We read the story of our yesterdays as it unfolds itself in the current chronicle; the ascent to the bank-house, the descent to the mad-house, and, over the glittering paraphernalia that follows to the tomb, we reflect upon the money-zealot's progress; the dizzy height, the dazzling array, the craze for more and more and more; then the temptation and fall, millions gone, honor gone, reason gone--the innocent and the gentle, with the guilty, dragged through the mire of the prison, and the court--and we draw back aghast. Yet, if we speak of these things we are called pessimists.
I have always counted myself an optimist. I know that I do not lie awake nights musing on the ingratitude either of my stars or my countrymen. I pity the man who does. Looking backward, I have sincere compassion for Webster and for Clay! What boots it to them, now that they lie beneath the mold, and that the drums and tramplings of nearly seventy years of the world's strifes and follies and sordid ambitions and mean repinings, and longings, and laughter, and tears, have passed over their graves, what boots it to them, now, that they failed to get all they wanted? There is indeed snug lying in the churchyard; but the flowers smell as sweet and the birds sing as merry, and the stars look down as loving upon the God-hallowed mounds of the lowly and the poor, as upon the man-bedecked monuments of the Kings of men. All of us, the least with the greatest, let us hope and believe shall attain immortal life at last. What was there for Webster, what was there for Clay to quibble about? I read with a kind of wonder, and a sickening sense of the littleness of great things, those passages in the story of their lives where it is told how they stormed and swore, when tidings reached them that they had been balked of their desires.
Yet they might have been so happy; so happy in their daily toil, with its lofty aims and fair surroundings; so happy in the sense of duty done; so happy, above all, in their own Heaven-sent genius, with its noble opportunities and splendid achievements. They should have emulated the satisfaction told of Franklin Pierce. It is related that an enemy was inveighing against him, when an alleged friend spoke up and said: "You should not talk so about the President, I assure you that he is not at all the man you describe him to be. On the contrary, he is a man of the rarest gifts and virtues. He has long been regarded as the greatest orator in New England, and the greatest lawyer in New England, and surely no one of his predecessors ever sent such state papers to Congress."
"How are you going to prove it," angrily retorted the first speaker.
"I don't need to prove it," coolly replied the second. "He admits it."
I cannot tell just how I should feel if I were President, though, on the whole, I fancy fairly comfortable, but I am quite certain that I would not exchange places with any of the men who have been President, and I have known quite a number of them.
II
I am myself accused sometimes of being a "pessimist." Assuredly I am no optimist of the Billy Sunday sort, who fancies the adoption of the prohibition amendment the coming of "de jubilo." Early in life, while yet a recognized baseball authority, Mr. Sunday discovered "pay dirt" in what Col. Mulberry Sellers called "piousness." He made it an asset and began to issue celestial notes, countersigned by himself and made redeemable in Heaven. From that day to this he has been following the lead of the renowned Simon Suggs, who, having in true camp meeting style acquired "the grace of God," turned loose as an exhorter shouting "Step up to the mourner's bench, my brethering, step up lively, and be saved! I come in on na 'er par, an' see what I draw'd! Religion's the only game whar you can't lose. Him that trusts the Lord holds fo' aces!"
The Billy Sunday game has made Billy Sunday rich. Having exhausted Hell-fire-and-brimstone, the evangel turns to the Demon Rum. Satan, with hide and horns, has had his day. Prohibition is now the trick card.
The fanatic is never either very discriminating or very particular. As a rule, for him any taking "ism" will suffice. To-day, it happens to be "whisky." To-morrow it will be tobacco. Finally, having established the spy system and made house-to-house espionage a rule of conventicle, it will become a misdemeanor for a man to kiss his wife.