The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-06-26

MERE IS certain HrOmetnedn
 quality and spirit in the smallest
 ! of small boys, and even in the fab biest of big and fabby men. Get very rat into a corner and he is ready to turn hero and defy fate with rushing leap and vitriolic bite Don't crowd mel" snarls little Jimmie whom nevertheless all the boys know to be ''sisse" at heaft There's many a fellow will be fighting mad If he either has to do 1t or else sacri- fee his self esteem But the doctrine or non-resistance fits admirably into the scheme of Jimmies ethics, because he greatly abhors a bloody nose. Hence when fate hustles Jimmie, worries and chokes him, loads him with burdens too heavy for his comfort, clouds his horizon with breeding tempest, and puts his soul under the spell of the gaunt witch, Anx- iety. Jimmie would thousand times rather hunt cover and lie low, with MT. w. H. Taft and all the other B'rer Rab- bits of the world
 Nevertheless there is another resource even for Jimmie Smash him, o Fate, if thou wilt, nevertheless he shall die in con fidence that he has cheated thee at last! The Rabbit-is he not the first great Ma ture Baker? Is 1t not notorious that by a subtle tooth of good fellowship he has gnawed open the s-reservoir Of the rattlesnake, though he left him the rat ties? Behold then, that sinuous scoun- drel flashing the dust and striking gaily or grimly at his tormentors, buzzing most dreadfully with his tail. but quite innocu- ous as to his head So, thinks Jimmie, he also will dupe fate, destiny and the devil.
 It is an interesting chapter in our racial history, this of cheating Fate, eluding the sphinx, fooling that which IS with the solemn pretense that it is not! Life Is It's opportunity and so also is death. Re ligion greatly concerns itseslf herewith. Politics Is it's chosen field. Business Is the stage on which 1t loves to dance. Above All things dress and social relationship and all that goes to make the soclai iad- der-ah, how your Dickenses ana your Thackerays and your Fieldings and your Swifts have satirized the earnest tolis or men and women therein, striving to dodge the fact by pretending 1t was fiction. and striving to revolutionize lie by pretend ing it was the truth
 Something of 1t was vulgarly illustrated by the humorous lecturer who told or new-made bride. who, let me add, was, moreover an old-maid bride, and who mad met with the chill winds of life's winter, 1~O- laid aside a glass eye. many removable molars, much radiant, but imported hair' and was supposed to be performing a surgical operation on a detacnapie loot, 1t is reported that the bridegroom lied and like MT. Samuel Wel'ers sausage manufacturer. has never been heard or since. But undoubtedly the lady is still schooling the dimples of her cheeks to fit the teeth. and adjusting her lorgnette to the glass eye That is her way to cheat the devil.
 Among the Chinese boatmen at Hong kong the traveller notes the presence or an eye, painted on the prov of every samran and sometimes even On the larger craft. What the origin of the custom may have been Is mere guess work. But 1t IS the common reply of the boatmen, when questioned as to the meaning of the eye
 "Spose no have eye, no can see
 Spose no can see, no can save-.
 : And this is luminous. But when al eventide all the boats in the harbor begin to blaze with firecrackers and you asK why, the common explanation is that thus the boat people drive away evil spirits.
 Roth eve and firecracker are very In timately related to certain buried GUS toms among the Chinese particularly that of burning paper money at the
  real. but sham, and Is offered as con- tribution to the spiritual expenditure of the deceased and apparently Is reclS~ oned good enough for circulation as smoke in the upper spiritual world. But what a reflection on ghostly integrity. that the honest citizen should be ex- pected to put in circulation the smoke of so very dubious dollars.
 All three of these customs indeed are forms of demon cheating, the vast bus mess of making a thing to be so by simply saving that 1t Is so. It is the rrown-up result of tb child's world of make believe, and it flourishcs in lands where the people do not despise the days of childhood, but cling to them That Oriental world has an in finite relish of dawn. It's simplicity is largely the simplicity of childhood The boat Is a person. needing an eye and possessed of a spirit. The night crackers drive away noxious spirits of the air. The money is spiritualized by burning and displays the lavish piety of the bereaved family. Anf it Is all a sort of dumb show, a make believe. But so far as the Chinaman Is con- cerned 1t succeeds in cheat ting the devil because he, too, belongs In that world of make believe.
 Now who would rob the poor woman of her artificial youth or the Hakka boatman of his Shamanistic world of dreams? Most nations are led along the path of evolution by precisely such pre- tences and pretenders. Thereais little that is not hollow. The ladies whose cheeks bloom with so sweet and health full tint often owe the secret tc a wise investment in powder or in paint,