"These children know not the taste of physic. All their ailments are treated in strict accordance with Mental Science. They eat no eggs, fish, or other animal matter, save the county-prescribed milk, living solely on grains, vegetables, and fruits; and it must be said that they all look extremely healthy. Mr. —— informs us that he rises daily at three A.M., goes directly to his corral and milks, comes in a little after four and prepares the children's breakfast. They are called at four forty-five, and breakfast at five. At five thirty devotional exercises begin, and last until six thirty, when the father of Shalam goes out and starts the hands on the farm. At eight the children begin lessons or some kind of mental training, which lasts till dinner time.
"After dinner they run wild for the rest of the day.
"We left Shalam at about five P.M. On the homeward drive we discussed this odd colony, and compared notes on what we had observed. An irreverent member of the party thus summed up the whole business in his own slangy fashion,—'a man who all winter long prances round in pajamas, making folks shiver to look at him, ought to be put in an insane asylum.' So there you have his side of the question.
"The original founder of Shalam, Dr. ——, not only aspired to be a painter, but, as an author, flew the highest kind of a kite, giving to the world no less than a new bible.
"A glimpse at its high-sounding prospectus will scarce incite in the sane and sober mind a desire to peruse a revelation whose absurdity and fantastic assumption leaves the Mormon bible far behind, and before whose 'hand and glove' acquaintance with the 'undiscovered country' Swedenborg himself must needs hide his diminished head.
"Thus it runs: 'Oahspe; a new Bible in the words of Jehovih and his Angel Embassadors. A synopsis of the Cosmogony of the Universe; the creation of planets; the creation of man; the unseen worlds; the labor and glory of gods and goddesses in the etherean heavens with the new commandments of Jehovih to man of the present day. With revelations from the second resurrection, found in words in the thirty-third year of the Kosmon Era.'
"Oahspe's claims are thus moderate: 'As in all other bibles it is revealed that this world was created, so in this bible it is revealed how the Creator created it. As other bibles have proclaimed heavens for the spirits of the dead, behold this bible revealeth where these heavens are.'
"Oahspe also kindly informs us 'how hells are made, and of what material,' and how the sinner is in them mainly punished by the forced inhalement of 'foul smells,'—so diabolically foul are these that one is fain to hold the nose in the bare reading of them!
"'There is,' declares Oahspe, 'no such law as Evolution. There is no law of Selection.' A vegetarian diet is inculcated; and we are gravely informed that 'the spirit man takes his place in the first heaven according to his diet while on earth!'
"A plan for the founding of 'Jehovih's Kingdom on earth through little children' is given. This 'sacred history' claims to cover in its entirety no less a period of time than eighty-one thousand years. At quarter-past six," concludes our informant, "we arrived, tired and hungry, but glad to have gone, and glad to get back, leaving behind us Shalam, with its spirit picture-gallery and its fantastic Oahspe, for the more stable verities of commonplace existence."