If any honor attaches to the citizenship in which intelligent, loyal, and unselfish devotion to the highest interests of country are made paramount, the names of those who have united in efforts for the establishment of this Institute of Patriotism constitute a roll of honor. Its ability to fully realize its objects is dependent upon the number and the efforts of those whose names are upon this roll.
Here is an opportunity for, and an appeal to, citizens of wealth. Money cannot be more worthily or wisely bestowed than in feeding the streams in whose life-giving power is the strength of the republic. Honorable names may find their noblest memorials by the gifts and endowments which shall forever connect them with this National School of Patriotism.
AN INDUSTRIAL FABLE.
BY HAMILTON S. WICKS.
The King of a certain country, whose power was absolute and whose will was despotic, issued an edict that all the laborers of his dominion who were engaged in honorable toil should exchange places with those persons who did no work or were engaged in dishonorable or merely speculative avocations, so that the laboring man should fare sumptuously and the non-laborer poorly. Those who worked up in the sunlight on the tall buildings should sit down in the evening to bountiful banquets and should sleep in fine linen on luxurious couches; while those who crawled below in the bleak valleys between the beetling cliffs of architecture should go to frugal meals and sleep amid the rough surroundings of the abodes of the poor. The monarch reasoned that those who did the world’s work were more deserving of the good things of the world than were the idle or the vicious, however wealthy. He imagined that the world was turned upside down socially and economically, and he proposed to turn it back again by his royal fiat.
Backed by his sword, “which is the badge of temporal power wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings,” he apprehended no failure in his plans, which had been worked out in their minutest detail. His army was the largest of any nation, and was to a man devoted to its King. His genius had won many victories and extended the borders of glory. Through his impartial system of promotion men from the ranks had risen to be commanders. The soldiery were well fed, well housed, and well paid. A word, a nod, from their King would set in motion this mighty machine to crush out all opposition. Supplementing the military arm of his government the King had organized the most elaborate system of espionage, so that all secrets were open to him, and no whisperings in the street or the club but were conveyed distinctly to his royal ear by the microphone of his spy system. The press was gagged or inspired; the legislature was composed of fawning sycophants; his judiciary was merely a reflection of the royal will; and Holy Church itself displayed its purple robe and golden bowl but to ornament his processions or to hallow his feasts.
Thus matters stood on the evening of the day this great social revolution was inaugurated. It fell out that a group of honest laborers were descending the elevator that carried the brick and mortar to the twentieth story of a certain downtown sky-scraper. While all of them knew of the edict of their King, none had taken it seriously or imagined for a moment that it would be carried into effect literally. On their arrival at the ground floor, a policeman stationed there stopped them and, motioning to an elegant equipage standing across the way, informed them that it was the King’s command that they should enter it and be driven to one of the avenue clubs which had been assigned for their accommodation. Into it they were thrust, dinner-pails and all. They had scarcely time to recover their equanimity, as they were rapidly whirled through one thoroughfare after another, till the avenue in question was reached and they were deposited in front of a stately brownstone mansion. Their coming had been expected, and the great doors swung open as they alighted, whilst a uniformed lackey motioned them to enter. Their astonishment was redoubled at the splendor of the interior furnishings. Each was assigned a room, where they were bathed and groomed and dressed in garments suitable for their surroundings. Dinner was served by the time they were ready, and into the glittering salle à manger they were duly ushered. A fashionable table d’hôte was a new sensation to every man of them, and they certainly astonished the table d’hôte. It (the table d’hôte) never realized before what it was to be fully appreciated. An evening of cigars, wine, and billiards followed; and then they stretched their tough and sinewy workmen’s legs between the whitest of silken sheets, spread over the springiest of hair mattresses, on the brightest of brass bedsteads. There we leave them to such dreams as their surroundings invited, to turn our attention to four bachelor brokers on the stock exchange, whose apartments at the club our bachelor workingmen were inhabiting.