GODS IN CHICAGO
IN the death of Mr. W. J. Gunning theology incurred a serious loss. The deceased was an intelligent and painstaking collector of gods, and at the time of his death was in the service of the Committee on Gods, of the “World’s Fair” in Chicago. He had already got together about five hundred deities, some of them exceedingly powerful, and was on his way around the world on the lookout for more. It is believed that he would have enriched the pantheon of the fair with some singularly fine exhibits if he had been spared, for he was a most accomplished theologian, knew exactly where to lay his hand on any deity that he needed in his business, and whenever he went godding was blessed (under Providence) with a large take. He was an honest collector, a kind and considerate provider, and left behind him a wide circle of Celestial Powers bewailing their loss.
The advantage of having a first-rate collection of gods at a world’s fair is obvious. Hitherto the study of comparative theology has been beset with dispiriting difficulties, many of which will vanish in the light that such a collection will pour upon the science. In actual presence of the wood and stone which the heathen in his blindness bows down to we shall be able to trace resemblances and relationships hitherto undiscerned and even unsuspected. We shall know, perhaps, why the religion of the Inquots is somewhat similar to that of the Abemjees when we see (if such is the fact) that the gods of both these widely separated tribes have availed themselves of the advantages of the tail. We shall perhaps find the missing link between the Hindu’s mild disposition and his adoration of the “idol of hope and slaughter.” Better than all, we shall by actual scrutiny of the mongrel and measly gods of other and inferior nations be confirmed in the True Faith, as in this favored land we have the happiness to know it.
That the goddery will be a point of chief attraction goes without saying. A temple in which, satisfying the two mightiest needs of his spiritual nature, one may both scoff and pray will have a powerful fascination for the truly religious. There the visiting stranger from the overseas can perform appropriate rites before the deity of his fathers and execute feats of contumelious disdain—short of actual demolition—before the hideous and senseless images adored of those not delivered from error’s chain. Even to the wicked person who has justly incurred the ancient reproach that he “tears down but does not build up,” the god-show will have a certain value as displaying everywhere the kind of things he tears down and nowhere the kind he is expected to build up—whereby he shall be put into better esteem and kicked and cuffed with abated assiduity. There is one disquieting possibility—one haunting thought that grows amain to apprehension: What will be the effect of setting up a multitude of gods in a city which has not hitherto tolerated one? It was well, though, to make the experiment, even as a missionary measure; and if the lakeside pantheon had served to lure the world’s pious to their financial doom the Chicagonese might have become a profoundly religious people, attentive to pilgrims and blandly assuring them that it was no trouble to show gods.
1892.
FOR LAST WORDS
THE special kind of telephone designed to be affixed to the bedside of one who may have the bad luck to suffer from some infectious or contagious disease is a thoughtful provision for a crying need. By means of the instrument so placed, the patient’s friends are able to converse to him, read and sing at him, and, in general, give him the benefit of their society without danger of getting back more than they bestow. The plan is of admirable simplicity and nothing could be better—for the friends. There must be a certain satisfaction in possessing one end of a telephone at the other end of which there is one who cannot get away—one who has to listen to as many helloes as may be thought good for him, and to submit to the question, “Is that you?” when you know that it is he, as frequently as you choose to afflict him with it. That he is heartily wishing but impotently unable to transmit his disorder through the wire adds something to the joy of the situation.
One of the advantages of the sick-bed telephone lies in the fact that it can be used for preservation of “last words.” Hitherto those only of men who died surrounded by attentive friends have had a chance of getting before the public; those of the unfortunate infectionary, isolated from his race and dying in a pesthouse, assisted by hireling physicians and unsympathetic nurses, have been lost to the world. No matter how many years of his life the patient may have been engaged in their composition and rehearsal; no matter how “neat and opprobrious” they were, they fell upon unappreciative ears, and were not recorded. Under the new régime the patient as his fire fails may summon his friends to the telephone, launch at them his Parthian platitude and die in the pleasant consciousness that posterity will have profit of his death. Whether, like Falstaff, he choose to give his remarks a reminiscent character and “babble o’ green fields;” confine himself to the historical method, like Daniel Webster with his memorable “I still live;” assume the benevolent pose, and, like Charles II, urge the survivors not to let some “poor Nelly” starve; the exclamatory, like the late President Garfield, who, according to one Swaim, said “O Swaim!” and let it go at that; or the merely idiotic, like the great Napoleon with his “Tête d’armée,” the faithful telephone will be there, ready and willing to transmit (and transmute) the sentiment, admonition, statement or whatever it may be.
To persons intending to make this use of the telephone a word of counsel may not be impertinent. As no human being, however well-eared, ever understood the telephone until it had repeated itself a number of times in response to his demands for more light, and as the moribund are not commonly in very good voice, it will be wise to begin the “last words” while there is yet a little reserve fund of life and strength remaining, for repetition and explanation.