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