These stories were of the staff of life to their hearers. How many of the novels you read bring nothing but the means of wasting an hour? Grown people to-day must find their stories in books: there do not frequently come in our way travellers who have been overcome with the mystery of far-off places; we have no longer medicine men who sing of the glories of our ancestors; we perforce must turn for our minnesinger to the printed page.
Let that page be worth while! Insist upon reading a story that means something; either that gives you a more sympathetic understanding of your fellow men, or an inspiration and refreshment by allowing a glimpse through that "magic casement" which opens to the world of Kings and Princes, Castles and Feudal Keeps, or to the mountain where dwelt the Giant or to the seas upon which sailed the Pirates of your boyhood.
When novels reveal unknown vistas of beauty and delight, or present ideas that jog our thoughtless complacency, they are of the stuff that intensifies and glorifies existence. They keep a man's mind from being commonplace and mongrel. Let us all be Kentucky thoroughbreds in the way we look upon the world. Chafe at your bit, stamp the ground and be eager to get away at the front when the barrier goes up. Anyone can be an "also ran." A good story is often tonic enough to turn an "also ran" into a winner!
CHAPTER IV
HISTORY AND YOUR VOTE
We are much beholden to Machiavel and others, that write what men do, and not what they ought to do.—BACON
One of the greatest evils into which a democracy may inadvertently slide is an indifference upon the part of the populace to the political issues of the day. We have upon several occasions in our history passed through periods of almost unlimited commercial prosperity during which everyone has been too much absorbed in the pursuit of power and riches to give a thought to the affairs of government, with the result that our state and national affairs have lapsed into disgraceful conditions of inefficiency and moral laxity. Such periods have paved the way to corrupt boss rule and throttling machine politics.
Ignorance, which always comes with indifference, and yet is most pernicious when most active, is another extreme and vital danger. It must be evident to every thinking man or woman, that a nation whose political destinies are in the hands of the people with their almost universal franchise should be made up of voters who are alive and thinking. "Read and reflect on history; it is the only true philosophy," wrote Napoleon Bonaparte in his instructions pertaining to the education of his only son, the King of Rome. The great Emperor must have realized that his phenomenal success in ruling men and establishing law had as an important part of its foundation his knowledge of the affairs of men in the past. Without suggesting that we should all be Napoleons, it seems true that our political fabric would be infinitely more stable, if the rank and file of American citizens should feel it a duty "to read and reflect on history."
With our ever-increasing number of ignorant Southern European immigrants, who have come from countries where republican forms of government are practically unknown, it seems that our inherited tradition of a republican democracy will be undermined through ignorance, unless, indeed, these new citizens be given an understanding of our history and the meaning of our systems.
To-day many specious types of radicalism, that are for the most part pleasant Utopian dreams of the future, standing upon no foundation and drawing no nutriment from the past, are thundered about most seriously. In life and in statecraft there is one great teacher,—Experience. A man weighs the advisability of a certain step by his past experience, and this must be the basis of thought when determining matters of political science. A reader of American History may find food for thought in comparing the manner in which the half-baked political theorists of to-day come to their conclusions with that of the great American statesmen of the past. To-day we are opportunists. Instead of weighing experience and testing the future, we jump helter-skelter at what seems of temporary value. In dreaming of the future you must remember the past or your dreams are futile. Emerson somewhere tells us, that when you are drawn into an argument upon moral values, you should always ask your opponent whether he has carefully digested his Plato. If he has not, you may placidly refuse to continue the altercation, as he to whom Plato is unknown is unfit to talk with a thinking man upon problems of higher morality. I believe that in like manner we could close the mouths of many trumpeters of social uplift through sumptuary legislation. Ask them if they have carefully read their histories. If they have not, and probably the accent will be on the "not," you may safely snub them, by insisting that they turn to the past, before they have the right to ask people to listen to their talk of the present and the future.