation. He dines there once a week 
 with the savings of a canned-bean diet. He is im- 
 pressed with the very practical theory that clothes 
 make the man. They do. Fortunately for many, they 
 do. After everything else has failed, it is merciful 
 that clothes make the man. This sucker can smilingly 
 wear a gaudy vest while his stomach beneath it is full 
 of indigestible emptiness. He has a grudge against 
 his appetite for being a sort of cruelty to art. Ap- 
 parently he eats for the purpose of commending the 
 cook; and starves to buy a curio. Altogether he has 
 a good outside effect. Long live this sucker; and 
 when he dies, may the pall-bearers be the most re- 
 spectable members of the community. 
 
 Public Opinion intimidates the sucker from think- 
 ing fortunately, for the chances are that he would 
 think incorrectly if he dared. Gallantly he assents to 
 everything that is demanded by the more rational 
 persons in power, and acts as an understudy to cele- 
 brities. At a prize-fight, he yells approbation at the 
 victor, to create the impression of having bet money 
 on him. Seated beside the flimsy maid, he accfords 
 with her whims, murmurs How-true to her numerous 
 ecstacies, and sneers with her at all that her young 
 soul has found sneerable. In the political prejudices 
 of her father he joins, for fear of being consMered an 
 
THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 67 
 
 enemy to the state. When the dear girl promises her- 
 self to him, he purchases an engagement ring whose 
 price he feels for the next six months. 
 
 He will relate the faults of a friend that is being 
 slandered, laugh at a philosophy that is being ridic- 
 uled, curse an unconvicted wretch that is charged 
 with crime, and discard an unstylish necktie with 
 equal insouciance. He will gorge on the food that a 
 wealthy man praises, copy the clothes of spendthrifts, 
 clap his hands at the play he is told he must see. He 
 will ignore the woman that others call dowdy, and 
 forsake a friend that has quarreled with the major- 
 ity ; doubt his religion when it is discredited by a prodi- 
 gal son, and assume an ideal when it is popular; test 
 the favorite liverpills of his employer, and do many 
 other things that go without saying, as asked of him. 
 
 He should not hastily be called a traitor to man- 
 hood; he is merely a martyr to Public Opinion. All 
 his acts are proper, and, in truth, more gracefully car- 
 ried out than might seem from their jotty enumera- 
 tion. 
 
 Public Opinion's relation to morality is this: pro- 
 priety recognizes good morals as widespread. 
 
 Hereinbefore, propriety was defined; and here is a 
 good opportunity to state, once for all, what morality 
 is and what it is not. Morality is a limitation of hu- 
 man nature; it is not the nature. On this point re- 
 ligion, common sense and common observation are ab- 
 solutely at one. Morality issued from religion. Re- 
 ligion does not assert that that morality is inbred of 
 us. On the contrary, religion asseverates and main- 
 tains that man is immoral, sinful and conceived in 
 iniquity. It offers us Heaven for disciplining our- 
 selves as best we can. This is a stupendous reward 
 for a stupendous task. 
 
68 THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 
 
 Public Opinion garbles these facts and pretends 
 that morality is an instinct. Public Opinion could not 
 get us into Heaven on such presumption, and frankly 
 does not claim to do so. But it can take us into good 
 society, which is more than religion, patriotism, 
 morality and art can do. Most of us are not de- 
 ceived by the statement that chastity, in man or wo- 
 man, is an instinct, or we should not throw rice af- 
 ter the happy pair going on their honeymoon, as they 
 say in public. 
 
 Howsoever, he who not only makes a pretence of 
 virtue but asserts that human traits are virtuous, is 
 an idealist; that is, a liar. Most likely he is not the 
 idealist that he seems. He fears to be otherwise. He 
 may love his wife, yet would not dare to walk hand 
 in hand with her through the streets of Public Opin- 
 ion. 
 
 The Sucker Who Tells the Truth 
 
 The truth must not be lost altogether. 
 
 As stated previously, the main traits of the sucker 
 are simplicity and wickedness. Now we have a sucker 
 that is all simplicity, which includes truth. We have 
 a fondness for him, as he has a pure soul and no 
 avarice viewed in the abstract. It requires dignity 
 and repression to tell the shooting of a lion without 
 dilating on unnecessary details. A man who has 
 caught any wild thing is apt to annoy other persons 
 with excessive description. Likewise, a man who has 
 captured the Truth is very prone to maWe his listen- 
 ers nervous with the horrible story. And he would 
 hardly be included J n this book, but that, having no 
 
THE WORLD OF SUCKERS , 69 
 
 guile, he serves to illustrate one of the sucker's ele- 
 ments in its raw state, or native crudeness. 
 
 It is to be noted that when young we are admon- 
 ished of the beauty and policy of truth-telling. There 
 seems to go with the advice an intimation that every- 
 thing which can be told of is beautiful. The'youngster 
 follows these instructions almost to maturity. Then 
 suddenly he beholds a blue light. He thought he had 
 come to a high place, but finds it to be the bottom- 
 less pit upside down. So he formulates new relations 
 between this sthd that. Here and there some fanatic 
 is not to be fooled that way. He feels that he is aurif- 
 erous with truth. He bestows truth as a savage gives 
 away his unvalued gold. He continues verily to the 
 end ; and if there be such a thing as the bitter end, 
 there is to be found the sucker who tells the truth. 
 
 Few persons have any notion of the amount of 
 falsehood humanity consumes in twenty-four hours. 
 If one lie be theoretically put down as a pennyweight, 
 it would be safe to say that we consume more false- 
 hood than bread. Cheap as falsehood is, the supply 
 is always equal to the demand. 
 
 Not many persons tell the truth when they have 
 time to think of something else. Not many wish to 
 be told the truth if it conflict with their vanity or 
 jostle against something already blessei with their 
 approval. Withal, there does arise, in one community 
 or another, the man who, not content with thinking 
 for himself, imagines that his audience wishes to 
 know what he thinks. He is not always to be blamed; 
 for occasionally he is asked a direct question and in- 
 fers that the questioner desires the result of his 
 reasoning powers. 
 
 If a woman with a strange new hat should ask this 
 sucker his opinion of it, he scrutinizes it, while she, 
 
70 THE WORLD OP SUCKERS 
 
 poor wretch, fondly trusts he is holding back in order 
 to let his admiration burst with greater fury. Then 
 he will abuse the girl's faith by venting his sincere 
 criticism. "Do you think I am vain?" she inquires, 
 after he has dubiously explained how his compre- 
 hension of the hat might be consistent with its ex- 
 cellence in the mind of some one else. He replies 
 that, of course, she, like every other normal person, 
 possesses at least some vanity. She pouts. He re- 
 joins to the effect that vanity is not reprehensible; 
 that it is necessary to human progress. The sucker 
 is under the delusion that he was called upon to think, 
 while it was merely intended of him to say, In pro- 
 portion with your superlative charms, your vanity 
 is practically nothing; in fact, my dear girl, it is folly 
 in you not to possess a thousand times more vanity 
 than you do. 
 
 This sucker tells a woman her age to gain credit 
 for perspicacity. Perspicacity! This word and sucker 
 were made for each other. 
 
 Be it not understood that women are the only ones 
 that are dumbfounded at truths. As illustrations, one 
 prefers to use women for the picturesque effect. If 
 bones were vanity, man would not be any shorter than 
 woman, and might still have a bone that she has not: 
 that extra rib. 
 
 Let a man quarrel with another and bring his plaint 
 to a friend. "Now tell me, who was wrong, he or 
 I?" "Well," answers the sucker, "it seems to me that 
 you both acted hastily in the matter. Of course he 
 was wrong to be angry ; nevertheless you might have 
 withheld that first remark of yours." 
 
 Without giving further examples, it can be seen 
 that from the flapjacks of breakfast through the tur- 
 moil of day to the goodnight kiss, a man should be 
 
THE WORLD OP SUCKERS 71 
 
 on his guard and not taint the innocence of this life 
 with his own scoundrel private opinions. He should 
 award the highest praise to every vanity that kneels 
 before him; and there is where art displays itself: 
 to be so versatile and give praise in such varied 
 phrase to all that one person's will not conflict with 
 anothers in the event of a comparison. This is one 
 argument, and not a bad one, against practical polyg- 
 amy. It would either convict the husband of duplic- 
 ity (rather multiplicity) or it would make women dull 
 and commonplace. 
 
 Flattery? Has any one ever proved the existence 
 of a flatterer. Truth to say, the world is underes- 
 timated and misunderstood. It is much better' than 
 most people deem. There is a mistake between the 
 acts and the heart of mankind. In its acts, mankind 
 is too often played for a sucker. At heart, and in its 
 mind, it is good and great. 
 
 The Sucker Who Takes Advice on 
 a Certain Important Question 
 
 There comes to every man a mood when he asks 
 himself whether or not a lifetime can be passed agree- 
 ably with one woman. Is marriage compatible with 
 two apparently compatible persons? Are man and 
 woman adjustible for a lifelong intimacy. Do they not 
 get along best before they understand each other and 
 while they are associating under false pretences? 
 
 How many times between the years of twenty and 
 thirty will a man and woman cling together for dear 
 life and separate six months afterards? Suppose the 
 two had married. Horrible to contemplate with the 
 
72 THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 
 
 latest charmer on his knee. The average person has 
 from one to two love affairs, of more or less intensity, 
 a year until marriage. The marriage is the result of 
 a no more cautious emotion than the others. In truth, 
 most men consider it unsportsmanlike to use judg- 
 ment in affairs of the heart. 
 
 Many people wish to know why this is, and there 
 are many writers on the subject. Day after day, in 
 all publications that dabble in philosophy, are essays 
 and editorials telling why marriage is not just what 
 it is smacked up to be by the kissers, and how it ends 
 in what it is cracked up to be by the joke-writers. 
 Most of the essayists are women and have quite an 
 air of authority. The stamp of the female viewpoint 
 fresh from the matrix of wisdom is frequently con- 
 vincing, although the delivery of the opinion oft seems 
 to be accompanied by a vexed stamp of the foot, as 
 if the lady is castegating the antics of somebody she 
 knows. Some of the writers are men. They are more 
 jocular. 
 
 The blame for tousled matrimony is imputed to 
 poorly trained men and silly women. Thus it seems 
 that the men are culprits in most cases. A few daring 
 writers have come forward to say that the men and 
 women are all right, but that the matrimony itself 
 is at fault. That is the trend of criticism in all dis- 
 agreeable matters. When a burglary is committed, 
 there are some critics who lay the odium on the burg- 
 lar; others blame the rich man for possessing that 
 which can be burglarized ; and still others condemn 
 the prison into which the burglar is put. Be that as 
 it may, marriage is not a burglary, even though some 
 wisdom-whackers of the darling sex gyrate on the 
 contention that a man does ruthlessly enter a girl's 
 home and carry her off to a dingy domicile in order to 
 
THE WORLD OP SUCKERS 73 
 
 make her unhappy. The women who write thus are 
 in earnest, or the policy of the paper is ; which is the 
 same thing. A newspaper's policy is as good as a 
 woman's opinion in most instances. However, the 
 point is that the girl readers keep a scrap-book of 
 these dorothy editorials, become disciples of the writ- 
 ers, and when the girls marry they want a sucker 
 to conform to that scrap-book. 
 
 The idea expressed by these philosophers with the 
 nude bosom vignette at the top of their columns is 
 that a man should study his wife's moods. When she 
 is in a snappish mood, he should be careful not to 
 snap back, or she will become snappier; when she is 
 in a mood for pleasure, he should refrain from being 
 tired after his day's work. There are many things 
 in woman uncomprehended by man ; when they take 
 a violent form, he should become a sort of poultice to 
 her. For all practical purposes, this is as good as 
 understanding her. If he take her rampages for reali- 
 ties, he is an ass first and a nondescript brute later. 
 When she is incomprehensible, she is merely giving 
 him an opportunity to show that he understands her. 
 If he let her anger make him angry, he is a failure as 
 husband, and might as well figure out the alimony 
 then and there. 
 
 Here is an idea that might be playfully inserted 
 into this low-neck philosophy : are not the writers 
 thereof responsible for much of the mischief? A wo- 
 man who follows these bed-critics can hardly fail to 
 contract a full-blown case of hysterics. There are wo- 
 men who seldom look upon themselves as persons; 
 they are always women. They hold their rights in 
 their hand, as a handkerchief; and there is no reason- 
 why they should not when the world is full of suck- 
 ers. 
 
74 THE WORLD OP SUCKERS 
 
 Perhaps in prehistoric times, at any rate before the 
 Flood, or (to use an epoch of our own country) before 
 the War, and, (as they reckon time in San Francisco) 
 before the Fire, man and woman were sinning. The 
 same causes, whatever they were, still exist. Taking 
 into consideration the printability, or unprintability, 
 of certain words in the public prints, also the fact 
 that these writers are paid by the week and write 
 year after year, it is plain why they do not answer 
 the question in a few words, and how the subject 
 took on a lengthy and overshadowing disorder with 
 purple hazes pierced by golden spires and woven 
 with threads of scarlet, which we are assured Uy 
 authors is the appearance of dusk. Howbeit, from 
 the stagnant pools of truth, and the phosphorescent 
 obscurity above, emerges a young thinking lady 
 startled into all wisdom by the first flash of red, bear- 
 ing on her arm the strawberry mark of true great- 
 ness, that establishes her as the long-lost daughter 
 of the Muse, and proceeds to argue the question 
 again. She says it is "the little things" of life that 
 go to make or mar it. 
 
 Why the little things? Or, to be exact, what is 
 the big thing? 
 
 A multitude of voices in controversy will cause a 
 man to forget the facts of the case. Were it not for 
 an occasional bath and a love affair, men might even 
 forget that the human body is not the fashionable con- 
 fection seen in the streets. It is, perhaps, not prudery, 
 but a desire to babble continuously for a monetary 
 consideration, that makes so many virtuous ladies on 
 the editor's staff evade the vital point in their printed 
 matter. Ignorance and undue zeal and the expected 
 pique of their friends may also have something to 
 do with it. 
 
THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 75 
 
 The truth is simply this: that which causes marri- 
 age also uncauses it. It leaps to it and then it leaps 
 away. Desire. On the first occasion, it is called love ; 
 on the second, temptation. It pairs and then it makes 
 irreparable. Infidelity known or suspected is at the 
 beginning of all matrimonial hardship. 
 
 Man has more liberty than woman, and is there- 
 fore caught and blamed oftener. He errs in compan- 
 ionship with a fair unknown. He associates with his 
 fellowkind in the happy part of a daredevil. A wo- 
 man meets her friends under a presumption of inno- 
 cence. Technically she is the superior being. And it 
 is this presumed virtue, together with her phase of 
 enduring or escaping offspring, that makes her the ob- 
 ject of man's courtesy. 
 
 With the advent of the sucker into modern life, 
 this courtesy took on innumerable variations. Some 
 of these assume that a man should understand a wo- 
 man in all her gradations of mood. As a result these 
 gradations have all the hues of a large box of assorted 
 pastels, with some ultra-violet moods that the lady 
 herself does not understand. So that when she wails 
 and weeps and goes into a disheveled psychology, the 
 idea is not to glare at her like a monster overhang- 
 ing a sunlit cliff, but utter such beautiful sentiments 
 that she will be led to repeat the performance another 
 day. When she goes into voluptuous convulsions at 
 finding one of her own unrecognized hairs on his coat, 
 he should not stand aghast, but repeat a love-scene of 
 his early courtship, until she recovers and is strong 
 enough to accept the price of a new hat. When, on 
 the other hand, he wonders how she came by those 
 scratches on her wrists, he should not ask questions, 
 but make a witty remark on some irrelevant matter. 
 
 Only the gentleman will do this; a common fellow 
 refuses to view woman as a delicate mechanism that 
 
76 THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 
 
 must be used in a certain way or it will go to pieces. 
 The manner of the noble sucker is, though, a dis- 
 paragement to woman ; for he takes her as a creature 
 without responsibility. He allows her to speak dis- 
 respectfully to him, and interprets her words as mean- 
 ingless. He treats her as a baby. Tell a woman she 
 is a goddess and use her intellectually as an infant; 
 no plan could be more tactful. 
 
 Loving a woman is segregating her from the others 
 of her sex. She acquiesces in this, and lets the lover 
 know she considers herself different. The majority of 
 women, like the majority of everything, are alike. Yet 
 every woman insists on being not only among the ex- 
 alted majority but the very paragon of those few ; she 
 wishes to be told this often and again. This is what 
 is called wooing the wife. For it is the dictum of the 
 dorothy journalists that a man should not cease woo- 
 ing a woman after marrying her. So the sucker's 
 work is laid out for him. The cynic may say that a wo- 
 man who would not consider herself won, after court- 
 ship, but is to be won over again every day of mar- 
 ried life, must not know her own mind and should not 
 have married at all. How insignificant ! It is not nec- 
 essary that wives be settled in their own minds that 
 they are wives. They should be petted into the belief 
 every day by man, who has the larger mind, and the 
 better memory for those details. 
 
 The fault of some men is that they try to adapt 
 common sense to matrimony, contrary to the promise 
 they made during courtship. A common sense and 
 unsuckerly sort of view would judge that a sweet- 
 heart is a sweetheart and a wife a wife, and that the 
 lady should understand he did not mean, could not 
 have meant, all that tomfoolery he whispered among 
 the sofa pillows. Some reaction from the high-gusted 
 phrases is inevitable. To keep love at its romantic 
 
THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 77 
 
 height is a feat that no woman has the unremitting 
 splendor to do. Yet it is said that simulation of such 
 torrid continuance is correct in man. So the sucker 
 proceeds in hope of gaining praise for this, and he 
 ends at a loss and in chagrin. 
 
 Women are somewhat alike and are married on that 
 assumption. Cuddling each one into the belief that 
 she is the arch-queen of her sex only makes her crave 
 the privileges thereof. What a man really desires is 
 a woman, not an arch-queen. If she were that, he 
 would relate the fact to other women. But such a 
 sucker is rare indeed. 
 
 A woman cannot be judged by a man until she un- 
 folds herself unto him in love. He does not behold 
 her thoroughly until she has quarreled with him. He 
 understands her best before he meets her. And if he 
 will estimate her by the latter process, that is, by 
 previous women, he will not, on meeting and marrying 
 her, be disappointed. 
 
 Reformers and Their Followers 
 
 There must be reformers to remind us of the old 
 glories and to ease our burden of inevitable sin. 
 
 An oddity about reformation is that it is bound to 
 make a sucker of somebody, either the reformer or 
 the reformer, whoever pays for it. In the tug-of-war 
 between Reformation and Progress, the wag who cuts 
 the rope gets the most applause. The reformer's con- 
 fidence in himself is the next item of interest. When 
 one has agreed with himself what ought to be done, 
 the next thing seemingly is to get others to do it. If 
 they are reasonable creatures, they will do it soon. 
 That is the fascination about Socialism : it seems pos- 
 sible. A seeming possibility is the most alluring and 
 
78 THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 
 
 elusive thing in the world. Absolute impossibilities, 
 such as making a round earth of a flat one, seizing 
 the thunderbolts from Jove, using the ethereal silence 
 as a conductor of sound, seeing through solid flesh, 
 are more profitable. To keep at the illustration of 
 Socialism, it is an ideal, and, needs to say, a pretty 
 one. But, as there never was one ideal man, and as 
 there never was one practical Socialist, it is difficult 
 to see how a large population would ever exercise the 
 ideal steadfastly together. When you behold the in- 
 creasing number of Socialists, you may ask, Why not? 
 As when you observe the increasing number of mil- 
 lionaires, you may ask, Why? 
 
 It is this ideal in our natures that makes a sucker 
 of the Unpaid Reformer. There are some ideas and 
 ideals that you think you can get rid of, but cannot. 
 They scamper off like a kicked cur, and then sit down 
 and blink at you lovingly from the distance. 
 
 There are three kinds of reformers: those that re- 
 form for money ; those that reform for love ; and those 
 whose long, flexible, pernicious noses enter slickly into 
 other persons' private affairs. 
 
 Of the first we have little to say ; they are not rele- 
 vant here. They do not come under the title of this 
 volume. They convert their impractibilities into cash, 
 are jolly fellows with fine wines and good cigars and 
 make suckers out of anybody that will contribute to 
 their cause. 
 
 We can surmise why a man who sells a wholesome 
 substitute for a popular evil would like to have the 
 evil eradicated. And we can discern why a church 
 wages its warning against divorce, for divorced peo- 
 ple are not good advertisements of the blessings ad- 
 ministered in the first place. Both the above are what 
 might be termed Paid Reformers, and are not suckers. 
 Regarding the curious tail-smeller who would like to 
 
THE WORLD OP SUCKERS 79 
 
 see the world pure, stiff and unhappy, it is hard to say 
 which is the greatest sucker, himself or his tolerator. 
 
 The chucklehead sometimes known as the dress re- 
 former is usually unpaid. He seldom has a substitute 
 to sell. Say that he stays up late at night meditating 
 about the corset . In his eyes, the corset is about as 
 evil as divorce. He wishes to see women stripped of 
 their corsets, and very likely would be glad to perform 
 the act himself. But while he would do away with 
 these mainstays of the female unreform divine, Pro- 
 gress laces them more tightly, which enrages the man 
 of simple habits. He descants upon the corseted wo- 
 man as an indecent exposition of loveliness. 
 
 The philosophy of the thing is always appropriate. 
 For some profound reason, the protuberances of the 
 human body are deemed unbespeakable in proper dis- 
 course, while the depressions, or slender parts, and 
 the joints, come under no such ban. For instance, a 
 woman will quite frankly refer to her ankle; hardly 
 ever to the calf above it. The knee again is also fre- 
 quently and sincerely referred to. A woman will 
 speak of her neck, but not of her bosom ; of her waist, 
 but not of her hips ; and so forth and so on. The poet 
 himself never mentions a woman's nose, the most 
 prominent part of her face. One readily sees the lines 
 along which the dress reformer is working. The cor- 
 set brings out these protuberances, making them un- 
 duly conspicuous, so that people are prone to notice 
 them and use them in conversation, unexpectedly. 
 
 Never in the history of the world were women as 
 beautifully appareled as they are now. And it may be 
 said of the dress reformer (judging him by his unpre- 
 possessing exterior) that had he not gazed too curi- 
 ously into the windows of her underwear shops, he 
 would never know how it was done; never would 
 have suspected that reform is necessary. As he works 
 
80 THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 
 
 from sheer malice, he is a nondescript in this chapter. 
 
 Our interest is directed upon that sucker, the Un- 
 paid Reformer, who graciously and gratuitously offers 
 to hurl back the course of evolution. He essays not 
 the easy task of whipping mankind along its progress- 
 ive paths, but boldly steps before a runaway, mad- 
 dened custom, and cries, Whoa stop ! He has an an- 
 cient and honorable ideal. His predecessors have 
 failed. For thousands of years they toiled at its 
 seeming possibility, always feeling success at hand, 
 and he desires to put this visionary success into full 
 force and effect immediately. An ideal is that which 
 might exist if other things would not, and which could 
 not if they didn't. This is not plain, but is a suffi- 
 cient description of an ideal, which is not a definite 
 thing anyway. 
 
 Suppose that a botanist should desire to make a 
 larger and showier blossom of a wild daisy; not that 
 there is anything in the nature of the daisy to suggest 
 a change, but the botanist inbreeds it to realize his 
 ideal : that is, he creates a novelty in a garden by de- 
 stroying something that grew otherwise in the wild. 
 The same trick might be performed with man and wo- 
 man, if they could be kept in a garden. God failed at 
 this ; but perhaps the modern reformer has better ma- 
 terial to his use. 
 
 There is some difficulty in analyzing the Unpaid 
 Reformer, because there is no telling when some so- 
 ciety or business man will take him up and pay him a 
 salary as a lecturer or as an officer in a corporation 
 that sells his ideas to suckers. And there are any 
 number of celebrities that are expected to uncork a 
 little reform every now and then to please their con- 
 gregations and constituents and admirers. Moreover, 
 when a public man makes a statement for publication, 
 he is afraid to say, Let the people do what they wish. 
 
THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 81 
 
 The people would not like it. They would rather be 
 forbidden their pleasure and then do it. 
 
 So, then, if the reformer make his living, or adds to 
 his livelihood, by his doctrine, he is not a sucker. His 
 followers are. 
 
 Respectively he urges us to abstain from intoxicat- 
 ing drink, to refrain from tobacco, to eschew profane 
 words from our vocabulary, to eliminate certain inno- 
 cent letters from the spelling of other words, to dis- 
 dain seductive women, to forbear the use of opiates, 
 to renounce wagers on the efforts of horses in race and 
 on the eccentricities of a set of dice and our skill at 
 cards, to look away from divorce as a remedy for mat- 
 rimonial contests, to prevent war, to be kind to the 
 common people, to expunge millionaires, to avoid 
 bribery, to exterminate amorous literature, to extir- 
 pate luxury, to averuncate Sunday baseball, to sup- 
 press prize-fights, to cease gossiping, to quit hugging 
 in the dance, to beautify cities, to keep farmers on 
 their farms, to to to to the Devil with him ! There 
 are on his mind a number of other matters, which, 
 if carried out, would make this world a Paradise and 
 we would not have to die in order to get to Heaven. 
 Then the question remains, Are we unhappy because 
 we do not relinquish these evils or because we cannot 
 get enough of them? 
 
 Should we follow the reformer's advice, and not 
 spend our income on these things, the millionaires 
 would get all the money that we now waste on our- 
 selves. 
 
 Now, there may be those who do not believe the stor- 
 ies of Adam and Eve. But nobody doubts that, given 
 Adam and Eve and the apple tree and the forbiddance 
 to eat, what would happen would be exactly what is 
 related did happen. One thing in the world^ that two 
 persons should not do,and they did. Nowadays there 
 
82 THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 
 
 are thousands of things that we should not do, and 
 millions of people to do them. The sincere reformer 
 may be an innocent sucker (if unpaid) and yet it is 
 incredible that he be honest, for he is either trying to 
 make millions of people do what he cannot do himself, 
 or he desires the world to conform to his own personal 
 defects and idiosyncracies. He who would have us 
 vegetariains because he is, omits the three most im- 
 portant points : that he is the product of a race that 
 might be monkeys were it not for meat-eating; that 
 we wish to give posterity the same benefits we re- 
 ceived ; that we regale ourselves contentedly on roast 
 beef. The advantage of drinking whiskey is not so 
 apparent; yet it must be there, for it is a part of our 
 racial education. Belief in it must remain a matter 
 of faith. 
 
 The reformer that would have the w r hole world as 
 brothers could never have had a brother himself. 
 Those folks that have had real blood-brothers natur- 
 ally prefer friends. The ordinary brother breaks his 
 father's heart, disappears and comes back to break 
 the will. He makes a better down-trodden member 
 of the masses than a brother. 
 
 The reformer does not recognize the fact that peo- 
 ple are as hypocritical as he is. They have certain 
 ideals and certain working principles. The ideals may 
 be read in books ; the working principles are what- 
 ever you see with all your faculties of observation. 
 Whatever has been will be, in itself and as part of all 
 that has existed with it. And even such a trivial mat- 
 ter as gambling could not be destroyed without de- 
 molishing humanity. The far past was not as pure 
 as reformers would have us believe. Attention should 
 rather be given to the complicated surroundings that 
 are ours now than the natural life which is errone- 
 ously accredited to the simple-machined but not sim- 
 
THE WORLD OP SUCKERS 83 
 
 ple-moraled people of ancient times. Why go back 
 to rock the empty cradle of the human race, whose 
 bloody infant still stinks in the darkness of history? 
 
 One of the most delightful of games is Leaping at 
 Conclusions. That is, from the standpoint' of a spec- 
 tator. The idea is to select your conclusion; then 
 leap. The fine point of the game is to perform with 
 that utter abandon that comes from long experience 
 at self-deception. The beginner may practice by 
 standing with his back to the sun, and is then to 
 jump over his own shadow. By turning half way 
 round during his course through the air, he will find 
 upon alighting on his feet, that his shadow is behind 
 him, proving that he has leapt over it. This done, 
 he should, in order not to expose himself as a sucker, 
 organize a society for the prevention of people who 
 think otherwise, make himself chairman of the execu- 
 tive committee, and he has a^salary for life. 
 
 To begin a reform of the world, we need not under- 
 stand it. All that we need understand, a small mat- 
 ter, is Heaven. Keep Heaven in mind and hammer 
 the world into shape accordingly. Beyond this, it is 
 advisable not to hammer the world in a too explosive 
 part of its temperament. 
 
 Unpaid reformers of this age are not such suckers 
 as were their brethren of past centuries, and have a 
 much easier time of it. Why, come to think of it, re- 
 formers themselves are a degenerate lot when com- 
 pared with the self-sacrificing spirits of old. Amid 
 far less danger, our reformers are less heroic than 
 those who once antagonized the powerful agents of 
 sin. Formerly, the sinful potentates levied their taxes, 
 banquetted one another and ignored the reformers ex- 
 cept to poison or behead them now and then. The 
 wicked ones, some of them clever and brave, passed 
 into fame instead of dying virtuous and forgettable as 
 
84 THE WORLD OP SUCKERS 
 
 was their plain duty. Sometimes of old, a great and 
 righteous and resounding protest also passed into his- 
 tory. Today it goes into pictures and paragraphs. As 
 a nation, knowing how to laugh, we can ridicule any- 
 thing from a saint to a Socialist. Upon failure, the 
 defeated reformer saves his head and goes back to his 
 trade or becomes a Chautauquan, whatever that is. 
 
 What is the matter with the world? It has more 
 people, more money, more books, more philosophy, 
 more religion, more of everything (except pure food) 
 than it ever had. The subject in parenthesis might 
 lead one to inquire if food sweetened with corn syrup 
 and preserved with benzoate of soda be not the cause 
 of all our ills. Still there was wickedness and wail- 
 ing in the world even before the cow had a competitor 
 in the chemist. So we must look elsewhere for the evil 
 ingredient of our natures. There are so many else- 
 wheres that the search is difficult. Modern civiliza- 
 tion makes a spectacular haystack in which to con- 
 ceal Truth's needle. And we have all kinds of search- 
 ers, from the plutocrat who says, "To hell with the 
 needle," to the Anarchist that says, "Burn down the 
 haystack." 
 
 Should you call this the Age of Gold, the Age of 
 Stocks and Bonds, the Age of Machinery, the Age 
 of Advertising, the Age of Trusts, the Age of Injus- 
 tice, the Age of Impiety, the Age of Frauds, the Age 
 of Electricity, the Age of Wonders, the Age of Sci- 
 ence, the Age of Commercialism, you would doubtless 
 have a large following in any case. It would be in- 
 teresting to know what the pundit of five hunded 
 years hence will call us. He may incline to one of 
 the phrases above, or another. At that, there may 
 arise another. The country may change. We shall, 
 unless we are perfect, we shall change. Of course, 
 there are wealthy men that say we are already per- 
 
THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 85 
 
 feet; perfection of conditions rendered themselves 
 possible. There are even suckers that believe this; 
 and show it with millions of votes. 
 
 It may be asserted then, that, while the refor- 
 mer is a sucker, he is a most valuable one; for he 
 keeps honor alive, while he himself becomes weak in 
 the giblets. Not everybody is capable of being re- 
 formed. You might be able to reform a drunkard, for 
 he may have brains ; but you cannot reform a sucker, 
 because he becomes angry when you request him to 
 think. 
 
 If there ever was a sucker that looks to be just what 
 he is, it is the Unpaid Reformer. He is very sad. At 
 first he was valiant; then he seemed to have torn his 
 hope into little bits and thrown them into the waste- 
 basket. Never trust a reformer that laughs. He can 
 laugh because he is sure that some thousands of pay- 
 ing suckers have faith in him. 
 
 The Greatest Sucker of All 
 
 The proof of courage is to die laughing. 
 
 He is sometimes called the Dead Game Sport. He 
 would say Yes, if a lion challenged ; he is afraid to say 
 No to a mouse. He does everything that is asked of 
 him. He is played for a sucker all the time. It is 
 part of his business. One day he is performing the 
 autopsy over a dead sure thing; the next, he requires 
 assistance of the bar-keeper to count his money. He 
 is so generous he is proud of having bought every 
 dream on the market. He is all kinds of a sucker. 
 He is the whole index. He is so imbued with the pride 
 of being a good loser that he makes failure heroic. 
 His victory consists in having survived. He himself, 
 
86 THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 
 
 with everything taken from him, is unconquered. 
 After being worsted, he allows anybody (even his 
 swindler) to pat him on the back and tell him to be 
 game. Where other men have been weakened by re- 
 gret, downed with remorse, shamed by exposure, 
 beaten by a mob, shot by a husband, imprisoned, ex- 
 iled, executed, he comes forth with a smile, still to 
 go ahead as a Dead Game Sport. 
 
 It is the spirit of the thing that keeps the Dead Game 
 Sport going. He admires a man who plays a shrewd 
 game, and he rejoices in the game most of all. 
 Whether he is for the while a good loser or a good 
 spender,he is always an exuberant good fellow. 
 
 He is a gambler in all matters, life and death. 
 Heaven and Hell, riches and poverty, love and trag- 
 edy. He is the Biped with the Coin, and, when he 
 has lost it, treats the crowd with his last dollar. They 
 wish him good luck, and the wish comes true. Joy- 
 fully he plays his friends and strangers for suckers* 
 and they forgive him because he acted without mal- 
 ice and can tell a good story. He always votes for a 
 good fellow; he cares nothing for public economy, in 
 fact, hating economy of all sorts. When cast off by 
 a woman whom he has emblazoned with pleasure, he 
 rips the pathos into ridicule. As a lover he does all 
 that is asked of him down to the dim-twinkling beauty 
 of his last dollar, and then says good-bye like a gen- 
 tleman. He is an optimist to the very last and final 
 resort, from which he walks gaily home. There is 
 but one thing that arouses his pessimism and that is 
 a bad cigar. He is always on the lookout for happi- 
 ness, but, unlike others, he sings and laughs on the 
 way. He is subservient to Public Opinion, always 
 accomplishing his purpose in the most expensive and 
 approved style. He would give a beggar his last 
 coin, partly because he does not know how to refuse 
 
THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 87 
 
 and partly because somebody might be looking and 
 judge that he knows too well. Occasionally he is 
 sucker enough to tell the truth ; usually, though, the 
 others are suckers for taking him seriously. 
 
 Now and then he goes on a carouse from glass to 
 glass and becomes so piratically jocund that he is 
 arrested by officers of the peace. They find him suf- 
 fering from the hallucination that he is a civil war at 
 midnight. He does not appear in the police court 
 next day, for he has given somebody a handful of 
 money with the request, Fix it for me. This is done. 
 
 He is also the man who wants to go to Heaven, and, 
 at times, is enthusiastic about it. Most of his heaven- 
 ward efforts consist of buying tickets for charity ba- 
 zaars and handing something to the pastor when they 
 meet on the street. Admiring virtue, he is not sure 
 that vice is as bad as reported. He considers Hell's 
 Landlord a devil of a fellow whose blackness is put 
 on with burnt cork. In all, the Dead Game Sort is 
 so artless and childlike and captivating that, like the 
 chief of all breakers of the law, he attracts the most 
 sympathy. So that, when he dies, the solemn priest 
 can do no less than shed a real tear and, calling upon 
 the Great Mediator, moan, O Master, fix it for him. 
 
 . 
 
 Something for the Future 
 
 The sucker should be improved if possible. 
 
 There is a likely class of yearners that oddly enough 
 has not been developed by this money-making epoch. 
 These would-be suckers are all around us, ready for 
 the hand of the promoter. 
 
 The facts are these : litigation is an expensive pro- 
 ceeding. Sometimes parties with the most interest- 
 ing cases have not the means with which to prose- 
 
88 THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 
 
 cute their claims. Sometimes the criminal trial of a 
 scapegrace will bankrupt his wealthy family. A di- 
 vorce-court experience is frequently a large and un- 
 merited expense to the husband and an ordeal upon 
 the nerves of the wife. A glance at the calendars 
 of our courts will find that the litigants represent a 
 large part of the community as regards numbers and 
 wealth and social position. 
 
 These litigants are important enough to demand 
 legislation. Court rooms are crowded, and, in some 
 cases, overcrowded with spectators. Why not have 
 passed a law giving the litigants a right to charge a 
 price of admittance to the court room? Thousands 
 of suckers pay from fifty cents to two dollars at the 
 theater to look at a woman that has passed through 
 a notorious divorce. Usually her acting on the stage 
 is not as interesting as it was in the court room. Her 
 play is some weak dramatic chicanery gotten up merely 
 as an excuse to exhibit the fair notorine. None of 
 the audience listen to the drama; they but watch the 
 lady's theatrical graces and grievance in the memory 
 of her recent escapades. These same suckers be- 
 sieged and invaded the court room, gasping with po- 
 licemen and bailiffs to get a seat. They would surely 
 pay twenty-five cents or a dollar to enter like ladies 
 and gentlemen. The parties to the suit could divide 
 the proceeds to pay their costs. In a criminal pro- 
 cedure, the state would get its half for the jury. On 
 days of routine, a low price would be asked. When 
 the witness is expected to give scandalous testimony, 
 at least a hundred suckers would pay a dollar. Season 
 tickets, entitling the holder to the whole course of 
 trial would be issued at reduced rates. 
 
 The plan may have its imperfections. What cus- 
 tom has not? The more celebrated witnesses, such 
 as society leaders, already invested with public inter- 
 
THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 89 
 
 est, might take advantage of their position to elabor- 
 ate upon the cause of divorce and make it as interest- 
 ing as possible, attracting the largest and most fash- 
 ionable audience. Some of them might be con- 
 strained, in view of the dramatic effect, to intensify 
 the truth even more than at present. Some ,of the fair 
 plaintiffs, with an unfairness that could readily be 
 blamed upon the press agent, might quadruple the 
 facts and make the defendant as loathesome as pos- 
 sible, to delight the crowd and bring them again next 
 day. Yet why have mercy on suckers? 
 
 Notoriety brings out some of the most startling 
 things from that gray conglomeration with flamboyant 
 functions, the human mind. Hero worship is mild 
 when compared with scandal-gazing. Hero worship 
 is wholesome. A hero is exhilerating. But the en- 
 thusiasm he causes is far less than the rush to hear 
 a dawling queen of the fashionables narrate the de- 
 generacies of her husband, and weep while he tells 
 of her wickedness. A hero is disappointingly modest, 
 and looks like anybody else. Quite the other way with 
 the heroine of a divorce. She is suddenly drawn from 
 the imperious modesty of her reputation into a flaunt- 
 ing saturnalia of evidence. The very hem of her gown 
 seems to trail from the stifling court-room back into 
 the yellow brilliance of Hell. She speaks, acts, sighs, 
 draws herself up, swoons, thrills, languishes, horri- 
 fies, and goes through a performance of the finest 
 technique, that could never be equalled on the stage. 
 Her hands, with diamonds and emeralds duskily 
 gleaming under black silk gloves, move hither and 
 thither like humming-birds. Her phrases come with 
 a breath of lilacs. And the crowd leans eagerly to 
 hear just what did happen at the Seven Mile House. 
 
 The court-room is not limited to the morals of the 
 stage. There is no melodramatic subterfuge nor cul- 
 
90 THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 
 
 turing of situations by a fourth-rate dramatist. The 
 scene does not end just as the excitement begins. The 
 lawyer's curiosity and his forefinger are cleared for 
 action, and he does not falter until the judge inter- 
 venes, and even then curiosity and the forefinger fight 
 for their lives. The lawyer and his client and the 
 crowd want to hear more about it. This is not done 
 on the stage. There there is a commonplace kiss, the 
 curtain drops, and all is over. 
 
 As it now is, the scandal-sucker gets the court play 
 free. It is the only performance that he gets for 
 nothing. And why should he? 
 
 The Idealist and Reader of Fidion 
 
 It may seem hammering the metal too thin with 
 the statement that fiction-reading is related to suck- 
 ism. And yet, this chapter will prove the relation and 
 more : that romantic literature prepares the way for 
 the frauds of life. The effect of literature on life has 
 never been estimated. It is vast. Let us investigate. 
 
 The first question is, Why should a girl on a porch 
 down in Pasadena be interested in what a man at a 
 desk in Penobscot writes about Nobody? The hero 
 never lived; everything that is written of his doings 
 is false. He is an ideal Nobody walking through a 
 hundred thousands words. 
 
 The next question is, Why is he ideal? And then, 
 Why should the reader care whether this inexistent 
 hero should rescue or not rescue an inexistent heroine, 
 arrive or not arrive at a scene in time to prevent an 
 inexistent villain from performing a destruction of 
 mere phraseology? Why be interested in the mar- 
 riage, infidelities and separation of nobodies? It is 
 
THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 91 
 
 queer that anybody should pore over Nobody's com- 
 plications with Nothing. 
 
 These questions might be answered precariously as 
 follows : The girl on the porch enjoys following the 
 imagination of the author, in the belief that she is 
 imagining the scenes herself; also, taking them as real, 
 she likes to see things done, without the trouble of 
 doing them ; thirdly, she fancies that she herself is the 
 heroine of surpassing beauty, incomparable devotion 
 and transcendent virtue. 
 
 This is just what suckers do. They pay for the priv- 
 ilege of imagination. They glorify their own import- 
 ance for a while, and then lay the fiction aside. It is 
 not truly imagination; it is delusion. Lunacy is nei- 
 ther imagination nor genius. Only when the genius 
 is a delusion do its possessors admit that thin bound- 
 ary line. 
 
 The price and the time given to the book are not 
 much loss. The contagion of the reader's mind with 
 the ideal is a calamity. It sickens his wisdom and 
 infects that of other people. 
 
 There is in life altogether too much courtesy to- 
 wards vice. Crime shelters itself with a certain ideal 
 that mankind is loth to shatter. And this is because 
 literature has fooled us into thinking that the ideal 
 has impregnated a large part of our action. There is 
 altogether too much politeness in literature. Because 
 a hero and heroine enter a scene that calls for sym- 
 pathy and admiration, the author wishes us to infer 
 that every other act of those two lives are worthy of 
 sympathy and admiration. In the course of time our 
 minds become literary. The words have made an im- 
 pression on our thought; they have rousted out the 
 real and squatted a fiction. So that men give the 
 world credit for more ideal than is its assessable prop- 
 erty; and the tax-collector has a bad time. 
 
92 THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 
 
 The ideals remain in the mind and take the place 
 of real memories. When a man wishes to give an 
 opinion he draws unwittingly on these ideals. He 
 acts in an ideal way on rare occasions and certainly 
 with a small proportion of the beast and spirit that 
 he is. 
 
 Most men do not think for themselves; for some 
 purposes one is almost inclined to say it were better 
 that there be no thought at all than that the few think 
 for the many. For the many become savage when 
 they discover what they have done. 
 
 Now, evolution may be a pretty good theory; yet 
 it does not show how man lost such a useful and or- 
 namental thing (of which when possessing he must 
 have been justly proud) his tail. With innumerable 
 uses for his tail every day, man gets along the best he 
 can without it, while civilization gives its well-dentis- 
 tried smile of satsfaction. Of all this, the fiction hero 
 knows, or seems to know, nothing. The characters of 
 fiction are not God's characters with knowledge of 
 good and evil. One character is good, and evil is the 
 other. The novel-writer must include the serpent 
 (the villain) in his garden of love ; but his Adam and 
 Eve do not bite. 
 
 Fiction thus gives us what is given to all suckers, 
 a sentimental delusion ; makes the readers believe in 
 their own greatness and purity. Like politics, it 
 soothes the people into an insensibility of their wrongs 
 
 On this account, fiction is responsible for most de- 
 ceptions of the world ; for it is the ideals spread by fic- 
 tion that enable villains to impose upon suckers. 
 
 Ask a farmer for information about apples, and he 
 will give the facts of his orchard. Good seasons and 
 bad, growth and failure, effects of wind and rain and 
 pest, and the average expectation per acre. Question 
 a man concerning mankind, and he will not recollect 
 
THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 93 
 
 facts, but hearsay and literature. He will become elo- 
 quent; take his little ideal-squirter and spray the air 
 with a perfumed phantom of description. 
 
 It is the ideal that causes all the dissatisfaction in 
 life. People are tempted by ideal representation and 
 find they are not getting it. They hang on to his fals- 
 ity and are discontented with their real selves and real 
 fellows. Fraud begins with an ideal ; ideals have ended 
 in bloodshed. 
 
 When a man goes into politics, or religion, or en- 
 deavors to raise a sum of money, his first act is to 
 promulgate a set of ideals nowise related to his project 
 except to attract the necessary number of suckers. 
 The ideal brings him fame and money ; he gives the 
 ideals fame. The moment a man desires something, 
 he becomes an orator. Whether he wants to fill a bal- 
 lot-box, a collection-box, or any other kind of a box, 
 he pleads with the sentiments of fiction. He makes, 
 declarations he knows are impossible of carriage. He 
 begins in the ideal ; he completes his work in reality, 
 schism, selfishness, quarrels and anger. Heroic ideal 
 abetted the malefactor. 
 
 The main characteristic of fiction is that it directs 
 the attention upon two persons who are well grounded 
 in all the laws of morality, propriety and good taste. 
 The author cannot give them individual wisdom, not 
 possessing any himself, or fears to give what he does 
 possess. Sometimes there is an infraction of moral 
 law, but the intimation is that this is the only instance 
 in the person's life. Breaches of propriety and taste 
 are never made into any other than a humorous book, 
 to counterbalance which indiscretions, the character 
 is made rigidly chaste. 
 
 Life is made up of meetings and separations; fic- 
 tion, of separations and meetings. In the latter, the 
 author puts the superb meeting at an opportune place, 
 
94 THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 
 
 which is, on an average, about 350 pages from the dye- 
 factory landscape at the beginning of the book. He 
 ends the book when he has taxed the reader's patience 
 and credulity to the utmost. 
 
 Let us go further and see how life has little to do 
 with the ideals of fiction except to inspire a swindle 
 or enjoy a sacrifice. 
 
 It is admitted that in real life every love affair ends 
 unhappily. The very fact that it always does end con- 
 stitutes unhappiness. If it escape all other ills, it 
 ends in death. Few novel writers (that is, only the 
 great ones) pursue their heroes unto death. Bio- 
 graphers do this, of course, and the life of Alexander 
 the Great is none the less interesting for the fact that 
 he died. 
 
 In life, a man gets all the peace and happiness he 
 can ; then loses it through misfortune or death. In 
 fiction, the hero first accumulates all the quarrels and 
 obstacles, clears them and is relegated back to noth- 
 ingness when he has achieved a happy climax. 
 
 Thus fiction, instead of portraying life, reverses it 
 and narrates what is not. Instead of teaching people 
 how an ideal character bears the ills and frauds of the 
 opposite sex, or how the ordinary person rises to a 
 transient ideal, fiction puts all the odium in one place 
 and rewards two honorable parties who do not seem 
 infected with original sin. In fact, most heroes and 
 heroines appear so sexless that we wonder why they 
 marry. The hero is a spurious character; his heroism 
 is not that of a real man. The heroine is a bogus girl, 
 a matter of wordy prevarication on the part of the 
 author. 
 
 Life is made up of falsehood; fiction is based upon 
 what would be true were it not for the fact that it is 
 not. The demand for it was created in childhood- 
 Those who still read are still children. 
 
THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 95 
 
 A man marries because of a necessity combined 
 with an ideal. It is obvious that he is untrue to his 
 wife because of an ideal only. Instead of selecting a 
 wife with judgment, he leaves her to romance. When 
 the romance is gone from the wife, he is- led else- 
 where. He is always looking for that ideal. He never 
 concludes that it does not exist, but that it was not 
 where he thought it was. 
 
 A man unfaithful to his wife is not misled by carnal 
 indulgence. He has that at home. He is lured by 
 romance and the ideal. He may be introduced to a 
 woman in a parlor and forget her. Meeting her in 
 picturesque circumstances, he is under an illusion. 
 The lack of sordid details in the scene immediately en- 
 chant him with the ideals of the book. His living 
 heart enguises itself with a fictitious heroship. He 
 becomes part of an extemporaneous tale, and is 
 lovingly infuriated. He yearns for a love that is 
 ideal and fleshly at once. Upon that, the other part 
 of the world is forgotten. At home, he may have to 
 deceive his wife concerning his absence. That is how 
 it works out. One ideal proves false, and the next has 
 to be concealed with falsehood. 
 
 It may be that if all women's legs were the same 
 shape, man would not fall in love as often as he does. 
 He gives a psychological importance to the lines of 
 pulchritude. He sees a certain spirituality in the 
 body-picture as well as in the forehead. 
 
 Fiction then is, for the most part, the influential 
 part, a particularizing of ideals. Ideals are, at ordin- 
 ary times, fiction. The woman that wants a diamond 
 ring, pretends ideality. The priest that wishes to live 
 in idleness pretends ideality. The newspaper that 
 would have a circulation pretends ideality. The re- 
 former that is looking to a salary pretends ideality. 
 The millionaire and the vagabond, the exemplars of 
 
96 THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 
 
 every condition meet humanity on an ideal offer that 
 has no force in their daily life ; yet they manage to 
 impress a world of suckers already seduced by the 
 ideals of fiction. 
 
 The Astonished Sucker 
 
 Suckerism is not a circumstantial folly but an active 
 emotion. There is, in the mind of the sucker, a sub- 
 sidiary trait that keeps him on the alert for duty. 
 This trait makes common things appear wonderful. 
 
 Ideas must have momentum, or else they will not 
 go very far. A certain initial impetus ^sends them 
 through the brains of mankind. This explosion, or 
 sudden burst of recognition, is called astonishment. 
 An invention or event or person or thing, to succeed, 
 must firstly astonish ; that is, it knocks all calmness 
 out of people's heads, and then goes on a successful 
 career. For this reason, and in anticipation of great 
 matters, the sucker must be trained to astonishment. 
 When shown an admirable thing, he must go into a 
 sort of pantomime denoting that he is in alarm for the 
 preservation of his senses. This gives animation to 
 everyday life, and keeps alive that enthusiasm which 
 is necessary to one thing and another. Lack of it in- 
 dicates a low morale. 
 
 Every exhibition of merit should be attended with 
 joy. The beauties of Nature should cause an artistic 
 soul to tremble in terror of the superb ; a piece of hu- 
 man finesse should set one agog with oh .and ah. 
 When an infant is discovered with its first tooth, a 
 casual observer might be moved to remark, Ah yes ; 
 this is about the time they get 'em. And yet, that the 
 onlookers themselves have teeth is no excuse for in- 
 difference. What should they do? Ejaculate. Be 
 
THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 97 
 
 astonished that Nature did not forget this babe (a 
 possibility). Call wildly for others to look. If there 
 be no others about, call anyhow, and thus make as- 
 tonishment all the more convincing. The parents un- 
 derstand, and feel that they have not had a child for 
 nothing. The production of children is encouraged. 
 
 Whether it be an infant with a tooth, an artist with 
 a picture, a singer with a voice, or anybody with any- 
 thing, the purport is to swoon with celestial wounds, 
 and exclaim, Well I didn't think it was in him. This 
 will not cause the person to feel aggrieved as under- 
 estimated. He will comprehend that the tooth or the 
 picture or the voice or the anything is acknowledged 
 to be miraculous, while the dumfoundoons and shock- 
 absorbers had previously considered him as merely 
 human, and are now licking the ambrosias of the di- 
 vine from their lips. 
 
 Of course, it requires energy to go through life 
 thunderstruck; yet this must be done, or most people 
 would feel themselves ordinary and unfit for achieve- 
 ment. 
 
 The astonished sucker is amazed at the poetry and 
 marvel of other people's business affairs. He becomes 
 loose-mouthed in the story of another's pleasures. 
 Should he read that a wealthy woman has lost her 
 diamonds, he will not rest until they are found. The 
 news of the day bloats the wonder-bag of his soul. 
 He would never believe that it is partly fiction. 
 
 He will attend a baseball game and become scarlet 
 over a pennant he has never seen. He roars for the 
 home team, forgetting that it is a home team in name 
 only. He understands merely that it is to be made 
 noisy, even as he understands that a bronze pot of 
 another century is to be murmured over. If he were 
 told to murmur soulfully at baseball and shout over 
 the bronze pot, he would do so. 
 
98 THE WORLD OP SUCKERS 
 
 When a popular book is being discussed, he will 
 collapse into unsphinctered awe over the genius that 
 wrote it. 
 
 He delights in the rare and the difficult. Given a 
 single hint that a friend is in need of praise, and he 
 comes up puffing for the third time from the drown- 
 ing waters of admiration. 
 
 This sucker has put a romantic glow over all his- 
 tory. The more incredible a tale the readier was he 
 to give it the astonishment that means belief, even 
 had he to go so far as to testify to its truth. We can 
 gauge ancient heroes by measuring the celebrities of 
 today. When a man or woman is so well known that 
 any bit of news concerning him or her is easily gob- 
 bled by the public, what a temptation it is for the 
 celebrity, pining in a week of obscurity, to make a 
 short remark that is sure to grow into a long story 
 before nightfall. Or an obsequious friend enlarges his 
 intimacy with a large tale of the great person. Ene- 
 mies can deny through envy ; the great person can 
 deny through modesty. The falsehood goes on. It 
 has caused astonishment, and there is no cessation. 
 The next man is as astonished as the first; more so, 
 perhaps with more cause, for each astonished sucker 
 puts his literary ability into the facts as he gets them, 
 and the end is never in sight. 
 
 In short, wherever genuine good will is needed, the 
 astonished suckers are there to give it. They are as 
 necessary to society as music to a dance; as a bass 
 drum to a political parade ; and their wonderful ex- 
 clamations fall in the paths of Progress with the fer- 
 tilizing thump of a bull signalling its approbation of 
 all Nature on a field of summer fallow. 
 
THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 99 
 
 The Sucker to Whom We Owe a 
 Great Responsibility 
 
 We are all infants when we talk to an infant. The 
 object is to let him grow up in simplicity. , 
 
 It was said that a man who tells the truth is a 
 sucker. In dealing with an infant, we cannot be too 
 careful in removing from him his natural tendency to 
 see things as they are. At first he makes many ex- 
 cusable blunders of word and behavior; gradually 
 these, ridiculous and charming though they be, should 
 be corrected. 
 
 As the little sucker puts his lips to the mother- 
 breast, he is, in his helplessness and innocence, the 
 only creature in the world of whom no one would take 
 advantage. Helplessness and innocence have not 
 saved older suckers, and we may put it down that 
 the only reason for not taking advantage of a babe, 
 is that he has nothing that people need. 
 
 When the mother withdraws her breast from the 
 infant's mouth, and substitutes a black-rubber nipple 
 over a bottle of animal or manufactured milk, then does 
 the little one become a sucker in the more social mean- 
 ing of the word. With the rubber nipple the tiny, 
 squirming novice takes his position among the insti- 
 tutions of society. Not much harm is done ; it is not 
 time. He begins easily, and takes his first delusion 
 and imitation. 
 
 As soon as this little fool begins to understand and 
 talk, he should be taught how to exclude the truth 
 from his conversation. Assuming that the parents are 
 suckers and useful members of society, they should 
 point him the perils and evils of thinking for him- 
 self, lest he grow up a cynic, a critic and an iconoclast. 
 Living in civilization as we do, the infant's brain 
 
100 THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 
 
 should not be allowed to develop wilfully as that of a 
 savage. Heredity is strong, yet environment should 
 nurse the young mind as early as possible. The child 
 belongs to the eooch in which he lives. The epoch 
 protects him, and, in return, has the right to his ser- 
 vices. His mind should be filled with its principles, 
 so that at boyhood the young soul be converted and 
 colored with all the enthralling dreams and ghosts 
 of popular belief. These being at the very making of 
 him, he will hardly be able to subdue them later. If 
 he should free himself, he is one in a generation ; 
 and so much the better, for it is more creditable to 
 free oneself than be born free. The majority of chil- 
 dren can never grow to achieve distinction. They 
 must be workers. To fill them with ambition would 
 be only to sadden their lives. Rightly are they in- 
 structed with so many deceptions that the only thing 
 of which they are not ashamed is the ideal, or that 
 which they are not. 
 
 Civilization considers it ill that a man take pride 
 in what he actually is. If he be ruggedly and na- 
 tively proud, he would not take part in the devotions 
 of his kind, but have only his innate love of mystery 
 as a motive for aspiring to something better. 
 
 Howbeit, the infant with his nursing-bottle, sym- 
 bolically performing the mental mischance that is to 
 characterize him through life, sucks the milk of his 
 first deception. If an angel should whisper to him 
 then, what would be the tale? What wisdom would 
 the infant have to relate unto his elders? What 
 startling and uncalled-for truths then out of the 
 mouths of babes and suckers ! The tale would need 
 expurgation, no doubt. 
 
 The thought is suggestive. It leads one into the 
 subject of propriety. The upshot of which is that the 
 first thing a child must be taught is to be ashamed of 
 
101 
 
 himself. Untaught to that extent, he would not be 
 tolerated anywhere. Parents are usually much con- 
 cerned as to just how much they should inform a 
 child of his person and the natural causes of his being 
 alive. 
 
 It must not be supposed that a child does not know 
 what he is, nor what he is to expect in after years. 
 But it is a fact that he gets two contrary ideas: from 
 his playmates, distorted and ignorant rumors of pleas- 
 ure ; from his instructors, restriction. These confuse 
 him v He sees no pleasure in restriction, and he does 
 behind his parents' backs what Adam and Eve, poor 
 children without knowledge of ethics, did when God 
 was out of their sight. 
 
 It would be an awful subterfuge upon a child to way- 
 lay his curiosity by opening all the bureaus of in- 
 formation to his inquiring mind. He would then have 
 nothing to vex him in his quest of primitive science. 
 There would be nothing to restrict him beside a re- 
 spect for the rights of others; which would keep his 
 bit of humanity quite alert morally. Eve and Blue- 
 beard's wife were in the same predicament as this 
 child ; one touch upon their curiosity, and both re- 
 quired a Saviour. The child's curiosity, perhaps the 
 strongest of his faculties, is liable to wander near 
 the same pitfall. In this hole there is seemingly some- 
 thing that he should not see. If it were provided with 
 a stairs instead of a snare, he would walk down and 
 not fall. If this were done, perhaps instead of expur- 
 gating the classics, we should have cause to expurgate 
 only the Penal Code. 
 
 Such a course would be a loss to the world. For, 
 assuming that there would be less crime if the child 
 were not predisposed to it by the taunts to his curi- 
 osity, much of the mysteries of love would be gone. 
 It is necessary to the exquisite adventures of love that 
 
102 THE lV0&Li3 OF 
 
 mystery surround it. If all should be, from childhood, 
 plain as eating carrots, and nothing improper in con- 
 versation, there would be no beautiful haze over car- 
 nal fact, no poetic illusion in language, no twinkling 
 magic in a lover's night. 
 
 An Ordinary Day in the Life of a 
 Sucker 
 
 The majority own the world; that is why they pay 
 rent. The voice of the people, which is said to be the 
 voice of God, is raised in everlasting protest. When 
 property is taken away from a man by superior force, 
 he is still a man ; when it is taken away by argument 
 he is a sucker. One could give good argument why 
 the people who live on this earth should not each have 
 a section of it. The best point is that, should each in- 
 dividual be given a share of earth, and be selfish 
 enough to take it, the prosperity of the united system 
 would suffer. 
 
 When the sucker awakes in the morning, he is one 
 day nearer the payment of rent. He lives on land 
 owned by somebody else. If the landlord had not 
 been allowed to acquire more property than was ne- 
 cessary for his home and business, it could have been 
 divided among the suckers. But, while this would 
 have benefited the sucker, it would have made the ci- 
 ties larger and inconvenient and less sightly. For 
 each sucker would have built a small house to suit his 
 own needs. A large city must be compact; hence 
 the land-holders build tenements. A large city must 
 be in the hands of the rich. 
 
 The poor cannot benefit their country except by the 
 
THE WORLD OP SUCKERS 103 
 
 surrender of their rights. The poor cannot collabor- 
 ate to advantage. For instance, in order to develop 
 a country, five men can construct a railroad; a thou- 
 sand men could not. Five men have more executive 
 ability than a thousand. Ten million men have no 
 executiveness at all. The suckers then could not lay 
 a railroad. They can only perform the hard work 
 and pay the fare. They develop the country. Why 
 they do so, or why the country should be developed, 
 is not a subject for discussion here. The virtue of it 
 was assumed at the outset herein. At any rate, the 
 sucker is the only patriot. He loves his country, 
 because he gives his all to it. But his country does 
 not love him. Nobody loves a sucker in his official 
 capacity. 
 
 Truth to say, money and land do not bring happi- 
 ness to a country any more than to a person. The 
 larger a country, the more is the patriotism divided. 
 Sometimes the sucker who pays a large rent for a 
 pygmy's home in a tenement can hardly enjoy having 
 contributed to the support of a railroad, when an 
 elevator would be more to his purpose. 
 
 When the sucker has washed himself in the morn- 
 ing, he sits to a breakfast of impure food. Dwelling 
 in a city, he cannot have all his food fresh from the 
 markets, but buys things that are grown at such a 
 progressive distance that they must come to him in 
 cans and packages, as not to become stale. It is 
 sweetened with by-products and preserved with chem- 
 icals. Occasionally the sucker, angered at these adul- 
 terants in his necessaries, attempts a clearing. Rather, 
 some well-meaning official attempts for him. A law 
 is passed that packages of food be labeled with their 
 every ingredient. The manufacturers are puzzled for 
 a while, until they recall the sucker's characteristics. 
 They need not better their product; they merely 
 
104 THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 
 
 change the labels in conformity with the law, print- 
 ing the names of the chemicals in the food. The 
 sucker buys the medicated goods with the amusing 
 labels. He has not the courage to refuse. 
 
 All the sucker's food, clothing and articles of daily 
 use are extensively advertised. The impression seems 
 to be that unless his food be advertised, the sucker 
 would not eat. He pays millions of dollars annually to 
 be induced to partake of the necessaries of life. 
 
 After breakfast, the sucker rides downtown in a 
 street car. He cannot afford to live near his place of 
 business. He gave the street to a corporation, being 
 unable to operate the railway himself, not having the 
 brains nor the money. The corporation got the money 
 from him, and tells him he has not the brains. So 
 the sucker keeps his hands off. 
 
 It is generally said that the sucker works with 
 either brain or brawn. Not entirely. He works with 
 his soul. If he is a laborer, he is inwardly cursing his 
 job most of the time; and most of his accompanying 
 speech is a disgruntled comment on what he is do- 
 ing. Laborer or clerk, he is dreaming of happiness; 
 he tosses up tempting visions with every spade or 
 penful. Some do not. They have been hypnotized 
 into the belief that their minds must be intent on the 
 work, and that appreciation will then follow. These 
 men can hardly be called suckers of a long deceit; 
 they are sword-swallowers. During the day they will 
 not converse with their fellow-workman. The pro- 
 prietor of their establishment frowns on such friend- 
 liness. His employees are there for business not 
 friendship. So the weak-souled clerk drudges through 
 the day, talking only on business, fearful of being 
 caught with a congenial word on his lips or a smile 
 on his busy features. He is stimulated with the pre- 
 
THE WORLD OP SUCKERS 105 
 
 cept that energy and attention will bring their reward. 
 He hopes for promotion. 
 
 These men are playing the most terrific game that 
 ever was : the tragedy of numbers. The hero of a 
 tragedy usually dies fighting; and so here. One man 
 in a community may succeed by industry and merit. 
 Fancy the confusion of a million endeavoring to get 
 near the top on that basis, or any basis. . Whatever 
 the chances of success held out by the preachers, it 
 cannot apply to all. One succeeds because the others 
 did not follow the advice, or were unable to keep up 
 the follow. The high places are for a few; the low 
 places must become more populous all the time. That 
 is the tragedy of numbers. 
 
 The adviser states that the chances for success are 
 greater now than ever; that is, the filling in of the in- 
 dustries enlarges the accomodations. The clerks are 
 advised to be honest, methodical, and to have their 
 employer's interest at heart. Let us see. Suppose a 
 corooration employ a thousand men, honest, method- 
 ical and interested. The corporation cannot prefer 
 and reward them all ; yet it does not harm the corpora- 
 tion to have them all trying for the reward and pref- 
 erence. 
 
 Theoretically, every individual ou^ht to try; but 
 theoretically a large majority ought not try, for suc- 
 cess to it impossible. 
 
 A thousand people could support themselves by 
 working four hours a day, and have many holidays. It 
 is ambition's promise of more than a natural emolu- 
 ment that steadies them to work for nine hours. With 
 everybody working for more than an ordinary liveli- 
 hood, and many getting less, there must be an awful 
 gulf of misery and a crush in some part of the system 
 But not one of them could be persuaded that he is. 
 not destined to be one of the crushers. 
 
106 THE WORLD OP SUCKERS 
 
 Some writers mention class distinctions; and re- 
 cently there has been a widespread assumption that 
 the millionaire is less honest than the workingman. 
 This is error. If the workingman were not dishonest, 
 the millionaires could not be. Millionaires are the out- 
 come of dishonest conditions, which arise from dishon- 
 est humanity. The workman who can talk sincerely 
 to himself will gaze at his oppressor and say, There, 
 but for the grace of something I could not help, goes 
 myself. I am that man in the mansion. If I were 
 he and he were I, the angels could see no difference. 
 
 The workingman must work; but why more than 
 is necessary for his family's food and shelter? He is 
 already a sucker to that extent a hard-working 
 sucker paying off the romantic debt of his youth. But 
 why must he earn even more than he is paid? It is 
 because he hopes to be paid at some time more than 
 he shall earn. It is his hope to get something for 
 nothing, eventually, that makes him now give his 
 all body, brain and soul. He is not a sucker indi- 
 vidually for trying; as part of the inevitable aggre- 
 gate failure, he is a sucker. There is no way out of 
 it ; the majority cannot free themselves from the trag- 
 edy of numbers. And were it not for religion, that 
 promises better times beyond the tomb, the case of 
 the majority would be sad indeed. And the more in- 
 telligent it might become, the sadder would be the 
 tragedy of its life. 
 
 A philosopher might be content to work hard, sell- 
 ing his philosophy, or doing something equally hon- 
 orable, yet would dislike being ordered about by a 
 speculator who calls himself an aristocrat because he 
 adds money with his brain. The great consideration, 
 then, is freedom. This the majority of men can never 
 have. And the less they are able to appreciate free- 
 dom, the better for their souls. 
 
THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 107 
 
 But what is an ordinary day in the life of a wealthy 
 sucker himself? He has freedom. It means nothing 
 to him. Freedom is nothing; lack of it, as lack of 
 air, is unpleasant. People continuously in fresh air 
 and freedom do not pay much attention to it. 
 
 The rich man has many many times one livelihood. 
 Unfortunately, he can use only one. Or say that he 
 may overeat himself and use somewhat more than one 
 livelihood. All the rest becomes a game. Clothes, 
 carriages, houses, pictures, jewels, fortune. They are 
 nothing more than an exciting game, the excitement 
 of much of it being lost after the things are won. He 
 can be in but one place at a time; the one place be- 
 comes tiresome. And then change becomes tiresome. 
 He has nothing but the game of his fortune ; and as 
 there are many as fortunate as he, and more, he is 
 playing a losing game most of the time. Those few 
 yearly millions he subtracts from the poor! They do 
 not amount to much. Every day he is disgraced by 
 wealthier men. 
 
 This is, of course, not saying that his position is 
 not better than the workingman's. It might be, in 
 some respects and not in others. A man with wife and 
 child and $5000 might take a vacation for a year. A 
 wealthy man would not dare to. He works under the 
 terrible nightmare that the loss of a few million dol- 
 lars would make him unhappy. But that does not 
 amount of much. The point is that wealth plays 
 everybody for suckers its owners included. The 
 game of wealth is as disappointing as that of life. No 
 one ever wins. 
 
 After his day's work, the sucker eats dinner. Then 
 he may go to the theater and see himself on the stage. 
 In comedy and tragedy he sees himself. In drama he 
 sees what is not. He would rather laugh than behold 
 his tears theatrically illumined. The curtain rises. 
 
108 THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 
 
 The audience beholds its multitudinous and incarnate 
 souls intermingling in bright satins and dark attire 
 beyond the footlights. It is the only illusion worth 
 anything. It is a sublime falsehood, a comic nothing, 
 a tragic truth, a melodramatic school for suckers. 
 
 The Sucker's Holiday 
 
 During what he is pleased to term Sundays and 
 Holidays, the sucker catches his breath, after the ex- 
 citing week. He sleeps later, eats more, may give 
 presents, and, for a few hours takes on a genial man- 
 ner, for which he has had no time during the week or 
 months past. Also he atones for his sins. 
 
 The superb holiday of the sucker, and most charac- 
 teristically his own, is the ist of April, otherwise 
 known as All Fools' Day or April Fool. On this day 
 the sucker, in sportive revenge for the indignities put 
 upon him during the year, tempts his fellows with 
 many pranks. This is a pleasure of the imagination, 
 or a delusion, in which the sucker raises himself to 
 the pomp of a laughing swindler by making others 
 act foolishily. The sucker plays aristocrat as a child 
 plays pirate. 
 
 For example, in token and remembrance of the im- 
 pure food sold him during the year, the sucker buys 
 candy which is filled with cayenne pepper or wood. 
 This he foists upon a friend, and his mouth joculates 
 widely at the ensuing discomfiture. Having done this 
 the sucker has proven to himself that he is not such 
 a fool after all, for he is yet sharp enough to transact 
 a practical joke on others. 
 
 On the back of another, he pins a card bearing the 
 words, "Kick me." The reversed applicability of this 
 trick is almost as bad as jesting with death. 
 
THE WORLD OF SUCKERS 10S 
 
 With another, he makes an apparently losing bet 
 with the proviso, "You will pay if you win/' And 
 takes the stakes feeling that he is recompensed for a 
 whole year of financial innocence. 
 
 He conceals a brick beneath an old hat on the side- 
 walk. This is the symbolic farce of a lifetime. The 
 sucker that kicks the hat and stubs his howling toe 
 exemplifies all the details of suckerism : the supercil- 
 ious approach, the sentiment of doing a heroic act, 
 the greed of achieving an illustrious kick, and then 
 the sudden pain. Observing a person play the sucker 
 to such a snare arouses the latent manhood and jo- 
 cosity of the bystanders. 
 
 At night the trickful sucker relates to his family 
 his acumen of the day, deluding others and himself 
 escaping. "Wasn't fooled once," he says. "Saw all 
 those tricks played years ago, and was on to them." 
 His own exploits he narrates with hilaritiy and ego- 
 tism, goes to bed happy and giggles in his sleep. 
 

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