The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-04-04
DRIFTING THE MONARCHY.
Mark Twain Gives His Reasons fo
 Snnnnslnp Thot We Are

Mark Twain Gives His Reasons for
 Supposing Thct We Are.
 Human nature being what it Is. I suppose We must expect to drift into monarchy by and by. It is a saddening thought, but we canot change our na- ture; we are all alike, we human be- ings; and in our blood and bone, and ineradicable, we carry the seeds out of which monorchies and aristocracies are grown, worship of gauds, titles, dis tinctions, power We have to worship these things and their possesors, we are all born so, and we cannot help it. We have to be despised by somebody whom we regard as above us, or we are not happy; we have to have somebody to worship and envy, or we cannot be content. In America we maifest this in all the ancient and customary ways In public we scoff at titles and heredl- tary privilege but privately we hanker after them, and when we get a chance we buy them for cash and daughter him any fgwymfwy y yllt llllinnnuu Sometimes we get a good man and worth the price, but we are ready to take him anyway, whether he be ripe or rotten, whether he be clean and de- cent, or merely basket of noble and sacred and long-descended offal. And when we get him the whole nation publicly chaffs and scoffs-and private ly envies; and also is proud of the honor which has been conferred upon us We run over our list of titled pur- chases every now and then, in the newspapers and discuss them and ca ress them, and are thankful and hap py.
 Like all other nations, we wor- they being our aristocracy, and we have to have one We like to read about rich people in the papers; the papers know it, and they do their best to keep this appetite liberally fed They even leave out a football bull fight now and then to get room for all the par- ticulars of how-according to the dis play heading Woman Fell Down Stairs-Not Hurt" The falling down the celalr is Of no interest to us when the woman is not rich but no rich woman can fall down cellar and we not yearn to know all about it and wish it was us
 In a monarchy the people Willingly and rejoiclngly revere and take pride in their nobilities and are not humili- ated by the reflection that this humble and hearty homage gets no return but contempt Contempt does not shame them, they are used to 1t, and they recognize that it Is their proper due. We are all made like that. Tn Europe we easily and quickly learn to take that attitude toward the soverigns and the aristocracries; moreover, 1t has been observed that when we get the attitude we go on and exaggerate 1t, presently becoming more serville than the na- tiyes. and vainer of it. The next step is to rail and scoff at republics and democracies. All of which is natural, for we have nc. ceased to be human being by becoming Ameriacns, and the human race was always intended to be governed by klngship, not by popular vote.
 l suppose we must expect that un ayoidable and irresistible circumstan- ces will gradually take away the pow CTS of central government, and that the of the States and concentrate them in republic will then repeat the history of all time and become a monarch; but belive that if we obstruct these en- croachments and steadily resist them the monarchy can be postponed for good while vet.