Cottonwood report. [volume] (Cottonwood, Idaho) 1893-1901, 1895-05-17
OSCAR WILDE.

Idle lux ury makes maniacs about
as rapidly as does idle poverty. Os-
car Wilde. is a product of the present
state of civilization which allows one
class humankind to revel III debauch-
cry, class whose sole occuption con-
sists in finding some new crime
against God and man. Men and
women of this class become drunk
with sin. They revel in it. Their
lives are filled with it until every
thing is colored to suit their taste
Oscar Wilde wasa maniac and there
are millions more in. the world just
like him. 1t is a. disease brought on
by idleness and by looking for some
thing to relieve the mind Wilde
was a man with a brain, but that
brain had nothing to do,and it decayed
rotted and became corrupt. Hal the
man been forced to earn his bread by
the sweat of his brow, as God declared
every man should do, he would today
be a healthy man, hut society gave
him that which he had never earned.
1t gave him the light to buy with his
cursed gold, human beinos in order
that he mihgt satisfy the lusts of a
diseased body and a leprous mind.
Alexander Harvey, in the Twentieth
Century, says of this product of high
life:
Driveling idiocy at times attains
the apex Of fine art. Oscar Wilde,
whose greatest. crime is, that he was
thoroughly civilized is the latest target
of attck Nobody, orrather pactically
nobody, has read Alright the riddle OF
this episode The human race is
rotten. Civilization eats its way
like worm into the vitals of society
and leaves it in decay. The social
organism is reeking with the pus
stewed by it's own diseases. The NAL
ady is old and like furnace flames
and weakeps in direct ratio to its
supply of fuel. Rome rotted under the
Caesars because civilization had moth
ing more to feed on. Society thinks
today with the decrepitude of a civil
ization fermenting its
filth. The ulcer is ready to burstand
the case of Oscar Wilde is but por-
tent OF its ,putrifaction.
This luxury-mad licentiate, with
the driveling idiocy inseparable from
law in social system like ours, is
treated as a malefactor when he il
but victimS Nor is this to be .won'
dered at. Civilization dare not ap
proach the confessional. It's maniact
must be manicled or they would her
aid to the world the iniqtiity which
gave them being. The mad despair
of poverty is familiar enotighin in it:
hideousness. The no less mac
despair of riches is hideous too, bu
it is an overheated, rank hideousnes
like that oftan unwashed hegress ar
fayed in royal robes, But. there i
hope in all this, too. The glcry o
prehistoric vegetation was creates
in it's decay, The grand forests rot
tied leaf by leaf and died away int,
the coalbeds that now afford US b aat
Society is hideons in its frantic lux
ury, and insane beggary,t SITS wil'
safety and tinclean hunger, its inco
,herent self indulgence and desperat
privation; It is an eagea leach, sool
to be gorgorged.
unhappy society," Unhappy Wilde
Ihis melancholy inaniac,, driven b.
smad cravings from one keen expert
'ence to another, il is but the victim
of an appetite bred by its, environ
ment. The rank weed gets its srengtl
from the reeking soil. There contagioi
in the pisoned air and WIlde's Kin
drankit inJ poor things; to their dc
'strueti0n. Well, the perfuiiied vermi
will BE scotehed, because oivilisatioi
can dos no nfbre doctor symptoms
ttheSonly encouragement to be dc
lived from contemplation Of the