Los Angeles herald., 1892-05-15

Under fa1r or stormy weather,
Through the desert and the park,
Through the morass, DER the meadow,
In the sunshine, in the shadow,
We are beckoped by the Fates,
We cannot stay we must away,
Marching bravely, stepping, ,gravely.
Gladly some, some very sadly
But we're marching, every mortal,
Toward the inward-0penihg portal,
Where the silent sentry waits
At the gates.
x*x
The foolishest fancy of day time. 1t seems,
Will grow like genie at night in our dreams.
'.The blush on my meerschaum is bronzing,"I
And straightway the fancy passed out of my
head.
But that very night, as dropped into sleep,
From Limbo that pipephrase must suddenly
leap.
"My pipe growing bronze; it occurs to me. too,
By some necromancy I'm taking that hue.
"Bropzel,,I am bronze. with torch in my
Why, lol am Liberty lighting the land
ooh, People My People! Look hitherp' cry.
And liftup my torch till 1t reddens the sky.
Ger city and country, DER mountain and
plain, 'C
call to the people-but call them in vain.
They sleep, heavy laden with burdens of care;
For thousands must toll to make one million.
a1re.
They sleep. though their pockets are looted by
law,
BY trusts and by tariffs insatiate NAV.
They sleep. though they walk, though they
labor and sweat,
And pay manifold for each thing that they get
They sleep. mesmerized, for their brains are SO
lax
They dream they grow richer by paying tax.
"Oh, people! My peoplel From gulf unto lake,
From ocean to ocean, when will ye awake?"
My cry was tocsin to waken the dead.
fell-and found myself out of my bed.
~
My friend, the professor, is fond of
quoting Newton's 20, physics, beware
OF metaphysics - He il neither Theo-
Logan, Agnostic nor Theosophist; but
he is eloquent. He paused by the man
telpiece. where he had been filling his
pipe, struck match, and when he had
taken two strong pulls and expelled the
smoke, delivered himself in these words
"The whole track of the past is strewn
with the debris Of idolized ideas, sys.
TENS Of theology and philosophy, which
have been broken on the wheel OF
time, or shivered upon the rock OF
positive philosophy, rock over against
which might be written the old Latin
legend, Conantia frangere frangit. We
have given over the search after first
and final causes. You cannot today
find metaphysician, or even q preach
er, who will venture to address
himself to the question: What is
the ultimate object of human pursuit?
Yet that is the oldest question. It was
ancient and unanswered when the pyra-
mids were new, when Troy fell, when
the foundations OF Rome were laid,
when Christ was crucifed, when the
Conqueror created the British empire,
when Columbus sailed, when the battle
at Lexington was news. Some have
tried to reason it out; others have hoped
to find it written in the records of the
remote past. They have tried to deci-
pher it from the half-effaced hero
glyphics upon broken columns and
arches and vases, from the sarcophagi
of prehistoric kings, from the hoary
pyramids, from the colossal figure of the
Sphinx, where it sits looking into
futurity on the banks of the Nile
It"
"Great guns !" said 1, "why dom you
answer it yourself? Not necessarily for
publication, but simply as an evidence
81 am waiting" said the professor,
"for all OF them to give it up"
x*x
DeTocqueville somewhere SAYS: "Men
are not corrupted by the exercise of
governmental power, nor are the people
debased by the habit of obedience
thereto; but by the exercise of power
illegitimately obtained, and by acqui-
escence on the part OF the people in an
administration Of affairs which they be-
lieve to be questionably acquired, harm
ful and oppressive"
What are the credentials of the pres
ent national administration 1t is true
(God save the mark y that the president
| avouches his election to be directly
referable to the active agency of the
Deity. But Blocks-of-five Dudley and
Dean Maitland Quay and the pious fat
fryer, John Wanamaker, feel con-
sciousness that the false pre-
tense cry of protection to Ameri-
ican labor" supplemented by their mas
terful rascalities, gave the electoral ma
jority to Mr.. Harrison, and the bene-
iciaries of tariff for spoliation over q
numerical majority of the voters. The
Republican is the only party, l believe,
] that has ever held the presidential
Office by such tenure.
Power so obtained and held must, of
necessity, corrupt the wielders of it and
induce them to again hope to wrench
power from the people by the use of
money, legerdemain and false pretense,
while they salve their consciences with
the Jesuitical maxim: 'The end justi-
fies the means."
Again, there are thoueands OF Repub-
licans, not to mention the Mugwumps,
who have been sufficiently educated in
the science of political economy to
have no mental obfuscation about the
fundamental fallacy and pernicious ef-
fects OF protectionism; but they debase
their moral and equitable standards by
acquiescing in the perpetuation Of the
present economic system, either because
they are personal bene6ciaries in it. or
from the weak sentimentality Of "fdel-
ity to party, right or wrong"