Half Jackal and Half Hyena.
Lucian L. Knight, Los Angeles, Cal.
I cannot silence without gratifying the impulse which prompts me to write you at once after reading what you have to say about that superlative scoundrel, Mann. As a friend who holds you in loyal and affectionate admiration, I resent with all my heart the treatment which you have received at the hands of one who is man in name only and who in nature is half jackal and half hyena. I am aware how true it is that the most insignificant of insects may vex even the noble lion. Mann may be a millionaire, but I warrant his shillings are dirty. How miserably poor the wretch is when the only assets he has in the world are the millions which lie in the bank!
I know how little things have annoyed me at times and I know how much I have appreciated an impulsive word of sympathy, even from “the least of these.”
I am sorry I could not get the extracts you were to send me in time for Vol. I of the Reminiscences which will be ready for publication within the next few weeks; but I hope to get them in time for Vol. II. The work will require two volumes. I have met with so much encouragement that I am warranted in beginning at once upon Vol. II. Disappointed in other cherished plans and prospects, I am now putting my life’s ambition into this work which I trust to be able to make of literary and historic value to Georgia.
An Anonymous Slander Rebuked.
W. H. Eddy, Los Angeles, Cal.
Can you explain what quality there is in human nature, that prompts some specimens of the race to the doing of things which are admirably adapted to the hindrance of all that they profess to be in earnest support of? Now, for instance: in The Appeal to Reason of October 27th, is an unsigned article headed, “Populism and the Pap.” Being unsigned would indicate that it came from the pen of J. A. Wayland, or that of F. D. Warren, the present Managing Editor. Now, both of these men have been earnest workers for several years, or at least for what they conceive to be the cause of socialism. It would seem as though, when two men are associated in a work which each of them has advocated and written signed articles in favor of, lauding it as a movement opposed to dishonesty, deceit and all the baser tendencies of the depraved mind, that when he takes a notion to stultify himself, descend to the lowest practices of the gutter blackguard, he would have consideration enough for his associate to sign his name, so that decent people who may be so unfortunate as to peruse it, and such of the patrons of the paper as have both decency and brains enough to resent it, might not blame the innocent party inadvertently.
If socialism is anything, or is to be anything in human history which is to make for the betterment of humanity, then it must rest upon the fundamental principles of honesty, justice and truth. All those who would not be cursed by its adoption to-morrow, by reason of their lack of development and their consequent lack of capacity to appreciate its meaning and the obligations inherent in it, assert that brotherly love, the golden rule, and the Sermon on the Mount, are also corner-stones in the foundation of its most noble structure.