"Feeding on thy sweet cheek, while thy lips are
With lava-kisses melting while they burn,
Shower'd on his eyelids, brow and mouth as from an urn."
That may be eminently satisfactory to Mars, but scarce proper for Venus. It is exciting, but not scientific. It suggests charity children gorging themselves with plum- pudding, rather than poetic natures drunken with beauty; and fragrance, swooning 'neath the sweetness of a duet sung by their own chaste souls. The dyspeptic who cannot recover by following my prescription deserves to die. The pessimist whom it doesn't make look at life through rose- tinted glasses, should be excluded from human society. The hypochondriac whom it doesn't help ought to be hanged. There is not a human ill—unless it be hypocrisy— for which nature does not provide a remedy, and I recommend the health germ which builds its nest on lovely woman's lips as worth more than the whole materia medica. I don't know whether it will raise the dead, but I've always doubted the story that Egypt kissed the cold lips of her Roman Antony—have suspected it would have brought me back to life and love had I been dead a month. The unscientific catch-as-catch-can kiss has no more beneficial effect than slapping yourself in the face with a raw beef- steak. It is but a slight improvement on the civilization of Ashantee, where a man proposes marriage by knocking his Dulcina down with a club and dragging her through the backwoods' pasture by the hair of her head; but kisses properly taken—beneath the stars and among the roses—are the perennial fount of youth for which Ponce de Leon sailed far seas in a vain search for the blessed Bimini.
* * * THE NEW SOUTH.
One of the cardinal faults of the American character is a propensity to brag. Brother Jonathan's egotism long since passed into a proverb. In no section of this land of the alleged free and home of the ism does the blowhard blow longer and louder than in the South. We are the people, the nonpareil; there are none like us beneath the sun! From the empyrean we look down upon common humanity, talk turgid and swell up with the vain glory of a young turkey-cock with his first tail feathers! It were well for us to cease our foolish boasting and con well the stern lessons taught at the cannon's mouth. The first and greatest of these is that only by honest labor, by earnest endeavor, can a people become truly great. The war swept away the curse that was our weakness, negro slavery. It broke in upon our old exclusiveness, shattered the foolish caste that held us in iron thrall, made labor respectable and progress possible. It brought energetic Northern people among us to teach us that the way to greatness lies through the workshop,—to incite us to shake of our indolence and enter the race for preferment. Grant's red- throated batteries did more than break the shackles from the wrists of the blacks; they tore the cursed fetters of caste and custom from the minds of the whites,—a nobler emancipation. They set the heart of southern chivalry to beating with a truer, a stronger life. In the mad tempest of battle the New South was born; the crash of arms was the groans of maternity, the deluge of blood her baptismal rite. From the ashes of desolate homes and ruined cities she sprang phoenix-like, and is now mounting the empyrean with strong and steady wing. The emancipation proclamation was a bow of promise that never again while the world stands and the heavens endure will North and South meet in battle shock; that the greatness of the one shall become the proud heritage of the other; that the grandest section of the American Union shall yet, with God's blessing, produce the greatest people that ever adorned the earth.
The war is long past. We fought and lost. Our triumphant foe extended to us a brother's hand, accorded us the honor due a brave and spirited people. That we should suffer reconstruction pains was to have been expected. That they were unnecessarily severe was due chiefly to the greed of a clique of politicians; partly also to the fact that the North misunderstood us and our black wards, even as we persist in misunderstanding the "Yankee." But no gibbet rose in that storm-swept waste; our very leaders now occupy positions of honor and trust under the flag they defied. Let us not requite the generosity of our erstwhile foes by an attempt to tarnish their well-earned laurels. Rather let us praise and emulate them—strive with them in a nobler field than that of war. When the North and South blend in one homogeneous people, as blend they must, when the blood of the stern Puritan mingles with that of the dashing Cavalier, then indeed will be a nation and a people at which the world will stand agaze; for Northern vigor wedded to Southern blood will
"Strike within the pulses like a god's,
To push us forward through a life of shocks,
Dangers and deeds, until endurance grows
Sinew'd with action, and the full grown will,
Circled through all experience, pure law,
Commeasure perfect freedom."
* * * DOGMATISM THE MOTHER OF DOUBT.
A WORSHIP FOR THE WORLD.
"Church Unification" has long been the dream of many earnest souls, who regret to see the various denominations wasting energy warring upon each other that should be brought to bear on the legions of Lucifer; but even the most sanguine must admit there is little prospect of their dreams becoming more tangible—at least for some ages yet. The bloody chasm which Luther and his co-laborers opened will not be bridged during the lifetime of the present generation, and human wisdom is not competent to formulate a "creed," to devise a "doctrine," upon which the Protestant world will consent to unite. The present tendency is not toward church unification, but greater and more sharply defined division. Instead of dogmatic controversy dying away it is becoming more general; "heterodoxy" is being hunted with a keener zest than for years, and doctrinal disputation has become well-nigh as virulent as the polemics of partisan politics.
In the meantime a majority of mankind in highly civilized countries remain away from church—take no thought of the future or seek truth in science rather than revelation. Dogmatism is the fruitful mother of Doubt. By assuming to know too much of God's great plan; by demanding too abject obedience to his fiats; by attempting to stifle honest inquiry and seal the lips of living scholars with the dicta of dead scholastics, by standing ever ready to brand as blasphemers all who presume to question or dare to differ, the church has driven millions of Godfearing men into passive indifference or overt opposition, and the number is rapidly increasing. The church does not realize how stupendous this army really is. Not every man who regards the church as but a pretender proclaims that fact on the housetops. It is not "good policy," and policy is the distinguishing characteristic of this day and age. Church people are very sensitive to criticism of their creed (perhaps the mother of a malformed or vicious child could tell why), and most men have loved ones or patrons who are trying to find a little comfort among the husks of an iron-bound orthodoxy. If any devout dogmatizer really desires to learn how general is this attitude of nonreceptivity of the orthodox religion, let him assume the role of a scoffer; then he will hear the truth from men's lips; for while the doubter may yield passive assent to the prevalent orthodoxy, the earnest believer is not apt to enact the role of Peter without compulsion. Instead of conquering the world, the church is rapidly losing what it has hitherto gained. True, it still retains a semblance of vigor and prosperity; but, like many a great political structure, its brilliancy is born of decay. It is no longer the dominating factor in social life, the heart and soul of civilization, but an annex—increasing in magnificence as wealth increases and mankind can afford to expend more for ostentation and fashionable diversion.