"The Paradise Of Fools"

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Title:     "The Paradise Of Fools"
Author: Robert L. Taylor [More Titles by Taylor]

Have you ever thought of the wealth that perished when paradise was lost? Have you ever thought of the glory of Eden, the first estate of man? I think it was the very dream of God, glowing with ineffable beauty. I think it was rimmed with blue mountains, from whose moss-covered cliffs leaped a thousand glassy streams that spread out in mid-air, like bridal veils, kissing a thousand rainbows from the sun. I think it was an archipelago of gorgeous colors, flecked with green isles, where the grapevine staggered from tree to tree, as if drunk with the wine of its own purple clusters, where peach, and plum, and blood-red cherries, and every kind of berry, bent bough and bush, and shone like showered drops of ruby and of pearl. I think it was a wilderness of flowers, redolent of eternal spring and pulsing with bird-song, where dappled fawns played on banks of violets, where leopards, peaceful and tame, lounged in copses of magnolias, where harmless tigers lay on snowy beds of lilies, and lions, lazy and gentle, panted in jungles of roses. I think its billowy landscapes were festooned with tangling creepers, bright with perennial bloom, and curtained with sweet-scented groves, where the orange and the pomegranate hung like golden globes and ruddy moons. I think its air was softened with the dreamy haze of perpetual summer; and through its midst there flowed a translucent river, alternately gleaming in its sunshine and darkening in its shadows. And there, in some sweet, dusky bower, fresh from the hand of his Creator, slept Adam, the first of the human race; God-like in form and feature; God-like in all the attributes of mind and soul. No monarch ever slept on softer, sweeter couch, with richer curtains drawn about him. And as he slept, a face and form, half hidden, half revealed, red-lipped, rose-cheeked, white bosomed and with tresses of gold, smiled like an angel from the mirror of his dream; for a moment smiled, and so sweetly, that his heart almost forgot to beat. And while yet this bright vision still haunted his slumber, with tenderest touch an unseen hand lay open the unconscious flesh in his side, and forth from the painless wound a faultless being sprang; a being pure and blithesome as the air; a sinless woman, God's first thought for the happiness of man. I think he wooed her at the waking of the morning. I think he wooed her at noon-tide, down by the riverside, or by the spring in the dell. I think he wooed her at twilight, when the moon silvered the palm tree's feathery plumes, and the stars looked down, and the nightingale sang. And wherever he wooed her, I think the grazing herds left sloping hill and peaceful vale, to listen to the wooing, and thence themselves, departed in pairs. The covies heard it and mated in the fields; the quail wooed his love in the wheat; the robin whistled to his love in the glen;

"The lark was so brim-full of gladness and love,
The green fields below him--the blue sky above,
That he sang, and he sang, and forever sang he:
I love my Love, and my Love loves me."

Love songs bubbled from the mellow throats of mocking-birds and bobolinks; dove cooed love to dove; and I think the maiden monkey, fair "Juliet" of the House of Orang-outang, waited on her cocoanut balcony for the coming of her "Romeo," and thus plaintively sang:

[Illustration: JULIET.]

(Sung to the air of My Sweetheart's the Man in the Moon.)

"My sweetheart's the lovely baboon,
I'm going to marry him soon;
'Twould fill me with joy
Just to kiss the dear boy,
For his charms and his beauty
No power can destroy."

"I'll sit in the light of the moon,
And sing to my darling baboon,
When I'm safe by his side
And he calls me his bride;
Oh! my Angel, my precious baboon!"

[Illustration: ROMEO.]

All paradise was imbued with the spirit of love. Oh, that it could have remained so forever! There was not a painted cheek in Eden, nor a bald head, nor a false tooth, nor a bachelor. There was not a flounce, nor a frill, nor a silken gown, nor a flashy waist with aurora borealis sleeves. There was not a curl paper, nor even a threat of crinoline. Raiment was an after thought, the mask of a tainted soul, born of original sin. Beauty was unmarred by gaudy rags; Eve was dressed in sunshine, Adam was clad in climate.

Every rich blessing within the gift of the Almighty Father was poured out from the cornucopia of heaven, into the lap of paradise. But it was a paradise of fools, because they stained it with disobedience and polluted it with sin. It was the paradise of fools because, in the exercise of their own God-given free agency, they tasted the forbidden fruit and fell from their glorious estate. Oh, what a fall was there! It was the fall of innocence and purity; it was the fall of happiness into the abyss of woe; it was the fall of life into the arms of death. It was like the fall of the wounded albatross, from the regions of light, into the sea; it was like the fall of a star from heaven to hell. When the jasper gate forever closed behind the guilty pair, and the flaming sword of the Lord mounted guard over the barred portal, the whole life-current of the human race was shifted into another channel; shifted from the roses to the thorns; shifted from joy to sorrow, and it bore upon its dark and turbulent bosom, the wrecked hopes of all the ages.

I believe they lost intellectual powers which fallen man has never regained. Operating by the consent of natural laws, sinless man would have wrought endless miracles. The mind, winged like a seraph, and armed like a thunderbolt, would have breached the very citadel of knowledge and robbed it of its treasures. I think they lost a plane of being only a little lower than the angels. I believe they lost youth, beauty, and physical immortality. I believe they lost the virtues of heart and soul, and many of the magnificent powers of mind, which made them the images of God, and which would have even brushed aside the now impenetrable veil which hides from mortal eyes the face of Infinite Love; that Love which gave the ever-blessed light, and filled the earth with music of bird, and breeze, and sea; that Love whose melodies we sometimes faintly catch, like spirit voices, from the souls of orators and poets; that Love which inlaid the arching firmament of heaven with jewels sparkling with eternal fires. But thank God, their fall was not like the remediless fall of Lucifer and his angels, into eternal darkness. Thank God, in this "night of death" hope does see a star! It is the star of Bethlehem. Thank God, "listening Love" does "hear the rustle of a wing!" It is the wing of the resurrection angel.

The memories and images of paradise lost have been impressed on every human heart, and every individual of the race has his own ideal of that paradise, from the cradle to the grave. But that ideal in so far as its realization in this world is concerned, is like the rainbow, an elusive phantom, ever in sight, never in reach, resting ever on the horizon of hope.

 

THE PARADISE OF CHILDHOOD.

I saw a blue-eyed child, with sunny curls, toddling on the lawn before the door of a happy home. He toddled under the trees, prattling to the birds and playing with the ripening apples that fell upon the ground. He toddled among the roses and plucked their leaves as he would have plucked an angel's wing, strewing their glory upon the green grass at his feet. He chased the butterflies from flower to flower, and shouted with glee as they eluded his grasp and sailed away on the summer air. Here I thought his childish fancy had built a paradise and peopled it with dainty seraphim and made himself its Adam. He saw the sunshine of Eden glint on every leaf and beam in every petal. The flitting honey-bee, the wheeling June-bug, the fluttering breeze, the silvery pulse-beat of the dashing brook sounded in his ear notes of its swelling music. The iris-winged humming-bird, darting like a sunbeam, to kiss the pouting lips of the upturned flowers was, to him, the impersonation of its beauty. And I said: Truly, this is the nearest approach in this world, to the paradise of long ago. Then I saw him skulking like a cupid, in the shrubbery, his skirts bedraggled and soiled, his face downcast with guilt. He had stirred up the Mediterranean Sea in the slop bucket, and waded the Atlantic Ocean in a mud puddle. He had capsized the goslings, and shipwrecked the young ducks, and drowned the kitten which he imagined a whale, and I said: There is the original Adam coming to the surface.

[Illustration: THE PARADISE OF CHILDHOOD.]

"Lo'd bless my soul! Jist look at dat chile!" shouted his dusky old nurse, as she lifted him, dripping, from the reeking pond. "What's you bin doin' in dat mud puddle? Look at dat face, an' dem hands an' close, all kivvered wid mud an' mulberry juice! You bettah not let yo' mammy see you while you's in dat fix. You's gwine to ketch it sho'. You's jist zackly like yo' fader--allers git'n into some scrape or nuddah, allers breakin' into some kind uv devilment--gwine to break into congrus some uv dese days sho'. Come along wid me dis instinct to de baff tub. I's a-gwine to dispurgate dem close an' 'lucidate some uv dat dirt off'n dat face uv yone, you triflin' rascal you!" And so saying, she carried him away, kicking and screaming like a young savage in open rebellion, and I said: There is some more of the original Adam. Then I saw him come forth again, washed and combed, and dressed in spotless white, like a young butterfly fresh from its chrysalis. And when he got a chance, I saw him slip on his tip-toes, into the pantry;

I heard the clink of glassware,
As if a mouse were playing there,

among the jam pots and preserves. There two little dimpled hands made trip after trip to a rose-colored mouth, bearing burdens of mingling sweets that dripped from cheek, and chin, and waist, and skirt, and shoes, subduing the snowy white with the amber of the peach, and the purple of the raspberry, as he ate the forbidden fruit. Then I watched him glide into the drawing room. There was a crash and a thud in there, which quickly brought his frightened mother to the scene, only to find the young rascal standing there catching his breath, while streams of cold ink trickled down his drenched bosom. And as he wiped his inky face, which grew blacker with every wipe, the remainder of the ink was pouring from the bottle down on the carpet, and making a map of darkest Africa. Then the rear of a small skirt went up over a curly head and the avenging slipper, in lightning strokes, kept time to the music in the air. And I said: There is "Paradise Lost." The sympathizing, half angry old nurse bore her weeping, sobbing charge to the nursery and there bound up his broken heart and soothed him to sleep with her old time lullaby:

[Illustration: PARADISE LOST.]

"Oh, don't you cry little baby, Oh, don't you cry no mo',
For it hurts ol' mammy's feelin's fo' to heah you weepin' so.
Why don't da keep temptation frum de little han's an' feet?
What makes 'em 'buse de baby kaze de jam an' zarves am sweet?

Oh, de sorrow, tribulations, dat de joys of mortals break,
Oh, it's heb'n when we slumber, it's trouble when we wake.

Oh, go to sleep my darlin', now close dem little eyes,
An' dream uv de shinin' angels, an' de blessed paradise;
Oh, dream uv de blood-red roses, an' de birds on snowy wing;
Oh, dream uv de fallin' watahs an' de never endin' spring.

Oh, de roses, Oh, de rainbows, Oh, de music's gentle swell,
In de dreamland uv little childun, whar de blessed sperrits dwell."

"Dar now, dar now, he's gone. Bless its little heart, da treats it like a dog." And then she tucked him away in the paradise of his childish slumber.

[Illustration: OLD BLACK "MAMMY."]

The day will come when the South will build a monument to the good old black mammy of the past for the lullabies she has sung.

I sometimes wish that childhood might last forever. That sweet fairy land on the frontier of life, whose skies are first lighted with the sunrise of the soul, and in whose bright-tinted jungles the lions, and leopards, and tigers of passion still peacefully sleep. The world is disarmed by its innocence, the drawn bow is relaxed, and the arrow is returned to its quiver; the Ægis of Heaven is above it, the outstretched wings of mercy, pity, and measureless love!

 

THE PARADISE OF THE BAREFOOTED BOY.

[Illustration]

I would rather be a barefooted boy with cheeks of tan and heart of joy than to be a millionaire and president of a National bank. The financial panic that falls like a thunderbolt, wrecks the bank, crushes the banker, and swamps thousands in an hour. But the bank which holds the treasures of the barefooted boy never breaks. With his satchel and his books he hies away to school in the morning, but his truant feet carry him the other way, to the mill pond "a-fishin'." And there he sits the livelong day under the shade of the tree, with sapling pole and pin hook, and fishes, and fishes, and fishes, and waits for a nibble of the drowsy sucker that sleeps on his oozy bed, oblivious of the baitless hook from which he has long since stolen the worm. There he sits, and fishes, and fishes, and fishes, and like Micawber, waits for something to "turn-up." But nothing turns up until the shadows of evening fall and warn the truant home, where he is welcomed with a dogwood sprout. Then "sump'n" does turn up. He obeys the call of the Sunday school bell, and goes with solemn face, but e'er the "sweet bye and bye" has died away on the summer air, he is in the wood shed playing Sullivan and Corbett with some plucky comrade, with the inevitable casualties of one closed eye, one crippled nose, one pair of torn breeches and one bloody toe. He takes a back seat at church, and in the midst of the sermon steals away and hides in the barn to smoke cigarettes and read the story of "One-eyed Pete, the Hero of the wild and woolly West." There is eternal war between the barefooted boy and the whole civilized world. He shoots the cook with a blow-gun; he cuts the strings of the hammock and lets his dozing grandmother fall to the ground; he loads his grandfather's pipe with powder; he instigates a fight between the cat and dog during family prayers, and explodes with laughter when pussy seeks refuge on the old man's back. He hides in the alley and turns the hose on uncle Ephraim's standing collar as he passes on his way to church, he cracks chestnut burrs with his naked heel; he robs birds' nests, and murders bullfrogs, and plays "knucks" and "base-ball." He puts asafetida in the soup, and conceals lizzards in his father's hat. He overwhelms the family circle with his magnificent literary attainments when he reads from the Bible in what he calls the "pasalms of David"--"praise ye the Lord with the pizeltry and the harp."

[Illustration: THE PARADISE OF THE BAREFOOTED BOY.]

His father took him to town one day and said to him: "Now John, I want you to stay here on the corner with the wagon and watch these potatoes while I go round the square and see if I can sell them. Don't open your mouth sir, while I am gone; I'm afraid people will think you're a fool." While the old man was gone the merchant came out and said to John: "What are those potatoes worth, my son?" John looked at him and grinned. "What are those potatoes worth, I say?" asked the merchant. John still looked at him and grinned. The merchant turned on his heel and said: "You're a fool," and went back into his store. When the old man returned John shouted: "Pap, they found it out and I never said a word."

His life is an endless chain of pranks and pleasures. Look how the brawling brook pours down the steep declivities of the mountain gorge! Here it breaks into pearls and silvery foam, there it dashes in rapids, among brown bowlders, and yonder it tumbles from the gray crest of a precipice. Thus, forever laughing, singing, rollicking, romping, till it is checked in its mad rush and spreads into a still, smooth mirror, reflecting the inverted images of rock, and fern, and flower, and tree, and sky. It is the symbol of the life of a barefooted boy. His quips, and cranks, his whims, and jollities, and jocund mischief, are but the effervescences of exuberant young life, the wild music of the mountain stream.

If I were a sculptor, I would chisel from the marble my ideal of the monumental fool. I would make it the figure of a man, with knitted brow and clinched teeth, beating and bruising his barefooted boy, in the cruel endeavor to drive him from the paradise of his childish fun and folly. If your boy will be a boy, let him be a boy still. And remember that he is following the paths which your feet have trodden, and will soon look back upon its precious memories, as you now do, with the aching heart of a care-worn man.

[Illustration: THE WILD MUSIC OF THE MOUNTAINS.]

(Sung to the air of Down on the Farm.)

Oh, I love the dear old farm, and my heart grows young and warm,
When I wander back to spend a single day;
There to hear the robins sing in the trees around the spring,
Where I used to watch the happy children play.
Oh, I hear their voices yet and I never shall forget
How their faces beamed with childish mirth and glee.
But my heart grows old again and I leave the spot in pain,
When I call them and no answer comes to me.

 

THE PARADISE OF YOUTH.

[Illustration: THE PARADISE OF YOUTH.]

If childhood is the sunrise of life, youth is the heyday of life's ruddy June. It is the sweet solstice in life's early summer, which puts forth the fragrant bud and blossom of sin e'er its bitter fruits ripen and turn to ashes on the lips of age. It is the happy transition period, when long legs, and loose joints, and verdant awkwardness, first stumble on the vestibule of manhood. Did you never observe him shaving and scraping his pimpled face till it resembled a featherless goose, reaping nothing but lather, and dirt, and a little intangible fuzz? That is the first symptom of love. Did you never observe him wrestling with a pair of boots two numbers too small, as Jacob wrestled with the angel? That is another symptom of love. His callous heel slowly and painfully yields to the pressure of his perspiring paroxysms until his feet are folded like fans and driven home in the pinching leather; and as he sits at church with them hid under the bench, his uneasy squirms are symptoms of the tortures of the infernal regions, and the worm that dieth not; but that is only the penalty of loving. When he begins to wander through the fragrant meadows and talk to himself among the buttercups and clover blossoms, it is a sure sign that the golden shaft of the winged god has sped from its bended bow. Love's archer has shot a poisoned arrow which wounds but never kills. The sweet venom has done its work. The fever of the amorous wound drives the red current bounding through his veins, and his brain now reels with the delirium of the tender passion. His soul is wrapped in visions of dreamy black eyes peeping out from under raven curls, and cheeks like gardens of roses. To him the world is transformed into a blooming Eden, and she is its only Eve. He hears her voice in the sound of the laughing waters, the fluttering of her heart in the summer evening's last sigh that shuts the rose; and he sits on the bank of the river all day long and writes poetry to her. Thus he writes:

"As I sit by this river's crystal wave,
Whose flow'ry banks its waters lave,
Me-thinks I see in its glassy mirror,
A face which to me, than life is dearer.
Oh, 'tis the face of my Gwendolin,
As pure as an angel, free from sin.
It looks into mine with one sweet eye,
While the other is turned to the starry sky.
Could I the ocean's bulk contain,
Could I but drink the watery main,
I'd scarce be half as full of the sea,
As my heart is full of love for thee!"

Thus he lives and loves, and writes poetry by day, and tosses on his bed at night, like the restless sea, and dreams, and dreams, and dreams, until, in the ecstacy of his dream, he grabs a pillow.

One bright summer day, a rural youth took his sweetheart to a Baptist baptizing; and, in addition to his verdancy and his awkwardness, he stuttered most distressingly. The singing began on the bank of the stream; and he left his sweetheart in the buggy, in the shade of a tree near by, and wandered alone in the crowd. Standing unconsciously among those who were to be baptized, the old parson mistook him for one of the converts, and seized him by the arm and marched him into the water. He began to protest: "ho-ho-hold on p-p-p-parson, y-y-y-you're ma-ma-makin' a mi-mi-mistake!!!" "Don't be alarmed my son, come right in," said the parson. And he led him to the middle of the stream. The poor fellow made one final desperate effort to explain--"p-p-p-p-parson, l-l-l-l-let me explain!" But the parson coldly said: "Close your mouth and eyes, my son!" And he soused him under the water. After he was thoroughly baptized the old parson led him to the bank, the muddy water trickling down his face. He was "diked" in his new seersucker suit, and when the sun struck it, it began to draw up. The legs of his pants drew up to his knees; his sleeves drew up to his elbows; his little sack coat yanked up under his arms. And as he stood there trembling and shivering, a good old sister approached him, and taking him by the hand said: "God bless you, my son, how do you feel?" Looking, in his agony, at his blushing sweetheart behind her fan, he replied in his anguish: "I fe-fe-fe-feel l-l-l-l-like a d-d-d-d-durned f-f-f-f-fool!"

[Illustration: THE SEERSUCKER YOUTH AT THE BAPTIZING.]

If I were called upon to drink a toast to life's happiest period, I would hold up the sparkling wine, and say: "Here is to youth, that sweet, Seidlitz powder period, when two souls with scarcely a single thought, meet and blend in one; when a voice, half gosling, half calliope, rasps the first sickly confession of puppy love into the ear of a blue-sashed maiden at the picnic in the grove!" But when she returns his little greasy photograph, accompanied by a little perfumed note, expressing the hope that he will think of her only as a sister, his paradise is wrecked, and his puppy love is swept into the limbo of things that were, the school boy's tale, the wonder of an hour.

But wait till the shadows have a little longer grown. Wait till the young lawyer comes home from college, spouting Blackstone, and Kent, and Ram on facts. Wait till the young doctor returns from the university, with his whiskers and his diploma, to tread the paths of glory, "that lead but to the grave." Wait till society gives welcome in the brilliant ball, and the swallow-tail coat, and the patent leather pumps whirl with the decollette and white slippers till the stars are drowning in the light of morning. Wait till the graduate staggers from the giddy hall, in full evening dress, singing as he staggers:

"After the ball is over, after the break of morn,
After the dancer's leavin', after the stars are gone;
Many a heart is aching, if we could read them all--
Many the hopes that are vanished, after the ball."

[Illustration: AFTER THE BALL.]

It is then that "somebody's darling" has reached the full tide of his glory as a fool.

 

THE PARADISE OF HOME.

How rich would be the feast of happiness in this beautiful world of ours, could folly end with youth. But youth is only the first act in the "Comedy of Errors." It is the pearly gate that opens to the real paradise of fools.

"It's pleasures are like poppies spread--
You seize the flower, its bloom is shed,
Or like the snowfall on the river--
A moment white then melts forever."

Whether it be the child at its mother's knee or the man of mature years, whether it be the banker or the beggar, the prince in his palace or the peasant in his hut, there is in every heart the dream of a happier lot in life.

I heard the sound of revelry at the gilded club, where a hundred hearts beat happily. There were flushed cheeks and thick tongues and jests and anecdotes around the banquet spread. There were songs and poems and speeches. I saw an orator rise to respond to a toast to "Home, sweet home," and thus he responded:

"Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen: John Howard Payne touched millions of hearts when he sang:

'Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,
Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home.

But as for me, gentlemen, give me the pleasures an' the palaces--give me liberty, or give me death. No less beautifully expressed are the tender sentiments expressed in the tender verse of Lord Byron:

"'Tis sweet to hear the watchdog's honest bark
Bay deep mouthed welcome as we draw near home;
'Tis sweet to know there is an eye will mark our coming,
And look brighter when we come."

But as for me, gentlemen, I would rather hear the barkin' of a gatlin' gun than to hear the watch dog's honest bark this minute. I would rather look into the mouth of a cannon than to look into the eyes that are now waitin' to mark my comin' at this delightful hour of three o'clock in the morning."

Then he launched out on the ocean of thought like a magnificent ship going to sea. And when the night was far spent, and the orgies were over, and the lights were blown out at the club, I saw him enter his own sweet home in his glory--entered it, like a thief, with his boots in his hands,--entered it singing softly to himself:

"I'm called little gutter pup, sweet little gutter pup,
Though I could never tell why--(hic),
Yet still I'm called gutter pup, sweet little gutter pup,
Poor little gutter pup--I--(hic)."

He was unconscious of the presence of the white figure that stood at the head of the stairs holding up a lamp, like liberty enlightening the world, and as a tremulous voice called him to the judgment bar, the door closed behind him on the paradise of a fool, and he sneaked up the steps, muttering to himself, "What shadows we are--(hic)--what shadows we pursue." Then I saw him again in the morning, reaping temptation's bitter reward in the agonies of his drunk-sick; and like Mark Twain's boat in a storm,

"He heaved and sot, and sot and heaved,
And high his rudder flung,
And every time he heaved and sot,
A mighty leak he sprung."

If I were a woman with a husband like "that," I would fill him so full of Keely's chloride of gold that he would jingle as he walks and tinkle as he talks and have a fit at every mention of the silver bill.

The biggest fool that walks on God's footstool is the man who destroys the joy and peace of his own sweet home; for, if paradise is ever regained in this world, it must be in the home. If its dead flowers ever bloom again, they must bloom in the happy hearts of home. If its sunshine ever breaks through the clouds, it must break forth in the smiling faces of home. If heaven ever descends to earth and angels tread its soil, it must be in the sacred precincts of home. That which heaven most approves is the pure and virtuous home. For around it linger all the sweetest memories and dearest associations of mankind; upon it hang the hopes and happiness of the nations of the earth, and above it shines the ever blessed star that lights the way back to the paradise that was lost.

[Illustration: RETURNING FROM THE CLUB.]

 

BACHELOR AND WIDOWER.

I saw a poor old bachelor live all the days of his life in sight of paradise, too cowardly to put his arm around it and press it to his bosom. He shaved and primped and resolved to marry every day in the year for forty years. But when the hour for love's duel arrived, when he stood trembling in the presence of rosy cheeks and glancing eyes, and beauty shook her curls and gave the challenge, his courage always oozed out, and he fled ingloriously from the field of honor.

Far happier than the bachelor is old Uncle Rastus in his cabin, when he holds Aunt Dina's hand in his and asks: "Who's sweet?" And Dina drops her head over on his shoulder and answers, "Boaf uv us."

A thousand times happier is the frisky old widower with his pink bald head, his wrinkles and his rheumatism, who

Wires in and wires out,
And leaves the ladies all in doubt,
As to what is his age and what he is worth,
And whether or not he owns the earth.

He "toils not, neither does he spin," yet Solomon, in all his glory was not more popular with the ladies. He is as light-hearted as "Mary's little lamb." He is acquainted with every hog path in the matrimonial paradise and knows all the nearest cuts to the "sanctum sanctorum" of woman's heart. But his jealousy is as cruel as the grave. Woe unto the bachelor who dares to cross his path.

An old bachelor in my native mountains once rose in church to give his experience, in the presence of his old rival who was a widower, and with whom he was at daggers' points in the race to win the affections of one of the sisters in Zion. Thus the pious old bachelor spake: "Brethren, this is a beautiful world. I love to live in it just as well to-day as I ever did in my life. And the saddest thought that ever crossed this old brain of mine is, that in a few short days at best, these old eyes will be glazed in death and I'll never get to see my loved ones in this world any more." And his old rival shouted from the "amen corner," "thank God!"

 

PHANTOMS.

In every brain there is a bright phantom realm, where fancied pleasures beckon from distant shores; but when we launch our barks to reach them, they vanish, and beckon again from still more distant shores. And so, poor fallen man pursues the ghosts of paradise as the deluded dog chases the shadows of flying birds in the meadow.

The painter only paints the shadows of beauty on his canvas; the sculptor only chisels its lines and curves from the marble; the sweetest melody is but the faint echo of the wooing voice of music.

We stumble over the golden nuggets of contentment in pursuit of the phantoms of wealth, and what is wealth? It can not purchase a moment of happiness. Marble halls may open wide their doors and offer her shelter, but happiness will flee from a palace to dwell in a cottage. We crush under our feet the roses of peace and love in our eagerness to reach the illuminated heights of glory; and what is earthly glory?

"He who ascends to mountain tops shall find
The loftiest peaks most wrapped in clouds and snow;
He who surpasses or subdues mankind,
Must look down on the hate of those below.
Though high above the sun of glory glow,
And far beneath the earth and ocean spread,
'Round him are icy rocks, and loudly blow
Contending tempests on his naked head."

I saw a comedian convulse thousands with his delineations of the weaknesses of humanity in the inimitable "Rip Van Winkle." I saw him make laughter hold its sides, as he impersonated the coward in "The Rivals;" and I said: I would rather have the power of Joseph Jefferson, to make the world laugh, and to drive care and trouble from weary brains and sorrow from heavy hearts, than to wear the blood-stained laurels of military glory, or to be President of the United States, burdened with bonds and gold, and overwhelmed with the double standard, and three girl babies.

 

THE FALSE IDEAL.

It is the false ideal that builds the "Paradise of Fools." It is the eagerness to achieve success in realms we cannot reach, which breeds more than half the ills that curse the world. If all the fish eggs were to hatch, and every little fish become a big fish, the oceans would be pushed from their beds, and the rivers would be eternally "dammed"--with fish; but the whales, and sharks, and sturgeons, and dog-fish, and eels, and snakes, and turtles, make three meals every day in the year on fish and fish eggs. If all the legal spawn should hatch out lawyers, the earth and the fullness thereof would be mortgaged for fees, and mankind would starve to death in the effort to pay off the "aforesaid and the same." If the entire crop of medical eggs should hatch out full fledged doctors, old "Skull and Cross Bones" would hold high carnival among the children of men, and the old sexton would sing:

"I gather them in,
I gather them in."

If I could get the ear of the young men who pant after politics, as the hart panteth after the water brook, I would exhort them to seek honors in some other way, for "Jordan is a hard road to travel."

The poet truly said: "How like a mounting devil in the heart is the unreined ambition. Let it once but play the monarch, and its haughty brow glows with a beauty that bewilders thought and unthrones peace forever. Putting on the very pomp of Lucifer, it turns the heart to ashes, and with not a spring left in the bosom for the spirit's lip, we look upon our splendor and forget the thirst of which we perish."

 

THE CIRCUS IN THE MOUNTAINS.

[Illustration: THE CIRCUS IN THE MOUNTAINS.]

I saw a circus in a mountain town. The mountaineers swarmed from far and near, and lined the streets on every hand with open mouth and bated breath, as the grand procession, with band, and clown, and camels, and elephants, and lions, and tigers, and spotted horses, paraded in brilliant array. The excitement was boundless when the crowd rushed into the tent, and they left behind them a surging mass of humanity, unprovided with tickets, and destitute of the silver half of the double standard. Their interest rose to white heat as the audience within shouted and screamed with laughter at the clown, and cheered the girl in tights, and applauded the acrobats as they turned somersaults over the elephant. But temptation whispered in the ear of a gentleman in tow breeches, and he stealthily opened his long bladed knife and cut a hole in the canvas. A score of others followed suit, and held their sides and laughed at the scenes within. But as they laughed a showman slipped inside, armed with a policeman's "billy." He quietly sidled up to the hole where a peeper's nose made a knot on the tent on the inside. "Whack!" went the "billy"--there was a loud grunt, and old "Tow Breeches" spun 'round like a top, and cut the "pigeon wing," while his nose spouted blood. "Whack!" went the "billy" again, and old "Hickory Shirt" turned a somersault backwards and rose "a-runnin'." The last "whack" fell like a thunderbolt on the Roman nose of a half drunk old settler from away up at the head of the creek. He fell flat on his back, quivered for a moment, and then sat up and clapped his hand to his bleeding nose and in his bewilderment exclaimed: "Well I'll be durned! hel-lo there stranger!" he shouted to a bystander, "whar wuz you at when the lightnin' struck the show?" Then I saw a row of bleeding noses at the branch near by, taking a bath; and each nose resembled a sore hump on a camel's back.

[Illustration: "WHACK!" WENT THE "BILLY!"]

So it is around the great arena of political fame and power. "Whack!" goes the "billy" of popular opinion; and politicians, like old "Tow Breeches," spin 'round with the broken noses of misguided ambition and disappointed hope. In the heated campaign many a would-be Webster lies down and dreams of the triumph that awaits him on the morrow, but he wakes to find it only a dream, and when the votes are counted his little bird hath flown, and he is in the condition of the old Jew. An Englishman, an Irishman and a Jew hung up their socks together on Christmas Eve. The Englishman put his diamond pin in the Irishman's sock; the Irishman put his watch in the sock of the Englishman; they slipped an egg into the sock of the Jew. "And did you git onny thing?" asked Pat in the morning. "Oh yes," said the Englishman, "I received a fine gold watch, don't you know. And what did you get Pat?" "Begorra, I got a foine diamond pin." "And what did you get, Jacob?" said the Englishman to the Jew. "Vell," said Jacob, holding up the egg. "I got a shicken but it got avay before I got up."

 

THE PHANTOM OF FORTUNE.

I would not clip the wings of noble, honorable aspiration. I would not bar and bolt the gate to the higher planes of thought and action, where truth and virtue bloom and ripen into glorious fruit. There are a thousand fields of endeavor in the world, and happy is he who labors where God intended him to labor.

The contented plowman who whistles as he rides to the field and sings as he plows, and builds his little paradise on the farm, gets more out of life than the richest Shylock on earth.

The good old spectacled mother in Israel, with her white locks and beaming face, as she works in her sphere, visiting the poor, nursing the sick, and closing the eyes of the dead, is more beautiful in her life, and more charming in her character, than the loveliest queen of society who ever chased the phantoms of pleasure in the ballroom.

The humblest village preacher who faithfully serves his God, and leads his pious flock in the paths of holiness and peace, is more eloquent, and plays a nobler part than the most brilliant infidel who ever blasphemed the name of God.

The industrious drummer who travels all night and toils all day to win comfort for wife, and children, and mother, and sister, is a better man, and a far better citizen, than the most successful speculator on Wall Street, who plays with the fortunes of his fellow-man as the wolf plays with the lamb, or as the cyclone plays with the feather.

Young ladies, when the time comes to marry, say "yes" to the good-natured, big-hearted drummer. For he is a spring in a desert, a straight flush in a weary hand, a "thing of beauty and a joy forever," and he will never be at home to bother you.

 

CLOCKS.

Oliver Wendell Holmes says: "Our brains are seventy year clocks. The angel of life winds them up once for all, closes the case, and gives the key into the hand of the resurrection angel." And when I read it I thought, what a stupendous task awaits the angel of the resurrection, when all the countless millions of old rickety, rusty, worm-eaten clocks are to be resurrected, and wiped, and dusted, and repaired, for mansions in the skies! There will be every kind and character of clock and clockwork resurrected on that day. There will be the Catholic clock with his beads, and the Episcopalian clock with his ritual. There will be an old clock resurrected on that day wearing a broadcloth coat buttoned up to the throat; and when he is wound up he will go off with a whizz and a bang. He will get up out of the dust shouting, "hallelujah!" and he will proclaim "sanctification!" and "falling from grace!" and "baptism by sprinkling and pouring!" as the only true doctrine by which men shall go sweeping through the pearly gate, into the new Jerusalem. And he will be recognized as a Methodist preacher, a little noisy, a little clogged with chicken feathers, but ripe for the Kingdom of Heaven.

There will be another old clock resurrected on that day, dressed like the former, but a little stiffer and straighter in the back, and armed with a pair of gold spectacles and a manuscript. When he is wound up he will break out in a cold sepulchral tone with, firstly: "foreordination!" secondly: "predestination!" and thirdly: "the final perseverance of the saints!" And he will be recognized as a Presbyterian preacher, a little blue and frigid, a little dry and formal, but one of God's own elect, and he will be labeled for Paradise.

There will be an old Hard-shell clock resurrected, with throat whiskers, and wearing a shad-bellied coat and flap breeches. And when he is wound up a little, and a little oil is squirted into his old wheels, he will swing out into space on the wings of the gospel with: "My Dear Beloved Brethren-ah: I was a-ridin' along this mornin' a-tryin' to study up somethin' to preach to this dying congregation-ah; and as I rid up by the old mill pond-ah lo and behold! there was an old snag a sticking up out of the middle of the pond-ah, and an old mud turtle had clim up out uv the water and was a settin' up on the old snag a sunnin' uv himself-ah; and lo! and behold-ah! when I rid up a leetle nearer to him-ah, he jumped off of the snag, 'ker chugg' into the water, thereby proving emersion-ah!"

Our brains are clocks, and our hearts are the pendulums. If we live right in this world, when the Resurrection Day shall come, the Lord God will polish the wheels, and jewel the bearings, and crown the casements with stars and with gold. And the pendulums shall be harps encrusted with precious stones. They shall swing to and fro on angel wings, making music in the ear of God, and flashing His glory through all the blissful cycles of eternity!

 

THE PANIC.

Happy is the man who lives within his means, and who is contented with the legitimate rewards of endeavor. The dreadful panic that checks the progress of civilization and paralyzes the commerce of the world, is the death angel that follows speculation. Everything is staked and hazarded on contingences that are as baseless as the fabric of a dream. The day of settlement comes and nobody is able to settle. The borrower is powerless to meet his note in the bank; the banker is powerless to pay his depositors, and confidence is stampeded like a herd of cattle. The timid and suspicious old farmer catches the wild note of alarm, and deserting his plow and sleepy steers in the field, he mounts his mule, and urging him on with pounding heels, rushes pell-mell to the bank, and with bulging eyes, demands his money. The excitement spreads like fire. The blacksmith leaves his anvil, the carpenter his bench, and the tailor his goose. The tanner deserts his hide, and the shoemaker throws down his last to save his all. The mason with his trowel in his hand, rushes from the half-finished wall; Pat drops his hod between heaven and earth and slides down the ladder, muttering: "Oi'll have me moaney or Oi'll have blood!" The fat phlegmatic Dutchman, dozing behind his bar, wakes to the situation and waddles down the street, puffing and blowing like an engine, and muttering: "Mine Got in Himmel--mine debosit ish boosted!" And thus they make the run on the bank, gathering about it like the hosts of Armageddon. The bottom drops out, and millionaires go under like the passengers of a wrecked steamer.

 

"BUNK CITY."

Did you ever pass the remains of a "boom" town in your travels? Did you never gaze upon the remains of "Bunk City," where but yesterday all was life and bustle, and to-day it looks like the ruins of Babylon? The empty fields for miles and miles around are laid off and dug up in streets, and look like they had been struck with ten thousand streaks of chain lightning. Standing here and there are huge frames holding up mammoth sign boards, bearing the names of land companies, but the land companies are gone. Half driven nails are left to rust in a few old skeleton buildings, the brick lies unmortared in half finished walls, and tenantless houses stand here and there like the ghosts of buried hope. Down by the river stands the furnace, grim and silent as the extinct crater of Popocatepetl; and the great hotel on the hill looks like the tower of Babel two thousand years after the confusion of tongues. The last of the speculators, with his blue nose and his old battered plug hat which resembles an accordion that has been yanked by a cyclone, stands on the corner and contemplates his old sedge fields which have shrunk in value from one hundred dollars a front foot, to one dollar for a hundred front acres, and balefully sings a new song:

"After the boom is over, after the panic's on,
After the fools are leavin', after the money's gone,
Many a bank is "busted," if we could see in the room,
Many a pocket is empty, after the boom."

 

"YOUR UNCLE."

[Illustration: COMING.]

An impecunious speculator once flooded a town with handbills and posters containing this announcement: "Your Uncle is coming." The streams of passers-by looked at the bill boards and wondered what it meant. The speculator rented the theatre, and one day a new flood of handbills and posters made this announcement: "Your Uncle is here." He gave orders to his stage manager to raise the curtain exactly at eight o'clock. The speculator himself stood in the door and received the admission fees and then disappeared. In their curiosity to see the performance of "Your Uncle," the villagers filled every seat in the theatre long before the hour for the performance arrived. The curtain rose at the appointed hour, and lo! on a board, in the center of the stage, was a card bearing this announcement in large letters: "Your Uncle is gone."

What a splendid illustration of modern speculation and its willing victims who are so easily led into the "Paradise of Fools!"

 

FOOLS.

But why mourn and brood over broken fortunes and the calamities of life? Why tarry in the doldrums of pessimism, with never a breeze to catch your limp and drooping sails and waft you on a joyous wave? Pessimism is the nightmare of the world. It is the prophet of famine, pestilence, and human woe. It is the apostle of the Devil, and its mission is to impede the progress of civilization. It denounces every institution established for human development as a fraud. It stigmatizes law as the machinery of injustice; it sneers at society as hollow-hearted corruption and insincerity; it brands politics as a reeking mass of rottenness, and scoffs at morality as the tinsel of sin. Its disciples are those who rail and snarl at everything that is noble and good, to whom a joke is an assault and battery, a laugh is an insult to outraged dignity, and the provocation of a smile is like passing an electric current through the facial muscles of a corpse.

God deliver us from the fools who seek to build their paradise on the ashes of those they have destroyed. God deliver us from the fools whose life work is to cast aspersions upon the motives and characters of the leaders of men. I believe the men who reach high places in politics are, as a rule, the best and brainiest men in the land, and upon their shoulders rest the safety and well-being of the peace-loving, God-fearing millions.

I believe the world is better to-day than it ever was before. I believe the refinements of modern society, its elegant accomplishments, its intellectual culture, and its conceptions of the beautiful, are glorious evidences of our advancement toward a higher plane of being.

I think the superb churches of to-day, with the glorious harmonies of their choral music, their great pipe organs, their violins and cornets, and their grand sermons, full of heaven's balm for aching hearts, are expressions of the highest civilization that has ever dawned upon the earth. I believe each successive civilization is better, and higher, and grander, than that which preceded it; and upon the shining rungs of this ladder of evolution, our race will finally climb back to the Paradise that was lost. I believe that the society of to-day is better than it ever was before. I believe that human government is better, and nobler, and purer, than it ever was before. I believe the Church is stronger and is making grander strides toward the conversion of the world and the final establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth, than it ever made before.

I believe that the biggest fools in this world are the advocates and disseminators of infidelity, the would-be destroyers of the Paradise of God.

 

A BLOTTED PICTURE.

I sat in a great theatre at the National Capital. It was thronged with youth, and beauty, old age, and wisdom. I saw a man, the image of his God, stand upon the stage, and I heard him speak. His gestures were the perfection of grace; his voice was music, and his language was more beautiful than I had ever heard from mortal lips. He painted picture after picture of the pleasures, and joys, and sympathies, of home. He enthroned love and preached the gospel of humanity like an angel. Then I saw him dip his brush in ink, and blot out the beautiful picture he had painted. I saw him stab love dead at his feet. I saw him blot out the stars and the sun, and leave humanity and the universe in eternal darkness, and eternal death. I saw him like the Serpent of old, worm himself into the paradise of human hearts, and by his seductive eloquence and the subtle devices of his sophistry, inject his fatal venom, under whose blight its flowers faded, its music was hushed, its sunshine was darkened, and the soul was left a desert waste, with only the new made graves of faith and hope. I saw him, like a lawless, erratic meteor without an orbit, sweep across the intellectual sky, brilliant only in his self-consuming fire, generated by friction with the indestructible and eternal truths of God.

[Illustration: INFIDELITY.]

That man was the archangel of modern infidelity; and I said: How true is holy writ which declares, "the fool hath said in his heart, there is no God."

Tell me not, O Infidel, there is no God, no Heaven, no Hell!

"A solemn murmur in the soul tells of a world to be,
As travelers hear the billows roll before they reach the sea."

Tell me not, O Infidel, there is no risen Christ!

When every earthly hope hath fled,
When angry seas their billows fling,
How sweet to lean on what He said,
How firmly to His cross we cling!

What intelligence less than God could fashion the human body? What motive power is it, if it is not God, that drives that throbbing engine, the human heart, with ceaseless, tireless stroke, sending the crimson streams of life bounding and circling through every vein and artery? Whence, and what, if not of God, is this mystery we call the mind? What is this mystery we call the soul? What is it that thinks and feels and knows and acts? Oh, who can comprehend, who can deny, the Divinity that stirs within us!

God is everywhere, and in everything. His mystery is in every bud, and blossom, and leaf, and tree; in every rock, and hill, and vale, and mountain; in every spring, and rivulet, and river. The rustle of His wing is in every zephyr; its might is in every tempest. He dwells in the dark pavilions of every storm cloud. The lightning is His messenger, and the thunder is His voice. His awful tread is in every earthquake and on every angry ocean; and the heavens above us teem with His myriads of shining witnesses. The universe of solar systems whose wheeling orbs course the crystal paths of space proclaim through the dread halls of eternity, the glory, and power, and dominion, of the all-wise, omnipotent, and eternal God.

[The end]
Robert L. Taylor's short story: "The Paradise Of Fools"

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