337 page printout CHAPTER XII. 1 - GOING TO JAIL FOR A PRINCIPLE. THE events of 1879 teste

                  337 page printout
                    CHAPTER XII.

        1 -- GOING TO JAIL FOR A PRINCIPLE.

   THE events of 1879 tested the loyalty of
many persons professing Liberalism. The
year began with the trial in prospect that
was to put D.M. Bennett in jail for thirteen
months and subject him to a fine of $300 for mailing
the pamphlet "Cupid's Yokes." All this trou-
ble, as I have said, began at the 1878 Watkins con-
vention of Freethinkers, when Josephine Tilton
for a moment left her book stand, which was "con-
tiguous" to Bennett's, and when in her absence he
waited on an individual who called for a copy of
that pamphlet. Of course the right to sell so in-
nocuous a piece of writing deserved to be main-
tained, even at some cost; but as for myself I
never viewed the production as worth quite the fif-
teen cents that was its list price. I read "Cupid's
Yokes" as most persons would, because it had been
pronounced indecent, licentious, and lewd; and
thereby began an experience to which there has
been no exception, i.e., that one who procures and
reads any book or print having no other distinc-
tion than that of being obscene will be disappointed,
as he deserves to be. The last book to catch me
that way was "Women in Love," by D.H. Law-
rence. Justice Ford of New York, in 1923, or
                     243
244    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1879

earlier, discovered that his daughter, unmarried,
had gained access to this book of Lawrence's at a
library; and on the strength of that fact justice
Ford went to the New York legislature with his
Clean Books bill. But "Women in Love" is the
soporific kind of literature that appropriately has
been called "chloroform in print," being so dull
that no one of my temperament, craving action,
could read it with sustained interest.
   The first number of The Truth Seeker for 1879
announced President Hayes's pardon of E.H. Hey-
wood, who had been jailed for writing and selling
the pamphlet, and that Bennett's prosecution in
the United States Court stood "in suspenso." The
case was set for March 18. Bennett then said that
he expected nothing but conviction from the presid-
ing judge, the Hon. C.L. Benedict, in whose court
Comstock had never lost. The suspense was brief.
Bennett headed his next editorial "Our Trial and
Conviction" (Truth Seeker, March 29), and the
article began with the words: "It is over. We
have been tried, and twelve men have pronounced
us guilty. We are now a convict, and if the rul-
ings and instructions of Judge Benedict cannot be
set aside, a prison awaits us."
   The rulings and instructions were not set aside.
On the 15th of May they were upheld by Judges
Blatchford, Benedict, and Choate, and on June 5
Judge benedict pronounced the sentence: "You
have been indicted by a grand jury, tried by a jury,
and found guilty of violating a statue of your land.
The Court has heard the arguments of your coun-
sel and given the case serious thought. The sen-
1879]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         245

tence of the court is that you be confined, at hard
labor, for a period of thirteen months, and to pay
a fine of $300; the sentence to be executed in the
Albany penitentiary."
   There was malice in that thirteen months. A
year's sentence might have been served in the com-
fortable county jail in Ludlow street.
   Bennett came to court that day prepared with
an article entitled: "What I Have to Say Why
Sentence Should Not Be Passed Upon Me," in
which he ventured to express the mild hope that
the laws of the country might sometimes be admin-
istered by a better judge than the one that had tried
him. He had with him these contemplated re-
marks in the form of galley proofs, having reduced
them to print, and asked twice for the privilege
of reading them; but "waving him imperiously
aside," Benedict pronounced his doom, and a mar-
shal took him to Ludlow Street jail.
   The Hon. Abram Wakeman, brother of Thad-
deus B. Wakeman, who managed the outside cam-
paign against the Comstock laws and their con-
stitutionality, had conducted the defense. Abram
was great as a man and a lawyer; his presence and
his eloquence made judge Benedict on his bench
look like a child in a high-chair taking a scolding
and occasionally saying "I won't." Mr. Wakeman
endeavored to show that the indicted pamphlet
contained no plain language that could not be par-
alleled in many other books. He tried to intro-
duce expert testimony that "Cupid's Yokes" must
be separated from the class of books recognized as
obscene. He was stopped by Benedict's "I won't
246    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1879

let you." The prosecuting attorney, Fiero, was one
of those vain fellows whom for their incorrigible
conceit and impudence you feel the desire to kick.
Present and ready to testify to the literary charac-
ter of "Cupid's Yokes," was O.B. Frothingham,
lecturer for the large group of cultivated persons
who met weekly in Masonic Temple to hear his
scholarly discourses. He came pretty near to be-
ing the flower and the ripe fruit of his generation.
Confronting such a man, Fiero seemed a small bad
boy, insolent and precociously vicious. And this
same Fiero, objecting to the introduction of com-
petent testimony, told the twelve dolts sitting as a
jury that they were to form their own opinion of
the book, or take it from the court, regardless of
the views of "Frothingham or any other ham."
(Here the impulse to kick Fiero would have been
too powerful for control had he not been out of
reach.)
   During the next lull in the proceedings the prose-
cutor approached Mr. Frothingham and said: "I
hope you will accept an apology from me if, as I
am warned, I have used your name in an insulting
manner." Mr. Frothingham, without appearing to
see him, replied that this was unnecessary; for,
said he, "neither your insult nor your apology
reaches me."
   The prosecution had marked in the pamphlet
the "passages held to violate the law. Fiero de-
clared they were too impure for the record; but
Abram Wakeman read every one of them in a good
clear voice, so that the jury and the audience could
hear them; they all went into the transcript of his
1879]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         247

speech and were included in the report of the trial
that Bennett made into a book, besides which all
of the readers of The Truth Seeker saw them in
the current number of the paper.
   The secular press almost unanimously condemned
the conduct of the trial, the conviction, and the
sentence that followed. Indignation meetings were
held in various parts of the country, while a peti-
tion for Bennett's pardon addressed to the Presi-
dent (Hayes) bore above two hundred thousand
signatures. The protest that went up has no mod-
ern parallel except that which was aroused by the
execution of Francisco Ferrer in 1909, or by the
Sacco-Vanzetti matter of 1927.

          2 -- From JAIL TO PENITENTIARY

   At the Ludlow street jail Bennett at first was
immured in a dungeon which from his description
of it must have surpassed all his expectations as
to noisomeness; but before the time for him to
sleep in it arrived the turnkey summoned him to
the jailer's office, where the sheriff's son let him
know that by paying $15 a week for board and
lodging, he might have better accommodations for
himself and the privilege of entertaining his friends
up to 10 o'clock at night. The prisoner closed at
once with the offer. The cell to which he was
now assigned had a comfortable bed, nicely white-
washed walls, and room for the reception of half
a dozen visitors.
   All the office hands, including the printers, sur-
prised the doorkeeper by going in a group to visit
248    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1879

their employer in prison. Bennett paid a tribute
to the loyalty of these faithful employees, calling
them by name. "It is saddening," he wrote, "to
part with the excellent and faithful corps of as-
sistants and compositors employed on The Truth
Seeker. Few papers have had a more faithful, in-
telligent, and honorable staff of assistants. We
have toiled together for years in perfect harmony
and cordiality. They entertain a high regard for
me, and I assuredly do f or them. Let me men-
tion their names, that you may at least know that
much about them: E.M. Macdonald, foreman;
H.J. Thorhas, proof-reader and compositor; T.R.
Stevens, G.H. Weeks, G.E. Macdonald, T. Grat-
tan, J. Phair, and C.A. Wendeborn, compositors."
The loyalty of employee to employer is a phenom-
enon rarer now than then. The change has been
brought about through organization of the em-
ployees exclusively in their own interests. In the
smaller offices, of which this was an example, the
man and the "boss" were much of a family. The
oldest of the compositors in the list, T.R. Stevens,
lives to count his great-grandchildren. Tom Grat-
tan was first to die, being a consumptive. Thomas
has been dead for many years. Phair was killed
in a street railway accident in Canada, and Weeks
and Wendeborn have not been heard of for de-
cades. As we are talking of a time fifty years
back, they more than likely have laid aside stick
and rule for good.
   On Bennett's removal to the Albany penitentiary,
pursuant to an order of District Attorney Fiero
dated June 17, E.M. Macdonald took the editor's
1879]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         249

desk. G.E. Macdonald then became foreman,
yielding his compositor's frame to Ed. Hurd, who
stayed with the family for a considerable time.
Few years have since passed without a call from
Mr. Hurd, who quit composition for proof-reading
and found employment on the daily papers. He
died May 30, 1928, in Colorado, at the Printers'
Home, in his 80th year.
   Bennett in the penitentiary was for the first thirty
days incommunicado to his friends in New York,
but a friend was nearby in the person of G.A.
Lomas, editor of The Shaker Manifests. Although
Mr. and Mrs. Bennett had left the Shaker com-
munity more than thirty years before that time, all
the members continued to express the sincerest
friendship for him; and their editor, it seems,
found a way of getting past the penitentiary guards.
Elder Lomas reported to the outside world that
"the old hero was in a most undaunted mood" and
likely to remain so. "But it was terrible to my
feelings," says the Shaker elder, "when he said,
with deepest emotion: 'You know, Albert, I have
not been used to being treated and spoken to like
a dog.'
   While in the Ludlow street hostelry the Doctor's
time was all his own, and having writing materials
at hand his output was profuse enough to fill
a half dozen pages of the paper every week. The
writing appeared as letters from "Behind the Bars."
At Albany, they allowed him at first a monthly let-
ter covering an area described as a "half-sheet."
On this he wrote so closely with a sharpened pen-
cil that at a little, distance the half-sheet appeared
250    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1879

to be almost a solid black, and it assayed more than
three thousand words. With practice he in the
course of a few months raised this number of words
to 3,250, which occupied more than a page of the
paper in solid and by no means fat long primer.
   Before the end of the year the keepers of the
penitentiary relieved their distinguished prisoner of
the duty of making shoes, to which they had first
detailed him, and, perhaps because he knew drugs,
placed him in the hospital, where the restrictions
as to writing were removed. He now could receive
papers and books and write unceasingly. Before
he came out he had nearly finished, with exterior
aid, a two-volume work entitled "The Gods and
Religions of Ancient and Modern Times."

           3 -- WHAT THE CAT BROUGHT IN.

   In the fall a new complication arose. His ene-
mies made public the intelligence that some two
years previously Dr. Bennett had been "vamped"
or seriously blandished, and that, while fearlessly
acting out the maxim, "Do right and fear no man,"
he had neglected its no less important amendment:
"Don't write, and fear no woman."
   On page 265 of Volume V (1878) of The Truth
Seeker, there is a brief article from the editor's
pen, dealing in a strikingly sympathetic way with
the unfortunate Bishop McCoskry of Michigan,
who at the age of 70 had written a number of let-
ters to a girl. Bennett comments:

   "It is a dangerous business for a doting old man to
write soft and silly letters to any lady, for he knows not,
1879]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         251

though they are designed for the eyes of but a single per-
son, how many may be invited to peruse them. Witness
the grief of the old bishop for this cause. He was obliged
to resign the honorable position he held, with the promise
to spend the remainder of his life in Europe, in exile and
retired disgrace. Poor Beecher had lots of trouble about
the letters he wrote. The Newell divorce case, now pro-
gressing in our courts, is bringing to light another batch
of ridiculous love-letters, written by another old man.
They may serve to amuse for an hour a giddy public,
but it would have been far better to consign them to the
flames. Were we to give advice to men of age, it would
be: WRITE NO LOVE-LETTERS.

   That was the voice and warning of experience,
for even then he was feeling disquietude over cer-
tain letters written by himself. A year later those
missives were serving to amuse a giddy public,
and for more than an hour too, for Bennett never
undertook a series of writings that could be read
in an hour. In his agitation for the repeal of the
Comstock laws he had raised up two sets of oppo-
nents who agreed in nothing else but the sacredness
of these laws. Those opponents of his were the
Christian cohorts on the one hand, and the so-
called Free Religious and conservative Spiritualist
people on the other. The orthodox had backed
Comstock all the time. Now the Boston contingent
who read The Index and took the side of Francis
E. Abbot in the debate, and the constituents of the
Chicago Religio-Philosophical Journal (Spiritual-
ist), Col. John C. Bundy, editor, espoused Com-
stock's cause against Bennett, and for downright
meanness and conscienceless lying far surpassed
252    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1879

their ecclesiastical allies. The woman addressed
in the tell-tale letters first tried to blackmail Ben-
nett, who wouldn't give her a cent, and then sold
the letters to Bundy, who made them public through
his paper. A fellow I have heretofore mentioned,
Seth Wilbur Payne, who started a paper called
The Age of Reason at 141 Eighth street, is sup-
posed to have stolen The Truth Seeker's mailing
list and conveyed it to the enemy. So Bennett's
readers received copies of Bundy's paper contain-
ing the letters, to which Bundy had given the worst
interpretation possible, and added a score of lies.
In an article of thirteen columns' length Bennett
from his prison acknowledged the authorship of
the letters and supplied the circumstances under
which they were written. Why he wrote them,
he said, must forever remain a mystery, since it
was a conundrum to him. He believed himself to
have been afflicted with a kind of moral delirium.
Well, he was not going to try to lie out of it. What-
ever may have impelled him to write them, the
letters certainly were from his hand. Then, plead-
ing the right of every man to be a fool once in his
life, and saying he feared he had too fully availed
himself of that privilege, he gave all the details,
getting forth that in an evil hour, somebody, doing
the cat act, brought in this female. Describing
the occasion, he wrote: "One evening, while [I
was] writing in my office, an old friend and ac-
quaintance of forty years' standing entered with
this person." The person was Miss Hannah Jo-
sephine McNellis -- "unmarried," thirty-five years
of age, Irish by birth, raised in the Catholic church,
1879]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         253

educated in a Catholic school, but now become, as
she stated, a Spiritualist, a Liberal, and a "me-
dium." Personally Josie was to be inventoried as
"petite, lively, chatty, and agreeable." DeRobigne
Mortimer Bennett fell for Hannah Josephine Mc-
Nellis. The person desired employment, and he
invented for her the situation of canvasser for ad-
vertisements. At that she had no success. She
next accepted the proposition to work in the office,
"to assist at correspondence, proof-reading, copy-
holding, and making some selections of anecdotes,
etc., for the paper." She failed again, totally; and
as no more pretexts for employing her occurred
to him, he advised Miss McNellis "that she had
better discontinue," which she did. But in depart-
ing, this person left the miasma with him, he states,
and the infection worked. Then was it that he
wrote the letters as his part of the correspondence
which ensued. Bennett for some time had been
assigning causes for the acts of others, but he now
provided himself with a problem in behavior which
he could not solve. "How I could ever write so
much," says he, "and keep it up so long and for so
unworthy an object, is a mystery even to myself."
Why he discontinued the correspondence is more
easily explained than its inception. People who
knew the woman brought him proof of her deceit-
ful nature. They gave him the name and residence
of a man she had lived and traveled with, and the
testimony of attendants when "she was brought
to premature childbirth." The latter misfortune
was worsened to his mind from the circumstance
that before he discovered the cause of her illness
254    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1879

he had been solicited for a donation "to procure
medicines, etc.," and "handed out seven dollars."
It irked Mr. Bennett to say aught against a wo-
man -- "the male sex very naturally feel a com-
mendable degree of magnanimity toward the oppo-
site sex." But, he demands, "what am I to do?
My reputation is grossly and dastardly attacked."
He had been accused by the loathsome Bundy of
pursuing, persecuting, oppressing, and trying to
starve out a virgin; of importuning her to sacri-
fice her virtue on the altar of his lust, when there
was no such person as a virgin concerned, and the
letters and circumstances admitted of no such in-
terpretation. Mrs. Bennett published a "card" in
the paper, saying that she had known of the wo-
man's influence over her husband and had been
grieved by it; that he had long since told her of the
letters. "But it is all past," she wrote; "the most
amicable feeling exists between us; and I am sorry
that other persons should make it their business
to arouse and spread a scandalous matter that was
all settled and overlooked." The ghouls were in-
different to the feelings of Mrs. Bennett, who suf-
fered much more from this publicity than she had
from the affair when it occurred.

              4 -- STEADFAST FRIENDS.

   If the publishers of the Bennett letters thought
themselves repaid, then it was an instance of vir-
tue, or meanness -- often the same thing -- being its
own reward. Bennett lost no credit. Those who
1879]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         255

had been his friends remained so still. When de-
tractors asserted that the higher type of Liberal-
ism had quit him and that only "the coarsest and
lowest species" remained, Bennett promptly named
as among the steadfast, whose absence he had not
noted: Colonel Ingersoll, who had worked for
weeks to procure him a pardon; James Parton, the
distinguished historian and biographer of Voltaire;
Thaddeus B. Wakeman, whose interest in The
Truth Seeker's welfare remained undiminished;
Theron C. Leland, who wielded the sharpest pen
then or since at the service of Liberalism; Mr.
Briggs of California, who, always generous, had
increased his donations; Courtlandt Palmer, of the
very heart of swelldom, who was writing a letter
nearly every week with a generous inclosure; and
Mr. A. Van Deusen, one of the "aristocrats," who
"drops in every now and then and leaves from $5
to $25." And as it was with the leaders, so with
the rank and file; there was no defection. My
own verdict in the case is that Bennett was a poor
judge of women. He ought to have sheered off
when he learned the McNellis woman's pedigree --
Irish, Catholic by education and training, and pre-
tending to be a "medium." The Irish-Catholic fe-
male is not passionate but intriguing. An honest
man trusted the McNellis woman and she betrayed
him. Except for her treachery we might congrat-
ulate Bennett on the experiencing of so pleasur-
able a commotion of the senses at sixty.
   In 1874 a large stuffed shirt known as Joseph
Cook was set up for a Monday lecturer in Boston.
256    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1879

Cook had a considerable vogue on account of his
pretense that he was harmonizing religion and
science. In 1879 he chose to "throw in" with An-
thony Comstock against D.M. Bennett and all
other Freethinkers. He delivered a special lecture
on the subject, to which Bennett replied under the
plain heading of "Joseph Cook, the Liar," and
when Cook came to New York to address the an-
nual meeting of the Comstock Society in the hall
of the Young Men's Christian Association, the boys
from The Truth Seeker office distributed the ar-
ticle, at the entrance, to persons going in and to
passersby. Hundreds of copies had been handed
out before the distribution could be stopped. Writ-
ing an account of this occasion was my first at-
tempt at reporting. I learn from the effort that
when Mr. Cook entered the hall he looked to me
"like a cross between a pugilist and a cattle-drover,"
and that as seen on the platform making a speech
he was "shock-headed, bull-necked, sledge-fisted,
with a foot like an earthquake." He had certainly
a big right foot, as I now recall, and he "stomped"
on the platform to impress his points. Hence the
simile of an earthquake.
   S.P. Putnam had now come out of the church
and announced himself as a lecturer not only on
Liberal topics but also on "Free Marriage," "Mar-
riage and the Social Evil," and "Times and Genius
of Shakespeare."
   Two Liberal papers were born but to die: The
Pacific Coast Free Thinker, San Francisco, Byron
Adonis, editor, and The Infidel Monthly, Albany,
1879]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         275

N.Y.; A.H. McClure & Co. John Brown Smith
went to jail in Northampton, Mass., for refusing
to pay a poll tax of $2. He stuck it out for eleven
Months, when a friend paid the tax and liberated
him. This was the year of the memorable "Pocas-
set tragedy," when a man named Freeman, in Po-
casset, Mass., killed his child in obedience to a
command of God," even as Abraham led his son
to the sacrifice.
   In this year of 1879 S.P. Putnam published his
attempt at a serial narrative called "Gottlieb: His
Life"; Mr. Wakeman wrote long and convincing
articles on the iniquity of the Comstock postal laws;
a numerously signed petition for the taxation of
church property was presented to the New York
legislature, sponsored by Senator G.E. Williams;
an attempt made to break up the Oneida Commu-
nity as "a form of organized harlotry" was de-
nounced by Mr. Bennett editorially and by E.C.
Walker in the correspondence columns. In these
days appeared occasionally Mary E. Tillotson of
Vineland, N.J., in skirts almost as short as 1928
fashions demand. But Mrs. Tillotson obviously
wore pants. Crowds followed her on the street.
Comstock bullied the American News Company into
refusing to distribute The Truth Seeker.

 5 -- I MAKE FORENSIC AND POETIC ENDEAVORS.

   The Fourth New York Liberal League held reg-
ular biweekly meetings. This is the organization
that met at Ned Underhill's house and at the home
of its president, Daniel Edward Ryan, or wherever
258    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1879

hospitality was offered and space available. One
member after another prepared and delivered a
talk or read a paper, listening to all which gradu-
ally produced in my mind the conviction that I
could do that. I therefore gave notice to the sec-
retary, who was my brother, that I should like to
step into the next vacancy and offer a few appro-
priate and well-chosen remarks. He and the other
officers consented, but he warned me I must not
expect him to stay. I withstood the pleasantries
of the boys in the printing-office while awaiting
my opportunity, and in the meantime conceived of
a paper under the title of "New England and the
People Up There." My chance came on March 9,
(1879). For the occasion the League, instead of
looking for a parlor to meet in, rented a small hall,
which was filled the audience including, besides
Dr. Bennett, the noted lecturer B.F. Underwood
and the learned philosopher Stephen Pearl An-
drews, as well as most of mother's roomers. I
marked with surprise the presence of Miss Ettie
DePuy, a magnificent young woman who might
have had a career as an actress in tragic parts if
she had not soon married and taken, up domestic
life. Owing to my natural reserve I had not at-
tempted to make her acquaintance.
   Mr. Bennett reported the occasion in his next
editorial article, March 15. He wrote (this was
three months before his imprisonment)

   "On Sunday night Mr. Underwood attended the bi-
weekly meeting of the Fourth New York Liberal League,
in Science Hall building. A paper was read by Mr.
1879]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         259

George E. Macdonald -- his first effort in that direction
-- entitled 'New England and the People Up There.' It
was full of sparkling humor all the way through, and
brought out repeated laughter and applause from the
audience. We hope ere long to lay this lecture before
our readers. Hearty compliments were paid to the lec-
turer on this his first effort, and several predicted a bright
future for him in the humorous field. Among the com-
plimentary speakers were S.P. Andrews and Mr. Under-
wood. They agreed that he would yet be appreciated by
audiences much larger than on this occasion."

      I regret not to have fulfilled these predictions.
However, Ettie DePuy captured me and made me
walk with her to her door, alternately praising the
matter of my discourse and hinting how I might
improve my speaking voice. Miss DePuy offered
to give me a few lessons in Delsarte oratory, but I
had had two girl teachers. I was twenty-one and
was through with women' Bennett printed the lec-
ture in the paper and then published it as a pam-
phlet. I feel no impulse to read it now. Sixteen
years passed before I "lectured" again, when my
audience had increased to eight hundred, all cheer-
ful; and that was the last.
   May was the fatal month when I wrote my first
"poetry," some stanzas inspired by the imprison-
ment of Bennett and the grief of his wife. George
Francis Train, who was contributing to The Truth
Seeker then, quoted three of them:

      "Our statute brooks are stained by laws
        That make our honest thought a crime;
        That couple Freethoughts aim sublime
      With moral filth's corrupting cause.
263                FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1879

      The hand of persecution smites
        Our noblest leaders, men of brain,
        Who work for universal gain
      And wage the war of human rights.

      Then let the lamp of truth be trimmed;
        Let growing strength allay our fears --
        The light that beams from coming years
      Illume the eyes by teardrops dimmed."

           WHENCE THE IMPULSE TO WRITE?

   I have often wondered how the writing game
chanced to appeal to our family. Mother made
the first venture; then my brother, and in the time
I am now speaking of I felt the urge to take a few
 chances. We had no literary or more than liter-
ate antecedents; and not one of our kin, who were
numerous, ever developed the writing faculty, or
were equal to more than the composition of a de-
cent letter hoping this finds you the same. How-
ever, a relative, nearby in space and time, but re-
moved in kinship, won no inconsiderable reputation.
That was Henry Harland, whose mother and my
mother had the same grandparents, and were cous-
ins, yet most sisterly in their intercourse. The
Harlands lived at 35 Beekman Place, in a house
that backed on the East River and commanded a
view of Blackwell's (now Welfare) Island. The
scene of Harry's novel "As It Was Written," put
forth under the pseudonym of Sidney Luska, was
laid in Beckman Place; and one summer when the
family was abroad, mother and I lived in the house.
Edmund' Clarence Stedman tattered Harry. Next
1879]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         261

to putting him in a printing-office his parents did
the best thing for their son. Having read his "Car-
dinal's Snuff-Box" I should have called it a perfect
piece of work if at one place he had not pictured a
cow licking a man's hand "with her soft white pad
of a tongue." A cow's tongue is no pad; it is ex-
ceedingly muscular; about as smooth as a rasp, and
two or three licks bestowed on a man's hand would
take the hide off. But the longer I live the more I
am forced to observe the ignorance of persons not
brought up on a farm. I have just found a high-
school graduate who has never seen a yoke of
cattle and doesn't know oxen from cows; who has
not seen a stone wall, a pile of cord-wood, nor a
woodsaw and sawhorse. A few years since a
painting deemed worthy of honorable mention by
incompetent judges placed the driver of a yoke of
cattle on the off side. Ben Ames Williams pro-
fessed to depict farm and barnyard life in New
England (in The Saturday Evening Post) with-
out being aware that the uprights which hold the
necks of kine at their manger are stanchions, and
so called them something else. The same writer
speaks also of barrel staves, released by their de-
caying hoops, falling into "shooks" again; which
would he like a piece of disintegrating statuary re-
suming the form and dimensions of the marble
block it was chiseled from. Then a Collier's ar-
tist painted a tapped sugar maple with a fire bucket'
hung by its bail over the sap spile. And he had a
girl tasting the sap with a spoon, evidently suppos-
ing that the tree ran hot syrup which could not be
drunk from a dipper. I look in the current At-
262    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1879

lantic Monthly (March, 1928) and find Llewelyn
Powys writing: "And as I gazed upon this frail
human being, so purely winnowed by the harsh
flails of life," and so on. Winnowed by flails!
Fanned by baseball bats! Such exhibitions of ig-
norance broadcast in publications like The Satur-
day Evening Post, Collier's, and The Atlantic
Monthly are a cause of deep distress to the edu-
cated.
   The home of his ancestors having been Nor-
wich, Connecticut, Harry Harland, though born
abroad, regarded that town as his birthplace. He
went further and traced his descent to the cele-
brated Pilgrims, John Alden and Priscilla Mullens.
I have not examined the genealogy to see if I am
implicated by it. The ancestors of the Hussey
famuy, to which his maternal grandfather and
mine belonged, were seventeenth-century pioneers,
not pilgrims.

   NOTE. -- The absorption just now of the Peter Eckler Pub-
lishing Company by The Truth Seeker makes it impos-
sible for me to resist telling now an incident, and its re-
lation to this deal, that happened the year that William
Green or William Green's Sons, printers, turned out the
first copies of the revised New Testament done in America.
One of the compositors in The Truth Seeker office men-
tioned by D.M. Bennett in his letter from Ludlow Street
jail quoted last week, had taken a job at Green's as proof-
reader. On the day the New Testament was up he could
not work and asked me to "sub." for him, which I did.
Now the foreman at Greeres was Robert Drunanond, a man
of such efficiency that employees and the craft spoke of
him as the "slave driver." When I entered his presence
that morning Mr. Drummond was spreading the gospel by
1879]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         263

cutting up copies of it into takes for the men. His greet-
ing to me was gruff; it assigned me to another place first,
and then to a red-headed assistant foreman. Well, Mr.
Drummond -- ages later -- bought the Peter Eckler
Publishing business from the heirs of Peter and Peter's son
Caryl, and managed it until November 1, 1927, when, just
before his 79th birthday, he was killed in a street accident
in Brooklyn. He liked the book trade, but printing was
his profession, and a few years before his death he got
to be almost a daily visitor at The Truth Seeker office,
where he enjoyed sitting on a high stool and discoursing
about old times and the newest refinements of the great
art. He had forgotten the morning when in Greens big
printing-office he officiated like a mate on a steamboat and
referred the green hand to the place aforesaid. His son
and son-in-law are the parties of the first part in the
transfer of the publishing company to this address. -- The
Truth Seeker, July 14, 1928.

                      ****     ****

            Reproducible Electronic Publishing
                   can defeat censorship.

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       are to be copied and given away, but NOT sold.

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                      CHAPTER XIII.

           1 -- A FREE PEOPLE IN A FREE LAND.

   WHEN the Hon. Elizur Wright of Boston,
president of the Liberal League, issued
his call for the annual congress of 1879, he
appointed also a national party convention "to give
the Liberals of the United States an opportunity for
consulting as to the propriety of taking political
action." The invitation to this convention, evidently
written by Colonel Ingersoll, was published Sep-
tember 6, 1879; it bore the heading, "A Free People
in a Free Land," and to it were affixed the signa-
tures of Robert G. Ingersoll, James Parton, T.B.
Wakeman, E.H. Neyman, Parker Pillsbury, J.P.
Mendum, Horace Seaver, and B.F. Underwood.
   The regular League Congress met on Saturday,
September 13, in Greenwood Hall, Mechanics' In-
stitute, Cincinnati. The political Convention as-
sembled on Sunday at the Grand Opera House,
which was filled. Having completed the unfinished
League business of the previous day by electing all
of the old officers, the Convention proceeded to
organize. The report of what was done occupied
thirty-four columns of The Truth Seeker of Sep-
tember 20 and 27 and October 5. Gen. B.A. Mor-
ton of New Haven, Conn., presided, and Colonel
Ingersoll spoke frequently, saying, for a last word:
                      264
1879]  FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT   265

"I think this convention has behaved splendidly.
Let us give three cheers for the party."
   No candidates were nominated, members being
advised to interrogate candidates of the political
parties and vote for such as accepted the principles
of the Liberal League. The new party's "menace"
appeared in the persons of Charles Sotheran and
other members of the Socialist Labor Party, who
demanded recognition of the "economic" question.
The Cincinnati papers falsely reported that these
Socialists had captured the convention. Colonel
Ingersoll, however, handled the bumptious ones
adroitly. They had been more welcome had they
been less obstreperous, since "One Who Was
There," writing in The Truth Seeker, said that
"whatever prejudice there might have been in the
convention against Socialists, as such, arose not
from their principles but from their violent manner
of announcing them, as also from their action in
urging upon the Convention the adoption of meas-
ures and principles which, by their own confession
on the floor of the Convention, the rules of their
own organization forbade them to support."
   As tried by the president of the League on Gen.
Benj. F. Butler and the Hon. John D. Long, nom-
inees for governor of Massachusetts, the experi-
ment of interrogating candidates on their church-
state attitude produced negligible results. Mr. Long
declined to give a categorical answer, but asked
Mr. Wright to call on him. Butler replied that he
must refer the inquirer to his record.
   A proposal from any hopeful member of the Lib-
eral party to endorse candidates of either of the
266    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT   [1879

old parties was sure to be met with heartfelt pro-
test from some other member who could think of
such a proceeding only with pain. There were re-
ports that Ingersoll had renounced his allegiance to
the Republican party. This was of course false.
Ingersoll for various reasons was dissatisfied with
Hayes, and held him in low esteem, as was shown
when a newspaper man asked him if he thought
there might be bloodshed over the late disputed ele-
ction, and Ingersoll answered, "Who would fire a gun
for Hayes?"

          2 -- STATE LIBERAL GATHERINGS.

   One of the ablest and best-known Freethought
writers and speakers of the last quarter of the nine-
teenth century reported, in The Truth Seeker of
October 4, a Liberal Encampment, composed of
Materialists and Spiritualists, that had closed a
week's meeting at Bismarck Grove, Kansas, Sep-
tember 11. The reporter's name, evidently a new
one to compositors and proof-readers, was printed
J.E. "Kemsburg."
   Mr. Remsburg, author of the report, named as
the moving spirit of the Encampment Gov. Charles
Robinson, Kansas' first governor, while among visi-
tors from abroad were the Hon. George W. Julian,
who had been the Antislavery candidate for vice-
president of the United States in 1852; and George
W. Brown of Rockford, Ill., formerly editor of the
famous Herald of Freedom, the first Antislavery
paper published in Kansas, which was destroyed by
a proslavery mob in 1853.
1879]  FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT   267

   Scores of the Antislavery agitators, when their
cause had been won, joined the Liberal ranks. They
were represented by such leaders as the two named
by Mr. Remsburg (Julian and Brown) and by
Elizur Wright, Parker Pillsbury, A.B. Bradford,
Lucy Colman, Amy Post, and Lucretia Mott, and
by hundreds of the rank and file who joined the
Liberal League and subscribed for The Truth
Seeker. The Abolitionists were in the main relig-
ious heretics, the single prominent exception being
the outlaw John Brown of Osawatomie, who was
a fanatical Presbyterian.
   In the columns of The Truth Seeker thus far
scanned I have not found the name of the veteran
Agnostic, student of Spencer and exponent of Evo-
lution, David Eccles, but on March 22, R.G. Eccles
asks The Truth Seeker to publish his challenge to
Charles Sotheran, a Socialist secretary, to debate
economic principles. As R.G. Eccles writes as of
New Castle, Pa., I do not completely identify him
with Dr. R.G. Eccles of Brooklyn; still his remark
to Sotheran, "If your object was to obtain truth
rather than to play the bully and obtain a bluff,"
etc., is after the forthright Ecclesonian manner,
and I doubt not that this was truly the brother of
David.
   The organized Freethinkers of the State of New
York held their convention in September at Chautau-
qua. George Jacob Holyoake of England was pres-
ent and participated in the exercises. Page 66 of
Mr. Holyoake's pamphlet "Among the Americans"
(1881) is devoted to a not complimentary notice of
268    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT   [1879

the gathering. Mr. H.L. Green writing to The
Truth Seeker said of Mr. Holyoake:

   "So soon as I noticed in the investigator that George
Jacob Holyoake was coming to this country I wrote a
letter to New York for him, when he arrived, inviting him
to attend the Freethinkers' Convention, and I rejoiced when
I received his card accepting the invitation. His pres-
ence was a great addition to the Chautauqua entertain-
ment. He has a great head and a greater heart. Everyone
who came in contact with him fell in love with him; and
after he had remained with us a number of days, and
spoken so often and so well, it gave us all sad feelings
to bid him farewell. The Liberal friends who met Mt.
Holyoake at Chautauqua will always remember the time
spent with him as the most pleasant period of their lives."

   The "greater heart" that Mr. Green found in Mr.
Holyoake did not save him from saying of the gath-
ering: "I was surprised to find the Liberal con-
vention I attended a great 'pow wow,' with no def-
inite plan of procedure such as would be observed
in England." That was unkind after the words of
Mr. Green, who was the organizer of the Free-
thinkers' Association and of the convention and
invited him there.
   A debating Fundamentalist of the time, the Rev.
Clark Braden, supposed to be a Campbellite, dogged
Freethought lectures and defied them to meet him.
He was a vituperative polecat, and Christians who
engaged him to meet Underwood or Jamieson did
not repeat the order. B.F. Underwood unveiled
this honorless and characterless individual in The
Truth Seeker of August 2, 1879.
   John Hart of Doylestown, Pa., proposed to
finance a pamphlet made up of the worst passages of
1879]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         269

the Bible to test the sincerity of the anti-decency
crusaders. When Mr. Hart died in 1927 he had
taken The Truth Seeker almost half a century.
   There were no dull moments in 1879: the organi-
zation of a new auxiliary League was reported al-
most weekly. Conventions were held in many states,
with indignation meetings here and there called to
protest against the imprisonment of Bennett, or
to censure President Hayes for not granting the
pardon petitioned for by two hundred thousand
citizens. All the "reformers," and there were many
varieties of them, joined forces with the Freethink-
ers. The Spiritualists were an exceedingly strong
division of the army, for as yet they bad not ex-
perienced religion and turned ecclesiastics.
   The last number of The Truth Seeker for the
year 1879 makes a quotation from "Man," showing
that a Liberal publication of that name then ex-
isted, the publisher of this small sheet being Asa K.
Butts. Later, "Man" was edited by Theron C. Le-
land and Thaddeus B. Wakeman, and became the
official organ of the League. The year closed with
Bennett in the Albany penitentiary serving his thir-
teen months' sentence.
   Reports said that Hayes declined to exercise
clemency on the ground that his act would show
disrespect for the court. Rumor said Hayes was
willing, but Comstock plowed with his heifer and
the Methodist Mrs. Hayes forbade her Rutherford
to shorten the imprisonment of the Infidel.
   Benjamin R. Tucker, John S. Verity, John
Storer Cobb, and other Boston plumb-liners spent
time and energy without stint in behalf of liberty.
270    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1879

They had their own local "case" in the arrests of
Ezra H. Heywood, publisher of The Word. Verity
                  and Cobb are to me only
                  memories which men-
        @@@@            tion of their names
                  evokes, but "the sub-
                  ject of our sketch" is
                  still a live one. Tucker
                  was born there in the
                  Bay state in 1854, and is
                  like myself in being of
                  Quaker stock on one
                  side of the family. He
                  was receptive to book
                  learning and got a fine
MY UNCLE BENJAMIN education at the Friends'
                   Academy and the Mas-
sachusetts Institute of Technology. At 23, Hey-
wood being in jail, Tucker edited The Word. He
served on the staff of the Boston Globe eleven
years, established The Radical Review and pub-
lished that high-class magazine for one year, and
also did editorial duty on The Engineering Maga-
zine. He is best known as editor and publisher of
Liberty from 1881 to 1908. I was writing for the
darned thing at the time it suspended. Bernard
Shaw and I were his only paid contributors. Long
previous to that he had translated and published
Claude Tillier's "Mon Oncle Benjamin," and
Tucker has been my Uncle Benjamin ever since.
Until a year or so ago he had refused to permit
his biography to be written. I would not claim
that my example has changed his mind, but I believe
1879]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         271

it is no secret that he has at length consented and
placed the material for his Life in competent hands.
The picture was taken in his insurgent youth, at
least fifty years ago. He lives in France, and with
him is Pearl Johnson, the mother of his now grown
daughter Oriole. Pearl is another of our Freet-
hinking girls who just naturally expanded into the
superior womanhood.

           3 -- DOMESTIC AND LOCAL

   When the family took its flight from the Third
avenue place near the Bull's Head Hotel in the
spring of 1878, it lit on Fourth avenue at the north-
east corner of Twenty-fifth street, occupying
rooms over and under Mrs. Stringer's drugstore,
for we had two floors and the basement. Roomers
were more numerous than ever before, and the
dining-table longer. Mother's paying guests fol-
lowed her. The additions were not all so interest-
ing as the old ones. However, we had with us the
newspaper man who did the column of Sunbeams
in The Sun, whose name comes to my mind as New-
bould; and a redheaded party known as Jim Ander-
son, who had gained notoriety down South as an
active member of the Louisiana Returning Board
which so altered the election results in 1876 as to
elect Hayes -- the President who, said Charles Fran-
cis Adams, wore upon his brow the brand of fraud
first triumphant in American history. The news-
paper man often contributed interestingly to the
table talk; but Mr. Anderson appeared not to be
exactly in his element. He was an adventure-
272    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1879

some person, more executive than conversational.
I was sorry to hear of his demise. It took place in
the West, perhaps in Nevada, where he engaged in
an altercation with a mounted desperado, and drew
a pistol on his adversary. The latter, as I heard
the encounter told by a man from Carson City,
slipped off his horse on the further side, and point-
ing his gun across the saddle, "pumped" Mr. An-
derson full of lead.
   A character not to be overlooked was Dr. Charles
DeMedici (pronounced demmy-deechy), a country-
man of Hamlet and a peripatetic philosopher who
taught languages without being able, in my opinion,
to enunciate or articulate any of them distinctly.
He confessed to being oblivious to the difference in
sound between whale, wale, vale, and fail. Per-
chance his native Danske requires no such discrim-
ination. One might acquire from him a short lesson
in French by lending him a dollar overnight, for he
acknowledged the favor with a "merci, mosur."
Years after I had last glimpsed Dr. DeMedici, an
advertisement canvasser named Albert Leubuscher
told me of an encounter with him. Leubuscher in a
street car perused a pamphlet entitled "The Art of
Conversation," when a voice beside him boomed:
"Wrong! lt should be the art of conversing." That
was DeMedici, and he was right of course. Leu-
buscher then and there made his acquaintance and,
much impressed with his merits, soon wrote a mem-
oir on him. Albert Leubuscher died many years ago.
His sister, Amalia, a lovely girl who attended our
socials in Lafayette place, is the widow of the late
Bradford DuBois. His brother Fred Leubuscher
1879]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         273

flourishes at the practice of law, and in 1927 was
retained by the man whose wife shot Wallace Pro-
basco. Dr. DeMedici turned chemist and invented
certain cosmetics called Lelia Pith and Oxzyn Balm.
He showed genius in gathering the last three letters
of the alphabet into, a short word.
   The main room on the first floor of the Fourth
avenue residence was capacious enough to be a
meeting-place for the Fourth New York Liberal
League and for other gatherings. There being a
piano present and some of the guests being gifted
and willing to oblige, these occasions had a tendency
to become social. Why we always moved the first
of May I never understood. As it was as regular a
phenomenon as anything occurring in the astro-
nomical world, I never thought to inquire. From
this house we moved in due season to one in East
Seventeenth street, owned by Mrs. Roberts, around
the corner from Stuyvesant Park, and almost op-
posite a church. No more paying guests. Mother
sold her boarding works to one of them at the
Fourth avenue house. And listen to a tale of woe.
To accommodate mother I had drawn thirty dollars
of my savings account to deposit with the gas com-
pany on three gas meters, one on each floor. Too
late I remembered this and went to recover. The
new landlady had let her gas bills run till they ate
up the deposit. I then drew the balance from the
bank and closed the account. What was the use of
saving? Forty years afterward the same bank ask-
ing me to have my signature verified, I told the
cashier to look in his books for 1878 and he would
274    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1879

find it, which he did. I presume that none of the
men who were in the bank when I had my account
and left my signature there was living when I re-
ferred the present cashier to it; a substance as per-
ishable as paper lasts so much better than the Stuff
the average human is made of.
   The Truth Seeker of June 7, 1879, recorded the
death of the Hon. Ebon Clark Ingersoll, who had
served six terms in Congress from Illinois. Then
first appeared that immortal tribute of his brother,
which was Ingersoll's most heartfelt utterance.

   "And love taught grief to fall like music from his tongue."

          4 -- LIBERATION OF DR. BENNETT.

   As the topic most widely and warmly debated in
1880, as in the year previous, was the imprison-
ment of Bennett, which incidentally provided many
a pulpit with its theme, I shall go to the end of the
matter and then return to pick up the happenings
passed by.
   When Bennett in his cell learned that the Presi-
dent had deferred to his wife in the matter of the
pardon, he wrote that he hoped after this no friend
of his would ask Hayes for either justice or clem-
ency, since a sense of justice was the quality the
Executive lacked, and Bennett would rather stay in
prison than accept clemency from that kind of a
man. In his letter from Albany, Feb. 8, I remark
this reflection: "Jesus once wrote in the sand. I
wrote several times on paper. His was the easier
rubbed out." He was thinking of his letters to the
1879]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         275

woman who sold him out, and wishing, no doubt,
that they had been written in water.
   In The Truth Seeker of May 8 Bennett broke
the news, under "Home Again," that he had been,
liberated from his unjust imprisonment. A month
earlier committees had been organized in New York
to give him a proper reception. There were two of
these committees, one representing the Liberal pub-
lic, the other the Fourth New York Liberal League.
The former was headed by Daniel Edward Ryan
and included Ingersoll Lockwood, T.C. Leland, and
the Drs. Foote, senior and junior. For the big
demonstration the trustees of Cooper Union refused
the use of that auditorium and the committee took
Chickering Hall, a much finer place, though not so
capacious. While members of the general commit-
tee went to Albany to escort Bennett home officially,
the first reception he had in the city was private
and unofficial. Let the guest of honor, Bennett him-
self, describe it:

   "All the attacks of The Truth Seeker office were in
waiting. The office was illuminated, speeches were made,
songs sung, toasts given, etc. California wine in reason-
able quantity was placed upon the large imposing-stone
in the composing room, and I found a wineglassful did me
no harm, it being the first drop of wine or beverage of
any kind I had tasted for nearly a year."

   Dr. E.B. Foote, Jr., who that evening was at-
tending a meeting of the general reception com-
mittee in Science Hall, participated in this greeting
by the attaches. He did part of the organizing,
particularly the forming of the attaches in a line,
with Bennett in the midst, and marching all hands in
276    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1879

lockstep formation around the imposing-stone, while
leading that popular chanty, "The Isle of Blackwell."
He took none of the wine but made most of the
noise. Bennett, for his indulgence in "a wineglass-
ful," was appropriately rebuked by several of his
abstemious readers, who warned him solemnly
against acquiring the habit or encouraging it in
others. There has always been found a considerable
fringe of ascetics in the Freethought ranks -- foes
of rum, tobacco, corsets, sex, meat, and white bread.
The good old Quaker lady, Elmina Drake Slenker,
having adopted what was called "Alphaism," wrote
unceasingly against "sexual intemperance," which
meant that men and women ought to let each other
alone unless they viewed with alarm the depopula-
tion of the earth and highly resolved to rescue hu-
manity from extinction. Mrs. Celia Whitehead ex-
posed the horrors of woman's dress. D.W. Groh
never allowed anyone to smoke a pipe with a clear
conscience. T.B. Wakeman advocated Prohibition,
and there were health-food people aplenty. For years
I have brought my luncheon to the office, the sand-
wiches being invariably constructed of mahogany-
colored bread. I long ago stopped eating white
bread lest E. Ismay, making a call, should sur-
prise me in the act, or for fear George B. Wheeler
would hear of it. Their slogan is: "The whiter the
bread the sooner you're dead."
   The Bennett reception in Chickering Hall, coming
off on the evening of Sunday, May 2, was an over-
whelming success, only that the place was too small
for the crowd. "Long before the hour of eight ar-
rived," says the report (Truth Seeker, May 8, 1879),
1879]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         177

"the seats were filled, hundreds were standing up,'
and large numbers were unable to obtain admit-
tance." My friend Henry H. Sherman, whom I
have mentioned, reported the speeches stenographi-
cally. The Hon. Elizur Wright presided and made
the opening address. The speeches and letters filled
more than seven pages of the paper. Many of The
Truth Seeker poets, including Samuel P. Putnam,
exhaled themselves in verse. Outside the hall the
allies of Anthony Comstock circulated a pamphlet
prejudicial to the reputation of the guest of the eve-
ning. It was ineffectual.
   In the midst of the report of the meeting is this
paragraph:

   "The quintet next sang the following original song of
welcome by Mrs. Jennie Butler Brown of New Haven,
Conn.; music by Edwin A. Booth of New York."

   This chap Booth, employed in the office as wrap-
ping and mailing clerk, had musical gifts and talent.
He invented a number of tunes, the words to one
of which I aided him in writing, and it was pub-
lished by Pond or Hitchcock. It dealt with "a
little faded flower?' By the time I had perverted
the words the way he insisted upon, nobody would
have known them for the song I composed. Booth
generously proposed my name on the published
work as co-author -- a distinction which I resent-
fully declined. So the performance was printed
"Words and music by Edwin A. Booth." One eve-
ning when I went with him to see the light opera
"Iolanthe," at the Standard (?), Verona Jarbeau
sang this song for an encore. Booth listened in
the most exalted state, and was not himself again
278    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1880

for some days. The song under some such title as
"The Flower That She Gave Me" may be found in
the old catalogue of the music publishers of that
date. Booth went on the road as salesman for an
Ohio firm of stove manufacturers, and so disap-
peared from these records.
   Bennett enjoyed other receptions. The National
Defense Association gave him one; but after all I
think he prized most his "Welcome and Installation"
by his own Fourth New York Liberal League. I
must quote the opening paragraph of his story
about it:

   "Though one of the grandest and most enthusiastic re-
ceptions ever bestowed upon mortal man was given to
D.M. Bennett upon his emerging from prison -- on which
occasion Chickering Hall could not contain more than half
the people who turned out to do him honor -- it has been
supplemented by another which, if less magnificent in
point of numbers, was certainly as enjoyable to all who
attended it. The Fourth New York Liberal League de-
cided, some four weeks ago, to give a private reception
to the returned convict, whom, during his imprisonment,
they had elected as their president, and to duly install
him in the office. At a meeting of the League held April
18th it was voted to give the private reception to Mr. Ben-
nett on the evening of Saturday, May 8th, and Mr. Henry
J. Thomas, Dr. Charles Andrews, and George E. Mac-
donald were appointed a committee to perfect the arrange-
ments for the meeting. On the evening of the 18th it came
off at the capacious and magnificent parlors of Mrs. E.L.
Femandez, No. 201 Second avenue. The greater part
of the members of the Fourth New York Liberal League
were present, with many invited guests. About seventy-
five persons were present, and by common consent they
passed one of the most pleasant evenings of their lives."
(Truth Seeker, May 15, 1880.)
1880]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         279

      Vice-president Henry A. Stone read the address
of welcome, at its close inviting Bennett to take, the
chair as president of the League. The latter com-
plied, his voice trembling noticeably as he responded
to the greeting. After that the affair became liter-
ary, musical, social, and convivial, there being
served, as Bennett notes, "a fine article of light
mountain wine of California." The reception was
held, as above said, in the parlors of Mrs. E.L.
Fernandez. Mrs. Fernandez, who was associated
with the theatrical profession as a teacher, or ad-
viser, needed only the call and the opportunity to
place her parlors at the disposal of this auxiliary
League for its meetings. The members carried
good times with them; the occupants of her house,
in the way of dancing and other entertainment,
added to the joviality. She had at this time a small
daughter, three or four years old, named Bijou, who
was friendly withal.

   5 -- WHAT LIBERALS DID AND TALKED ABOUT.

   The English Comtean, Mr. F.J. Gould, will be
interested to learn from these presents that there
is a day named for Mrs. Fernandez in the Posi-
tivist Calendar. It is the 12th of April, on which
day in 1880 her elegant and hospitable residence
was open to a brilliant company representing "the
press, the lyceum, the studio, and the stage," which
was met there to present "a beautiful crayon like-
ness of Stephen Pearl Andrews to that gentleman in
behalf of his many admirers." The artists were
Miss L.E. Gardinier, Mr. Pickett, and Mrs. Varni.
280    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1880

I surmise that the reporter of the event was Mr.
Courtlandt Palmer, and that the naming of the day
was the inspiration of that other Positivist, T.B.
Wakeman, who made the presentation speech. The
report ends with the words: "It was eminently en-
joyable -- to be there, and all who shared these de-
lightful hours will long treasure the dedication of
Fernandez Day in the radiance of Andrews' glory."
I was not present, yet I have hanging in my house
the picture of heroic size, presented to Mr. An-
drews that day. The magnificent head and poise
of Andrews was an unsurpassed model for some-
thing Jovian in the way of portraits.
   A European committee called a Congress of the
Universal Federation of Freethinkers to assemble
in Brussels in August, 1880, and invited the Na-
tional Liberal League to send delegates. President
Wright replied that as the Liberal League was not
an organization of Freethinkers as such, but a union
of persons of all shades of thought and creed to
effect an entire separation of church and state, send-
ing a delegate to a purely Freethought congress
would lead to misapprehensions as to its purposes.
Mr. E.C. WaIker, Liberal organizer for Iowa, dif-
fered emphatically with Mr. Wright, and not fear-
ing the identification of the League with a Con-
gress of Freethinkers, held that the League should
be represented by delegates. At present, I believe,
the views of Mr. Walker are much in harmony with
the more conservative ideas expressed by Mr.
Wright in 1880.
   Mr. Walker in Iowa, Mr. H.L. Green in New
York,, and Mr. F.F. Follet in Illinois were the most
1880]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         281

industrious organizers of Leagues in the country.
   D.M. Bennett and A.L. Rawson, secretary of
the National Liberal League, set sail August 4 for
Liverpool, thence to Brussels to attend the Universal
Congress, dated for the last of the month. The
letters Bennett wrote while absent were made into
a book called "An Infidel Abroad." He reached
home on November 9 to discover that he had "sent
in letters more profusely than room has been found
for them," and it was New Year's by the time the
last of them appeared.
   Bennett's fellow-delegate, Rawson, was an artist
of some reputation, having illustrated a 'de luxe'
edition of the Bible, besides making the pictures for
Beecher's "Life of Christ."
   Little or nothing was heard during the year 1880
of the National Liberal Party organized in Cincin-
nati in 1879. Politics had proved a divisive issue.
The fourth Congress of the National Liberal League
assembled in Hershey Hall, Chicago, September 17-
19, and reelected Elizur Wright president with T.C.
Leland for secretary. Editor H.L. Barter of the
LeClaire, Iowa, Pilot had just been arrested by a
Comstock agent named McAffee and lodged in jail
on a frivolous charge. The outrage acted as an
irritant on the Liberal public, and the majority of
Freethinkers said in their hearts that the Comstock
laws should be repealed and censorship of the mails
discontinued. That was their temper when they
gathered in the Congress at Chicago. Ingersoll, who
was opposed to the League's committing itself to
that policy, found himself in a hostile atmosphere,
for the first time among Freethinkers.
282    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1880

      Secretary Rawson reported that of the two hun-
dred and nine auxiliary Leagues eighty-two were
represented by delegates. He had received twenty-
five proxies, while fifty had asked him to appoint
proxies for them. T.B. Wakeman of the Commit-
tee on Resolutions reported, with other recommen-
dations: "We therefore urge the repeal of the pres-
ent United States postal laws known as the Com-
stock laws."
   Colonel Ingersoll opposed the resolution, asked
the privilege of offering a substitute, and closed his
participation in the discussion with the words: "If
that resolution is passed, all I have to say is that,
while I shall be for liberty everywhere, I cannot
act with this organization, and I will not." Never-
theless the resolution for repeal went through "al-
most unanimously," and he withdrew his name as
first vice-president from the list of officers.
   In his speech Ingersoll said: "This obscene law
business is a stumbling-block. Had it not been for
this, instead of a few people voting here -- less than
one hundred -- we should have had a congress num-
bered by thousands. Had it not been for this busi-
ness, the Liberal League of the United States would
tonight hold in its hand the political destiny of the
United States. Instead of that we have thrown
away our power upon a question in which we are
not interested. Instead of that we have wasted our
resources and our brains for the repeal of a law that
we don't want repealed. If we want anything, we
simply want a modification."
   So the League was divided again, as it had been
two years before, H.L. Green, who resigned along
1880]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         283

with Ingersoll, tried ineffectually to organize an-
other. The report of the proceedings was printed
in The Truth, Seeker of September 25 and October
2, 1880.
   Recalling today the odium suffered by the organi-
zation on account of its action on the Comstock
laws, and even by Ingersoll although he opposed the
motion to repeal, I conclude that it was an impolitic
course for the organization to pursue. Yet there
were thousands who believed that the work of
Anthony Comstock, with the approval and patron-
age of nearly all the churches, was indeed the most
dangerous form of union of church and state. Had
the religious public shown any inclination to treat
the League fairly, or to understand it, or to cease
lying perpetually about its objects, the stand of the
League would have been recognized as a very
courageous way of meeting a moral issue. But in
the circumstances the organization took a big risk,
and in view of the consequences I am inclined to
think it would have been better to take Ingersoll's
advice.

        6 -- AU REVOIR TO ANTHONY COMSTOCK

   During Bennett's imprisonment, members of a
"James Parton Club," headed by Parton himself,
sent a letter and a contribution every month. Court-
landt Palmer stood by Bennett through thick and
thin. Colonel Ingersoll wrote to Mrs. Bennett:
"When you write your husband tell him for me that
I have never joined in the cry against him and
never will." Ingersoll imputed no base motives to
284    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1889

those who differed with him. He said: "I do not,
I have not, I never shall, accuse or suspect a soli-
tary member of the Liberal League of the United
States of being in favor of doing any act under
heaven that he is not thoroughly convinced is right."
There are few men with the nobility to take that
position in a controversy, and Francis Ellingwood
Abbot, Benjamin F. Underwood, and members of
the Free Religious fraternity generally were not
among them. These were frightened and hunted
cover when their Liberal associate, Bennett, was
accused. Had one of them, or any Liberal, been
attacked on moral grounds, Bennett would have re-
plied with an attack. He would have brought for-
ward the names of five hundred ministers of the
gospel who had done worse. They did not under-
stand as well as he how to repel such assaults, which
are inspired by the meanest reactions that take place
in the visceral cavity of man.
   Two newspaper editors in New York stood by
the Liberal cause -- Porter C. Bliss of The Herald
and Louis F. Post of the Daily Truth.
   As for Anthony Comstock, I would not speak
with extreme harshness of any man, therefore I
shall not say of him all the ill that I think. "De
mortuis nil nisi bunkum." In his latter days he
said in self-praise that he had sent enough men to
jail to fill a long train of passenger cars. If among
those hundreds of convicts there was one whose
shortcomings could be so described that I should
conceive of him as being a less desirable person than
Anthony Comstock, I beg his pardon; I am doing
that passenger an injustice. Within my ken, no
1880]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         285

person has breathed the vital air who as a sneak
and hypocrite touched the low level of this repel-
lent blackguard -- Anthony Comstock. As a gen-
eralization, he summed up all the vile particulars
discoverable by close scrutiny of humanity per-
verted, degraded or perverse. A man whose proud-
est boast might be that by tearing up a railway track
he had sent a large number of passengers to a hos-
pital for terms averaging thirteen months, and sim-
ultaneously caused scores to be subjected to such
agony that they blew out their own brains -- such
a man might be more of a hero and less the mis-
creant, in my judgment, than Anthony Comstock.
And when you come to analyze the motives of his
backers, aiders, and abettors, they are no higher
than the impulses of their tool, in all respects exe-
crable. Conscious of baseness in themselves, they
hoped the world might mistake it for virtue if they
decried the manifestation of their own traits in
somebody else. When legislators pass laws of the
Comstock variety they know themselves to be hypo-
crites and trucklers. Judges who permitted Com-
stock to obtain convictions in their courts were bru-
tal and stupid. The offense penalized is wholly
imaginary, the injury purely hypothetical. It is im-
possible to prove in any case I ever heard of that
anybody has been harmed -- impossible to show that
the activities of Anthony Comstock throughout a
career marked by the deceit and treachery of the
sneak and the malice of the religious fanatic, and
causing more misery than an epidemic of hemor-
rhoids, have ever worked final benefit to any man,
woman, or child. Such is the charitable view I am
286    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1880

able to take of a man the sight or thought of whom
always aroused in me the impulse to give him a mighty
swat on the jaw.
   In 1928, while cogitating on the incidents of the
past which I am now setting down, I received from
Annecy, Haute Savoie, France, a letter written by
one of The Truth Seeker compositors of 1878-9.
This was that bird Henry Hoyt Moore, already
mentioned as having later become a religious editor.
In his letter, Moore indulges in the following rem-
iniseence:
   "Nearby where Sunset Cox's statue now stands
unless it has been removed since I came to Europe,
was a moving-van stand. I recall this particularly
because it was from this stand that a husky young
furniture smasher was brought into the composing-
room on one occasion. The comps had become in-
terested in the manly art and had bought a set of
boxing gloves to use on one another 'after hours.'
It was suggested that we should bring in one of
these outside demons, accustomed to scrapping and
perhaps to the more plebeian art of rough-and-
tumble fighting, to show us the methods of a real
fighter. He came, put on the gloves -- and you wal-
loped him all over the place."
   I quote this to preface the statement that had
Anthony Comstock occupied the place of that be-
wildered piano-mover, a fond ambition of my life
would have been attained then and there. He
would have received the aforementioned swat.
   In the year 1913 I one evening heard a testy old
man making a fuss in the middle of a group of
passengers at the gate of the ferryboat I was on,
1880]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         287

and when I looked closer -- it was Anthony Com-
stock. I wanted to merge with the crowd in which
he was using his elbows and let what might happen;
but when I got nearer I saw a gray and pallid and
flabby and short-winded old party who tottered on
his legs -- no game for anybody but the undertaker
at an early date. He died that year.

           MR. DARROW OF HARVARD, ILL.

   Notices of liberal lectures here and there brought
out the names of Keresy Graves, author of "Six-
teen Crucified Saviors"; George Chainey, a young
clergyman of Evansville, Ind., who had renounced
the Christian pulpit; John S. Verity, a sturdy de-
fender of liberty; Dr. Sarah B. Chase, whose spe-
cialty was physiology; Mrs. H.S. Lake, who ad-
dressed either Freethinkers or Spiritualists; J.E.
Remsburg, who appears to have made his first In-
fidel speech at Bismarck, Kan.; Van Buren Dens-
low, a journalist of Chicago, later of New York,
author of "Modem Thinkers" (preface by Inger-
soll); Juliet Severance, Augusta Cooper Bristol,
Mrs Mattie P. Krekel, Mrs. O.K. Smith, Mrs.
A.H. Colby, O.A. Phelps, John R. Kelso, A.H.
Burnham, L.S. Burdick, R.S. McCormick -- many
of them Spiritualists who doubled in Freethought.
   A few names appear once and are not seen again.
Clarence Darrow, who signed himself C.S. Darrow,
wrote from Harvard, Ill., Feb. 19, 1880, to commend
the Freethought lectures which a young man of the
name of Eli C. Ohmart had been delivering in north-
ern Illinois and southern Wisconsin. Mr. Darrow
288    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1880

saw in Ohmart not an equal but a rival of Ingersoll.
   Except that Mr. Darrow, who is just a week my
junior, had a father who was the village Infidel,
while mine lay "in cold obstruction" by the rivulet
of Bull Run, his boyhood was the same as what I
have described as my own; and as Ohio, or the
Western Reserve, was settled by Yankees, there
would be nothing to differentiate its people from
New Englanders. In February, 1928, he was quoted
by the New York World as thus describing his
youthful surroundings:

   "I was born and lived for twenty years in a small coun-
try town. Generally, conditions of life have changed a good
deal since that time. My family were poor and so were all
the other families in the place. There was a blacksmith's
shop, a wagon shop, a harness shop, a furniture shop, and
practically everything that was used was made in the town.
Nobody had a monopoly of either riches or poverty. Every
one had enough to eat and all the clothes they could wear,
which were not many, although the wardrobe was more
extensive than at present, especially with the girls. I never
heard of anyone dying of starvation or coming anywhere
near it. The community was truly democratic.
   "There were a few people who had what they now call a
servant but what they then called a hired girl, and some
had a hired man. These went to all the swell parties with-
out evening clothes and they were in no way boycotted by
the people who employed them and they had as good a time
as the rest. Often a hired girl married her employer's son
and the hired man married the employer's daughter and
began creating the foundation of an American aristocracy.
   "There was one railroad within ten miles of the place and
I remember having a great thrill taking a long trip of twenty
miles on the train, much more of a thrill than to travel half
way round the globe today. There were churches in the
town, of course, and there were people who didn't belong
1880]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         289

to the church, of which my family were a conspicuous ex-
ample, my father being the village Infidel, which afforded
him considerable occupation and enjoyment in a place in
which there were few real pleasures. I don't remember
that the neighbors ever refused to associate with him. They
thought him queer but hardly dangerous, and at least didn't
carry any dislike of him to his children."

   The town of Darrow's birth and boyhood was
Kinsman, Ohio. When writing him for information
as to how far Eli Ohmart had got by now, I asked
him for a picture of himself taken by the Kinsman
photographer, and he replied that he had not pre-
served one; and as to Ohmart he had nothing fur-
ther to report. Time's reversals are ironical. Mr.
Ohmart did not write to The Truth Seeker to say
that he had just met in Harvard, Illinois, a young
Freethinker named Darrow who was destined to
make his mark in the world. Darrow wrote that of
him; and he didn't and Darrow did.
   At the beginning of 1880 Bennett bought out
Charles P. Somerby, who had conducted a Liberal
publishing business and bookstore at 139 Eighth
street. Spelling reform in The Truth Seeker was
so extended as to drop ue from such words as dia-
logue; the final e from definite, etc.; te from quar-
tette, and me from programme. These most excel-
lent spellings, adopted at the same time by The Home
Journal, would still be the rule in The Truth Seek-
er office but for our giving up the composing-room
and sending the work out to be done on the ma-
chines by operators who cannot be expected to fol-
low the style until it becomes universal.
   On October 30, 1880, Ingersoll was one of the or-
290    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1880

ators at the exciting political meeting in the Acad-
emy of Music, Brooklyn, where the great audience
lost control of its emotions on his being introduced
by Henry Ward Beecher, who presided. As the
New York Herald said the next day: It was indeed
a strange scene, and the principal actors in it seemed
not less than the most wildly excited man there to
appreciate its peculiar import and significance.
Standing at the front of the stage, underneath a
canopy of flags, at either side of great baskets of
flowers, the great preacher and the great Agnostic
clasped each other's hands, and stood thus for sev-
eral minutes, while the excited thousands cheered
themselves hoarse and applauded wildly. As Mr.
Beecher began to speak, however, the applause that
broke out was deafening. In substance Mr. Beecher
spoke as follows: "I ... now introduce to you a
man who -- and I say it not flatteringly -- is the most
brilliant speaker of the English tongue of all men
on this globe. But as under the brilliancy of the
blaze of light we find the living coals of fire, under
the lambent flow of his wit and magnificent antithesis
we find the glorious flame of genius and honest
thought. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Ingersoll."
Said the Herald reporter: "The enthusiasm knew no
bounds, and the great building trembled and vibrated
with the storm of applause."
   Apart from some humorous verses appropriate to
the occasion but of no permanent worth, with re-
ports of meetings and unsigned notes here and there,
I kept out of print and attended to getting the paper
to the press. The foreman (myself) gave out the
1880]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         291

copy to the compositors after he had revised it;
made up forms of the paper and books, and either
held copy or read proofs. He was also expected to
set the type for advertisements and title pages.
Those were good times. He worked ten hours per
day, got $15 a week, and saved money. The re-
sponsibilities and troubles of the world rested lightly
upon young shoulders, and he rejoiced in his own
works.




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                       CHAPTER XIV.

              1 -- D.M. BENNETT, JERUSALEM

   ON his trip abroad, Bennett developed the
wanderlust, and when, soon after his re-
turn, a friend suggested a journey around
the world and an account of it, he accepted with
no show of reluctance. His letters in ten weeks
from Europe, printed as "An Infidel Abroad," had
made a tome of 860 pages, but undeterred by the
fact that they were asked to pay a dollar-fifty for
this, and, in addition, to subscribe five dollars each
for the globe-encircling journey, his readers fell in
with the plan by hundreds. On the. 7th of May,
1881, he reached the decision that he would go, the
date of sailing to be determined by the tide of sub-
scriptions. The next two months yielded seven hun-
dred subscribers to the enterprise. His faithful
Fourth New York Liberal League tendered him a
farewell reception in the parlors of Daniel Edward
Ryan, 231 West Thirty-seventh street, on the 24th
of July, when there were speeches, songs, and rec-
itations. He gave two pages of the paper to a de-
scription of the affair, concluding: "Many of those
present expressed their determination to visit the
steamer Ethiopia, of the Anchor line, which sails
at 8 o'clock Saturday morning, the 30th, at the foot
of Dey street, and see Mr. Bennett off." Forty
were there to see him join Cook's Tourists. He
                         292
1881]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         293

wrote a Parting Word for the paper, giving his first
foreign address as London, England, and the sec-
ond as Jerusalem, Palestine. He resigned the edi-
torial chair and the power of attorney to E.M.
Macdonald.
   The Ethiopia was an eleven-day boat. Bennett
had time before making land to write a nine-column
letter, and in addition to resume the series of arti-
cles begun three years before on "What I Don't Be-
lieve." Convinced of the infinitude of space, Ben-
nett never quite understood why it should be limited
by the chaces that inclosed the forms of the paper. I
heard my brother try to make this clear to him by
pointing to the foot of the last column and expound-
ing the incompressibility of type.
   It soon became evident that he had possessed him-
self of all the guidebooks accessible to tourists and
was drawing upon them freely for ancient and mod-
ern history. He attended the International Free-
thought Congress held in the Hall of Science, Lon-
don, with Charles Bradlaugh as chairman. He can
have omitted few details of the proceedings, since
his report, occupying parts of three numbers of The
Truth Seeker (October 29, and November 5 and 12,
1881) filled sixteen columns, and meanwhile he was
contributing two columns per week of "What I
Don't Believe." When the paper had been printed
the type was lifted, made into book pages and stere-
otyped.
   Meanwhile Liberal speakers at home were busy
East and West. George Chainey, the brilliant young
minister who had left the church and turned state's
294    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1881

evidence, lectured to large audiences in the West,
and then came to Boston, establishing a lectureship
in Paine Hall and publishing his paper called The
Infidel Pulpit.
   Samuel P. Putnam was burgeoning forth. He
had experienced adversity since stepping down from
the pulpit. The year 1881 is too early for a bio-
graphical sketch of Putnam, but since he was the
coming man in Liberalism, I will say here that he
was born in Chichester, New Hampshire, in 1838.
the son of a Congregational minister; entered Dart-
mouth College in 1859; enlisted in the Union army,
1861; in 1863 competed for a captaincy and won it;
experienced religion and resigned in 1864; later
attributed his conversion to an attack of camp fever;
took three years in a theological seminary, Chicago;
married in 1867; served two churches as orthodox
preacher; joined the Unitarians; wife divorced him
in 1885 because of "religious and temperamental
differences"; joined the Free Religionists and con-
tributed verse to the Boston Index and Unitarian
papers; from necessity took another Unitarian pulpit
and built a church, but found himself unable to
preach the religion required; entered the Liberal
ranks just in time to share in Bennett's fight against
comstockery; gained a precarious livelihood by lec-
turing, bookkeeping, and writing wrappers; in July,
1880, was appointed on probation to a clerkship in
the New York Custom House; confirmed January
1, 1881; promoted on merit April 1, 1882. One of his
college mates tells me that Putnam took the "big
slate" at college in mathematics, and I certainly
should suppose that he would, for no man I ever
1881]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         295

saw, except some lightning calculator, was so quick
at figures as Sam. He habitually added two columns
at once; or three when in a hurry. He was short,
red faced and chubby, and spry as a cat.
   With his living provided for by his salary at the
Custom House, Putnam now lectured, contributed
                  articles to The Truth
                  Seeker, and further gave
        @@@@            play to the exuberance
                  of his poetic fancy. I
                  prepared a long bio-
                  graphical sketch of Put-
                  nam for the memorial
                  volume published with
                  the report of the Secu-
                  lar Union Congress for
                  1896, and also for the
                  Dartmouth Class Book
                  of 1862. (Horace Stu-
                  art Cummins, Washing-
                  ton, D.C., 1909.)
   In 1881, at 43, he still looked like a boy, and I
might say he never really grew up. In spirit and
manner and outlook he remained the boy all his
life.
   In certain quarters the year 1881 produced some
trepidation as being the year when the famous
Mother Shipton prophecy matured.
   All of this prophecy, except the last two lines,

        The end of the world shall come
        In eighteen hundred and eighty-one."

having been written after the event, is fairly true.
296    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1881

The author was one Charles Hindley of Brighton,
England, who published the lines in 1862, represent-
ing them to be a reprint of an old version of fif-
teenth century prophecies. So stated Ella E. Gib-
son in The Truth Seeker of January 22, 1881.
Frauds are killed off with the greatest difficulty.
They are championed with a zeal that rarely comes
to the defense of truth. The credulous prefer to
believe that the Mother Shipton prophecy was all
written in the fifteenth century except the closing
lines. The book of Deuteronomy is a parallel in-
stance. The last chapter of Deuteronomy describes
the funeral of Moses: and they say Moses wrote
all the book but that.
   In a spring number of The Truth Seeker I ob-
serve an apology for "imperfect bookkeeping." It
says: "If we have had dishonest or careless help in
our office, we have them no longer." Bennett in
the Albany penitentiary made the acquaintance of
several whose tales of injustice and injured inno-
cence he accepted as they were told to him. One
was a young fellow we will call Albert Smith. When
Albert's term expired Dr. Bennett employed him in
the office and gave him access to unopened mail and
to postage stamps. Bennett's confidence in the hon-
esty of the man was imbecile. E.M. Macdonald
had him watched. He was glad to get off with only
an exposure of his thefts. Anybody could impose
on Bennett once.
   At this period William Henry Burr, formerly a
congressional reporter and pioneer shorthand writer,
made the discovery, as he thought, that Paine was
1881]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         297

the author of the Junius Letters and of the Declara-
tion of Independence. In an article of January 22,
1881, he flouts Ingersoll and Van Buren Denslow,
who were unconvinced of Paine's identity with Ju-
nius. The controversy caused me to devote a num-
ber of evenings to a close examination of the Junius
Letters laid beside the writings of Paine. I saw no
correspondence of style whatever. The Declaration
is reminiscent of Paine's writings prior to its date.
One may agree that whoever wrote the Declaration
of Independence, Paine was its author, yet I could
not feel that he had contributed any of its para-
graphs to that composite work.
   A man destined to cause the Freethinkers much
embarrassment ran, at Lamar, Missouri, a paper
named The Liberal. He was G.H. Walser, who
founded the town of Liberal, in that state, to be the
home, exclusively, of Freethinkers. Incidents in
the after fate of Liberal as a town must be men-
tioned in this record as they occur. In the begin-
ning of 1881, Walser and his wife deeded Bennett
"all lot No. three (3), in block No. seven (7) in
Liberal." The Doctor printed the debenture and re-
turned thanks.

           2 -- PERSONS AND PROBLEMS.

   All the economic reformers brought their doc-
trine to the Liberal Club, perhaps the only open fo-
rum in the city. Henry George, author of "Progress
and Poverty," made a speech there on the 14th of
January, the club having met to hear a lecture by
Henry Appleton on Ireland. That was the first
298    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1881

time I saw Henry George. His book, published two
years earlier by the Appletons, New York, was then
in its fourth edition, and coming out in London,
Paris and St. Petersburg. Mr. George's head looked
large for his body; he wore a presentable red beard,
and spoke English with a pronunciation acquired
abroad -- perhaps of his mates on British sailing ves-
sels. His book was reviewed in The Truth Seeker,
April 16, by the lawyer and author, Edward W.
Searing, who married the deaf and voiceless Laura
Catherine Redden ("Howard Glyndon"), poet and
newspaper correspondent.
   This year a fund was raised -- in The Truth Seeker
of course -- for the renovation of the Paine monu-
ment at New Rochelle, the Fourth New York Lib-
eral League leading the enterprise. Exercises took
place at the repaired monument on Memorial Day
(reported in The Truth Seeker of June 4, 1881),
the month before Bennett's departure. When most
of the speeches had been made, the Doctor proposed
a vote of thanks to the donors of the restoration
fund, calling for "three sonorous ayes." He got
them, and then, when the party had visited the old
Paine house, he informs us, "we wended our way to
the station, all feeling that we had enjoyed a very
pleasant day, and that we would like to see returns
of the same on every succeeding year."
   A piece of ancient history worth picking up is
Dr. Thomas P. Slicer's renunciation of evangelical
orthodoxy. Dr. Slicer, pastor of a Brooklyn church,
announced himself unable longer to preach the ac-
cepted faith. His name appeared many years after-
wards on the list of speakers at Paine celebrations.
1881]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         299

   Ingersoll delivered his lecture, "What Must We
Do to Be Saved?" in Wilmington, Delaware, about
the beginning of the year. At the opening of the
February term of the New Castle county court,
Chief Justice Comegys, haranguing the grand jury
on the subject of blasphemy, implied that Ingersoll
ought to be indicted for blasphemy. Any officer, he
said, might arrest Ingersoll without warrant if he
again entered the state. The alarm of Comegys,
with the accents in which he communicated it to the
jury, brought upon the state of Delaware almost as
keen ridicule, if not as much, as Tennessee endured
forty-five years later because of the Scopes anti-
evolution trial. Ingersoll closed an interview pub-
lished in the Brooklyn Eagle by saying: "For two
or three days I have been thinking what joy there
must have been in heaven when Jehovah heard that
Delaware was on his side, and remarked to the
angels in the language of the late Adjt.-Gen.
Thomas: 'The eyes of all Delaware are upon you.'"
   In March T.B. Wakeman went before a legisla-
tive committee at Albany, N.Y., "in opposition to
a bill to largely increase the criminal jurisdiction
and powers of the Society for the Suppression of
Vice." Under the heading: "Liberty and Purity;
How to Secure Both Safely, Effectively, and Im-
partially," the address ran through five numbers of
The Truth Seeker. Incidentally it exposed, by
producing the affidavits of numerous honest citizens,
the lies told by Anthony Comstock in his book en-
titled "Frauds Exposed."
300    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1881

   3 -- THE INSPIRED ASSASSIN OF GARFIELD.

   The two days of leisure and recreation promised
workers by the Fourth of July falling on Monday
in 1881, were turned to days of anxiety because
the religious fanatic, Charles J. Guiteau, chose Sat-
urday, the second, for the assassination of Presi-
dent James A. Garfield. The President was in the
waiting room of the Potomac Depot at Washington
when Guiteau approached him from behind with a
heavy revolver and fired two shots, one entering
Garfield's arm and the other his body. The Presi-
dent lingered for eighty days and died at Elberon,
N.J., September 19. Meanwhile the churches
prayed intensively. It was an orgy, a regular prayer
drive. The splurge continued for two months,
when the powers of the ministers were augmented
by the state governors appointing September 8 for
a day of prayer with a gesture of fasting added --
all but one; Govenior Roberts of Texas pleaded
that his was a civil, not an ecclesiastical office, and
would attempt no control over the religious acts
he of the citizens of his state. The prayer promoters
condemned him to perdition, but went on and per-
fected their organization. On the 8th of Septem-
ber they mobilized more praying people than had
ever got together before on one day. The prayers
placed end to end would have reached anywhere in
or out of the universe except, as the event proved,
the throne to which they were addressed.
   Put on his trial in November, Guiteau offered the
defense that God had chosen him as an instrument
to carry out the inscrutable purpose of the divine
1881]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         301

will. It was God's act, he said, and God would
see him through. Writing to George Jacob Holy-
oake of England, Ingersoll said: "It was fortunate
for me that the assassin was a good Christian, that
he had delivered lectures answering me, that he
was connected with the Young Men's Christian As-
sociation, and that he had spent most of his life
reading the sacred scriptures."
   Religious demonstrations were confined to Gui-
teau and the churches. Garfield made none, invited
none. The Sun said, when the grave had closed
over the body of the President: "During the long
and trying illness which his chief physicians have
recently declared was incurable from the outset,
there is no record that he was ever visited by a
minister of the gospel, that religious services were
performed, or that his sufferings were soothed by
religious consolations in any form."
   In August the Ingersoll-Black discussion occu-
pied the pages of The North American Review, on
account of which the Appletons gave notice that
they would no longer publish that magazine. The
North American Review came out thereafter under
its own imprint, and with its editorial policy un-
changed.
   The Rev. H.W. Thomas of Chicago, Methodist,
was featured as the heretic of the year. Charged
with heterodoxy and threatened with expulsion, he
resigned and formed a People's Church, where his
audience and his salary were doubled.
   The ranks of Liberal lecturers were recruited by
the appearance of John R. Kelso of Modesto, Cal.,
302    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1881

formerly a rousing revival preacher, and after-
wards author of some excellent Freethought books.
His arguments were as clear as mathematical de-
monstrations.
   The Dominion of Canada woke up and barred the
works of Voltaire and Paine's "Age of Reason"
from its provinces. Canada for most of the time in
recent history has had the meanest government on
earth.
   Moses Harman began the publication of the Kan-
sas Liberal at Valley Falls, Kan.
   A note in The Truth Seeker of December 24
states: "Sheriff Pat Garrett, the slayer of Billy the
Kid, is a Freethinker and patron of The Truth
Seeker. Billy the Kid was a Christian."
   The monthly Iconoclast was started by W.H.
Lamaster at Noblesville, Ind.; Remsburg entered
the lecture field October 8, 1881; Judge Waite's
History of the Christian Religion to A.D. 200"
was reviewed October 8.
   On the evening of Friday, September 23, I
was early in a seat at the Liberal Club when notice
had been given that Mrs. A.C. Macdonald would
attempt a "Universological Explanation of the
World and Man," and would answer the objections
of Mr. T.B. Wakeman to the proposition that "the
laws of thinking and the laws of creative energy in
the universe are one." I listened closely and took
notes, so that when mother reached home with the
party of women who had accompanied her, I was
prepared to tell her what I thought of her lecture.
But she did not ask that. She asked, "How did I
look?"
1881]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         303

      The annual congress of the National Liberal
League, held in Hershey's Hall, Chicago, Septem-
ber 30 to October 3, was pronounced "a most en-
thusiastic, harmonious, and successful meeting."
Secretary Leland reported 175 active auxiliary
Leagues, and 55 others that were no more inactive
than many branches of the Christian church. This
congress resolved that the resolution that had been
passed at a previous congress and had led to the
withdrawal of some members, embodied the opinion
of only the majority who voted for it and was not
a test of membership in the League. Owing to the
inability of the Hon. Elizur Wright to serve long-
er, the congress elected T.B. Wakeman president.
Other officers were T.C. Leland, secretary; Court-
landt Palmer, treasurer; George Lynn of Lock-
port, Ill., chairman of the Executive Committee, and
Mrs. S.H. Lake, Elgin, Ill., chairman of the Fi-
nance Committee.

         4 -- I JOIN THE NONPAREILS.

   A reading notice in a December number invites
the public to attend the annual ball of the Non-
pareil Rowing Club at Tammany Hall on the eve-
ning of the 16th. As the name of this club would
warrant one in inferring, its members were in large
measure connected with the printing craft. The
invitation alluded to, having given the date and
place, went on to say that "those who like to dance
can find no better society to do it in than these
gentlemen, who erstwhile arrange the alphabetical
metal, and anon urge the propulsive oar through
304    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1881

the pellucid waters of the Harlem." I must have
been at my best when I wrote that. The club was
not exclusive; it admitted policemen. Nobody ever
tried to explain why printers and policemen should
flock together, but there they were.
   Joining the Nonpareils for the sake of the exer-
cise and to acquire the art of rowing with a sweep,
I soon was a member of a scrub crew propelling
a four-oared gig up and down the Harlem and
looking for races with other crews of our class.
Such rowing is enjoyed because it is a personal ac-
complishment. When one catches the water with
the blade of a sweep, and feels the boat jump as
he puts his back to it, he may get a thrill not to be
had by stepping on the gas.
   For several blocks above the Harlem Bridge at
139th street both sides of the river were lined with
boathouses. The Nonpareils had theirs on the west
side some two blocks away. If I may I will speak
of my first appearance in the clubhouse after elec-
tion to membership. My new rowing suit, a bright
blue with pure white stripes about the terminals,
drew undesired attention from old members whose
suits, under water and sun, had turned all of one
color, and that one only faintly suggestive of the
original hue. As I advanced from my locker in the
rear toward the front of the boathouse I found my-
self walking self-consciously between two lines of
attentive spectators. Someone observed that the
new member would now wet the new suit by going
overboard, and that Mr. Halloran would assist. I
went to the float with Mr. Halloran, but did not
go overboard. Mr. Halloran went. Another name
1881]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         305

was called and a two-hundred-pound policeman
came forward. I never resist an officer. He dis-
charged his duty and I was duly ducked. But there
was some defect in his strategy, for he went also
into the rolling river, and when I let go of him and
swam out, regaining the float easily, the tide had
got him and he disappeared downstream. When he
came back by land twenty minutes later, he reported
that he had made a landing near the bridge. The
initiation being over, I received the greetings of
the president of the club, known as Charlie Gatta.
                   CHAPTER XV.

         1 -- THE RELIGIONS ON TRIAL.

   THE religious pathology of Guiteau was the
subject of many communications to The
Truth Seeker in the first half of the year
1882. The bloody assassin persevered, and ever
grew more insistent, in his protestations that he
was but the instrument of divinity in "removing"
President Garfield. The identity of Guiteau's con-
tention with that held for the patriarch Abraham
was plain, and I am glad to find an article in The
Truth Seeker of January 7 by that logical thinker
Stephen Pearl Andrews, which puts the matter in
a clear light and in the right words. Said Andrews:
   "It strikes me forcibly that it is really not so
much Guiteau who is on trial as the Christian
church, and religion itself as it has been and is
understood and taught in most countries. Espe-
cially is it Judaism, Mohammedanism, and Christi-
anity, the three great religions of the occident,
which are on trial; and to convict and hang Guiteau
will go a long way toward rendering a verdict
against the fundamental doctrine of these three
great religions -- the one doctrine in which they all
agree, and by which they are affiliated as of the
same descent. That doctrine is, faith in the direct
inspiration of individual minds by the deity, which
inspiration may and does in some supreme instances
                        306
1882]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         307

lift the individual so inspired out of himself, cancel
his responsibility, and make him the mere agent
of the higher power; and further, that the grandest
and sublimest test of the overpowering presence of
such inspiration is its requisition upon the indi-
vidual to some act so abhorrent to his natural af-
fections and reason that nothing but such a divine
pressure upon him from without himself could have
induced him to, and have sustained him in, the act.
Such was the act of Abraham in his proposed sacri-
fice of his son Isaac at the supposed and assumed
command of God; and it was that supreme act of
faith in what came to him as an inspiration, and of
obedience to the command so communicated, sub-
jectively, or through the operation of his own mind,
that constituted and constitutes Abraham 'the father
of the Faithful,' and, as such, the historic head of
the three great religions above mentioned. All of
them date back to Abraham for their origin, and to
this one act of Abraham as the sign and seal of the
divine sanction of their own faith -- the very reason
of their own existence.
   "What Abraham did, or proposed to do," con-
tinues Mr. Andrews, "Guiteau has done. The cases
are as nearly identical as can well be imagined.
Abraham was the Guiteau of his day; Guiteau is
the Abraham of our day. Guiteau and Abraham
are virtually one ... Guiteau is logically and pre-
cisely right in affirming that there are two and only
two questions rightly before the court: (1) Was
he under a divine pressure, an overpowering influ-
ence, compelling him to do an act from which per-
308    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1882

sonally he would have recoiled, both in his senti-
ments and in his reason? and (2), Does the presence
of a divine inspiration, thus lifting a man out of him-
self, constitute such a variety of insanity as also
to lift him above all responsibility to human laws?"
   That was the line of Guiteau's defense. It is
sound if the religions are sound. Naturally, how-
ever, The Truth Seeker denied the validity of any
such plea, while admitting to its columns argument
in Guiteau's behalf. A man named Wisner, of
Fordham, made out a strong case, theologically, for
the defense. "That it was God's will Garfield
should die," he wrote, "is already proven. Had the
bullet missed, would it not have been providen-
tial? As it hit, was it not equally providential?
All Christians agree that if God had willed it other-
wise it would have been otherwise. Could he not
have palsied Guiteau's arm had he so pleased?
When Guiteau raised his weapon in his name,
would he not have stopped him as he did Abraham
of old, had it been his will?"
   This letter, of a column's length, which The
Truth Seeker published in full, Guiteau incorpo-
rated into his statement to the press, accepting its
appearance as "providential." His own sister, con-
vinced of her brother's divine mission, wrote him:
"You certainly deserve the commendation of all
people who profess to be Christians, for your un-
wavering trust in God's power when you shot the
President, as I sincerely believe you had. There
can be no condemnation on God's part toward you,
and no condemnation in your heart toward your-
1882]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         309

self." In a special prayer, prepared by the assas-
sin for use on the gallows, Guiteau implicated his
deity, saying, "Thou knowest thou didst inspire
Garfield's removal." He also composed a hymn
with the closing line, "Glory hallelujah! I am with
the Lord."
   Socrates died like a philosopher, but Guiteau
died like a saint.

   Every generation, doubtless, produces its pulpit
clowns. History sets them down as "eccentric
preachers." Such was the Rev. T. DeWitt Tal-
mage. Talmage at the height of his career as pul-
pit clown delivered his sermons in the Tabernacle
church, Brooklyn, Presbyterian, and they were syn-
dicated; that is to say, he prepared weekly a quan-
tity of matter to appear in the newspapers as the
sermon of "last Sunday." A series of his sermons
in 1882 were on Ingersoll. That accounts for In-
gersoll's "Talmagian Catechism" and "Interviews
on Talmage" (see the fifth volume of the Dresden
edition of his works). Talmage owes it to Inger-
soll that his name is mentioned a quarter of a cen-
tury after his death (in 1902). The next genera-
tion may ask the meaning of the words Talmage
and Talmagian -- whether they possibly are variants
of Talmud and Talmudic.

      2 -- INGERSOLL'S MEMORIAL DAY ADDRESS

   The Grand Army of the Republic invited Inger-
soll to deliver the Memorial Day address at the
Academy of Music, May 30, which deeply stirred
310    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1882

the souls of a number of nervous Christians. They
demanded to know whether there was no Chris-
tian soldier who could have been asked to speak.
The editor of The Sun, which printed numerous
protests, saw in the event the doom of Christian-
ity. Said he: "The fact that a professed Infidel, a
man who denounces the scriptures and pours scorn
and insult upon the Christian religion, could be
brought forward as the chief orator on such an
occasion as the services of Decoration Day in this
city, appears to us something of far greater import
than any of our correspondents have taken it for
... It means, in our judgment, that there has been
a general decline in religion. ... If this process
continues for fifty years the Christians will form
a very small minority of the people of this country.
But perhaps some new manifestation of religious
life may arise to arrest the spread of Infidelity."
   Besides this prediction that Christianity would be
wiped out, there were warnings that Ingersoll's ap-
pearance would produce a riot; yet the day came
and Ingersoll with it; and "there was not a dis-
senting voice amidst the thunders of applause that
greeted him as he stepped to the reading-desk."
One beholding the audience called it a "throng
rather than a crowd." The speech delivered that
day by Colonel Ingersoll was the one which, thirty
years later, Christianity's most popular exponent,
the Rev. W.A. Sunday, gave as his own at a Me-
morial Day observance in a Pennsylvania town.
   The indignation felt by the religious people of
the country that a man who denounced the scrip-
1882]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         311

tures and poured scorn and insult upon the Chris-
tian religion should be publicly heard was shared
and voiced by Mr. Frank James, who, at the time
he so expressed himself, was an inmate of a jail
in Jackson county, Missouri, where he awaited trial
for several murders and numerous highway rob-
beries. Said that bandit, as reported in the Kan-
sas City Journal: "Ingersoll is a blasphemer, who
goes abroad denouncing the Bible, the most sacred
of all books. He ridicules its teachings and the
savior, and yet amid all this he has hearers to the
number of two thousand, while a man for using an
indecent word while drunk will be confined for
thirty days. My God! How can such a state of
affairs be? The Lord is my helper. I care not
what men shall say against me. Ingersoll is do-
ing unspeakable injury to this nation. He is sow-
ing the seeds of iniquity in the minds of our
youth." This Frank James and his brother Jesse
being the most notorious criminals of their day,
his pious deliverance carries its own sarcastic com-
mentary.
   Among the contemners of Ingersoll who threw
in with Talmage, Joseph Cook, Guiteau, and Frank
James, was the hereinbefore mentioned skunk and
scalawag, Clark Braden, who propagated falsehood
by pamphlet. Braden circulated the printed state-
ment that Ingersoll was financially irresponsible and
his note unbankable in Peoria. In reply, Mr. Kirk-
patrick of Arrowsmith, Ill., published in The Truth
Seeker an open letter to the libeler, saying: "Mr.
Clark Braden -- Sir: In your pamphlet you say
312    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1882

that Colonel Ingersoll's note is unbankable in Peo-
ria, Ill. Now let me say that if you will go to the
trouble of finding one of those unbankable notes,
Mr. A.T. Ives of this place (formerly of Bloom-
ington) will gladly trade a bill for house rent he
holds against you for an interest in one of those
unbankable notes of R.G. Ingersoll's."
   The season's pulpit heretic was the Rev. George
C. Miln, once a Congregational preacher in Brook-
lyn, and then of a Chicago Unitarian church, where
he delivered a sermon renouncing belief in God
and a future life. He stepped down and out with
the full consent of his congregation. Miln at this
time, the beginning of 1882, was a man of middle
age and personally pleasing. As he appeared to
me when he spoke before Felix Adler's Society
for Ethical Culture, he more resembled an actor
than a clergyman. I thought he intentionally
strove after that effect. Soon we read: "The ex-
Rev. George C. Miln has now definitely announced
his intention of taking the stage this fall. He will
appear as Shakespeare's Hamlet, of whose charac-
ter he has an original conception." When the time
came he appeared in several Shakespearean roles.
His Hamlet was praised.
   In The Truth Seeker a debate about prohibi-
tion got a start from the declaration of Mr. E.C.
Walker that "prohibition involves a principle which,
if carried to its logical conclusion, would stop every
Liberal press in the country, and close the lips of
every Freethinker." Mr. Walker quite convinc-
ingly defended this position. A Freethinker hav-
ing doubts could hardly do better than to turn to
1882]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         313

Mr. Walker's clear demonstrations of the charac-
ter of prohibitory laws. The logic of prohibition,
carried to a conclusion in New Jersey that year,
brought about the arrest of W.H. Rosentranch of
Newark for the crime of blasphemy, April 14, and
in Massachusetts an attempted suppression of Walt
Whitman's "Leaves of Grass."
   There lived a man in France during a past cen-
tury who thought the world would be happier when
the last king had been strangled with the entrails
of the last priest. Should an accident like that
happen to the last amateur custodian of public
morals and the last censor, we might go to hell with
less friction.
   William H. Herndon, for twenty-two years the
law partner and intimate associate of Abraham Lin-
coln, and his biographer, appealed to The Truth
Seeker (Nov. 25) to publish, with "a good little
editorial," his refutation of the lies of pulpit and
press that defamed him for speaking the truth
about the religious belief of Lincoln. In a "card of
correction" Mr. Herndon wrote:
   "I wish to say a few words to the public and
private ear. About the year 1870 I wrote a letter
to F.E. Abbot, then of Ohio, touching Mr. Lin-
coln's religion. In that letter I stated that Mr. Lin-
coln was an Infidel, sometimes bordering on Athe-
ism, and I now repeat the same. In the year 1873
the Right Rev. James A. Reed, pastor and liar of
this city (Springfield, Ill.), gave a lecture on Mr.
Lincoln's religion in which he tried to answer some
things which I never asserted, except as to Lin-
coln's Infidelity, which I did assert, and now and
314    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1882

here affirm. Mr. Lincoln was an Infidel of the
radical type; he never mentioned the name of Jesus,
except to scorn and detest the idea of a miraculous
conception."
   The Rev. Reed, whom Herndon names, endeav-
ored to lay the foundation for a Herndon mythol-
ogy -- a reverse of the myth that Lincoln was a de-
vout Christian and praying man -- which should rep-
resent Herndon as a drunkard, a liar, a blasphemer,
and a pauper, wholly unworthy of credence. If the
Rev. Reed only knew it, he was libeling a man
whose faith was much nearer his own than was
Lincoln's.

       3 -- THE LEAGUE STARTS A NEW ERA

   The sixth Annual Congress of the National Lib-
eral League -- convening in the hall of the Young
Men's Temperance Union (formerly a church),
St. Louis, Mo. -- opened on Friday, September 29,
and continued until Sunday, October 1, with morn-
ing, afternoon, and evening meetings. "Its pro-
ceedings were reported in The Truth Seeker of
October 14 (1882). The officers elected for the
ensuing year were: President, T.B. Wakeman,
New York; secretary, T.C. Leland, New York;
treasurer, Courtlandt Palmer, New York. E.A.
Stevens of Chicago and Mrs. H.S. Lake of Cali-
fornia were elected chairmen, respectively, of the
Executive and Finance Committees. That, I be-
lieve, was the first recognition of Stevens, who in
coming years loomed large in the affairs of the
national organization.
1882]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         315

   The discussions of the congress were diverted
from the subject of church and state separation
by the introduction of proposals to take sides with
the industrial cause in its various forms. But or-
ganized labor was not there to take the side of the
Liberal League. The following paragraph in the
report is significant:

   "Another member arose and pointed to the vacant seats
as a reminder to those present of the interest exhibited in
their discussions and plans by the labor organizations and
other societies the cooperation of which they expected to
secure."

   The situation warranted the inference that the
various industrial organizations took then, as they
continue to take, only the coldest sort of interest
in the secular cause.
   The congress of 1879 had tried without suc-
cess to establish a National Liberty Party. The
members had then listened to a very urgent mem-
ber of the Socialist Labor party. That individual
(Charles Sotheran), as Mr. T.B. Wakeman now
asked the Congress to notice, had since accepted a
position on a Tammany newspaper, was sending
his children to a convent school, and "had spent
much of his spare time in abusing his former com-
rades and Liberal movements and societies." Again,
said Mr. Wakeman, in order to placate the respect-
able Liberals who deprecated the League's war
on comstockery, and at the same time to please
the Socialist element, the Congress of '79 had
elected as chairman of its National Committee
(Gen. B.A. Morton) a reformed capitalist who
316    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1882

was at the same time an ardent admirer of the
League's first president, Francis Ellingwood Ab-
bot, the champion of purity. And shortly after-
wards, when the National Committee looked for
its chairman to lead the new party, he was dis-
covered to be under indictment for forgery and
bigamy, with some half dozen wives on hand to
illustrate his aversion to the principles of that so-
cial freedom which was advocated by certain mem-
bers of the League whom he despised. (I never
heard before 1879 or since 1882 of Gen. B.A.
Morton, chairman of the National Committee of
the Liberal Party.)
   Mr. Wakeman at this sixth congress expressed
disappointment that Colonel Ingersoll had appar-
ently withdrawn from the National Liberal Party
of 1879, at the launching of which he had pro-
posed three rousing cheers.
   Viewing the character, hinted at above by Mr.
Wakeman, of some of the persons who made them-
selves prominent in that 1879 party, I never sup-
posed that Ingersoll's want of enthusiasm required
any further explanation than his inability to work
in harmony with them.
   Mr. Wakeman still held that the labor organ-
izations could be brought into the League, since
"only those who have broken with imagined au-
tocracy above the skies can lead effectively the
break from the real autocracies and monopolies on
the earth." They have never come in.
   An old and experienced Freethinker, Thomas
Curtis of St. Louis, a charter member of the
1882]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         317

League, opposed a Liberal political party as being
impractical; it would be obliged to move fifty mil-
lions of people, which was like the old story of the
tail trying to wag the dog. "The trouble will be,"
Mr. Curtis said, "that these very labor and reform
organizations you may try to combine in order to
wag your dog are largely composed of your relig-
ious opponents. The thousands of Catholics in
them will obey not you but their priests, and so
with the Protestants and even semi-Liberals. Un-
til these men are liberated from their old religious
bonds they cannot cooperate with themselves nor
with you."
   At the request of Mr. Wakeman, the Congress
committed itself to the use of the new "Era of
Man" in place of Anno Domini. This era Mr.
Wakeman reckoned from the martyrdom of 'Gior-
dano Bruno in the year 1600 of the common chro-
nology, and the League paper, Man, was so dated
thereafter (282 instead of 1882). The reform cal-
endar did not survive its founder.

 4 -- THE WORSTING OF THE REV. JOSEPH COOK.

   Bennett's letters of travel at the beginning of
1882 were from the Near East; and it was a short
one that did not make four Truth Seeker pages.
His articles on "What I Don't Believe" were mean-
while continued. His old enemy, the Rev. Joseph
Cook of Boston, overtook him in Bombay. The
Bombay Gazette had proposed a debate between
Cook and Col. H.S. Olcott, the Theosophist. At
318    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         319

the annual dinner of the Theosophical Society, Ben-
nett being present, the colonel mentioned the Ga-
zette's suggestion, and saying he had no time for
a debate, invited Mr. Bennett to be his substitute.
Bennett agreed, and then and there said a few
preliminary words regarding the Boston Monday
lecturer, following them with a challenge to Cook.
The latter ignored the challenge, but took Bennett
as his text when he spoke publicly again. The
Christian minister made the mistake of acting up-
pish or arrogant toward the natives, with whom, on
the contrary, Bennett immediately got upon the most
friendly terms. Cook, irascible and quarrelsome
by nature, could put up with no opposition. Some
sort of an issue arising between him and his native
audience at Poonah, as reported in The Theosophist,
"Mr. Cook wrathfully advised them to pray to their
'false gods.' Then he quarreled with two of the
Christian missionaries present, and insulted the
chairman, a respectable European gentleman of
Poonah; the remarkable lecture coming to a close,
to the great delight of the heathen audience, amidst
a 'general Christian row,' as the heathen editor of
a local paper expressed it."
   Cook having returned Bennett's written challenge
unopened, Colonel Olcott and Dayanana Sarawati, a
learned Parsee, each sent him a defi, which he re-
fused to take up because he would not appear on
the same platform with Bennett. So it was neces-
sary to answer Cook in his absence, and Bennett
had a walk-over. A crowded audience heard him
flay "the falsifier, the defamer, the malinger, the
1882]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         319

slanderer, who with falsehood and malice in his
heart wilfully attempts to injure and destroy the
reputation of a fellow-being." I am quoting Mr.
Bennett's language. After dealing with Cook, Ben-
nett dealt with his religion, pointing out its errors
and receiving "abundant applause."
   Cook, coming well advertised to Bombay, charged
upon the heathen like a warhorse. Bennett had
no advance agent, but he got the decision. He went
away with a testimonial, while to Cook the Native
Public Voice addressed a farewell thanking him for
coming, but hoping he was under no delusion that
his "flimsy, unargumentative, and merely rhetorical
lectures have produced any impression whatever on
their minds with respect to the truth of Christian-
ity."
   On the boat he took from Japan to Sydney, the
Reverend Joseph fell off the upper deck and landed
so hard on a lower one that the ship's surgeon had
to repair his ribs.

             5 -- HOME AT LAST.

   Bennett, the earth's circle completed, as far as
might be by sea, touched land at San Francisco
on May 30 (1882). He was two months crossing
the continent to New York on account of the many
receptions held for him on the way. His Fourth
New York Liberal League awaited him with an-
other reception, which was held at Martinelli's, in
Fifth Avenue. The feature of this occasion, to
me, was the presence of Horace Seaver and J.P.
Mendurn of the Boston Investigator, for I had been
320    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1882

detailed to meet them at the Grand Central and
lead them to the banquet. Mr. Seaver was a stout
old gentleman, with a considerable mustache; Men-
dum slightly built with a not luxuriant brown
beard turning gray. When I came upon them
they were standing together like children lost in
the crowd, timidly regarding their surroundings in
the big station. They were of the age I have now
reached myself, when a man is not so sure of
himself as he is at twenty-five. I conducted them
to Martinelli's and placed them in seats of honor
at the speakers' table.
   When Bennett was in Ceylon, and had addressed
at a place he calls Panadure, an audience of two
thousand, he relates: "Two persons came to the
stand and chanted to me several stanzas in Pali,
composed for the occasion by the two young priests
in the pansala (Panchala?)." (Truth Seeker, July
8, 1882.) The eighth stanza ran thus: --

   "May Mr. Bennett, who is like unto the Sun which de-
        stroys the dew of superstition,
    Is like a victorious general in engagements of controversy,
    Who follows the teachings of Lord Buddha, which com-
        fort the world,
    And who well bears the pearl necklace of renown,
        Shine long."

   At the reception we were giving him in New
York, T.B. Wakeman read some of these stanzas
very acceptably to the diners. The ceremonies
lasted nearly six hours. Samuel P. Putnam was
the poet of the evening.
   The two thousand persons who attended the New
York State Freethinkers' Convention at Watkins,
1882]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         321

feted Bennett again, and he must have found it
hard, after all this, to get back to work at the desk.
In fact, he was already planning for a tour of the
United States with a stereopticon and slides pur-


              @@@@







    THE TRUTH SEEKER OFFICE IN CLINTON PL.

chased abroad. But first he must oversee the re-
moval of the office from the rooms in Science
Hall, which had long ago become too crowded
through his inveterate publishing of books. He
found new and larger quarters at 21 Clinton place
and moved in. The number of the paper for Octo-
ber 14 first bore that address.
   A little while later the mind of Bennett seemed
to undergo a reversal as to the policy of bucking
the Comstock laws; for when on October 27 Ezra
H. Heywood of Princeton, Mass., was arrested
by Anthony and held in default of $1,000 bail,
for circulating selections from the poems of Walt
Whitman, Bennett wrote (Nov. 4): "We must
322    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1882

confess that we have wondered why Mr. Hey-
wood should decide, under the circumstances, to
mail such matter. He seemed to us not a man
with a coarse, animal nature, but naturally as free
from such tendency as one man in a thousand. We
must say, however, that he chose to make himself
most conspicuous by mailing Walt Whitman's most
objectionable poem, and by publishing some things
which we most certainly would not publish. We
could not see what good was to be gained by it,
what principle of Liberalism is involved, or how
the best interest of any class of the community can
thereby be served. There is no reason why any-
one should unnecessarily thrust his hand into the
lion's mouth."
   Bennett did not in this article descend to the
impeachment of Heywood's character; in fact, he
gave him a clean bill of moral health, so far as he
could judge; but otherwise he paltered very much
as his timid friends had done not long before when
his own hand was in the mouth of the lion, saying:
"We are all in favor of free mails, the same as
free thought, a free press, and free speech, but
we are not in favor of sending indecent matter by
mail, or any other way."
   These remarks at once impressed me as invidious and
while I pondered them, a printer who prided
himself on the classical allusions at his command.
said with a sigh: "Achilles had his vulnerable spot
and so has the Doctor. I'm afraid it is his vanity;
he is in the limelight, and isn't encouraging any
rivals in martyrdom." The uncompromising Ben-
jamin R. Tucker, then publishing Liberty replied
1882]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         323

to the article with heat and vigor. Writing of Hey-
wood's arrest, he said: "In this connection we must
express our indignation at the cowardly conduct
of D.M. Bennett, editor of The Truth Seeker,
who orates about Mr. Heywood's taste and methods.
We do not approve of Mr. Heywood's taste and
methods, but neither did we of Bennett's when we
did our little best a few years ago to save him from
Comstock's clutches."

           6 -- THE LAST HOME.

   Others expressed their astonishment at the
change in Bennett's point of view. I lay that
change to his last sickness, which attacked him
while we were moving the office in October. We
were still at 141 Eighth street when he began to
hiccup, and the affection was never checked. It
became a habit. I heard him say to Dr. Foote and
his son (this was at 141): "If you boys don't do
something to stop this hiccuping, I am gone." He
was enough of a physician to know what to ex-
pect. The trouble was shaking him apart when he
worked, or spoke, or ate. Criticism of his utter-
ances then would be leveled at a dying man. About
the last of November he left a piece of unfinished
copy on his desk and went home. To get the con-
clusion of what he was writing I carried the last
sheet to his rooms, where he dictated a paragraph
to me. It is in The Truth Seeker for December
9, the shortest installment of anything he ever
wrote to be continued. The same number of the
paper announced his death, December 6, 1882.
324    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1882

   We buried Dr. Bennett on the Sunday follow-
ing his death, from the place where the Liberal
Club met, German Masonic Temple in East Fif-
teenth street, Mr. Wakeman being the eulogist.
Over his grave in Sylvan avenue, Greenwood Cem-
etery, stands a monument bearing his name and
extracts from his writings, and the legend, "Erect-
ed by One Thousand Friends."
   For a Bennett Memorial I composed an ode of
many stanzas, closing with the apostrophe:

   "Where o'er thy precious dust this shaft we raise
     To bear the record of a hero gone,
   'Neath changeless stars, through ever-changing days,
     First in our heart of heart, sleep on, sleep on."

   He sleeps on. And could he be awakened alone
by the footfall above his grave of someone who
remembers him, his slumbers have been undisturbed
for many years. Until I went West -- that is, for
five years following his death -- my brother and I
were accustomed, once in a summer, to visit Green-
wood Cemetery and delay our walk for a few mo-
ments at the place where he lies. I have not been
there since the summer of 1887.

    The inscription on the face of the monument underneath
"Erected by One Thousand Friends" and the medallion
reads: "D.M. Bennett, the Founder of The Truth
Seeker; the Defender of Liberty, and its Martyr; the
Editor Tireless and Fearless; the Enemy of Superstition,
as of Ignorance, its Mother; the Teacher of Multitudes;
the Friend faithful and kind; the Man honest and true,
Rests Here. Though dead he still speaks to us and asks
that we continue the work he left unfinished. When the
Innocent is convicted, the Court is condemned."







                               @@@@












              THE GRAVE OF D.M. BENNETT

      The monument stands at the corner of Sylvan avenue
   and Osier path, Greenwood Cemetery, Brooklyn, N.Y.

      The monument stands at the corner of Sylvan avenue
and Osier path, Greenwood Cemetery, Brooklyn, N.Y.
326    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1882

   Many young Freethinkers have expressed them-
selves as desirous of knowing what kind of a man
was Bennett who founded The Truth Seeker. In
my attempt to answer the question I have described
him as I knew him. I hope the picture presented
and received is fairly accurate, which none can be
when a man is overpraised. It would be useless
for me to conceal any of his faults. He told them
all or showed them all himself. Anything added
thereto, to his discredit, may be dismissed as false.
He owed the popularity he achieved partly to cir-
cumstance, and more to his simple and honest na-
ture, his industrious hand, his capable head, and
his courageous heart. His success was all earned
and genuine, for he had none of the tricks, either
of speech or pen, that deceive the unwary, nor re-
sorted to the "skilled digressions" which appeal to
the passions or stir the emotions of the unthinking.
He was a likeable man, and it did not embarrass
him to be praised. His journalism was of the sort
called personal. The Truth Seeker was Bennett,
and in advertising himself he advertised the paper.

            7 -- FOR THE RECORD.

    I am writing of a year (1882) in which occurred
many events that have their place in the annals of
Freethought. John William Draper, author of
"The History of the Conflict Between Religion and
Science," died January 14; Bradlaugh was elected
to Parliament for the third time; Charles Darwin
died and was entombed in Westminster Abbey.
Satirizing the burial and memorial of unbelievers
1882]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         327

in this sacred edifice, Thomas Hardy, speaking for
the dean, said in 1924:

        "'Twill next be expected
          That I get erected
          To Shelley a tablet
          In some niche or gablet.
          Then -- what makes my skin burn,
          Yes, forehead to chin burn --
          That I ensconce Swinburnel"

The dean got his revenge on Hardy for this jibe
by laying the author's ashes away in the Poets'
corner, in 1928.
   Charles Watts of England and Charles Bright of
Australia came to the United States to lecture.
Herbert Spencer spent a few weeks here in the
fall, and was dined at Delmonico's by the evolu-
tionists. The attendants at the dinner included
John Fiske, Editor Youmans of The Popular Sci-
ence Monthly, Carl Schurz, the Hon. Wm. M.
Evarts, Thaddeus B. Wakeman, Courtlandt Palmer,
and Henry Ward Beecher. Carl Schurz said of
Spencer: "We greet him as a hero of thought who
has devoted his life to the sublime task of vindicat-
ing the right of science as against the intolerant
authority of traditional belief." Beecher was a
professed evolutionist from that date.
   Otto Wettstein, designer of the Freethought
badgepin, began writing for The Truth Seeker, as
did also C.L. James, author of a History of the
French Revolution. LaRoy Sunderland, formerly
a hypnotic evangelist, wrote articles unveiling the
philosophy of revival hysteria. Bennett made the
experiment of reducing the subscription price of
328    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1882

The Truth Seeker to $2.50, but got no more sub-
scribers thereby, and the next year it was put back
at $3. The surviving Liberal exchanges of The
Truth Seeker and Boston Investigator were: New
York Man, Boston This World, Milwaukee Liberal
Age, Indianapolis Iconoclast, Missouri Liberal, Val-
ley Falls (Kan.) Liberal, the Pepin Gazette, Texas
Agnostic, San Francisco Jewish Times, and Dr.
Foote's Health Monthly, New York.
   In the pages of this ninth (1882) volume of
The Truth Seeker I come upon occasional contri-
butions from my own pen in prose and verse. Vis-
itors to the office began asking where G.E.M.
could be seen, and were brought into the printing
office, for purposes of congratulation. The elder
Dr. Foote was the second person to encourage me
to write more and oftener; the first one being Ben-
nett. Bennett imprudently had said as early as 1879
that The Truth Seeker would print whatever I might
choose to write.
   As a neophyte, I was an exceedingly enthusi-
astic Freethinker, justifying Ingersoll's similitude of
the bumblebee -- "biggest when first hatched." How-
ever, nobody, I trust, will accuse me of shrinking
up any since. The following sonnet, the form and
terms of which were lifted from Shakespeare, I
wrote in praise of Universal Mental Liberty. it
is a fair transcript of my mental state at that period.

      "Could half the joy a mind enfranchised brings
        Be told in numbers that to it belong,
       The world would say, 'A poet 'tis that sings
        Whose wayward fancy hath betrayed his song.'
1882]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         329

       Too. early still the day, too late the dawn,
        For all mankind yet to behold the light
       That shines on those who know of coming morn,
        And greet its glow from Freedom's lofty height.
       But time may come -- when dust of ours shall lie
        Mute as our papers, yellowed with their age --
       When those who now would plainest truths deny
        The present poet will esteem a sage.
       His worth shall live upon the lips of fame,
        And grateful praises consecrate his name."

   As an exponent of Freethought I have had oc-
casion to repel the insinuation that Freethinkers
are without ardor, that emancipation from supersti-
tion as they deem it, is not with them an occasion
for rejoicing. I put that sonnet in evidence to show
what the wider outlook did to me, who am not
emotionally effervescent, and never was.
   Embalmed in the files of The Truth Seeker there
are probably hundreds of testimonies to the "spir-
itual" uplift of Freethought. A convincing one came
from a woman in Texas many years ago, who
"thanked God," as she phrased her gratitude, for
the day when her husband went to hear Ingersoll,
some two years prior to the time of her writing,
and became a Freethinker. She said that while a
church member he had been the tyrant of his house-
hold, and had even beaten her. He came home
from Ingersoll's lecture a different man, and had
since been the kindest of husbands. She had not
herself wholly given up the old faith, but she was
ordering more of Ingersoll's pamphlets for him, and
expected to enjoy them herself.
330    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1882

   A perplexing phenomenon is the occasional rever-
sion of an apparently convinced Rationalist to some
form of mysticism. O.B. Frothingham, for years
a Rationalist lecturer, whose discourses made up
the bulk of a Truth Seeker book entitled "The
Radical Pulpit," turned in his last days to a form
of theism. B.F. Underwood, whose lectures in the
'70s made a lifelong Materialist of me, thought he
was taking a step forward when he embraced Spir-
itualism. Louis F. Post died a confirmed Sweden-
borgian, they say. G.H. Walser, founder of the
town of Liberal, Missouri, after being fooled by a
medium who later was exposed as a fraud, relapsed
into an orthodox fundamentalist. George Chainey,
who, as a Materialist, called Theosophy "mental rub-
bish" and said he hoped Bennett would write no
more about it, went to a Spiritualist camp-meeting,
found there the "mother of his soul," proceeded
from Spiritualism to Theosophy, and has been a
mystic of one sort or another ever since. I have
known men, once supposed Freethinkers, to lean
toward Christian Science, even Bahaism. And I
have ceased to wonder thereat, not because I can
explain their action, but because I have seen so
many of them they are no longer, novelties -- not
even an individualist turning authoritarian. Doubt-
less their state of reaction may be called a spiritual
second childhood, matching that of the body and
mind. Like children, the aged must play safe. I
once stood upon a bridge over a swollen river
watching two or three families of Indians hauling
ashore the drift and wreckage that came down with
1882]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         331

the flood. While the vigorous bucks worked their
canoes in the current of the midstream, the old men
and young boys paddled about close inshore. The
old men in their prime had breasted the current,
and after a few years the boys would be doing a
man's part also, but now the old and the young
were in the same boat -- the youth not yet competent
for the battle, the aged owning defeat.
                   CHAPTER XVI.

      1 -- I BECOME THE ASSISTANT EDITOR.

   PROGRESS in these writings for 1883 is
hindered by my preoccupation with the
contents of the volume of The Truth Seeker
for that year. As an employee I had been taken
off stone-work in the printing-office, and to my
duties as foreman and proof-reader there had been
added the role of assistant to the editor, E.M.
Macdonald, much of whose time was taken up with
the business affairs of the paper. Mrs. Bennett,
as owner, took care of the receipts and expendi-
tures, but my brother understood the trade; and
while from some source she had brought in a
"business adviser," she found after a little experi-
ence that Eugene was her reliance. This "adviser"
and her relatives, I suspect, would have displaced
both of us if that had been practicable. As it was
not, they made her fairly suspicious of us; and
soon she endeavored to take the management from
Eugene by organizing the Truth Seeker Company.
The members of the Company, whom, with herself,
she called "executors," were Daniel E. Ryan, T.
B. Wakeman, her brother Loren J. Wicks, Eugene
M. Macdonald, and John V. Wingate. In an-
nouncing the formation of the company she said
that her brother and Mr. Wingate would relieve
1883]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         333

herself and Mr. Macdonald of "much business and
office work." The change gave Mr. Wingate a
position with salary. Meanwhile the office had re-



                               @@@@

















                  A PICTURE OF MRS. MARY BENNETT

moved from No. 21 to No. 33 Clinton Place, and
my brother and I had desks in the rear of the
building. Visitors met Wingate and then came
334    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1883

back to the editor's room to inquire who the hell
Wingate was. The business adviser made a confi-
dant of one of the compositors to keep him in-
formed of all that was said in the rear, and re-
ceiving what could be measured as an earful, re-
warded the printer with a job in the front office,
at time work, and little to do. Mrs. Bennett lost
confidence in Eugene -- the influence of her rela-
tives and adviser, I suppose. To place events in
the right connection I will say here that she died
in my brother's house, to which she had come in
her last years, and gave him what they had left her
of the estate.
   To resume. I was assistant editor, and, to me,
being assistant editor meant more than the leisurely
preparation of a measured amount of matter per
week, and handing it to the chief for revision and
bestowal on the men who were to put it in type, My
brother wrote his editorials, and with letters and
articles for publication passed them to me. He
could go fishing then, if he wanted to and had the
time, which on account of examining contributions,
answering letters and receiving visitors he usually
did not. It was my pastime to take the writers'
mistakes out of the MSS. by revising them, to
supply the headings, and otherwise to prepare them
for the printer. When they were insufficient for
the available space, I must select the "fillers." I
then took the printers' mistakes out of the proofs
and overlooked the make-up. The editor might
keep regular hours; the assistant was expected to
stay for the last revise, and, when the forms were
locked up, to test them and see if they would lift.
1883]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         335

All the manuscripts for books as well as for the
paper went through the assistant's hands for read-
ing. To be a competent assistant editor the person
in that position should have persuaded himself
that he could do the work a little better than the old
man, and should be watchful that none of the lat-
ter's errors get past him and go through.
   The work was not burdensome. There was still
time to indulge the itch for writing, which led to
the production of editorial articles. The New
York Times then had on its staff William Living-
ston Alden, who originated the famous "sixth
column" feature, a humorous editorial. To bring
The Truth Seeker to a level with the best journal-
ism, I began making that kind of a contribution to
the last column, when available, of the ninth page.
The pieces are in the first few numbers of the
tenth volume of The Truth Seeker, and are worth
a chuckle today. But the space was not always
available, for my brother's articles and selections
often filled the pages, so that, dropping the column
editorial, I devoted myself to writing editorial
paragraphs of either light or serious import. I re-
flect with something of sadness on the fact that at
the time in question I could turn off about twice
the amount of work in a given length of time that
I am now capable of doing. Then the thought
went ahead of the pen. Now it does not keep up
with the typewriter -- and I am a slow typist. In
these days of the sere and yellow, as the weeks go
by, I am inclined to breathe a sigh of relief when
the pagination of the editorial manuscript I am
making lets me know that enough has been pre-
336    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1883

pared for the next number of the paper. At that
age (in 1883) I should have done this Fifty-Years
narrative on spare time during the day, in the office.
Now the preparation of it is home work -- three
hours in the evening, six Saturday afternoon, and
twelve or fifteen on Sunday. About twenty-four
hours are required to turn through a year's file of
The Truth Seeker and to make notes, and the re-
mainder of the week is not too much for elaborat-
ing them. With forty-five volumes yet to do, a
year's travel lies between me and the colophon.
And work on the volume in hand is prolonged by
my dallying over the pieces that I wrote myself, to
which I have not turned before for more than four
decades. One feels a curiosity to see how he
thought and wrote in his salad days.
   Besides editorial paragraphs, there was verse, of
which none I ever produced satisfied me. I found a
market for some of it, but not a line contains the
germ of immortality. My first commercial venture
in "poetry" went to a trade paper, The Sewing
Machine Journal, and produced ten dollars. It
was embalmed in a "popular" publication called
"Gems of Poetry and Prose." I have no inclina-
tion to disturb the remains.
   That season I took up the study of phonography,
or shorthand, with D.L. Scott-Browne (pioneer of
the Haldeman-Julius form of matrimonial hyphena-
tion), who charged me a dollar an hour for lessons
and seemed surprised when I taxed him fifty cents
an hour for making up the forms of his magazine
at night. I contributed certain verses to his publi-
cation for which I received no thanks from the
1883]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         337

young lady in whose behalf I invoked the muse.
One scrap of my rhyme -- a parody -- in The Truth
Seeker, Mr. Scott-Browne pounced upon to use
as a test for his advanced pupils. Entitled "How
to Be a Preacher," it ran:

      "If you want a receipt for a popular minister,
        Skilled in expounding the doctrine of sects,
       Arrange a collection of expletives sinister,
        Mingled with fragments of various texts;
       Take the last wailing of Christ in his agony,
        Latin and Hebrew, original Greek --
       Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani --
        Howl it and chatter it, mumbie and shriek;
       Of Moses and Joshua study astronomy,
        Copy the morals of David and Lot,
       Practice each day in Ezekiel's gastronomy,
        Drink with old Noah, the bibitious sot;
        Gather some scraps of New England theology,
       Weak metaphysics, and Cook's eschatology;
        Fill your discourses with all that's fanatical,
       Rattle them off in a manner theatrical;
        Doubt every fact and believe every mystery,
       Meet modern learning with biblical history,
        Praise all the actions of pious rascality,
       Damn every heretic as a finality.
        These qualities constitute, blended in unity,
       The joy of the modern religious community."

   A Boston lawyer named James W. Stillman sur-
prised me one day by coming unannounced to the
door of the room where I was at work and then
reciting the lines in a thunderous voice. It embar-
rassed me, of course; but still and all, that was bet-
ter than being in ignorance as to whether anyone
ever noticed the verses or not.
338    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1883

          2 -- THE MAN WITH THE BADGEPIN

   With my shorthand notebook and several care-
fully pointed lead pencils in my pocket, and nothing
to do with them but a little occasional transcribing
for my friend Sherman, the stenographer by pro-
fession, I bethought me to go and get some practice
for speed at the Liberal Club, which met in East
Fifteenth street every Friday night. It was my
fortune first to hit the club with this purpose in
view on a night when a controversy was going on
between Mr. T.B. Wakeman and another legal
gentleman named Shook, a professed Christian;
Mr. Wakeman being the speaker according to the
program, and Mr. Shook there to controvert him.
I am not going to quote the report I turned in at the
office to be published with the foreword: "Reported
for The Truth Seeker by a Young Man Whose
Veracity we have hitherto had no Occasion to
Doubt."
   In my notebook were the speeches of the even-
ing nearly verbatim. Transcribed, they would
have filled many columns, and, for the purpose of
a descriptive report of the meeting, were wholly
useless. However, I had written some asides in
"English," and from these made up the printed
account. When Mr. Wakeman saw it a week later
he pronounced it unsatisfactory. Young Dr. Foote
who was present at the meeting, said it was better
than the speeches. With some further encourage-
ment I repeated the performance, and the report of
the Liberal Club became a feature of the paper, im-
1883]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         339

proving, I hope, from week to week. Shorthand
being an obstruction to descriptive reports, I dis-
continued its use in doing the story of the Club.
This was the beginning of my career as the Man
with the Badgepin.

    3 -- MEMORABLE LIBERAL CLUB MEETINGS.

   Three meetings of the Club in 1883 were in a
way historical. The speakers severally were Albert
Brisbane, Dr. Dio Lewis, and Samuel P. Putnam.
Mr. Brisbane spoke on "Modern Scientific Specu-
lations -- Their Superficialities." His lecture was a
review of philosophies ancient and modern, none
of which satisfied him. He examined and rejected
Comte, Hegel, Spencer, Darwin. They had settled
nothing, he said. As near as I can say, Mr. Bris-
bane, being a Fourierite, rejected observation and
experiment as methods of ascertaining the ultimate
truth, and relied upon thought or excogitation. The
problems of the universe were to be solved by
thinking -- by discovering "the designs and laws of
cosmic wisdom." Mr. Brisbane was one of the
notable men of his generation. In discussing his
speech Stephen Pearl Andrews referred to the
French philosopher, Charles Fourier (1772-1837),
as the greatest genius the world had ever produced.
Occasionally the reader finds in the writings of
Arthur Brisbane, son of Albert, the same unquali-
fied praise of Fourier. But Mr. Andrews dissented
from the dictum of Mr. Brisbane, speaker of the
evening, that the law of cosmic wisdom remained
340    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1883

yet to be discovered. "As a matter of fact," said
Mr.Andrews, "I have discovered it and am now
teaching it to a small class."
   Did all these philosophers labor in vain? It
would appear so, for who now quotes Fourier to
prove a point? What did Hegel demonstrate?
Who works out a problem now by applying the
thoughts of Kant? What is of most human inter-
est today in the career of Albert Brisbane -- the
advocacy of Fourierism which he conducted, or
the fact, to be verified by reading the files of New
York newspapers for 1855, that on an evening
when he was meeting with a society of social radi-
cals at 555 Broadway the police raided the place
and arrested him with the rest of those present?
   Seeing how soon philosophers are forgotten,
Omar Khayyam was not irrelevant when he said
that the revelations of the learned are no more
than "stories" which they wake up and tell before
going to sleep for all time.
   Beholding Dr. Dio Lewis in the flesh was like
witnessing an incarnation. He had been one of the
myths of my childhood. His name I had known for
twenty years, for he was head of the school for
nurses attended by mother just after the war; but
here he was in proper person, speaking from the
platform of the Liberal Club on the announced
subject of "The Function of Civil Law in Human
Government." He declared that all rights belonged
to the individual, none whatever being vested in
that vague abstraction called society. We must
learn, he said, to distinguish between crime, which
may properly be dealt with by force, and vice,
1883]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         341

which we should seek to eradicate by persuasion.
A crime must have the element of malice prepense
and of injury toward another person. VICE IS AN
INJURY WE DO OURSELVES IN A MISTAKEN PURSUIT
OF HAPPINESS. The law cannot properly deal with
vice, because vice is not a crime, and law has only
to do with crime. Rum-selling and rum-drinking
are vices, but the sale of liquor should no more be
interfered with by law than the sale of potatoes.
Gluttony is a vice fully equal, in the extent of harm
it does, to intemperance in the use of alcoholic
liquors, yet no one believes gluttony should be
punished by law. We have all more or less vices,
and if vices were to be punished with imprison-
ment the whole world would be in jail, and the last
man would have to put his hand out through a hole
in the door and lock himself in. Thus spoke Dr.
Dio Lewis at considerable length. He was a health
reformer, a dietician, heartily opposed to the use
of rum and tobacco; and as for selling either, he
said he would prefer to be a horse-thief. His dif-
ferentiation between vice and crime suited me
then and does now.
   When Samuel P. Putnam spoke in the fall, Ben-
jamin R. Tucker had just translated and published
Bakounine's "God and the State." Putnam took
the book for his theme and was full of his sub-
ject. At the outset he announced himself to be
an Anarchist -- of course of the school later known
as Philoscphical -- a godless, churchless, stateless
Anarchist. Society, he said, very much in the
vein of Dio Lewis, did not exist. It was a myth.
The church and state were relics of a barbaric
342    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1883

past, born of ignorance and fear and brute force.
Give us freedom of thought. Yet freedom of
thought is born to blush unseen unless we have
freedom of speech, and freedom of speech is
nipped in the bud if it be not supplemented with
freedom of action. The church would control our
thoughts and the state our acts. Away with both.
The Anarchist will brook no authority except that
which is accepted in freedom. Enforced equality
of men is a humbug. Liberty first: equality if you
can achieve it as an outcome of that liberty. Lib-
erty is the means, not the end. The state is un-
trustworthy and cruel. It has been guilty of every
enormity. It is a giant monopolist. It uses brute
force in order to compete with private enterprise.
Even the postoffice has to protect itself by law
from individual competition. The state has made
fishing or attending a theater on Sunday a crime.
It is a tyrant and usurper.
   Those were some of the points maintained by
Mr. Putnam; and I have never been a more vio-
lent dissenter from such views than from those of
Dio Lewis. The ideal condition of man would be
stateless and churchless, realizable when each shall
have become orderly enough to respect the liberty
of all. For some years I even advocated these prin-
ciples myself and would now rejoice could it be
seen that any progress had been made toward their
general adoption. But "progress" has gone in the
opposite direction. Before the people can get
fairly set in opposition to one bad law, the legisla-
tive bodies divert our attention from it by enacting
a worse one.
1883]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         343

      Fifty years ago a voice might hopefully be raised
in behalf of libertarian ideas, but no more. The
time when those ideas might have had a China-
man's chance has gone by. We have reached a
point, with respect to the conflict between liberty
and authority, where a man found himself on the
morning after he had bet on the Dempsey-Tunney
prize fight at Chicago. The man I speak of was a
passenger on the train which takes me to New
York. He acknowledged he had placed his money
on Dempsey and lost; but, he said: "I still think
Jack Dempsey can lick Gene Tooney." And a
train hand who had been listening turned away
saying: "Aw, it is too late to think." So it is too
late to think that liberty can beat force. Liberty,
in whose eyes shines always "that high light where-
by the world is saved" -- Liberty is licked.

     4 -- A PAPAL EMISSARY AND ADVENTURER

   A package of bad medicine shipped from Rome
entered our ports under the label of "Mgr." Capel.
The monsignor, a French Jesuit, was on a mission
from the pope to work amongst Protestants and
make as many converts as he could. The Protes-
tants gave him a hearing, and the better-fixed en-
tertained him in their homes and invited their
friends to meet him. Episcopalians afflicted with
the Catholic itch were especially cordial, He gave
in Chickering Hall a lecture on divorce, making
the point that when a divorced man marries a sec-
ond time the woman he takes is a concubine. The
good and polite Episcopalians applauded the monsig-
344    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1883

nor. In addition to indulging in this sort of black-
guardism, Capel ventured to sound out the country
on the question of state support for Catholic paro-
chial schools. Catholic statisticians in 1883 laid claim
to only 8,000,000 adherents of the church in place
of the 20,000,000 they are talking about now, and
the parochial school was in its infancy. Speak-
ing in Chicago, Mgr. Capel condemned the public
school and the school laws that compelled the at-
tendance of Catholic children. He then gave his
American hearers due notice that there was going
to be a fight. The American public school, he said,
was no place for Catholics and they were going
to leave it. He proceeded: "Suppose that the
church sends out an authoritative command to the
Catholics to start schools in every parish and sup-
port them, and send all Catholic children to them.
It can be done in the utterance of a word, SHARP
AS THE CLICK OF A TRIGGER." Had Herr Johann
Most, a contemporary bumptious anarchist, talked
about "the click of a trigger" a policeman would
have pulled him down and put him in jail. But
this emissary of the pope was permitted to pro-
ceed. Said he: "That command will be obeyed.
New schools will spring up everywhere. What
will be the result of that? A FIGHT! Do you
suppose some millions of people are going to pay
taxes twice over -- once for their own schools, and
again for Protestant schools from which they get
no benefit? If it isn't a downright fight, it will be
at least a WARLIKE CONDITION -- A million or two
of voting, tax-paying citizens HOSTILE TO THE GOV-
ERNMENT." He promised that Americans should
1883]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         345

see Catholic parents pressing the muzzles of their
guns against the breasts of the state tax-collectors.
   The threat contained in this incendiary language
of the pope's emissary went unheeded. The propo-
sal to relieve Catholics of the burden of support-
ing their religious schools met with no public re-
sponse. Thirty years later (in 1915) Mr. Alfred
E. Smith, then a delegate to the New York state
constitutional convention, moved to strike out the
clause prohibiting state support of sectarian
schools; but Smith's motion never got a second.
Thus Capel exposed the hostility of Catholics to
the government without gaining anything thereby.
Notice, however, that the Catholics are not mak-
ing their demands and threats so loudly and de-
fiantly as in 1883.
   In his mission as proselyter, Capel's best catch
was the widow Hamersly, an Episcopalian lady of
New York whose husband had left her four mil-
lions. Her bishop, Dr. Horatio Potter, had been
expecting that his church would come in for a
large share of the Hamersly money. The widow
disappointed him. The French Jesuit had been
there, and the Catholic church got it; which showed
the error of the Episcopalian fashionable in lion-
izing Capel.
   Again, in the furtherance of his mission Capel
appealed to the government at Washington in the
name of 8,000,000 American Catholics to arrest the
Italian government in the act of taxing propa-
ganda property in Rome. That failed despite its
approval by a big Catholic mass meeting which he
arranged.
346    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1883

   The late John R. Slattery, a former Catholic
clergyman and a contributor to The Truth Seeker
at the time of his death in 1926, related to me that
Capel, while in New York, declared himself to a
Catholic married woman and proposed an intrigue.
Being repulsed, he professed to be mystified, say-
ing he did not understand New York Catholic la-
dies. Mr. Slattery remarked that the woman told
him of the incident in order that she might dis-
close the name of another New York Catholic
woman with whom Capel came to an understand-
ing. That Capel was a woman-hunter appears
not only from testimony but from what happened
to him in California, where the pursuer seems to
have been pursued. Anyhow a woman there took
him into camp and he never got back to Rome with
a report to his holiness the pope. So far as I know
or care he lived with this woman on a ranch in
California until 1911, when he died. So all is
well that ends well.
   Capel is dismissed for the present with the fol-
lowing excerpt from the News of the Week in
The Truth Seeker November 4, 1911:

   "Monsignor T.J. Capel, the Catholic preacher, died in
Sacramento, Cal., Oct. 23, at the age of 75. Capel was
the Catesby of Disraeli's satirization in 'Lothair' because
of his success as a social lion in the English society of his
day. He appeared in New York nearly thirty years, ago,
and in his lectures talked about putting muskets to the
breasts of representatives of the government who came
to collect the school tax from Catholics who were support-
ing parochial schools. He argued at the same time in
favor of putting irreligious persons to death as homicides
1883]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         347

because they 'murdered the soul.' He was a high liver
and hard drinker, and had the reputation of being 'the
devil after women.' He went west from here, and it was
reported that he had annexed a wife and a farm in Cali-
fornia. He drank heavily in New York, appeared in an
intoxicated condition at a dinner of police captains at
Delmonico's, picked up a woman afterwards, and disgraced
himself generally. He beat everybody who would lend
him money. His priestly function was at length taken
from him by Cardinal McCloskey."

           5 -- FOR THE RECORD OF 1883

   W.H. Herndon of Illinois contributed to The
Truth Seeker, February 24 and March 10, articles
on the religious belief of his friend and law part-
ner, Abraham Lincoln.
   The Catholics pushed their "freedom of wor-
ship" bill in the New York legislature. It pro-
vided that the wardens of state prisons should be
compelled to give clergymen access to prisoners.
The drive ended years later with the appointment
of Catholic prison chaplains salaried by the state.
   Peter Cooper, the philanthropist, died in April.
When testimony was taken as to Mr. Cooper's
views, they were found to be substantially those
of Thomas Paine.
   A strange figure called the Dude made its ap-
pearance in the early part of the year. The New
York Tribune, after describing the genus, said
that "he gets his religion from Colonel Ingersoll."
The Tribune had taken Courtlandt Palmer for a
pattern. Mr. Palmer to some extent dressed the
part.
348    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1883

   George Chainey discontinued publication of his
paper, This World, which was consolidated with the
Radical Review, edited by E.A. Stevens and
George Schumm.
   The death of Dr. George M. Beard, Materialist
and one of New York's most eminent men of
science, gave opportunity to Joseph Cook to put in
circulation a story that the doctor had come to
Jesus on his deathbed. The religious newspapers
caught by the Rev. Cook's falsehood later repu-
diated it and expressed regret. Yet it is still go-
ing.
   Religion was injected into the political campaign
in Ohio by the nomination of Judge George H.
Hoadley for governor. Mr. Hoadley being a Free-
thinker, the Cleveland Leader declared the nom-
ination to be "the deepest and most outrageous in-
sult ever offered to the God-fearing people of the
State." Judge Hoadley was elected.
   H.L. Green began the publication of a Free-
thought Directory, the forerunner of his Free-
thinkers' Magazine that continued through many
volumes.
   The International Federation of Freethought
Societies held its fourth Annual Congress at Am-
sterdam, August 31 to September 2. Charles
Bradlaugh and Dr. Ludwig Buchner, author of
"Force and Matter," were among those present.
   Kersey Graves, author of "The World's Six-
teen Crucified Saviors" and the "Bible of Bibles,"
died September 4 at his home in Richmond, Ind.,
at the age of 70 years.
   The Liberal League Congress for 1883 was held
1883]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         349

at Milwaukee, Wisconsin, September 21-23, in
Freiegemeinde Hall. Largely attended by Ger-
mans, it could adopt a resolution declaring: "No
so-called temperance (prohibition) law shall be
passed." The resolution caused animated discus-
sion. T.B. Wakeman, T.C. Leland, and Court-
landt Palmer were reelected president, secretary,
and treasurer respectively, and E.A. Stevens chair-
man of the Executive Committee.
   On October 13 Mrs. Bennett announced that
she had disposed of her pecuniary interest in The
Truth Seeker and its business to The Truth Seeker

                    @@@@






         THE MANAGER AND THE EDITOR.

Company. Charles P. Somerby became business
manager, E.M. Macdonald continuing as editor.
The company paid Mrs. Bennett $10,000 for the
property, Ephraim E. Hitchcock furnishing the
money and being the actual owner. Mr. Hitchcock
350    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1883

was wealthy and supposed to be conservative. The
public was surprised at his death in the '90s to learn
that he was proprietor of an Infidel paper. Mr.
Hitchcock made the company a present of the $10,
000.
   The famous Nineteenth Century Club, Court-
landt Palmer president, came into notice the early
part of the year 1883. The meetings were held in
Mr. Palmer's parlors. Carrying Freethought into
swelldom, as it were, it was the means of causing
some plain people to put on swallowtails who had
never worn them before. It admitted the common-
ality to the presence of the exclusive. Here Inger-
soll in 1888 debated with the Hon. Frederic R.
Coudert and former Governor Stewart L. Wood-
ford "The Limitations of Toleration."
   In London, George William Foote, editor of the
Freethinker, underwent prosecution and conviction
on a charge of blasphemy and served a year in jail.
A religious commission was appointed to examine
the works of Mill, Darwin, Huxley and others,
with a view to bringing blasphemy prosecutions
against their publishers.
   The Seymour Times, Indiana, took the name of
The Ironclad Age and was published as a Free-
thought paper until merged with The Truth Seeker
a decade afterwards.
   William Denton, author, geologist, man of
science, and Freethinker, died while conducting ex-
plorations in New Guinea, August 26. "His death,"
said The Truth Seeker, December 22, "was a sacri-
fice to science."
1883]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         351

   The Children's Comer of The Truth Seeker,
edited by Susan Helen Wixon, began Nov. 10.
The department was continued long after her
death, which occurred in 1912.
   On December 8 The Truth Seeker announced
that the Bennett monument "now stands in Green-
wood cemetery." On the 23d, it being the 65th an-
niversary of Mr. Bennett's birth, the Fourth New
York Liberal League, rechristened the Bennett
Auxiliary, celebrated the day with a meeting in the
hall of the Liberal Club.
                  CHAPTER XVII.

      1 -- KEEPING HOUSE IN THIRD AVENUE.

   VIEWING Third avenue, a few blocks above
the Bible House, in 1928, the spectator might
guess that the thoroughfare had seen bet-
ter days, but he would have no idea what a "homey"
aspect those precincts wore forty-five years ago.
While the same houses are there now as then, most
of them, they are not in good repair. The class
of tenantry has changed, and not for the better.
It was a good neighborhood when mother and I
kept house at No. 78 in the '80s, and those may
have been among the most restful and contented
years of that active woman's life, since she had
no responsibilities but myself, who paid the rent
and the household expenses, while she was free to
answer calls from her old patients, who never for-
got her when ill, or to visit her relatives near and
far. She seldom stayed long with her relatives;
they were so surprised at her views, which it was
against her nature to conceal, that they lived under
some strain while she remained with them, espe-
cially those in the South. She had a pension of
$12 a month. It is surprising today to know how
far that amount would go toward the upkeep of a
woman who was independent of the dressmakers.
And, always remindful of me, or else of the other
                       352
1884]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         353

party concerned, she never left me without a house-
keeper. On one of her most extended vacations
she installed a Miss Dalrymple, a girl employed on
part time at demonstrating an invention of young
Dr. Foote's called the polyopticon, of which one
might see the advertisement, with occasional men-
tion, in The Truth Seeker. The device reflected
pictures on a screen. The doctor introduced it at
entertainments given by the Liberal Club. Miss
Dalrymple showed it at fairs. I never saw her be-
fore or since the month or more she cared for my
rooms, prepared my meals, and read to me evenings
for shorthand practice. I, faintly recall May Sin-
clair, who came for a short time and then passed
out of my ken. And after her Mrs. Mina Egli, a
Swiss woman who had enjoyed a varied experience
among reformers; had been with the Kaweah col-
ony, an enterprise of Burnett G. Haskell of Cali-
fornia; had in that state joined an Adamic or
Edenic society wishful to restore the innocence of
primitive man and woman with respect to clothes;
had ranched in Dakota. Her remarks were gen-
erally cast in German, and she set me the task of
translating Heine's verse. I also, at her sugges-
tion, began to turn a German version of David
Copperfield back into English. By looking at the
book I observe that I turned the hard words into
shorthand in the margin, and now I can't read
that. Mrs. Egli cooked my steak by frying it in a
tin pieplate on top of the stove. Otherwise this
very bright lady is but a vague recollection. Came
later Mrs, Britton, an actress, who was a Graham
354    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1884

ite, with prejudices against bakers' bread. To con-
vert me she once made a batch of Graham biscuits.
Not being a good judge of huantity, she mixed
dough enough to make half a peck of them, and
baked it all. When fresh from the oven the Gra-
ham biscuits were assimilable; when cold they had
the resistance of the packing that is put on a horse's
foot under the shoe to protect the frog. To utilize
them I set a plateful by the window to shy at cats
frequenting the roof of the Charities and Correc-
tions building just below. From this I was com-
pelled to desist when the janitor came up through
the hatch, and having examined the tin where I
had made a hit, looked accusingly in my direction.
Mrs. Britton removed my ammunition. Not see-
ing the biscuits again on the table, I asked for
them; but Mrs. Britton said she had given them to
the man who brought the kindling-wood. He had
thanked her, too, saying he could feed them to his
horse. He never came back, and I suspected, with-
out imparting my suspicions to the lady, that the
horse had not got the better of the biscuits.

           2 -- A DISTURBING CHURCH

   On Twelfth street there was and now is St. Ann's
church, one of the miracle-joints where they hold
novenas and expose, for the healing of the faith-
ful, an alleged bone of St. Ann. That church had
the worst bell I ever heard. The body of the
church extended deep into the backyard space,
and the noise of the bell came in at my windows
with such an irritating effect that I was obliged to
1884]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         355

emit a rhymed objurgation and send it to St. Ann's
pastor. Called "The Protest of a Disturbed Citi-
zen," it was thus conceived:

      "By heat oppressed, and disinclined to roam,
       I spend the Sabbath in my humble home.
       Borne to my windows, looking toward the west,
       Come anthems rising to the winged and blest,
       And organ's peal that quivers on the air,
       The drone of human voices blending there;
       The shriek of tenor, orotund of bass,
       Soprano screaming in Jehovah's face,
       And wail of preacher supplicating grace.
       A church looms skyward, mocking Babel's height;
       Through windows stained pours in the varied light;
       An uncouth tower, offensive to the eye,
       Gives shelter to a bell whose agony
       Finds voice in rasping and sepulchral sound
       That grates the nerves of all the dwellers round.

       O pile of brick and monumental stone,
       Thou'rt reared of martyrs, from their blood and
       bone;
       For every brick a sacred life they gave,
       And for each stone some hero found a grave.
       The window-panes that tint the sunlight's flood
       Have caught their hue from sacrificial blood;
       The chime, the chant, and mammoth organ's tone,
       Seem echoes from a dying martyr's groan.
       Nuisance thou art to deity or man,
       Thou church of God Almighty and Saint Ann."

       3 -- HEALTH EXERCISES AND A VACATION

   While I was taking one of my infrequent vaca-
tions in New Hampshire, a demure young school-
marm whom I had for company in my rides about
the country said to me that she supposed I took
356    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1884

advantage of the opportunities which city life af-
ford for being naughty. And when I answered
with dignity touched with indignation that I did
nothing of the kind, she replied: "Well, if I lived
there you bet I would." But in the days now be-
ing recalled I was potipharically speaking a Joseph,
though taking little credit therefor, since I never
had to slip out of my coat to get away. My mem-
bership in the Nonpareil Rowing Club had lapsed
before 1884. The literary game was more to me
than sport on the Harlem, if not so stimulating to
health. I came to New York weighing 160 pounds.
In the spring of '84 I weighed 145; had a pain in
my chest, and a cough tinted pink. My maternal
guardian, taking the situation under advisement,
recommended that I should go out more evenings,
that I should get a wife, or stop sitting up so late
at night to read; meantime swinging Indian clubs
would straighten the shoulders. She practiced lay-
ing poultices on my chest at night, arguing that
adjacent irritation would be good for the lungs.
The Indian club notion seemed best to me. On
the block below us the well-known Coroner Brady
had set up his son-in-law in the hardware business.
As a pair of clubs were part of his window display
I went there to buy them. The coroner, who hap-
pened to be present, tried to sell me a zinc wash-
board, bringing out a specimen, casting it to the
floor, and then jumping on it with both feet to show
how substantial it was and how unlikely that a
woman would rub a hole in it by bearing on it too
hard. His enthusiasm came near making a pur-
chaser of me. I escaped when he said he would
1884]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         357

lay it aside till I came again; and then he followed
me to the door and said in confidence that he was
just trying to show his son-in-law how to sell goods.
   Our living room afforded space for the swing-
ing of clubs if mother would retire for the nonce
into the kitchen. From that vantage point she
watched me through the window between the two
rooms. I can still see the flash of her spectacles
out of the gloom beyond. To these recuperative
measures I added a long vacation in the farthest
reaches of the state of Maine -- away off in the
Aroostook (native pronunciation Aroostick, with
the accent on roos). There lived the uncle who
more than twenty years before had wanted to take
me with him, and also the aunt who as the big girl
Amanda Dunn had dragged me to school in Sulli-
van for the first time, at the age of 3. North from
their house lay fifty miles of woods, and then the
Canadian border. Twenty miles west arose Mt.
Katahdin. We were on the east branch of the
Mattawamkeag.
   The first stage of the trip to Maine was made
aboard the old steamboat Franconia, then plying
between New York and Portland. We had aboard
a dogmatic old Scotsman from Brooklyn named
Matthews. He carried a Bible for light summer
reading and confined himself closely to the Psalms.
For a joke, I inquired whether he were consulting
the Book of Jonah. He shook his head, but a few
minutes later asked sternly: "Am I to understand
that your question was meant to be personal and
suggestive?" Before we were out of the East
River our boat went into collision with the Sound
358    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1884

steamer Rhode Island, so that the Franconia made
the rest of the voyage with a battered nose. Ar-
rived at Portland, this old Scot, feeling sure
that his family had read of the accident and might
want to know whether he had escaped with his life,
made haste to mail home a postal card. A few
minutes later he mailed another. I asked him why
the second one, and he explained that on the first
card he had forgotten to tell his wife he was
alive. While his conversation was very dry, his actions
provided me with amusement. The car we rode
in out of Portland had double windows. Mr. Mat-
thews, wishful to throw away a half glass of water,
raised the inside sash and let fly; and he was be-
wildered when the water came back and took the
starch out of his shirt. Nearing his station, and
aiming to brush up a little, he produced a whisk
broom, removed his coat, and tried to hang the gar-
ment on the top of the open door of the car. He
stood on his toes; he even hopped into the air, in
his endeavor to make the coat stay there for him
to brush it. The top of the door was oval. He
gave the door many reproving glances as he re-
turned to his seat. Somewhere along the journey
the hat went 'round in behalf of a boy who had
lost a leg. Mr. Matthews saw it coming and opened
his Bible. Just before the hat got to his part of
the car he closed the book and his eyes and indulged
in silent prayer which lasted until after the collec-
tion. I had supposed that kind of a Scotch Pres-
byterian to be a mythical figure.
   At Oakfield Plantation, where I stayed a month,
there had lately been a Baptist revival and no con-
11884]       FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         359

verts, as a swearing man told me on oath. This
blasphemer had attended one evening and put in a
request for prayers, which somehow the parson
missed, so it went unheeded. The next day a
neighbor inquired whether he should renew the
request. He replied: "No, b'God, I shan't. Last
night I was in a state of grace if any one ever was,
and if the elder'd buckled down to it and prayed
for me like a man, by Jesus Christ, he'd 'a' got
me; but b'damned if he can get me today."
   The farm of one hundred and seventy-five acres,
mostly woods, where I took this vacation, had at
the time a market value of perhaps five hundred
dollars. In a few years the railroad came into the
neighborhood; potatoes were "discovered," and the
farm about 1920 sold for ten thousand. Living on
farm, garden, and dairy products, with mutton
when someone killed a sheep, or "beef" when an
overcurious deer came too close and got shot by
chance, I gained weight and forgot about my health.
I have seldom thought of it since.
   The following piece of poetry, which excites ten-
der recollections, should have been inserted before
unless the morality of it ought to exclude it alto-
gether. Since such works belong not to a man's
years of discretion, this will be assigned to youthful
days regardless of the date, it was committed:

  To A LADY WHO WOULD NOT PERMIT HERSELF TO
   RESPOND TO THE POET'S PASSION, LEST IT
          MIGHT PROVE; FLEETING.

      "Gather ye Rosebuds while ye may;
        Old Time is still a-flying,
      And this same Flower that smiles today
         Tomorrow will be dying."
360    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1884

      Since Love is joy, how short so'er its stay,
        Why seek a fleeting passion to subdue?
      The longest life we reckon but our day,
        We spurn not roses though their hours be few.
      All things are transient -- happiness or grief
        Hath morn, hath eve declining from its noon;
      And things most sweet are fleetest; mark how brief
        The moment's ecstasy of love's deep swoon.
      The passing passion sleeps; it never dies.
        The stars that are Her eyes, her gentle breath,
      Dwell ever in the dream-world of the skies.
        "Dear as remembered kisses after death."
      When Cupid knocks; throw open wide the door,
      Lest Love, affronted, should return no more.

       4 -- AFFAIRS OF THE LIBERAL LEAGUE

   Messrs. Wakeman and Leland gave notice that
they should not be candidates for reelection as
president and secretary of the National Liberal
League. The Truth Seeker nominated Samuel P.
Putnam. It was also proposed that the League
drop divisive issues, like prohibition, and confine
itself to the Nine Demands of Liberalism. The
proposition was hotly debated. More than the usual
friction could be noticed between Spiritualists
and Materialists. Some of the "hard-headed" ones
seemed to exert themselves to make impossible the
cooperation heretofore practiced by the two divi-
sions of Liberalism. The Truth Seeker took no
editorial part in that debate. The Spiritualists
were loyal and practical Secularists. After a man-
ner, it seemed to me, they contributed to the cause
a feminine element of rare value. The women who
at a Spiritualist gathering were liable to go into a
1884]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         361

trance and deliver an inspirational address knew
how to leave out the spirits when speaking before
the Liberal Leagues. The Truth Seeker carried a
full column of meeting notices, about half of which.
were Spiritualist. Announcements of deaths were
equally impartial. It was deemed no unusual thing
to see a death notice begin "passed to spirit life."
Twenty-five per cent. of the readers of The Truth
Seeker were Spiritualists, and ninety per cent. of
the Spiritualists of the country were with Bennett
in his fight for free press and mails.
   Other nominations for next president of the Na-
tional Liberal League included George Chainey, by
Putnam, with the endorsement of the Boston In-
vestigator. No one hastened to demand that the
nomination be withdrawn when the news appeared
that Chainey had been converted to Spiritualism.
The eighth congress of the League met, September
8 and 9 1884, "on the grounds of the Cassadaga
Lake (N.Y.) Free Association, to which it had
been invited by the officers of the Association."
That is to say, the hosts of the Congress were Spiri-
tualists, and Cassadaga Lake was the Spiritualist
camp-meeting ground. George Chainey had gone
early, attended the camp-meeting, and to the sur-
prise of the Liberal world experienced conversion
to Spiritualism. Proceeding to a confession, he
declared that "the horizon of his mind had previ-
ously been bounded by the limits of this mundane
life; now his mental vision pierced beyond the
grave, and in the abyss of eternity he saw gleaming
the star of immortal life." His speech at the
Congress demanded a reply, and a reply, he got
362    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1884

from T.B. Wakeman and Charles Watts. These
speakers expressed as they would not otherwise
have done their unflattering view of Spiritualism
in general.
   And all this on the grounds the Spiritualists had
invited the Freethinkers to occupy.
   I suspect that the other-world people thereupon
walked out on the Congress, which then went into
executive session. The Committee on Platform
reported a short program inoffensive to Prohibi-
tionists or "modificationists" of the Comstock law.
The Congress proposed to change the name of the
organization to the AMERICAN SECULAR UNION,
elected Ingersoll president, Putnam secretary,
Charles Watts first vice-president, and Courtlandt
Palmer treasurer. It raised $1,200 on the spot and
voted to put Putnam and Watts into the field at
salaries of $1,500 each. (T.S., Sept. 20, 1884.)
   Liberals who would read the story of an inter-
esting year in the history of Freethought will con-
sult the files of The Truth Seeker for 1884. Agi-
tation for statehood in Utah stimulated a drive
against the Mormons, who were the Bolsheviki of
the period, and there was as much opposition to
admitting Utah into the Union of States as ever
there was to the recognition of the Soviet republic
in the League of Nations. But while the Bolshe-
viki are said to be atheistic, the Mormons were
orthodox to the point of Fundamentalism. A
clergyman named Gallagher, who spoke at the Lib-
eral Club, proposed very drastic measures for their
control if not extirpation. Sanity talked back at
the excited preacher in the eloquence of Stephen
1884]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         363

Pearl Andrews. Mr. Andrews protested we could
hardly spare Mormonism, which was an object-les-
son on the rise and growth of religions. In re-
porting the meeting I must have resorted to my
shorthand notebook, for the Pantarch's speech is
given in full in my report of the discussion. Of
the Mormon church Mr. Andrews said:
   "It shows us precisely here and now the whole
method and process by which a religion founded in
faith in the supernatural takes its rise in the sub-
jective illumination of a single individual. Now
Mormonism has given us during the last half-cen-
tury, right here, in modern time, the opportunity
to witness the precise way of this immense phe-
nomenon. One hundred years ago nobody knew
or could know what we now know of the engen-
dering, gestation, and ultimate evolution of a great
religious movement. Mormonism has contributed
to us that knowledge."
   It followed that Buddhism, Christianism, and
Mohammedanism could be accounted for in the way
which the rise of Mormonism illustrated to all. It
was better to observe Mormonism and learn from
it, said the wise Mr. Andrews, than to destroy it.
   The editor of The Truth Seeker came out
strongly against the Mormon church as being, like
other branches of the Christian church, a menace
to the republic. He charged that the crimes of the
Saints were due to their religion, and cited facts
to prove it. Had Mr. Andrews lived another quar-
ter century he would have seen the phenomena at-
tending the rise of a religious integration repeated
in Christian Science.
364    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1884

          5 -- FOR THE RECORD OF 1884

   Conventions were held in several states and lec-
turers were busy. Ingersoll spoke sixty times in
three months. New organizations sprang up,
among them a pioneer Freethought Club in Toron-
to, Canada. Helen Gardener made her first ap-
pearance as a public lecturer at Chickering Hall in
January, Colonel Ingersoll presiding. The press
hailed her as "Ingersoll in soprano."
   We issued a fine large Truth Seeker Annual at
the beginning of 1884, containing a review of the
previous year and some contributed articles. It
was a Freethinker's Almanac, with a calendar.
Five thousand copies were sold. In this annual T.
C. Leland reported that some two hundred and
twenty-five Liberal Leagues had been organized.
   New York State Superintendent of Public In-
struction Ruggles had rendered a decision order-
ing the discontinuance of Bible reading in public
schools. The editor of The Truth Seeker ment-
ions the fact that the predecessors of Mr. Ruggles
-- John A. Dix in 1838 and John C. Spencer the
year following -- had issued similar orders. "We
presume;" the editor observes, "that as little at-
tention will be paid to Mr. Ruggles's decision as
was paid to his two predecessors' orders." This
proved to be the fact.
   Charles B. Reynolds, ex-Rev., who had made a
good impression at the Salamanca Convention of
Freethinkers in 1883, now took the field as a lec-
turer. George Chainey gave a Sunday evening
course in New York. Remsburg visited the East
1884]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         365

and spoke at the Liberal Club. Henry Ward
Beecher having abandoned in succession the doc-
trines of hell, the fall of man, the atonement, and
the trinity, now added to his heresies the rejection
of the resurrection story. The Rev. Dr. R. Heber
Newton, Episcopalian, was rebuked by Bishop Ho-
ratio Potter for destructive criticism of the Bible,
and forbidden to allow Henry George to speak in
his church. Oscar Straus of New York read a
paper eulogistic of Thomas Paine before the Brook-
lyn Historical Society. Mr. Straus was heard again
on the same subject before The Thomas Paine
National Historical Association in 1921.
   Wendell Phillips, the great antislavery agitator
(b. 1811), died in February, 1884, and was eulo-
gized as a distinguished Liberal. In February, G.
W. Foote of the London Freethinker was liberated
after a year's imprisonment for blasphemy. In,
March the Bennett Monument had been completed
and an extended description published.*
ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ
   *The monument stands at the junction of Sylvan Ave-
nue and Osier path, Greenwood Cemetery, some ten min-
utes' walk from the main entrance. "It is distinguishable
from the other monuments in the vicinity by its massive
proportions and severe plainness." Its total height is
thirteen feet, six inches; the cost, some $1,500, made up of
contributions by "one thousand friends." Dedicatory ser-
vices were held at 220 East Fifteenth street, June 13, 1884.
The Truth Seeker of June 28 reported brief addresses
given and the fine oration by T.B. Wakeman. The same
number of the paper printed a beautiful full-page picture
of the monument, the work of the Moss Engraving Com-
pany, which by a coincidence is now making the pictures
which appear in these reminiscences.
366    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1884

   It diverts me now to observe that the compan-
ionate form of marriage is quite old in principle.
In April, 1884, at Dover, N.H., a man and a woman
appeared before a clergyman and asked him to
marry them for six months. The groom explained
that a previous marriage that he contracted for
life had ended in divorce and he didn't purpose to
take any more risks. The lady, confident it would
be renewed, was willing to enter into the limited
contract. The minister withheld his approval, as
did a justice of the peace. As another instance,
there had been a companionate marriage in 1877
between Mrs. H.S. Lake, a Liberal lecturer, and
Prof. W.F. Peck, the parties agreeing to continue
it "so long as mutual affection shall exist." The
Massachusetts Supreme Court five years later,
when Mrs. Lake asked for a separation, decided
that such a contract required no divorce proceed-
ings to terminate it.
   Before Paul Carus ever was known as Dr., or
had married a fortune and begun the publication
of the monthly Open Court to expound "the relig-
ion of Science," that intelligent and learned Ger-
man spoke before the Manhattan Liberal Club on
"Education and Liberty," or, as he gave us the
more comprehensive title, "Wohlstand, Freiheit
und Bildung." He observed that the English lan-
guage contained no equivalents of these terms. Dr.
Carus lived and died loyal to the Kaiser, and dur-
ing the World War his Freiheit was gravely men-
aced by the Espionage Act.
   An editorial article in The Truth Seeker of July
26 began: "At her home in St. Cloud, N.J., on
1884]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         367

Sunday, July 13, after suffering for several years
with consumption, Jennie Macdonald, wife of E.
M. Macdonald, passed to her rest." Jennie had
been a singer. "She sang," the article reads, "at
Chickering Hall when thousands gathered to wel-
come home the founder of The Truth Seeker; at
Watkins, when the Freethinkers went there to their
annual meeting; at all our League meetings here;
and at home she filled her house with music like
the warbling of a bird." That was so. No babies
ever had sung to them sweeter lullabies than hers.
She lost one baby by death when it was a year or
two old. That led her to ponder the question,
whether it would live again. And Mr. Bennett,
who had been but a short time dead, would he not,
she inquired, find, her little babe and care for it
there as she knew he would in this life if it had
no other friend? How could a man answer that
question from a dying woman? I said to Jennie
that one of two things was undoubtedly true --
either that her baby was with the Doctor over yon-
der, or it had passed beyond the reach of harm or
need of care.
   Jennie was a Southern girl who came to New
York as a concert singer. Her singing voice,
which might have made her a reputation had it been
trained, took the grades without effort. She could
sustain B flat with a smile. The features of many
singers wear a look of agony while holding that
note.
   Among the 1884 obituaries was that of John P.
Jewett (b. 1816), the original publisher of "Uncle
Tom's Cabin" -- a Freethinker, a cordial friend of
368    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1884

D.M. Bennett, and a caller at the office when in
town. He was a native of Maine, and a resident
of Orange, N.J., at the time of his death.
   Philip G. Peabody advocated in The Truth Seek-
er the adoption of cremation in place of earth
burial.
   The Freethought Association of Canada, which
in December held a largely-attended convention in
Toronto, affiliated with the National Liberal
League. Mr. William Algic of Alton erected a
Freethought hall, contemporaneously dedicated to
the cause. The speakers at the dedication were Mr.
Algie, William McDonnell, author of "Exeter
Hall," Charles Watts, and Samuel P. Putnam.
   The Nineteenth Century published the historic
debate on religion between Herbert Spencer, Ag-
nostic, and Frederic Harrison, Positivist. When
The Truth Seeker had reprinted the discussion,
Stephen Pearl Andrews intervened to reconcile
the antagonists. The Pantarch was given to the
use of unusual words. This essay on Spencer and
Harrison, being so marked, drew the following let-
ter from "A Spencerian Positivist" (William Hen-
ry Burr) of Washington, D.C.

               "A SLANDER NAILED."

   "To the Editor of The Truth Seeker: In his communi-
cation last week Mr. Stephen Pearl Andrews characterizes
Auguste Comte as a 'comprehensive agglomerative concep-
tualist,' and intimates that Mr. Herbert Spencer is no bet-
ter. The charge furnishes ground for an actionable cause
against the publishers. So far as is known, the character
of Mr. Spencer's mother is above reproach. Let the poli-
ticians have a monopoly of slander."
1884]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         369

   The Andrewsian phrase "comprehensive ag-
glomerative conceptualist" is seldom paralleled.
However, one may cite a near approach to it by
the Hon. John M. Robertson, who, quoting Pope
on Bacon, "the wisest, brightest, meanest of man-
kind," remarked on "the monstrous parallogism of
the collocation."
   The League organ, Man, suspended in the fall
of 1884, and The Truth Seeker took over its assets
with the exception of its boom for Ben Butler, who
was running for President with the sanction and
encouragement of Mr. Wakeman. Just before the
election, James G. Blaine, the Republican candi-
date, was Burcharded. I quote my report of the
incident:

   "Blaine received the benefit of the clergy at the Fifth
Avenue Hotel last week, being waited upon by a committee
of about two hundred Protestant ministers. The chairman,
the Rev. Dr. Burchard, assured Mr. Blane that they were
loyal to him, and had no sympathy with the opposite party,
which had always been the party of RUM, ROMANISM,
and REBELLION. Mr. Blaine thanked the reverend
gentlemen for this sympathy, and challenged the world
to point out an act of his own or of the party he represent-
ed that could not receive the sanction of the clergy, the
church, and the Almighty." (T.S., Nov. 8.)

   The political referees decided that Burchard had
Leaten Blaine. Owing to disillusionment regarding
the merits of his party's candidate, Colonel Inger-
soll took no share in the campaign. In the course
of a lecture in Chicago he put the question: "What
minister has ever done as much for the world as
Darwin?" and when a voice sang out "Burchard!"
he joined in the laugh that followed.
370    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1884

   The ministers were for Blaine, and he lost. They
were against Grover Cleveland, who won. They
opposed Cleveland on moral grounds, assuming as
true the campaign story which they aided in cir-
culating, fixing upon him the guilt of bastardy.
The Truth Seeker said: "These clerical gentle-
men flooded the country with obscene literature,
slandered candidates without, stint, and while os-
tensibly working for morality, did more to corrupt
the public mind than all the literature Comstock
has been able to suppress." The New York World
put it felicitously, thus: "Slander was backed by
sanctity; defamation and regeneration walked
hand in hand; lying and praying mingled. The
'family purity' dodge was practiced by those [the
clergy] who have, unfortunately, contributed their
full share to family impurity." In the end Cleve-
land's one effective clerical helper was Henry Ward
Beecher. Mr. Beecher had at first refused to en-
dorse him, on the grounds alleged, but came around
to his support with the powerful argument that if
every man in New York who had broken the sev-
enth commandment once, twice, or even thrice,
should vote for Mr. Cleveland, he would carry the
state by two hundred thousand majority.
                  CHAPTER XVIII.

       1 -- GIORDANO BRUNO'S PHILOSOPHY.

   THE year 1885 starts with the item that Dr.
Woodrow has been removed from the faculty
of the Presbyterian Theological seminary at
Columbia, South Carolina, for teaching that the
Bible can be reconciled with the theory of evolution.
Dr. Woodrow was a mistaken prophet, for the
reconciliation has become more hopeless with the
years; but he had the spirit to retort on the trustees
of the seminary that they might take their places
with the Wesleyans who only a century before had
declared that anybody disbelieving in witchcraft
denied the truth of the Bible.
   This year began the raising of a fund to erect at
Rome a statue to Giordano Bruno, the Italian phi-
losopher, father of pantheism, who had been burnt
at the stake as a heretic in 1600. The first subscriber
to the fund was George N. Hill of Boston, who
shared with T.B. Wakeman the glory of proposing
a new calendar, to wit, the Era of Man, begin-
ning with the death of Bruno.
   This martyr to Freethought, Giordano Bruno, was
born at Nola, Italy, in 1548. His name was Filippo.
The name of Giordano was adopted when he became
a Dominican monk. He had a theory of his own
372    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1885

about the infinite, and once made the dangerous re-
mark that a priest could be in more profitable busi-
ness than contemplating the seven joys of the Virgin
Mary. He also hinted that the theory of transub-
stantiation was to a certain degree absurd. Only
his youth preserved him from the inquisitors. Fi-
nally, on account of his outspoken heresy, Italy
waxed too tropical for him, and he turned wanderer,
supporting himself at one time by teaching, at an-
other time as a proof-reader. He taught grammar to
the young and astronomy to the men. At Milan he
became the intimate friend of Philip Sydney, whom
he afterward saw in England. At Geneva he met
with no better reception from the Protestants than
he had found with Catholics at Rome. He there-
fore journeyed to France, to Lyons and thence to
Toulouse. At this latter place he had the audacity
to remark that the earth revolved continuously and
persistently upon its axis. The Aristotelians tackled
him upon this subject and he was obliged to flee.
From one place to another he went, either led by his
desires or forced by the enmity of the church, until
in 1593 he was placed in the dungeons of the In-
quisition. Seven years later, being condemned to
die for heresy, it was ordered that he should be
put to death without the shedding of blood, which
meant the stake. He informed his judges that they
inflicted the sentence with more fear than he re-
ceived it. A crucifix was held up before him as he
stood bound to the stake, Feb. 17, 1600; he told
them to take it away. He was burned to ashes and
his dust scattered to the winds.
1885]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         373

   I take this little sketch of Bruno from my report
of a lecture before the Manhattan Liberal Club,
October 30, 1885, by the Scotch-American philos-
opher, Thomas Davidson (1840-1900), who was
himself a good deal of a Bruno and expounded a
philosophy as baffling as Bruno's own. And judge
by this what a heretic he was: "Giordano Bruno,
said the lecturer, was a greater savior and nobler
martyr than Christ. The crucified Galilean did not
suffer a tithe of the torture endured by Bruno, and
with his latest breath he inquired why God had for-
saken him. Bruno died composed; having a God
within, he knew that God would not forsake him
unless he forsook himself. Incidentally the lecturer
remarked that the church claimed to be the repre-
sentative of the theological God, and the worst thing
to be said about the church was that it represented
him very faithfully."
   Professor Davidson's interpretation of the phi-
losophy of Bruno may be regarded as authoritative
(or should I say "authentic"?). Knowing that the
more I said about it the greater number of errors I
should fall into, I merely observed in my report that
it "consisted of being, process, and result"; that
different philosophers had taken up separately the
three postulates of Bruno, and had founded a system
on each of them. For instance, Hegel's philosophy
was that of pure being; Leibnitz's of process, and
Spinoza's of result. Twenty years later I composed
an extended biography of Bruno for "A Short His-
tory of the Inquisition."
   It was as reporter of the proceedings of the Lib-
eral Club that, as heretofore stated, I came to be
374    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1885

called the Man with the Badgepin. Mr. Otto Wett-
stein, the Liberal jeweler of Rochelle, Illinois, had
just designed and introduced that emblem, which
I have worn ever since.

        2 -- WERE NOT THESE FEMINISTS?

   Rereading the reports of this famous Club's af-
fairs, one realizes how little there is which is new
to reformers of advanced age. Woman speakers in
rational dress appeared on its platform, and the gar-
ments of 1928 were advocated. Mrs. King, who
spoke at the first meeting of the new year on
"Rational Dress Realized," would have been in style
today had she omitted her "pants," which descended
a few inches below her short skirt. But Mrs. King
foresaw the day when the skirt would disappear and
only the trousers be retained. Mrs. Leonard made
a better guess by saying the short skirt would come
but the trousers would be dispensed with, "There
was no reason," Mrs. Leonard implied, "why the
great works of nature should be concealed." The
ladies refused to consider the objections of men.
Mrs. King would reassure the men by suggesting
that if they feared to be shocked they might put on
"blinkers." That was forty years before the girls
of Somerset, Pennsylvania, issued their declaration:

        "We can show our shoulders;
          We can show our knees,
         We are freeborn Americans,
          And can show what we please."
1885]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         375

   All the eccentric personages of any note came to
see us at The Truth Seeker office. Have I men-
tioned Mary Tillotson, who risked arrest by  wear-
ing bloomers on the street? She never missed us
when in the city, and was an occasional contributor.
A less conspicuous person was Mrs. Vosburgh, a
woman who, like Joanna Southcott, manifested
the virgin-mother complex. Presumably disap-
pointed in her hope, Mrs. Vosburgh soon retired
from view. Dr. Mary Walker was much better
known and had a longer career. She frankly wore
clothes in the similitude of male garments, topped
with a high silk hat. If I am not mistaken she suf-
fered arrest, but vindicated herself by arguing that
the clothes she wore were not a disguise. Moreover,
she declared she would "wear trousers or nothing,"
so that on the whole it was deemed advisable to let
the doctor have her way.

        3 -- THE TRUTH SEEKER'S HEATHEN.

   We had a compositor unique among New York
printers -- an educated Hindoo named Amrita Lal
Roy, a non-graduate of Edinburgh University.
Amrita was a good compositor and moreover spoke
and wrote English with, precision. In religion he
was pagan. In one of my sixth-column editorials I
brought him to the attention of the Baptist Foreign
Missionary Society, which was boasting, in a report
on results, that it had made more converts among
the heathen than all other denominations by their
united efforts. To convert a heathen to Episcopa-
376    IFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT          [1885

lianism, so the Baptist Society urged, cost on an
average, as statistics showed, not less than $592.03;
to Congregationalism, $248.14; Presbyterianism,
$224.91; Methodism, $117.91; Campbellism, $72.88;
but Baptists were bringing them into the fold at
$37.05 per convert.
   Casting doubt on its being worth even that sum
to a heathen to be turned into a Baptist, this is the
proposition I caused The Truth Seeker to put before
the missionaries:

   "To tell it just as it is, we do not believe that a heathen
can be converted to Christianity for $37.05, and to afford
them an opportunity of testing the matter, we will make
the Baptists an offer. We have in this office, bowing down
to the wood of his case and the stone of the imposing slab,
a full-blooded royal Bengal Heathen. He is of high caste,
ranks next to the Brahmans for style, and bears credentials
to that effect. He is without religion, neither drinking in-
toxicants nor smoking or chewing tobacco. He does not
swear by heaven above nor by the earth below. Jehovah
and Jesus Christ rank in his mind along with the mythical
Giascutis and the apocalyptic Boojum Snark. There is
but one obstacle to his becoming a Christian, and that is
the fact that he is well educated, and has probably in his
comparatively brief existence forgotten more than the
ordinary minister ever learns; We say this without mean-
ing to impeach the retentiveness of his memory. He is con-
versant with Greek and Latin, and with Sanskrit, Begalee,
and Telegoo, besides writing English of the purest kind.
In disposition he has the mildness peculiar to his race, and
buckles down to reprint or the Spencerian copy of Mr.
Charles Watts with equal humility. Taken all in all, he
is a rare heathen. We could scarcely conceive of a more
desirable subject for the proselyting zeal of a missionary.
   "What we propose is to throw open the door of our com-
posing-room and give the Baptist missionaries a chance
1885]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         377

at this heathen. If he has a soul that is likely to be d--d,
we would by all means prefer that it should be saved.
It is a sad sight to see a pagan of his mental caliber going
down the dark valley unprepared and neglecting the means
of grace.
   "The financial arrangements for the test are immaterial,
perhaps, but it is well to have everything done decently
and in order. Let the Baptists deposit $37.05 with some
responsible person; we will do the same. The heathen
may be allowed $3 per day for his time; the missionary
50 cents. Heathen and money to be found any day at 33
Clinton Place. If by the time the sum of $37.05 has been
exhausted the heathen shall have knocked under and con-
sented to be baptized, the Baptists take the money. If,
on the other hand, he still remains the heathen that he
is, we take the cash.
   "We urge our brethren of the Baptist denomination to
come forward and prove their claim to converting heathen
at $37.05 per head. Our heathen, so to speak, is white
unto the harvest, to say nothing of the other composi-
tors who might casually experience a change of heart.
Here is a soul for ministers to save, and we presume, in
the words of the immortal Webster Flannagan, that is
what they are here for."

   Amrita Lal Roy remained a heathen. He wrote
a number of excellent articles for The Truth Seeker,
and for John Swinton's paper, and sold one to The
North American Review.
   I have before mentioned John Swinton and the
paper bearing his name. The Truth Seeker had
numerous occasions to chasten Mr. Swinton for
suppression of the fact that many of the men whom
he honored with his notice were Freethinkers. That
designation did not appear at all in Mr. Swinton's
paper. One would sooner expect to see it today in
the New York Nation, And still, When subscrib-
378    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1885

ers were coming in slowly, Mr. Swinton's friend,
Madame Henri Delescluze, took the platform at the
Liberal Club and canvassed the audience for re-
cruits. She got twenty of them, and in acknowledg-
ing the favor said she "would make the labor unions
blush for their lukewarmness when she recounted
to them the generosity of the Freethinkers." It has
always been the weakness of Freethought societies,
or perchance it is to their praise, that they invari-
ably have been hospitable to outsiders who had no
further interest in them than to secure their help.
Freethinkers in those days as in these were often
accused, falsely, of being as narrow-minded as the
orthodox. Mr. Swinton was asked in The Truth
Seeker to make the test as to who were his friends
by requesting the use of a New York pulpit in which
to plead for support of his paper. As for open-
mindedness, as between the Liberal Club and the
labor unions, that might have been ascertained by
applying for a chance at one of their meetings to
canvass for a Freethought paper.
   The evening just referred to was the one at which
John E. Remsburg gave his lecture on "Sabbath
Breaking," and Madame Delescluze had the grace
to object to all he said and to defend Sabbath ob-
servance! Mr. Swinton was the lecturer at the next
meeting of the Club.

          4 -- PRIEST LAMBERT'S BOOK.

   A Catholic priest named L.A. Lambert of Water-
loo, N.Y., wrote a book called "Notes on Ingersoll"
which was so cordially received by the Christian
1885]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         379

world as the finishing blow for the blasphemer that
its author became boastful. Freethinkers had paid
small attention to the performance; but when Lam-
bert's organ, The Catholic Union and Times, edited
by a priest named Cronin, made the statement that
their silence was due to their inability to answer the
Waterloo priest, The Truth Seeker challenged him
to debate the matter with Charles Watts. Lambert
declined on the ground that an oral discussion gave
too much room for blasphemous declamation on the
part of the Infidel. However, if Mr. Watts would
publish his side of the debate in The Truth Seeker,
then Dr. Lambert would reply through the same
medium. The editor at once accepted, with the
proviso that the articles by both Mr. Watts and the
priest should be published simultaneously in The
Truth Seeker and in The Catholic Union and Times.
To this perfectly fair offer no response came from
the boasting editor and priest. It met with the
same joyless reception that a similar one would get
today from a Fundamentalist journal asked to print
one of the Truth Seeker's Fundamentalist-Atheist
debates.
   The mendacity of the Lambert book would sur-
prise and abash any common liar who could un-
derstand it. A religious person recommended it to
my notice and I secured a copy which I carefully
read, and having done so wrote my opinion of Lam-
bert. It ran: "On questions of fact he is mali-
ciously and I think knowingly dishonest. As to
scriptural quotations, he forces into them meanings
which the authors could not have designed to con-
vey, and denies to them the interpretations which
380    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1885

anyone can see the writers intended should be made.
Having by these methods formulated replies to
Colonel Ingersoll's statements, he crowns mendacity
with audacity and challenges his opponent to answer
him. In nearly every case where opportunity is
afforded for a direct issue, Lambert has saved his
cause only by direct or indirect falsification of the
authorities which he quotes. I say nearly every
case. I mean every case which access to the records
has permitted me to examine. I believe that his
statements are not to be relied upon in any instance.
He who runs may read his arguments and detect
their fallacy without pausing to give them a second
reading. In proportion to its size, Lambert's 'Notes
on Ingersoll' probably contains more sophistry, more
captious criticism, more misstatement of fact, and,
in a word, more slush, than any other volume print-
ed during the present century. It will no more bear
replying to than a sieve will hold water."
   That was my opinion when I read the book in
1885, and I presume it is right. I place much con-
fidence in first impressions.

            5 -- THE DYNAMITERS.

   The disturbers later more frequently called an-
archists, or propagandists by deed, were in the early
'80s known as dynamiters. There was O'Donovan
Rossa, an Irishman, who reaped profitable publicity
as a dynamiter until a woman with the attractive
name of Lucille Yseulte Dudley came by and missed
several shots at him with a pistol. A Washington
newspaper headed its account: "Woman Empties
1885]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         381

Four Chambers at Irish Agitator." Mr. Rossa seems
soon to have subsided: the woman, after an amus-
ing trial, was acquitted as irresponsible.
   A dynamiter who made himself known to Liberals
by joining their societies and appearing at congresses
was William J. Gorsuch. Gorsuch attended the Mil-
waukee Congress of the League as a Freethinker
with Socialist and anti-prohibitionist leanings. In
'85 he came out as a dynamiter and was the English
speaker at a New York meeting of Herr Johann,
Most and his followers in commemoration of one
Reinsdorf, whom the German government had put
to death for attempting to remove a crowned head.
My brother and I were present at this meeting and
were entertained with beer by Herr Most. There
was much blood-curdling oratory in advocacy of
destroying by "blind, brutal, barbaric force," within
the week next ensuing, all the existing governments
of the world. The dynamiters were known as Inter-
nationals. Reporting a call by Gorsuch at The Truth
Seeker office, the editor wrote:

   "In religion, Mr. Gorsuch told us, the Internationals are
about half Atheists and half Christians. But the Atheists
among them never attend Freethought meetings, read no
Freethought papers or books, of course take no interest
in constructive Liberal work, and remain Atheists for the
same reason the French peasant did -- 'If there were a
God, he would give us bread, wouldn't he?' Not getting
bread, the peasant was an Atheist."

   A later note reads: "There was a meeting of
dynamiters at Paris the other day called the Council
of Eleven. Three American delegates were pres-
ent. During their deliberations one of the American
382    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1885

delegates wanted to 'embrace the occasion' to say
that they (the dynamiters) were not Atheists."
   Gorsuch achieved arrest at Newburg, near Cleve-
land, Ohio, in July, for advising strikers to put dy-
namite on the street car tracks and blow the cars
to pieces. He appears not to have been prosecuted,
for in August he spoke at a workingmen's meeting,
when he exhorted his hearers to "arm themselves
with rifles, visit the warehouses, and take whatever
they wished, shooting down all who opposed them."
He had spoken before the Manhattan Liberal Club
advocating these sentiments without creating a rip-
ple. The old Club was not a place where a speaker
could talk utter nonsense and not have the defects
of the presentation made clear to him. Dr. R.G.
Eccles, a Brooklyn member, qualified as a specialist
in the treatment of certain forms of delusion. The
Liberal League of Chicago appeared to be less fortu-
nate in the handling of its menaces, and a not good-
natured discussion was had over the policy of ex-
cluding them. "Dynamiters" were the heralds and
prophets of the Haymarket tragedy that was on its
way. Had Gorsuch been in Chicago at the time
of the bombing of the police he undoubtedly would
have suffered with the four who were hanged. But
the nerve of Gorsuch failed him. He abandoned his
radicalism, struck his colors, and got a kind of re-
ligion, and the last time I saw him, say in 1920, he
told me he was writing a book to "expose" Inger-
soll.
   An apostasy took place among the Freelovers that
went unnoticed in The Truth Seeker because the
1885]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         383

male party to it was pious. About 1875, one Leo
Miller, then of New York, free, white, and married,
entered into illegal conjugal relations with Martha
or Mattie Strickland, spinster. They suffered a cer-
tain martyrdom for their principles, being jailed,
and were canonized by the social radicals. Then in
1885, Miller, under conviction of sin, dissolved the
union and published a letter in The Sun confessing
marriage to be a divine institution established by
our heavenly father.

         5 -- THE DEPARTING VETERANS.

   The leaders of Liberalism were lessened in num-
ber during 1885 by the death of Porter C. Bliss,
J.S. Verity, Theron C. Leland, LaRoy Sunderland,
T.W. Doane, and Elizur Wright. This was the
year also of the death of General Grant and Victor
Hugo.
   The death of Mr. Bliss took place in February.
He was a journalist, explorer, archeologist, his-
torian, and Freethinker. His Liberal editorial work
on the New York Herald has been mentioned. In
philosophy, he was a Positivist. Mr. Verity died
in Lynn, Mass., February 10, at the age of 62.
Horace Setver conducted his funeral in Paine Hall,
which was draped in mourning. Verity was an
able, useful, and much respected member of the
Boston Liberal Club, and a good writer. T.W.
Doane, who died in Boston, August at the age of
34, was the scholarly author of "Bible Myths and
Their Parallels in other Religions."
384    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1885


                      @@@@







   Theron C. Leland died June 3 of this year at the
age of 64. The rudiments of knowledge came to
this farm boy without effort on his part and his
first consciousness of himself included being able
to read. At eighteen, he entered the Wesleyan
Seminary at Lima, N.Y., being graduated with
highest honors. But the virus didn't "take," and
we find him soon afterward an ardent convert to
Fourierism in which he became expert as he did in
everything he undertook. So much so that he
developed into an expounder of this social phi-
losophy and it was while lecturing upon it that he
came to know A.F. Boyle, the partner of Stephen
Pearl Andrews in the teaching of phonography, or
shorthand. Leland speedily gained first rank in
the winged art. He in turn taught phonography
to men who themselves became experts. Among
those whose speeches he reported were Daniel Web-
ster, Rufus Choate, and William Lloyd Garrison.
1885]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         385

The year 1851 was marked by the arrival of Kos-
suth, the great Hungarian statesman-refugee, whose
statue was in 1928 unveiled in New York. Leland
attended his receptions, taking notes for the New
York Tribune and Courier and Enquirer. A list
of his engagements as stenographer shows that
he stood almost above and beyond the heads of
his profession. The frequent mention of Leland in
these pages indicates how active he was in the
Liberal movement. With Wakeman he conducted
the League organ, "Man," devoting all his day-
time to that and the secretaryship, and supporting
himself by teaching evening schools of shorthand.
His wife was Mary A. Leland, a woman of no
small literary capacity, and a natural poet, whose
gift has descended to her daughter, Grace D., best
known to Truth Seeker readers for her "Ingersoll
Birthday Book," and as the life-partner of the
editor for more than a few years of a national
Freethought weekly published hereabouts. Leland
was a wonderfully bright and witty man, of buoyant
spirits and a sense of humor that constantly bubbled
over. A birdman, gay, active, and swift. But deep
and serious withal, a valiant fighter and a rock in
time of trouble.
   Elizur Wright, who several years held the office
of president of the National Liberal League, and
had come to be called the Nestor of Liberalism, died
in Boston, Dec. 21, 1885.

   Mr. Wright was born in South Canaan, Conn., on Feb.
12, 1804. He was graduated at Yale Collage in 1826, and
for two years was a teacher in Groton, Mass. From 1829
to 1833 he was professor of mathematics and natural phi-
losophy in Western Reserve College, Hudson, Ohio. In
386    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1885

1833 he came to New York, and was for five years secre-
tary of the American Antislavery Society, editing, in 1834-
5, a paper called Human Rights, and in 1834-8 the Quar-
terly Antislavery Magazine. He went to Boston in 1838,
becoming editor of the Massachusetts Abolitionist. In
1846 he established the Chronotype, which he conducted
until it was merged in the Commonwealth in 1850, of which
he was also for a time the editor. From 1858 to 1866 he
was insurance commissioner of Massachusetts, and was
thereafter connected with insurance interests. Mr. Wright
published, in 1841, a translation in verse of La Fontaine
Fables, a work entitled "A Curiosity of Law" in 1866, and
many pamphlets and reports. The part taken by Mr.
Wright in the antislavery contest was conspicuously heroic
and the black race of America owes to but few men more
than to him. After the abrogation of slavery, Mr. Wright
devoted himself largely to the discussion of Freethought.
   In the latter part of 1884, following the defection
of Chainey and the controversy it engendered, the
Spiritualist papers and some of their contributors
announced that the hour had struck for the sepa-
ration of Spiritualism from Liberalism. In June,
1885, the Banner of Light declared:
   "It is time Spiritualism obtained a full and absolute
divorce from what is miscalled Liberalism, says the
Spiritual Offering -- and we have about come to the same
conclusion. Spiritualists offered them the right hand of
fellowship in opposing bigotry and superstition, but they
have of late ignored it by traducing our mediums in public,
in private, and in the columns of their newspapers, and
calling us all delusionists! This is a quality of Liberalism
we do not understand. No wonder The Offering wants the
two divorced."

   The editor of The Truth Seeker, commenting
upon this, saw no reason for the separation. "Lib-
eralism," he argued, "is not particularly Material-
istic any more than it is Spiritualistic." Moreover,
1885]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         387

he thought that the space in the Liberal papers given
to the discussion of Spiritualism had been about
equally divided between those in favor of it and
those opposed. However, there was a difference.
The Spiritualists were less dogmatic than certain
of the hardboiled Materialists like Otto Wettstein,
T. Winter, and Dr. Titus L. Brown, who could not
view the other-worlders as anything but a deluded
lot of victims of their own credulity and the trick-
ery of their mediums. The first of these writers
always signed "T. Winter, Materialist," as though
a man might be under suspicion of being something
else unless he labeled himself, and the matter of
his communications was uniformly offensive to
such Spiritualists as might be readers of The Truth
Seeker, and these were not few in number.

         6 -- FOR THE RECORD OF 1885

   Someone proposed to the ex-Rev. C.B. Reynolds,
who had become an effective Freethought lecturer,
that he should travel with a tent as a Liberal evangel-
ist. He seized upon the idea, and through The Truth
Seeker raised the needed funds. William Smith of
Geneva, N.Y., paid for the tent with a contribu-
tion of $300.
   In Mr. R.B. Butland of Toronto the Freethinkers
found an excellent reporter of their activities. They
held a well-attended convention in Albert Hall,
Toronto, in December, 1884, at which eleven local so-
cieties were represented (T.S., Jan. 19); Mr. J. Ick
Evans was elected president, Mr. Butland secretary,
and the name changed from the Freethought As-
sociation to the Canadian Secular Union.
388    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1885

   The Museums of Art and Natural History in New
York -- the former in Central Park, the latter just
outside of it on the west -- had been closed on Sun-
day. The park commissioners passed a resolution to
open them. Then ensued a fight, the obstructionists
being the soap man Colgate, who was a trustee;
Morris K. Jesup, and the Rev. Dr. John Hall. In
cooperation with Samuel P. Putnam, secretary of
the National Liberal League, The Truth Seeker
printed and circulated a petition supporting the com-
missioners and asking for the Sunday opening.
The long contest that following brought public at-
tention to the question and in the end the closers
were defeated. That was one case where Liberal-
ism won. How many Sunday visitors to the mu-
seum know to whom they are indebted for the
opening of the doors?
   The suggestion of a reader that the Society of
the Religion of Humanity hold regular meetings
and install T.B. Wakeman as "pastor" met with ap-
proval by the editor, who added: "let us have a
temple without a priest; religion without theology;
morality without dogma; a social organization that
meets the emotional and artistic wants of the people
without degrading their mental faculties by a blind
faith." The idea was to some extent realized the
following year.
   A paragraph in the same number announces the
removal of "Mr. Replogle and his wife" from the
editorship of the Missouri Liberal, the paper estab-
lished at Liberal, Mo., by G.H. Walser, founder
of the town. "The Liberal," says the paragraph,
"opens war on the Freelovers, announcing that it
1885]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         389

has in preparation a series of articles against them."
This course divided the town of Liberal against it-
self with injurious results.
   Besides Ingersoll, the active Liberal lecturers
regularly reporting to The Truth Seeker in '85 were
S.P. Putnam, C.B. Reynolds, Charles Watts, Helen
H. Gardener, E.C. Walker, W.S. Bell, W.F.
Jamieson, J.L. York, Mattie P. Krekel, and J.E.
Remsburg. In the three years since he left the
school room as teacher for the field as lecturer,
Remsburg had traveled nearly fifty thousand miles
and had delivered from one to twenty lectures in
one hundred and fifty cities and towns.
   A well attended convention of New York State
Freethinkers at Albany was reported in The Truth
Seeker of September 19; the Canadian convention
at Toronto in the October 3 number. A new weekly
called The Rationalist appeared in Auckland, N.Z.
   The report of the proceedings of the New York
Liberal Club on the occasion of the inauguration
of T.B. Wakeman as president gave the following
brief history of the club: This organization was
started by seven persons, including Mr. Wakeman,
who met in a little hall in Third avenue, Sept. 14,
1869. Henry Edger was one of the prime movers.
T.D. Gardener was the first secretary, and J.D.
Bell the first president. The second president was
Horace Greeley, who presided at several meetings
and presided at a dinner while candidate for Presi-
dent of the United States. The next president,
W.L. Ormsby, gave place to James Parton. Mr.
Wakeman's election as Parton's successor took place
in the spring of 1885.
390    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1885

   Judge Hoadley, running for Governor of Ohio,
engaged in a debate with his opponent, Foraker, who
attacked the judge's well-known views on the separa-
tion of church and state and the exclusion of God
from the Constitution. Foraker won the election.
   At the annual congress held in Cleveland, Ohio,
October 9-11, the National Liberal League adopted
the name of the American Secular Union, as pro-
posed the year before and elected as officers Robert
G. Ingersoll, president, and Samuel P. Putnam,
secretary. A woman suffrage plank met with opposi-
tion from but one member. Ingersoll closed the
meetings with a lecture. The Truth Seeker, October
17-24, reported it as the largest congress in the his-
tory of the League.

          7 -- ENTERTAINED BY INGERSOLL --
                   AN INTERVIEW.

   In August I took part in an event which I recog-
nized as the greatest thing that had ever happened.
I interviewed Ingersoll for The Truth Seeker. With
his family he was at Long Beach, New York, and
included me in an invitation to S.P. Putnam to
visit him at his hotel. They were supposed to talk
about the affairs of the national organization, Inger-
soll being president and Putnam secretary. The
members of the family were assembled on the hotel
veranda when we arrived. One of the young ladies,
sitting by her father, arose and offered me the post,
which I hesitated to accept until the Colonel drew
the chair a little nearer to him and beckoned me to
take it. Mrs. Ingersoll made the same provision
for Putnam, and the girls, Maude and Eva, beauti-
fied the group. The Colonel asked me questions
1885]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         391

that seemed to be only such as I was prepared to
answer readily. Mrs. Ingersoll gave a homy turn
to the conversation by asking her husband if he had
put on his heavy underclothes, according to her
advice. When Ingersoll got an answer to a question
he expanded upon it, as though he were just con-
tinuing the other's line of thought. His conver-
sation was as well organized as his lectures, and
he spoke as entertainingly to one as to a thousand
-- which is to say his thought was as clear, his words
as well chosen, and his sentences as perfectly
formed. I showed him a newspaper clipping of
which he was the subject and inquired whether he
would confirm or add to its statements, so that I
might reprint it. When he had read the piece he
slipped it into his vest-pocket, and said: "Let's
have something original. Write out a few questions
and I will answer them." And so in this manner I
got an interview with Ingersoll that filled six col-
umns -- his first contribution to The Truth Seeker.
   On the way home in the train Putnam expressed
his admiration for the Colonel and Mrs. Ingersoll,
and then fell to praising the daughters. I responded
by mentioning one of them, with whom I had
spoken, as certainly a lovely girl, and he declared
the other one glorious.
   Here is ancient history. November 7 The Truth
Seeker announced: "The Rev. Mangasar M.
Mangasarian, who has been pastor of the Spring
Garden Presbyterian church in Philadelphia for
three years, has publicly renounced the doctrines of
Presbyterianism and tendered his resignation to his
congregation. In his sermon he said: 'I have
392    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1885

ceased to be a Calvinist. If Calvin, Wesley, and
Edwards had the right to make articles of faith and
differ with good and holy men who went before
them, have I not the same right to make articles of
faith and differ with Calvin, Wesley, and Edwards?
I have outgrown the creed of Calvin. I shall have
no creed save the words of Christ'." Mr. Manga-
sarian, progressively skeptical, soon surrendered
the words of Christ as his creed. He does not now,
in fact, believe that the Christ of Christianity is
anything but a myth.
                    CHAPTER XIX.

       1 -- THE MIXED ECONOMIC SITUATION.

   THE Truth Seeker Company issued another
Annual at the opening of the year 1886 and
the paper began to be illustrated every week
with Heston's cartoons, to which were added pic-
tures by an artist named John, and with others
taken from the comically pictorial French Bible.
One of Heston's pictures entitled "A Contribution
to the Irish Question," showing Uncle Sam putting
money in the hat of Pat while Bridget handed the
gifts out of the window to a priest, caused a fellow
named Blissert (a sort of agitator) to promise he
would see that the labor unions put the boycott on
The Truth Seeker. (See T.S., Mar. 20, 1886.)
Events justified the picture, for while a league of
Irishmen in America were soliciting funds for their
friends on the other side, the Vatican was sending
a deputation to Ireland to beg funds for the erection
of a church in Rome.
   Agitation for the opening of the Museums in
Central Park was continued by Putnam, as secretary
of the Secular Union. In opposition the churches
organized the New York Sabbath Committee, at
a meeting of which, reported by myself, there ap-
peared as a speaker the famous Congressman
Breckinridge of Kentucky. Mr. Breckinridge will
394    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1886

"get his" at the proper place in this record. A bill
passed the Assembly appropriating $20,000 an-
nually for the cost of Sunday opening of the
museums.
   Oppression of the Mormons under the Edmunds
act began to take the form of persecution. Edmunds
proposed that the President be empowered to ap-
point trustees to take charge of Mormon church
property. John Swinton's paper asked, "How
about trustees for other churches?" The Edmunds
act provided that if any male person in a territory
(this was years before the admission of Utah as a
state), over which the United States had exclusive
jurisdiction "hereafter cohabits with more than one
woman, he shall be deemed guilty of a misde-
meanor." The penalty was a fine of $300 and six
months' imprisonment. The Truth Seeker said:
"Supposing this law was enforced in the District
of Columbia?"
   A new contributor to the paper appeared with the
signature of Si Slokum. He was one of those
prolific writers who could turn out a good story
every week for boys' papers of the Ned Buntline
make and had a great number of readers. This year
saw, probably, the first of the contributions of L.K.
Washburn, who had begun a lectureship in Boston
under the auspices of The Investigator.
   Our Hindu printer, Amrita Lal Roy, left us to
return to his native land. We gave him an evening
of festivities called a "Chapel Send-off." A num-
ber of well-known labor leaders were present, in-
cluding a Russian named Leo Hartman but known
as Somoff, for whose return a large reward had
1886]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         395

been offered by the czar. Everybody made a speech
and signed a testimonial. The account of the occa-
sion closes thus: "Beyond anything that was ex-
pressed in words, the loss of Mr. Roy is felt in The
Truth Seeker office; for, somehow or other, the
little chap, in spite of his dusky face, had worked
himself into the regard of all who associated with
him." The Russian known as Somoff told the as-
semblage that his stay in America had banished
Nihilism from his mind and he was now prepared
to be a good and conservative citizen of the com-
munity. But Roy, on the other hand, had been
changed from a mild Hindu to a revolutionist and
he was returning to India to stir up the natives.
   In December, 1887, the New York Sun reported
that "the talented, learned, and gentle young Hin-
doo, Amrita Lal Roy ... recently started a paper
in the English language in Calcutta called Hope."
His book, "Three Years Among the Americans,"
appeared in 1889. Said Amrita in this book: "I
spent my most peaceful days in New York as a
printer at The Truth Seeker office. At this date I
cannot help comparing the conduct of these so-
called 'Infidels' with that of the pious Christians of
New York to whom I had applied for a situation
on my arrival in America, very much to the preju-
dice of the latter. Nor can I refrain from acknowl-
edging with gratitude that by few persons in New
York were the peculiar circumstances in which I
was placed so considerately recognized, or so much
facility for making my way given to me, as by the
Infidels of The Truth Seeker office." (T.S., March
30, 1889.)
396          FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1886

   The obstreperous dynamiters, now called anar-
chists, were making a good deal of trouble in the
ranks of industry, especially in Chicago and Mil-
waukee. Discussion of the propaganda was quite
continuous in The Truth Seeker, the editor hold-
ing that while their ideas were wild, their right to
express them could not be denied, and he there-
fore denounced as an outrage the arrest of Herr
Johann Most, who was advocating the policy of
violent resistance to authority. The Chicago Lib-
eral League had been obliged in self-defense to ex-
clude them from its platform (T.S., '86, p. 359)
and from membership, but in spite of these meas-
ures, the League was fired from Dearborn Hall,
where its meetings had been held. In May oc-
curred the riot at a labor meeting that has since
been known as the Haymarket tragedy. A bomb
was projected into a crowd and five policemen
killed. It is the tradition that the police were the
aggressors, the disturbers of an orderly meeting,
and that they had no call to be there. The Truth
Seeker said: "A mass meeting from which no riot
promised to spring was in progress when the police
charged upon the assemblage. In what followed
the rioters were in the wrong. Even in war no
nation would use such horribly murderous weapons
as dynamite bombs." The editor did not live to
observe what missiles were used in the World War,
1914-1918. In the News of the Week a paragraph
said that "August Spies and Sam Fielden, the men
who made so much trouble in the Chicago Liberal
League, are in jail and liable to be tried for mur-
der. Nothing is heard of Gorsuch in these troub-
1886]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         397

lous times." E.A. Stevens, president of the Lib-
eral League, wrote that but for the fortunate ejec-
tion of the trouble-makers, the League meetings
would doubtless have been prohibited and its of-
ficers arrested. Who threw the bomb was never
known, but on August 19 a jury returned a verdict
of murder against August Spies, Michael Schwab,
Samuel Fielden, Albert R. Parsons, Adolph Fischer,
George Engel, and Louis Lingg. In passing sen-
tence judge Gary said: "The conviction has not
gone upon the ground that they did have actual
participation in the act which caused the death of
Deegan" [one of the policemen killed].
   Somebody not known did throw the bomb. Spies,
Parsons, Fischer, and Engel were ultimately hanged.
Lingg committed suicide or was killed, while in
jail. The police professed to know that he was
the actual bomb-thrower. Fielden and a man named
Neebe were sentenced to prison terms, and later
pardoned by Governor Altgeld.
   Early in the season Henry George began his can-
vass for nomination and election as mayor of New
York on a Labor ticket. In April the following
occurred, as I find on page 263 of The Truth
Seeker:

        SUPERSTITION IN THE LABOR MOVEMENT.

   I followed the crowd into Irving Hall one night last week
when the workingmen had their mass meeting in favor of
the eight-hour system. The hall is one of the largest in the
city, and it was full. It looked to me as if this ought to be
a great day for the movement, and maybe it was, but I
don't think so. A certain Mr. Qunn had been chosen
chairman of the meeting, and when I entered he was con-
tending for the abolition of poverty on the ground that
398    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         1886

"God Almighty never intended for men to be poor," which
was rather a novel proposition to lay before a multitude
of intelligent people. The position of God on the labor
question is not of the slightest importance, but it may be
suggested that he would scarcely have given the assurance
that the poor we would always have with us if he had
intended wealth to be universal. There is nothing quite
so tiresome as listening to those dogmatic persons who
attribute their own conceits to God and deliver them as
revelations of the divine will.
   Mr. George was received with overwhelming applause,
and was listened to with the closest and most respectful
attention. It soon transpired from the direction of his
remarks that he favored an act of the legislature which
should make it a misdemeanor for an employee to work
more than eight hours out of the twenty-four. Leaving in
the background the fact that we already have in this state
a similar law, to which no one pays the slightest attention,
Mr. George went on to develop his argument in support of
such a statute. And what grounds do you think he based
it upon? He placed it plumb beside the Sunday laws,
whose beneficence he defended with all the strength of his
lungs. To the Christian sabbath, he held, which had its
sanction and authority "among the thunders of Sinai,"
from the Creator himself, the world owed all the progress
which it had achieved. Except for the Sunday laws, he
argued, mankind would still be in the degraded state indus-
trially, whatever that may have been, in which it was
situated before the Sunday was established. Such was Mr.
George's main argument in favor of an eight-hour law, and
it is due to the intelligence of the audience to say that it
was not received with marked enthusiasm. The remainder
of the address was good in a general sense, but it had slight
reference to the eight-hour movement.
   Mr. George is one of those who hold the superstition
that the religious and labor questions are one; that the
ministers are the workingman's best friends, and that
the Salvation Army fanaticism is of vast industrial signifi-
cance. -- G.E.M."
1886]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         399

   Mr. George delivered a lecture on Moses as a
great statesman, political economist and law-giver,
and defended Sunday laws. There should be no
campaigning on Sunday, he said, except to discover
the will of God. And yet he was generally sup-
ported by Liberals. Shortly after his nomination
the editor of The Truth Seeker addressed to him a
letter inclosing the Nine Demands of Liberalism,
and inquired whether he thought his prospects of
election would bear the strain that would be thrown
upon them by his endorsement of these principles.
Mr. George was shrewd enough as a politician to
ignore the letter. The editor waited three weeks
for an answer and then said: "The treatment
which our letter has received at the hands of Mr.
George is unworthy of a man asking the votes of
the people because he is a Reformer." Mr. George's
rivals for the office of mayor were Abram S. Hew-
itt, Democrat, described by the editor as "the fussy
gentleman who refused to rent Cooper Union for
the reception of D.M. Bennett when he came out
of the Albany bastille"; and Theodore Roosevelt,
Republican. Mr. Hewitt was elected with 90,000
votes. George had 68,000, and Roosevelt 60,000.
Colonel Ingersoll, analyzing the result, said: "Sev-
eral objections have been urged, not to what Mr.
George has done, but to what Mr. George has
thought; and he is the only candidate up to this
time against whom a charge of this character could
be made."
   The Rev. Edward McGlynn of St. Stephen's
church had been a popular orator at George's meet-
ings, and publicly announced his conversion to the
400    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1886

Single Tax. The pope, assuming to be more of a
political economist than Moses or George, sup-
pressed McGlynn. This seemed inconsistent, for
George contended that God owned the land, and
the pope as God's representative on earth would
be in a position to make terms for its occupancy.

       2 -- LIBERAL AND SOCIAL QUESTIONS.

   A quite notable occasion was the meeting for
discussion, at Courtlandt Palmer's Nineteenth Cen-
tury Club, between Prof. John Fiske and Chauncey
M. Depew. Fiske defended a kind of deism, or
near-pantheism, based on the proposition that God
is "an infinite and eternal power which is mani-
fested in every pulsation of the universe." Mr.
Depew presented Fundamentalism in the manner
of the best after-dinner speaker of the period. Mr.
Palmer had brought there T.B. Wakeman to show
the gentlemen where they got off, as it were, at.
The eminence of the debaters, with the distinction
of the audience present, left Mr. Wakeman power-
less. He did not like to tell Professor Fiske and
Mr. Depew that from his point of view they were
Sunday-school scholars in the infant class. He
must have longed to meet them at the Liberal Club
where critics were not too reverential. He con-
tented himself with presenting the superior claims
of Positivism and the Religion of Humanity.
   During this year the difficulty of maintaining
freedom of opinion in a small community became
apparent in the experience which the town of Lib-
eral, Missouri, was going through. The father of
1886]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         401

the town, G.H. Walser, had been converted to
Spiritualism by a tricky "medium" named Bouton,
and had displaced Henry Replogle, a Materialist,
as editor of his paper, The Liberal. Mr. Replogle
began to print a paper of his own called Equity,
devoted to the principles of libertarianism. Mr.
Walser objected to Equity, first, because he did not
think the town needed two papers; second, because
Equity was labor reform, while he was a capitalist.
Add to this the fact that Replogle advocated social
freedom, and Walser had a case with which he
could go before the community. He had employed
a lecturer named C.W. Stewart, who, addressing
a Sunday night meeting in the Opera House, pro-
posed that the persons holding objectionable views
about sex and marriage should be led to the out-
skirts of the town and invited to keep going. Mr.
Walser indorsed the speech and called for a rising
vote of approval. This brought to their feet as
many as did not wish to be understood as approv-
ing of free love. Of the contrary minded, four
persons arose, including Mr. Replogle. Two days
later a mob attacked Replogle's house, heaving
rocks, firing guns, and sticking a dagger in his front
door, The demonstration divided the town. Mr.
Chaapell Spiritualist but Liberal, resigned from the
editorship of Mr. Walser's paper. The disputants
brought their deplorable quarrel to The Truth
Seeker, July 17 and July 31. Then came the ex-
posure of the medium Bouton, who had converted
Walser and been indorsed under oath by Stewart
and others, with a diagram of the premises and test
conditions. (T.S., June 27, 1986.) But the ex-
402    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1886

posure, occasioned by a fire in the medium's house
which brought to light the devices of Bouton, was
so complete that Walser himself wrote to The
Truth Seeker about it, and Bouton acknowledged
his deceit. That was another blow to the town of
Liberal. A still harder one was delivered by the
local railroad company which, itself being in the
coal mining business, refused to transport Walser's
coal except at discriminatory rates, and Liberal, be-
ing a coal town, suffered accordingly. Its indus-
try was crippled. Freethinkers were compelled to
sell their property and look elsewhere for employ-
ment; and as no one else would buy, they sold to
Christians.
   Mr. Walser's belief in spirits survived the ex-
posure as fraudulent of the phenomena upon which
it was established. Instead of returning to Ration-
alism he appears to have become more credulous and
more fanatical. I am unable here to tell what be-
came of Mr. Walser, except that within the past
few years I have seen a pamphlet containing relig-
ious poetry of his composition that showed he was
out of touch with Freethought and was as religions
as a hymnbook.
   Mr. Edwin C. Walker, divorced from his wife,
and receiving the hand of Lillian Harman, bestowed
upon him by her father, Moses Harman, suffered
arrest along with Miss Harman, because they "did
then and there unlawfully and feloniously live to-
gether as man and wife, without being or having
been married together, contrary to the statute in
such case made and provided, and against the
peace and dignity of the State of Kansas." This
1886]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         403

took place at Valley Falls, September 20. Lillian
was soon liberated. On trial in October, both
were found guilty and sentenced -- he to two and
one-half months' and she to one and one-half
months' imprisonment. Mr. Walker determined to
appeal his case on the ground that the marriage
was valid. We read in The Truth Seeker, Novem-
ber 5:
   "One of the incidents of this affair is the de-
sertion of Mr. Walker by his old friend Tucker.
Hitherto Mr. Walker and Mr. Tucker have been
mutual admirers of each other. Mr. Tucker now
parts from Mr. Walker, sadly but firmly. Why?
Because, in claiming that his marriage is valid, Mr.
Walker submits to the state, and in so doing makes
defendants of himself and Mrs. Walker, and Mr.
Tucker will never contribute money for the vin-
dication of the right of men and women to enslave
themselves." This union of Mr. Walker and Miss
Harman, entered into without ostentation, adver-
tising or publicity, became the subject of a long
and interesting discussion. Because the parties to
it were associated in the publication of the paper
Lucifer, Dr. Juliet Severance named it the Lucifer
match.
   "Dr. Edward Aveling, Socialist and Free-
thinker," says The Truth Seeker of September 18,
1886, "arrived last week from London." But that
was the sort of arrival that, like a rise in tempera-
ture, announces itself. Dr. Aveling and his lady,
who was Eleanor, daughter of Karl Marx, blew into
The Truth Seeker office one day, or should I say
blossomed? They made quite an appearance; he,
404    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1886

the perfect stage Englishman as done by our best
comedians, with his "bowler" hat and a bit of a
cane which he carried by the middle, and clothes
of a pattern like a yard-square cross-word puzzle;
and she in a gown conceived in the height of the
Dolly Varden mode, bearing figures of bright roses
nearer the size of a cabbage than anything that a
rosebush could produce or support. Passers-by who
saw this attractive couple enter the office waited
for them to emerge, as when Dr. Mary Walker
in her male attire or Mary Tillotson in pantalets
would call. As they were engaged to speak for the
Socialists, I wondered how the proletariat would
receive persons in such gorgeous raiment. With
Dr. and Mrs. Aveling came Herr Wilhelm Lieb-
knecht, member of the German parliament. The
Karl Liebknecht who was assassinated in the Spar-
tacide uprising in 1919 was his eldest son. Mr.
Aveling, on his return to England, wrote a book on
how America struck him. It was deprecatory of
our customs, habits, manners, and institutions. He
spoke of the difficulty he experienced, in local option
towns, in obtaining champagne, and stated that
when strolling in Fifth avenue he met with more
"stares" than he had encountered since he climbed
the monument (for he had visited Washington).

         3 -- STEPHEN PEARL ANDREWS.

   After having been for some weeks reported ab-
sent from Liberal meetings, on account of illness,
Stephen Pearl Andrews died on May 21 (1886).
1886]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         405

   The Truth Seeker said:
"New York does not ap-
preciate it, only a few            @@@@
know it, but the city has
lost one of her greatest
men. If Mr. Andrews
had been a politician
representing greatness
achieved through ways
dark and devious, or if
he had posed as a phi-
lanthropist who had
squeezed the life-blood
out of what people he
could reach, and had
then given them a statue on some street corner, or
a few pictures for the museum in the park, New
York would be dressed in mourning. But the city
has few tears for reformers and it was left for
the heretics to do honor to his memory. The
funeral was held at the Liberal Club rooms on Sun-
day after noon, the 23d. T.B.Wakeman pronounced
the oration, and the brotherhood and sisterhood
of born radicals filled the hall to more than over-
flowing. After Mr. Wakeman had concluded, the
Rev. G.W. Sampson, president of Rutgers Col-
lege, spoke of his friendship for the dead man."
Friends had long been aware of the close sympathy
between Dr. Sampson and Mr. Andrews, and were
not surprised when the clergyman appeared; but
the scandalized Dr. Buckley of the Christian Ad-
vocate sternly inquired: "Can this be true?"
406    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1886

   When Stephen Pearl Andrews passed away, he
had just rounded out seventy-four years of an ac-
tive and intense life. No field of thought was
alien to him. Dictionaries of biography still carry,
in connection with his name, the legend "eccentric
philosopher." Eccentric he was, if by that appella-
tion is meant refusal to let others do his thinking
for him, or to order his actions. Perhaps the ad-
jective "eccentric" will do as well as any for a man
who liked to go where trouble was and help
straighten it out. Thus we find him an active Abo-
litionist, and this in the southland where he stood
an excellent chance of being suddenly and com-
pletely abolished himself, and he not yet thirty. He
went to England in 1843 to enlist the aid of the
British Antislavery Society that he might raise suf-
ficient funds to pay for the slaves of Texas and
thus make that "republic" a free state. While in
England he learned phonography, becoming the
founder in America of shorthand reporting sub-
stantially as we have it today. Mr. Andrews was a
man of vast learning, a forceful speaker, and had
a remarkable command of the philosophy of lan-
guage, through which he achieved intimate knowl-
edge of thirty-two tongues, speaking several flu-
ently, Sanskrit, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and Chinese
among them. He came later to study the thinkers
of all schools and was convinced that he had found
the principles underlying them.
   Stephen Pearl Andrews did more than other
teacher to broaden my education. The writings
of D.M. Bennett made me an unbeliever in the
Bible. Ingersoll gave me Freethought touched with
407    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1886

emotion and adorned with beauty. From reading
and hearing B.F. Underwood I became a Ma-
terialist. Dr. W.A. Croffut saved me from em-
bracing certain economic fallacies; Herbert Spen-
cer led me into individualism; and Mr. Andrews
liberalized my mind so that I could look on all sorts
of conflicting views without any great amount of
astonishment or exasperation. He had charity for
all manifestations of belief, whether material or
spiritual, yet for anyone who designed by force of
law to impose religious belief or social conduct on
another he had a club, intellectually speaking. I
am thinking of him on the platform of the Liberal
Club. He was a tall man with a large frame and
a head to match. His command of language was
extraordinary, and when he employed it in denun-
ciation he made the best choice of words. One
thought that thunder was rattling and crackling
overhead. He was very strong on social freedom,
so emphatic in fact that it was years before I could
listen to him without wishing he wouldn't say it.
The spying of neighbors on men and women's rela-
tions moved him to profanity. "That," he once
said publicly, "is none of their damned business."
I shuddered to hear him. That was long ago. In
1928 Arthur Davison Ficke, in an article "featured"
by The Outlook, which once was the Rev. Dr. Ly-
man Abbott's paper and had President Theodore
Roosevelt for a contributing editor, writes of that
"absolutely individual problem, marriage," and
says: "To discuss marriage in public is an essen-
tially foolish undertaking. But the necessity of do-
ing so has been forced upon the individual, every-
408    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1886

where in the world, by the prying and bullying
power of the neighbors. The thing which we call
'society' is only the neighbors. The sooner we slap
the neighbors' noses, the better for them and for
us."
   That is substantially what Mr. Andrews held.
As for his philosophy of Universology, I thought
his language unnecessarily obscure, and said so.
When he replied that only babies needed to have
their food mummed for them by some old granny,
I dropped that objection; still when one meets with
such a phrase as "convoluto, evolutive, spiroserial
progression direct and inverse," he finds the thought
requires clarifying. But Universology had more
contacts with the common mind than Einstein's
theory of relativity, which the inventor said would
not be understood by more than twelve living per-
sons. Some previous study is necessary to the ex-
planation of many problems. For illustration, a
professor of mathematics remarks that he would
not attempt to describe the cosine to a person who
has no geometry. However, I once wrote for The
Truth Seeker a digest of a lecture on Universol-
ogy. Mr. Andrews made a trip to the office to tell
me it was correct and to enlist me if he might as
his interpreter, but I made excuses. I felt incom-
petent for the undertaking. Today I might be un-
able to interpret the piece that I wrote myself.
After a lapse of time a student asked the philoso-
pher Hegel to unfold the meaning of something
he had said. He replied that when he wrote it
there were but two who knew what it meant -- him-
self and God; "and I have forgotten," said Hegel.
1886]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         409

            4 -- RANDOM OBSERVATIONS.

   No fission so nearly complete had occurred forty
years ago between the Freethought and economic
advocacies as has since taken place. Radicalism
has gone in the opposite direction, into regions
where Freethought cuts no figure, and where some
sort of religion prevails. We have only to com-
pare the defense of the Chicago anarchists with
that made in the Sacco-Vanzetti affair of 1927.
The accused in Chicago never were suspected of
being hold-up men. Fielden, a former Methodist
exhorter, owned a team and carted stone. Par-
sons was a printer; Spies, an editor; Schwab an
assistant editor, and so on. They could not be
connected physically with the bomb-throwing. No
one "identified" them as witnesses professed to
identify Sacco and Vanzetti. The Intellectuals in
those days gathered no great defense fund. The
Socialists and the labor interests raised money
enough to retain General Butler. I suppose The
Truth Seeker, for the reason that there was no
evidence whatever to connect the accused with the
crime, devoted as much space, editorial and other,
to the defense, as any paper then published.
The prosecution was regarded as solely an assault
on free speech. The "highbrow" magazines were
silent or hostile, according to my recollection; but
this class of magazines in 1927 and later opened
their columns to the Sacco-Vanzetti partisans. I
think the Chicago anarchists had the better case.
I never doubted their innocence of the actual crime,
which the court itself admitted.
410    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1886

   To be friendly I carried a Socialist card and
bought stamps to stick on it to show my dues were
paid; and attended the Socialist and labor meet-
ings and festivities. Seeing his name in The Truth
Seeker in 1886 reminds me that at a big meeting
in Cooper Union I heard a distinguished foreigner
named Shevitch, who had with him on the stage
the woman over whom Ferdinand Lassalle fought
his fatal duel. She was a beautiful woman, a
stately German blonde. I acquired a prejudice
against Shevitch. The Leader, a Socialist daily
started during the political canvass of that year,
held a protracted fair in the Lange & Little Build-
ing, 20 Astor Place, to buy itself a press. She-
vitch, a big, handsome, imposing, and even pomp-
ous person, attended, and the Socialist girls went
weak in the knees when he came near them or
deigned to notice them. He picked as a favorite
one very pretty German girl, and buying wine in-
duced her to drink glass for glass with him till
she got fuddled, and then he took her away. I
heard no criticism of him for this, but formed my
own opinion. He did not bring with him to the
fair the Lassalle relict, who, I heard, was a titled
or aristocratic woman. The Pressmen's Union
voted not to attend the Leader Fair for the rea-
son that the press the paper intended to buy was a
self-feeder and would throw a hand out of work.
   The year 1886 was an uneasy one for persons
who are troubled by the Friday superstition. It
came in on a Friday, went out on a Friday, and
the day occurred fifty-three times. Four months
1886]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         411

had five Fridays each; the moon changed five times
on a Friday, and Friday was the longest and the
shortest day.
   The New York State Freethinkers held their
annual convention, September 2-12, at White Sul-
phur Springs. E.M. Macdonald as treasurer re-
ported that the association had profited from a
lecture by Colonel Ingersoll to the extent of $736.50.
The president of the association was Thaddeus B.
Wakeman; the secretary, Mrs. F.C. Reynolds.
   There were items in the paper now and then
concerning the defalcation and death of Archbishop
Purcell of Cincinnati. This ecclesiastic had swin-
dled the people of his diocese out of about $4,000,-
000, and his assignee, named Mannix, turned out
to be no better. It happened that George Hoadley,
the Freethinking ex-Governor of Ohio, had gone
upon the bond of Mannix, and was mulcted for
$62,000. The church itself, though also on the
bond of Purcell, never settled with its dupes.
   The Secularists of Canada, holding their annual
convention in Science Hall, Toronto, September
10-12, reelected William Algie president and J.A.
Risser secretary. Mr. R.B. Butland, a former
secretary and long-time correspondent of The Truth
Seeker, died during the year, bequeathing the sum
of $7,000 to the Toronto General Hospital.
   John Peck, the Learned Blacksmith of Naples,
N.Y., became a prolific and very popular con-
tributor to The Truth Seeker, and continued so for
twenty-five years.
   John H. Noyes, founder of the Oneida Com-
munity, died April 13, at 74. William Rowe, the
412    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1886

old Land Reformer, died June 24, aged 68. Burn-
ham Wardwell, Prison Reformer, died October 3,
after having been supported by the charity of Free-
thinkers for some years. The Boston Index ex-
pired December 30.
   A leaf in a scrapbook, the making of which con-
tributed for a time to the diversion of my better
element (Mrs. M.), preserves a piece of my rhym-
ing dated 1886.

              THE OLD, MAN'S CHOICE.
      
                  "There are three things of
                    beauty I have seen --
                     Three things beside
                   which other beauties pale.
        @@@@              One is a ship at sea
                   beneath full sail,
                   When all her canvas draws,
                    whose tall masts lean,
                   While in her cordage sings
                    the rising gale.

                  "The second is a field of
                   waving Wheat,
                    Grown tall and bright,
                   and golden in the sun.
                    A fair young woman is
                    the other one,
                   Which ends the trio of my
                   graces sweet
                    That with the full-rigged
                   vessel was began."

    With, four-score winters battered, bent and gray,
        So spoke this man passed far beyond life's prime,
            Yet answered, with a wealth of nerve sublime,
      Unto my query: "Which is fairest, pray?
            "My son, give me the woman every time."
                                G.E.M.

   The theme of the verse was furnished by an old
fellow named Maxwell, met on a vacation in the
1886]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         413

Aroostook, who asked if I knew what were the
three handsomest things in the world. As I had
not at that time segregated all the lovely objects
to be seen, I replied that I could not name them
offhand. "Well," he said, "I can. They are a ripe
field of wheat, a full-rigged ship in a breeze, and
a woman who is a wife; and the last one is the
prettiest." sold the poem to Puck for about half
my vacation carfare.
   The Freethinkers of Petaluma, Cal., established
a Free Secular Library in the store of Philip Cowen,
who acted as librarian. The largest contributor
was William Pepper, the friend and patron of Lu-
ther Burbank, and probably the man who made an
"Infidel" of the plant wizard. Mr. Pepper was a
nurseryman and left large bequests to charity.
   The 1886 Congress of the American Secular
Union was held November 11-14, in Chickering
Hall, New York. Among those attending were
Robert G. Ingersoll, John E. Remsburg, Horace
Seaver, William Algie (Canada), Samuel P. Put-
nam, Charles Watts, T.B. Wakeman, James Parton, Par-
ker Pillsbury, Robert C. Adams, Helen Gar-
dener, L.K. Washburn, J.P. Mendum, and Court-
landt Palmer. There are no survivors of this
group, and among the delegates I find the name of
but one now known to be living, Miss Kate Booth
of the Boonton, N.J., Secular Union. Kate is
now Mrs. George Gillen of Nutley, N.J. It was
at this congress that Ingersoll gave his lecture en-
titled "A Lay Sermon" to an applauding house.
   Ingersoll had been president of the Union for
two terms, and declined a third in favor of Court-
414    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1886

landt Palmer. Mr. Putnam continued as secretary.
I conclude from an entry by the directors that
Colonel Ingersoll paid the local expenses of the
Congress.
   In July the earnest Christians of Boonton, New
Jersey, contributed to the history of religious per-
secution by wrecking the tent in which C.B. Rey-
nolds held his meetings, and then causing his ar-
rest on a charge of Blasphemy. Reynolds was held
under a bond of $400 to await the action of the
Morris county Grand Jury. Mr. Edwin Wannan
offered bail. Ingersoll agreed to undertake the de-
fense. On the 19th of the following October an
indictment for blasphemy was placed by the Grand
Jury in the hands of the district attorney. Mr.
Reynolds renewed his bail and awaited the action
of the court.
   In March the Committee of Ways and Means
of the New York Assembly gave a hearing on a
bill to abolish the exemption of church property.
Samuel B. Duryea appeared, representing the Con-
stitution Club. T.B. Wakeman represented the
American Secular Union, and Gilbert R. Hawes the
Liberal Christians. The editor of The Truth
Seeker, who was present, received the impression
that "the real sentiment of the Assembly is in favor
of this bill, but legislators have such a fear of the
religions element that we cannot expect it to pass."
It did not pass.
                    CHAPTER XX.

        1 -- GOOD WORKERS AND WORKS OF 1887.

   A DOZEN or more Freethought lecturers were
in the field and were heard during the sea-
son of '87 in nearly every northern and
western state. In April The Truth Seeker gives
these laborers in the vineyard the following men-
tion:

   Judging from the number of papers containing favorable
reports of their lectures, the Freethought missionaries in
the field are not only winning fame for themselves, but
are having a good effect upon the population they visit.
Mr. Charles B. Reynolds is called "able and eloquent," and
his manner of presenting his themes "dramatic and pic-
turesque." Mr. Samuel P. Putnam is described as "of pleas-
ing address and a finished orator." His style, we are
told, "is cultured and refined," and his action "graceful and
expressive." Mr. John E. Remsburg sustains his reputa-
tion for presenting "masses of facts in a scholarly and
eloquent way," and Mr. W.F. Jamieson is set down as
"eloquent and solid." Mr. W.S. Bell pleases the timid
ones of the fold, because his "scholarly periods do not
offend." Dr. J.L, York is very generally called the
"Ingersoll of the West," and Mr. Charles Watts is re-
ported from Canada as "holding his audience in rapt at-
tention." He has challenged all the ministers of Toronto
or of any other city throughout the Dominion, to debate
with him, but so far without finding a victim. Capt. Rob-
ert C. Adams of Montreal is doing yeoman service in
lecturing to the intelligent of his city and in writing
letters to the Montreal journals. One of his recent
letters upon the Sabbath question -- which is up for dis-
cussion there -- is the best, for a short review, that we
                      415
416    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1887

have seen. Mr. J.D. Shaw, of the Independent pulpit,
has taken the field in Texas, and the papers say he gives
excellent satisfaction, being a "logical, forcible, and pleas-
ant speaker." His oratory is "chaste and refined, and he
wins many warm admirers. It is pleasant also to learn
that he obtains many subscribers to his Independent Pulpit
wherever he lectures. Of the other speakers we hear less;
but Dr. Juliet Severance was a power in the recent Labor
Convention at Cincinnati; E.C. Walker is fighting the
best he can from behind the iniquitous bars of a Kansas
county jail; J.H. Burnham occasionally emerges from his
retirement at Saginaw City, Mich., and electrifies an au-
dience; Col. John R. Kelso keeps the church stirred up
around Longmont, Col.; Mrs. M.A. Freeman of Chicago
speaks for all who wish, and her auditors, we are
told, are more than pleased. Helen Gardener is at present living
here in New York, but when she does go out the reporters
hasten to throw themselves at her feet. Mrs Lucy N.
Colman is warned by age not to tax her strength upon
the rostrum, but her reminiscences are enjoyed by a larger
audience than any grand opera house would hold. She
has had her share of aged eggs and crowns of glory for her
magnificent work for liberty, and now lives quietly in
Syracuse. L.K. Washburn is going West, and when he
gets where Liberal lectures are appreciated, we shall ex-
pect to see in the papers of all the towns he visits, ap-
preciative reports of his ornate, epigrammatic, and beauti-
fully-rounded sentences, delivered in a musically ringing
voice. For Mr. Washburn is second to but one as an
orator, and piles up his facts in rivalry of Remsburg. We
wish we had space to reproduce all the good things the
press say of our missionaries, but they must accept the will
for the performance, for there is a limit to the columns of
even so large a journal as The Truth Seeker.

   The Society of Humanity had acquired the three-
story and basement building at 28 Lafayette street,
through a donation or bequest of $10,000 by a Mr.
Habel, and on the parlor floor meetings and so-
1887]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         417

ciables that might almost be called receptions were
held. Birthdays of Paine and Jefferson were cele-
brated, their services and principles expounded, and
then there were musical and literary offerings, fol-
lowed by dancing. They were quite brilliant func-
tions. I discover that I reported these affairs for
The Truth Seeker, with lists of those present. Cas-
ually it is observed that "Henry George, Jr., and
his pretty sister made many friends." Among the
elders but one survivor can be named, Mr. Ed.
Wood, who still makes his yearly visit to the office
of The Truth Seeker, which he has bound and
mailed for nearly half a century. It is the only
paper among those he was handling when he took
it, that is still alive. It is his mascot. When the
Society suspended its formal meetings for the sea-
son, the younger set rallied and kept the dances
going. Mothers seemed pleased to bring their bud-
ding daughters, whom for form's sake they watched
from the side lines, besides having, I hope, a good
time themselves. The rooms were free. There
was no necessity for advertising to fill them com-
pletely, and no undesirable intrusions resulted.
They were joyful occasions.
   Henry Ward Beecher grew more rationalistic in
his utterances. One of his sermons must have been
annoying to Catholics, who address the mother of
Jesus a hundred or a thousand times to once for
his Father in heaven. Beecher said:
   "The mother and brothers of Christ did not be-
lieve him to be what he declared himself to be,
and surely his mother should have known. Be-
tween this Mary," Beecher went on, "celebrated in
418                FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1887

the Magnificat for two thousand years, and the
real Mary, there is a wide difference. That she
had the slightest spiritual perception or insight
there is no proof, and she and her other sons
thought Jesus was 'cracked.' When he was good
and great they said that he was crazy, and begged
him not to tramp around and exhibit himself to
the common multitude. They wanted him to stay
at home and be a good citizen." One could see
that Mr. Beecher had set aside as negligible the
story of the angel's appearance to Mary with the
news that she was the mother of God. A daily
newspaper observed that he handled the holiest
mystery of Christianity "with the carelessness of
contempt." If Beecher's treatment of the incarna-
tion was not blasphemy on the virgin, it was vergin'
on the blasphemous, said a humorist. "Beecher
should not be condemned for speaking the truth,"
said The Truth Seeker. But while the public was
puzzling itself to reconcile Beecher's preaching with
orthodox theology, he took sick and died March 7,
1887, in the 74th year of his age. The Congrega-
tional ministers of Chicago charitably refused to
send a message of condolence to his widow. In
the Beecher memorial volume abortly compiled
thereafter, the only tribute that has lived is Inger-
soll's.

              2 -- THE ANARCHISTS,
           HENRY GEORGE, THE CHURCH.

   The discussion over the question whether or not
the Chicago Anarchists ought to be hanged con-
tinued through 1887. Henry George, who was con-
1887]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         419

ducting The Standard, denounced all the proceed-
ings that had been taken against the accused men,
and declared their defenders to be the party of law
and order. The police had acted without provoca-
tion, the jury was chosen in a manner shamelessly
illegal, and it would be charitable to suspect the
judge of incompetency. The Truth Seeker main-
tained vigorously that the men had been convicted
for their opinions and not for the commission of
crime. On the result of the appeal the editor said:
"The police by perjury connected the defendants
with some wretch who threw a bomb, the lower
court by partiality secured their conviction, and the
higher court by sophistry sustains the verdict."
And later. "The Chicago tragedy is over. Oscar
Neebe is serving his fifteen years' sentence in Joliet
penitentiary; Samuel Fielden and Michael Schwab
have been sentenced by the governor (Oglesby) to
life imprisonment instead of death; Louis Lingg is
dead by his own hand; August Spies, Albert R.
Parsons, Adolph Fischer, and George Engel were
hanged on Friday (Nov. 11, 1887), as commanded
by law." The Haymarket bombing had occurred
May 4, 1886. I wrote some verses on the hanging,
one couplet of which fixes in the memory the names
of the men who were hanged, and corrects the
common mispronunciation of one by rhyming it:

      "Four corpses swing in the morning breeze:
       Engel and Parsons, Fischer and Spies."

   Throughout the year the heretic priest, Rev. Ed-
ward McGlynn, pastor of St. Stephen's Catholic
church and land reformer of the Henry George
420    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1887

school, was the center of a religious, economic, and
political disturbance. McGlynn was a better secu-
larist than George. The editor of The Truth Seeker
laid the Nine Demands before George and he
dodged them, but Father McGlynn had come out
for similar principles in 1870, and in 1887 added:
"I am glad to know that what was said so long
ago is in substance and spirit and largely in phras-
eology the same as the Nine Demands of the Amer-
ican Secular Union. I can cordially and unreserv-
edly subscribe to those demands, and I should be
glad to see them granted by appropriate changes
in our constitutions, state and federal." His de-
fiance of his ecclesiastical superior, Archbishop Cor-
rigan, was expressed in a current conundrum:
"Why is the Rev. Dr. McGlynn like a stray goose?"
The answer was that he didn't follow the propa-
ganda. In association with Henry George he or-
ganized the Anti-Poverty Society, which elected
him president, Mr. George being the leading mem-
ber. John Swinton alluded to the combination hu-
morously as "the bald-headed prophet and the pot-
bellied priest." At the first meeting, which filled
Chickering Hall, Henry George said: "This so-
ciety does not propose to ask what beliefs its mem-
bers hold. If Archbishop Corrigan wishes to join,
good and welcome; if Colonel Ingersoll wishes to
join, good and welcome." The archbishop's name
was received with hisses and Colonel Ingersoll's
with "prolonged and tremendous cheers." Hugh
O. Pentecost, then a reverend, addressed the society
a few weeks later. Pentecost, besides preaching
anti-poverty doctrine, made a plea for the Chicago
1887]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         421

Anarchists. When he added that he was "no
longer in sympathy with the church as an organiza-
tion or with evangelical Christianity," his congre-
gation in Newark permitted him to resign. Dr. Mc-
Glynn was ordered to Rome, but publicly refused
to go. The Christian Advocate said: "A few
years ago Dr. McGlynn would have been under-
going torture at the hands of the Inquisition, and
if he refused to recant, the fagots for an auto-da-fe'
would soon be collected. As Rome is infallible,
and never changes, the only reason it does not do
this now is because it cannot." Dr. McGlynn re-
marked: "In the good old days of Galileo they
could take a layman to Rome in chains for what
they think I am guilty of." Continuing obdurate,
he was formally excommunicated.
   The followers of Henry George charged that
the Catholic church, through its tool, Terence V.
Powderly, had enlisted the Knights of Labor to
destroy the George land movement. This proved
to be the fact. There was a conflict between the
George party and the Socialists as to which should
send delegates to the convention of the United La-
bor party at Syracuse, for the nomination of a
state ticket. George also contended with the So-
cialists for control of The Leader newspaper. The
Socialists prevailed in both instances. Mr. George
started The Argus as a campaign paper. Both
The Argus and The Leader suspended before the
end of the year, and so did John Swinton's paper,
which in the squabble between the church and
George took the side of the church and the Knights
of Labor. George atoned for his disrespect for
422    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1887

the Catholic machine by emphasizing his own part-
nership with God. His proposed reforms, he said,
were "God's will," he was carrying out "God's in-
tentions" according to what "God designed." He
phrased his theory thus: "I have never stated that
the land belongs to all men. Rather I believe it
belongs to God and that all men are his children to
tenant this world for a little while. This is a new
crusade," said George. "As in the old crusades the
cry was 'God wills it!' so in this crusade the cry is,
'God wills it!"' The will of God counted little, as
George's party got few votes. The Truth Seeker
noted there were two Infidels on his municipal
ticket, that of the Union Labor Party -- Louis F.
Post, candidate for district attorney, and Fred Leu-
buscher, nominated for the General Sessions judge-
ship. Thaddeus B. Wakeman, who the year be-
fore had been a George man, was now with the
Socialists. The Truth Seeker gave space to the
issues of the campaign because of the amount of
religious controversy the participation of Dr. Mc-
Glynn brought into it.

     3 -- BLASPHEMY AND OTHER PERSECUTIONS.

   The case of C.B. Reynolds, arrested the previous
year for blasphemy, came before the court of Mor-
ristown, N.J., on May 19, with Ingersoll for the de-
fense. It lasted two days. Judge Francis Childs,
presiding, cautioned the jury not to violate the law
by acquitting the defendant. The obedient jury,
after an hour's deliberation, brought in a verdict of
guilty. The judge imposed a fine of $25, with costs,
which, duly juggled, made the whole penalty $75.
1887]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         423

Ingersoll drew his check for the amount, and the
prisoner was free. His address to the jury is con-
tained in the Dresden edition of his works.
   The Rev. Hugh O. Pentecost, who was becoming
extremely radical, wrote to the New York World:
"I think some one ought to express the disgust and
shame which many Christians must feel at the pro-
ceedings. How silly and stupid it is to fine a man
for expressing his honest opinions, in whatever bad
taste, so long as he infringes on no one else's equal
rights in doing so. Will men never learn anything
from history? It seems incredible that a statute
against blasphemy can be operative in this or any
state. This silly and wicked statute has succeeded
in giving a thousand times the circulation to Mr.
Reynolds's pamphlet that it otherwise would have
had. I am a Christian minister, but in my opinion
if God and the Christian religion cannot take care
of themselves without a resort to courts of human
law, both are in a bad way. Truth can take care of
itself. If we have the truth we need not fear blas-
phemers. If Reynolds has the truth, judges and
jurors will not suppress it. That cause is a very
weak one which will not bear discussion. I venture
the opinion that there are many Christians in New
Jersey who are ashamed of the Reynolds trial and
conviction, as I certainly am."
   Pentecost was right. When Ingersoll had fin-
ished his address to the jury, professing Christians
to a considerable number, and some of the clergy
of Morristown, presented themselves before him to
register the protest that they had had no hand in the
prosecution and did not believe in it.
424    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1887

   Mr. Edwin C. Walker of Kansas, who in 1886
had lectured industriously to Liberal audiences
                  wherever he could col-
                  lect them, spent New
                  Year's in jail at Oska-
                  loosa. He had effected a
        @@@@            marriage union with Lil-
                  lian Harman in a way
                  that apparently violated
                  no law, and yet involved
                  no recognition of the
                  right of the state to in-
                  tervene in such relations.
                  Miss Harman, sharing
                  his imprisonment, de-
                  clined to purchase her
                  liberty by paying her
half of the costs. The prisoners were placed under
regulations more severe than those usually enforced
in civilized lands, being denied the privilege of
either writing or receiving letters.
   This "Lucifer match," as it was called because of
the connection of the parties with the radical paper,
Lucifer, published by Lillian's father, Moses Har-
man, at Valley Falls, lit the fires of revolt among
social radicals, and was the subject, of course, of
discussion in The Truth Seeker, where the griev-
ances of all were heard. The editor advised the
prisoners to submit to the money extortion, as the
least of two evils, and pay their fines. In Febru-
ary their bands were forced by the arrest of Moses
and his son George Hannan, on a charge of using
the mails for the circulation of obscene literature.
1887]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         425

The matter complained of was an article headed,
"An Awful letter." The editor of The Truth
Seeker described it as "a coarsely written and ex-
clamatory denunciation of the abuse of marital
rights." Following this arrest Edwin and Lillian
paid their fines under protest and came out of pris-
on to help fight the battle of the two arrested Har-
mans. Mr. Walker wrote to The Truth Seeker:
"The accursed church-state monster has separated
us, has murdered our happiness, but it has not made
us love and respect it, and it cannot. We are
pledged by our sufferings and our devotion to
liberty and justice to do all that we can through
all the years of our isolated lives to destroy it."
Mr. Walker was immediately rearrested on the
same charge as that for which the Harmans had
been held, and in November he was indicted with
them to appear for trial in April, 1888.
   In May Mrs. Elmina D. Slenker, of Snowville,
Va., who had been contributing to The Truth
Seeker for ten years or more, was arrested by an
agent of the Comstock society, accused of con-
taminating the United States mails. Mrs. Slenker
was an Alphite, or one who admitted the legitimacy
of marriage for no other purpose than to perpetu-
ate the species. She circulated literature bearing
on this question and probably treated of the propa-
gative act with considerable freedom. The agent
of the Vice Society got her into the trap by pre-
tending to be interested in her work. The Truth
Seeker came out with the searching inquiry: "What
shall be said of the dirty agents employed for years
in ensnaring an aged woman -- inducing her, by
426    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1887

pretending to be students of her special hobby, to
write such words as should place her in their power?
What shall be said of the society that employs
these foul creatures? What of the Christians who
support this society and urge the prosecution of the
miserable work" Their actions sink them beneath
the notice of clean and honorable people, and they
are best left to fester in their own corruption. No
words can express the contempt in which every de-
cent man must hold them."
   The National Defense Association, E.B. Foote,
Jr., secretary, E.W. Chamberlain, treasurer, con-
ducted the defense of Mrs. Slenker and Truth
Seeker readers paid the expenses. Her most ardent
advocates were women. She was indicted on July
12 and held for trial in the United States Dis-
trict Court for the Western District of Virginia
at Abingdon. She was arraigned October 21 be-
fore Judge Paul and a jury, which found her guilty.
When the judge postponed sentence, Chamberlain
argued a motion in arrest of judgment on the
ground of defective indictment and the court
granted it and discharged Mrs. Slenker from cus-
tody. Henry M. Parkhurst, one of the old-time
stenographers, a Freethinker like nearly all pio-
neers of that art, reported the trial for The Truth
Seeker.

        4 -- PERSONAL AND REMINISCENT.

   The matter written by myself and published by
The Truth Seeker in 1887 would make a small book
if collected for that purpose; but it was mainly topi-
1887]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         427

cal and of no permanent value. There were verses
and stories, reports and special articles. Because in
those years my brother and I could do each the
other's work, vacations of some length for both
were feasible. When I returned from mine I
offered him congratulations on having conducted
the paper as ably during my absence as I had when
he was away.
   I quote here a paragraph in one of my letters to
Eugene written from our old home on Surry Hill,
for the effect it had on two old men -- Peter Eckler
of the Eckler Publishing Company, and Dr. J.R.
Monroe, editor of The Ironclad Age. The para-
graph reads:

   "I sat under the old apple-tree in the dooryard,
where we used to roll about when we were boys.
The tree is dead and furnishes hardly any shade;
so I sat in the sun and watched the summer clouds
go over, like ships sailing in the sky. The old times
came back, and old familiar faces clustered around,
and I saw them but with closed eyes. The hum of
bees and the drone of vagrant flies sounded now
and then, and with their music came memories,
floating, drifting, appearing and disappearing like
things seen through a glass reversed -- distant but
distinct. Thus I saw my friends not only as they
are now, but as I knew them then; not only those
who still walk the earth, but those who have sunk
back to that dreamless sleep from which they first
awakened on this life. So under the apple-tree I
dozed and dreamed."

   Monroe said in his paper: "We confess to the
weakness of having critically read his communica-
428    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1887

tions over the second time, merely for the pleasure
his style of writing imparts." That called out Peter
Eckler, who wrote Dr. Monroe a letter indorsing his
commendation. It appeared that Mr. Eckler both
read the vacation letters and preserved them, so
that he could quote not only the paragraph I have
reproduced, but another from my vacation letter
of the previous year.
   Having reached the age these men had attained
forty years ago, I probably understand better now
than I did then why the description of a visit home
appealed to them.
   In one of the old numbers of The Truth Seeker
I find this quoted by a contributor in order to ex-
pose its false reasoning:
   A certain Infidel, calling upon his friend, an
astronomer, noticed several globes lying upon a ta-
ble, and admiring their appearance, he inquired as
to where they had been obtained and who was the
maker of them.
   "What would you say were I to tell you that no
one made them, and that they came here of their
own accord?" questioned the astronomer in reply.
   "Such a thing would be impossible," answered the
Infidel.
   It reads like a story prepared for Sunday-school
consumption a century ago. Ingersoll had been
dead but a short time when the Rev, Dr. Charles
Parkhurst adopted the narrative to hortatory uses
by repeating it with Henry Ward Beecher in the
Place of the astronomer and with the name of In-
gersoll given to the "certain Infidel," the conversa-
1887]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         429

tion taking place in Beecher's study where Inger-
soll was represented as calling upon the Brooklyn
preacher.

                5 -- FOR THE RECORD.

   Another death which took away a man in whom
the liberal world felt an interest was that of Prof.
Edward Livingston Youmans, editor of The Popu-
lar Science Monthly (Jan. 18), which he had
started in 1872. Professor Youmans is remem-
bered by those who observed his work for the fact
that he created for Spencer, Darwin, Huxley and
Tyndall an audience in America almost before they
had achieved one in England. He was 67 years old.
   Activity on the part of J.D. Shaw, lecturer, edi-
tor, and organizer, was frequently reported from
Waco, Texas, where his Religious and Benevolent
Association met in Liberal Hall. In his monthly
Independent Pulpit for January he spoke of the
goodly number of youth in attendance at his meet-
ings. "Now," he says, "we have many young peo-
ple, and a more orderly, well-behaved, and attentive
company it would be hard to find."
   "Our Canadian friends," announces our edi-
tor under date of January 15, "have another Freet-
hought journal, and we trust it may be longer
lived than its predecessors. Mr. Charles Watts
and Mr. H.C. Luse have begun at Toronto the
publication of Secular Thought, and the first number
is out." Secular Thought under Mr. Watts (who
returned to England in 1892) and his successor
J. Spencer Ellis, continued to be published well
into the twentieth century.
430    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1887

   Lucy N. Colman, who was born in 1817, and
was in the anti-slavery reform with Garrison, Phil-
lips, Frederick Douglass and others, published her
Reminiscences in many numbers of The Truth
Seeker during 1887.
   In March The Truth Seeker moved its office
from 33 Clinton Place to 28 Lafayette Place, which
was to be its home for nearly twenty years. The
editor wrote:
   "Our new quarters are commodious, consist-
ing of a large store and basement, and a new
building in the rear for a printing-office and edi-
torial rooms. The neighborhood is very religious
and literary, but we hope to survive the former
fault and add to the latter good quality."
   St. Joseph's Union and the Mission of the Im-
maculate Conception were a block below. The
Episcopal clergy house was across the street. There
was an old church nearby. The Christian Union,
The Church Press, and The Churchman were
neighbors, as was also the Astor Library. Lafay-
ette Place, now no more, ran between Broadway
and the Bowery, from Great Jones street to Astor
place. The great event connected with the removal
was the Printers' Ball in the new building attended
by the elite of Typographical Union No. 6 and
enough ladies and gentlemen from the Society of
Humanity to make up twenty couples. Ed. King,
the philosopher of the workingman, made the dedi-
catory address. The curious reader will find the
report of this soiree in The Truth Seeker for
March 19, 1887.
   Felix Oswald's, "Bible of Nature" ran in The
1887]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         431

Truth Seeker as a serial, beginning July 16. Dr.
Oswald (1845-1906) termed it "a contribution to
the religion of the future." It was purely ration-
alistic and therefore hopeless as a religion.
   The paper now published in Liberal, Mo., was
called The Ensign. It reported "the first annual
commencement of the first Freethought University
in the world" as occurring every evening from
June 28 to July 2. Evidently The Ensign was short-
lived, for the next reference to the town (Sept. 24)
states that C.M. Overton and M.D. Leahy have
resuscitated the Liberal, Mo., paper under the title
of "American Idea." "Mr. Overton's greatest ef-
fort," we read, "thus far has been to endeavor to
prove that Liberal is a Christian town, and its peo-
ple Christians."
   There was great mortality among the Spiritualist
papers, marked by the demise of Light in the West,
Spiritual Offering, Light for Thinkers, Current
Fact, and Mind and Matter. A new one was started
at Cincinnati called The Better Way. In Mel-
bourne, Australia, the Anarchists published a 12-
page monthly which they named Honesty, and the
Freethought lecturer, Thomas Walker, started a
monthly illustrated magazine, The Republican. For
some years L.V. Pinney conducted The Press at
Winsted, Conn., as what Mrs. Slenker called "the
most radical of radical papers."
   One of the curious events of the year was the
confiscation of all Mormon church property by the
U.S. government. This was in some way the out-
come of the attempt to prevent Mormon men from
cohabiting with more than one woman.
432    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1887

   On the death of John Swinton's Paper, August 7,
which The Truth Seeker attributed to the George
furor and false issues raised by Labor leaders, our
editor said: "It was better edited, contained more
labor news, and had more editorial vigor than any
labor paper now in the field." Mr. Swinton said:
"I have been wrecked by this paper and by the
labors associated therewith -- in which during the
past four years I have sunk tens of thousands of
dollars -- all out of my own pocket" Mr. Swinton
was one of the great editors, of the Horace Greeley
and Charles A. Dana class, but had the misfortune
to be an idealist.
   Dr. Titus L. Brown, the Binghamton, N.Y.,
Materialist who had served six terms as president
of the New York State Freethinkers' Association,
wrote his funeral sermon and died August 17. His
family, with a treachery common to religious sur-
vivors of deceased Freethinkers, gave him "Chris-
tian" burial.
   The International Freethought Congress was
called by Charles Bradlaugh to be held in the Hall
of Science, 142 Old street, E.C., on September
10-12. One hundred delegates attended accord-
ing to a report copied from the London Freethinker
into The Truth Seeker of October 1.
   The annual Congress of the American Secular
Union, held in the rooms of the Chicago society,
October 15 and 16, elected Samuel P. Putnam pres-
ident (Courtlandt Palmer resigning) and E.A.
Stevens secretary in the place of Putnam.
   The Canadian Freethinkers held a convention in
Toronto, October 29 and 30.
1887]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         433

   "Mr. and Mrs. B.F. Underwood have resigned
the editorial control of The Open Court (Chicago).
The reason is that Mr. Hegeler, the proprietor, de-
sired to associate with them Dr. Paul Carus, his
secretary and future husband of his daughter, to
which they objected. This will, probably, end The
Open Court." -- Truth Seeker (Dec. 17).
   Mr. Hegeler fixed The Open Court so it could
not fail by endowing it with a million dollars. His
son-in-law, Dr. Carus, remained the editor until his
death in 1919, and it is still published.
   After thirteen years Mrs. Besant resigned her
place as coeditor of Bradlaugh's paper, The Na-
tional Reformer, to take up the advocacy of Social-
ism.
   The last important news item for 1887 is the
resignation of Andrew Carnegie and Judge George
C. Barrett of the New York Supreme Court from
the membership of the Nineteenth Century Club,
"the upper-tendom of heresy," of which Courtlandt
Palmer was president. Mr. Palmer in a letter to
the New York Tribune had stated his opinion that
the Chicago Anarchists did not deserve death. Mr.
Carnegie brought this question up at the club and
was personally unpleasant. Mr. Palmer declined to
admit that his private views were any concern of
Mr. Carnegie, who thereupon resigned. The dis-
cussion reached the newspapers and the publicity
caused the resignation also of Judge Barrett, who
on account of his judicial office was in no position to
face the music. Mr. Palmer said that two qualifica-
tions for membership in the club, according to its
motto, were "courtesy and courage." He would say
434    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1887

he thought Mr. Carnegie was wanting in the one
and Judge Barrett in the other. The ruction proved
an excellent recommendation for the club, which
moved to larger quarters and flourished up to the
time of its founder's death the following year.
   Mr. Carnegie, as a large employer of labor and
as a target for the Anarchists, was excusable prej-
udiced against men believed to have advocated the
removal of capitalists by means of bombs. Judge
Barrett was merely placed in an embarrassing posi-
tion and took the easiest way out. I recall the
amusement evoked among his acquaintances by the
notion that he could not sanction radical thought or
expression. If those from whom he thus separated
himself had retaliated by telling what they knew
about his social views as exemplified in his private
life, he might have been severely damaged. But
telling tales was opposed to their principles. I can
almost, not quite, visualize the excellent lady and
speak her name; but I wouldn't if I could.
                              *  *  *
   And now, after a few preliminary remarks at the
beginning of Chapter XXI (next number) I close
twelve years with The Truth Seeker and am off to
the Pacific Coast for six years of experience on the
other side of the continent.
                   CHAPTER XXI.

         1 -- TAKING LEAVE OF NEW YORK.

   WHEN two men, both known to readers by
name, are at work upon a paper, one being the
editor and the other an assistant
who writes articles for the editorial column but puts
his brightest ideas somewhere else and signs them,
then all the good stuff that appears stands a chance
of being credited to the assistant. Such is my
experience. Ever since I came to be the Hyas Tyee
of The Truth Seeker, with an assistant off and on,
pieces of my writing that attracted attention by their
merits have been passed to the credit of my con-
federate for the time being. But if somebody did
wrong, that was the editor. For instance, an article
by one in 1913 got me summoned by a priest; an-
other in 1918 caused the postoffice to refuse the
paper distribution in the mails, and a paragraph
done by a third in 1925 is the basis of a libel suit
by a preacher now pending. Two of the assistants
were lawyers who ought to have known how far
they could safely go, and the other was a minister
who had hitherto preached the gospel for thirty-five
years. Thus was it, in a measure (though I never
wrote anything actionable), when I served as as-
sistant to my brother. He stood sponsor for what-
ever appeared editorially, for, like his model, Mr.
Dana of The Sun, he held that a paper had only one
editor. We were so much alike in style that at this
436    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1887

day I cannot tell our articles apart. His were likely
better to maintain sobriety throughout, but ofttimes
he wrote with enjoyable humor.
   So in The Truth Seeker of December 24, 1887,
Dr. E.B. Foote, Sr., having seen certain lightly
conceived notices on the editorial page, wrote
Eugene to inquire whether I had taken a seat at the
editor's desk or he had borrowed my pen. The
editor replied:
   "We regret to be obliged to state that when the
notices were written our brother was on his way
to the limitless West, where he proposes, in com-
pany uith Samuel P. Putnam, to start a Freethought
paper and grow up uith the country, or walk back
to New York."
   He to whom Charles Watts so often alluded when
to the editor he wrote: "Give my regards to your
funny brother," was now off The Truth Seeker, and
had not been missed. Such is our little life.
   On the 16th of December I parted from the boys
in the office by the usual sign of shaking hands.
That evening a few intimates attended a dinner at
Mouquin's in Fulton street and at its end, with
expressions of good-by and good luck, Putnam and
I crossed the Hudson to the West Shore and were
off for the coast, which we believed offered a field
for another paper.
   Our train, crossing Niagara River, gave me my
first sight of the Falls. Unfortunately I viewed this
marvel of nature just after I had been charged the
extraordinary sum of sixty cents for a plate of
corned beef and beans, and my capacity for admira-
tion and wonder at anything else had been dimin-
1887]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         437

ished by the size of the restaurant check. One
should see the Falls first.
   At Chicago, reached on a Sunday morning, we
met E.A. Stevens; that is, he met us. Stevens was
secretary of the American Secular Union and presi-
dent of the Secular League of Chicago -- a most
efficient man in all respects. The Liberals of the
city on that morning attended the meeting of the
Ethical Culture Society to hear Mr. William M.
Salter's commients on the current discussion in The
North American Review between Robert G. Ingersoll
and the Rev. Henry M. Field. Mr. Salter was, as
far from indorsing Ingersoll as his successor, Mr.
Bridges, is from approving Darwin as a philosopher.
All of his discourse that remained in my mind was
his denial of the Colonel's dictum that happiness is
the greatest good. Mr. Salter maintained, with
superb disdain for this plebeian sentiment, that the
greatest good is "character." And yet character
contributes to human happiness, or it is a nugacity
or an evil. Convinced that Mr. Salter was getting
us nowhere, I inquired of Putnam what he thought
of the argument. He said he hadn't heard it, being
asleep during its delivery. Putnam traveled much,
by day and night, and improved all his oppor-
tunities to make up for lost sleep.
   That evening's meeting of the Chicago Secular
League, at which Stevens presided, was different,
more like the New York Liberal Club -- a lecture
and then discussion. A young fellow of about my
own age arose on the floor and offcred a few perti-
nent remarks. I reported his name as Darrell. It
was Clarence Darrow.
438    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1887

       2 -- VARIETIES OF PASSENGERS.

   After a twilight breakfast, Putnam and I took a
train out of Chicago and shortly ran into a blizzard
that stalled our engine. We ate next at 10:30 that
night. I quote from an account I wrote for the first
number of our new paper FRFETHOUGHT:

   "When the train got under way its progress was slow,
and Kansas City (Mo.) must have started out to meet us
or we never should have seen it. The city is away up on
a bluff, out of sight of the depot. It is evidently a large
commercial center, doing an extensive business in a product
labeled 'Relief for Kansas Sufferers,' put up in bottles for
residents of the adjoining state. The Kansas unfortunates
referred to were supposed to suffer from thirst, their state
being dry and Missouri wet. And yet a brighter side of
the situation in Kansas had been turned to me. In that
state I overheard an argument on prohibition between a
resident and a stranger. The resident bore a bottle, which
he shared with the other. And as they swigged it off, he
said: 'I am a prohibitionist from principle. I have drank
prohibition whiskey for fifty-seven years, and it never
hurt me; but a quart I got once in Missouri made me sick
for a week'."

   Kansas must have been a tough state at that
time (1887). Two passengers who evidently were
natives lured a brace of Easterners into taking a
hand at old sledge. After a game or two that the
tenderfeet won, a Kansas man picked up three of
his cards and said he wished the game had been
poker. One of the Easterners held three aces, and
agreeing to call it poker, bet a dollar in confidence
that no other three cards could beat his hand. His
opponent raised him ten, and being called, laid down
three hearts, saying "A flush," and took the money.
1887]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         439

   That was the now-past cowboy age. Through
Arizona and New Mexico the train picked up men
wearing white, wide-brimmed felt hats. These were
cowboys off the range. But of the "cowboy," it
soon appeared, there were two classes -- genuine and
bogus. The real one, as I observed, was a healthy
specimen, and though his legs sometimes got be-
yond his control and stretched themselves across
the aisle of the car, he would make an effort, with-
out taking offense, to coil them down when politely
requested to do so. He wore an expensive band
on his hat; carried no visible weapons, and seemed
to be an educated and agreeable person, speaking
grammatically in good English. "The bogus cow-
boy," to quote from notes I made, "is different. He
is not a cowboy at all. He only calls himself one
and wears a cheap sombrers. He is an imitation
bad man, an all-around tough, who never mounted
a horse in his life and when at large is seldom sober
enough to keep the saddle if lifted into it. Descrip-
tion of a meeting-up with one of them who surged
into the smoking-car near Flagstaff may be excused
because it developed my partner's unexpected re-
sourcefulness and nerve."
   Apart from his jag the fellow brought with
him only annoyance and discomfort. He bulldozed
the passengers, lounging up and down the aisle with
his hand on his hip. The discomfort arose from the
probability of his being armed, and no one could
tell what a mean souse might do with a gun. As I
sat next to the aisle, he paused to inquire whether
I would prefer to fight or to lend him four bits for
a couple of drinks. I replied that he misjudged me
440    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1887

if he supposed that I would do either to oblige
a man in his condition. His subsequent remarks
interested Putnam more than they did me, for when
he had moved along to propose that the next pas-
senger either fight or "pungle up," Putnam ex-
changed seats with me. "If that fellow comes this
way again," he said, "I'll down him and you can
sit on him and take away his gun." A carpenter
from Chicago volunteered: "And then I'll kick him
off the train at the next station." We had no need
to carry out this fell conspiracy, for when the train
stopped again at a place called Williams, the dis-
agreeable passenger dropped off for a drink and
made such a belated return that he missed the
train, which was just moving out. He chased us
a little way, but only the words that came out of
his mouth got aboard. A new passenger said:
"Hell! him a cowboy. The son-of-a-gun is a sec-
tion boss on the Santa Fe."
   I asked Putnam, skeptically, whether he really
had designed to climb the front of that low-life had
he come back. He replied: "You would just have
found out I would if he gave me the chance. I
can't fight, but I can down a man quick as light-
ning. But don't write anything about it." I
thought of his collision with the author of "Helen's
Babies" and believed him.*
ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ
   *If readers have forgotten this incident, which I believe
I have somewhere already mentioned, I will repeat that
the "collision" took place while both men were in the army.
Putnam on one side of the campfire played cards with
comrades. John Habberton on the other side anhoyed the
players by tossing small, smoking brands ubon the blanket
1887]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         441

      3 -- THE NATIVE LAND OF THE HUALAPAL.

   Of the country we passed through I wrote, while
the impression it made on me was fresh:

   "This southwestern land, New Mexico and Arizona, is a
land of poetry and mystery and terror. It is full of fear-
some mountains and chasms and precipices. Along the line
of the railroad nothing appears to grow, and the soil is of
a rich brick color, as thotigh it had been baked in a kiln.
Bluffs rise near you hundreds of feet high, in such layers
as are sometimes seen in the high banks of a river. Rocks
turned on edge stand off by themselves with no relative,
perhaps, within a hundred miles. Then there are rocks
weighing thousands of tons arranged in all manner of
queer forms, helter-skelter, in pyramids, in circles, as we
see cobble-stones beside the road where children have been
at play. The sandbanks do not slope from top to base;
they are straight up-and-down, or overhanging. The
mountains often have no foothills but rise from these
plateaus like the pyramids from the plains of Egypt. Soli-
tary peaks stand treeless from the foot to the white sum-
mits that wear their caps of snow in very presence of the
regal sun, Again, there are canyons deep enough to put a
good-sized mountain into. How these gorges ever got
scooped out in their present fashion is a matter of great
mystery. The train crossed one called Canyon Diablo, 285
feet deep.
   "The natives of this land are much the color of the
soil, somewhere between copper and chocolate. From their
adobe huts these natives came out to meet the train and sell
their wares to the passengers. The Pueblo Indians were,
ÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ
where the cards were dealt. When words failed to abate the torment,
Putnam arose and capturing Habberton by a leg dragged him through
the fire on his seat. Habberton bore malice and perhaps scars all
his life, and showed the former many years later by voting against
the admission of Putnam to an author's club.
442    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1887

if I recollect accurately, the first we saw. All the business
enterprise of this tribe seems to have been given to the
women, who had bits of pottery, volcanic glass, and some
colored stones, the which they desired to convert into the
currency of the East. The tawny damsels were the least
attractive of all human females that have appealed to me.
Old or young, they showed no trace of past or promise of
future good looks. The male Indian was content to let the
women support the family. I saw one absurd old Indian
astride a small donkey, and addressed him as Powhattan.
He replied, 'No savey.' He wore a white man's necktie,
the string about his forehead and the ornamental part
falling behind, In these Indian villages were adobe
churches for baptizing converts, but no facilities for wash-
ing them. The Mojave Indian girls painted and penciled
their faces to imitate the front of a brick house. Both
these and the Mojave women dressed carelessly. They
drew about their bosoms, beneath the arms, what passed
for a shawl that was somehow fastened behind at the top.
This was an adequate covering while it hung straight down,
front and back. It failed to be such when the wearer
stooped. In my notes is the entry: 'Before the average
Indian maiden can make her debut in paleface society, she
must spend more money for buttons and adopt some form
of trousering.' To the old Indian who didn't 'savey' I
made the proffer of a dime for the purchasing of pins
with which to fasten the back of her dress for his daugh-
ter, Pocahontas. The train lingered at its stopping-places
as though reluctant to leave, giving passengers plenty of
time for fooling. There was a long wait at Mojave, where
an enterprising farmer had struck a furrow around one
hundred and sixty acres. He could go around twice a day,
they said, with a horse-drawn machine that sowed the
seed, which was barley, and covered it two and a half
inches deep. He carried four furrows. In a beauty con-
test among the Indian women and girls there assembled,
some Hualapai maiden would have been crowned as Miss
Mojave, for the women of that tribe were a laughing lot,
and had the reputation of being companionable.
1888]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         443

   "Some of the places marked on the Arizona map as
towns were deceptive, for when reached they were found
to consist of a single building and to contain a single
inhabitant. Such were Chino and Aubrey, each with a
population of one. Cactus as big as apple-trees made
spots in the absolutely Saharic desert look like orchards.
There is a great deal of that sort of illusion in that country
where trees subsist almost without water."

          4 -- IN A HISTORIC PRINTING-OFFICE.

   I liked San Francisco at first sight, and like it
still, although fire and progress must have changed
it greatly in forty years. We had the best of luck
in finding an office room at 504 Kearny street that
was precisely what we wanted. In a jiffy we had
a corner curtained off for trunks and sleeping quar-
ters, a long table brought in that would serve for
the uses of a desk and to display books, and chairs
enough to seat ourselves and visitors. In the search
for a printer our good luck still went with us, steer-
ing us away from the wrong place and into the right
one. The one positively not It, but first entered,
was run by a man named Bacon, a deacon. We
were to hear of him later as Deacon Pork. We
got out of there without coming to terms with him.
I could see he had a good outfit. Nevertheless we
withdrew. And then we came to William M. Hin-
ton's, 536 Clay street, below Montgomery. Both
those printers were, as you might say, historic.
Bacon put his shop on the map by rejecting the
manuscript of Bret Harte's "Luck of Roaring
Camp" as irritating to the modesty of his young
lady copy-holder. The deacon had his meed of
444    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1888

praise for taking this protective attitude toward
the girl employee, who seemed as safe with him as
anywhere except in the arms of Jesus. On the
other hand one not impressed by the piety of Dea-
con Pork, but professing that the fact was of com-
mon knowledge, told me that this employer had
himself betrayed the confidence of the girl, and sent
her East in that condition.
   A few moments' speech with Mr. Hinton was
enough to satisfy me that this was the printing-
office we sought. He told me more papers had
been born in his office and buried from the same
than anywhere else on the coast. "But, semper
paratus, we are always ready for one more. We
will set all the matter for you or you may set part
of it, and what you earn we will knock off your
bill.  There's a spare frame over there. Henry
George set up the first edition of 'Progress and
Poverty' at that frame."
   Here seemed to be established a sort of affilia-
tion, George and his book being no strangers. Mr.
Hinton had been in fact the partner of George in
publishing a daily paper. He printed four num-
bers of Freethought, enough to convince me that
owing to the dolce far niente way of running his
office, I must spend my time there as foreman, com-
positor, and stone hand. While the fifth number
was in hand and the work far in arrears, I asked
Mr. Hinton if he would disclose to me, as one friend
to another, why the paper was late. He replied
that he was unable to explain the circumstance.
Looking about him he said: "Here we stand in the
1888]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         445

presence of enough material to print the largest
paper in the country. Here are from fifteen to
twenty men, all at work, many of them sober. I
cannot understand why your work is behind. You
think it over and come back and tell me." In five
minutes, having looked at the copy on the cases
of the compositors, I returned to say that his men
were working on a job of city printing, putting in
type an extended list of delinquent tax-payers. He
waved his hands, but said: "If you know what to
do in this exigency, do it. The office is yours."
   Who could say an unkind word to a man like
that? In a few minutes, then, the men were busy
on my copy in place of the list of delinquent tax-
payers, and having read and corrected the matter
and made up the forms, I put the paper on the
press. But this arrangement, so ideal from Mr.
Hinton's point of view, could not last. It gave me
no time for reflective thought. We rented another
room on the floor at 504 Kearny; bought an outfit
of type, and hired Frank L. Browne and his wife
to set up the paper. This relieved Mr. Hinton
of all but the presswork, which he continued to
do excellently well and quite promptly throughout
the life of the paper. Some years later, on the oc-
casion of a political overturning, he was elected
as supervisor of San Francisco.
   Putnam early in the year departed upon a lecture
tour of the coast, drawing good audiences, selling
books, taking hundreds of subscriptions, and earn-
ing generous lecture fees. He thus virtually sup-
ported the paper. Neither of us drew a salary
above expenses, and for my part I knew how to
446    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1888

live economically. There came in all the literary
contributions and letters admissible to a paper of
our size, which began with twelve pages, lOxl2
inches over all. The city had one labor paper,
The People, which soon suspended, for no Labor
paper lives long, and The Weekly Star, independent-
political. published by James H. Barry and edited
by F.B. Perkins, the father of Charlotte Perkins
who has been successively Charlotte Stetson and
Charlotte Gilman, a remarkably brilliant writer and
poet. Mr. Perkins was a Freethinker and avail-
able for lectures when meetings were held. A
fierce remark about Mr. M. De Young, one of The
Chronicle brothers, was accredited to him. Ac-
cording to the tradition De Young started The
Chronicle in a small way as a gossipy sheet, being
aided or financed by a lady vocalist known as
Madamoiselle Celeste, who sang at the Bella Union,
a concert hall near the Barbary Coast. The paper
scored a success. In the course of a year or two a
news paragraph stated that a well-known sculptor
had executed a bust of the founder of The Chronicle
which was to be seen in the office of the paper, and
copies thereof were for sale. Mr. Perkins com-
mented: "Not so: the bust of the founder of The
Chronicle is to he seen at the Bella Union, and
we believe it is for sale."
   Barry was aggressive, attacking injustices in vig-
orous terms. Usually he had a fight going, and
once got into jail. The Star employed Alfred Den-
ton Cridge, a veteran writer and printer, and a for-
mer friend of D.M. Bennett.
1888]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         447

    5 -- CALIFORNIANS CORDIAL AND TRUSTING.

   Our business for the first year was to make ac-
quaintancc with the town and the limited number
of Freethinkers there and in the vicinity, as well
as in the state. We found them hospitable and
helpful. Some were "forty-niners." Numbers
were miners, ranchers, wool-growers, orchardists,
pioneer merchants, old settlers, and all were inter-
esting. Out-of-town visitors selected the Free-
thought office as a place to leave their trappings.
One day a man of about 60 entered, wearing an
overall suit, which, having introduced himself as
Thomas Jones of Independence, Inyo county, he
asked my permission to remove. Then he stood
revealed as very well dressed, a wealthy man and
liberal with his money, but he did not propose to
spoil a set of glad rags by exposing them to the
wear and tear of railroad travel. On another day
there came in a rough-looking individual so dis-
guised by drink that his faculties wandered. He
seated himself for a short period of repose and
then coming to life inquired if this were the Free-
thought office and myself Putnam or Macdonald.
Set right about that he proceeded in a drunken
man's fashion to say: "I don't know you and you
don't know me, but we both know my partner Bill
Reed. Bill says that you are a man that can be
trusted with money." And he drew from his
pocket a heavy buckskin sack and emptied there-
from two hundred dollars in double eagles. These
coins he poured upon the table, and drawing out
448    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1888

some of the pieces, pushed the rest toward me
with the command: "Take care of that until I call
for it." With the sum which he returned to his
pocket, he proposed to fight away dull care. I
suggested that a man might dissipate considerable
gloom with less money, provided the effort were
not protracted beyond reason, but he replied that
he wasn't looking for an argument; that his plans
were laid and couldn't be changed. And thereupon
he departed, while I gathered up his gold
and put it away. Once during the following week I caught
sight of him firing a rifle in a shooting gallery near
the office, and went in with the idea of accosting
him. He saw me but there was no recognition in
his eye. His shooting, I noticed, was good. The
muzzle of the gun cut circles in the air larger than
the target, yet he would apostrophize himself:
"Fire when she bears," and so turn loose at the
right moment and make a fair shot. At the end
of the week be paid me a second visit, being sober
but cheerful, and saying, with no reference to his
previous call, that he had come to greet me in be-
half of his partner, Bill Reed, who took the paper.
"A pretty good town, this is," said he, "for a man
to spend his money in. I come here a week ago
as near as I can figure, with a couple hundred dol-
lars in the old sack; and I am going back to camp
with less than fifty of 'em -- broke -- damn a fool,
drunk or sober." I suggested he might have de-
posited a part of it with some friend for safe
keeping, but he replied regretfully that there was no
chance. To determine whether his expedition was
1888]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         449

at a sure-enough end, I asked: "Are you dead
certain you are on your way back to the camp, or
wouldn't you extend yourself another week if you
had the dinero?" Said he: "No; I am not quite
broke yet, but I know when I have had enough.
Well, I'll tell Bill I met you, Mr. Putnam. Good-
by." I stopped him and he never suspected why
until I brought his money out and asked him to
take care of it for me until we met again. It took
an argument to convince the man that the wealth
was his and that he had seen me before. San Fran-
cisco was a comparatively safe city at that time.
He had been bemused for a week without being
robbed.*
   The contents of The Truth Seeker show that
during the first part of 1888 I wrote several letters
to the brother I had left "back in the states," as
was the phrase of the Californians. They were
written, probably, to occupy time spent alone, Put-
nam being absent filling lecture engagements, and
I was never keen on hunting the society of my fel-
low-beings or inflicting my own on them. Was I
homesick? The closing paragraph of one letter to
The Truth Seeker runs:

   "I am several thousand miles away from The Truth
Seeker office, but am often with the boys in the light and
bright composing room, and see the familiar 'forms,' as it
were. I see Stevens tapping around the stone, Colby mak-
ing eccentric and apparently unnecessary marks on the
ÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ
   *The amount of this man's deposit was much larger than
I have indicated, but I would not put a strain upon
the reader's credulity by naming it.
450    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1888

proofs, Mellis groaning over a take of long primer, Blake
snatching the type from his case, and looking forward to
four figures in Saturday's bill, and the rest with con-
tracted brows studying the quirks and turnings of their
manuscript. I attend again the little parties at the Socicty's
parlors and see all the faces there -- Dr. Foote head and
shoulders above the rest, Brother Eckhard walking through
the Virginia Reel with stately motion, Philosopher King
lost in the wilderness of the Saratoga Lancers -- the room
full of girls and melody and laughter and light. And
sometimes I find myself once more up in your editorial
room, resting my elbow upon your desk and stretching
out an inky and black-leaded hand for copy. And as the
answer sometimes came then, 'No more tonight,' I take
your words to close this long letter with. No more tonight.
But yours always."

   A degree of lonesomeness may be implicit in
those lines, but if so the presence was at hand to
relieve it.

    6 -- SHOULDERING THE WRONGS OF SOCLETY.

   Mrs. Mary A. Leland, widow of Theron C. Le-
land of New York, had come to San Francisco to
live, with her two daughters, Rachel and Grace, and
they had a house on Taylor street, at the north end.
Mrs. Leland had been a quite remarkable woman;
like another Frances Wright, an agitator for the
rights of the female sex. In 1859 or earlier Josiah
Warren, an apostle of equitable commerce and
complete individualism, furnished the ideas on which
to found a community at the place now called
Brentwood, Long Island, under the name of "Mod-
ern Times." It was one of the numerous social
experiments of that epoch. Moncure Daniel Con-
way accepted an invitation in the summer of 1860
1888]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         451

to go to Modern Times and address the inhabitants.
The story he told afterwards was printed in the
Cincinnati Gazette of February 27, 1860. On the
evening of his arrival, he says, he was taken to
visit the Queen of Modern Times. Following is
the picture he draws of that royal personage:

   "The Queen of Modern Times was in truth every inch
a queen. She was a most beautiful woman, in the prime
of life, who was born and reared in the Cotton States. She
had at an early age married a rich man in the South, who
in the end proved himself an utterly worthless man and a
tyrant. From him she separated, and the law which gave
him her children gradually schooled her to sum up all the
wrongs of society in the one word 'marriage.' If she was
the champion of any popular cause Mary Chilton would
be regarded as the leading female intellect of her country;
and it would be impossible for anyone to see her in her in-
spired mood, and to hear her voice as it sweeps through the
gamut of feeling, rehearsing the sorrows of her sisterhood,
without knowing that she brings many momentous truths
from the deep wells of nature."

   Mary Chilton was Mrs. Leland. Twenty-eight
years later, that is when I found her there in San
Francisco, the queen had grandchildren for her sub-
jects and seemed to be somewhat mollified. I sent
her an invitation to drop in at the Freethought
office when downtown. She replied that she went
forth only occasionally, and would prefer to have
me call, which I did, and soon persuaded her
younger daughter (Grace) to come to the office
and write wrappers. She was then typing the manu-
script of her sister Rachel's (Lilian Leland's) story
of a trip around the world entitled "Traveling
Alone." I discovered the work needed revision by
452    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1888

a practiced hand, as most all writing does (and this
which the reader has now before him has so prof-
ited). The arrangement resulted in the young lady's
bringing her Remington No. 2 to 504 Kearny street
and working at my elbow, almost, when I was
there, and greeting callers when I was out. The
meeting in San Francisco was not our first. It was
probably our fourth. Years before, when spending
the end of a week at a farmhouse on the Schraalen-
berg road, in Closter, New Jersey, I observed a
small girl playing croquet. She belonged there,

                      @@@@





        GIRL                  SCHOOL GIRL

and acted the hostess by chasing the arrows I shot
at a target. We got along well. Soon after that
I encountered her as she walked with her father
on the street. In another period of years, I unde-
signedly wandered into a place in New York where
a society was giving a dance, and finding her there
1888]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         453

renewed the acquaintance. A married couple who
were chaperoning a collection of girls obligingly
surrendered to me the privilege of going home with
her, as the hour was late, the night cold, and her
house far beyond theirs. It wasn't so far as I
wished it had been by the time we got there. That
was an evening in the year 1884. The next day


                       @@@@





        THE GIRL                WIFE

I informed my brother, and was ready to tell the
world, I had found the Girl, but he coldly restored
me to sanity by saying: "You poor chump; don't
you know she was bespoken long ago?" That was
the reason why a marriage that was evidently or-
dained at the time she chased arrows for me was
not fulfilled until four years after this 1884 date,
when it might have taken place. But now, here
in San Francisco, I had her isolated. At her house
I detected favorable signs. In a little red album
454    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1888

that held tintypes an inch square, mine was inserted
beside hers. She had been observed to write our
names together, one imposed on the other, Grace


                    @@@@








           THE BENEFICIARY, 1888.

D. Leland and George E. Macdonald, and then to
perform the operation of canceling identical letters,
with the happiest results. The name of Leland
disappeared unless preserved as a middle one.
1888]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         455

Plainly it was all over but the formalities. If the
former Queen of Modern Times still held that the
wrongs of society were summed up in the word
marriage, she made no objection to our taking
them all on at once. The inevitable took place
on the July 20 following, establishing an anniver-
sary I have not since been permitted to forget. I
say inevitable because as I have stated to Marshall
Gauvin of Winnipeg, Canada, and to Ernest Sauve
of Iron River, Wisconsin, all men marry their
stenographers. Inevitable again for the following
reason: Said Mr. Bird of The Truth Seeker office
to me a few years ago: "Did your boy get married?"
Said I: "Yes, when he let his eye fall on that normal
school girl, there was no escape." Said Mr. Bird:
"There never is."
   While composing this truthful record I have
asked her whether she would have accepted me at
any or all of our previous meetings, and with confi-
dence and no hesitation she replied that she would.

        7 -- MY PARTNER'S COLLISIONS
                WITH THE ENEMY.

   Satisfaction is always felt in mentioning in-
stances where persons who have made themselves
conspicuous by their unfair courses against the ad-
vocacy of Freethought have got their comeuppance.
In May, 1887, while Putnam was delivering a lec-
ture in Ukiah, Cal., on the Nine Demands of Liber-
alism, a local scamp named Hamilton arose and de-
nounced him as a scoundrel, and to emphasize his
displeasure he seized a lighted kerosene lamp and
threw it at Putnam's head. Putnam dodged and
456    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1888

the lamp went through a window and exploded out-
side. The interference of bystanders prevented
Hamilton from trying to improve his aim with an-
other lamp. Putnam finished his discourse, while his
assailant ran away. Afterwards the man was placed
on trial for his murderous assault, but escaped pun-
ashment. His conduct may have had the approval
of the Christian part of the community, for when
the citizens of Ukiah organized to purchase the
right of way for a railway to a nearby town they
elected Hamilton secretary with power to raise
funds. He collected a few thousand dollars and
departed for San Franscisco, soon followed by a
sheriff. But he had taken ship for Australia, car-
rying with him the funds of the Ukiah and North
Cloverdale Railway Extension Company.
   A meeting addressed by Putnam in Oakland in
May, 1888, was interrupted by the intrusion of the
Christian champion and rapscallion, Clark Braden,
reinforced by a local preacher named Sweeney and
one Bennett, local agent of the Comstock society,
with a demand to be heard and a challenge to de-
bate. Mr. A.H. Schou of Oakland, who was pre-
siding, said he would leave it to the audience
whether these persons should be allowed to take up
the time of the meeting, since the character of
Clark Braden was well known throughout the coast.
The audience voted a loud and unanimous No. The
minister Sweeney begged he might inquire what
was Mr. Putnam's objection to Clark Braden. Mr.
Putnam replied: "I will tell you why I will not de-
bate with him. I refuse to meet Clark Braden in
public debate because he is a blackguard and a liar."
1888]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         457

There was curiosity to know how the Christian
champion would take that. He shouted something
at the speaker and then walked stiffly forth, fol-
lowed by the Rev. Mr. Sweeney and Comstock's
young man. As they went, Mr. Schou sent after
them the reminder that if a Freethinker had en-
tered Mr. Sweeney's church and created this sort
of disturbance of the meeting, he would have been
placed under arrest instead of being allowed peace-
fully to depart.
   This man Braden, whose argument consisted in
an attack on the good name of Freethinkers, usual-
ly did not retum to serve the same Christian com-
munity twice. The religious people who employed
Braden had a custom of meeting afterwards to pass
resolutions repudiating him as too rank to be borne
with. He professed to be a Campbellite, or "Disci-
ple," and when the churches of that denomination
could be worked no longer, he went to the Method-
ists. A religious paper in Winfield, Kansas, The
Nonconformist, gave him this piquant mention: "It
is yet to he reported that Clark Braden was ever
received in a community the second time, except in
company of the officers, with jewelry on his wrists."
At one place, where he debated B.F. Underwood,
the Christians who employed him told him he was
injuring their cause, and he had to borrow $20 of
Underwood to get out of town. In return he sent
to Underwood a letter in which he told how the
Rev. John Sweeney, Underwood's next opponent,
was to be defeated. There was absolutely no good
in Braden. His backers in Oakland came to grief.
The Rev. Sweeney involved himself in an affair that
458    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1888

laid him under charges of financial crookedness and
vice, and Comstock's agent Bennett gained publicity
by means of rascally proceedings, the nature of
which will later appear.

        8 -- IRELAND AND THE POPE.

   It became my duty to review on its first appear-
ance Judge James G. Maguire's pamphlet "Ireland
and the Pope," being "a brief narrative of papal in-
trigues against Irish liberty, from Adrian V to Leo
XIII." That was a work of considerablc impor-
tance, although written, as its publisher, J.H. Barry
of The Star, explained, on Daniel O'Connell's
principles -- "as much religion as you please from
Rome, but no politics." That dictum of O'Con-
nell's was a slogan among the supporters of Father
McGlynn in New York in the earlier '80s, without
the very hearty indorsement of thoughtful Freet-
hinkers. That the taking of religion from Rome
involves the same surrender of independence as re-
ceiving politics from that quarter needs no argu-
ment, especially when no Catholic is allowed to de-
cide for himself what belongs to religion and what
to politics. Judge Maguire's book had a large run
and is of permanent worth for the history it gives
of the plundering of Ireland with the pope's connivance.

   John Alexander Dowie, who afterwards as
Elijah II, was to make a considerable splurge in the
country and to found Zion City, Illinois, appeared
that season in San Francisco, where he "unmasked
Spiritualism" and boasted himself to be a faith
1888]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         459

healer. Reports that followed him from Australia
were unflattering. San Franscisco clergymen pub-
lished him as a "tramp and impostor." I attended
one of his meetings in Irving Hall. In appearance
he reminded me of Clark Braden, and he was a dull
preacher.
   I observed that there was a Greek Catholic
church in San Francisco, and wrote to the resident
bishop, one Vladimir, to inquire if he would not lay
before the readers of Freethought the difference
between the Greek church and the Roman. The
bishop complied at some length, supplying the in-
teresting information, verified by profane history
and sacred scripture, that the Greek was the origi-
nal Christian church, founded by an apostolical
council at Jerusalem, as related in the fifteenth chap-
ter of the Acts of the Apostles. Christians from
Palestine, having fled there to escape the persecut-
ing Jews, founded a church in Rome, Bishop Vladi-
mir wrote me, but fell into many errors, apostatized
from the faith of the true church, and invented
doctrines too monstrous for the human conscience,
as witness the dogma of the infallibility of the pope.
The bishop of Alaska and the Aleutian Islands, for
such was Vladimir's title, proved clearly that the
bishop of Rome, which is to say the pope, was an
arrant impostor.
   On the eastern lecture tour Putnam in Septem-
ber attended a meeting of the Chicago Forum, a
former church turned into what he termed a "tem-
ple of humanity," for social purposes, and spoke
there twice on Sunday. His report to Freethought
contained this note of prophecy: "Young Darrow,
460    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1888

formerly of Farmdale, Ohio, of heretic blood, is
going to the head of his profession. Law, and poli-
tics, and reform are his forte, and he is bound to
be one of the brightest leaders of the people." As
Putnam always predicted fair weather, he was
bound to make some good hits, as in this instance.

         9 -- THE RIGHT OF AFFIRMATION.

   The editor of The Truth Seeker made a little
record for Secularism that year of 1888, which was
noticed throughout the length and breadth of the
country, by contending for the right of a citizen to
register as a voter without swearing, or to affirm
without raising his right hand. The Board of reg-
istration demanded that he should make oath on the
Bible and then catechized him on his "belief in
God." He declined to answer and the board refused
to register him. The following paragraph tells
what ensued.
   "From the decision of the board the editor ap-
pealed to the Supreme Court, as represented by
Judge George C. Barrett, for a mandamus compell-
ing the inspectors to register him, and in opposi-
tion those gentlemen sent in their affidavits stating
that he had refused to swear or to affirm in the
usual manner. The judge was a righteous one. He
said that the chairman of the board had no busi-
ness to ask a man to uplift his hand; a citizen had
been denied his legal rights, and the board must
reconvene and register the applicant. In his writ-
ten opinion Judge Barrett said: 'Inspectors have no
right to require a man to affirm with uplifted hand,
1888]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         461

nor was it their province to demand the religious
test. Indeed, their interrogations about the rela-
tor's belief in the existence of the deity was an im-
pertinence to which no citizen, in the absence of any
suspicion of untruthfulness, should be subjected.'"
   The Board of Registration was therefore com-
pelled to reconvene, without pay, for no other pur-
pose than to register the editor of The Truth Seeker
as a voter. Judge Barrett, who rendered this deci-
sion was the jurist previously mentioned who re-
signed from the Nineteenth Century Club with An-
drew Carnegie because of the economic radicalism
of the club's president, Courtlandt Palmer. The
judge's membership in the Nineteenth Century Club
had done its perfect work of liberalizing his mind
on the relations between church and state which
were there discussed.

        10 -- COURTLANDT PALMER DIES.

   Unfortunately Courtlandt Palmer, former presi-
dent and long the treasurer of the American Secu-
lar Union, did not live to applaud the decision of the
judge. He died, July 23, 1888, at the early age of
45 years, in New York, the city of his birth. For a
man born on the conservative side of the fence,
and reared, as one biographer said, "amid the giddy
whirl of fashionable society," besides being a mem-
ber of the Dutch Reformed church until after he
was married, Mr. Palmer underwent a considerable
mental and social transformation. John W. Drap-
er's "History of the Intellectual Development of
Europe" made him a religious skeptic, and the So-
462    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1888

ciety of Hunianity and his association with Free-
thinkers did the rest. A blography evidently pre-
pared by himself was printed in the Social Science
Review for February, 1888. In it the writer dwells
with obvious pride on his
relations with the Free-
thought movement. That             @@@@
was all the experience he
had. Up to the time he read
Draper, except from his col-
lege courses, his life had
been a blank. There was
nothing to record. After
that he had the full intellec-
tual life. Ingersoll spoke at
his funeral. Palmer had
put in writing his wish not
to be buried from any Chris-
tion church nor to have any
Christian hymn sung. His survivors hardly kept
faith with him, for they called in the Rev. R. Heber
Newton to read the Episcopal service. He had dis-
cussed with Stephen Pearl Andrews, whose Collo-
quium suggested the Nineteenth Century Club, the
subject of Spiritualism and survival, in which he
did not believe. They agreed that the one who
first died should communicate with the other. An-
drews preceded Palmer by two years, and no word
came.
   Other Freethinkers to die in 1888 were Judge
Arnold Krekel of Kansas, July 14, aged 73, at the
end of a long and honerable career in the Missouri
legislature and on the bench; and Richard A. Proc-
1888]     FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT            463

tor, the popularizer of astronomy, New York, Sep-
tember 12, at 51. Proctor was an Englishman, and
reared a Catholic, but he wrote some observations
on the Ingersoll-Gladstone discussion which showed
that with respect to the Bible and the god that
book depicts he was on the side of the unbeliever.
B.F. Underwood wrote of Professor Proctor in
The Investigator: "I was acquainted with him
personally. I had conversations with him, one fully
two hours in length, and corresponded with him
from the spring of 1887 until a short time before
his death. Professor Proctor was a radical Free-
thinker, an Agnostic. He had no belief in a per-
sonal God and none in a personal immortality. He
regarded the whole system of Christianity in its
theological aspects as a system of superstition. He
regarded Herbert Spencer as the greatest philo-
sophic thinker of any age."
   In Freethought for November 10 I began to
write under the head of "Observations," where I
stated my views and opinions with unrestricted
freedom and restricted responsibilty. These ob-
servations were kept up in Freethought for above
three years, and later in The Truth Seeker. I may
be a mesozoic precursor of today's colyumist.

         11 -- A PEEP FROM THE POPE.

   Apparently Pope Leo XIII put out an encyclical
about this time in which he laid down the law on
liberty. Said his holiness as I find him quoted
(Dec. 1) : "The state must profess some one re-
ligion, and the Catholic being that which alone is
true, should be professed, preserved, and protected
464        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT            [1888

by the state, and false doctrines should be diligent-
ly repressed by public authority ... I anathema-
tize those who assert the liberty of conscience and of
religious worship, and all such as maintain that the
church may not employ force." No man with that
stuff amongst his mental furniture, if discovered,
could get past our immigration officials today.
Archbishop Riordan of San Franscisco issued a
circular letter, read in all the churches of the city,
saying that marriage between a Catholic and a
Protestant, the ceremony being performed by a
Protestant minister, was "horrible coneubinage."
Would a pope or an archbishop say the same things
today for American consumption? It seems to me
the boys are losing some of their courage.
   In The Truth Seeker for 1888 are numerous en-
tries concerning that experiment in churchless
towns, Liberal, Mo. C.B. Reynolds having visited
Liberal, reported that its progress was checked by
the restraining hand of its founder, G.H. Walser.
"If he [Walser] would absent himself from Lib-
eral for a few years," wrote Mr. Reynolds, "he
would be better appreciated, the citizens would be-
come more self-reliant, and on his return he would
be surprised and delighted at the progress the town
had made." Prof. M.D. Leahy of the Liberal Uni-
versity felt compelled to resign as the alternative
to advocating Prohibition, which had become an
issue. There was no academic freedom for Pro-
fessor Leahy.
   Charles Watts, who was publishing Secular
Thought in Canada, filled lecture engagements in
the States. The Canadian govemment refused a
1888]    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT            465

charter to the Secular Thought Publishing Com-
pany. The Freethinkers of Canada held a success-
ful convention at Toronto, September 15. The
Manhattan Liberal Club elected Dr. E.B. Foote,
Jr., president, to succeed Van Buren Denslow. The
New York legislature unanimously requested
Ingersoll to deliver the memorial address in honor
of the late Roscoe Conkling, and the Colonel ac-
cepted the invitation. The Rev. Hugh O. Pentecost
proclaimed himself an Agnostic. John R. Charles-
worth, an Englishman, who said that he had done
talking for branches of the National Secular So-
ciety, announced in December that during the win-
ter months he would lecture for American Free-
thought societies for the expenses of his journey.
All of Mr. Charlesworth's connection with the
Freethought cause, as I remember the circum-
stances, did not redound to its glory.
   E.A. Stevens, secretary of the A.S.U., began
proceedings to make the churches of Chicago pay
taxes on property unlawfully exempted,
   The Liberal papers existing in 1888 were The
Truth Seeker, Boston Investigator, Ironclad Age,
Indianapolis; Freethought, San Francisco; Secu-
lar Thought, Toronto, Ont.; Independent Pulpit,
Waco, Texas; Lucifer and Fair Play, Valley Falls,
Kansas; Liberty, Boston; The New Ideal, Boston;
The Open Court (then a weekly, now a monthly),
Chicago; I name also the Spiritualist papers, Ban-
ner of Light, Foundation Principles, Olive Branch
and Better Way, and Dyer D. Lum's Alarm, which
was Liberal with something to spare, being violent-
ly anarchistic.
466        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT              [1888

   The Congress of the American Secular Union,
toward which Putnam lectured his way East, was
held in Lafayette Hall, Pittsburgh, Pa., October 5-7.
Putnam had declined reelection as president of the
Union, and after a series of meetings which a local
Freethinker named Harry Hoover canvassed as a
candidate for secretary, creating something of a
diversion and causing controversy, the delegates re-
elected E.A. Stevens, and put in R.B. Westbrook,
LL.D., of Philadelphia as president, The anti-
religious addresses and general proceedings at this
Congress were reported to the police, and it ap-
peared afterwards that the assemblage barely es-
caped being raided and its speakers arrested. The
new president, Dr. Westbrook, was a native of Pike
county, Pa., born in 1820. Princeton college con-
ferred on him the degree of A.M., New York Uni-
versity that of LL.D., and he got a D.D. from the
Presbyterians, who fired him in 1864 for "abandon-
ing the ministry and engaging in a secular profes-
sion." He wrote "The Bible: Whence and What,"
a book that enjoyed a vogue among liberals; at-
tacked the trustees of Girard College in public
lectures for their violation of Gerard's will in intro-
ducing religious teachings, and then published the book
"Girard College and Girard College Theol-
ogy," a clear exposure of the whole situation. Sec-
retary Stevens wrote eulogistically of Dr. West-
brook and predicted a good record for Secularism
under his presidency.

        12 -- LOCAL SEISMIC DISTURIBANCE.

   The climate of California requires that in order
1888]     FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT             467

to preserve its reputation there shall be rain early
in November. The vegetation well watered by the
rains that continue from September till June can
stand a long dry spell, but in October, unless rain-
ing is resumed, there comes the sere and yellow
leaf. In the autumn of 1888 it was dry. John
Robinet, sheep ma,n of San Luis Obispo county,
gave me a call about the 10th of November, just
after the election, and discussing results said that,
still and all, the prosperity of California depended
less upon the triumph at the polls than upon our
having a little rain in the near future. Said I:
"You probably have heard that the ministers prayed
for rain last month?" He said: "Yes, but what I
think is that instead of praving, some one ought to
do a good job of swearing, as for instance" -- and
in eloquent swear words he condemned the pro-
tracted dry spell; in the language of the statute he
did unlawfully, wickedly, profanely, premeditated-
ly, and spitefully utter with loud voice, in the
presence of divers of the citizens of the common-
wealth, publish and proclaim, concerning the
weather, certain wicked, profane, and blasphemous
words, to the discredit and contempt of the same.
Forty-eight hours had not passed before rain be-
gan falling and falling hard, and there was a great
storm, with vast commotion. One may read in
Freethought that I had just written the heading
of an article on supernatural interference with the
weather "when my ear was struck by a sound that
might have been made by a trainload of steam
boilers coming up Kearriy street over cobblestones.
The telegraph pole across the way waved like a
468    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1888

cattail in a breeze, and the building I was in ap-
peared suddenly to move about six inches to the
south, stopping with a bump that nearly slid me
out of my chair." The next day's paper reported
the severest earthquake since 1871, and the Berke-
ley University professors laid it to "the late heavy
rains diminishing the barometric pressure," and
so on. I remembered the fervent swearing of Mr.
Robinet, and recalled the prayers of the ministers
for rain. Why not swear for rain? The minis-
ters had indeed offered up their petitions, but noth-
ing happened to the barometric pressure prior to
the time of Robinet's profanity.
   Our landlord while we were at 504 Kearny street
was a man of the name of Von Rhein, and he was
an argumentative Christian. The first time I went
to pay the rent he ask me how Freethinkers ac-
counted for design in nature unless they believe in
God, or would account for the existence of a watch
if it had no designer. I replied that Freethinkers
recognized design in manufactured articles, but
not necessarily in raw material, which was about
all one could make out of nature. He dismissed
the subject then by saying that of course I had
given it more thought than he had, but he believed
I could be answered. Again, on a similar occa-
sion, when the rent money passed from my hands
to his, he inquired whether I fully realized what
the fate of a scoffer was likely to be. I said no,
that I was not quite clear on that point, and he
tendered the information that all who denied the
divinity of the Christian religion were destined to
be damned. He said he did not mean perhaps.
1888]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         469

When I inquired if persons who had never heard
of the Christian religion would share the same fate,
he said they most undoubtedly would. "To illus-
trate," quoth Mr. Von Rhein, "it is as if a person
were approaching a deep hole; the fact that he does
not know the hole is there will not save him from
falling into it, however honest he may be." Said
I: "One can't reply to an argument like that ex-
cept by saying that parties who prepare deadfalls
are more culpable than those who ignorantly walk
into them, and that an infinite being who would
play that sort of trick on a blind man could not be
depended upon to do the fair thing in any case."
Mr. Von Rhein answered that the arrangement was
sufficiently equitable to satisfy his sense of justice.
   Not so very long after this discussion occurred,
Mr. Von Rhein, while inspecting a building on
Montgomery street, illustrated the argument, as
might be held, by walking through a skylight and
taking a drop of some twenty feet to the floor be-
low. When making an observation on the incident
I said: "His fall did not result fatally, but con
siderable blame is attached to the owners of the
building for neglecting to provide proper safe-
guards against such accidents, while Mr. Von Rhei-
is entirely exonerated. When he is recovered from
the shock I may take occasion to ask him whether
he holds himself or the owners of the building re
sponsible for his drop through the skylight. If he
takes the blame to himself I shall then understand
how it is that he believes in the culpability of peo-
ple who, as he imagines, walk blindfold into the
everlasting pit."
                   CHAPTER XXI.

         1 -- TAKING LEAVE OF NEW YORK.

   WHEN two men, both known to readers by
name, are at work upon a paper, one being the
editor and the other an assistant
who writes articles for the editorial column but puts
his brightest ideas somewhere else and signs them,
then all the good stuff that appears stands a chance
of being credited to the assistant. Such is my
experience. Ever since I came to be the Hyas Tyee
of The Truth Seeker, with an assistant off and on,
pieces of my writing that attracted attention by their
merits have been passed to the credit of my con-
federate for the time being. But if somebody did
wrong, that was the editor. For instance, an article
by one in 1913 got me summoned by a priest; an-
other in 1918 caused the postoffice to refuse the
paper distribution in the mails, and a paragraph
done by a third in 1925 is the basis of a libel suit
by a preacher now pending. Two of the assistants
were lawyers who ought to have known how far
they could safely go, and the other was a minister
who had hitherto preached the gospel for thirty-five
years. Thus was it, in a measure (though I never
wrote anything actionable), when I served as as-
sistant to my brother. He stood sponsor for what-
ever appeared editorially, for, like his model, Mr.
Dana of The Sun, he held that a paper had only one
editor. We were so much alike in style that at this
                     435
436    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1887

day I cannot tell our articles apart. His were likely
better to maintain sobriety throughout, but ofttimes
he wrote with enjoyable humor.
   So in The Truth Seeker of December 24, 1887,
Dr. E.B. Foote, Sr., having seen certain lightly
conceived notices on the editorial page, wrote
Eugene to inquire whether I had taken a seat at the
editor's desk or he had borrowed my pen. The
editor replied:
   "We regret to be obliged to state that when the
notices were written our brother was on his way
to the limitless West, where he proposes, in com-
pany uith Samuel P. Putnam, to start a Freethought
paper and grow up uith the country, or walk back
to New York."
   He to whom Charles Watts so often alluded when
to the editor he wrote: "Give my regards to your
funny brother," was now off The Truth Seeker, and
had not been missed. Such is our little life.
   On the 16th of December I parted from the boys
in the office by the usual sign of shaking hands.
That evening a few intimates attended a dinner at
Mouquin's in Fulton street and at its end, with
expressions of good-by and good luck, Putnam and
I crossed the Hudson to the West Shore and were
off for the coast, which we believed offered a field
for another paper.
   Our train, crossing Niagara River, gave me my
first sight of the Falls. Unfortunately I viewed this
marvel of nature just after I had been charged the
extraordinary sum of sixty cents for a plate of
corned beef and beans, and my capacity for admira-
tion and wonder at anything else had been dimin-
1887]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         437

ished by the size of the restaurant check. One
should see the Falls first.
   At Chicago, reached on a Sunday morning, we
met E.A. Stevens; that is, he met us. Stevens was
secretary of the American Secular Union and presi-
dent of the Secular League of Chicago -- a most
efficient man in all respects. The Liberals of the
city on that morning attended the meeting of the
Ethical Culture Society to hear Mr. William M.
Salter's commients on the current discussion in The
North American Review between Robert G. Ingersoll
and the Rev. Henry M. Field. Mr. Salter was, as
far from indorsing Ingersoll as his successor, Mr.
Bridges, is from approving Darwin as a philosopher.
All of his discourse that remained in my mind was
his denial of the Colonel's dictum that happiness is
the greatest good. Mr. Salter maintained, with
superb disdain for this plebeian sentiment, that the
greatest good is "character." And yet character
contributes to human happiness, or it is a nugacity
or an evil. Convinced that Mr. Salter was getting
us nowhere, I inquired of Putnam what he thought
of the argument. He said he hadn't heard it, being
asleep during its delivery. Putnam traveled much,
by day and night, and improved all his oppor-
tunities to make up for lost sleep.
   That evening's meeting of the Chicago Secular
League, at which Stevens presided, was different,
more like the New York Liberal Club -- a lecture
and then discussion. A young fellow of about my
own age arose on the floor and offcred a few perti-
nent remarks. I reported his name as Darrell. It
was Clarence Darrow.
438    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1887

       2 -- VARIETIES OF PASSENGERS.

   After a twilight breakfast, Putnam and I took a
train out of Chicago and shortly ran into a blizzard
that stalled our engine. We ate next at 10:30 that
night. I quote from an account I wrote for the first
number of our new paper FRFETHOUGHT:

   "When the train got under way its progress was slow,
and Kansas City (Mo.) must have started out to meet us
or we never should have seen it. The city is away up on
a bluff, out of sight of the depot. It is evidently a large
commercial center, doing an extensive business in a product
labeled 'Relief for Kansas Sufferers,' put up in bottles for
residents of the adjoining state. The Kansas unfortunates
referred to were supposed to suffer from thirst, their state
being dry and Missouri wet. And yet a brighter side of
the situation in Kansas had been turned to me. In that
state I overheard an argument on prohibition between a
resident and a stranger. The resident bore a bottle, which
he shared with the other. And as they swigged it off, he
said: 'I am a prohibitionist from principle. I have drank
prohibition whiskey for fifty-seven years, and it never
hurt me; but a quart I got once in Missouri made me sick
for a week'."

   Kansas must have been a tough state at that
time (1887). Two passengers who evidently were
natives lured a brace of Easterners into taking a
hand at old sledge. After a game or two that the
tenderfeet won, a Kansas man picked up three of
his cards and said he wished the game had been
poker. One of the Easterners held three aces, and
agreeing to call it poker, bet a dollar in confidence
that no other three cards could beat his hand. His
opponent raised him ten, and being called, laid down
three hearts, saying "A flush," and took the money.
1887]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         439

   That was the now-past cowboy age. Through
Arizona and New Mexico the train picked up men
wearing white, wide-brimmed felt hats. These were
cowboys off the range. But of the "cowboy," it
soon appeared, there were two classes -- genuine and
bogus. The real one, as I observed, was a healthy
specimen, and though his legs sometimes got be-
yond his control and stretched themselves across
the aisle of the car, he would make an effort, with-
out taking offense, to coil them down when politely
requested to do so. He wore an expensive band
on his hat; carried no visible weapons, and seemed
to be an educated and agreeable person, speaking
grammatically in good English. "The bogus cow-
boy," to quote from notes I made, "is different. He
is not a cowboy at all. He only calls himself one
and wears a cheap sombrers. He is an imitation
bad man, an all-around tough, who never mounted
a horse in his life and when at large is seldom sober
enough to keep the saddle if lifted into it. Descrip-
tion of a meeting-up with one of them who surged
into the smoking-car near Flagstaff may be excused
because it developed my partner's unexpected re-
sourcefulness and nerve."
   Apart from his jag the fellow brought with
him only annoyance and discomfort. He bulldozed
the passengers, lounging up and down the aisle with
his hand on his hip. The discomfort arose from the
probability of his being armed, and no one could
tell what a mean souse might do with a gun. As I
sat next to the aisle, he paused to inquire whether
I would prefer to fight or to lend him four bits for
a couple of drinks. I replied that he misjudged me
440    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1887

if he supposed that I would do either to oblige
a man in his condition. His subsequent remarks
interested Putnam more than they did me, for when
he had moved along to propose that the next pas-
senger either fight or "pungle up," Putnam ex-
changed seats with me. "If that fellow comes this
way again," he said, "I'll down him and you can
sit on him and take away his gun." A carpenter
from Chicago volunteered: "And then I'll kick him
off the train at the next station." We had no need
to carry out this fell conspiracy, for when the train
stopped again at a place called Williams, the dis-
agreeable passenger dropped off for a drink and
made such a belated return that he missed the
train, which was just moving out. He chased us
a little way, but only the words that came out of
his mouth got aboard. A new passenger said:
"Hell! him a cowboy. The son-of-a-gun is a sec-
tion boss on the Santa Fe."
   I asked Putnam, skeptically, whether he really
had designed to climb the front of that low-life had
he come back. He replied: "You would just have
found out I would if he gave me the chance. I
can't fight, but I can down a man quick as light-
ning. But don't write anything about it." I
thought of his collision with the author of "Helen's
Babies" and believed him.*
ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ
   *If readers have forgotten this incident, which I believe
I have somewhere already mentioned, I will repeat that
the "collision" took place while both men were in the army.
Putnam on one side of the campfire played cards with
comrades. John Habberton on the other side anhoyed the
players by tossing small, smoking brands ubon the blanket
1887]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         441

      3 -- THE NATIVE LAND OF THE HUALAPAL.

   Of the country we passed through I wrote, while
the impression it made on me was fresh:

   "This southwestern land, New Mexico and Arizona, is a
land of poetry and mystery and terror. It is full of fear-
some mountains and chasms and precipices. Along the line
of the railroad nothing appears to grow, and the soil is of
a rich brick color, as thotigh it had been baked in a kiln.
Bluffs rise near you hundreds of feet high, in such layers
as are sometimes seen in the high banks of a river. Rocks
turned on edge stand off by themselves with no relative,
perhaps, within a hundred miles. Then there are rocks
weighing thousands of tons arranged in all manner of
queer forms, helter-skelter, in pyramids, in circles, as we
see cobble-stones beside the road where children have been
at play. The sandbanks do not slope from top to base;
they are straight up-and-down, or overhanging. The
mountains often have no foothills but rise from these
plateaus like the pyramids from the plains of Egypt. Soli-
tary peaks stand treeless from the foot to the white sum-
mits that wear their caps of snow in very presence of the
regal sun, Again, there are canyons deep enough to put a
good-sized mountain into. How these gorges ever got
scooped out in their present fashion is a matter of great
mystery. The train crossed one called Canyon Diablo, 285
feet deep.
   "The natives of this land are much the color of the
soil, somewhere between copper and chocolate. From their
adobe huts these natives came out to meet the train and sell
their wares to the passengers. The Pueblo Indians were,
ÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ
where the cards were dealt. When words failed to abate the torment,
Putnam arose and capturing Habberton by a leg dragged him through
the fire on his seat. Habberton bore malice and perhaps scars all
his life, and showed the former many years later by voting against
the admission of Putnam to an author's club.
442    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1887

if I recollect accurately, the first we saw. All the business
enterprise of this tribe seems to have been given to the
women, who had bits of pottery, volcanic glass, and some
colored stones, the which they desired to convert into the
currency of the East. The tawny damsels were the least
attractive of all human females that have appealed to me.
Old or young, they showed no trace of past or promise of
future good looks. The male Indian was content to let the
women support the family. I saw one absurd old Indian
astride a small donkey, and addressed him as Powhattan.
He replied, 'No savey.' He wore a white man's necktie,
the string about his forehead and the ornamental part
falling behind, In these Indian villages were adobe
churches for baptizing converts, but no facilities for wash-
ing them. The Mojave Indian girls painted and penciled
their faces to imitate the front of a brick house. Both
these and the Mojave women dressed carelessly. They
drew about their bosoms, beneath the arms, what passed
for a shawl that was somehow fastened behind at the top.
This was an adequate covering while it hung straight down,
front and back. It failed to be such when the wearer
stooped. In my notes is the entry: 'Before the average
Indian maiden can make her debut in paleface society, she
must spend more money for buttons and adopt some form
of trousering.' To the old Indian who didn't 'savey' I
made the proffer of a dime for the purchasing of pins
with which to fasten the back of her dress for his daugh-
ter, Pocahontas. The train lingered at its stopping-places
as though reluctant to leave, giving passengers plenty of
time for fooling. There was a long wait at Mojave, where
an enterprising farmer had struck a furrow around one
hundred and sixty acres. He could go around twice a day,
they said, with a horse-drawn machine that sowed the
seed, which was barley, and covered it two and a half
inches deep. He carried four furrows. In a beauty con-
test among the Indian women and girls there assembled,
some Hualapai maiden would have been crowned as Miss
Mojave, for the women of that tribe were a laughing lot,
and had the reputation of being companionable.
1888]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         443

   "Some of the places marked on the Arizona map as
towns were deceptive, for when reached they were found
to consist of a single building and to contain a single
inhabitant. Such were Chino and Aubrey, each with a
population of one. Cactus as big as apple-trees made
spots in the absolutely Saharic desert look like orchards.
There is a great deal of that sort of illusion in that country
where trees subsist almost without water."

        4 -- IN A HISTORIC PRINTING-OFFICE.

   I liked San Francisco at first sight, and like it
still, although fire and progress must have changed
it greatly in forty years. We had the best of luck
in finding an office room at 504 Kearny street that
was precisely what we wanted. In a jiffy we had
a corner curtained off for trunks and sleeping quar-
ters, a long table brought in that would serve for
the uses of a desk and to display books, and chairs
enough to seat ourselves and visitors. In the search
for a printer our good luck still went with us, steer-
ing us away from the wrong place and into the right
one. The one positively not It, but first entered,
was run by a man named Bacon, a deacon. We
were to hear of him later as Deacon Pork. We
got out of there without coming to terms with him.
I could see he had a good outfit. Nevertheless we
withdrew. And then we came to William M. Hin-
ton's, 536 Clay street, below Montgomery. Both
those printers were, as you might say, historic.
Bacon put his shop on the map by rejecting the
manuscript of Bret Harte's "Luck of Roaring
Camp" as irritating to the modesty of his young
lady copy-holder. The deacon had his meed of
444    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1888

praise for taking this protective attitude toward
the girl employee, who seemed as safe with him as
anywhere except in the arms of Jesus. On the
other hand one not impressed by the piety of Dea-
con Pork, but professing that the fact was of com-
mon knowledge, told me that this employer had
himself betrayed the confidence of the girl, and sent
her East in that condition.
   A few moments' speech with Mr. Hinton was
enough to satisfy me that this was the printing-
office we sought. He told me more papers had
been born in his office and buried from the same
than anywhere else on the coast. "But, semper
paratus, we are always ready for one more. We
will set all the matter for you or you may set part
of it, and what you earn we will knock off your
bill.  There's a spare frame over there. Henry
George set up the first edition of 'Progress and
Poverty' at that frame."
   Here seemed to be established a sort of affilia-
tion, George and his book being no strangers. Mr.
Hinton had been in fact the partner of George in
publishing a daily paper. He printed four num-
bers of Freethought, enough to convince me that
owing to the dolce far niente way of running his
office, I must spend my time there as foreman, com-
positor, and stone hand. While the fifth number
was in hand and the work far in arrears, I asked
Mr. Hinton if he would disclose to me, as one friend
to another, why the paper was late. He replied
that he was unable to explain the circumstance.
Looking about him he said: "Here we stand in the
1888]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         445

presence of enough material to print the largest
paper in the country. Here are from fifteen to
twenty men, all at work, many of them sober. I
cannot understand why your work is behind. You
think it over and come back and tell me." In five
minutes, having looked at the copy on the cases
of the compositors, I returned to say that his men
were working on a job of city printing, putting in
type an extended list of delinquent tax-payers. He
waved his hands, but said: "If you know what to
do in this exigency, do it. The office is yours."
   Who could say an unkind word to a man like
that? In a few minutes, then, the men were busy
on my copy in place of the list of delinquent tax-
payers, and having read and corrected the matter
and made up the forms, I put the paper on the
press. But this arrangement, so ideal from Mr.
Hinton's point of view, could not last. It gave me
no time for reflective thought. We rented another
room on the floor at 504 Kearny; bought an outfit
of type, and hired Frank L. Browne and his wife
to set up the paper. This relieved Mr. Hinton
of all but the presswork, which he continued to
do excellently well and quite promptly throughout
the life of the paper. Some years later, on the oc-
casion of a political overturning, he was elected
as supervisor of San Francisco.
   Putnam early in the year departed upon a lecture
tour of the coast, drawing good audiences, selling
books, taking hundreds of subscriptions, and earn-
ing generous lecture fees. He thus virtually sup-
ported the paper. Neither of us drew a salary
above expenses, and for my part I knew how to
446    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1888

live economically. There came in all the literary
contributions and letters admissible to a paper of
our size, which began with twelve pages, lOxl2
inches over all. The city had one labor paper,
The People, which soon suspended, for no Labor
paper lives long, and The Weekly Star, independent-
political. published by James H. Barry and edited
by F.B. Perkins, the father of Charlotte Perkins
who has been successively Charlotte Stetson and
Charlotte Gilman, a remarkably brilliant writer and
poet. Mr. Perkins was a Freethinker and avail-
able for lectures when meetings were held. A
fierce remark about Mr. M. De Young, one of The
Chronicle brothers, was accredited to him. Ac-
cording to the tradition De Young started The
Chronicle in a small way as a gossipy sheet, being
aided or financed by a lady vocalist known as
Madamoiselle Celeste, who sang at the Bella Union,
a concert hall near the Barbary Coast. The paper
scored a success. In the course of a year or two a
news paragraph stated that a well-known sculptor
had executed a bust of the founder of The Chronicle
which was to be seen in the office of the paper, and
copies thereof were for sale. Mr. Perkins com-
mented: "Not so: the bust of the founder of The
Chronicle is to he seen at the Bella Union, and
we believe it is for sale."
   Barry was aggressive, attacking injustices in vig-
orous terms. Usually he had a fight going, and
once got into jail. The Star employed Alfred Den-
ton Cridge, a veteran writer and printer, and a for-
mer friend of D.M. Bennett.
1888]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         447

    5 -- CALIFORNIANS CORDIAL AND TRUSTING.

   Our business for the first year was to make ac-
quaintancc with the town and the limited number
of Freethinkers there and in the vicinity, as well
as in the state. We found them hospitable and
helpful. Some were "forty-niners." Numbers
were miners, ranchers, wool-growers, orchardists,
pioneer merchants, old settlers, and all were inter-
esting. Out-of-town visitors selected the Free-
thought office as a place to leave their trappings.
One day a man of about 60 entered, wearing an
overall suit, which, having introduced himself as
Thomas Jones of Independence, Inyo county, he
asked my permission to remove. Then he stood
revealed as very well dressed, a wealthy man and
liberal with his money, but he did not propose to
spoil a set of glad rags by exposing them to the
wear and tear of railroad travel. On another day
there came in a rough-looking individual so dis-
guised by drink that his faculties wandered. He
seated himself for a short period of repose and
then coming to life inquired if this were the Free-
thought office and myself Putnam or Macdonald.
Set right about that he proceeded in a drunken
man's fashion to say: "I don't know you and you
don't know me, but we both know my partner Bill
Reed. Bill says that you are a man that can be
trusted with money." And he drew from his
pocket a heavy buckskin sack and emptied there-
from two hundred dollars in double eagles. These
coins he poured upon the table, and drawing out
448    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1888

some of the pieces, pushed the rest toward me
with the command: "Take care of that until I call
for it." With the sum which he returned to his
pocket, he proposed to fight away dull care. I
suggested that a man might dissipate considerable
gloom with less money, provided the effort were
not protracted beyond reason, but he replied that
he wasn't looking for an argument; that his plans
were laid and couldn't be changed. And thereupon
he departed, while I gathered up his gold
and put it away. Once during the following week I caught
sight of him firing a rifle in a shooting gallery near
the office, and went in with the idea of accosting
him. He saw me but there was no recognition in
his eye. His shooting, I noticed, was good. The
muzzle of the gun cut circles in the air larger than
the target, yet he would apostrophize himself:
"Fire when she bears," and so turn loose at the
right moment and make a fair shot. At the end
of the week be paid me a second visit, being sober
but cheerful, and saying, with no reference to his
previous call, that he had come to greet me in be-
half of his partner, Bill Reed, who took the paper.
"A pretty good town, this is," said he, "for a man
to spend his money in. I come here a week ago
as near as I can figure, with a couple hundred dol-
lars in the old sack; and I am going back to camp
with less than fifty of 'em -- broke -- damn a fool,
drunk or sober." I suggested he might have de-
posited a part of it with some friend for safe
keeping, but he replied regretfully that there was no
chance. To determine whether his expedition was
1888]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         449

at a sure-enough end, I asked: "Are you dead
certain you are on your way back to the camp, or
wouldn't you extend yourself another week if you
had the dinero?" Said he: "No; I am not quite
broke yet, but I know when I have had enough.
Well, I'll tell Bill I met you, Mr. Putnam. Good-
by." I stopped him and he never suspected why
until I brought his money out and asked him to
take care of it for me until we met again. It took
an argument to convince the man that the wealth
was his and that he had seen me before. San Fran-
cisco was a comparatively safe city at that time.
He had been bemused for a week without being
robbed.*
   The contents of The Truth Seeker show that
during the first part of 1888 I wrote several letters
to the brother I had left "back in the states," as
was the phrase of the Californians. They were
written, probably, to occupy time spent alone, Put-
nam being absent filling lecture engagements, and
I was never keen on hunting the society of my fel-
low-beings or inflicting my own on them. Was I
homesick? The closing paragraph of one letter to
The Truth Seeker runs:

   "I am several thousand miles away from The Truth
Seeker office, but am often with the boys in the light and
bright composing room, and see the familiar 'forms,' as it
were. I see Stevens tapping around the stone, Colby mak-
ing eccentric and apparently unnecessary marks on the
ÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ
   *The amount of this man's deposit was much larger than
I have indicated, but I would not put a strain upon
the reader's credulity by naming it.
450    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1888

proofs, Mellis groaning over a take of long primer, Blake
snatching the type from his case, and looking forward to
four figures in Saturday's bill, and the rest with con-
tracted brows studying the quirks and turnings of their
manuscript. I attend again the little parties at the Socicty's
parlors and see all the faces there -- Dr. Foote head and
shoulders above the rest, Brother Eckhard walking through
the Virginia Reel with stately motion, Philosopher King
lost in the wilderness of the Saratoga Lancers -- the room
full of girls and melody and laughter and light. And
sometimes I find myself once more up in your editorial
room, resting my elbow upon your desk and stretching
out an inky and black-leaded hand for copy. And as the
answer sometimes came then, 'No more tonight,' I take
your words to close this long letter with. No more tonight.
But yours always."

   A degree of lonesomeness may be implicit in
those lines, but if so the presence was at hand to
relieve it.

    6 -- SHOULDERING THE WRONGS OF SOCLETY.

   Mrs. Mary A. Leland, widow of Theron C. Le-
land of New York, had come to San Francisco to
live, with her two daughters, Rachel and Grace, and
they had a house on Taylor street, at the north end.
Mrs. Leland had been a quite remarkable woman;
like another Frances Wright, an agitator for the
rights of the female sex. In 1859 or earlier Josiah
Warren, an apostle of equitable commerce and
complete individualism, furnished the ideas on which
to found a community at the place now called
Brentwood, Long Island, under the name of "Mod-
ern Times." It was one of the numerous social
experiments of that epoch. Moncure Daniel Con-
way accepted an invitation in the summer of 1860
1888]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         451

to go to Modern Times and address the inhabitants.
The story he told afterwards was printed in the
Cincinnati Gazette of February 27, 1860. On the
evening of his arrival, he says, he was taken to
visit the Queen of Modern Times. Following is
the picture he draws of that royal personage:

   "The Queen of Modern Times was in truth every inch
a queen. She was a most beautiful woman, in the prime
of life, who was born and reared in the Cotton States. She
had at an early age married a rich man in the South, who
in the end proved himself an utterly worthless man and a
tyrant. From him she separated, and the law which gave
him her children gradually schooled her to sum up all the
wrongs of society in the one word 'marriage.' If she was
the champion of any popular cause Mary Chilton would
be regarded as the leading female intellect of her country;
and it would be impossible for anyone to see her in her in-
spired mood, and to hear her voice as it sweeps through the
gamut of feeling, rehearsing the sorrows of her sisterhood,
without knowing that she brings many momentous truths
from the deep wells of nature."

   Mary Chilton was Mrs. Leland. Twenty-eight
years later, that is when I found her there in San
Francisco, the queen had grandchildren for her sub-
jects and seemed to be somewhat mollified. I sent
her an invitation to drop in at the Freethought
office when downtown. She replied that she went
forth only occasionally, and would prefer to have
me call, which I did, and soon persuaded her
younger daughter (Grace) to come to the office
and write wrappers. She was then typing the manu-
script of her sister Rachel's (Lilian Leland's) story
of a trip around the world entitled "Traveling
Alone." I discovered the work needed revision by
452    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1888

a practiced hand, as most all writing does (and this
which the reader has now before him has so prof-
ited). The arrangement resulted in the young lady's
bringing her Remington No. 2 to 504 Kearny street
and working at my elbow, almost, when I was
there, and greeting callers when I was out. The
meeting in San Francisco was not our first. It was
probably our fourth. Years before, when spending
the end of a week at a farmhouse on the Schraalen-
berg road, in Closter, New Jersey, I observed a
small girl playing croquet. She belonged there,

                    @@@@





        GIRL                  SCHOOL GIRL

and acted the hostess by chasing the arrows I shot
at a target. We got along well. Soon after that
I encountered her as she walked with her father
on the street. In another period of years, I unde-
signedly wandered into a place in New York where
a society was giving a dance, and finding her there
1888]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         453

renewed the acquaintance. A married couple who
were chaperoning a collection of girls obligingly
surrendered to me the privilege of going home with
her, as the hour was late, the night cold, and her
house far beyond theirs. It wasn't so far as I
wished it had been by the time we got there. That
was an evening in the year 1884. The next day


                          @@@@





              THE GIRL               WIFE

I informed my brother, and was ready to tell the
world, I had found the Girl, but he coldly restored
me to sanity by saying: "You poor chump; don't
you know she was bespoken long ago?" That was
the reason why a marriage that was evidently or-
dained at the time she chased arrows for me was
not fulfilled until four years after this 1884 date,
when it might have taken place. But now, here
in San Francisco, I had her isolated. At her house
I detected favorable signs. In a little red album
454    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1888

that held tintypes an inch square, mine was inserted
beside hers. She had been observed to write our
names together, one imposed on the other, Grace


                      @@@@








             THE BENEFICIARY, 1888.

D. Leland and George E. Macdonald, and then to
perform the operation of canceling identical letters,
with the happiest results. The name of Leland
disappeared unless preserved as a middle one.
1888]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         455

Plainly it was all over but the formalities. If the
former Queen of Modern Times still held that the
wrongs of society were summed up in the word
marriage, she made no objection to our taking
them all on at once. The inevitable took place
on the July 20 following, establishing an anniver-
sary I have not since been permitted to forget. I
say inevitable because as I have stated to Marshall
Gauvin of Winnipeg, Canada, and to Ernest Sauve
of Iron River, Wisconsin, all men marry their
stenographers. Inevitable again for the following
reason: Said Mr. Bird of The Truth Seeker office
to me a few years ago: "Did your boy get married?"
Said I: "Yes, when he let his eye fall on that normal
school girl, there was no escape." Said Mr. Bird:
"There never is."
   While composing this truthful record I have
asked her whether she would have accepted me at
any or all of our previous meetings, and with confi-
dence and no hesitation she replied that she would.

          7 -- MY PARTNER'S COLLISIONS
                WITH THE ENEMY.

   Satisfaction is always felt in mentioning in-
stances where persons who have made themselves
conspicuous by their unfair courses against the ad-
vocacy of Freethought have got their comeuppance.
In May, 1887, while Putnam was delivering a lec-
ture in Ukiah, Cal., on the Nine Demands of Liber-
alism, a local scamp named Hamilton arose and de-
nounced him as a scoundrel, and to emphasize his
displeasure he seized a lighted kerosene lamp and
threw it at Putnam's head. Putnam dodged and
456    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1888

the lamp went through a window and exploded out-
side. The interference of bystanders prevented
Hamilton from trying to improve his aim with an-
other lamp. Putnam finished his discourse, while his
assailant ran away. Afterwards the man was placed
on trial for his murderous assault, but escaped pun-
ashment. His conduct may have had the approval
of the Christian part of the community, for when
the citizens of Ukiah organized to purchase the
right of way for a railway to a nearby town they
elected Hamilton secretary with power to raise
funds. He collected a few thousand dollars and
departed for San Franscisco, soon followed by a
sheriff. But he had taken ship for Australia, car-
rying with him the funds of the Ukiah and North
Cloverdale Railway Extension Company.
   A meeting addressed by Putnam in Oakland in
May, 1888, was interrupted by the intrusion of the
Christian champion and rapscallion, Clark Braden,
reinforced by a local preacher named Sweeney and
one Bennett, local agent of the Comstock society,
with a demand to be heard and a challenge to de-
bate. Mr. A.H. Schou of Oakland, who was pre-
siding, said he would leave it to the audience
whether these persons should be allowed to take up
the time of the meeting, since the character of
Clark Braden was well known throughout the coast.
The audience voted a loud and unanimous No. The
minister Sweeney begged he might inquire what
was Mr. Putnam's objection to Clark Braden. Mr.
Putnam replied: "I will tell you why I will not de-
bate with him. I refuse to meet Clark Braden in
public debate because he is a blackguard and a liar."
1888]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         457

There was curiosity to know how the Christian
champion would take that. He shouted something
at the speaker and then walked stiffly forth, fol-
lowed by the Rev. Mr. Sweeney and Comstock's
young man. As they went, Mr. Schou sent after
them the reminder that if a Freethinker had en-
tered Mr. Sweeney's church and created this sort
of disturbance of the meeting, he would have been
placed under arrest instead of being allowed peace-
fully to depart.
   This man Braden, whose argument consisted in
an attack on the good name of Freethinkers, usual-
ly did not retum to serve the same Christian com-
munity twice. The religious people who employed
Braden had a custom of meeting afterwards to pass
resolutions repudiating him as too rank to be borne
with. He professed to be a Campbellite, or "Disci-
ple," and when the churches of that denomination
could be worked no longer, he went to the Method-
ists. A religious paper in Winfield, Kansas, The
Nonconformist, gave him this piquant mention: "It
is yet to he reported that Clark Braden was ever
received in a community the second time, except in
company of the officers, with jewelry on his wrists."
At one place, where he debated B.F. Underwood,
the Christians who employed him told him he was
injuring their cause, and he had to borrow $20 of
Underwood to get out of town. In return he sent
to Underwood a letter in which he told how the
Rev. John Sweeney, Underwood's next opponent,
was to be defeated. There was absolutely no good
in Braden. His backers in Oakland came to grief.
The Rev. Sweeney involved himself in an affair that
458    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1888

laid him under charges of financial crookedness and
vice, and Comstock's agent Bennett gained publicity
by means of rascally proceedings, the nature of
which will later appear.

          8 -- IRELAND AND THE POPE.

   It became my duty to review on its first appear-
ance Judge James G. Maguire's pamphlet "Ireland
and the Pope," being "a brief narrative of papal in-
trigues against Irish liberty, from Adrian V to Leo
XIII." That was a work of considerablc impor-
tance, although written, as its publisher, J.H. Barry
of The Star, explained, on Daniel O'Connell's
principles -- "as much religion as you please from
Rome, but no politics." That dictum of O'Con-
nell's was a slogan among the supporters of Father
McGlynn in New York in the earlier '80s, without
the very hearty indorsement of thoughtful Freet-
hinkers. That the taking of religion from Rome
involves the same surrender of independence as re-
ceiving politics from that quarter needs no argu-
ment, especially when no Catholic is allowed to de-
cide for himself what belongs to religion and what
to politics. Judge Maguire's book had a large run
and is of permanent worth for the history it gives
of the plundering of Ireland with the pope's connivance.

   John Alexander Dowie, who afterwards as
Elijah II, was to make a considerable splurge in the
country and to found Zion City, Illinois, appeared
that season in San Francisco, where he "unmasked
Spiritualism" and boasted himself to be a faith
1888]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         459

healer. Reports that followed him from Australia
were unflattering. San Franscisco clergymen pub-
lished him as a "tramp and impostor." I attended
one of his meetings in Irving Hall. In appearance
he reminded me of Clark Braden, and he was a dull
preacher.
   I observed that there was a Greek Catholic
church in San Francisco, and wrote to the resident
bishop, one Vladimir, to inquire if he would not lay
before the readers of Freethought the difference
between the Greek church and the Roman. The
bishop complied at some length, supplying the in-
teresting information, verified by profane history
and sacred scripture, that the Greek was the origi-
nal Christian church, founded by an apostolical
council at Jerusalem, as related in the fifteenth chap-
ter of the Acts of the Apostles. Christians from
Palestine, having fled there to escape the persecut-
ing Jews, founded a church in Rome, Bishop Vladi-
mir wrote me, but fell into many errors, apostatized
from the faith of the true church, and invented
doctrines too monstrous for the human conscience,
as witness the dogma of the infallibility of the pope.
The bishop of Alaska and the Aleutian Islands, for
such was Vladimir's title, proved clearly that the
bishop of Rome, which is to say the pope, was an
arrant impostor.
   On the eastern lecture tour Putnam in Septem-
ber attended a meeting of the Chicago Forum, a
former church turned into what he termed a "tem-
ple of humanity," for social purposes, and spoke
there twice on Sunday. His report to Freethought
contained this note of prophecy: "Young Darrow,
460    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1888

formerly of Farmdale, Ohio, of heretic blood, is
going to the head of his profession. Law, and poli-
tics, and reform are his forte, and he is bound to
be one of the brightest leaders of the people." As
Putnam always predicted fair weather, he was
bound to make some good hits, as in this instance.

       9 -- THE RIGHT OF AFFIRMATION.

   The editor of The Truth Seeker made a little
record for Secularism that year of 1888, which was
noticed throughout the length and breadth of the
country, by contending for the right of a citizen to
register as a voter without swearing, or to affirm
without raising his right hand. The Board of reg-
istration demanded that he should make oath on the
Bible and then catechized him on his "belief in
God." He declined to answer and the board refused
to register him. The following paragraph tells
what ensued.
   "From the decision of the board the editor ap-
pealed to the Supreme Court, as represented by
Judge George C. Barrett, for a mandamus compell-
ing the inspectors to register him, and in opposi-
tion those gentlemen sent in their affidavits stating
that he had refused to swear or to affirm in the
usual manner. The judge was a righteous one. He
said that the chairman of the board had no busi-
ness to ask a man to uplift his hand; a citizen had
been denied his legal rights, and the board must
reconvene and register the applicant. In his writ-
ten opinion Judge Barrett said: 'Inspectors have no
right to require a man to affirm with uplifted hand,
1888]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         461

nor was it their province to demand the religious
test. Indeed, their interrogations about the rela-
tor's belief in the existence of the deity was an im-
pertinence to which no citizen, in the absence of any
suspicion of untruthfulness, should be subjected.'"
   The Board of Registration was therefore com-
pelled to reconvene, without pay, for no other pur-
pose than to register the editor of The Truth Seeker
as a voter. Judge Barrett, who rendered this deci-
sion was the jurist previously mentioned who re-
signed from the Nineteenth Century Club with An-
drew Carnegie because of the economic radicalism
of the club's president, Courtlandt Palmer. The
judge's membership in the Nineteenth Century Club
had done its perfect work of liberalizing his mind
on the relations between church and state which
were there discussed.

        10 -- COURTLANDT PALMER DIES.

   Unfortunately Courtlandt Palmer, former presi-
dent and long the treasurer of the American Secu-
lar Union, did not live to applaud the decision of the
judge. He died, July 23, 1888, at the early age of
45 years, in New York, the city of his birth. For a
man born on the conservative side of the fence,
and reared, as one biographer said, "amid the giddy
whirl of fashionable society," besides being a mem-
ber of the Dutch Reformed church until after he
was married, Mr. Palmer underwent a considerable
mental and social transformation. John W. Drap-
er's "History of the Intellectual Development of
Europe" made him a religious skeptic, and the So-
462    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1888

ciety of Hunianity and his association with Free-
thinkers did the rest. A blography evidently pre-
pared by himself was printed in the Social Science
Review for February, 1888. In it the writer dwells
with obvious pride on his
relations with the Free-
thought movement. That             @@@@
was all the experience he
had. Up to the time he read
Draper, except from his col-
lege courses, his life had
been a blank. There was
nothing to record. After
that he had the full intellec-
tual life. Ingersoll spoke at
his funeral. Palmer had
put in writing his wish not
to be buried from any Chris-
tion church nor to have any
Christian hymn sung. His survivors hardly kept
faith with him, for they called in the Rev. R. Heber
Newton to read the Episcopal service. He had dis-
cussed with Stephen Pearl Andrews, whose Collo-
quium suggested the Nineteenth Century Club, the
subject of Spiritualism and survival, in which he
did not believe. They agreed that the one who
first died should communicate with the other. An-
drews preceded Palmer by two years, and no word
came.
   Other Freethinkers to die in 1888 were Judge
Arnold Krekel of Kansas, July 14, aged 73, at the
end of a long and honerable career in the Missouri
legislature and on the bench; and Richard A. Proc-
1888]     FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT            463

tor, the popularizer of astronomy, New York, Sep-
tember 12, at 51. Proctor was an Englishman, and
reared a Catholic, but he wrote some observations
on the Ingersoll-Gladstone discussion which showed
that with respect to the Bible and the god that
book depicts he was on the side of the unbeliever.
B.F. Underwood wrote of Professor Proctor in
The Investigator: "I was acquainted with him
personally. I had conversations with him, one fully
two hours in length, and corresponded with him
from the spring of 1887 until a short time before
his death. Professor Proctor was a radical Free-
thinker, an Agnostic. He had no belief in a per-
sonal God and none in a personal immortality. He
regarded the whole system of Christianity in its
theological aspects as a system of superstition. He
regarded Herbert Spencer as the greatest philo-
sophic thinker of any age."
   In Freethought for November 10 I began to
write under the head of "Observations," where I
stated my views and opinions with unrestricted
freedom and restricted responsibilty. These ob-
servations were kept up in Freethought for above
three years, and later in The Truth Seeker. I may
be a mesozoic precursor of today's colyumist.

          11 -- A PEEP FROM THE POPE.

   Apparently Pope Leo XIII put out an encyclical
about this time in which he laid down the law on
liberty. Said his holiness as I find him quoted
(Dec. 1) : "The state must profess some one re-
ligion, and the Catholic being that which alone is
true, should be professed, preserved, and protected
464        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT            [1888

by the state, and false doctrines should be diligent-
ly repressed by public authority ... I anathema-
tize those who assert the liberty of conscience and of
religious worship, and all such as maintain that the
church may not employ force." No man with that
stuff amongst his mental furniture, if discovered,
could get past our immigration officials today.
Archbishop Riordan of San Franscisco issued a
circular letter, read in all the churches of the city,
saying that marriage between a Catholic and a
Protestant, the ceremony being performed by a
Protestant minister, was "horrible coneubinage."
Would a pope or an archbishop say the same things
today for American consumption? It seems to me
the boys are losing some of their courage.
   In The Truth Seeker for 1888 are numerous en-
tries concerning that experiment in churchless
towns, Liberal, Mo. C.B. Reynolds having visited
Liberal, reported that its progress was checked by
the restraining hand of its founder, G.H. Walser.
"If he [Walser] would absent himself from Lib-
eral for a few years," wrote Mr. Reynolds, "he
would be better appreciated, the citizens would be-
come more self-reliant, and on his return he would
be surprised and delighted at the progress the town
had made." Prof. M.D. Leahy of the Liberal Uni-
versity felt compelled to resign as the alternative
to advocating Prohibition, which had become an
issue. There was no academic freedom for Pro-
fessor Leahy.
   Charles Watts, who was publishing Secular
Thought in Canada, filled lecture engagements in
the States. The Canadian govemment refused a
1888]    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT            465

charter to the Secular Thought Publishing Com-
pany. The Freethinkers of Canada held a success-
ful convention at Toronto, September 15. The
Manhattan Liberal Club elected Dr. E.B. Foote,
Jr., president, to succeed Van Buren Denslow. The
New York legislature unanimously requested
Ingersoll to deliver the memorial address in honor
of the late Roscoe Conkling, and the Colonel ac-
cepted the invitation. The Rev. Hugh O. Pentecost
proclaimed himself an Agnostic. John R. Charles-
worth, an Englishman, who said that he had done
talking for branches of the National Secular So-
ciety, announced in December that during the win-
ter months he would lecture for American Free-
thought societies for the expenses of his journey.
All of Mr. Charlesworth's connection with the
Freethought cause, as I remember the circum-
stances, did not redound to its glory.
   E.A. Stevens, secretary of the A.S.U., began
proceedings to make the churches of Chicago pay
taxes on property unlawfully exempted,
   The Liberal papers existing in 1888 were The
Truth Seeker, Boston Investigator, Ironclad Age,
Indianapolis; Freethought, San Francisco; Secu-
lar Thought, Toronto, Ont.; Independent Pulpit,
Waco, Texas; Lucifer and Fair Play, Valley Falls,
Kansas; Liberty, Boston; The New Ideal, Boston;
The Open Court (then a weekly, now a monthly),
Chicago; I name also the Spiritualist papers, Ban-
ner of Light, Foundation Principles, Olive Branch
and Better Way, and Dyer D. Lum's Alarm, which
was Liberal with something to spare, being violent-
ly anarchistic.
466        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT              [1888

   The Congress of the American Secular Union,
toward which Putnam lectured his way East, was
held in Lafayette Hall, Pittsburgh, Pa., October 5-7.
Putnam had declined reelection as president of the
Union, and after a series of meetings which a local
Freethinker named Harry Hoover canvassed as a
candidate for secretary, creating something of a
diversion and causing controversy, the delegates re-
elected E.A. Stevens, and put in R.B. Westbrook,
LL.D., of Philadelphia as president, The anti-
religious addresses and general proceedings at this
Congress were reported to the police, and it ap-
peared afterwards that the assemblage barely es-
caped being raided and its speakers arrested. The
new president, Dr. Westbrook, was a native of Pike
county, Pa., born in 1820. Princeton college con-
ferred on him the degree of A.M., New York Uni-
versity that of LL.D., and he got a D.D. from the
Presbyterians, who fired him in 1864 for "abandon-
ing the ministry and engaging in a secular profes-
sion." He wrote "The Bible: Whence and What,"
a book that enjoyed a vogue among liberals; at-
tacked the trustees of Girard College in public
lectures for their violation of Gerard's will in intro-
ducing religious teachings, and then published the book
"Girard College and Girard College Theol-
ogy," a clear exposure of the whole situation. Sec-
retary Stevens wrote eulogistically of Dr. West-
brook and predicted a good record for Secularism
under his presidency.

        12 -- LOCAL SEISMIC DISTURIBANCE.

   The climate of California requires that in order
1888]     FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT             467

to preserve its reputation there shall be rain early
in November. The vegetation well watered by the
rains that continue from September till June can
stand a long dry spell, but in October, unless rain-
ing is resumed, there comes the sere and yellow
leaf. In the autumn of 1888 it was dry. John
Robinet, sheep ma,n of San Luis Obispo county,
gave me a call about the 10th of November, just
after the election, and discussing results said that,
still and all, the prosperity of California depended
less upon the triumph at the polls than upon our
having a little rain in the near future. Said I:
"You probably have heard that the ministers prayed
for rain last month?" He said: "Yes, but what I
think is that instead of praving, some one ought to
do a good job of swearing, as for instance" -- and
in eloquent swear words he condemned the pro-
tracted dry spell; in the language of the statute he
did unlawfully, wickedly, profanely, premeditated-
ly, and spitefully utter with loud voice, in the
presence of divers of the citizens of the common-
wealth, publish and proclaim, concerning the
weather, certain wicked, profane, and blasphemous
words, to the discredit and contempt of the same.
Forty-eight hours had not passed before rain be-
gan falling and falling hard, and there was a great
storm, with vast commotion. One may read in
Freethought that I had just written the heading
of an article on supernatural interference with the
weather "when my ear was struck by a sound that
might have been made by a trainload of steam
boilers coming up Kearriy street over cobblestones.
The telegraph pole across the way waved like a
468    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1888

cattail in a breeze, and the building I was in ap-
peared suddenly to move about six inches to the
south, stopping with a bump that nearly slid me
out of my chair." The next day's paper reported
the severest earthquake since 1871, and the Berke-
ley University professors laid it to "the late heavy
rains diminishing the barometric pressure," and
so on. I remembered the fervent swearing of Mr.
Robinet, and recalled the prayers of the ministers
for rain. Why not swear for rain? The minis-
ters had indeed offered up their petitions, but noth-
ing happened to the barometric pressure prior to
the time of Robinet's profanity.
   Our landlord while we were at 504 Kearny street
was a man of the name of Von Rhein, and he was
an argumentative Christian. The first time I went
to pay the rent he ask me how Freethinkers ac-
counted for design in nature unless they believe in
God, or would account for the existence of a watch
if it had no designer. I replied that Freethinkers
recognized design in manufactured articles, but
not necessarily in raw material, which was about
all one could make out of nature. He dismissed
the subject then by saying that of course I had
given it more thought than he had, but he believed
I could be answered. Again, on a similar occa-
sion, when the rent money passed from my hands
to his, he inquired whether I fully realized what
the fate of a scoffer was likely to be. I said no,
that I was not quite clear on that point, and he
tendered the information that all who denied the
divinity of the Christian religion were destined to
be damned. He said he did not mean perhaps.
1888]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         469

When I inquired if persons who had never heard
of the Christian religion would share the same fate,
he said they most undoubtedly would. "To illus-
trate," quoth Mr. Von Rhein, "it is as if a person
were approaching a deep hole; the fact that he does
not know the hole is there will not save him from
falling into it, however honest he may be." Said
I: "One can't reply to an argument like that ex-
cept by saying that parties who prepare deadfalls
are more culpable than those who ignorantly walk
into them, and that an infinite being who would
play that sort of trick on a blind man could not be
depended upon to do the fair thing in any case."
Mr. Von Rhein answered that the arrangement was
sufficiently equitable to satisfy his sense of justice.
   Not so very long after this discussion occurred,
Mr. Von Rhein, while inspecting a building on
Montgomery street, illustrated the argument, as
might be held, by walking through a skylight and
taking a drop of some twenty feet to the floor be-
low. When making an observation on the incident
I said: "His fall did not result fatally, but con
siderable blame is attached to the owners of the
building for neglecting to provide proper safe-
guards against such accidents, while Mr. Von Rhei-
is entirely exonerated. When he is recovered from
the shock I may take occasion to ask him whether
he holds himself or the owners of the building re
sponsible for his drop through the skylight. If he
takes the blame to himself I shall then understand
how it is that he believes in the culpability of peo-
ple who, as he imagines, walk blindfold into the
everlasting pit."
                   CHAPTER XXII

         1 -- WE ORGANIZE AND CELEBRATE.

   THE year 1889 opened cheerfully in the
Freethought office, San Francisco, under the
influence of a pleasantry neatly turned by
Mr. Channing Severance, the Carpenter of Los
Angeles, who wrote that he had within the week
beaten the best six days' record walking for work,
and added: "The thought has struck me several
times that if Jesus Christ found it as hard to obtain
carpenter work as I have, his going to preaching
may have been a necessity on his part instead of a
desire to save the world."
   I still see occasionally the name of Mr. Severance
attached to an article in a Spiritualist exchange.
   Fifty of the Liberals of San Francisco subscribed
a fund of $100 to finance a series of Sunday Free-
thought lectures by Putnam in Irving Hall. The
first lecture, January 6, drew an audience of three
hundred. Those which followed were still better
attended. Within the month more than nine hun-
dred citizens of California had signed a call for a
State Convention, which was held on Sunday, the
27th, to organize the California State Liberal
Union. There were two hundred and fifty atten-
dants at the morning meeting, four hundred in the
afternoon, and in the evening a thousand. I assume
it was the largest gathering of the kind yet held in
San Francisco, for an old-timer observed to me that
                                470
1889]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         471

he had never before tried to attend a Freethought
meeting in a hall that would hold a thousand when
he couldn't find a seat. Judge J.W. North of
Oleander, in Fresno county, was the unanimous
choice for president of the new union. Judge North
in many respects reminded me of the Hon. Elizur
Wright, president of the National Liberal League.
The Judge in his younger days had been an anti-
slavery lecturer in Connecticut. He went out to
Minnesota and founded the towns of Faribault and
Northfield, the latter taking its name from him. He
went to California and founded the town of River-
side I believe I heard him say that a rascally court,
that had been brought up by land stealers, robbed
him of most of his property. Feeble health and old
age, he being now about 75, prevented Judge North
from accepting the presidency of the California
State Liberal Union, which he handed to Putnam
with a graceful speech and amidst cheers. As a
Freethinker, Judge North, again like Hon.
Elizur Wright, went all the way.
   This convention drew part of its numerical
strength from the local Turners, and a member of
that Bund, a young architect named Emil S.
Lemme, was elected secretary.
   The Paine celebration immediately followed the
convention was a tumult. A German speaker named
F. Schuenemann-Pott made an address, following
opening songs by German singing societies. Mr.
Schuenemann-Pott, a well-known Liberal leader of
those days, and a man of experience, said he had
never seen such a demonstration on a similar oc-
casion.
472    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1889

   In New York half of the audiences assembled at
Liberal meetings were women. In San Francisco
female attendants were rare. Here at this Paine
celebration where we had an audience of a thousand,
less than one hundred women could be rallied for
the grand march that preceded the dancing after the
literary and musical exercises were over.
   A series of local Liberal meetings followed, in-
augurated by Prof. Herbert Miller, a scholarly
young man who for his unbelief had found him-
self set outside a religious institution where he had
been teaching. In another month the professor
had raised funds and organized the San Francisco
Freethought Society, meeting regularly in Irving
Hall, with P.O. Chilstrom for president and him-
self for regular speaker. Of itself, with its mem-
bership made of the pleasantest sort of people, with
a full quota of girls and women; with a scholar for
a lecturer and musical talent enough for a concert;
with a generous patronage that made the expense
only a trifle, this started out to be a model Free-
thought society. It wanted only the right hall, and
such a one we supposed it would be easy to find in
the place that had been provided by the money of
James Lick, Freethinker and philanthropist --
namely, Pioneer Hall. There, however, we were
in for a disappointment. Some of the members of
the Pioneer Society were willing to allow the Free-
thought Society to occupy the hall rent free, ex-
cept for the mere cost of janitor and light. But the
committee in charge of the building would not con-
sent on any terms. They had a reason, which,
while not a good one, served their purpose. The
1889]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         473

Freethought Society had an open platform, not for
the exclusive use of members or invited guests,
which in my opinion was a mistake. The lectures
of Professor Miller, condensed, made admirable
editorial articles not below the standard of any
paper anywhere. But the discussions that were al-
lowed to follow them when they were delivered
spoiled their good effect and lowered the quality of
the meetings as a whole. These discussions, partici-
pated in by such "protagonists" and "menaces" as
we have always with us, diminished our audiences
in size and led to the inquiry whether we called that
sort of wild speculation "Freethought." Possibly
the not always dignified proceedings suggested to
the committee a reason for not renting us the hall.
The situation discouraged Professor Miller, who
relinquished his lectureship. His after fate is un-
known to me, but I should be surprised to be told
that he had not made his mark somewhere.

       2 -- SAN ]FRANCISCO FREETHINKERS.

   A variety of speakers followed on the platform
of the society, which still met in Irving Hall, one
of the best being Mr. F.B. Perkins, whom I have al-
ready mentioned. It was written of him in one of
my Observations: "Mr. Perkins is a big man, with
broad shoulders and a broad mind, and he is one of
the ripest scholars I have ever met." He was a
nephew of the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher. In
former times he had been librarian of the San
Francisco Free Library and of the Boston City
Library.
474    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1889

   We had another good man in Mr. Junius L.
Hatch, who had studied for the ministry when
young, but missed ordination. He told me he lost
out on one question. They asked him if he believed
unfeignedly that God created the world in six calen-
dar days, and he answered that he did. "But I don't
believe he could do it again," said the candidate. So
he became a journalist. In 1889 he was fixed ap-
parently for life by getting a place in the Custom
House.
   The cornerstone of the Lick Academy of Sciences
was laid on July 12 of that year, 1889. Irving M.
Scott, president of the Union Iron Works, gave
the principal address, on "The Development of
Science." It was the story of the church's warfare
on science, but Mr. Scott did not mention the
church. He called the hostile forces "Patristic,"
which few understood as of and appertaining to the
holy fathers of the church. He thus escaped criti-
cism at the expense of not being comprehended.
   There were eminent Freethinkers to be found in
San Francisco, though some of them suffered from
shyness. I came into possession of a small book en-
titled "The Evidences Against Christianity," written
by John S. Hittell and published by him in 1856. It
was as strong an attack on the Bible as Paine's "Age
of Reason," but more condensed and therefore less
readable or "popular." I had heard Mr. Hittell, who
was a historian, in an interesting lecture at Pioneer
Hall on the discovery of Humboldt Bay, and finding
him to be a Freethinker invited him to speak for the
Freethought Society. He declined on the score of
having more important work to do. Later I dis-
18891        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         475

covered that he deprecated aggressive Freethought
work. As the author of "A Code of Morals," in
which he dismisses the Golden Rule as "not suffi-
cient for the guidance of humanity," he laid down
enough maxims, drawn from the pagans and his
own consciousness, to make everybody good, if fol-
lowed. But as to propagating Freethought, he said:

   "You are under no obligations to proclaim doctrines
that, by the people around you, are regarded as criminal or
injurious to the general welfare. If your neighbors accept
false and debasing opinions, you can presumably do more
good by teachings that will please and gradually elevate
them than by offending them so that they would at once
burn, banish, or avoid you."

   On the other side to this proposition I named for
the benefit of the author of those discouraging sen-
timents the examples of Socrates, Jesus Christ,
Servetus, Giordano Bruno, and Mr. Hittell in 1856,
who had proclaimed doctrines calculated to provoke
burning, banishment, and avoidance.
   On June 9, 1889, the Freethinkers of the world
unveiled a statue to Bruno in Rome, with the finan-
cial encouragement of a thousand dollars sent from
the Liberals of the United States. It is not the re-
formers that follow Mr. Hittell's advice who get
the monuments and so perpetuate their influence.

       3 -- TRIBULATION OF SINGLE TAXERS.

   One of the careless Freethinkers who turned up
in San Franscisco was Frank McGlynn, a real
estate dealer and brother of the Rev. Edward
McGlynn who had recently distinguished himself in
476    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1889

the Henry George campaign back East. The wife
of George McGlynn was suing him for a divorce, or
an annulment of their marriage, because he would
not go to church, because he "made their home a
house of blasphemy," and because he was in short
an Atheist. He professed the Single Tax, which
put him on the church's bad books without further
argument.
   An adventure, rather comical on the whole, in-
volved another Single Taxer. There appeared at
the California State Convention in January "an
evoluted preacher," as he described himself -- the
ex-Rev. J.E. Higgins, who in the course of his
speech, which made an excellent impression, de-
clared that he had found his right environment
among Freethinkers, and believed he would do a lit-
tle lecturing if he could find audiences. Soon after
the convention he brought to the Freethought office
a notice that he had an engagement to lecture in
Eureka, Humboldt county, and along the Eel river,
under the patronage of Robert Gunther. Having
delivered this message to me, the ex-Rev. Mr. Hig-
gins remained to impart a lecture on Single Tax,
which he had recently espoused. Said I: "If you
are going to meet Robert Gunther, take a fool's ad-
vice and leave the Single Tax behind you. Gunther
has a hundred thousand dollars' worth of unim-
proved land." He promised faithfully to hold that
thought. Anyhow, he said, his mind was so stored
with other useful precepts struggling for utterance
that he would hardly get around to economics. Only
the worst of luck, including rain, pursued Mr. Hig-
gins on this expedition. He was compelled to spend
1889]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         477

two or three days and nights under the roof of Mr.
Gunther, and to defend the Single Tax or let Mr.
Gunther get away with the proposition that Henry
George was crazy. After the discussion he moved
his quarters to the hotel and waited until the
weather had cleared, when he came back to San
Francisco and reported. Later Mr. Gunther re-
ported also. The Single Tax had proved so divisive
an issue between them that the two men had been
unable to get together on any other. Mr. Gunther,
in his description of their falling out, seemed to
be the more outraged of the two. Mr. Higgins per-
ceived in the adventure enough that was funny to
compensate for his loss of time, but Mr. Gunther
was too hot ever to cool off.

          4 THE ADVENT OF BELLAMY.

   The book "Looking Backward," by Edward Bel-
lamy, that got to San Francisco early in 1889,
raised a commotion more or less homogeneous with
the revival conducted there that year by Sam Jones.
According the volume a fair review, I still pro-
nounced it a work inferior to "Rational Commun-
ism," by Alonzo Van Deusen, which The Truth
Seeker Company had brought out in 1885. The
emotional collectivists immediately staged "Look-
ing Backward" as a Socialist revival under the name
of "Nationalism." As such it had drawing power
enough to fill the largest hall in the city. But Na-
tionalism was nothing new, being merely a more
theatrical presentation of an old idea.
478    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1889

The Hon. John A. Collins was one of the best
and clearest headed friends of Freethought. As a
social student, he had written, a half century ago,
a work entitled "A Bird's-Eye View of Society."
Toward Nationalism I found him cool, if not indif-
ferent. I asked if he had read "Looking Back-
ward, the Uncle Tom's Cabin of Industrial
Slavery." He said he had glanced at it, and added
rather wearily: "I went through all this turmoil and
excitement fifty years ago." He had doubtless been
a Fourierite, and any Fourierite will admit that
Fourier said the last word on the problems of hu-
man society. I attended a Nationalist meeting
where speakers defined the term, and came away to
write the impression that Nationalism was "razzle-
dazzle Socialism." An enthusiast named Haskell
stated at this meeting that Nationalism promised
"two hours' work per day, luxuries for the poorest
equal to those now enjoyed by the richest, rare exo-
tics in every man's front yard, carpets in the house
ten inches thick, fare to New York, $12," and so
on. I predicted: "The Nationalist movement in
San Francisco will soon be where Croasdale said
he found the Single Tax Movement in New York,
namely, in a howling dervish state of emotional in-
sanity. A rabbi asserted the new Socialism -- that is,
Nationalism -- to be synonymous with Judaism; the
Eddyites said it was Christian Science; Theos-
ophists recognized it as Theosophy; it was generally
accepted as harmonizing with the Spiritualist phi-
losophy, and orthodox ministers were heard to af-
firm they were Nationalists because they were
Christians. I risked the surmise that the leader of
1889]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         479

the cause, Mr. Haskell, was a "four-flusher." The
confirmatory testimony on that point from persons
having knowledge of Haskell's past performances
was so voluminous that it could not be printed.
Nationalism as manifested in San Francisco goes
into the museum labeled as an interesting phe-
nomenon while it lasted.

             5 -- THERE WERE DIFFERENT
              KINDS OF SPIRITUALISTS.

   A society of Liberal Spiritualists in San Fran-
cisco sent notices of their meetings to Freethought;
some of the members came to Freethought meet-
ings, and the same singers assisted at both. Out-
side these Liberals, the Spiritualist leaders in San
Francisco were about as hopeless a collection of
bamboozlers as could anywhere be found. Dr.
Louis Schlesinger, who published The Carrier
Dove, could hardly be called anything that would
write him plain but a humbug and grafter. For his
printing-office in the old St. Ignatius church on
Market street he solicited orders, yet one who gave
him an order, as I did just to be friendly, would
be hooked for twice what the job was worth. His
stunts as a medium, for he professed to be such,
were transparent frauds.
   Mr. J.J. Owen published The Golden Gate,
Spiritualist, and sold lots in Summerland, Santa
Barbara county. The Celestial City, a Spiritualist
paper published in New York, viewed Summerland
and reported:
480    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1889

   "Far out on the Pacific slope, hemmed in between a
homely range of rugged, knotty, infertile mountains on
the one hand, and on the other a dreary expanse of endless
sea that has not even the activity of a surf, there lies a
miserable, barren waste. Four consecutive months of each
year no rain falls upon this parched, far-off land, while
the sun's bright rays beat down and dry to pulverous dust
the burning soil. Here is wanted to be established the
new colony of Summerland, the future home of the Spir-
itualists of the world. No native fresh water is found
within the border lines of this would-be city of the future.
All the fresh water it gets for the irrigation of this un-
fruitful land is forced there through pipes, from a distance
of four miles; and year after year has this sluggish soil
sung its melancholy soliloquy in unison with the listless
waters of the calm Pacific. To this forlorn and ragged
edge of the western world are the owners and propagators
of Summerland trying, by the wholesale suppression of all
information relative to its disadvantages, to induce the
people to come, trying to inveigle the innocent and the
uninformed into giving up comfortable homes in the fertile
fields of the East, and taking up their abode in this
wretched colony."

   Editor Owen of The Golden Gate, who was put-
ting this thing over upon the hopeful, had no part
or parcel with the Freethinkers and named them
but to mispraise. He informed his readers that his
editorial articles were messages from the angels,
inspirational, and obtained by "secluding himself
from the world and becoming passive and receptive
to those higher and better influences and thoughts
which he endeavors to express through the columns
of The Golden Gate." Thus he wrote while promot-
ing the Summerland scheme described in the lan-
guage just quoted by the editor of The Celestial
City.
1889]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         481

      The Summerland development may have been a
bona fide endeavor to found a Spiritualist colony,
or it may have been merely a real estate specula-
tion with Spiritualists appointed to be the victims.
Probably it was the latter, since there is at the pres-
ent time a place in Santa Barbara county of that
name, and colonies never last the length of time
that has elapsed since the date of which I am writ-
ing. The rival Spiritualist papers in San Francisco
stated that Summerland was a swindle. Some of
the Liberals who were also good Freethought
workers "fell for" the various schemes that were
floated by idealists or by cheats. One was the
Topolobampo venture, a plan with considerable
backing from the East, to establish the Sinaloa
colony in Mexico. John Lovell, publisher of
Lovell's Library, was interested in it, and I had
heard him talk on the Credit Fancier of Sinaloa be-
fore the Manhattan Liberal Club. I met numerous
returned Sinaloists who were known as Topolo-
bampo Sufferers. One recounted that a woman,
Marie Howland, more or less an authoress, had
gone there to preside. He told me she was too ad-
vanced to meet his approval, since she attempted
to introduce mixed bathing among the colonists
"doffed of their clothes."
   The Golden Gate advertised the medium Fred
Evans, a more versatile workman than Schlesinger,
but without the old doctor's blandness. I think
Schlesinger would perform his solemn tricks as
often as he could get a dollar a throw, even if he
knew all the time that the sitter was "onto" him;
but Evans was suspicious of anyone who asked him
482    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1889

to do that again and do it slow. Having one day, at
the solicitation of an earnest believer, sat at Evans's
curtained desk and got some slates with writing
on them, all in his own hand, as an observing
printer could tell, I wrote him a request to give me
another sitting, merely exchanging seats. I desired
to be on the side of the table where the works
were. He declined, making the excuse that he was
soon going to Australia and his dates were full.
At the same time he solicited more patronage
through newspaper advertisements -- which showed,
anyhow, that he was lying when he pretended to
be too busy. I had solved his slate trick and
wished to have him see me do it and correct me
where I was wrong.
   Meanwhile a friend with a totally unexplainable
confidence in Evans had sent me some slates firm-
ly screwed together to be taken to the medium. My
friend assured me that in the presence of Evans I
should undoubtedly receive messages. I believed,
and still do, that nothing could be written on the
inner surfaces of the slates without taking out the
screws. As Evans was now out of the question,
my friend directed me to a medium named Colby,
with almost as good a reputation for slate-writing
and other psychic powers. I found Colby and
liked him personally. He did not, like Evans, re-
mind me of a weasel. Had I seen him dealing faro
I might have asked for a look at the box before
putting anything down; still, one could recognize
in him certain qualities of a good sport. His rooms
were not far from the Freethought office, and
more than once after luncheon he came in to have
1889]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         483

a chair and a chat and smoke his cigar. Then a
visitor from the South recognized him as a Bap-
tist clergyman, named Rains, of Texas, who had
been in prison for holding up and robbing a pas-
senger train. That put an end to my friendly re-
lations with Mr. Colby. He had deceived me about
his past. He never told me he had preached. Mr.
Colby left San Francisco. Evans met in Australia
some one a little keener than himself who solved
his method.

       6 -- MR. BAILEY SOUGHT SAFETY AFLOAT.

   The shipping disaster in Port Apia, Samoan
Islands, when a terrific hurricane drove three Ger-
man and three United States men-of-war upon the
reefs, with the loss of one hundred and forty men,
took place in March, 1889. Among the survivors
who somehow won through when their vessels
went down was an old man-o'-warsman named Bai-
ley. He had "been to sea" all his life, but now
counted it time to quit, especially as he had reached
the age for retiring. Mr. Bailey, being a reader
of Freethought, deemed it neighborly to call on us
when he reached San Francisco on his way to join
his people in Oregon, with whom he expected to
spend his remaining days. He told me that for
some years he had held the thought of leaving the
navy, and when his ship foundered and he had to
swim for his life, and then barely saved it, because
he tired easy these days, the time seemed to have
come for him to lay up ashore. He gave me his
future address, where the paper was to be sent,
484    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1889

and departed for the State of Oregon, bidding all
a final good-by and last farewell. I am uncer-
tain about the length of time, but it seemed only
a few months later, when the aged Mr. Bailey re-
appeared at the Freethought office with cheerful
greetings. I asked him the question which he must
have expected in view of the above farewell, and
he replied that he was now on his way to the naval
station at Mare Island to reenlist in the navy.
How come? Well, it was like this: When he had
got to the place in Oregon where his daughter
lived, they had given him a little cabin all by him-
self on the side of a hill that showed a good pros-
pect on pleasant days, and where, furnished with
all the supplies he needed, he had settled down to
a life of ease. But it rained and it rained, causing
occasional landslips that changed the scenery about
him. They assured him, however, that these things
were always happening and were no cause for anx-
iety. But weren't they? Mr. Bailey testified that
one night when he thought he was snug in his berth
the ground under his cabin went adrift, and the
next thing he knew he was at the foot of the hill,
house and all. He pulled himself out of the wreck,
spent a week making repairs, and took up life anew
in the valley. It kept on raining, the streams rose
till his house took in water, and had to be aban-
doned. The day after be got out of her she floated
and went downstream. Then Mr. Bailey commu-
nicated with his shipmate Purdy, aboard the In-
dependence, to see whether there was any berth
for him there, and finding a chance to ship again,
he came back. "Of course," said Mr. Bailey, re-
1889]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         485

membering Samoa, "a fellow that goes to sea takes
some chances, but folks that live ashore aren't safe
at all. Whether it's a gale or fair weather, war
or peace," he concluded, "the deck of a man-o'-war
is good enough for me. I've seen battle and wreck
and sudden death at sea, and been cast away, by
thunder, but I got the scare of my life right on
terry firmy."

   The Liberal activity stirred up by Putnam and
reported in Freethought drew the country's force
of lecturers in our direction. C.B. Reynolds came
first, followed by his wife, who was also a good
speaker, and they located at Walla Walla, Wash-
ington. B.F. Underwood made two tours. W.S.
Bell came and stayed; W.F. Jamieson arrived in
November, and the eloquent Mrs. Mattie P. Kre-
kel, widow of Judge Arnold Krekel of Kansas City,
was on the way. The one lecturer left to the East
was L.K. Washburn. On July 1, Putnam had
seventy-five lecture engagements booked. Dr. J.
L. York of San Jose, with almost the whole field
to himself prior to Putnam's advent, and known to
those who read his announcements as "the Inger-
soll of the West," appeared aloof and on the whole
unfriendly. George Chainey, was still going from
one perishing superstition to another. Just then
he was reported to be a Christian Scientist.
   One day in the middle of the year G.L. Hen-
derson, copartner in the old days with Hugh By-
ron Brown in the proprietorship of Science Hall
in Eighth street, New York, spoke for our Free-
thought Society and paid me a call at the office. A
[1889        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         486

decade had not yet passed since we met, but all
things had changed. "If the friends of the begin-
ning of the decade were to meet again in Science
Hall," we said, "how many distinguished ghosts
would be among them -- Stephen Pearl Andrews,
D.M. Bennett, Theron C. Leland, Courtlandt
Palmer, Henry Evans, Porter C. Bliss, Tom Mc-
Watters, and many another." Henderson had
moved to Yellowstone Park, Wyoming, and the Re-
ligion of Humanity interested him no more.
   A "character" known in San Francisco then was
an old gentleman of the name of Choynski, who
published his weekly "Public Opinion." He may
have taken in subscriptions, but mostly, it was said,
he took in his subscribers. He sent his paper for
a year and then went and collected three dollars.
The postal law allowed that as long as a paper was
received, and the publisher not notified through the
postoffice to discontinue it, the receiver was liable
for the price. Mr. Choynski made the price high
enough to pay him for the trouble of collecting.
He was the father of Joe Choynski, pugilist, and
said in his paper that every time Joe was going to
fight, papa and mamma prayed he would get licked.
   Occasional reference was made to the dilatori-
ness of the Lick trustees in carrying out the will of
that Freethinker and philanthropist who had died
thirteen years before. They held in their hands
$1,650,000, yet half the bequests had not been car-
ried out. The old ladies still waited for their
Home, there were no Free Baths, nor any Manual
Training School for the boys and girls of San
Francisco. The monument to Francis Scott Key
1889]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         487

had been erected, and the Lick Observatory, con-
taining the most powerful telescope in the world,
completed and presented to the University of Cali-
fornia.
   One of our Oakland subscribers, Mrs. Dolly Bro-
neer, was a descendant of Good Abner Kneeland,
founder of the Boston Investigator, who back in
the '30s had been a prisoner for blasphemy in Mas-
sachusetts. Mrs. Broneer showed me an acrostic
written by Uncle Abner when he was 68 (two
years before his death) to Dorcas Jane Rice, who
was Dolly Broneer's mother. It ran thus, in quite
classical form:

      "Delightful theme as e'er engaged the tongue,
       Or more sublime than ever poet sung,
       Remote from bigotry or slavish fear,
       Conjoined with love and all that men hold dear,
       Are modest virtue, pure in every sense;
       Sincerity of heart, benevo'ence,
       Justice and kindness join to make the sum,
       As all the graces harmonize as one.
       Now the result of all is happiness --
       E'en bigots here must surely this confess.
       Rejoice, then, now that we have found the road,
       Immortal bliss is ever doing good;
       Contented in its lot, does not repine;
       Enrobed in truth the graces ever shine."

   Signed "Abner Kneeland" with a neat and proper
flourish and dated at Salubria, I.T., the initials
standing for Iowa Territory.

   NOTE -- These chapters of "Fifty Years of Freethought,"
which I have thrown into the form of an Autobiography to
make a human document, have drawn more comment from
readers, in their letters, than anything else that I can re-
member in The Truth Seeker. That is, more than have
488    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1889

been received regarding anything the writer approved.
People are inclined to animadvert more frequently than to
commend. Regarding these chapters, one friend has indeed
said they contain too much sex stuff, but that is character-
istic of our species, being due, as the poet Milton divined,
to the original error of Omnipotence in creating that "fair
defect of nature," woman, without whom the history of the
race, as well as these memoirs, might have been materially
modified.
   The temptation to print the commendatory words of
readers that has been overcome hitherto, conquers at sight
of these lines in The Literary Guide, to wit:
         "Mr. George E. Macdonald, the editor of the New
      York Truth Seeker, is contributing to this journal some
      autobiographical chapters which are intensely interest-
      ing. For nearly fifty years he has been identified with
      the Rationalist Movement in America, and his pen
      becomes more gifted as time passes."

   The year of my beginning to be identified, or affiliated,
with the Movement was 1875 -- fifty-three years ago. The
second half of the last sentence in the paragraph quoted
from The Literary Guide brings the comfort which one
past the meridian of life extracts from the assurances of
polite and he hopes not insincere persons that he does not
look his age.
   The man writing in his eighth decade knows production is
slower than in his fourth. He trusts it isn't inferior, but
doesn't know. Hence the yielding to the temptation to
print what is said by The Guide, I am not prepared to
debate whether reprinting it makes it any nearer true or
not. Still there is a feeling that an idea comes closer to
being fixed as a fact, when put into type once or twice,
than when it exists only as a hope.

            8 -- CLOSING EVENTS OF '89.

   Free as was San Francisco in the realm of per-
sonal liberty, there were streaks of religious bigotry
1889]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         489

such as that which excluded the Freethought So-
ciety from the hall built with the money of James
Lick; and the town had Irish Catholic policemen,
who could not see our right to sell the paper on the
street. An old man named Ketchum attempted
this, and one of "the Pope's Irish," as The Argo-
naut named them, ordered him to be on his way.
Being stubborn, the old man suffered a clubbing.
Not only that, but some influence prompted his
neighbors to trump up charges of assault against
him, and without defense he would have been in-
definitely jailed. I testified as "character" witness
for him, visited the prosecuting attorney at his
office, and hired a lawyer. When I told the prose-
cutor that Ketchum was an industrious person who
made his living selling our paper, the official replied
that he must be industrious and a crank besides.
An idealist of any sort in San Francisco was a
crank and an object of suspicion. There was no
more protection for Ketchum. When he came to
the office on a later day with his bundle of papers
ruined by the blood he had allowed himself to shed
on them when a Catholic rough in a policeman's
uniform beat him up, I advised him to desist.
   The reading of The Truth Seeker and Free-
thought for 1889 is calculated to exasperate the Sec-
ularist who pays attention to what the churches
were then doing. The effect of beholding all at
once, instead of week by week, the year's sum of
the church's stealings, invasions, abuses, persecu-
tions, is impressive to the last degree. The church
as an aggregate, backed by its millions of adher-
490    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1889

ents and more millions of money, was achieving a
record of infamy -- grafting, grabbing, and for a
pretense making long prayers. Deacon Benjamin
Harrison occupied the White House, and the Sun-
day-school teacher Wanamaker a place in his cabi-
net as postmaster-general. Opposed to this pre-
daceous combination were a few hundred Free-
thinkers, belonging to an organization, the Ameri-
can Secular Union, that could not raise ten thou-
sand dollars; the secretary, E.A. Stevens, fighting
a lone battle in Chicago to head off a little of the
stealing if he might; the president of the Union, in
Philadelphia, preoccupied with a book of Moral In-
struction for the schools to displace the Bible and
religious teaching; as if the promoters of those
things -- Bible and religion in the schools -- cared a
snap for moral instruction, or enjoyed anything
better than to contemplate the feeble efforts of the
Freethinkers with their half-dozen newspapers of
limited circulation to prevent the incessant hold-ups
and robberies in the name of religion. But what
was going on then and has been ever since, and by
what we behold today, doubts are raised whether
Secularists can form an organization large enough
to win by force of numbers. They will not for
centuries be as numerous as the religious people
who insist that whatever they believe as Christians
ought as far as possible to be crystallized into law,
and that what can't be enacted should be propagated
at public expense. However, if Freethinkers can-
not put the Bible out they can expose it. If they
cannot exclude religion, they can at least show it
1889]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         491

up. I am not hopeful of settling the question of union of
church and state while believers are in the
vast majority, and not reached by the voice or
literature of unbelief.
   The workers of the American Secular Union that
year appear to have been divided, though not at
cross purposes. In Chicago E.A. Stevens, secre-
tary, agitated for the taxation of church property
and exposed the graft of the Catholic institutions
that enjoyed appropriations of public money. In
Philadelphia, R.B. Westbrook attacked the trus-
tees of Stephen Girard, who were violating the
provisions of his will by giving religious teaching
in the college built with money Girard had left the
city of Philadelphia for a wholly secular institu-
tion. Judge Westbrook also collected a fund to be
offered as a prize for the above book of Moral In-
struction in the schools. Mr. Stevens resigned be-
fore the next Congress, which, held in Philadel-
phia October 25-27, reelected Judge Westbrook
and picked Miss Ida Craddock for secretary. The
Rev. Father Edward McGlynn of New York, now
a good Secularist, addressed the Congress.
   A well-attended convention of the Oregon State
Secular Union met at Masonic Hall, Portland, Oc-
tober 12. Putnam said of it:

   "The Portland Convention was a happy success. Hun-
dreds were present from all parts of the state, and the
Liberals of Washington were generous in their attendance.
It was an event for Liberalism, a representative assembly
that in itself would mean much, but in its relation to
future work it has a much grander significance. It is the
beginning of many such mass meetings by which there
will be more active union among Liberals and greater work
492    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1889

accomplished. The impulse and attraction of this conven-
tion will be for practical advancement ... I have not
attended any national convention where there were greater
numbers or more interesting addresses."

   He speaks of the "impulse and attraction" of
the convention. But the impulse and attraction of
the work on the coast was Putnam -- the tireless
worker, the eloquent speaker, the ready, learned,
and effective writer. The men liked him; so did
the women. He might have kept the work buzzing
in Washington, Oregon, and California if he could
have remained there and borne the burden. There
was plenty to do. The Sabbatarians of California
were agitating for a Sunday law, without which
the state had got along very well theretofore, every-
body being free to go to church who wanted to,
or to the theater, or to work. The Rev. Wilbur F.
Crafts, field secretary of the American Sunday As-
sociation, sent a questionnaire all over the world
to find out where Sunday was best observed, and a
San Francisco pastor answered: "Among the Chris-
tian people of California." With this proposed
Sunday law to fight in California, the Blair Chris-
tian Education bill in Congress, and the Western
States of Washington, Wyoming, Idaho, and New
Mexico holding constitutional conventions and vot-
ing for theological preambles, there was much to
comment upon.
   The Museums in Central Park, New York, were
finally opened on Sunday in 1889.
   Abroad in 1889, the International Freethought
Federation held its Congress in Paris in September;
Charles Bradlaugh resigned as president of the Na-
1889]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         493

tional Secular Society of Great Britain, to be suc-
ceeded the next year by George William Foote; and
the Swedish courts sentenced Victor E. Lennstrand
to six months' imprisonment for publicly speaking
against Christianity in Stockholm and Malmo.
Lennstrand's health failed and the King pardoned
him at the end of three months.
   The Truth Seeker printed Ingersoll's only oral
debate, the one he held with Frederic R. Coudert,
a Roman Catholic, and Gen. Stewart L. Wood-
ford, a Protestant, before the Nineteenth Century
Club, on "The Limitations of Toleration," and
Remsburg's "Abraham Lincoln: Was He a Chris-
tian?" A letter by Lincoln's law partner Herndon
appeared, testifying: "Let me say that Mr. Lincoln
was an Infidel. He did write a little work on Infi-
delity in 1835-6, and never recanted. He was an
out-and-out Infidel, and about that there is no, mis-
take."

   The death of Mrs. Amy Post of Rochester, N.
Y., early in the year, called one of the good old
mothers in Israel to her rest at the age of 86 years.
Mrs. Post had always been a reformer, beginning
as an Abolitionist and closing her life as a radical
Freethinker. It was said of her that as an "under-
ground railroad" station keeper she harbored in her
house for more than a dozen years, an average of
one hundred and fifty runaway slaves each year. I
believe that her last dear enemy was Anthony Com-
stock. Being a suffragist and a friend of woman,
her remarks on that individual were replete with
sentiments of pity for his mother.
494    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1889

   The cause lost by death in 1889 that son of thun-
der, Horace Seaver, who had been editor of the
                              Boston Investigator
                              more than fifty years.
                              He died August 21,
                              four days before his
                              79th birthday, for he
                              was born August 25,
                              1810, in Boston. His
                              inclination in youth
                              was to be an actor,
                              his parents' wish was
                              that he should be a
                              minister. Fortunate-
                              ly he became a printer
                              and at 27 took work
                              on The Investigator.
      HORACF SEAVER,          He remained there
                              while Abner Knee-
land served his term as prisoner for blasphemy,
and when the liberated Kneeland retired from the,
editorship in 1838 Seaver took his place. Inger-
soll once wrote to Mr. Seaver that the distribu-
tion of the Boston Investigator had made it pos-
sible for him to travel through the country and lec-
ture to thousands. Mr. Seaver was buried from
Paine Memorial Hall, Ingersoll being the eulogist.

   Late in 1889, the support of our paper Free-
thought having become rather burdensome to my
partner, Mr. Putnam, who was sinking $1,500 a
year of his earnings in it, we concluded to form a
Freethought Publishing Company. Putnam had
1889]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         495

kept the lecture field almost continuously, selling
books and taking subscriptions, and remitting the
proceeds along with his lecture fees. The Free-
thinkers were loyal and liberal, but there were not
enough of them. Although church members are
in the minority, there are not many Freethinkers,
and never were, who could be signed up as sub-
scribers to a Freethought paper. In my letters to
Putnam acknowledging his remittances I many
times protested against his working so hard and
giving his wages to pay the bills of the paper. I
had the feeling of being supported by his labors
rather than my own. He was getting along in
years, I reminded him, and ought to lay aside some-
thing for the time when he could not do so much
remunerative work. So we formed the company,
issued stock, and moved to larger quarters, namely
838 Howard street, where there was a vacant store
in a new building.

                      ****     ****

            Reproducible Electronic Publishing
                   can defeat censorship.

       Bank of Wisdom, Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201

                      ****     ****
                     CHAPTER XXIII.

          1 -- MEETINGS AND THE GIRL PROBLEM.

   ON December 2, 1889, the Freethought Pub-
lishing Company had been organized and
had filed incorporation papers; president,
Samuel P. Putnam; vice-president, Frank L.
Browne; secretary, George E. Macdonald. The
names of W.H. Eastman and Emil S. Lemme, two
excellent young men, were added to complete the
corporation. One hundred and fifty persons bought
shares. January 1, 1890, found us doing business
at 838 Howard street. The company voted me a
salary of $20 a week. Mrs. Macdonald kept the
books and met the visitors. Outside my inclosed
editorial corner I hung a basket marked: "Please
leave poems here and go away." At that period
Edwin Markham, distressed by one of Millet's pic-
tures, wrote "The Man with the Hoe." I had a
Millet picture, "The Angelus," showing a man and
a woman, evidently farm hands, standing with their
eyes attentively upon the ground, as though search-
ing for something. The poem appears to have
caused to be reproduced thousands of copies of this
picture. I marked mine "The Lost Angleworm"
and hung it in a good place.
   The California State Freethinkers' Convention,
held in San Francisco January 25 and 26, was a
                                496
1890]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         497




                       @@@@









   Redrawn from a faded photograph, the picture shows
the front of the office of Freethought, 838 Howard
street, San Francisco, in 1890. The figures represent
(from right to left) Putnam the Lecturer, the girl
Compositor, Browne the Printer, and the Editor.
ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ

gathering of local Liberals. It must have been a
memorable year in the history of the climate of
California, for all places more than a day's journey
from the city were cut off by landslides,
washouts, and snowdrifts. The elder Dr. E.
B. Foote of New York convened with us and
served with me on the Resolutions Committee. We
had enough present to elect ninety vice-presidents,
an executive committee of nine, and Putnam for
president, Lemme for secretary, and A.H. Schou
for treasurer. The Liberal Spiritualists were there
with their speakers and singers.
   The extraordinary weather conditions and the ad-
vent of influenza or epizootic, under the new name
498    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1890

of la grippe, operated also adversely on the Paine
celebration that followed the convention. In my re-
ports of meetings I sometimes felt it my duty to re-
buke the girls who were due to be there for their
non-attendance at lectures on serious topics, where-
as when singing and dancing were promised they
outnumbered the young men two to one. At the
state convention they might have heard the able ad-
dresses of W.S. Bell, the Hon. F.B. Perkins, and
various other speakers who never failed to instruct
an audience, but they were not present, while at the
Paine celebration, with a short program of educa-
tive talk and many musical numbers and a social
dance for good measure, they were plentiful and
happy until midnight's hour had come and been
chased away. Young married men and the fathers
of daughters were equally at a loss to explain why
this should be so.
   On girls absenting themselves from Freethought
lectures I wrote in another place: "It seems to be a
settled fact that young women don't want public
lectures, and that they won't even attend a sociable
for pleasure when an instructive lecture must be
taken as a penance. If I were a safe man to send
into our families, I should be glad to inaugurate a
crusade among the girls for the purpose of quick-
ening their minds on the matter of mental improve-
ment. They will go to church without urging, and
to the theater when urged to stay away, but they
seem to look upon an educative lecture as an un-
necessity and therefore to be avoided at any incon-
venience."
   A young woman who read this asked me how
1890]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         499

many girls we had among our officers or on perma-
nent committees. By a sad blunder we had omitted
to elect or name any.
   Annually in San Francisco occurred the Bohe-
mian ball in the same Union Square hall where the
Freethinkers met, and so many of our Bohemian
readers invited us that we must attend or explain.
They were joyous routs where one was allowed to
dance Bohemian figures he had never seen before.
Why my report of the 1890 affair should have run
into rhyme as it did is a wonder to me. I read:
"The band was playing all the night, and if feet
were heavy, hearts were light. The music told the
tale of him, yclept McGinty, who never rose, since
he went down into the swim, dressed in his Sun-
day suit of clothes. Then it related with toot and
blare, how the rollicking razzle-dazzle boys went
wandering off on a terrible tear and awoke the
night with their joyful noise. Ah! life is a dance
and the figure a reel; Time is the fiddler, gray and
grim, whose music we follow with toe and heel, till
foot is weary and eye is dim. We waltz and polka,
fast or slow, chassez and balance, cross over and
turn. New faces arrive and old ones go, but the
set moves onward in unconcern."
   Versification and rhyme dribbled uncontrolled
from my pen in those days, while only under the
greatest provocation have I made two measured
lines rhyme in the past twenty-five years. E.C.
Walker told me a while ago that verse-making was
connected with the activity of glands.

        2 -- OBSERVATIONS ON THE STATE.

From reading Herbert Spencer, who was and
500    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1890

is my favorite philosopher, and in companionship
with a considerable number of bright writers, I fell
into ways of anti-government dissertation from
which I have never fully returned. Take this ex-
ample from one of my Observations in Free-
thought:

   "If there is any conspicuous evil that should be done
away with as fast as possible, it is government. Thomas
Paine called it a necessary evil, and declared that in its
best form it could be nothing else; but since his time
people have got into the habit of treating government as
though it were something to be proud of. They dress the
government in fine clothes and parade it through the
streets as Chinamen do their devil. They give it the best
buildings in the country, and do not appear to realize that
the state house is half-brother to the penitentiary.
   "No good reform can come through the legislatures --
the tendency is the other way. Are the people enjoying any
liberty, a bill is introduced to restrict it. If they demand
more chains, the legislature will hasten to accommodate
them; if they desire more liberty, they must fight for it.
The people of this country fought for their independence
of Great Britain, for the rights of American citizens in
foreign countries, for their protection on the high seas,
and for the abolition of human slavery at home. These
epochs, marked by wars, are the only periods when liberty
has been achieved and personal rights guaranteed. It
seems to be the lot of the people to acquire liberty, and
that of legislative bodies gradually to filch it away. The
legislatures give us Sunday laws, oath laws, blasphemy
laws, Comstock laws, protective statutes, medical laws, and
unequal taxation. The legislature kindly takes from us a
part of our earnings for its support, and another part for
the support of superstition. It lets us pay for religious
services for its own so-called benefit and for the benefit
of all inmates of public institutions. It gives us the privi-
lege of voting if we are males of twenty-one years and
1890]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         501

upwards, and denies suffrage to females of all ages. Where
it got the right to grant the one or to deny the other no-
body knows. Our legislatures know that the ballot amounts
to nothing in the hands of a man in any large community
where it is worth using, and that they should withhold it
from women is explainable only on the theory that they
never make even a seeming concession to the people until
the worthlessness of the concession has been demonstrated."

   There was much to a similar effect in my output
for the dozen years following. I learned with
gratification that my writings carried comfort to
those who were in prison. Benjamin R. Tucker's
paper, Liberty, brought me the news that Free-
thought was received weekly in Joliet, Illinois, and
was read with pleasure by Messrs. Fielden,
Schwaab, and Neebe, life prisoners and alleged
participants in the Haymarket affair.

       3 -- DEDICATED TO GIORDANO BRUNO.

      The Freethought Society made the two hundred
and ninetieth anniversary of the Martyrdom of
Giordano Bruno, burned at the stake in Rome Feb-
ruary 17, 1600, the occasion for a large memorial
meeting. Thomas Curtis, with his fifty years' rec-
ord as speaker and worker for Freethought, deliv-
ered the speech. I copy the last paragraph of the
report of the proceedings: "This was one of the
best meetings the writer has ever attended. The
addresses, songs, and recitations were of such high
merit, the audience was so large, so attentive where
close attention was called for, and so generous in
awarding praise to its entertainers -- everything in-
deed passed off so brilliantly and harmoniously
502    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1890

that many a day may pass before we see the like
again."
   Emotions stirred by the enthusiastic response of
the big audience to a Bruno poem I had written
and Putnam read, had not subsided when I wrote
that paragraph. The verses are too many to be
copied here.
   It was ordinary, unimaginative verse, yet on the
whole, dramatic; appropriate to the recent erection
of the Bruno monument in Rome, to which many
present had contributed, and Putnam put the
needed energy into his rendering of the lines.
   This year the California State Secular Society
lost one of its best members by the death of the
Hon. J.W. North of Fresno, who died February
21, in his 76th year. Another death soon followed
-- that of the Hon. John A. Collins of San Fran-
cisco, April 3. The judge, nearly 80 years old, had
made a record in liberal and progressive work. As
a boy he was an associate of Horace Greeley. A
student for the ministry at Andover Theological
Seminary, he failed of his purpose to be a preacher
and took up anti-slavery work; also temperance,
woman suffrage, Spiritualism, and industrial co-
operative reform as a co-student of Fourier along
with Albert Brisbane. Details of his professional
and political life made a half-column in the daily
papers.
   Judge Collins was legal adviser without pay to
the Freethought Publishing Company. I consulted
him when the Freethought Society was troubled
by John Alexander Dowie, who held his faith-heal-
ing services in a hall that was next to the one we
1890]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         503

occupied for our meetings, separated from it by
doors that could be removed. His services were
so noisy sometimes that our lecturer had to raise
his voice. We bore the nuisance without complaint.
And then this imported impostor (he came from
Australia) proposed to enjoin us from advertising
meetings at the same time and place as his. He
complained of our holding Sunday night dances,
threatening to be mean about it. Judge Collins
thought of the facts a few moments and said we
might advise Dowie it was his first move. Mean-
while we pushed our piano, as far away from the
partition between the two rooms as it would go.
There was in town a rival faith-healer, Mrs. Anna
Johnson. To discredit her work Dowie called her
an impostor, a jezebel, and, moreover, unchaste.
Thus defamed, Mrs. Johnson, remarking that
Dowie was a beast, a devil, and a liar, sued him
for fifty thousand dollars. That diverted Dowie's
attention from the Freethought Society.

          4 -- AN EXPONENT OF EGOISM.

   Henry Replogle shared our printing-office at 838
Howard street and there resumed the publication
of his paper called "Equity," which was suspended
when he left Liberal, Mo. The house Henry oc-
cupied at Liberal had been mobbed on account of
his social views; hence he departed that town. He
advocated in "Equity" a philosophy called Egoism,
which runs more or less like this: Every man
should be able to give a reason for the course in
life that he chooses, and should be prepared to ex-
504    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1890

plain his conduct when he does good as well as
when he does what is thought to be evil. To do
good for the sake of good, or to do right "because
it is right," is unphilosophical. Self-denial is un-
natural, and therefore unwise unless some benefit
results to the self-denier sufficient to pay for the
inconvenience. Life has no object, but may have
uses. Uses for what? To give the means of hap-
piness to its possessor. One thing is not "higher"
than another, but may be more complex. That is
the difference between mud and brains. Intelli-
gence is the result of complexity, and is the recog-
nizable manifestation of the working of the brain.
There is no design, but a natural process. There-
fore we are not required to indulge in a sentimental
adoration of genius. We need only to recognize
it as a natural outcome of prior conditions, the
same as virtue. Life has no purpose, but shall we
therefore spend it riotously? No; that will not
pay, as witness the wrecks on the shores of dissipa-
tion. Shall we practice self-denial as regards the
pleasures of the world? Certainly, if it gives us
happiness to do so; in which case we have used
life to the point of its highest productivity, and in
denying ourselves one pleasure we have achieved a
greater. If the monk in his cell, the anchorite in
his cave, the priest among lepers, were not happier
than he thinks he would be somewhere else, he
would not be there. To be what we call virtuous,
not for virtue's sake, but because experience has
taught us it brings most happiness, pays us in the
end, and is without credit. It is no more praise-
worthy than the act of paying our board in advance
1890]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         505

when we have no credit. To practice what goes
under the name of morality is simply to prepare
conditions for selfish benefits. The duty idea has
nothing in it. If a person would be happier other-
wise than in the performance of what he calls his
duty, he would never perform it. What is life for?
It is for nothing. We have legs adapted to locomo-
tion, and we use them for that purpose. We find
life adapted to the pursuit of happiness; therefore
let us so employ it.
   Horace Seaver, for more than fifty years editor
of the Boston Investigator, is said to have pro-
duced his editorial articles by setting the type of
them from notes. I sometimes preferred that
method to writing an article in full and then revis-
ing it. I was at the case one day with Replogle
alongside, running off a page of his "Egoism" on
our half-medium Universal, when news came that a
brother editor of liberal tendencies, T.L. Mc-
Cready of The Twentieth Century, was dead. Said
I to Henry as I spaced out a line, "McCready is
in luck." Said Henry: "Yes; only being dead he
can't appreciate it."
   And holding these sentiments, that it were bet-
ter not to be, we kept on working for dear life!
   Henry had as his companion a sweet and lovely
woman named Georgia. As she was the faster com-
positor of the two, and hence had the greater earn-
ing capacity, she held a frame on an Oakland daily
and he did the housework. Not being married,
they were so absorbed in each other that when
Georgia died, Henry nearly lost his reason through
grief.
506    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1890

   In one number of Freethought I published a note
of thanks to my wife for a gift of roses which she
had placed on the editorial desk. Georgia Replogle
remarked that probably editors' wives had brought
them roses before, but my acknowledgment of them
was an original thing for an editor to do. So far
as I have known, it is the only instance recorded.
                                 I quote myself as re-
                              porter when I say that
            @@@@              Lilian Leland bloomed
                              on the platform of the
                              Freethought Society one
                              Sunday evening like a
                              blossom in a hedge, and
                              told in simple language
                              the story of "Free-
                              thought Around the
                              World." Miss Leland
                              prefaced her address by
                              saying that she had the
                              good fortune to be born
                              of Freethinking parents,
 Author of "Around the        who left their children's
     World Alone."            minds unfettered by any
                              creed or belief, so that
the Sunday-school stories of cross and crucifixion
took no more hold upon her unterrified mind than
the fairy tale of Jack the Giant Killer. In her
journey around the world the first heathen country
she visited was Japan, whose people she found
more ideally Christian than those she left behind.
The Japanese were the kindest people on earth,
and suffered more than they gained from the in-
1890]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         507

troduction of Christianity. She saw in Japan more
missionaries than converts. In China the people were
different. Their cities and their habits were inde-
scribably unclean, and it was scarcely possible for
the missionaries to make the inhabitants worse -- or
better. She visited Benares, in India, the oldest and
holiest city on the globe. It stands upon the Ganges,
the impurest river in the world. In both India and
Japan she was warned against the native who pro-
fessed Christianity, The uncivilized Hindu could
be relied on for a certain amount of fidelity, but the
converted Hindu had lost faith in his own gods'
power to punish and had learned hypocrisy. Pales-
tine Miss Leland found the barest, poorest, stoniest
country on earth, and Jerusalem the least tidy city
with the possible exception of a walled one in China.
At the alleged tomb of Christ in Jerusalem warring
Christian sects were prevented from killing one an-
other by the presence of a Mohammedan soldier
who guards the holy sepulcher. In concluding, the
speaker said her experience all over the world had
taught her that it is a good thing to be an Ameri-
can, because independence in an American woman
is not only forgiven but admired, while it would
subject a European woman to suspicion.
   There was no discussion of the lecture, but when
Putnam had paid a brief tribute to the late T.C.
Leland, father of the speaker, and had said that the
daughter was a worthy descendant, Thomas Curtis
offered a resolution, which was adopted without
dissent, that the Christian parents of the country
be challenged to prove by comparison that they
could show a brighter example of womanhood, men-
508    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1890

tally, morally, and physically, as a result of a re-
ligious training, than Miss Leland afforded as a
result of escaping it.

       5 -- AN UNGRATEFUL INSTITUTION.

   I violate the chronologies once more to say that
early in 1928, a professor in Mills College, Oak-
land, resenting the act of an acquaintance who had
sent him The Truth Seeker, which he pronounced
"ignorant trash," thus showing that his reading of
the paper had been confined to the affirmative of
one of our Fundamentalist debates, wrote me to
take his name off the list.
   The discourteous language of the professor,
whose name is Linsley, almost caused me to regret
the defense of a Mills College president that I put
up in 1890. The president concerned was the
Rev. Dr. Stratton, charged by a girl with going
into her room when she was abed and the lights
out, and kissing her while allowing his hand to
wander. I held that the Rev. Dr. Stratton was a
misunderstood man; for it appeared that the apart-
ment occupied by the complainant contained a tele-
phone, one of the old-fashioned kind, of course,
that had a little crank on it, to which the accused
clergyman had frequent occasion to repair. Ad-
mittedly the light was insufficient; and this fact, so
ran my defense, added to absent-mindedness -- an
infirmity which is known to accompany great learn-
ing, or to result from habits of pious abstraction --
doubtless caused the clergyman to mistake the
young lady's face for the receiver, while the move-
1890]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         509

ment she resented as an ulterior design, may have
been but a well-meant endeavor on the clergyman's
part to ring up central. I submitted this explana-
tion in lieu of Dr. Stratton's alibi and general de-
nial, for it looked to me like a complete and trium-
phant vindication of a man cruelly misjudged, leav-
ing no stain on the record of an institution with
which Dr. Linsley has now the questionable honor
of being connected.
   The faculty never in gratitude asked for my
photograph to put in the college album, or for the
purpose of having an oil painting executed to hang
on the walls. It should at least have my name en-
shrined among the defenders of its fair fame.
   In September Mayor Pond of San Francisco
summoned me before him for examination as to
my capacity to act as judge of elections. A quali-
fication for that position was being a taxpayer. I
passed, and was O.K.'d on the English language,
along with Mr. James Corbett, a prominent and
gentlemanly exponent of pugilism, who a while
later was roughly K.O.'d by Mr. Fitzsimmons.
   D.C. Seymour, a traveling lecturer, who reported
the incidents of his itinerary through Freethought,
challenged Putnam to a debate on Spiritualism be-
fore our society, but appeared not when came the
hour. Putnam made it a lecture. Not attacking
Spiritualism as a theory, a religion, or an inspira-
tion, he took the ground that its alleged facts were
so far from being demonstrated that Spiritualism
was not entitled to be called a science. Among
those present was an ingenious chap named Kel-
legg, who asked permission to demonstrate certain
510    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1890

of the facts which Mr. Putnam had set aside as un-
proved. Mr. Kellogg hoped that for the produc-
tion of harmonious conditions some Spiritualist
would assist. Our believing member, Mr. James
Battersby, consenting to the sacrifice, Mr. Kellogg
asked him to write a few questions on slips of pa-
per, or "ballots," and while he did so the ingenious
one went to the piano and played the music of a
hymn. When the ballots had been prepared, the
"medium" and sitter placed themselves at opposite
sides of a table on the platform, their fingers touch-
ing. Kellogg apparently picked up one of the close-
ly-folded slips of paper and held it against his head,
looking serious. Loud and seemingly causeless raps
were heard, then the voice of Kellogg reading the
message, which he passed to Putnam to be read to
the audience. Mr. Battersby attested its correct-
ness. Repeating the demonstration by request, Kellogg
sat at the table in such a position that per-
sons nearby could see his work. Instead of put-
ting the ballot to his head, as he appeared to do, he
dropped it into his left hand, unfolded it and held
it where he could read it. What Mr. Battersby
held down carefully under his fingers on the table,
supposing it to be another ballot, was a blank piece
of paper. Kellogg spoke of a local medium with
whom he had enjoyed a sitting that cost him a dol-
lar and a half. The medium was making $15 a day by means
of this self-same "demonstration."

    6 -- A JAMES LICK INCIDENT, AND OTHERS.

   The Nationalist movement, founded on Bellamy's
"Looking Backward," ceased not to spread, nor
1890]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         511

clubs to multiply. One of the principal clubs had
for president Mrs. Addie Ballou, a Spiritualist and
Freethinker who was active as member and speaker
at our society. Her daughter, Evangeline, who
sang in opera, came frequently to sing for us.
   A word more about Mrs. Ballou. She was an
artist and had painted a fairly good portrait of
Thomas Paine from her personal impression of
how the Author-Hero probably looked in life. Be-
ing acquainted with James Lick, she acted on his
suggestion and offered the portrait to the committee
in charge of the Centennial celebration, to be car-
ried in the parade with banners representing other
Revolutionary fathers. The committee, which may-
be never heard of Paine, or were against him if
they had, rejected her offering and she went back
to the Lick House to report. Lick was then suf-
fering from his last illness at this fine hostlery he
had built on Montgomery street. Said he: "Well,
if they will not march with Paine, they shall march
under him"; and he had a line led across the street
from his window to a window opposite, and ran the
painting out on it. The procession marched under-
neath.
   There were five Nationalist clubs in San Fran-
cisco in the spring of 1890. Henry George, then on
the coast, pronounced Nationalism a castle in the
air. Hardly a year later but one club remained,
and in place of the thousands who had thronged
Metropolitan Temple, there was sometimes no quo-
rum present. Dr. J.L. York had gone over to this
movement and to Spiritualism.
   The Blair Christian Education bill met its fate
512    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1890

in the Senate at Washington on March 20, 1890;
ayes 31, noes 37. The history of that bill, outside
the then current issues of The Truth Seeker, is
told in a book on "Religious Treason in the Ameri-
can Republic," by Franklin Steiner.
   The Protestants and Catholics at Edgerton, Wis-
consin, quarreling over the Bible in the schools,
carried their case to, the supreme court of the state,
which decided that any reading of the Bible neces-
sarily involved the reading of a sectarian doctrine.
Therefore Bible reading in the schools was uncon-
stitutional and prohibited. That was a famous de-
cision.
   There was in Boston an aged Freethinker named
Photius Fiske, some of whose many philanthropies
were occasionally discovered. He possessed wealth,
and pensioned a number of indigent persons, be-
sides making generous donations to Liberalism.
When he died on February 7, 1890, the Boston pa-
pers reported that he had left a great fortune and
had willed it to "Boston's deserving poor." He
may be named among Freethinking philanthropists
when Christians ask what Infidels have done for
charity.
   The first number of Freethought for the year
1890 announced the death of Mrs. Elizabeth H.
Church, aged 81 years, whose father had been a
consul in France, and her grandfather consul-gen-
eral at Lisbon during the administration of George
Washington. She made small bequests to Free-
thought activities and requested a secular funeral
conducted by Mr. Putnam. She had one relative,
the Rev. Edward B. Church of San Francisco, who
1890]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         513

faithfully carried out her will, attending the funeral
to hear Putnam's Freethought discourse, and hand-
ing me the amount of her bequest as soon as the
will had been probated. Mr. Church was a
preacher who did not preach, but held the position
of principal of the Irving Institute.
   Some books with a vogue came out that year:
"John Ward, Preacher," by Margaret Deland;
"Robert Elsmere," by Mrs. Humphry Ward;
"Story of an African Farm," by Olive Schreiner,
and "Caesar's Column," by Ignatius Donnelly. John
Wanamaker, postmaster-general, took the Sabbath
school view of books. He barred from the mails
Tolstoy's "Kreutzer Sonata," "An Actor's Wife,"
"The Devil's Daughter," "Thou Shalt Not," one of
the Albatross (Albert Ross) novels, and "Speaking
of Ellen" and "In Stella's Shadow," by authors
whose names have not endured. Joseph Britton,
fugleman of the Comstock Society, arrested Pat-
rick Farrelly, president of the American News
Company, for handling them. Farrelly was a Ro-
man Catholic, and made no defense, as a man of
principle should have done. He "Pulled" Lilian Le-
land's "Around the World Alone," after publish-
ing it, on complaint that, like Mark Twain's "Inno-
cents Abroad," it ridiculed sacred objects and pic-
tures in Palestine and Rome.

           7 -- THE CHINESE PRESS.

   At the corner of Washington and Dupont streets,
in San Francisco, a visiting Colorado editor and I
one day in 1890 discovered a printing-office like no
other in the country at that time, It was the office
514    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1890

of a Chinese newspaper. The tall hand-press, made
in Edinburgh long before the Chinese trade, was
surmounted by a dragon. A compositor at his la-
bors wore a yellow silk cloak with flowing sleeves,
and his blue trousers were tied about his ankles with
white tape. He wore a silk skullcap having a red
knot at the crown, thus contrasting strongly with
such members of the typographical union as I have
been privileged to know. The Chinese comp, it could
be seen, was one of the higher class, perhaps en-
titled to wear the mandarin-button, as in Franklin's
day the printer, being a gentleman, wore a sword
on dressy occasions. This compositor was sur-
rounded by sixty type cases, each divided into 196
compartments, or "boxes." Job cases held display
type awaiting sensational news, like the Second
Coming. The Chinese compositor, when we ob-
served him, happened to be distributing, or throw-
ing in his case. He carried his type in a stick, from
which he extracted it with nippers. Not beginning
with the end of a line and throwing back the letters
as they had been set, he rather planted himself in
front of a case and stayed there until all the char-
acters he had with him that belonged to this par-
ticular case were returned to it, when he proceeded
to another. He may have distributed as many in-
dividual pieces of type in an hour as it would take
an American printer five minutes to throw in. The
Chinaman's type-face was on a square body of soft
metal, bigger than pica. In his takes he got no
"fat," no poetry, no italics, and no punctuation. The
heading of the paper he produced, The Oriental
News, appeared on the last column of the last page,
1890]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         515

and looked like the tail of a kite. I saw not the
editor, but some of his copy hung on the hook. He
had written it with a small brush and a box of black-
ing. A stone-hand carried a form on a tin galley
held above his head like a tray borne by a waiter.
He put no trust in his lock-up; he slid the form
from the tin galley to the bed of the press, which
was of the "Washington" pattern, but older. I have
not watched the progress of the art preservative
among the Chinese. It may have advanced and left
this office in San Francisco in 1890 the last of its
kind.
   Our Freethought paper never looked like itself
unless it carried a glowing report of Putnam in the
lecture field. But one week when he was some-
where in Oregon, it contained only this card:

   DEAR GEORGE: I have struck it rich. Lectured three
times and am only fifty cents behind expenses. No post-
age stamps. Yours forever,               SAMUEL."

   Assuming it was my duty to write something for
him to keep up the enthusiasm, I added to his card:

   "The future gleams with promise, and the earth trembles
beneath the tread of the advancing hosts that fling to the
glistening sun the radiant banners of progress. Morn
spills its goblet of effulgence over the mountain tops; the
chariot of day mounts the heavens to high noon; the de-
clining orb in majestic splendor sinks below the western
clouds that he in banks of red and gold above the far
horizon's rim; the pale moon like a silver scimeter, cuts
through the sky's serene and vast abyss; the stars peep
brightly from the void of space; night stretches forth
her laden scepter o'er a slumbering world; and the Pil-
grim dreams of a postage stamp large as a quarter-section
of government land."
516    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1890

   We called Putnam the Secular Pilgrim. He went
wherever there was a call, and often had to take a
loss.
   From publications fifty years old readers dis-
cover how few of the lies told of Infidels in the
twentieth century are new. President Calvin Cool-
idge in 1927 made the unfounded statement that
doubters do not achieve. The San Francisco Moni-
tor in 1890 said: "The achievers of great things
have never been Infidels." At the New York Press
Club that year Ingersoll said: "And after all, gen-
tlemen, I call upon you to witness that there is
nothing so weak and helpless as the truth. She
goes into the arena without shield or spear. A
good healthy lie, clad in complete armor, with sword
and shield, does the business." Two of the prin-
cipal achievers in San Francisco, James Lick and
Adolph Sutro, were Infidels.
   Thus far I haven't mentioned Henry Frank,
known to all readers of The Truth Seeker. I sup-
ply the omission now from an article in Freethought
of July 19, 1890: "The Rev. Henry Frank of
Jamestown, N.Y., has been denounced as a heretic
and expelled from relationship with the Western
New York Association of Congregational churches."
The title of one of Mr. Frank's books, "Doom of
Dogma," stimulated many years ago the mind of
the Rev. Dr. A. Wakefield Slaten, who in 1922 was
also fired.

           8 -- PROPHETS OF DISASTER.

   Eighteen ninety was the year of many dire
predictions, forerunning a historic "messiah craze,"
1890]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         517

especially among the Amerinds. Mrs. Woodworth,
a revivalist, foresaw a tidal wave that was to drown
Oakland for its sins. In the August Arena, Dr.
Joseph Rodes Buchanan, Spiritualist and psychom-
etrist, in a twenty-page article on "The Coming
Cataclysm of America and Europe," laid down the
disastrous future for a period of nineteen years
and after. Dr. Buchanan saw the Republican party
hurled from power by the Democratic party, which
would make things worse, and then yield to the
Labor party with no better results. Meanwhile
the seasons would so mingle with one another as
to destroy all crops and make large regions of the
United States barren. He had the Atlantic sea-
board swept away from Maine to New Jersey, but
forgot to mention Galveston on the gulf. "The
Mississippi will be a scourge like the Yang-tse-
Kiang in China." Here he came near the truth,
since in 1927 the Mississippi-Kiang did overflow
its banks. For the Pacific coast Dr. Buchanan du-
plicated substantially the prediction of Mrs. Wood-
worth. Occasionally someone recalls Dr. Buchanan
and his prophecies. He has been dead many years
and his psychometry (soul-measuring) died at about
the same time. I saw him often in the early '80s
when he had an Eclectic School of Medicine in Liv-
ingston Place, on Stuyvesant Square, New York
City, and walked about the Park with Hope Whip-
ple, who I believe was his psychic.
   The former Reverend Hugh O. Pentecost was
now conducting his paper, The Twentieth Century,
as an Atheist and Materialist. He soon added
Anarchist and defied the world. He held a meeting
518    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1890

in Newark, N.J., on the 7th of November to com-
memorate the Chicago victims. It was stopped by
the police, who clubbed the members of the assem-
blage and locked up Lucy Parsons, widow of Al-
bert, hanged in '88.
   An absurd manifestation of Comstockery showed
itself among the principals of schools in Brooklyn,
who wished to have Longfellow's poem, "The
Building of the Ship," withdrawn from the text
books as a menace to the morals of their pupils.
Longfellow had been so indelicate as to call his
Ship a young bride and to represent the Ocean as
the ardent Swain. Quite lost to considerations of
modesty, he wrote:

      "And for a moment one might mark
       What had been hid'en in the dark.
       That the head of the maiden lay at rest,
       Tenderly on the young man's breast."

      "She starts-she moves-she seems to feel
       The thrill of life along her keel,
       And, spurning with her foot the ground,
       With one exulting, joyous bound,
       She leaps into the ocean's arms!"

      "Take her, O bridegroom, old and gray,
       Take her to thy protecting arms
       With all her youth and all her charms!"
      "How beautiful she is! How fair

       She lies within the arms that press
       Her form with many a soft caress
       Of tenderness and watchful care."

   Often in my youth had I read that poem uncon-
scious of its voluptuous theme. And at the Union
1890]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         519

Iron Works, out at the Potrero, I later had seen
ships launched without indulging an impure thought.
I did not even think of Longfellow's verse. One
day they put overboard the cruiser Charleston,
which instead of leaping into Old Ocean's eager
arms, moved out a little distance into the slough
and came to rest with her bottom in the mud, and
the groom, Old Ocean, miles away. On another
day it was the cruiser San Francisco they launched.
Substantially the same story; but as she slid down
the ways a 100 per cent American leaped upon the
timbers she had left and frantically waved the flag
of his country. His feet slipped their hold and he
went into the water after the bride. But the ex-
hibition was moral, even if the hands who pulled
him out were profane.

                 9 -- FOR THE RECORD.

   The American Secular Union held its fourteenth
annual congress in the Grand Opera House, Ports-
mouth, Ohio, October 21-23, 1890, the attendance
being large. "The opera house was packed," and
the old officers reelected -- Dr. R.B. Westbrook,
president; Miss Ida C. Craddock, secretary. The
congress discussed the policy of appointing a Field
Secretary and sending him forth on a salary to
work in the name of the Secular Union. The
choice fell on Charles Watts, editor of Secular
Thought of Toronto, Ont., to be confirmed when
the funds for his salary should be collected. Mr.
Watts already occupied the field, with half a dozen
other lecturers. Dr. E.B. Foote, Jr., questioned
520    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1890

the justice of paying a salary to one and lending
no assistance to the rest. Better, he thought, to
subsidize them all. Dr. Westbrook had stressed,
the necessity of appointing a man of the best moral
character. As all of them were of good moral char-
acter so far as known, this seemed a reflection on
the unchosen. The fund to provide a salary for
Mr. Watts failed to be subscribed.
   The birth of a son to George E. and Grace L.
Macdonald became known when the editor of The
Truth Seeker, November 29, published a letter from
me saying that I had made him an uncle and given
his nephew the name Eugene. My letter said:

   "The subject of these remarks [that is, the infant
Eugene] became a resident of California on the eighth of
the present, month of November, and, I am informed, fa-
vors his father in the matter of sex. He was too late for
the election this year, but will vote in 1912, provided he is
not himself a candidate for any high office. This native
son of the Golden West was recognized at once as Eugene
Leland Macdonald, although he has so far declined to ac-
knowledge his identity. The mother is happier than she
ever was before. She is also in her right mind, and I
would that I could say as much for the father, who has
been in a state of wild excitement since the eighth. In
acquiring a son I fear that I have lost many cherished
friends among my male acquaintances on account of my
inclination to thrust information upon them about the said
son. When they see me coming nowadays they make
haste to get upon the opposite side of the street or to con-
ceal themselves where I cannot find them. Even my friend
Burgman, the tailor with whom for many months I have
been accustomed to exchange theosophic thoughts, now
turns upon me a cold ear and a deaf shoulder, says good-
bye and skips around the corner at my approach. Putnam
hurrayed as I did at first, but he has now departed for
1890]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         521

Texas, and the time is near at hand when I shall have
to howl alone or hire somebody to shout with me. I shall,
be pleased if you or any of the boys in The Truth Seeker
office will kindly make a little noise on my account. When
you see Counsellor Sherman and Harry Thomas, convey
the tidings to them. We were young together ere wives
and families had set their seal upon our brows. When we
all have scant soap-locks above our ears we will meet
again, and refer casually to the halcyon days of youth."

   The interested mother of the boy has preserved
a Swinburnian travesty with the suggested title
of An Infant Son-(net). It might be entitled "A
Burden of Paternity":

      "Lying asleep between the sheets of night,
        I heard a sound arise beside my bed,
        Faint first, but swelling as I lift my head;
      And growing fiercer till I strike a light
      It issues from a mouth not made to bite
        Nor yet articulate, but small and red,
        With voice imperative, which spoke and said
      I wist not what, save something to incite
      Me to a livelier motion, and I haste,
        Without formality of donning shoes
      Or coat, or vest, or any other clothes,
      To warm a jolt of milk, in toilet chaste,
        Which quickly in a bottle, I infuse,
        And thrust the same beneath that infant's nose."
   The Oregon State Secular Union, C. Beal, presi-
dent, and Kate Kehm,, secretary, called a conven-
tign to meet in New Orion Hall, Portland, October
11, 1890. Putnam attended and reported that it
"added a bright page to the history of Free-
thought."
   For all that California had no Sunday Law and
made a pretense of taxing churches, San Francisco
was afflicted with the same meanly pious gang of
522    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1890

officials that get into places of authority in other
cities. I have said that the trustees of James
Lick's various bequests, taking a salary from the
estate of the Infidel, refused to let the Freethought
Society occupy Pioneer Hall, which his money
built, but they rented the front store in the build-
ing to a liquor dealer, who named his place the
Pioneer Saloon. I have told how the pope's Irish
on the police force clubbed off the street an old man
who sold our papers. The press was not much to
rely upon in 1890; we could get no notice taken of
meetings that drew sometimes as many as eight
hundred or one thousand attendants. To help news-
dealers sell Freethought, I printed posters they
might hang in conspicuous places. On their own
authority the police, being Irish and Catholic, or-
dered these taken in, although they bore nothing
more offensive than "Read Freethought: 'To Plow
is to Pray; To Plant is to Prophesy, and the Har-
vest Answers and Fulfills. -- Ingersoll." Catholic
roughs defaced the poster fastened to a board in
front of the office, and threw the board into the
street. There were more papists in San Francisco
than in any other city of its size, and they got the
political jobs. Ward politicians, controlling the
schools, made the teachers pay for appointments,
in money or otherwise. One teacher who had paid
in money and then lost the appointment, exposed
the system; and those that had paid in another
way and been cheated, naturally had nothing to
say. Men were placed on the school board who
were not fit for the police force. One of these
whom I met personally was a regular rounder, and
1890]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         523

I heard him boast of the perquisites of his job. I
exclaimed somewhat loudly in the paper against the
suppression of Freethought by "office-holding poli-
ticians ready and seeking to be debauched by coin
or concupiscence." The old part of the city con-
tained a nunnery called Visitation Convent. One
could learn from persons of long residence in San
Francisco that the priests and some laymen had car-
ried keys to its doors and lodged their mistresses
there -- a practice that might not have been wholly
discontinued.
   The local Comstock agent, C.R. Bennett, patron
of Clark Braden, tried so many times to win his
cases by lying that the courts ceased to act on his
testimony. "He has been proved to be a man who
cannot be believed under oath," said Prosecutor
Mott, and Mott refused to prosecute a case with
Bennett in court as witness.

                      ****     ****

            Reproducible Electronic Publishing
                   can defeat censorship.

       Bank of Wisdom, Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201

                      ****     ****
                  CHAPTER XXIV

 1 -- my PARTNER REPULSES THE SABBATARIANS.

   THE religious element in California, as else-
where, was as unappreciative as it was un-
worthy of the free institutions, the gift of
a more honest generation, which the bigots with a
zest for persecution were preparing to slaughter.
They had picked the free Sunday for their first vic-
tim. As no law exempted church property or par-
sons from taxation, it might be supposed that re-
lease from the civic duty of helping to support the
state that protected them would be the first concern
of the ecclesiastical parasites. But the nominal
taxes, which in so many instances were never paid,
worried them less than their lost grip on Sunday
liberty. They could enjoin the collector of taxes
by pleading oppression, or practice on the city offi-
cials to have their ratables overlooked, but they
could hardly put barbers, bootblacks, or merchants
in jail for Sunday work without some sort of statute
to plead in their complaint. Therefore, in order to
procure such a law the ministers formed a Sabbath
Union, prepared a bill, and sent their secretary and
several assistants to argue its passage before the
joint committee of the legislature at Sacramento.
Advices from the capital foretold a hearing, in
February, 1891, when the advocates of the Sunday
bill "expected to have it their own way." But to the
displeasure if not dismay of the holy men, the
Freethinkers sent Putnam, and the Spiritualists
                       524
1891]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         525

Addie Ballou, to speak for the opposition. And,
unexpectedly, the bill was for the time defeated.
Mrs. Ballou told me that Putnam did it, and gave
so lively a description of the scene in the Senate
chamber that I forthwith celebrated the victory in
a poem of sixteen stanzas. I quote the opening one
and some of the others:

The Christian hosts had massed their force in Sacramento
      town,
And they had brought great orators of merit and renown;
And they had vowed a Sunday law they straightway would
      enact,
And all the Senate chamber with their followers was
      packed.

   A half dozen stanzas give the argument of the
Reverend Thompson, secretary of the Sabbath Un-
ion, and introduce Putnam and what he had to re-
mark about the proposed law.

He said it had its origin along the pagan line,
And was imposed upon the world by Emperor Constantine;
And that when we observe the day, as under law we must,
We strike our colors to a knave and trail them in the dust.

The Fathers of the nation never dreamt of Sabbath laws,
And in all the Constitution there was not a Sabbath clause.
The gonfalons of ancient Rome might make a Christian
      flag,
But he would not consent to march behind a pagan rag.

He's stood beneath the Stars and Stripes upon the battle
      field,
And while that was triumphant he did not propose to yield.
Freethought, religious liberty! was his motto in this
      fight,
And Sunday laws he held to be subversive of his right.
526    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1891

When Putnam first began his speech, he scarcely had a
      friend
In all that vast assemblage, but when he reached the end,
So persuasive was his eloquence, so righteous was his cause,
From gallery and chamber rose the salvos of applause.

Oh, there are victories of peace, and victories of war,
And there are victories that hold the whole great world
      in awe --
Great triumphs for the men who win, aye for the men who
      fall,
But a victory for Freethought is the greatest of them all.

   Putnam rightly estimated the value of the tem-
porary success. "The snake is scotched, not killed,"
he wrote. "The combat will be renewed. But I
hope that at every session of the legislature there
will be a debate like this. It will educate the people.
It will set even the Christians to thinking. Agita-
tion is the best thing for progress." When the
combat was renewed, Put was not there to engage
the enemy, and the ministers got their Sunday law.
Henceforth there could be no more sociables and
dances at the Freethought Society Sunday night to
disturb the faker Dowie. Malignity, spite, and
stupidity, on which Sunday laws are begotten and
thrive, had given the joy-killers their way. And
long they have had exemption too. The passage of
a law making legal deadheads of them was hardly
more than a ratification of an existing condition. It
legitimatized the skinning of the taxpayers and of
the treasury by the churches, which they had been
doing unlawfully hitherto.
1891]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         527

             2 -- RHYMES THAT RETURNED.

   Of my rhymes, some that I considered the neat-
est were not so esteemed by anybody else, and they
never got farther than the columns of Freethought.
Others went about everywhere that papers like
Freethought were circulated. In quoting my verse,
then, I choose only such pieces as had the approval
of reproduction elsewhere. There was one about
1890 that came back to me in the exchanges. It
bore the title "Christian Faith" and evidently was
a reply to a religious rhymer.

      There is no Christian faith:
      A man may say all increase is of God,
      But he who plants not seed beneath the  clod
            Reaps barren sod.

      That man who hastes, when clouds are in the sky,
      To house his grain, knows that no God on high
            Will keep it dry.

      The mariner seeks Heaven's aid no more,
      But life-preservers, when the breakers roar
            On leeward shore.

      "The wind is tempered," says the Christian seer,
      Yet prudent herdsman scarce are known to shear
            At fall of year.

      We go, to rest with prayer when day is o'er
      But seldom lock our sense in sleep before
            We've locked the door.

      Believers rear their temples high and broad,
      And then attach, not having trust in God,
            A lightning-rod.
528    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1891

      And who has read of flaming holocaust,
      Nor noted, touching churches that were lost,
            "Insured for cost"?

      Whoever for another day prepares,
      And guards 'gainst dangers coming unawares,
            God's word forswears.

      He rises from his knees when prayers are said,
      And, shunning Heaven, to whom he prayed,
            Seeks human aid.

      There is no Christian faith;
      Men with their lips may trust a God on high,
      And by their every act their word deny,
            I know not why.

   There were diversions occasionally, or they
might be created. A subscriber in British Columbia
discovered some lines of verse which he sent me
saying that he thought them worthy of a place in
Freethought, but if I did not agree with him, I
might return them. They were as follows:

      We stand by the graves of the old-time gods
            Who sleep with their prophets and seers,
      Whose crowns and kingdoms and scepters and rods
            Have passed with the vanishing years.
      And we know they are gone, and that even so
      Shall ours and the gods of our children go.

      Yet man shall abide, though his gods be dead
            And he bury them one by one;
      He shall witness the last of the triple head,
            The Father and Spirit and Son;
      And shall cry as his deities disappear,
      "The gods have departed, but I am here."
1891]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         529

      We stand in the valley, or on the hill,
            Or move by the rolling stream;
      And we query: "All these, are they older still
            Than the gods of the prophet's dream?"
      Vale, river, and mountain as one reply:
      "Before Jehovah was am I."

   I sent the poem back to my correspondent telling
him I thought it rather poor, the theme not being
original and the versification and rhythm faulty. He
replied that of course he respected my judgment,
but still had confidence in his own; and, another
thing, he believed that our Freethought papers
would please their readers by publishing plenty of
good poetry. Editors arrogated to themselves more
than was warranted, he believed, by their qualifi-
cations as critics. He was sending the poem again,
and hoped I would find room for it, not alone to
humor him but at the same time to compliment the
unknown author. An adroit letter and the publica-
tion of the poem pacified him. To excuse the liber-
ty I had taken in so freely criticising the verses, I
said I had written them myself in 1879, twelve
years before, which was the fact.

   James Barry of the San Franscisco Star, who
had suffered imprisonment for publishing his opin-
ion of a judge, went to Sacramento (1890) to argue
before the Senate Judiciary Committee in favor of
a bill designed to take from judges the power to in-
flict fines and imprisonment, with no trial of the ac-
cused by jury. When addressing the committee he
was interrupted by the chairman, a man named
Sprague, who asked with sarcasm if Mr. Barry
530    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1891

"gave the committee no credit for possessing in-
telligence." Mr. Barry requested that he might
be excused from answering immediately, as it was a
question yet to be determined. He said that the com-
mittee appeared to be lacking in something, but he
had not yet made up his mind whether it was intel-
ligence or honesty. He then resumed, and soon
came to the reading of an extract from Ingersoll
on the matter of contempt of court. The chairman
again interrupted him, this time to inquire: "Who is
this man Ingersoll you are quoting?" Then Barry
stopped and announced that he was ready to answer
the preceding question concerning the intelligence
of the committee. His mind was now made up. If
that committee was fairly represented by its chair-
man, and if the chairman did not know who Inger-
soll was, then the committee did not possess in-
telligence enough to carry thistles to a jackass.

              3 -- FOR THE RECORD.

      Moses Harman, editor of Lucifer, Valley Falls,
Kan., who had been arrested in 1887 for publishing
a coarsely-written letter on marital abuses, was sen-
tenced in April, 1890, to serve five years in the
penitentiary and to pay a fine of three hundred dol-
lars, and was taken to Lansing, on May 4. Ezra H.
Heywood, editor of The Word, Princeton, Mass.,
appears to have courted arrest by publishing in-
dicted matter from Harman's paper. He got it. E.
C. Walker, who had separated himself from Lucifer
and started Fair Play, later removed to Sioux City,
Ia., in order to pursue another policy than that of
1891]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         531

using words morally certain to provoke arrest. I
maintained the not original position that these ven-
turesome men who drew the attention of the sadists
to themselves were buffers for the rest of us. Any-
how their persecution marked the limits of safety
for us. B.R. Tucker of Liberty took a little dif-
ferent view. He said (I quote from memory) that
by putting themselves recklessly where they needed
defense, they halted the advance and sapped the
strength and resources of the main army of prog-
ress, which was under no obligation to halt or turn
aside for their relief.
   Throughout the year 1891 The Truth Seeker
agitated for the Sunday opening of the World's
Fair in Chicago. Sixteen Liberal societies pub-
lished notices of regular meetings. In Tennessee
a farmer named R.M. King, Seventh-day Advent-
ist, of Obion county, was prosecuted for plowing
on Sunday. Convicted of Sabbath-breaking by the
county court, he took his case to the supreme court
of his state, where the sentence was confirmed;
he then employed Don M. Dickinson, former U.S.
postmaster-general, to carry it to the United States
Supreme Court, alleging that the conviction was
contrary to the Bill of Rights. In August The
Truth Seeker said: "Only the merest outline of the
opinion [by Justice Hammond] has reached the
public, but it appears to be in keeping with our
United States Court decisions, that the United
States constitutional amendments are binding on
Congress only, and not upon state legislatures. The
Justice ruled that King was convicted under due
process of Tennessee law, and that it was not the
532    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1891

province of the federal court to review the case."
   Hugh O. Pentecost, who for the past few years
had been lecturing against the state, now took up
the practice of the law. Asked his reason for doing
so, he replied that the class people for whom he
had been suffering martyrdom were not worth it.
"They are wedded to the clergymen and the poli-
ticians," he said. "They will follow a black gown
and a brass band into slavery, and they enjoy their
servitude. They like to be humbugged, robbed,
and ruled, and they love the men who humbug, rob,
and rule them. When I did not know this I was
willing to suffer, if need be, for the working people,
Now that I know it, I am not."
   Liberal lecturers in the field and reporting to
The Truth Seeker at the end of 1891 were, first and
foremost, Putnam; then, Dr. Henry M. Parkhurst,
John R. Charlesworth, C.B. Reynolds, Mrs. Mat-
tie P. Krekel, W.S. Bell, and John E. Remsburg.
Henry Frank, lately fired by the Congregationalists
of Jamestown, N.Y., announced himself ready to
found the New Society of Human Progress and
preach the New Liberalism. He has continued to
do such preaching off and on up to the time of this
writing.
   In the line of duty during these closing years of
my stay in San Francisco I had to record that Mrs.
Annie Besant, once rational, had gone theosophist;
that instead of emphasizing the neomalthusian doc-
trine taught in her "Law of Population" she now
insisted that to be perfect one must be sexually in-
ert;
   That Edward Bellamy, publishing his "New Na-
1891]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         533

tion," preached the second coming of the spirit of
Christ, incarnated, one inferred, in the person of
Mr. Bellamy, while Nationalism was the name of
the new dispensation;
   That the always hostile Rev. Owen, once
editor of the Spiritualist paper, The Golden Gate,
when he received his editorial articles by with-
drawing himself from disturbing influences and al-
lowing thoughts to flow into his mind, now con-
ducted the aggressive Better Way in San Jose and
made war on a brother editor who accused him of
leaving his hat and shoes behind when interrupted
in a pastoral call;
   That Col. M.E. Billings, compiler of the original
edition of "Crimes of Preachers," had been prose-
cuted for shooting somebody and had made a pro-
fession of Christian belief;
   That Tolstoy's "Kreutzer Sonata" had been vin-
dicated as mailable and that Wanamaker repudiated
all responsibility for giving the book a boom by or-
dering it thrown out;
   That the trustees of Kaweah colony, established
in Tulare county to exemplify Nationalism, had
been arrested for poaching on government land
(probably a bit of persecution).

   The Liberals of Oregon rallied at a good con-
vention at Portland, October 3-5, and elected J.
Henry Schroeder of Arago, president. The Ameri-
can Secular Union Congress was held in Industrial
Hall, Philadelphia, October 31 (1891). The edi-
tor of The Truth Seeker headed his report of it
"I said in My Haste, All Men are Liars," and in his
534    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1891

opening sentence pronounced this "the shortest and
meanest congress" ever held by the organization.
Thirty-four persons entitled to vote attended, about
one-half of them, including the whole Truth Seeker
office force, being from New York. President
Westbrook tried to control the proceedings in such
a way as to give no offense to the clergy. The Free
thinkers were paying all the expenses and wanted
some Freethought remarks, which Dr. Westbrook
held to be improper. The delegates took counsel
with one another and decided to move the head-
quarters to Chicago. To that end they elected Judge
C.B. Waite president and Mrs. M.A. Freeman
secretary. Dr. Westbrook had spent something like
$5,000 of the Union's funds on a Manual of Moral-
ity. The New York Independent, then a religious
paper, reviewed the work as follows:

      "'Conduct as a Fine Art,' by N.P. Gilman and E.P.
Jackson, is a book composed of the two essays which
shared equally the prize of $1,000 offered by a Philadel-
phia organization for the best manual to aid teachers in
public schools to instruct children in morals without dab-
bling in religious details. We heartily recommend the
volume as one to which the average school teacher can
turn with certainty of gain. Both essays are clear and
forcible; the one by Mr. Gilman is strikingly so."

   The essayists are said to have been liberal clergy-
men. Mr. Gilman referred his readers to the
Apostle Paul, who refers his to God, said The
Truth Seeker, and assumed the immortal soul of
man as a certainty. The book had no useful future.
1891]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         535

           4 -- THE PASSING OF VETERANS.

   Death took its toll of veteran Freethinkers. On
January 10, 1891, J.P. Mendum, proprietor of the
Boston Investigator, died at his home at Melrose
Highlands, Mass., in his 80th year. Mr. Mendum
was born in Kennebunk, Me., July 7, 1811. As
Abner Kneeland's successor in managing The In-
vestigator, he enlarged the field of the paper, and
published the works of the great Freethinkers --
Voltaire, D'Holbach, Paine, Robert Taylor, Volney.
He proposed the Paine Memorial Hall in Appleton
street, raised the money with which it was erected,
and owned it at the time of his death. He left a
son Ernest (born 18-3) who inherited the hall and
The Investigator, which he conducted until it was
consolidated with The Truth Seeker in 1904. Er-
nest disposed of his interest in the hall to Ralph
Chainey, son of George.
   Distinctly remembered events attended the re-
ceipt of news in San Francisco that Charles Brad-
laugh was dead, January 30, 1891. The following
paragraph recounts my participation in the publish-
ing of the startling intelligence:
   "It is a sign of enterprise in a daily paper to pub-
lish, on the day following his decease, the likeness
and biography of a distinguished man. It was the
enterprise of the San Francisco Examiner, which
never spares its employees on great occasions, that
caused a reporter of that paper to extract me from
my bed on the night of Friday, January 30, in or-
der that I might provide him with a portrait and
sketch of Charles Bradlaugh. I made the nocturnal





                       @@@@
















                  CHARLES BRADLOUGH

   This is believed to be Bradlough's best portrait. It was
submitted to The Truth Seeker by his daughter Hypatia
Bradlough Bonner for an anniversary edition, September
25, 1909.

1891]         FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         537

visit to the office, hunted up the etching and the
facts, and sent the reporter upon his way rejoicing,
Otherwise he would not have gone back to The Ex-
aminer office, such being his orders. The paper
contained the next day the only accurate likeness
and biography of Bradlaugh published in the city.
The Post, having no picture of Bradlaugh, pub-
lished Ingersoll's likeness with Bradlaugh's name."
   The Examiner appreciated my assistance enough
to give me its cut of Bradlaugh to publish in Free-
thought.
   There are biographies of Bridlafigh in all the
encyclopedias. He was born in East London, Sept.
22) 1833; became a great orator and established The
National Reformer, 1860, on the staff of which
were employed Bernard Shaw, John M. Robertson
James Thomson, Annie Besant, and Bradlaugh's
daughter, Hypatia. He was many times elected to
Parliament, being a member at the time of his
death. He was a great man -- the English compeer
of Ingersoll.
   In June Mary A. Leland, having enjoyed and
suffered a life of near sixty-eight years that cov-
ered all the experiences of wife, mother, and grand-
mother, with the trials of a reformer besides, said
good-bye to all and closed her eyes not to open
them again. We held the funeral in the house
where she had lived, at Filbert and Taylor streets,
with the family and the near neighbors by the cof-
fin while Evangeline Ballou sang an evening song
and the venerable Thomas Curtis, himself not hav-
ing far to go, spoke the few words the occasion re-
538    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1891

quired. A memoir of Mrs. Leland, her personal
history as Mary Ann (Brush) Torbett, so long ago
that no one now living can remember the woman
reformer of that name, would make a better biog-
raphy than you could find by looking at a hundred
that have been written.
   I went to the office the day of the funeral and
came to the house in the afternoon to attend the ser-
vices. The family help, according to a San Fran-
isco custom, was a Japanese boy; and this particu-
lar one, for certain advantages which thereby ac-
crued to him, had joined the Salvation Army. The
Jap had a surprise for me, for when I went up the
steps he opened the door in a very formal way, and
displayed himself in the full uniform of a Salva-
tion Army warrior. Why he donned that rig for
the occasion of a funeral I was never able to make
up my mind. He may have thought the services re-
ligious, and hence calling for a religious garb, or he
may have noticed the absence of religious prepara-
tions, and decided to add the missing touch him-
self.
   To the list of deaths in 1891, Col. John R. Kelso,
of Longmont, Colorado, contributed his. Colonel
Kelso was a man of great mental and physical en-
ergy, a tall, soldierly man, with a limp from a bullet
in his leg, who had been in the Civil War and in
Congress. As I remember seeing him, he always
wore a high hat and a ribbon in his buttonhole.
Seventeen years after he was born, near Columbus,
Ohio, Kelso was a teacher in the public schools
and a licensed exhorter of the Methodist church.
His mind was analytical. Analysis may be said to
18911        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         539

have been his middle name. As a preacher he ap-
plied it to the Bible, and came near committing
suicide when he found the holy book wouldn't
stand it. He quit exhorting, but kept on teaching
until 1885 -- thirty-seven years. Then he published
his books -- Analysis of Deity, of the Bible, of the
Devil, and finally, of Government -- this last un-
finished at the time of his death, January 26, 1891.
He had a wife who helped him in his literary labors,
and who adored him; so that his life was a great
success.
   The world lost James Parton, beloved of all
Freethinkers, October 17, 1891, in Newburyport,
Mass., where he had lived since 1875, and wrote
his life of Voltaire. He
was born in Canterbury,
England, February 8,
1822. After coming to
New York at five years
and receiving his educa-
tion here, he began
teaching and pursued
that calling until he took
the editorship of The
Ladies' Home Journal, a
very important periodi-
cal of its day. He adopt-
ed the profession of let-
ters, lectured on literary
and political topics, and became one of America's
biographers of the first class. In 1854 he married
the lady, then a widow of the name of Eldredge,
who was born Sarah Willis, a sister of the poet N.
540    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1891

P. Willis and known throughout the country as
"Fanny Fern." She died in 1872, and three years
later he married her daughter, Miss Ellen Eldredge,
by her previous husband. Parton was a fearless
man. He wrote energetically in defense of D.M.
Bennett, and sent The Truth Seeker a money con-
tribution every month of 1880-'81 that its editor
was in prison.
   Dr. J.R. Monroe died November 9, 1891. The
doctor had been in journalism for many years. He
started the Rockford Herald in 1855, moved it to
Seymour, Ind., in 1857 and changed its name to the
Seymour Times, and on removing it to Indian-
apolis in 1881 called it The Ironclad Age, which it
remained until his death and its later absorption by
The Truth Seeker. He had an honorable, not to
say distinguished, record as an army doctor dur-
ing the Civil War. A eulogist states that he stood
at the head of his profession as a physician. Dr.
Monroe, born about 1825, was a native of Mon-
mouth county, New Jersey, of Revolutionary stock.
His paper, The Ironclad Age, was a great favorite
with Infidels.

         5 -- ACCEPTING THE INEVITABLE.

   If there had been enough interested Freethinkers
on the coast to support a paper by renewing their
subscriptions year after year, I should be there now
editing the weekly Freethought; but it appeared
there were only about two-thirds of the required
number. The receipts and Putnam's earnings paid
the paper's bills, but left out the editor. Putnam
1891]        FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         541

had earned and turned in some $3,500 in cash. I
had put in only my time. He more than once mur-
mured that if he had known the difficulties and the
unrewarded work of getting out a paper, he wouldn't
have proposed starting one, nor have lured me to
the coast. He was past fifty years: it was time to
collect for his old age. The expert accountant put
on the books discovered that subscribers owed two
thousand dollars, and the company owed, say, $200.
   The meeting decided that were the friends of the
paper to be told that I needed a salary they would
subscribe it. I protested that I had a good trade,
was in the best of health, and capable of earning an
independent living. Besides, there was an attrac-
tive job, down at the water-front, loading angle-
iron on a scow. However, against my vote the
proposition carried that a salary fund be solicited in
my behalf. A considerable amount of money came
in. I agreed, nevertheless, with one man who wrote
that if I could not make a go of it editing a paper
I had better try something else. That looked like
a sound economic principle. I therefore resigned.
The company appointed Putnam as editor. I took
a job setting type, but continued my contributions
to the paper. Frank L. Browne assumed the man-
agement. Browne thought the paper could be made
to pay. Putnam took the editorship, but was obliged
to keep the lecture appointments he had made. In
one of my contributed editorials I reviewed with
approval an article by Herbert Spencer on Nation-
alism. Mr. Browne in the next number apologized
for the editorial, being convinced that the hope of
the race lay in Socialism. I am giving only an im-
542    FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT         [1891

pression of the situation. There was no quarrel, no
warm words. But I never could write Socialist ar-
ticies. If a Socialist policy would be helpful to the
paper, I was in no position to object.
   I have an idea that 1889-'91 were years of failing
prosperity in California. Men who had been flush
of money found themselves getting short of that
commodity and were apologetic about it. Papers
without capital discontinued. Unemployment pre-
vailed and the population drifted; old friends dis-
appeared, went away in search of work, and new
ones were few. Subscribers wrote that while our
struggling paper enlisted their full sympathy, we
must not forget that they had their own troubles.
They could no longer raise the money for lectures,
which had been so easy a year or two before. That
card of Putnam's that I have quot