PRESERVATION PHOTOCOPY: ORIGINAL MATERIAL RESTRICTED

Faith and Prayr

We have no reason to believe there is a god who governs our
lives. We can have no such reason because we know nothing and can know
nothing but the report of our senses. Our eyes, our ears, unrelated
to reality are not to be trusted but that is all we have.

No matter how complex the world of physical study may appear
to us, it can be no more than a semblance: we have to work with
sensations and conclusions to be drawn from them. These are appearances,
to the last reflections of the philosophical, psychological or complex
physical appearances we have to deal with, the effects of our own
minds to the very surface of the moon. We can never experience anything
beyond that, or may not be beyond that, the real, if it
exists.

Meaphysics makes a scientist laugh. Taken all in all the whole
bolus of man's mystical beliefs are to be so included and rejected as
sensibly untenable.

The disorder which we observe daily in the haphazard arrangement
of stars in the sky is corrected or completed by the orderly arrangements
of microscopy. Periodicity gives us our rules of conduct. Though
we know nothing, we can measure # between objects that we see and hear. That
is the province of the arts, from mathematics to poetry, from medicine
to merchandizing, from banking to other forms of robbery, from taking a
woman to murder.

We live in an unimaginative age. It was not always so. Why should
not the supreme deity not be conceived of as a woman? Even a who? The
ridiculous and cocky male, whom we all know, should not be presumed

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to shoulder all the blame or credit for the reproductive act.

Let's kid ourselves a little.

Moralatry is the grotesque form of a worship which has far more reputable antecedents than is to be presumed by the vulgar present day practice of Mother's day. We give our faith to the female because she has never yet failed to produce when called upon, or not called upon, an offspring when she has cohabited effectually with the male of her speciesown species. The race continues solely on that assumption. Woman lies in wait for man far more effectively because of her power to reproduce than does she who rapes her and leaves her strangled in the bushes of some lover's lane.

Our ancestors with their myths concerned with the earth, the season of rebirth, fruitfulness had faith in flowers, the ripening grain and animals which consumed it. They had reason to believe in woman as the great completer. Without her, nothing. So it might still be, if as it has always been, that faith in Proserpine.

The perversion of it is the childless nun, but in this world I suppose, things always go by opposites and the exception proves the rule. I'm serious, if anyone thinks otherwise.

As for faith, the ignorance of a child. Believe in a man or a woman and he'll deceive you because he is a human. But never lie to a child unless you want to make a statesman of him or a priest. Now abideth faith, charity, hope and faith, and the greatest of these is charity but don't put too much in the poor box or it may be robbed.

There is a popular song, a sweet popular song, that tells us all it will be convenient for us to know. If we are content with it we'll make out well enough Love me tender love it is said, there is a woman sings it over the air who, they say, has had both her legs amputed either above the knee or below it.

You should never lie to a child.

Fables,
But tell them stories such as Esop's La Fontaine's, Hans
adventures
Anderson's or Uncle Remusses. Huk Fin is a story I have never forgot.
Which reminds me that I have just returned from a trip down the
Mississippi River but that will have to wait a moment while I tell you
something about prayr.

There are many devout stories about prayr from those associated
with Lourdes and the Monastery of St Ann de Beaupres to the prayers my
grandmother taught me when I was a child.

if I die before I wake
pray the Lord my soul to take

I used to go to sleep nightly with my mind prepared to waken in heaven.
It was not a bad feeling but rather spooky. Of course there are the same
in all languages.

But I don't like prayrs for specific objents such as a football
victory or success in battle. George Washing, we are told, prayed at
Valley Forge that he would survive the hard winter. He got down on his
knees for it to us was a holy cause. Many a woman has prayed that
her sick baby will survive.

But <u>revenons à nos moutons</u>, I was telling you about a trip I

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my wife and I have just taken down the Mississippi River
from Cincinnati by stern wheeler Mark Twain to New
Oreans and back.

It took me, after the first few days of it, through nigger country which I have always wanted to see. In a violently spinning world of change, round and round until the creatures that appear to me in the picture and out of them to my aging eyes seem to me to have lost all attachment to the earth but move on wheeles, round and round and round, London, Paris, Moscow, Peiping, Tokio by way of South Africa, Argentina and Australia, until they are dizzy.

the other day

I attended a formal tea at which I was a sort of here. I knew scarcely anyone who was there but could easily distinguish people from various countries who were on the make. Maybe I exaggerate, but there was scarcely anyone there that I wanted to talk to. There were a few but they were mostly/attaches from/Germany on the rush to go to Hollywood whom I shall never see again.

world

In this violently spinning world of change, round and round at ever increasing speed until the mind is unseated (and they shows it) those green wooded banks, housing as far as such a violent presence can be said to be hosed, the river goes hugely along in the cadences of a negro song.

Old man River, he just go
rolling along

And you suddenly realize that the picture spinning has ceased.

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It hits you first in the night. The completely comfortable throbbing of the paddles to which you have been already accustomed has unaccountably quit. The boat must be tied to a tree somewhere in the semi-darkness among the green leaves to let an unseen barge headed up stream go by. A muffled horn is sounding in the near distance followed by a long silence, fogbound.

You are bound down the Mississippi. The tightening cords with which you are held in the squirrel cage of your lives has been torn been nowhere visible. The direction has been altered. The ties fastened you, a pigmy, in the inexorable pattern that held you have been cut.

At breakfast you will begin to meet men and women similar to yourselves. Your youthful waiter's name is, amusingly, Reubin Pilot, too bad it wasn't Pontius, said someone, a good name. a recently married lad with an infant son and a wife in Cincinnati whom he is waiting impatiently to join after this trip.

########## Mornings (I am an early riser) taking advantage of the pilot's knowledge of the intricate bends of the river, often scraping the banks, we can take hold of green leaves and twigs as we go by. I can hear birds I do not recognize singing in the branches of the willows.

6 # #

Among the 120 passengers, # over worked libraians or stenographers and recent teachers, # get used to their sorrows; was a scattering of high tension widows trying to # lay their nerves and get # themselves set # for the next six month's grind.

One among these individuals interest me in a somewhat remote # fashion. I never got his name or # he went abour deck in Bermuda shorts # or less and played Bingo to win. His only # a middle age man, # a jock strap, # manipulated Bingo to hid his genitals, # which was not too large, between them # to my wife's ill supressed fury.

This man looked at me and I at him when we me about the cprridors but we seldom said anything to each other but the briefest of good days. # His face carried a habitually haggard upon it which did not intrigue me; a typical American business man, I was sorry for him though I had no need to be, he was probably worth twice or three times as much as I could kick into the pot # if there had been a showdow.

The story was that he was a successful Passadena # executive who left his office once or twice a year when he couldn't stan it any longer before getting a stroke; a top # of some sort, at which time he would leave instruction to his secretary that he had gone away, gone away, God damn it; # just gone away. # for no one, but no one, to try to get him. Tell them I have just did, stepped into a hole and dissappeared. Don't try to get me on the phone because I won't answer it.

The man came annually to the Mississippi for a rest to keep

7 # # # #

himself from going mad. He was a nice enough guy perhaps hit the ball smaller in the high 80s, goes to church (or not) on sundays, / kids at camp this summer, the girl at Wellesly nezt year, got to reak up this west coast habit, though #### always favord the University of California, science you know, a serious boy who will make a place for himself in this world.

The man has faith in the country, that in spite of certai obvious defects, but why mention them, will continue to give you the best value for your money of any investment that the world can supply. And when, it is not inconceiveabl, his investments pile up enough, in his old age, he may sometme in the future endow a museum of art in the metropolis of his region where the Frick or the J.P. Morgans take the trophis of and profit by. the period for future generation to wonder at. / If this is not a work of faith what is it?

Faith is a negro attribute, it is bred of the forest, the jungles and plains, dessers of Africa. It incites to ritualistic dances. Voodoo is a Haitian form of it, as the Freudian confessional is another. But the negro of our own south is closer to us. than any other.

On our boat trip south I was slow to discover that our waitresses practiced a private devotional service ###### before breakfast at ###### before going on duty about the rooms and corridors every day. It concists of a reading from the scriptures and the singing of a few hymns.

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of the thing trickled out amid the paying guests, / led
who,
The rumor / slowly spread among the paying guests / led
an
strangely enough by the old man, appeared one morning / the pilot's
assistant, spread one morning among the passengers / one morning
lead me
He was
for the service. This followed next morning by the ladies, the
Catholics kept this strictly away. We were emotionally impressed.
It brought tears to our eyes.
fast,
broken our

It brought tears to our eyes.

The early hour added to the effect, we / the passengers had not yet
held
The service was held deep in the hold, on the bottom deck, in
the maids' sleeping quarters, a narrow space quite against their beds,
we had to bow our heads to enter it. Not much room. We crowded together
sitting on the bottom steps of the gangway, our knees squeezed up to
make room for the others.

Hymn books were handed around by a big, pleasant faced woman
whome I had seen frequently smoking a cigarette as she readied our room.
There was silence, as prompted by someone they began to sing. They didn't have
a leader nor were their voices
particularly melodious but an air of intense religious fervor
made their faces serious and commanded attention.

Years of slavery with an African background took hold of me as
I listened intently. There was a reading from the psalms in which the
congregation stood / took part. My wife and I had in the last few months been reading
Mez Mezzero's, white jazz player's, Really the Blues. It came over us
with fresh emphasis, how deep had been the well of suffering that
the negro race was giving vent to. The faces of the singers, fine heads
again and again about me
made me glance up at those who were to be
compared with them. I have been long surprised at what I saw there.

This was the end of the service. He had come away from Passengers
after all / of some sort among the passengers. He had come away from Passengers