The paper contains the usual Sunday morning quota of church notices, religious news and editorial moralizing— constituting a delectable olla-podrida calculated to turn the stomach of a self-respecting yaller dog. Doubtless many purveyors of garters keep in stock those peculiarly adapted to the trade of the "tenderloin"; but this is the first time that I have seen such truck advertised in any paper permitted to pass through the mails or enter the homes of respectable people. Imagine a Houston parson rising from family prayers on Sunday morning and placing in the hands of his young daughter a "great moral daily" which sets forth in display type that, for the small sum of fifty cents, she can secure a pair of silken garters that warn the great he-world that she's "a warm baby," and bid it "look quick" at her shapely legs! Think of a modest old mother in Israel watching the face of her youthful son as he learns for the first time of garters that invite him to "take off your things"! Fine Sabbath morning reading that for the so- called Christian people of Harris county! Such an "ad." would forever damn even the Nashville Banner, or show in the feculent columns of the Kansas City Star like a splotch of soot on the marble face of Raphael's Madonna. The Police Gazette and Sunday Sun are debarred from the mails, yet neither ever contained aught one-half so horrible. We keep the "Decameron" and Daudet's eroticisms under lock and key; yet they are only "suggestive," while this is frankly feculent, a brazen bid for bawdry. Should the ICONOCLAST publish such a thing it would be promptly denounced from ten thousand pulpits as a pander to pruriency; yet against the iniquity of the Daily Chippie Chaser, alias the Houston Post, not one preacher has raised his voice in protest! Why? Because the dirty rag does not attack their religious dogma—does not strike at their bread and butter! The shortest route to the heart of the average parson is through his pocket—hit him there and you raise a howl that startles high Heaven. Print his church notices, report his foolish little sermons, kneel with him in prayer, slander agnostics and atheists, serve the ICONOCLAST as the foul yahoos did Gulliver, flip a plugged nickel into the contribution box, and you may safely flaunt the patois of the nymph du pave in the fair face of every honest girl between Cape Cod and the Golden Gate. And as it is with the average preacher so it is with the bulk of his parishioners. The Post introduces the language of the prostitute into the parlors of its patrons. It boasts a boys' and: girls' club—"The Happyhammers"—of more than six-hundred members, and to these children it carries the first knowledge of sexual perversity, gives them their initial lesson in social sin. Were this the paper's first offense we might attribute it to the carelessness or stupidity of a clerk in its counting-room and the incompetence of its business; manager; but it is an old, a shameless, a persistent sinner against all life's decencies and proprieties. Its "personal column" was for years the most revolting thing known to yaller journalism. Its counting-room was an assignation post-office. The paper was the recognized organ of "Happy Hollow," the Hell's Half Acre of Houston. It was a pander to all the worst passions that run riot in the "tenderloin," a procurer of young girls to glut the lust of godless libertines. Its sign was the ligniyoni, its ideal the almighty dollar. Through its feculent columns Muckle- mouthed Meg and Doll Tearsheet made assignations with forks-of-the-creeks fools, while blear-eyed bummers and rotten-livered rounders requested respectable women to meet them at unfrequented places and wear camp-meeting lingerie. The ICONOCLAST compelled its unrespected contemporary to purify its "personal column"—and this service to society has never been forgiven by the bench- legged hydrocephalous grand panjandrum of that paper. The Post next proceeded to publish a directory of Houston's red-light district, giving names and addresses of the "madames," the number of their "boarders" and the condition of the merchandise thrown upon the market. All that was necessary to make the Post's Bawdy-house Guide complete was the addition of rate- cards. On that little bit of journalistic "enterprise" the ICONOCLAST put a kibosh also, much to the satisfaction of every decent family in Harris county. Now the fecular sheet has found a new road to infamy—is advertising garters fit only to adorn the crummy underpinning of negro prostitutes. It does seem that the Post will do anything for a dollar— except be decent. Owing to the mental perversity of its management, respectability is for it impossible. It is a social leper, a journalistic pariah. It is devoid of political principle as a thieving tomcat of conscience. It has no more stability than a bad smell in a simoon. It has deified and damned every statesman by turn. It has been on every possible side of every public question, and wept bitter tears of regret because further change of policy were impossible. It is a perfect maelstrom of misinformation, the avatar of impudence, the incarnation of infamy—a social cesspool whose malodor spreads contagion like the rank breath of the gila-monster or the shade of a upas tree. Yet its editor, I am told, aspires to the lieutenant-governorship of Texas. Verily, he's "got his gall." He will indeed be "a warm baby" if elevated to that inconsiderable office and permitted to monkey with the scepter while the governor is doing the elegant elsewhere. Texas may certainly consider herself fortunate if he does not pawn the fasces of power and blow in the proceeds of the erstwhile John Bell's variety joint. Should he do so, he will probably be permitted to "take off his things." The Post "ad." is worse than that of holy John Wanamaker, who once announced in the Philadelphia papers that "Parisian thoughts are sewn in our underwear." With such lingerie I should imagine that "call again" garters would be the proper caper. Such a combination would suggest the patent medicine certificate of the happy husband who joyfully testified that "My wife was so nervous that I could not sleep with her, but after taking two bottles of your remarkable, etc., she has so far recovered that anybody can sleep with her." Just what effect the "Parisian thought" underwear of holy John Wanamaker had upon the preeminently respectable people of Philadelphia I shall not assume to say, but I should consider such goods contraband of war when found on a Sunday-school bargain counter. Imagine the result of introducing "Parisian thoughts" into the unbleached muslin lingerie of a lot of single-standard-of-morals old maids! There's really no telling for what Harrison's professional Sunday school superintendent is responsible. He's a rank conspirator against the Seventh Commandment. The Post should be abated as an incorrigible nuisance—it is a standing menace to the morality of the community. It has never been a legitimate journal. Its chief sources of revenue have been fake voting contests and unclean "ads." that range in sphacelation from abortion pills to garters for prostitutes. What this country seems to need is a press censorship. The second-rate newspapers are mistaking liberty for license. The dogma that public opinion can be depended upon to correct the evil is an "iridescent dream"—the public will stand almost anything so long as its religious theses and political confessions of faith are let alone. Men claiming to be quasi-decent, if not altogether respectable, will carry home day after day and suffer to be read by their young daughters such a paper as the Houston Post—with its "w. y. o. d.," and "take off your things" advertisements, its puffs of abortion pills and syphilitic panaceas—who would have a conniption fit and fall in it should a copy of Bob Ingersoll's eloquent lecture on Abraham Lincoln creep into their library. The stench of such a paper creeps abroad like the malodor of a cloaca, beslimes the senses like the noxious exhalations of an open sewer. How in God's name men can be found so debased as to work on such a sheet is beyond my comprehension. I once undertook to hold down its editorial page; but soon "got sore at myself," cursed everything connected therewith, from the pink-haired president of the company to the peewee business manager, got out, purified myself and have been sick at the stomach ever since. Should a man lay a copy of the foul sheet on my parlor table, I'd blow his head off with a shotgun. All that I now see of the paper is the clippings sent me by disgusted Houstonians, and I take those out behind the barn to read— then bury them lest they poison the hogs. I regard my temporary connection with the sheet much as Jean Valjean must his tramp through the Parisian sewers. It is a ten- legged nightmare, an infamy that I can never outlive. I strove manfully to make the foul thing respectable, but the Augean stables proved too much for my pitchfork. I managed to occasionally inject into the sphacelated sheet a quasi-intelligent idea, to disguise its feculence with a breath of sentiment that by contrast seemed an air from Araby the blest; but the stupid ignorance and dollar-worshiping of the management soon dragged it back into the noisome depths of hopeless nescience and subter-brutish degradation. Poor old Houston! A morning newspaper should be a city's crown of glory, an intellectual Aurora ushering in the new- born day; but in Houston's case her chief newspaper is a sorrow's crown of sorrow, her inexpungeable badge of shame.
LIFE AND DEATH.
In a city beyond far seas there dwelt a Youth who claimed not land nor gold, yet wealthier was than sceptered sovereign, richer far than fancy ever feigned. The great round earth, the sun, the moon and all the stars that flame like fireflies in the silken web of night were his, because garnered in the salvatory of his soul. And the beaded dew upon the morning-glories, the crimson tints of dawn, Iris' bended bow and all the cloth-of-gold and robes of purple that mark the royal pathway of the descending sun; the perfume of all the flowers, the bulbul's sensuous song, and every flowing line that marks woman's perfect form he hoarded in his heart and gloated over as a miser does his gain. And the Youth was in love with Life and held her to his heart as God's most gracious gift. Ah, beautiful was she, with her trustful eyes of blue, and hair of tangled sunbeams blown about a brow of alabaster, arms of ivory and bust whose rounded loveliness were a pulsing pillow where ever dreamed Desire—beautiful beyond compare, and sweet as odors blown across the brine from the island- valley of Avalon, mad'ning as Lydian music, in which swoons the soul of youth while all the passion in the blood beats time in delirious ecstasy. And Youth and Life built fair castles in the air, with turrets of sapphire and gates of beaten gold, wherein they dreamed the days away on a bed of thornless roses, drained the chalice of the honeysuckle, ate the lotus-bud and thought of naught in all the world but love. Of this soft dalliance was born a son, and Life cried with falling tears, "Now I am shamed!" "Nay," said the Youth, "for I will hide our child within my heart and none shall know." And Life laughed and kissed the boy, and called him Ambition, and hid him in the secret recesses of her lover's heart, and gayly went and came as though her fair breasts had never burgeoned with a wealth of liquid pearl. But the child was restless within its prison house and beat against the walls, and grew day by day, and fought with teeth and nails, until the Youth cried out in agony. And Life said mockingly: "Hast not room enough within thy heart for one poor child to range— that heart which holds the earth, the sun and stars? Cast forth the foolish rubbish—the rainbow and the flowers, the incense and the summer sea. Make room, make room for thine and mine—though naught else doth remain." He cast them forth with fond regret, and Ambition grew and filled his heart and strove with all his strength. The Youth looked no more upon the fair field flowers, but thought only of the victor's wreath; he heard no melody but fame's shrill trumpet rising ever louder on the blast, and saw no beauty but in Minerva's laureled brow; the cool sylvan path became a blinding mountain trail, his hours of dalliance days of toil and nights of agony. The hidden son had become master of the sire, and all the host of Heaven melted into a single star which poured its baleful fire into his face the treacherous star of Hope. And so he strove with augmenting strength, his goal the highest, his guerdon the immortelles. But oft he fell, and cursed his folly for having left the flowery vale to beat against the barren mountain rocks; but Life upbraided him, and with her soft breath fanned the paling star to brighter flame—the star behind which lay the throne. And Death followed them, shadowy, indistinct, like a spirit wrapt in mist. And Life mocked at Death, crying: "Behold the envious strumpet doth follow, to despoil me of mine own! Faugh! How uncanny and how cold! What lover would hang upon those ashen lips? Her bosom is marble, and in her stony heart there flames no fire. With her Ambition perishes and the Star of Hope forever fades. Her house is a ghastly tomb, her bed the granite rock, her lover childless, for her womb is barren." And the Youth, glancing with a shudder at the figure in the mist, drew close to Life and echoed her words with trembling lip, "How uncanny and how cold!" Thus fared he on through many a toilsome year, to where no shadow falls to East or West—to manhood's glorious noon. He looked at the towering heights before him with undaunted eye, measuring his strength against the walls of stone. He glanced back, and a chill swept over him, for he was standing far up on the mountainside, he was in a barren desert whose level waste stretched back to the pathetic tomb where Love was left to starve and sweet Content lay festering in her shroud. "Fool," cried Life, "why looked ye back like wife of ancient Lot? Now are ye indeed undone!" The voice was harsh and shrill, and starting as from an uneasy dream, he looked on Life with wide-open eyes and soul that understood. He found her far less fair than in the heydey of his youth, when he reveled in her voluptuous charms and loved her well. Her face was hard and stern as that of some hag from Hell; the sunlight had faded from her hair, the cestus of red roses become a poisonous serpent, her fragrant breath a consuming flame, her robe of glory, a sackcloth suit, begrimed with ashes, torn by thorns and stained with blood. "Thou hast changed, O Life!" he cried in horror. "Not so," she said; "the change is thine. In youth you saw me not, but only dreamed you saw. She you loved was a creature of your vain imaginings; I am Life, mother of that scurvy brat, Ambition." She pointed upward, saying: "Behold, thy star is gone, and the shining goal hangs pathless in the heavens. When the sun hath reached the zenith it must descend. Henceforth your path leads downward, for every hour will sap your lusty strength, and every step be weaker than the last, until you sink into senility. Come, my love, you do not know me yet; behold me as I am!" She cast aside her soiled and ragged robe and stood revealed in all her hideousness—a thing of horror. Her breasts distilled a poisonous dew, around her gaunt limbs aspics crawled, her eyes were fierce and hollow, and in one bony hand she held a scroll on which was writ the record of her frauds and follies, her sin and shame. "Come," she cried mockingly, "let us on together. You may caress me as in the days of old, and I will answer with a curse. Hold me to your heart and I will wither it with my breath of flame. Praise me, and I will requite you with dishonor and crown you with the grewsome chaplets of grief. Fool! Thou hast striven for a prismatic bubble bursting on the crest of a receding wave. Why scorned you gold and lands to grasp at castles in the air? Why dreamed of the Dimiurgus when desiring harlots beckoned thee? Why dealt with open hand and unsuspecting heart when thrown 'mid a world of thieves? Hadst thou been content and not aspired to rise above the grossness, the falsehood and the folly which is Life, I would have loved thee well and deceived thee with a painted beauty to the end—my foul breasts would have been to thee ever a fragrant bed of flowers. You have invaded Life's mysteries, the penalty whereof is pain. You have looked upon the past; behold the future!" He looked, and saw a tortuous path winding downward through bogs and poisonous fens and bitter pools. In the far distance an old man, tottering beneath his weight of years, stood leaning on a staff, reading a riddle propounded by a sullen sphinx, and striving with failing intellect to understand—"Cui Bono?" Near by was an open grave, beside which an angel of mercy stood and beckoned him. "Thou hast tarried long, my lover," she said in a low sweet voice that was the distant note of aeolian harp, or summer zephyr soughing through the pines. With a cry of gladness he cast himself into her cool arms; she touched his tired eyes with her soft white hands, she pressed a kiss upon his lips that drained his breath in an expiring gasp of pleasure all passionless, and, cradled upon her bosom like a weary child, he fell asleep. The burden and its bearer, hallowed by a pale glory as of St. Elmo's fire sank into the open grave, yet the sphinx sat stolidly holding the painted riddle in his stony hand—"Cui Bono?" But there was none to answer; the path faded like the phosphorescent track of a ship in midnight waters, and all was dark. He turned fiercely to Life, a question on his lip, but ere he could utter it she had answered, with a bitter shrug: "The angel with the pitying eyes; the beauteous one?" My rival, Death—so uncanny and so cold! All who love me leave me for this sorceress, and she holds them 'neath the magic of her spell forevermore. But what care I? I do take the grain and give to her the husk; I drink the wine and leave the lees. Mine the bursting bud, hers the withered flower. Go to her and thou wilt. I have slain Ambition and blotted thy foolish ignis fatuus from the firmament. For thee the very sun henceforth is cold, the moon a monstrous wheel of blood, the stars but aged eyes winking back their tears as they look upon thy broken altars and ruined fanes, the grass grown green above the ashes of thy dead. Go; I want thee not, for thou hast seen me as I am. I am for the red wine and wild revel, where 'in Folly's cup still laughs the bubble Joy'—for the idle day-dream and the sensuous dance, the fond kiss of foolish Love and the velvet couch of Lust." Then Death came and stood near him, beautiful with a beauty all spirituelle, a world of pity in her eyes. But he shrank from her with a shudder, seeing which she said: "Am I indeed so cold—I, who warm the universe? Is the bosom of Mercy to be feared and the breath of peace despised? What is Life that she should mock me?—this hideous harlot whose kisses poison and whose words betray? Is she not the mother of all ills? Behold her demoniac brood: Hate and Horror, Discord and Disease, Pride and Pain! she is the creature of Time, the slave of Space. She is the bastard spawn of Heat and Moisture— was engendered 'mid the unclean ooze of miasmic swamps, in the womb of noisome fens. And I? I am empress of all that is, or was, or can ever be. Come dwell with me, and all the earth shall be thy home, thy period eternity. Would'st live again? Then will I make of thy clustering locks grasses to wave in the cool meadows green, of thine eyes fair daisies that nod in the dewy dawn, of thy heart a great blush rose worn between the breasts of beauty, of thy body an oak to defy the elements, of thy blood a wave breaking in slumbrous thunder upon a beach of gold, of thy breath the jasmine's perfume, of thy restless spirit the levin brand that crashes in thunder peal above the storm. Why press the cruel thorn into thy heart, the iron into thy soul? Thus do I clasp thee to a bosom ever true, and shield thee from the slings and arrows of the world. Thy hot heart beats faint and ever fainter 'gainst its pulseless pillow, until it ceases with a sigh, and thou art mine and eternal peace is thine."
* * * THE GARDEN OF THE GODS.
Much has been written of Texas by immigration boomers, "able editors" and others, with an eye single to the almighty dollar. Its healthfulness, delightful climate, undeveloped resources, churches, schools, etc., have been expatiated upon times without number, but little has been said of its transcendent beauty. The average "able editor" is not a very aesthetic animal. He has an eye for the beautiful, 'tis true; but his tastes are of the earth earthy.
A half-page display ad. with wood-cut portrait of a chamber- set occupying the foreground and the clare-obscure worked up with various sizes and styles of black type, possesses far more charm for him than does the deep blue of our Southern sky, whose mighty concave seems to reach to Infinity's uttermost verge; a two-story brick livery stable or laundry is to him far more interesting than the splendors of the Day-god rising from the ocean's blue; an eighty-cent dollar with its lying legend more beautiful in his eyes than even Austin's violet crown bathed in the radiance of the morning or arched with twilight's dome of fretted gold. The "able editor" cares naught for purple hills, unless they contain mineral; for broad champaigns unless the soil be good; for flashing brooks unless they can be made to turn a millwheel or water a cow.
The "able editor" takes it for granted that everybody is as grossly materialistic as himself,—care not whether the sky above their heads is blue or black so long as the soil beneath their feet is fertile; whether the landscape be pleasant or forbidding so long as it will yield them creature comforts. Perhaps he is very nearly right. The fact that millions will make their homes beneath leaden skies, amid scenes of desolation, while there is room and to spare in our sunny Southland, is not without its significance,— indicates plainly that man has not yet progressed far into that spiritual kingdom where the soul must be fed as well as the stomach; where sunlight is more necessary than sauer-kraut, where beauty furnishes forth more delights than beer.
Still there must be a few people in this gain-grabbing world not altogether indifferent to the beauties of nature; to whom the gold of the evening sky is more precious than that wrung with infinite toil from the bowels of the earth; to whom the purple of the hills is more pleasing than the crustacean dyes of ancient Tyre; the flashing of clear waters more delightful than the gleam of diamonds; the autumn's rainbow tints more inspiring than the dull red heart of the ruby. To have such a home in Texas were like a sojourn in that pleasant paradise where our primal parents first tasted terrestrial delights. No Alps or Apennines burst from Texas' broad bosom and rear their cold, dead peaks mile above mile into heaven's mighty vault; no Vesuvius belches his lurid, angry flame at the stars like a colossal cannon worked by Titans at war with the Heavenly Hierarchy; no Niagara churns its green waters into rainbow- tinted foam. The grandeur of Texas is not that of destruction and desolation; its beauties are not those which thrill the heart with awe, but fill it with adoration and sweet content. Not dark and dreary mountains riven by the bolts of angry Jove; not gloomy Walpurgis gorges where devils dance and witches shriek; not the savage thunder of the avalanche, but the sun-kissed valley of Cashmere, the purple hills of the lotus eaters' land, the pastoral beauties of Tempe's delightful vale. Here is repeated a thousand times that suburban home which Horace sang; here the coast where Odysseus, "the much-enduring man," cast anchor and declared he would no longer roam; here the Elysian fields "far beyond the sunset"; here the valley of Avilion lies
"Deep-meadowed, happy, fair with orchard-lawns
And bowery hollows crowned with summer sea,"
where Queens nurse the wounded hero back to life; here the lost Atlantis, new-found; the land where it is always summer; where airs softer than those of Araby the Blest are ever blowing; skies bluer than ever arched famed Tuscany bid earthworms look heavenward; sunsets whose gleaming gold might ransom a universe!