Therefore, it matters not, though the Creator decked the earth with prolific soil, and deposited within great stores of wealth for man’s enjoyment, for, if Economic Equality is ostracised, man is enslaved and the world surges through space around the sun, a gilded prison. It matters not, though the infinite blue vast be sown with innumerable stars and the earth be adorned with countless beauties, teeming with the multiplicity of living forms for man’s edification, for if Liberty is exiled, the intellect is robbed and man knows not himself. It matters not, though nature opens her generous purse and pours forth melodies of her myriad-tongued voices for man’s delectation, for, if the shackles of wage slavery are not loosed, the mind is stultified and ambition destroyed by the long hours of toil’s monotony in the factory, the machine shop, in the mines, at the desk, and on the farm. It matters not, though the fireside of the home sheds forth a radiance in which is blended paternal love, health and happiness, for, if woman is denied equal suffrage, then this queen of the household, perforce, becomes a moral slave.
Man, therefore, is not the sovereign citizen as pictured by the flashing phrases of the orator and soothsayer.
Liberty exiled, we have heard of before, but economic equality ostracised, is new. The idea that the multiplicity of living forms exist for man’s edification, is ancient to the point of being moldy, but we must concede originality to “myriad tongued voices” issuing from a “purse.” The concluding remarks about the “flashing phrases of the orator” are peculiarly well taken—unless that gentleman should be mean enough to say, “you’re another.”
Of course there is no objection to real eloquence and one’s sentences should always be smooth and rhythmical. One great source of smoothness and rhythm is alliteration. Tennyson says:
“The distant dearness of the hill
The sacred sweetness of the stream.”
Here the smooth movement comes from the alliteration on d in the first line and the tripling of the initial s in the second.
“With his back to the field, and his feet to the foe.”
gets its music from the alliteration on f. In revising the MS. of my lecture on “Weismann’s Theory of Heredity” for publication, I found the following sentence, referring to Johannes Mueller.
“He failed to fill the gap his destructive criticism had created.”