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Gleanings from Old Journals.

Old newspapers make good reading–if they are old enough. Like the deciphering of moss-covered epitaphs, the reading of journals of other days gives rise to reflections that mingle the sweet with the sad. It shows plainly that time does not alter human nature, much as customs may change.

The Scrap Book, Volume 1, Number 3, published May, 1906 by Frank A. Munsey.

from: The Queen of the Block, by Alexander L. Kinkead.

CHAPTER IV.

THREE-SISTERS.

It is one town and not three contiguous villages as its name might suggest. Three blast-furnaces stood on the bank of the river below the town. These Colonel Hornberger had named for his daughters, Martha, Sarah, and Henrietta. So the town that grew up near them came to be known as Three-Sisters, and was often spoken of as Three-Girls.

On all sides of it mountains, through which there were three gaps, rise precipitously. Through one of the gaps Boomer Creek, a clear and rapid stream, given to sudden rises, runs into the river, which is picturesque and famous, and almost encircles the town. Through another gap the river glides to the village, and by still another pursues its journey towards the sea.

Beginning above the town, and running parallel to the river, the race conducts the water to the huge wheels in the bellows-house and at the saw-mill.

The railroad runs to the left of the village, crossing the flat on which it is built, while the river flows to the right.

A long wooden covered bridge spans the river and race, and the island between them, and connects Three-Sisters with Boomer Creek Valley, in which are many farms that are gradually encroaching on the forests.

Many of the streets and alleys in the town were given high-sounding titles, but nearly all have their nicknames. The street on which the proprietor dwells is called Big-bug Avenue. There are Goose Street and Backbiter’s Alley. Harmony Lane is where the worst wranglers in the village live. And there is the Block-of-Blazes, standing at the head of Big-bug Avenue, yet giving it the cold shoulder, for not a door of the Block opens, not a window looks, except askance, upon the Avenue.

The people of Three-Sisters, in the days of this story, were laborious, frugal, and patient; they had few grievances. Strikes were unheard of, and no trouble was fermented, except by the tavern whiskey, which flowed freely on Saturday nights, when there were frequent fights among the men.

The women were given to gossip, but were honest. Scandal was rare among them, and they prided themselves on being good cooks and tidy housewives.

Belford’s Magazine, Volume 2, Issue 1, December 1888.

Nature is incomplete. She leaves man to provide for himself his raiment, shelter, and surroundings. Nature in her works throws out suggestions of beauty, rather than its perfect and complete embodiment. Her gold is imbedded in the rock. Her creations are limited by the particular material and the narrow conditions which are at her disposal at a given time and place. To seize the pure ideal of beauty which Nature suggests, but never quite realizes; to select from the universe of space and the eternity of time those materials and forms which are perfectly adapted to portray the ideal beauty; to clothe the abodes and the whole physical environment of man with that beauty which is suggested to us in sky and stream and field and flower; to present to us for perpetual contemplation the form and features of ideal manhood and womanhood; to hold before our imagination the deeds of brave men, and the devotion of saintly women; to thrill our hearts with the victorious struggle of the hero and the death-defying passion of the lover;–this is the mission and the significance of art.

Art is creative. The artist is a co-worker with God. To his hands is committed the portion of the world which God has left unfinished–the immediate environment of man. We cannot live in the fields, like beasts and savages. Art has for its purpose to make the rooms and houses and halls and streets and cities in which civilized men pass their days as beautiful and fair, as elevating and inspiring, as the fields and forests in which the primeval savage roamed. More than that, art aims to fill these rooms and halls and streets of ours with forms and symbols which shall preserve, for our perpetual admiration and inspiration, all that is purest and noblest and sweetest in that long struggle of man up from his savage to his civilized estate.

THE DUTY.

Beauty is the outward and visible sign of inward perfection, completeness, and harmony.–In an object of beauty there is neither too little nor too much; nothing is out of place; nothing is without its contribution to the perfect whole. Each part is at once means and end to every other. Hence its perfect symmetry; its regular proportions; its strict conformity to law.

The mind of man can find rest and satisfaction in nothing short of perfection; and consequently our hearts are never satisfied until they behold beauty, which is perfection’s crown and seal. Without it one of the deepest and divinest powers of our nature remains dwarfed, stifled, and repressed.

How to cultivate the love of beauty.–It is our duty to see to it that everything under our control is as beautiful as we can make it. The rooms we live in; the desk at which we work; the clothes we wear; the house we build; the pictures on our walls; the garden and grounds in which we walk and work; all must have some form or other. That form must be either beautiful or hideous; attractive or repulsive. It is our duty to pay attention to these things; to spend thought and labor, and such money as we can afford upon them, in order to make them minister to our delight. Not in staring at great works of art which we have not yet learned to appreciate, but by attention to the beauty or ugliness of the familiar objects that we have about us and dwell with from day to day, we shall best cultivate that love of beauty which will ultimately make intelligible to us the true significance of the masterpieces of art. Here as everywhere, to him that hath shall more be given. We must serve beauty humbly and faithfully in the little things of daily life, if we will enjoy her treasures in the great galleries of the world.

THE VIRTUE.

Beauty is a jealous mistress.–If we trifle with her; if we fall in love with pretentious imitations and elaborate ornamentations which have no beauty in them, but are simply gotten up to sell; then the true and real beauty will never again suffer us to see her face. She will leave us to our idols: and our power to appreciate and admire true beauty will die out.

Fidelity to beauty requires that we have no more things than we can either use in our work, or enjoy in our rest. And these things that we do have must be either perfectly plain; or else the ornamentation about them must be something that expresses a genuine admiration and affection of our hearts. A farmer’s kitchen is generally a much more attractive place than his parlor; just because this law of simplicity is perfectly expressed in the one, and flagrantly violated in the other. The study of a scholar, the office of the lawyer and the business man, is not infrequently a more beautiful place, one in which a man feels more at home, than his costly drawing room. What sort of things we shall have, and how many, cannot be determined for us by any general rule; still less by aping somebody else. In our housekeeping, as in everything else, we should begin with the few things that are absolutely essential; and then add decoration and ornament only so fast as we can find the means of gratifying cherished longings for forms of beauty which we have learned to admire and love. “Simplicity of life,” says William Morris, “even the barest, is not a misery, but the very foundation of refinement: a sanded floor and whitewashed walls, and the green trees, and flowery meads, and living waters outside. If you cannot learn to love real art, at least learn to hate sham art and reject it. If the real thing is not to be had, learn to do without it. If you want a golden rule that will fit everybody, this is it: Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.”

THE REWARD.

The refining influence of beauty.–Devotion to art and beauty in simplicity and sincerity develops an ever increasing capacity for its enjoyment. As Keats, the master poet of pure beauty, tells us,

A thing of beauty is a joy forever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep,
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.

The refining influence of the love of beauty draws us mysteriously and imperceptibly, but none the less powerfully, away from what is false in thought and base in action; and develops a deep and lasting affinity for all that is true and good. The good, the true, and the beautiful are branches of a common root; members of a single whole: and if one of these members suffer, all the members suffer with it; and if one is honored, all are honored with it.

THE TEMPTATION.

Luxury the perversion of beauty.–Luxury is the pleasure of possession, instead of pleasure in the thing possessed. Luxury buys things, not because it likes them, but because it likes to have them. And so the luxurious man fills his house with all sorts of things, not because he finds delight in these particular things, and wants to share that delight with all his friends; but because he supposes these are the proper things to have, and he wants everybody to know that he has them.

The man who buys things in this way does not know what he wants. Consequently he gets cheated. He buys ugly things as readily as beautiful things, if only the seller is shrewd enough to make him believe they are fashionable. Others, less intelligent than this man, see what he has done; take for granted that because he has done it, it must be the proper thing to do; and go and do likewise. Thus taste becomes dulled and deadened; the costly and elaborate drives out the plain and simple; the desire for luxury kills out the love of beauty; and art expires.

THE VICE OF DEFECT.

Ugly surroundings make ugly souls.–The outward and the inward are bound fast together. The beauty or ugliness of the objects we have about us are the standing choices of our wills. As the object, so is the subject. We grow into the likeness of what we look upon. Without harmony and beauty to feed upon, the love of beauty starves and dies. Our hearts become cold and hard. Not being called out in admiration and delight, our feelings brood over mean and sensual pleasures; they dwell upon narrow and selfish concerns; they fasten upon the accumulation of wealth or the vanquishing of a rival, as substitutes for the nobler interests that have vanished; and the heart becomes sordid, sensual, mean, petty, spiteful, and ugly. The spirit of man, like nature, abhors a vacuum; and into the heart from which the love of the beautiful has been suffered to depart, these hideous and ugly traits of character make haste to enter, and occupy the vacant space. What Shakspere says of a single art, music, is true of art and beauty in general:

The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not mov’d with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils:
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus.
Let no such man be trusted.

THE VICE OF EXCESS.

The hollowness of ostentation.–Man is never proud of what he really enjoys; never vain of what he truly loves; never anxious to show off the tastes and interests that are essentially his own. In order to take this false attitude toward an object, it is necessary to hold it apart from ourselves: a thing which the true lover can never do. He who loves beautiful things will indeed wish others to share his joy in them. But this sharing of our joy in beautiful objects, is a very different thing from showing off our fine things, simply to let other people know that we have them. Ostentation is the vice of ignorant wealth and vulgar luxury. It estimates objects by their expensiveness rather than by their beauty; it aims to awaken in ourselves pride rather than pleasure; and to arouse in others astonishment rather than admiration.

THE PENALTY.

Vulgarity akin to laziness.–Art, and the beauty which it creates, costs painstaking labor to produce. And to enjoy it when it is produced, requires at first thoughtful and discriminating attention. The formation of a correct taste is a growth, not a gift. Hence the dull, the lazy, and the indifferent never acquire this cultivated taste for the beautiful in art. This lack of perception, this incapacity for enjoyment of the beautiful, is vulgarity. Vulgarity is contentment with what is common, and to be had on easy terms. The root of it is laziness. The mark of it is stupidity.

At great pains the race has worked out beautiful forms of speech, for communicating our ideas to each other. Vulgarity in speech is too lazy to observe these precise and beautiful forms of expression; it clips its words; throws its sentences together without regard to grammar; falls into slang; draws its figures from the coarse and low and sensual side of life, instead of from its pure and noble aspects.

Vulgarity with reference to dress, dwellings, pictures, reading, is of the same nature. It results from the dull, unmeaning gaze with which one looks at things; the shiftless, slipshod way of doing work; the “don’t care” habit of mind which calls anything that happens to fall in its way “good enough.”

From all that is precious and beautiful and lovely the vulgar man is hopelessly excluded. They are all around him; but he has no eyes to see, no taste to appreciate, no heart to respond to them. “All things excellent,” so Spinoza tells us, “are as difficult as they are rare.” The vulgar man has no heart for difficulty; and hence the rare excellence of art and beauty remain forever beyond his reach.

From: Practical Ethics, by William DeWitt Hyde. New York: Henry Holt & Company, 1892, p. 89 ff.

It is said that when Victoria, late queen of England, had read Alice in Wonderland she was so pleased that she asked for more of the author’s books. They brought her a treatise on logarithms by the Rev. C. L. Dodgson….

In an academical discussion held at Oxford he once published three rules to be followed in debate. This is one of the three: “Let it be granted that any one may speak at any length on a subject at any distance from that subject.”

From: Stories of Authors, British and American, by Edwin Watts Chubb, 1910.

One Henry Higden, a dramatic writer about the close of the seventeenth century, wrote a comedy, called the Wary Widow, in which he introduced so many drinking scenes, that the actors were completely drunk before the end of the third act, and being therefore unable to proceed with the play, they dismissed the audience.

Another snippet from The Mirror of Taste and Dramatic Censor (Volume 1, Issue 4, April 1810.).

An extract from a Manuscript Novel.

“’Twas nothing more, indeed my dear uncle! No, indeed, ’twas nothing more! Dear, dear, how could I suppose it to be any thing more? And yet I even tremble now,” exclaimed Miss Godfrey to her astonished uncle, as he entered the house. “For heaven’s sake, my beloved Frances what has thus dreadfully alarmed you?” returned the old gentleman. “Tell me I beseech you! I’m on the rack till I know what could possibly have the power of alarming you to this dreadful degree. Come my sweet girl, compose yourself and relate to me this “soul harrowing” tale; for I’m half inclined (seeing you smile) to suppose it some imaginary evil.” It is indeed, sir, an imaginary evil, and a very foolish fear: I am very, very angry with myself, and am seriously apprehensive, that in disclosing to you my weakness, I shall draw down your very just animadversion; but if you will give me a patient hearing, and not think me too circumstantial in my narrative, I will give you then the seeming cause for the disorder in which you found me.” Do not fear censure from me my dear Frances, we all have our weak moments; and I am convinced, a girl with my Fanny’s understanding, could not be so alarmed at a very trifling circumstance; therefore proceed, my love; I will promise not to fall asleep over the recital.”

“Sitting in my dressing room at work, I was surprised by a very hasty tap at the door, which I opened, when Monsieur l’ Abbé appeared before me, with his hair erect, his eyes starting from their sockets, and his whole frame so convulsed with terror, that I momentarily expected the wax taper which he bore in his hand would make a somerset on my muslin dress. I begged him to inform me if he was ill? whether any thing had alarmed him? if I should ring for his servant? He shook his head in token of disapprobation of my last interrogatory, and in broken and almost inarticulate accents, begged I would indulge him with a moment’s hearing. He then, with much difficulty, addressed me as follows:–

“You know Miss Godfrey, I am the last man in the world to be frightened at bugbears, or in other words, superstition and I were ever sworn enemies: I think, then, after reprobating this weakness in others for fifty years, I have this evening become its victim; for to that alone must I ascribe my fears. Listen then to the cause of this weakness in me. I was deeply immersed in Horace, when I heard a knocking against the partition that separates the rooms. I paid little or no attention to it at first, when a second time the knocks were repeated with more violence. I then arose, and proceeded to the room where the noise issued; and directing my eyes towards the bed, to my infinite surprise I perceived the bell-rope making rapid and extensive strides from one side of the partition to the other. After viewing it for a moment, I thought I would take the liberty of stopping the marble breasted gentleman’s progress; I grasped the bell-rope, it yielded to my embrace, and became quiescent; I sat a moment to observe it; it remained quiet, and I returned to my studies. The instant I was seated, the same noise was repeated with increased violence; I entered the room a second time, and a second time saw the bell-rope in rapid motion. I then examined every corner of the room, without discovering the least trace by which I might elucidate this singular appearance. I again grasped the rope, and again it was motionless: I sat two or three minutes in the room, I believe, during which every thing was perfectly quiet. I returned to my room, when scarcely had I seated myself, ere the same noise met my ear, with a sort of hard breathing. This was more than even my philosophy could bear at that moment, and must plead my excuse for appearing before you in the disordered state which you have just witnessed.” “You must pardon me, my good sir, for smiling,” I remarked, but I really have scarcely had patience to hear you out, so anxious am I to be introduced to this ghost in the shape of a bell-rope! lead me to the haunted room, and you will gratify me beyond measure!”

“Magnanimous courage! exclaimed Monsieur, with such a guide, I’d face e’en Beelzebub himself;” when each embracing our taper, we proceeded to the mysterious room. My eager eye sought the bell-rope; but no sooner did I perceive its motion (for it was moving as Monsieur had described) than all my boasted philosophy forsook me. Ashamed to confess as much, I begged my companion to once more stop its progress, and suppressing my emotions, I assisted Monsieur in searching the room. Nothing, however, which possessed animation could we discover, (ourselves excepted) and indeed we could scarcely be said to possess it. Monsieur prevailed on me to retire to his sitting room, when perhaps, he observed, we should hear the noise repeated. I acquiesced, when to my inexpressible horror our ears were assailed by a tremendous knocking, accompanied by a terrific scream. This was more than human nature could bear. I rang the bell with unusual violence, which brought up two of the female servants. Without communicating my fears, I requested that the groom might be called: he came, and thus, in a body we once more ventured to enter this terror striking room, every corner of which was searched without success; when the groom accidentally moving the bed, out sprung our–black cat! She had so completely concealed herself in the head curtain of the bed, that all our endeavours to discover anything were fruitless; and each time we left the room, she amused herself with patting the pull of the bell, which occasioned its motion to the infinite terror of a French philosopher, and an heroic maiden.

“The ‘terrific scream,’ was a faint groan, proceeding from a servant who was ill in the house.”

From: The Mirror of Taste and Dramatic Censor, Volume 1, Issue 4 (April 1810).

“Hey, ho, hum!” exclaimed Uncle Wiggily Longears, the rabbit gentleman, as he stretched up his twinkling, pink nose, and reached his paws around his back to scratch an itchy place. “Ho, hum! I wonder what will happen to me to-day?”

“Are you going out again?” asked Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, the muskrat lady housekeeper. “It seems to me that you go out a great deal, Mr. Longears.”

“Well, yes; perhaps I do,” admitted the bunny uncle. “But more things happen to me when I go out than when I stay in the house.”

“And do you like to have things happen to you?” asked Miss Fuzzy Wuzzy.

“When they are adventures I do,” answered the rabbit gentleman. “So here I go off for an adventure.”

Off started the nice, old, bunny uncle, carrying his red, white and blue striped barber-pole rheumatism crutch–over his shoulder this time.

For his pain did not hurt him much, as the sun was shining, so he did not have to limp on the crutch, which Nurse Jane had gnawed for him out of a corn-stalk.

Uncle Wiggily had not gone very far toward the fields and woods before he heard Nurse Jane calling to him.

“Oh, Wiggy! Wiggy, I say! Wait a moment!”

“Yes, what is it?” asked the rabbit gentleman, turning around and looking over his shoulder. “Have I forgotten anything?”

“No, it was I who forgot,” said the muskrat lady housekeeper. “I forgot to tell you to bring me a bottle of perfume. Mine is all gone.”

“All right, I’ll bring you some,” promised Mr. Longears. “It will give me something to do–to go to the perfume store. Perhaps an adventure may happen to me there.”

Once more he was on his way, and soon he reached the perfume store, kept by a nice buzzing bee lady, who gathered sweet smelling perfume, as well as honey, from the flowers in Summer and put it carefully away for the Winter.

“Some perfume for Nurse Jane, eh?” said the bee lady, as the rabbit gentleman knocked on her hollow-tree house. “There you are. Uncle Wiggily,” and she gave him a bottle of the nice scent made from a number of flowers.

“My! That smells lovely!” exclaimed Uncle Wiggily, as he pulled out the cork, and took a long sniff. “Nurse Jane will surely like that perfume!”

With the sweet scented bottle in his paw, the rabbit gentleman started back toward his hollow-stump bungalow. He had not gone very far before he saw a nurse maid, out in the garden, back of a big house. There was a basket in front of the maid, with some clothes in it, and stretched across the garden was a line, with more clothes on it, flapping in the wind.

“Ha!” exclaimed Uncle Wiggily. “I wonder if that garden maid, hanging up the clothes, wouldn’t like to smell Nurse Jane’s perfume? Nurse Jane will not mind, and perhaps it will be doing that maid a kindness to let her smell something sweet, after she has been smelling washing-soap-suds all morning.”

So the bunny uncle, who was always doing kind things, hopped over to the garden maid, and politely asked:

“Wouldn’t you like to smell this perfume?” and he held out the bottle he had bought of the bee lady.

The garden maid turned around, and said in a sad voice:

“Thank you, Uncle Wiggily. It is very kind of you, I’m sure, and I would like to smell your perfume. But I can’t.”

“Why not?” asked the bunny uncle. “The cork is out of the bottle. See!”

“That may very well be,” went on the garden maid, “but the truth of the matter is that I cannot smell, because a blackbird has nipped off my nose.”

Uncle Wiggily, in great surprise, looked, and, surely enough, a blackbird had nipped off the nose of the garden maid.

“Bless my whiskers!” cried the bunny uncle. “What a thing for a blackbird to do–nip off your nose! Why did he do such an impolite thing as that?”

“Why, he had to do it, because it’s that way in the Mother Goose book,” said the maid. “Don’t you remember? It goes this way:

“‘The King was in the parlor,
Counting out his money,
The Queen was in the kitchen,
Eating bread and honey.
The maid was in the garden,
Hanging out the clothes,
Along came a blackbird
And nipped off her nose,’

“That’s the way it was,” said the garden maid.

“Oh, yes, I remember now,” spoke Uncle Wiggily.

“Well, I’m the maid who was in the garden, hanging out the clothes,” said she, “and, as you can see, along came a blackbird and nipped off my nose. That is, you can’t see the blackbird, but you can see the place where my nose ought to be.”

“Yes,” answered Uncle Wiggily, “I can. It’s too bad. That blackbird ought to have his feathers ruffled.”

“Oh, he didn’t mean to be bad,” said the garden maid. “He had to do as it says in the book, and he had to nip off my nose. So that’s why I can’t smell Nurse Jane’s nice perfume.”

Uncle Wiggily thought for a minute. Then he said:

“Just you wait here. I think I can fix it so you can smell as well as ever.”

Then the bunny uncle hurried off through the woods until he found Jimmie Caw-Caw, the big black crow boy.

“Jimmie,” said the bunny uncle, “will you fly off, find the blackbird, and ask him to give back the garden maid’s nose so she can smell perfume?”

“I will,” said Jimmie Caw-Caw, very politely. “I certainly will!”

Away he flew, and, after a while, in the deep, dark part of the woods he found the blackbird, sitting on a tree.

“Please give me back the garden maid’s nose,” said Jimmie, politely.

“Certainly,” answered the blackbird, also politely. “I only took it off in fun. Here it is back. I’m sorry I bothered the garden maid, but I had to, as it’s that way in the Mother Goose book.”

Off to Uncle Wiggily flew Jimmie, the crow boy, with the young lady’s nose, and soon Dr. Possum had fastened it back on the garden maid’s face as good as ever.

“Now you can smell the perfume,” said Uncle Wiggily, and when he held up the bottle the maid said:

“Oh, what a lovely smell!”

So the bunny uncle left a little perfume in a bottle for the garden maid, and then she went on hanging up the clothes, and she felt very happy because she had a nose. So you see how kind Uncle Wiggily and Jimmie were, and Nurse Jane, too, liked the perfume very much. So if the little girl’s roller-skates don’t run over the pussy’s tail and ruffle it all up so she can’t go to the moving picture party, I’ll tell you next of Uncle Wiggily and the King.

From: Uncle Wiggily and Old Mother Hubbard, by Howard R. Garis, ©1922. Printed by A. L. Burt.

Bookp(h)ile

Since the Unitary Theory explains the structure of the entire Cosmos, from bottom to top, using only the sane rational methods employed by a mechanic in a machine shop, why debase our reason by attempting to explain cosmic construction by mystic flubdub? Suppose we did not understand terrestrial mechanics, but did perfectly comprehend all the outside Cosmos. Would it no then be absurd to assume our earth mechanics were unique, contrary to all outside phenomena, a mushy mystic miasma?

Well, then, in reverse, why guess idiotically about the Outside when we know the Inside? Should it not be all alike? A mathematician has no doubt about the universality of mathematics. But the mystic physicist, who sees it all spread out at his feet, in his eyes and hands, dreams that a lunatic eddingsteinian bedlam of erratic disorder prevails beyond our Sun, tho at the same time he demands that his light come straight thru all the grotesqueries of curveting “empty space,” ether with its “permanent waves,” parallel lines which criss-cross at infinity, reflect and return in reversed parallel, bricks made from buildings, light traveling faster than its own subconstituent units like a train running faster than its diner’s fans thru space; colors with equal speeds because Algol’s winks reach us, at our great distance, as gray in stead of prismatic; gravitation (which “can’t be seen and therefore can’t exist”), but a fairy tale scene shifter in the farce called Regional Geometry (tho a corkscrew on earth shows us how gravity really works); “space eating mass,” the Universe is “running down, expanding and exploding;” space has from four to fifty odd extra (fairy tale) dimensions beyond geometry’s limit of three–length, breadth, depth; gravity nonchalantly and capriciously rolls down warps, ruts and tilting bowling alleys of an uncurvable nothingness, dubbed “curved space,” along its “easiest way,” like a wanton scornful of interfering reactions.

And many other equally wild lunacies, such as the skeery mysteries of the “awful depths” of “empty space” (which should be equally scared of the “awful distant us”); “vast distant nebulae,” fleeing in panic from the ever fixed centric Man-Devil (sizzling thru space at 23 miles per second), at speeds causing light to blush, with a red faced spectrum; tho their light reaches us–they claim–in regular schedule time. Mass spends velocity as a spendthrift spends money–the faster it goes the “shorter” it becomes. All the above is contrary to fact. Nightmares of Mystic Mental Cholic. And if you will only believe all the foregoing, “they will tell you some more.” Allright. Swallow this:

Their pet mascot, Man’s all-cosmic champion light unit, is the sole unique Outlaw and Gangster, privileged to break the universal Cosmic Law of Action and Reaction, of Cause and Effect, of all-impartial Orderliness. It reflects and refracts, to be sure; but only because it desires to do so of its own free will. But it arrogantly refuses to accept velocity reactions from other mass as all other mass units are compelled to do. Man’s light defies the Cosmos–UNLESS–the Mysticks are only Mistooks and you can safely bet your last dollar against them on almost any bet they offer. And they are our leaders? Nerts!

These Mystic Vaudevillians for twenty years have been putting over the greatest Farce in Science. It is time “they got a laugh.” One Great World Roar! Surely the audience has not taken these showmen seriously! They are just having a lot of fun at our expense and, meanwhile, gathering in huge royalties while spoofing us. Readers! Is it not about time we “cleaned house” in Science and swept these goofy mystics out into the backyard? Have you not enough plain common-sense to take their measure, to see what they really are? Well, turn on the Hose of Reason, swab the Ground Floor of Science, draing them down the Sewer to Oblivion, to sink beneath the Sea of Sane Thought–the Ocean of Truth.

An orthod-ox will not believe anything is what it is unless it happens to be just what “he was told” he “must believe” it to be. All of which boils down to the alleged definition by a precocious English child: “Faith is believing what you know is not so.”

Real scientists never believe even a demonstrated fact fanatically. They are ever ready to repair a tentative acceptance to harmonize with later evidence. Fanaticism cannot flourish on Truth, it must feed on Fantasy, where it takes a real effort to “believe” and so should earn a reward for concession and share in its emoluments. It is a “racket.” The truth seeker is never a fanatic. He has no fantasies to be fanatic about So he is serene and humane, civilized. He does not strive to force his opinions on others, since he may soon change them himself. “Live and let live” is his motto. In short, he is “for man.”

“Vast distant stars,” “remote depths of space” and “gigantic nebulae” are but relativities. They exist evertywhere, up and down, around and within us. They are but points of view and everything which ever happens within, to or from, them occurs in replica in all planes of size. Our Home Cosmic Circus is a complete and every bit as good as those distant awful mygodhowwonderful ones. If you feel awed be honest enough to realize you but feel ignorant. Awe means only, “aw! I don’t understand.” Eliminate awe as you would dust from a telescope’s lens or, self-blinded you will never see.

****

The Cosmos is one infinite theatre, with stages in every plane of size, each stage ever presenting the same play, plot and scenes. The play is continuous, eternal. The actors come and go. Each actor thinks himself a permanent star, but he is only a temporary “super” in a “one-night” stand. Ho, Hum!

****

Now read the Entire Cosmic Play–in the Rational Non-Mystical Cosmos. One act, one actor, one trick–reaction. Duplicated infinetly, endlessly.

GEORGE F. GILLETTE. New York City (1935).

(From an addendum to Orthod Oxen of Science: Synoptic conspectus of author’s Unitary Theory. Published by George F. Gillette, Author of Unity of Universe, Cycle of Power, Rational Non-Mystical Cosmos at the Blackstone Publishers, New York City, 1936.)