But I seem to be evading the issue—my own confession as a monumental egoist and a killer. I have said that my parents were egoists, like all their forefathers before them. Yet the world never held a better mother than mine. I do not except any who may sit in heaven at the present time. And my father, as a man, was far better than his son will ever be. He was a gentleman of the old school, living, as he died, an example of courage and fearlessness and honor to all who knew him. Yet did these two splendid people, like all other parents, foster and cultivate my egoism from the beginning. They did it unconsciously, blindly, as hundreds of millions of other parents are doing to-day.
My father loved hunting and fishing, and at eight years of age I possessed my own gun. I remember with what pride he taught me to shoot and to stalk my first living victims; and when we returned from a hunt, if I had killed anything, it was always to me that my beloved mother gave her greatest attention and commendation. We lived on an Ohio farm then, and I became a sort of boy prodigy in the art of hunting. When I was nine years old, a newspaper in a near-by city published a story of my prowess, and I do not think I was more puffed up over it than my father himself. By the time I was twelve, I had lost all respect for that life which the laws of our state said I might take. I had a fine collection of birds’ eggs, and another “splendid” collection of birds’ wings. My room was decorated with the wings.
I always recall with an odd sort of feeling that at this particular height of my boyish slaughter of life I “got religion,” and got it hard. At Joppa, a “four-corners” two miles from our farm, a series of revival meetings was going on that winter, and I cannot remember anyone in all our community who did not get the religious fever, except most of the youngsters. But it hit me hard. I felt that I was actually inspired. So deeply did the excited preachings effect my mind that frequently, when I was alone, I felt that angels were with me. One moonlight night, in returning from a revival, I actually saw an angel, and the beautiful thing with white wings and white raiment and wonderful flowing hair walked halfway home with me. When I told that story at school the next day, and insisted that it was true, I had five different fights. My mother said that it probably was true, for she was delighted that I had become religious. So I fought, and licked—and got licked—for about a month because of my faith.
But what I am coming to is this: Though practically our whole township was converted, at no time did this religion tell me to stop killing. So inspired was I that Mr. Teachout, the revivalist, had me give a short “sermon” one evening—and I recall vividly how, in “introducing” me, he said, in a loud voice and with a great flourish of his arms, that I “was the best hunter in all Erie County and could kill more game in a day than almost any grown hunter there.” Whereupon there was a mighty applause from the hundred people present, and I was the proudest youngster in Ohio.
Why?
Because from a church rostrum I was hailed as the greatest boy killer in that county! No one of all those Christians told me that I should stop killing. They made a hero of me because I was already becoming a master in the art of killing. They built up my egoism to a point where it became blasphemous—to a point where it more than offset my mother’s pleadings that I stop shooting birds for their wings. Then came a thing which, as I look back upon it now, seems to me monstrous. There was to be a big “hunters’ supper” to end the revival. The men chose sides, and on a certain day all these men set out to kill. They were to kill nothing “outside the law.” But all life not protected by law might be sacrificed. I remember that a rabbit counted five points, a squirrel four, a hawk six, a blue jay two, and so on. The side that lost out on “points,” or, in other words, destroyed the least life, was compelled to furnish the supper. How I did slaughter! When I came in to the “count” that night, my game-bag was filled to the brim with dead things. Among other creatures I had killed seventeen blue jays! Any wonder that Captain Kidd and his pals screamed over my head this morning?
And yet good Christian people still regard with horror the day when pagan Rome burned the martyrs.