Life — January 31, 1907 — page 8: what you’re looking at

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

‘LIF E* —— Tus is a practical age, which wastes nothing, utilizes everything and capi- talizes even its whims and weaknesses. Mary Baker Eddy is of the age aged is that heterodox paradox, a practical visionary, who has organized neurosis, syndicated hysteria, capitalized imagina- tion and made mind triumph over matter, medicine and money. Too modestly she calls herself Mother . She is Father Tiber in fluid volume, the Bey of Algiers in authority, the sea in acquisitiveness, the Sargasso Sea to which drift all the daffied derelicts of storm-lashed creeds and sects. ARY is a child of stern New Hampshire, where eye-tecth are cut carly, and thrift and theology go hand in hand; and hers is the gift of visions and the Yan- kee talent of organization. She tabbed the clairvoyant and the mind-curer; she spotted the dotty by-products of dogma and dementia, and saw the rattle-headed cohorts of credulity and gullibility run- ning to seed; and she saw their possibili- ties. To sce was to act. The visions ma- terialized in a cult; she gave it a book like Moslem and Mormon to puzzle over; she equipped it with spellbinders and press agents, and waited for the gate money. HE Mother li in Concord, but not in peace. She has got into the dime magazines and is answering back. A parlous and polemical priestess excites merriment; a seeress should be serious, solemn, silent; when the Sphinx gets “sassy,” the world gets gay, the faithful flit and the cash-box becomes a hollow mockery. “The Human Zoo Mum's the metier for Mary. If Mary gets a little lam and she yells, her golden fleece is apt to go. A rolling Peary gathers no moss. One good Kipling deserves another. Newport was not Vanderbilt in a day. Mr. Shaw EORGE BERNARD SHAW is that rara avis, a bashful Irishman, whose deep-seated modesty has earned him the title of the Violet of Literature. He ad- mits blushingly he is greater than Shake- speare, almost as good as Clyde Fitch and not in the same class as Anthony Trol- lope. A consistent vegetarian, he once confided to Ibsen, “I care not who cooks the corned beef of old Englandif Iam per- mitted to eat the cabbage of the people.” Though he has never toured America with an extended hat and a canned G. B. SHAW speech, he is a genuine Irish patriot; he never disturbs Ireland; he constantly inflames England, frequently inducing apoplexy in her most representative hum- bugs. A human galvanic battery, he shocks the London Times, the Noncon- formist Conscience, and kindred Anglo- Saxon institutions by his solicitude for British Virtue and Society, Vanity and Propriety. While his contributions to belles-lettres have decreased the vogue of dirt and dulness and unsettled the ideals of Caine and Corelli, they have not in- creased that mental calm and soulful placidity which are the charm and attrac- tion of middle-class Britain. His vogue among the bizarre brethren of table d’hote Bohemia alarms the conservative and constructive forces of Anglo-Saxony. RAMATICALLY, Shaw is a terrible example; his drama is impossible. It is marred by wit, humor, irreverence, brilliancy, contempt of traditions and pet prejudices, and is sadly lacking in that banality and smug and covert indecency which appeal to our best-fed people. A man so deaf to the appeal of dreary, , dramatic conventions as to load his dia- logues with truth and epigram, who scofis at tradition, laughs at precedent, flouts custom and pelts mud at our ideals, is an outlaw, an Ishmaelite, who must expect to be denied house-room by the Israelite, charity by the Samaritan, mercy by the Philistine and tolerance by the Gentile. O tempora! O mores! Oh, pshaw! A Depew by any other name would cost as much, Prudence is the better part of Dryden. Mark Twain wr is the champagne of life, humor the Burgundy; champagne is the joy and jag of youth, Burgundy the stay and swig of age; champagne uncorked fizzes and flattens, Burgundy improves with years. Age cannot wither, nor cus- comicbooks.com