I do not belong to the Republican party, but I have been going with it, and when it goes wrong I shall quit, unless the other is worse. There is no office, no place, that I want, and as it does not cost anything to be right, I think it better to be that way.
Question. What is your idea of Christian Science?
Answer. I think it is superstition, pure and unadulterated. I think that soda will cure a sour stomach better than thinking. In my judgment, quinine is a better tonic than meditation. Of course cheerfulness is good and depression bad, but if you can absolutely control the body and all its functions by thought, what is the use of buying coal? Let the mercury go down and keep yourself hot by thinking. What is the use of wasting money for food? Fill your stomach with think. According to these Christian Science people all that really exists is an illusion, and the only realities are the things that do not exist. They are like the old fellow in India who said that all things were illusions. One day he was speaking to a crowd on his favorite hobby. Just as he said "all is illusion" a fellow on an elephant rode toward him. The elephant raised his trunk as though to strike, thereupon the speaker ran away. Then the crowd laughed. In a few moments the speaker returned. The people shouted: "If all is illusion, what made you run away?" The speaker replied: "My poor friends, I said all is illusion. I say so still. There was no elephant. I did not run away. You did not laugh, and I am not explaining now. All is illusion."
That man must have been a Christian Scientist.
—The Inter-Ocean, Chicago, November, 1897.
VIVISECTION.
Question. Why are you so utterly opposed to vivisection?
Answer. Because, as it is generally practiced, it is an unspeakable cruelty. Because it hardens the hearts and demoralizes those who inflict useless and terrible pains on the bound and helpless. If these vivisectionists would give chloroform or ether to the animals they dissect; if they would render them insensible to pain, and if, by cutting up these animals, they could learn anything worth knowing, no one would seriously object.