Life — February 10, 1916 — page 15: what you’re looking at

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

“PEACE AT ANY PRICE” “LIPi- An American Portrait Josephus Daniels LITTLE man, puffed up with vague conceits, And thrust, by some mad whim of Destiny, Into a place that fatness cannot fill— He sits and mouths his moral vaporings, Half-haunted by his own incompetence, And peevish for that reason ; but withal Too entertained with power to be sad. A little man, aye! But a dangerous, For that he holds our freedom in his hand— Our freedom! Would to God That we might laugh at him and drop the curtain! Clowns have their uses in this childish world, But who would trust his honor to a clown? 'Tis his plaything! Behold him, O ye Audience of Ages, Propped in his seat, his body soft and round, Life’s Short Story Contest The contest closed on October 4th, 1915. So many thousands of manuscripts have been received, each one necessitatin, are invited to exercise all due patience. a careful reading, that our friends ¢ shall continue to publish the stories accepted each week in this department until ail the manuscripts have been passed upon; and as soon thereafter as possible the prises will be awarded. The King of the Pledgers T° tite Eprtor or Lire, Sir: I send this communication to you, rather than to the editor of one of the country's daily papers, because your publication is national and even international, instead of being a more or less local one, and also because the sketch of my life it con- tains, true though it is, has an appear- ance sufficiently fictional to fit one of your short-story numbers. My special purpose in wishing to have this autobiographical sketch published is that it may warn and protect a worthy body of men, the Roman Catholic priest- hood of the United States, against a class of grafters which preys upon them and of which I was the “King” for nearly ten years. But, knowing mankind in general, and myself in particular, fairly well, I have no doubt there is another reason for the wish, to wit, that vanity of vanities ich compels all crooks, “con grafters, to brag of their exploits oc- casionally, and which—through a perverse viewing of viciousness as prowess— causes the most of men to be prouder of their falls from grace than of the good things they have done. Up to this very day ten years ago, I was wealthy and happy. The wealth I had inherited and the happiness I had married. Then my happiness died—with my wife. And, the same evening, my wealth disappeared—with a dishonest manager. There was nothing left me but our little daughter, a child of eight, and some two thousand dollars. The former I gave into the care of the Dominican Sisters at whose convent, in a small Eastern His face the blanker for its solemn stare, His fingers busy at the strings that make Puppets of patriots! He, the deadly fool, The fatal hypocrite, the blunderer, Who strips true manhood of its honest braid To cloak his own transparent naked- ness, Nor sees how valor’s trappings, worn for show, Turn to the garish tinsel of the clown! A pity ‘tis he cannot be dismissed With laughter. Life, alas! is not a pla: And nations die of jesters as of king: Look long upon him, O my. blinded Land, And read the writing on the year's clean wall— That lies The smug self-worship that in time will breed The doom and downfall of Democracy! Dana Burnet, such meagre souls as his there town, my wife had been educated, and who would, I felt sure, make a true woman and lady of the girl. And the money I also turned over to the nuns, for my child's keep as a boarding-pupil, until she was eighteen. So I remained alone with my responsi- bility: the need of providing for my daughter's later future. This purpose sim- ply had to be achieved, and that within ten years—because, when I recovered from the sickness, partly brought about by my wife's death, the doctor, a scientist of note and a close friend, told me frankly that I was afflicted with a disease of the heart which would not let me live on longer than a decade, and this only if I remained as exceptionally temperate as I had always been. God knows I did my best to obtain honest and fairly remunerative work— my very best. But I failed utterly. And, finally, I came to think of work that was not honest. Grafting began to seem al- most a duty, what with my pennilessness and my responsibility. Still, I did not know how to graft, not at all. A bit of street-corner talk it was that “put me wise.” I heard a fellow ask another to have a drink, and I heard (Continued on page 268) comicbooks.com