The Mystery of Mankind
On Christmas we noticed a lot of you angling around with your tongue hanging out,
And tearfully beseeching everybody to point your ears toward a place where they sell licker
Made out of barbed wire and red ink, with a touch of rat poison thrown in to take the curse off,
And you were willing to divorce yourselves from a complete set of a dozen dollars
For the privilege of assaulting your stomach with a bottle of it.
And when you couldn’t get it you were as peeved as a hen that tries to get results from a doorknob.
And you are the same lads who were whooping it up for pop and ice water at election time.
And who said that Demon Rum had killed more people than the doctors.
If you are a dry, why do you run yourselves bowlegged hunting for unhealthy licker,
And if you believe another lil’ drink won’t do us any harm, why do you vote the Sahara Desert ticket?
What’s the answer?
Darned if we know. We’re a Mick.
High Life in South America
Reverend Golightly Morrill, veteran of many travels in sinful climes, will tell of the wickedness of the West Indies in the March issue of the WHIZ BANG, and how he, sophisticated as he is, succumbed to the enticements of one of Eve’s daughters with a tempting bowl. He describes his experience thusly: “Hot courtesan that yields readily, that drinks and laughs, that stains the cloth and the gown—the ribald orgy that shows its foot and its leg, quick to snatch its stiletto from its garter—” Read it in the next issue.—The Editor.
By REV. “GOLIGHTLY” MORRILL
Pastor People’s Church, Minneapolis, Minn.
Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, have the dual reputation of being the Sodom and Gomorrah of South America.
The theatres of Buenos Aires begin at 9 p.m., and the Devil’s Mission opens at the same time. I followed some of his congregation to the “Royal Theatre” and paid $1.50 gold to stand up in the back part of the house behind a rail and look at some silly French films. They were followed by the real entertainment which was opened by an American chorus whose flat voices would have been high-priced at 25 cents admission. I endured it in shameful silence, but the audience was “cynical,” and by barks and obscene onomatopoeic sounds, instead of hisses, showed its dissatisfaction. So far, this was but a prelude to the interlude intermission when everybody adjourned to an upper and lower foyer where the band played, the men and women marched and countermarched, flirted, paired off and sat at the tables eating and drinking.
The “ladies” were especially friendly to me, alone and idly looking on. They spotted me as a gringo, and in French, German and Spanish, Italian and English said “Good evening,” asking me if I would not have a drink or go out for a little walk. One coveted my scarab pin, thinking it would make a nice breast-pin. I compromised with her on an American flag which she proudly bore aloft. Another as unmindful of my calling as I was of not standing “in the way of the ungodly,” chucked me under the chin and said, “Hello, kiddo, how’s New York?”
This was the life or death I didn’t care to cultivate. I told them I had no time or money to waste and that my wife was waiting for me to help pack the trunk, since we were to sail in the morning. I returned to my standing place to get my money’s worth of torture. It was over at twelve, when I left. Hurrying to the hotel, I met the hotel runner. He asked where I had been. “Everywhere,” I said, and told him. He laughingly replied I was in the “wickedest city” in the world and hadn’t seen anything. Then he proceeded to introduce me to the Red Lamp district across the river, where the sailors are searched and relieved of their arms; where the arms of the frail denizens relieve them of their money by charging dollars for dime drinks; where blistering curses and kisses echo through the darkened rooms; and where colored movies of human and animal life are shown that would make the pornographic pictures of Paris and Havana look like a Pilgrim’s Progress film.
Here are the painted women whose keen eyes stab, whose vampire lips suck life blood, whose tresses are winding-sheets, and bodies graves in which honor and purity are buried. Happier for them had they dressed in a shroud, clasped hands with a leper and kissed a red-hot stove than to have dressed, drunk and debauched as they did.
These midnight marauders seemed to think the stars were lit to lead them on from shame to shame, while the truth is they sadly look down on souls whose beating pulses live for a pleasure that murders time, health, wealth, character and reputation.
They follow Satan as a guide, hypocrisy as a lawyer, impudence as an art, pleasure as an object and damnation as their end. If their minds were like matter and could show decay, they would smell like carrion. They wear fine clothes and live in beautiful houses, but their minds are empty and their souls in rags.
Religion has pleasure, but their pleasure was religion, and Cupid and Bacchus their saints.
The fabled Greek Temple of Pleasure had a large doorway for entrance, lights, music and lovely women within, but back of it all a wicket-gate which opened into a pig-pen.
Thus, the end of vice is not satisfaction, but satiety, and the bacchanal worshiper of what appeals only to his physical senses is thrust out naked, ashamed and alone. Satan smiles, and hell is happy.
A dying king dreamed he would be met on the other shore by a beautiful woman and led to a throne. Instead, he was welcomed by a horrible hag who leered and laughed at him. When he recoiled and asked who she was, she replied, “I am your sins and have come to live with you forever.”
Leaving this bare-breasted, forbidden fruit untasted, I bought some navel oranges, and went to my hotel thankful that, if I had been led into temptation, I had been delivered from evil.
The Devil’s calling cards he gives to visitors here, have B. A. after his name, and it does not stand for “Bachelor of Arts,” although he has that degree from several European and American universities. Last impressions are first in mind. I had hoped that B. A. (Buenos Aires) would stand for “Better Afterwards,” but just before the boat pulled out I found it meant “Bad Always.”
A well dressed man sold my wife some pretty post cards, of the city, and while she was looking at them he took me to one side, whispered “dirty book” in my ear, and offered me something “nice” to read on the trip. I read the title, “The Lustful Experiences of a Physician,” and refused him, saying I was no doctor, didn’t intend to study for the profession, or do anything that would make it necessary to contract for medical services in advance. As the ship sailed out of the harbor I gazed ruefully at this roué paradise of a city, repeating the lines of the poet,
“Farewell, dear, damned, distracted town;
Ye harlots live at ease.”
Oh, that last night in Rio de Janeiro. The city was brilliantly lighted but we saw some shady places to make the picture complete. Passing by the brightly lighted movie foyers, where the waiting crowd is furnished with seats and music, instead of being log-jammed as they are in the United States, I went down the Avenida through a public park. Its main gate opened into a street, not filled with churches, libraries and museums, but aristocratic “maisons de joie.”
There was a corner café with a score of well-dressed women sitting at the tables, but no men. They seemed social as I passed by and beckoned me in. When I went on they followed me with a loose collection of Spanish, French, German and English oaths. That was the only way they could follow, for there was a man on horseback at the street corner prepared to run them in if they ventured out. It was eight o’clock, we were the only ones on the street, and must have looked lorn and lonely, for in every doorway stood a besilked, bediamoned, benighted beauty who looked compassionately on and invited us to come in and make ourselves at home.
A long walk brought us to a kind of Leicester Square of many theatres. Believing they were all equally good or bad, we entered one and saw and heard a Portuguese comic opera. It was comical to see some of the red light scenes we had just escaped, enacted on the stage. Again we went out of the light into the night, passing through narrow streets of dives brighter and blacker than any we had yet seen. This was the busiest place in Rio. Although it was midnight, an unending stream of humanity poured up and down the walks, the patrolling police charging the crowds time and again.
I was sorry I had not seen Brazil’s “men of war” because it was foggy when we entered the harbor, but I was more sorry to see most of them gambling, drinking, going in and out of the dives along these streets. Here vice was wholly evil and lost none of its grossness. It was dirty, dowdy and depraved. Jack Falstaff would have hurried away as fast as his fat legs could carry him, and not paused to pity, endure or embrace the poor, half-dressed, painted, powdered prostitutes. There is a sharpness of teeth hiding in their cruel kisses, poison in the honey of their lips, and many a deluded lover starts up terrified as if he heard snakes hissing in their hair. Rio de Janeiro is damned with a debauchery which the natural beauty of its harbor can not redeem.
On leaving Rio I met two young ladies on shipboard who told me a “white slave” story. A Buenos Aires agent for vaudeville had come to New York and booked them through his agency. He said conditions were better in South than North America; that they could each earn $50 a week, and have all expenses paid, if they would “just sing American songs.” But before landing they learned from some one who knew this agent, that gambling and wine rooms were run in connection with the theatre, and that it would be necessary for them to carry revolvers for protection. When they realized their danger and decided not to land, but board our ship for New York, they were nabbed by the police, who work hand in hand with the white slavers, and had it not been for the American consul and others interested who raised enough money for their return passage, and insisted that the contract of the agent’s false promises be broken, these two girls would have been placed in durance vile for two years, according to law.
South America is the white slave market of the world. She has black slaves in gold mines and rubber camps of the interior, and white slaves on the coast who have been brought from every country of the world with promises of marriage or respectable employment.
The white slaver is the Devil’s missionary who lays nets which Lucretia cannot avoid, and gives baits and bribes which move Penelope.
Babylon had a marriage market for her women; Rio has a girl’s slave pen, over whose portals is written Dante’s Hell motto.
“She has been in South America,” is the living epitaph of many a poor girl dead in trespasses and sins.
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