Life — May 3, 1888 — page 2: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

“While there’s Life there's Hope.” VOL. XI. MAY 3, 1888. No. 279 28 West TWENTY-THIRD STREET, NEw York. Published every Thursday, $5.00 a year in advance, postage free. Single copies, 10 cents. Back numbers can be had by applying to this office. Vol. I., bound, $15.00; Vol. II., bound, $10.00 ; Vols. III., IV., V., VI., VII., VIII., IX. and X., bound or in flat numbers, at regular rates. Rejected contributions will be destroyed unless accompanied by a stamped and directed envelope. Subscribers wishing address changed will greatly facilitate matters by sending old address as well as new. ISDOM, according to the original Solomon, crieth at the gates at the entry of every city : “Oh, ye simple, understand wisdom ; and, ye fools, be ye of an understand- ing heart.” Asking pardon of Mr. Elliott F. Shepard for venturing to quote from his Bible, we would like to draw the attention of Mrs. Wisdom to three classes of fools who have recently made themselves conspicuous, such as even Solo- mon in all his glory never beheld; for surely a fool, who is a fool in an enlightened age, deserves more credit as a fool than one who lived in an age of superstition, when the least mysterious phenomena of nature were not understood and the wise men could not explain the simple natural laws that the school-boy of to-day is familiar with. * * * HESE three classes of fools are the Esoteric Buddhists, who have recently concluded a convention in Chicago ; the believers in Spiritualism, who have been warmed into new life by the Diss Debar-Marsh affair; and the “ Christian Scientists,” who have just killed another victim in Medford, Massachusetts. All three of these classes are composed exclusively of knaves and fools, for one could not exist with- out the other. The fool needs the knave to impose upon him, or else he could not be a Theosophist, a Spiritualist, or a “Christian Scientist; and, of course, the knave needs the fool to make his living out of and practise his impostures upon. It is like the positive and negative poles of a magnet, one would be inoperative without the other. To present one or two instances: there is Diss Debar the knave, positive current, and Marsh, the fool, negative; Mme. Blavatsky the knave, and Professor Elliott F. Coues the fool—positive and negative; the “Christian Science” (blasphemy of blas- phemies !) physician the knave, and her patient the fool, who suffers a terrible death as the penalty of her folly. * * * ND what can we do about it? We can make laws punishing these swindlers mercilessly, and when we have reached to a higher degree of civilization we shall make just such laws. To murder people by “Christian science” is a terrible crime, but it is the least terrible of the evils brought about by the three classes of knaves and fools we have specified. For surely to put a man to death is less hurt- ful to him and to the community than to inoculate him with mental and moral disease, as the other two cults are sure to do, and send him abroad to spread the contagion. * * * OR the comfort of those of us who grieve over the sorrows of the Hohenzollerns, the assurance is given that if the match falls through between Alexander Batten- berg and the Princess Victoria there will be no broken hearts. The young people, it seems, have only met twice, and have scarcely got beyond that preliminary stage of acquaintance wherein the weather, the waltz and the last new novel form the staples of conversation. They are simply in the hands of their match-making friends, and Prince Bismarck, with a recalcitrant digestion, is a fitter object of sympathy than either of them. * * * HAT if Mayor Hewitt’s father did display the British coat-of-arms over the door of his shop<half a century ago? Is that any reason why the Irish flag should be flaunted from the City Hall dome on the day that the natives of Erin brave pneumonia and dipsomania in honor of St. Patrick, the benevolent and pious French gentleman, who was educated in Italy and canonized in Ireland? And would the fact that there had been such a coat-of arms over the paternal shop detract from the Mayor's courage in re- fusing to be dictated to by the immigrants in the Board of Aldermen? * * * N° If Hewitt Aéve had had the lion and the unicorn painted on his sidewalk, embroidered on his coat- tails, or branded on his carriage horses, it would have no bearing upon the issue between the Mayor and the Alder- men. And, by the way, the Irish politicians are certainly doing their best to alienate the sympathy of the Americans from their cause in Ireland. * * * HE wise man we have previously quoted—with apolo- gies to Mr. Shepard—once declared that there were three things too wonderful for him—yea, four, which he knew not: the way of an eagle in the air, the way of a serpent upon a rock, the way of a ship in the midst of the sea, and the way of a man with a maid. If Solomon were au fazt of municipal affairs, he might add to his list, the way of a District-Attorney with a boodler’s trial. Colonel Fellows is an expensive experiment. comicbooks.com