ALWAYS A WOMAN. [Kansas City Time,s November 22, 1887.] It was a woman, and a beautiful one at that, in that terrible eastern story who, when the night deepened, stole away from the side of her drugged and drunken husband, a lord of armies and kingdoms, and crowns and crept to the hovel and the arms of a beastly ragpicker, where her food was to be garbage and her caresses blows. It was to Lacenaire, the Paris butcher, who killed people like fatted hogs and sold their flesh in delightful sausages, that a grand dame cried out, supposed to be a duchess: "They will cut off your head. Very well. You shall have as many masses as a king. Not for your soul's sake, however, but your sausages." Evidently this magnificent animal had been eating some of the pork. When Charlotte Corday forced a passage into the bathroom of that wild beast Marat, and plunged a dagger into his breast, it was a woman who flew upon her like a tigress, knocked her down, leaped upon her ferociously, tore out her hair, lacerated her face, and strove to bite out her flesh by mouthfuls. "When she was removed," says Camille Desmoulins, who reported the trial, the face of Marat's mistress was as bloody as if she had that moment been eating raw flesh just cut from a recently slaughtered ox." "And the prisoner?" inquired the judge. Even in her blood she was beautiful. I did not see her torn and disfigured face, however; I only saw her soul." Poor, grandly-gifted, intrepid, unfortunate journalist! There came a day when even your colossus Danton could not save you, and when this one little speech alone-though only a sudden outburst of pity, or tenderness, or romance-would weigh more in the scales of the Terror, which was to try you than did the gigantic, two-handed sword of the barbarian Brennus weigh in the scales when Rome was buying back her very life with jewels and precious and golden things enough to freight a vessel. But to meaner and viler things: When the anarchists had done their devil's work in Chicago, and when a suddenly awakened and infuriated country was demanding that those who preached dynamite should fare equally with those who acted dynamite, the hunt was up for a scrofulous, pestiferous fellow who needed mercury badly in some one of its preparations or other, called Johann Most. Where was he? In what hiding place was stowed away the carcass of this slinking cur of revolution, barking furiously before danger began to show itself, and then-through alleys and places where offal is deposited-hurrying away to a congenial kennel. One day they found him, and where do you think? Under a woman's bed. And there sat the woman in front of his place of concealment, rocking as blandly as the May winds rock the apple blossoms and singing low to herself, no doubt, as her scullion hero crouched under the bed, some song of the grand old days when lance-shaft was splintered to gauntlet-grasp and sword blade was shivered at the hilt-something which, when looking out upon the wild sea of fight would call aloud to tell of one peerless leader coming down to guide its vanguard: I know the purple vestment; So ever rides Mamilius, One respects and glorifies the heroic Highland maiden who— when the bloodhounds of Claverhouse were hot on the flying footsteps of her youthful lover-gave him shelter under her hoops. The moss troopers came; entered in; ransacked that house from cornerstone to rafter; broke into closets; thrust broadswords through bedticks; sounded the wainscoting; knocked in the heads of hogsheads, and rummaged every box and barrel capacious enough to hide a man; but no fugitive. There sat the maiden, serene and smiling, never stirring a fold of her dress, or lifting so much as a finger from her lap. Finally the fellows of the broadswords, and they were slashing fellows, too, bade her a rough goodbye as they rode away. Then out popped her lover, radiant. Then he wanted to take her in his arms and caress her. Then she broke down, burst into a flood of tears, and cried passionately: "Go away! Go away! Go instantly! I hate you!" But she didn't, bless her pure, virginal, heroic soul "for," as old David Ramsay says, a quaint old story-teller of the olden time, "they were married after the evil days, and Claverhouse sent a young peacock of an aide to dance at the wedding.' But under a bed with a woman on guard! Under a bed and he a man of war! Under a bed and he the fierce evangel of a new crusade-of bomb-shells, gunpowder, fulminates that tear mountains to pieces, oaths taken at midnight at a coffin for a court, pass-words, grips, signs, signals, gabble, gush, rant, cant scoundrelism, and boom! boom! boom!Lord of Israel! what sort of a woman was that who stood guard over that sort of a lover? But a little more of Mr. Most. After a speech in New York the other day, notorious for its blasphemy, ferocity, and evil counsel, the law laid hold of him and brought him to its bar. Bail, of course, but who do you think was his bondsman? It was not a man at all, but only another woman, said to be rich, said to have a home, husband, children, property, the good things of life, and to be a devout believer in every infernal doctrine put forth by the most advanced anarchist. A little before this, yet another woman, well known in New York took upon herself the task of erecting a monument to the hanged scoundrels, who appeared to have made rampant all the crankism latent in the country. She swears to rest neither day or night until she has raised money enough to carry out her purpose. "And it shall be as high as Washington's, too," she said, defiantly, to a reporter, "if we choose to make it so." We frankly confess that we do not understand anything about the whole business. Of course, in the bosom of every woman ever yet born into the world there is something of the nature of the tigress, and in all the black and the dark things of a man's life, those threads which are blackest and go mainly to make up the warp and the woof, are always woven by a woman's hand; but the tigress, is a cleanly animal. Gordon Cumming says that she bathes three times a day in her native jungles, that she will not touch the meat she has not slain, and that for her offspring she is the bravest wild beast known to the earth. And yet what could this bondswoman for Most do for her offspring if anarchy could barely once hold the city of New York for twenty-four hours. Whence comes, however, to sum it all up, this morbid, monstrous, unaccountable female craving for making heroes, angels, and models out of all sorts, kinds, and conditions of murderers-men who have butchered in cold blood. Who have not killed in open combat, body to body and pistol to pistol, but have ambushed their vic tims and slaughtered them before they could turn about. Ogre murderers, pitted and pustuled, as though yet in their veins and mixed with their blood there still flowed the incarnate spirit of small-pox. Beetle-browed murderers their ancestry still traceable to some traveling showman's escaped chimpanzee. Pert young murderers of the long hair order, beginning with a stolen horse and ending by killing a man in his sleep for money. Romantic murderers, who poison friends, pack their bodies in trunks and then go off in a blaze of glory, leaving behind them a track that might be followed in a coach and four. Mysterious murderers-regular dons of fellows-low-voiced, soft of speech, perfumed, affecting jewelry, dirt under their finger nails, and kept by a woman. But whatever the kind of murderer, he gets fresh fruits, flowers, visits when admissable, sly little missives, fondling when possible, books marked at any passage that is amorous, all too often means to escape, money, delicate things, bon-bons, adulation, flattery, hero worship, sympathy, pity, and tears. But bring to the attention of one of these murderer worshipers some member of his victim's family who needed help, and she would draw back her dainty garments as though they might be touched by the finger of a leper, and throw a kiss to her beloved as she flounced away from the cell. But, after all, nature takes care of such creatures as these called women? Those who finally do not die through pads, stays, corsets, and bustles, die in the midst of an apothecary shop. MORE LITERARY MUTILATION. [Kansas City Times, Dec. 12, 1887.] Sir Richard Burton is probably the ablest, the most gifted, and the most thoroughly equipped and accomplished Oriental scholar any English-speaking country ever produced. His knowledge of the Arabic language is almost perfect, as also his knowledge of Eastern customs and manners, Eastern traditions, superstitions, and folk lore, and especially Eastern literature, which he delights to revel in and to inhale whatever there was about it of perfume, languor, dalliance, and love. Well, he once upon a time made a literal translation of the “Arabian Nights,” accompanied by a mass of invaluable notes, which threw a flood of light upon points that had hitherto been obscure-so obscure, indeed, as to be a sealed book to everybody. Only 1000 copies of the translation were printed, and these instantly found their way into the hands of such scholars in England, France, and Germany as could the more quickly lay hold upon them. So far so good, but now comes Lady Burton, with her edition of her husband's great work. It has been pruned, trimmed, dovetailed, pared down, peruked, periwigged, pomatumed, essenced, and perfumed. Out of some 3,000 pages of the famed original, she makes the modest statement that she has only found it necessary to cut out, carve, mutilate, make patchwork of, make crazy-quilts of, some four or five hundred! As for the notes and the explanations of the first edition, which made it so extremely valuable in more ways than one, what about them? Have they, too, been sprinkled with rosewater, and submitted to the inspection of some sacerdotal mummy who, wearied out long ago with parish tittle-tattle, gossip and scandal, has withdrawn to his own hide-bound sarcophagus, hating and condemn. ing everything which comes to him from the outside world, telling of a civilization which he could never understand because of its frankincense, its myrrh, its odors, and its Odalisques, and because in snuffle, and groan, and drone, and monotone, it is not up to the standard of the "Pilgrim's Progress," or "Baxter's Saints' Rest." And Lady Burton's self-confidence over what she has done in the way of mutilation, and her self-assurance that she has done it so well, are all the more amusing and refreshing because of the fact, as she states herself, that Justin Huntley McCarthy, M. P., assisted her much in the little matter of expurgation. And was it not a little matter? Only some four or five hundred pages out of 3,000. Only! Why, there is nothing in this world that could furnish a counterpart for such vandalism, unless one could find a sculptor greater than any known to ancient or modern times, who, after carving out a magnificent statue of Apollo, needing only life to be a god, proposed to put it in some great gallery of art for the world to see. Before doing this, however, he would cut away a leg, saw off an arm, put out one eye, pinch a piece off the nose, and then cry aloud to everybody: Come up and see the work of your Phidias, greater than whom no sculptor was ever born upon the earth." 66 But why go on? Juggled with and cheated in all sorts of ways -in his adulterated flour, sugar, coffee, pepper, yeast powder, wine, whisky, beer, brandy, in the most of what he eats and what he drinks, why should this easy-going, rollicking, broad-shouldered, good natured beast of all burdens, called the American, draw the line at his literature? Skimmed milk is skimmed milk, no matter whether in the greasy pot of a swill-fed dairy, or within the guilt and gold of Lady Burton's dishwater edition of her husband's "Arabian Nights." One thing more: before the work is printed, we respectfully suggest that it be dedicated to Anthony Comstock. CHRISTMAS REJOICINGS. [Kansas City Times, December 27, 1887.] It is well to make Christmas the one precious holiday of the nation; to fill it full of mirth and good cheer; to rest from labor and have a reckoning with time; to open the heart and the purse to every cry of sorrow and every tale of distress; to remember that midnight sky across which a star flashed that had never yet been seen on shore or sea; to ask why in that lowly manger a babe was found, above its head an aureole, and in its eyes the light of a mighty revelation; to recall how from all the long, cold, cruel, terrible night of paganism there came forth a far voice in the wilderness echoing the tidings of a New Jerusalem; think over all that Christianity has done for the world and it may yet do if infidelity does not defile it, politics debauch it, agnosticism corrupt it, materialism obscure it, pernicious pulpit-teachings emasculate it, and brutal sectarianism finally cat it up alive. That the birth of Christ, the deliverer of the human race, and the mysterious link connecting the transcendent and incomprehensive attributes of the deity with human sympathies and affections, should be considered the most glorious event that ever happened and the most worthy of being reverently and joyously commemorated, is a proposition which must commend itself to the heart and reason of every one of His followers who aspires to walk in His footsteps and share in the ineffable benefits His death has secured to mankind. And was not the birth of our Saviour the most glorious event that ever happened in all history? The world was rotten at every pore and vein and organ and artery of its body. Born in the reign of Tiberius Cæsar, that monster of everything beastly in lust and horrible in cruelty. Rome-then almost the mistress of everything known of either land or water-was given up wholly to war, murder, pillage, rape, gladiatorial butcheries, and excesses of other kinds so monstrous and so unnatural that historians have not yet agreed as to their origin, whether, in fact, they were borrowed from the Greeks, the Babylonians, the Assyrians, or from a race in further Egypt, long antedating the loves, the crimes, the sins and the follies of Cleopatra. Look where one would, chastity was the exception and not the rule. Woman was literally a beast of burden in most of the nations, and was bought and sold as a ewe or a heifer upon the hoof. Polygamy abounded. Slavery in the most intolerable form ever known to man universally existed, the master having the absolute power of life and death over his slave. War was little less than absolute extermination, Conquest meant either depopulation, extinction, or absorption. Some of the massacres surpassed in extent and atrocity everything ever yet recounted of Timour Lenk or Zingis Khan. Out of this sort of a civilization there comes forth a Nero, a Phalaris, a Caligula, a Domitian, a Heliogabalus, a Marius, and a Sylla-human butchers all, possessed of a thirst for blood that never knew an hour of appeasement until the assassin's hand smote some, and death in the fullness of their years smote the balance. Paganism was the only religion-if such indeed it can be called -and it taught nothing but a gross and licentious materialism. To live was simply to enjoy. Possession was the only thing needful to struggle for-the possession of palaces, slaves, kingdoms, jewels, concubines, fine linen, spices, wines, wild beasts, shows, monster circuses, triumphal processions, luxury, trophies, monuments, temples, and legions that roamed at will, butchering as they roamed, through Europe, Asia, and Africa. Might was right, and the sword the only arbiter. Mankind appeared to have but one mission, that of making war, in which the strong laid hold of the weak, and either slew them, exiled them, or made them helpless and pitiful slaves. It was then that the Judean shepherds, watching their flocks by night, saw a great, strange light in the sky, and it was then, in a trough of a stable in Bethlehem, the founder of a new faith, a new belief, and a new religion, first showed himself in human form to a world which was to put Him to death because, in full accord with His heavenly mission, He wished to redeem and save it. And how feeble and helpless the struggle first appeared. On every hand was menace, wrath, unbelief, and despotic power. The Roman tyranny was harsh beyond measure, soulless, and omnipotent. How long would paganism tolerate the preaching of doctrines which were eventually to shatter its idols, purify its temples, and convert its. worshipers. And yet how touching, tender, and appealing were the doctrines thus preached. Woman was enfranchised and made fit to become the helpmate and companion of man-to adorn his household, rear their offspring, teach purity and virtue, thereby making the family homogeneous, and thereby making as adamant the foundations upon which to erect the two precious and priceless fabrics of society and the state. When polygamy died something |