Life — January 29, 1914 — page 19: what you’re looking at

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

; AN j Ws THE CURSE takes only moderate audacity to talk wild words before election, but to misuse scandalously the powers of con- siderable office takes a lot of nerve. A man who can do that is more than a blatherskite. He is a rascal, A mere blatherskite will usually incline to pander to the people whose good opinion is valuable. That is what Sulzer did. He wanted to be well re- garded. He even wanted, apparently, to be good. Those aspirations could not» be successfully adjusted to his record as a blatherskite, and up he went. So it may be with Curley, who seems to be a typical, clever blatherskite. If he tries to be good he will be em- barrassed by his intimate obligations to characterless people, corporations and others, and if he undertakes to be eminently. bad, he may find himself back in the Charlestown jail. So he will have to be careful. But the fact that he could be elected Mayor means something, and may be beneficially in- structive to Boston. The Montessori method is fine in politics. Give the children their heads, and let things happen, in moderation. No objection to the teachers learning, too, e) IX our blessed country it is quite apt to happen that just as you think the blatherskites are going to get everything in sight, the St. Bartholo- mew’s bell tolls, and they all get mas- sacred at a swoop. Not physically massacred, of course, but politically. They are all conducted to the back seat and set down hard on it. That happens when they have ful- filled their office, loosened up the soil of political thought, wakened the coma- tose and induced the thrifty to come out of their shops to discover what's afire. That is why the blatherskite millennium never quite arrives. Just as it is kindling, like those bonfires the naughty children start on the asphalt pavements, the thrifty rush out with bad words and put it out. 187 There must be a great massacre of blatherskites now impending; they are so very numerous and so very noisy. Listen! Hear Lincoln Steffens say to the suffragists in New York: “If women really want the suffrage let them destroy buildings: let them de- stroy anything they want to destroy hear Moon, of Tennessee, describe in Congress the Diplomatic Corps as “that gang of political reprobates and society degenerates that we ought to wipe out of existence”, Tut, tut; Lincoln, don’t mislead the ladies. Tut, tut; Congressman Moon, go out and eclipse yourself, There is an extinguisher for con- gressional blatherskites provided by the Constitution and stored at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue from the Capitol. Possibly we shall see it used anon. But so far Congress has been very good. But, oh! the great roar of blather- skites throughout the land! crying for everything from minimum millionaires to eugenic marriage and sex rights! Is it rising, or is it falling? Falling, as we see it. It is still noisy, but far more amusing than dangerous. There is more danger that it will sink away before its work is finished than that it will breed any serious mischief to the people. ° CONSOLING thoughts continue to come to notice every week. The movies are reported to detach the mind of man from alcohol, and di- minish the gains, of the saloons. The tango is credited with diminishing spirituous indulgence on New Year's night. To a certain proportion of “minds alcohol is the only practicable road to joy. Open other roads ard the alcoholic path gets less custom. Grape juice as an alleviation of in- temperance is prejudiced by the cur- rent assertion that five per cent. of alcohol has been found in it. But this may be a wile of the grape juice ad- vertising department, invented to in- crease business, comicbooks.com