The
Torch of Reason
Or
Humanity's God
The Torch of Reason
Cloth bound, 12 illustrations, per copy, $1.00
By mail or Express, $1.20
January, 1912
The Torch of Reason, Publishers
3944 Spring Grove Avenue
Cincinnati, Ohio
COPYRIGHT, 1910 AND 1911,
FOR THE AUTHOR.
COPYRIGHT, 1911,
BY FREDERICK FORREST BERRY.
COPYRIGHT, 1912,
BY FREDERICK FORREST BERRY.
All rights reserved and fully protected by law, including
foreign translations, picture rights, and play rights, by author.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. WOLVES 1
II. THE TALE OF AN UNTOLD LOVE 24
III. THE EVER PRESENT MENACE 60
IV. THE LAST LEAF 100
V. THE SON OF JASON SANDS 144
VI. REASON AND A STONE 188
VII. MIND THE MASTER 232
VIII. THE JUVENILE DEMOCRACY 270
IX. FOUR YEARS AROUND THE WORLD 314
X. THE RAWHIDE THONG 343
XI. THE SURRENDER OF THE FROST KING . . . 388
XII. NOT EVEN IN THE GRAVE. . . 441
ILLUSTRATIONS
CHAPTER I.
"A Giant Shadow, Bended with the Weight of
an Eighty Pound Pack, Stopped in the
Snow and Listened ! " 1
' ' For Each Pair of Leaping, Snapping Jaws that
Came, He Sent Back a Dead Wolf" 20
CHAPTER II.
"And When a Second Later the Little Savage
Carbine 'Spank Spank Spanked' Into the
Frosty Aphony, it Spit out the Lives of
Three* Great Husky Timber Wolves" 28
CHAPTER III.
"To All but Jason Sands the Trip Down the
Wild Yukon was a Delightful and Romantic
Caprice" 84
CHAPTER IV.
"He Gazed Reverently Upon the Two Faces". . . 114
CHAPTER V.
"The Bawd-attired Mistress of a Screw-tailed
Terrier Fed that $10,000 Beast Sponge-cake
and Cream from Her Own Plate" 184
CHAPTER VI.
"Swish! The Whip Cut the Air. The Bully
Came To Four Hours Later in the Hos-
pital" 230
V
vi ILLUSTRATIONS.
CHAPTER VII.
"He Found the Histories So-called Simply
the Printed Accounts of Bloody Deeds of
War Heroes!" 242
CHAPTER VIII.
"An Exquisitely Beautiful Young Girl in
Robin 's-egg Blue and with Corn-silk Blond
Hair, Advanced and Pinned a Luscious Red
Rose on the Lapel of His Son's Coat, and
the Crowd Went Wild!" 280
CHAPTER IX.
"At Full Speed Straight Into a Mountain of
Ice!" 342
CHAPTER X.
"You May Take Your Gold-plated Religion and
Go to Hell! I'm A-goin' Home and I
Ain't A-comin' Back!" 378
CHAPTER XII.
' ' And Where the Frog-pond Chorus Rose Dream-
ily O'er the Sweet-scented Woodland as it
Had Done for Erma and Jason in the Days
of Auld Lang Syne, She Said, 'Yes, Dear
One,' When He Whispered, 'Ray' " 476
" Verily, What Prof iteth It?"
* Where this asterisk (*) appears, preceding a
paragraph in the llth chapter of this story, it indi-
cates that the entire paragraph so marked is one of
several whole paragraphs arbitrarily striken out of
the magazine serial, without the author's knowledge
or permission, and subsequent to his having read
and edited the galley proofs. These paragraphs, to-
gether with all the other parts censored and omitted,,
incorrectly printed and otherwise mutilated and
discredited, I have taken great pains to revise,
correct and incorporate in this book. Herein you
will find THE TORCH OF REASON as originally written
and edited by myself, including both verse and
prose composition.
F. F. BERRY.
vii
"I Will Be True."
Were I to let this opportunity pass without avail-
ing myself of it to thank those faithful comrades
who have stood staunchly by me through this long,
painful travail, I would be an ingrate indeed.
Had those for whom I have labored proven true
to their trust with me and the cause that shall have
my life, this book would long ago have been printed
and read by thousands, and thousands of new con-
verts might thereby have been added to our army
of peace and love. But I forgive my enemies, for
they are the product of the System, and a traitorous
environment having turned their hearts to stone,
they are more to be pitied than censured, and they
will find greater punishment than I could wish them,
in the canker of their own cowardice that will never
cease to eat into their poor misguided souls.
Those who have tried to help THE TORCH OF
REASON are many, and those who have helped are
many more. The army is increasing and will rise
like an ocean tide until it shall prove what this
book foretells. All these heroic comrades I thank
and appreciate, especially do I wish to thank my
good friend and comrade, Peter Herbert, of Cincin-
nati, through whose unselfish generosity and finan-
cial backing it becomes possible for me to bring out
this volume. After all others had failed me, Com-
rade Herbert stepped into the gap and supplied the
cash with which to bring out the first edition.
The illustrations in this book were created for the
author by our rising young artist, Roy Legault, a
graduate of the G. H. Lockwood School of Art, Kala-
mazoo, Michigan. Any patronage extended to this
struggling young genius will, in addition, be a favor
conferred on our entire movement. His address is
2073 East Washington St., Portland, Oregon.
F. F. B.
Warning !
(It is our plain duty to push this book and to do
it NOW ! There is a cloud of war's red hell gather-
ing over this fair land. It is not too late to dispel
it will you do your duty ? Will you sell ONE copy
of this book?)
We warn you that this book is a revelation. It
is not only a revelation, but it is a revolution! It is
an iconoclast. It is a pillar of oasian fire, burning
like a volcano alone in a desert of midnight black-
& Every sentence is a meteor. Every paragraph
is a meteoric shower, and every chapter is a volume
of life history, throbbing with the surcharge of
realism and truth.
Many books have gone before; but this book
blazes a new trail. This book is not an advocate
of the paliatives of reform. It advocates, not
reform, but new form. There are no soup-house
mediatives advocated here. The "full dinner-pail"
and "patched pants" philosophers will find cloudy
weather in the perspective of this literary Vesuvius.
The war fiend and battle hero will crumple up and
pale before the continuous cannonade of this re-
sistless intellectual Krupp.
Till ess you are prepared for shocks don't read
this terrific book. Unless you can stand a jolt take
no chances with its logic. If you are bound to read
only what the race has been fed on and starved on
since the invention of fire, turn not another page,
lest you violate the injunctions of the dead and
desecrate the codes and screeds of a civilization
x WARNING.
which nested in trees and caves. If you read this
book it will open your eyes.
This creative volume is not a Billiken of "things
as they are." It is not a confirmation, but a
repudiation! It follows naught, but leads all. It is
a god of things, not as they are, but as they ought
to be. It smashes the idols. It strikes down the
Golden Calf. It blasts the dollar sign. It cauterizes
the guillotine and torture chamber, and strikes off
the fetters of superstition and fear.
The author of this book is a man. If you admire
a coward you will not fall in love with him. He
has dared to have his say. He has had the courage
to stand alone. He has spoken out from the wilder-
ness, and his voice shall be heard forsooth from the
very housetops. He has placed man above the
dollar. He has painted from life. His models have
lived and breathed and suffered the long travail
that portends the birth of the new world that is to
be. This artist's brush is a flaming torch, and his
soul is a fountain of love-fire unquenchable and
xhaustless.
This mighty book speaks the truth. If you love
a lie read no further. If you prefer your chains lay
it down now. If you are satisfied with life as you
see it, then you are not ready for THE TORCH OF
REASON, and its light of truth would only blind you.
This book will awaken you from your fanciful dream
of Fairyland to a realization of your plain duty to
your fellow men. But if you yearn for industrial
freedom; if you love liberty; if you crave justice
for all human society, then read this wonderful book
and arm yourself with knowledge and reason and
fit yourself for the change that is at our doors, the
change that shall mean peaice and love and joy for
all mankind.
THE PUBLISHERS.
Author's Apology !
If I must write a preface, let me tell a story a
true story. Personally, I do not like prefaces. They
remind me of index fingers on guide-boards, and
explanatory footnotes and artists' "keys," by
means of which is supposed to be conveyed intelli-
gence to the effect that, "this be a hoss."
So, I promise to write this foreword and I trust
you will agree to forgive me, not for what I have
said in the book, but for what I am going to say
in this that you are now reading.
I remember the first Fourth of July I ever
"had." It was away back there on the dear hills
of old New Hampshire when I was but five years
old. They brought me home from the village a toy
pistol that cost a cent, together with a box of paper
caps which cost another cent! That made my first
Independence celebration cost two cents!
Going some in "patriotism," says you a whole
two cents' worth for a whole year! But in those
days patriotism was cheap and enjoyed by all. That
was before "patriotism" became an auxiliary to the
trusts.
I never forgot that Fourth of July celebration.
We lived many miles from the village, and when
the cannon boomed down there, I would fire off my
pistol! The cannon went "boom," and my pistol
went "putt!"
xii AUTHOR'S APOLOGY.
I have that ent pistol still ; and whenever I want
an "inspiration," I get out that ancient toy grin
and think.
You may not believe it, but that little cent toy
pistol is the thing which inspired me to write this
book.
Maybe I didn't feel some brave when I answered
that cannon's "boom" with my little "putt!" But
then, I was only a boy, and you must forgive me !
The years rolled on. I grew out of the "putting"
stage and then I became a Socialist. One day I was
looking at that little toy pistol, all rusty, where it
had once been painted red, and no longer capable
even of a "putt," and while my thoughts were sadly
harking back over the painful years to that two-cent
Fourth of July celebration of the long ago, I re-
solved to take a shot at Capitalism, the historic foe
of Humanity.
This time it was my determination to "boom"
instead of "putting." If I have succeeded, I am
sorry that I made no greater noise. And if I have
"putted" instead of "booming," I regret that I did
not use a Gattling-gun or a thirteen-inch cannon,
both of which will shortly be used on us unless we
wake up and get together before 1914.
There are both "putters" and "boomers;" and
if I am still in the former class, I apologize for not
having been a better student in my master's school.
If my shot struck home and wrung a pain, I
regret that it did not kill. If I have rescued one
hapless soul from the bloody claws of the cruel
Beast, I grieve that I did not shoot before. My aim
was at Ignorance, Superstition and Slavery; have
AUTHOR'S APOLOGY. xiii
I hit one of these? Then I beg forgiveness for not
having killed all three.
If you, my brother and my sister, will take the
trail and follow the Beast by the blood I have made
him spill ; if you will camp on his trail early and late
trying as hard to run him down as I have tried to
get this shot into him, I will load up, and by the
time you run him around this way again, I will be
ready for him with a "dum-dum." Keep the scent
hot, there is no time to lose.
I have given you THE TORCH OF REASON, but I
cannot make you see. I am one of you, and I can
look ahead of you; but I am not you. You must
look for yourself. I can call to you, but I cannot
make you come. If you would be free you yourself
must strike the blow. If you would know Justice,
you must first reason. If you would reason, you
must first think.
If none had ever used the mental processes of
reasoning the race never would have progressed one
inch away from the cave and the tree nest. Green
pastures are not discovered by satisfied cattle. If
no man had ever broken a law to obey The Law, the
workers would still be wearing neck yokes and
ankle balls under booted and spurred drivers with
"blacksnake" and pistol.
Socialism is in violation of law the law of
private ownership in human flesh. Socialism will
break that law, to write upon the books in its stead
the law of social ownership of the earth. Socialism
will break the law which legalizes profit from human
toil. It will abrogate the instrument of legalized
robbery of unearned riches, and give freedom of
xiv AUTHOR'S APOLOGY.
possession to the useful worker of the full value of
his hands' creation.
There are many reasons why I am a Socialist.
First, it is because of my great selfishness. I want
to be happy. Not being able to satisfy this selfish
desire under the present arrangement, and knowing
that Socialism means perfect selfishness, I naturally
lean toward the light of my heart's desire. But the
selfishness of which I am speaking to-day is sure to
be misunderstood. I realize that any attempt at
an explanation of this greater selfishness at this time
were well nigh impossible of comprehension. It is
only the "charity" faker who parades before
the footlights bedecked in his spangled garb of
' ' unselfishness. ' '
In a world of riches and poverty, great may be
the harpings on "greed and selfishness." To be
perfectly selfish is to be perfectly happy. To be
perfectly happy is to be perfectly well pleased. No
real sane individual may be perfectly happy in a
world where there sorrows one unhappy brother or
sister. Possessed I all the wealth in the world, I
would still be the most unhappy person living; for
then I would know that no one else owned anything,
and the misery of their poverty would destroy all
my peace of mind. But were it possible for me to
know that every human creature on earth smiled
happily and secure in the fullness of a life of peace,
plenty and love, and that I were an economic equal
in the enjoyment of the same opportunities for life's
full measure, then indeed would I be perfectly
happy. This, then, would be perfect selfishness
achieved.
AUTHOR'S APOLOGY. xv
For ten years I have been trying to think of the
right way by Which to reach that peculiar intelli-
gence which refuses an audience to Truth. There
are enough good and scientific books on Socialism
to convert the world in a day ; but they are, for the
most part, dry and hard to read. At least, they are
hard to get read. In THE TORCH OF REASON I have
tried to come to the rescue of the prejudiced mind.
I have written something that I feel will be read.
It was my aim to blaze a new trail, far and away
from the beaten paths of all conventional Socialistic
propoganda.
This book contains a warning to both Socialists
and trade-unionists. Also I have dared to fill the
toil-wrung heart with the promise of a better time
by taking the reader into the future the very near
future. Dangers have been pointed out wherever
seen. If they are not heeded in time, pardon me
if I blame you for the crime of inertia, for my duty
is well begun and if you fail to use the weapon I
have placed in your hands, I am willing to take the
judgment with a clean conscience and unafraid.
In giving you this book I have not counted the
cost. If I am -criticised unfavorably I shall know
that I have trod upon a corn. If I have hurt your
feelings, then your feelings were ripe for the
hurting. If flesh were not heir to pain the body
would destroy itself for lack of precaution. So if
I have made you weep, think. If I have made you
laugh, think. If I have made you think, think
again THEN ACT !
THE AUTHOR.
'A giant shadow, bended with the weight of an eighty-pound
pack, stopped in the snow and listened!"
CHAPTER I.
WOLVES !
Alas for life the best I knew
The day is done;
Pause not for me, nor error rue,
But call my son.
Up from the black swamp in the valley
and into the chill silence tore an unearthly
and terrifying yell.
A giant shadow, bended with the weight
of an eighty pound pack, stopped in the
snow and listened.
Again the blood-curdling cry split the
night ; this time from a different quarter.
The shadow heard, and nodded, wisely.
Still once again came the doleful, agoniz-
ing plaint, in a long-drawn-out wail, like the
cadence of despair up from some cavern-
throated chasm of lost souls! Up, up it
soared, rocket-like, resonantly wooing its
dizzy goal with lute-noted affinity; then
spent and subsiding, slid back to earth and
lost itself in a dying, gutteral moan.
Again the shadow heard and nodded.
Then turning heavily in the snow looked
back in the direction of the little cabin left
behind. The shadow knew! It was the
dreaded CaU of the Wolf!
It was fifty below zero. The night was still
unto death. So still and inert was all in earth
and above earth that the redundant silence
(i)
2 THE TORCH OF REASON.
was palpitant with terror at its own magnifi-
cence. Long and motionless the shadow
paused and listened ; but all was still again,
for silence reigns supreme at the top of the
world, and the only voice of the Silence is
the conjugal voice of Death.
Then up from the valley and over the
bleak desert of silent rest swept the multi-
throated yelp of the wolf -pack. There was
no mistaking it, that wild, discordant chorus
which freezes the blood with a song that
spells the traveler's doom. The shadow
heard and smiled. Not sweetly, babe-like,
but grimly and cruelly like the triumphant
smile of the suicide. Like the gambler's
smile when, the victim taking a last chance
on a final throw, gamely loses. 'Twas the
smile of conquest. The smile that lifts the
scornful lip of the unwhipped fighter with a
sneer of defiance the smile that challenges
Death!
Jason Sands was not born yesterday.
The poise of head and flash of eye were
marks of discipline undergone in a cruel
school and at the hands of a cruel master.
This was not the first time he had heard
the hated wolf-cry. He had faced danger
many times in his day, and he had come
to know it for what it was worth and could
face it unafraid. For twenty years danger
had been his constant companion; and he
boasted he could sense it in advance in-
tuitively, as it were with an inscrutable
THE TORCH OF REASON. 3
intuition that baffled even himself, but
which never failed him.
Right or wrong, he had come to look
upon death and the menace of death as
part and parcel of life itself, and scorn-
fully he invaded its most sacred precincts;
violated its most inviolable creeds; scoffed
at its immutable mandates and contemptu-
ously defied rather than feared it.
What was this thing Death, anyway?
Why should one be hounded through life
making preparations for a thing known to
be inevitable, only to flee from it in terror
when met with face to face? If the souls
of men predamned were to be "saved"
from death everlasting, or " damned" with
life everlasting, as the case might be, what
in hell was the use fretting to keep up ap-
pearances ?
If to be wafted heavenward, or sluiced
hellward, were at the optional whim of the
Heavenly Father who, being responsible
for our beginning and. end, had it all cut
and dried beforehand just what our fate
was to be, all one might offer by way of
protest must be simply so much hot air.
Thus he reasoned; and he would not pros-
titute his splendid manhood in venial sup-
plications to a juryless court that never
convened and from which there could be
no appeal.
Death? Ha! It would have to show
him ! Besides, he was ready for it, and for
4 THE TORCH OF REASON.
the filial struggle with it; for had he not
whipped it on more than one occasion al-
ready? Yes, a dozen times, single-handed
and alone. It were the strong who won life
from the battle of life, and he was strong.
True, the battle might not be nice, but it
was on, and had been raging for many a
year. In fact, it was here when he came
and was not of his making. He was a vic-
tim of it, a creature of environment.
His forty summers he preferred to desig-
nate as ' 'forty frosts;" for summers and
sunshine were for the idlers, and not for
such as he. These were things he had come
to know.
Having lived in twenty-eight states in
the union, circled the globe twice and not
having been born blind, there were things
he had seen! He had pillowed his head on
live goose-down in the palaces of affluence,
and he had slept under the wharf with the
rats. Also he had pillowed his head on the
bosom of woman; but that was a memory
of other days, days in the toyland of life
when the world was small and sweet, and
when love was sweet and young. Moreover,
his flesh had quivered at the numbing drive
of keen-edged steel, and the white-hot pain
in the sting of "cold lead" was known to
him.
The man was a giant and possessed a
giant's strength and courage. Also he pos-
sessed spirit, and an indomitable character,
THE TORCH OF REASON. 5
neither to be humbled nor cajoled. These
splendid characteristics were ever being
mistaken by fools for ugliness and a natural
* C7
avidity for being on the "off side."
No more appreciated and none the less
creditable, was his finely tuned sense of
justice; and whenever he would fight rather
than submit to tyranny, these "little
people, " as he called them men and women
of tight-screwed mentality hastened to
brand him "trouble-maker and disorderly
person."
But here was a man one man who
would not be cut down to fit their pigmy
habitations. Here was a man living large
and broad in spite of want and oppression.
Their narrow codes and commandments
could not encompass him; for he loved the
music of the living spheres, and the limita-
tions of human brotherhood were bounded
only by the limitations of the cosmic realm.
He knew Nature, and he loved her ways
and deeds. Understanding her voice and
living by her plan, they were companions,
roaming the world together and singing the
unsung songs of their unknown and silent
love.
Here was a man who could carve a habi-
tation from the virgin forest, rear, and
furnish it, with the aid of but a single tool.
Here was a man who both wrote and sang
songs. And out in the world which knew
him not, many little children sang the songs
6 THE TORCH OF REASON.
he had written ; but he knew the world, for
it had broken his heart and driven him over
the mountains and over the snows to try the
one thing left him, the mining of gold.
Not that he wanted the gold for the sake
of it as riches, such were miserly motives
and tended to decay; but men had made
laws compelling each other to get gold or
starve, and without which the things of life
piled high in the marts were unobtainable.
He had earned much gold. Also, he had
done some starving, off and on, with the re-
sult that life had been, not life at all, but
ever a fruitless grind.
Political parties had come and gone, but
Poverty had remained. The years had left
him older and poorer.
He had sweltered in their mills and on
their railroads, on their ships and in their
offices; the sum total of which being that
he had grown older and poorer, more
friendless and unloved, discredited and de-
spised. And so, the dividend on all the in-
vestment had been : Age and poverty, pov-
erty and old age and insecurity, homeless-
ness, hopelessness, and death only awaiting
him at the end of the trail. Added to all
this like a nightmare had come the awaken-
ing consciousness of having been but a sub-
missive, though unwilling, wage slave.
So much in passing for the man-shadow
that loomed powerful and alert under the
growing gray of the Arctic dawn, listening
THE TORCH OF REASON. 7
to the hunger-cry of the wolf-pack rising
out of the dismal swamp in the valley.
Why, then, should he fear them? Besides,
was he not a dead shot? Then let them try
it on. He would fool them.
"Why don't you come for me, my pretty
darlings?" he sneered. Then after a mo-
ment's listening: "I wonder what God's
gray angels are up to off there in that
damned swamp! I didn't come that way
and haven't made any noise. Besides,
that's to windward and they could not have
scented me from there." As the raving
confusion grew fainter and more to the
northeast, he continued: "I know it can't
be Ben, and I hate to think it's the mail
up from Dawson to Gold City; but if it is,
he's off his trolley by more than two hun-
dred miles, and I'm thinking this will be
about his last trip. Well, by the time
they've eaten him and his outfit I'll be over
the ridge, and by the time they've slept it
off I'll be out of hearing and beyond the
reach of their cunning smellers, if the wind
don't shift, which isn't likely; there's too
little of it. Anyway, four hundred miles
is not so far, so if that choir of pious-eyed
hell-hounds don't head me off and if it
don't thaw, I'll be about right with the boat
if she leaves Dawson on schedule time.
There's plenty of grub, too, my dawny-hued
beauties, so whenever you're ready to start
something I'll stay with you for a while, I
promise you,"
8 THE TORCH OF REASON.
Beaching up over his head to the top of
the pack, he felt out the five boxes of car-
tridges to make sure they were still there
where he knew he had packed them. Once
more defiantly, though unconsciously smil-
ing, he turned a last time to listen to the
hunt-mad demons, then sarcastically solilo-
quized: " Whoever you are, old-timer, I'd
like to be in with you when the curtain goes
up. We'd make 'em go some while lead
and liver lasted; but it seems to me a man
with the brains of a Burbank Seedling
would have fought shy of rabbit swamps
getting in here, and you'll learn! I did.
These free-for-all fights, you know, tend
to ' bring out the best in us'; and all you
have to do is 'be good and you'll be happy!'
I guess you're in for it, old sport, so cheer
up, and let the best brute win! And, you
know," he rambled on, "if you're a good
Christian gentleman, 'God will be with you,'
which promise ought to be consolation
enough for any man to take with him into
the stomachs of five hundred wolves!"
"Poor cuss!" he reflected a moment later.
"He's lost, most probably, and there's ab-
solutely no hope for him. But why should
it concern me? I couldn't help him if I
would, he's too far away. My dear, Chris-
tian mother taught me to mind my own
business and let well enough alone; 'climb
to the top, beat the other fellow to it and
get the cream!' 'Be satisfied with your lot,
THE TORCH OF REASON. 9
Jasie, and don't go borrowing trouble.'
Worse luck ! The neighbors hereabouts are
too far apart 1"
Thus winding up his satirical harangue,
the hardened miner hunched the sagging
pack higher between his great shoulders,
wound his sinewy arms around his rifle and
bit into the frozen end of the Arctic trail.
His course lay to the southwest, sixteen
days snowshoe time from the "Broken
Bone." But he had allowed four days
extra for good measure and possible acci-
dents, planning his supplies accordingly.
Once at Dawson, he would bid farewell to
the frozen dome of earth forever. With the
little dust stowed away in the pack, he
would go back to the world where the sun
shines and where the roses bloom; settle up
with the few friends who had proven true,
attend to another matter of long standing,
and close the books.
Four years back while prospecting alone
he had fallen in a mad flight down the
mountain, trying to escape a down-coming
slide, and broken the tibia of his left leg.
Notwithstanding the solitude and cold,
coupled with the danger from wolves and
starvation, he battled on through the long
winter months, successfully mending his
broken leg, and winning one more signal
victory over the courtesan queen of the
spectral kingdom. Later, he found gold in
the very slide that had caused him so much
10 THE TORCH OF REASON.
suffering, as if the hand of fate would ex-
piate the wrong with the wonted yellow
balm. And thus it was that the " Broken
Bone" mine came to be born and named.
At the top of the world life is a rare and
lonesome thing. But life is full of hope,
and a grim tenacity to be, and to master
death. It is a fighting life and a living
fight. It is a fight that neither begs nor
gives quarter. It is win or lose with the
winning or losing of life or death.
" Thumbs down," that's the symbol, and to
a finish! There is no arbitration here.
There is " nothing to arbitrate." Speech
is an asset not to be squandered idly where
Justice cowers in her citadel behind the law
of self-preservation.
Man, like the eaters of flesh and drinkers
of blood, must rise above the law or under
it go down. It was the weak that went
down, but Jason Sands was not weak. He
not only obeyed the law, but also he inter-
preted, aye, dictated it!
Morning broke still and gray. Like a
gyroscope, the crystal dome or earth ca-
reened, dipping its southern rim awash in
a flood of crimson glory. 'Twas like a
painted ship on a painted ocean, feathering
her lee rail in the trough of a fancied sea.
The scarlet sun, like a toy balloon, would
float lazily for a space along the frosty
fringe of the boreal circle, then roll over
the edge as the world tipped back, disap-
THE TORCH OF REASON. 11
pearing in his rosy robe like the spotlight
queen of the fairy fire-dancers.
Jason knew the day would be short, and
he would make the most of it, camping at
first sign of dusk, this would mean twenty
hours of constant snowshoeing without a
break for rest or sleep.
Fifty miles at least, he figured, had been
eaten out of the four hundred. "Three
hundred and fifty left fifty at a slap
eight camps and there you are, Jason,
old hoss, and you're good for it or
you're a piker, and you know you're
there with the goods," he said aloud. Paus-
ing to gaze down into the bottoms country
off to the left slope of the ridge, he broke
out savagely : * ' Oh, you yellow-hearted sin-
ners! Whose mother's darling have you
torn from his red bones this time? You
may swarm your swamps and I will not
molest you. Give me the ridges where the
footing is better and I will pick no fuss
with you."
The weather was fine, clear and dry and
cold.
The day wore on.
With the western sky ablur with purple
twilight, lower crouching from strain of
pack and trail, and heavy with oncoming
sleep, the titanic Jason bent on toward the
sound of falling water that leaped and
foamed through a rocky gorge and plunged
a thousand feet among the ice-terraced
rocks below. He knew the location, having
12 THE TORCH OF REASON.
prospected and camped there during the
summer of 1906.
The trembling thunder of the falls grew
louder as the distance shortened and the
top of the white world and the bottom of
the sombre sky drew together; and ere the
dusky nightmaids had pursed their purple
curtain overhead, Jason Sands had drunk
his fill of the icy water, that thickened in
the tin cup like slivered glass. He gazed
about the falls with puzzled scrutiny, shook
his head gravely, then proceeded to cross
the river. Climbing the far bank to the ice
above the falls, he studied the face of the
cliff long and critically. Then he swore
audibly, jabbed the butt of his rifle down
into the snow and freed himself from pack
and snowshoes.
The spot he had selected for his camp site
was a natural veranda in the side of a huge
shelf of rock that jutted far out over the
crest of the deafening waterfall. In sum-
mertime such a bed-chamber must have
been both unique and grand. But Jason
had forgotten that it was different now.
Instead of finding his old "roost" as he
called it, high and dry, and away from all
dangers, the sloping walls were faced solid
with ice and snow. However, the exact lo-
cation was clearly defined by a great crevice
at the rear of the platform. This showed
in a whiter line straight up through the en-
tire brow of the promontory and down to
THE TORCH OF REASON. 13
the bed of the river a thousand feet below
the falls.
During the four months he had made his
nest on the ledge, Jason never feared a
visit from wolves, though he knew the coun-
try to be infested with the " slant-eyed ver-
min" as he dubbed them. The crevice in
the rear afforded an excellent back door to
the level below, and was filled nearly to the
floor of the shelf with crumblings from the
rift overhead. Thus it was safely naviga-
ble from the north bank for one of Jason's
enormous size and strength, who could
straddle with one foot on either side, the
yawning chasm stretching away deep and
black far beneath. But it was absolutely
inaccessible to all other forms of life not
possessing wings.
In repose, Jason Sands was a deep and
thorough thinker ; but in action he was like
a coil of steel springs released. Possessing
a finely disciplined mentality, thought and
action were a unit with him, and operated
with the rapidity and precision of lightning.
In fact, as he often said, the fighting life
cut out for him had been so fierce and rapid,
he believed he sometimes acted first and
without thought, reserving the latter oper-
ation for more leisurable and congenial
circumstances.
There is a peculiar development in the
faculties of men born with the instinct and
love of hunting, that enables the best of
14 THE TORCH OF REASON.
them to drop a buck running at full speed,
rifle at waistline. It is a sort of scientific
physical heritage that with long practice
becomes truly marvelous. Jason was per-
fection in this backwo.ods accomplishment,
and his remarkable skill in woodcraft had,
on more than one occasion, been the means
of prolonging not only his own life, but the
lives of others. He was both man and mas-
ter. And here he was at the top of the
world, alone in a desert of ice and snow and
it was coming night.
As the prospect of being eaten by wolves
either human or animal had never ap-
pealed very strongly to his sacrificial pro-
clivities, and noting that the cliff was an
ice-wall, he quickly made a decision: He
would scale the wall to the shelf, scoop out
the snow with axe and snowshoe, spread his
blanket and have a good night's sleep while
thfi torrent foamed below. To chor) an im-
provised stairwav slantingly ur> from the
frozen river to the overhang above, would
mean but a blow with the axe for each stair ;
and once safely lodged for the night, the
ra pin fir waters would drown all other noises,
including the yelmnsr of his furry friends,
should they trail him to his temporal perch.
That settled it. He crept cautiously to
the edge of the ice just back of the steai-ninn;
current, feeling out its strength and thick-
ness with his hunter's half -axe, dipped up
and drank some more of the burning-cold
THE TORCH OF REASON. 15
water (for his supper would have to be
munched dry, and thawed as munched).
Backing away from the open hole he arose
to his feet, and with a look that was neither
animal nor human, and in a voice neither
animal nor human, fairly belched: "Great
God Almighty!" One swift look was
enough. There they were WOLVES ! A
great V-shaped line of them the width of
the river, and they were on his track. Now
they were climbing the south bank below
the falls Christ! hundreds of them. Aha!
It is steep. The leaders slip and fall back.
See! They are quarreling! Quick! It is
now or never. Jason! Jason! Jason Sands
have you turned to stone ? Fly somewhere
anywhere for your life.
But Jason Sands had not turned to stone.
Neither had the minutest detail of the
frightful drama escaped his trained vision.
In the second that had elapsed he was
thinking. Thinking first in this crisis, he
would act later and at the proper time he
always had.
There are times in the lives of men
some men when hope flees and life pivots
in the balance to the bending of knees and
the wringing of hands. A fire; the cannon's
mouth ; the sinking ship ; a fall from a great
height; a thousand ways in which men
have met death. And, when a moment ago
life was full of joy and sunshine, heedless
were they of both present and future; but
16 THE TORCH OF REASON.
with the Raw Head staring them in the face
from eyeless orifices, they paled before the
stark spectre, crumpled up in palsied sup-
plication, bellowing into the black beyond
and paying the inevitable toll with inco-
herent, raving protest.
There have been times when other men
faced the same immutable spectre ; and rais-
ing an aggressive chin to the level of her
lipless, worm-eaten jaw, they met her empty
grin of immutability with the confident
smile of manly godhood ; swept her croning
bones from life's pathway and walked free.
For the first time in his life, varied as it
had been and full of dangers, Jason Sands
felt the presence of the Bony Reaper. Not
that he was afraid, for to him the word was
meaningless. But he knew he was in a trap.
He knew the wolves would soon be upon him
and that he could not kill all of them un-
protected as he was on all sides. They were
coming. He knew what he would do. Rash
and desperate though it was, he would face
and fight them where he was ; kill as many
as he could with pistol and knife, then at
the last moment his strength gone and no
chance or hope, he would take one step
backward into the bulging crest of the open
falls and fool them at last with all their
accursed cunning. They should never pick
his bones. On that point he was settled.
In the Great Cosmos there is one law : the
Law of Change. All things being subject
THE TORCH OF REASON. 17
to that law, why marvel that some men
deign to change their minds ? Some change
their minds voluntarily to keep pace with
the changing conditions of economic life.
Others have their minds changed for them,
sometimes, alas, too late.
Men have come and gone who benefited
the world by having lived in it. Others
benefit it by getting out of it. Jason Sands
was in tune with the universe. He long
since had cast off the millstones of preju-
dice, ignorance and superstition, and nu-
merous beliefs, leaving more mental elbow
room in which to grapple with the simple
problems of everyday life.
Jason Sands Changed His Mind.
It was a horrible scheme that had flashed
through his brain with a swiftness that took
his breath away. And then there flashed
another thought a vision the memory of
a lone, fatherless and motherless boy, some-
where out in the world, for whom he, Jason
Sands, must live and fight and hunt, as he
had lived and fought and hunted for twenty
weary years. For himself he did not care ;
but for him, his son, his only boy, he did
care, and he would not die. He would live.
He would fight and win; and some day he
would find his child, a victory indeed. This
being final, nothing could swerve him from
his heroic purpose. Surely not a handful
of cowardly puppies!
And Then Jason Sands Acted!
18 THE TORCH OF REASON.
With a bound and a blow he was halfway
up the ice-wall to the coveted place of
safety. Madly he wielded the little half-
axe, as step by step he rose. Then, with a
shock that nearly loosed his hold, hanging
there in bas-relief like a graven image, the
old sensation of impending peril seized him
as one may be seized from behind by an
unseen foe. He did not turn to look, no
time for that ; but with a speed and strength
that unleashed every fibre of muscle in his
huge body and fired his nerves like the
charged wires of a battery, he swung both
axe and body backward and downward with
the impact and resistibility of a steel truss.
"Sure! I knew it!" he hissed, as the
keen, polished blade crashed full in the face
and eyes of the leader of the pack, severing
the husky head at the ears and sending
both head and carcass spurting a crimson
torrent in all directions among the onrush-
ing brutes below.
Confusion reigned at the sight of their
fallen leader, but it was of brief duration.
Up shot another fanged shadow, then an-
other and another; only to meet the now
blood-encrusted steel in mid-air and to be
smashed back to earth and to the mercy of
the cannibalistic host at the bottom of the
wall. For each pair of leaping, snapping
jaws that came he sent back a dead wolf:
and for every one slain another came. Ur>
they sprang, death and blood and wounds
only lending wings to their devilish fury.
THE TORCH OP REASON. 19
It was a gruesome spectacle. Like a fly
in a spider's web hung the desperate man,
sheath-knife driven deep in the snow-ice
far above, the handle of which he gripped
in his left hand. With muscles drawn like
tuned catgut, smeared with bloody ice and
swaying back and forth like a storm-door
on its hinges, cutting and slashing and
maiming, lip curled in the old smile that
never lost a battle, eyes flashing blue death
down into the constellation of green death
below, hung the grand old warrior. It was
a sight such as man or beast had never seen
before !
Just one more step ! Oh, if only he could
make it ! One more, only one more ! Safety
lay just beyond that one step. They could
not reach him there. But clinging on that
wall-paper of bloody ice, to take that step
were a ticklish venture. He reasoned that
lie could not make the forward turn and up-
ward spring with enough speed and surety
of footing and at the same time, while de-
fending his none too secure left foot with
the axe. If he turned and raised his right
foot for the leap, the movement would put
the axe, his only available weapon of de-
fense, out of commission. An advantage
that, from experience, he knew would not
be lost on his alert and deadly foe. More-
over, if obliged to continue the fight in his
present predicament, it was a question of
but seconds ; for a new peril had beset him.
20 THE TORCH OF REASON.
His left arm for some minutes had been
slowly but surely losing its sense of feeling.
The numbness had now reached the shoul-
der, and was creeping up the biceps inch
by inch to the elbow. Jason knew that when
the anesthetic stage should reach the fingers,
his hold on the knife must relax, sending
him gyrating down into the jaws of the
murderous beasts and to certain death.
O, for one blessed moment in which to
switch the axe for his "Automatic." He
would put a different taste into their slimy
mouths. Now the cold, prickly sensation
was in his forearm. With all his terrific
strength he renewed his grip on the sheath-
knife. It was a critical moment. The in-
terval between life and death spanned by a
lightning flash of time, but age-long in
thought. Worlds swam before his eyes.
The whole life scroll unrolled. Vistas
eternity-long swept in panoramic train
past the lens of his mind with a speed to
shame chain lightning. Would they never
let up for just one second !
"Not yet, you fiend!" he ground out be-
tween clenched teeth, the red flaked foam
of battle spurting from his bursting lips,
as a monster brute slashed his moccasin, the
next instant to lose the whole forepart of
his head to the eyes for his pains. Follow-
ing the slashed moccasin, he became con-
scious of a thin, needle-like pain in that
foot at the base of the little toe. Accom-
"For each pair of leaping, snapping jaws that came, he sent
back a dead wolf."
THE TORCH OF REASON. 21
panying the pain was a hot, feathery feel-
ing akin to the buzz of a bee's wing. But
there was no time for this. The mighty
right arm with its axen extremity had never
for a moment ceased its windmill cycle of
cutting and slashing of skull, and jaw, nose
and neck and breast ; but the time had come.
It was now pitch dark.
When a mere boy, Jason had learned
some great and valuable lessons from old
"Pete," who lived higher up on the moun-
tain; and now, when the end seemed near,
he remembered them as they had come to
him a thousand times before in the hour of
trouble.
"Boy," the old hunter would say, "don't
fight. It's hard on good looks. But don't
be a coward. And if you have to fight, fight
to win." Also it was old Pete who taught
him that: "Whatever is worth doing is
worth doing well." These were simple les-
sons of the simple wood folk of the moun-
tains; but Jason had never forgotten them,
and their author was his friend.
With the coming of darkness, eyes only
could Jason see. Eyes ! Eyes ! Eyes ! Green
balls of fire, circling and dancing and leap-
ing to the rythmical roar of the raging wa-
terfall. A veritable sea of emerald coals
below and in front of him; at right and at
left of him. Like myriads of mammoth
fire-flies. Straight at him they flew, dart-
ing up and falling back. Up and down, in
22 THE TORCH OF REASON.
and out and all around; a leaping, billow-
ing ocean of deadly venom and f anged light-
ning. Always in pairs they came, like gob-
lin-goggled demons storming the cata-
combed corridors of Hell. Dancing their
demoniacal dance of death to the tune of
the wailing damned!
It was awful ! And in that maelstrom of
mad destruction, the man that was a fighter
lived lived on and fought on, and
breathed, and thought and smiled the
smile that forbade and baffled death. Love
had fled from him. Mercy had fled from
him. Humanity had fled from him. Only
Will remained to him the will to live by
killing those who sought to kill him. He
was obeying the law as laid down by his en-
vironment. Once a great, noble-hearted
boy-man, now he was but a killer, an autom-
aton of incarnate slaughter, as he obeyed
the command and fought life for life.
In addition to the perpetual whirling of
the axe the besieged miner had kept up a
constant kicking of his free foot, and thrice
the moccasined heel had met ivory fang;
and thrice had the moose-hide been slit as
with a knife. Still the fight went on. The
arm kept flying, the foot kicking and
thrusting and sweeping in the unequal war
of desperation with might and will, against
overwhelming numbers.
With mitten now blood-encrusted and
frozen fast to the axe-handle, there was no
THE TORCH OF REASON. 23
danger of losing hold on that faithful
weapon. If only he could hold on by the
knife they would never get him; he had
come to know that; for with all their
strength of body and spring of leg they
were scarcely able to leap above his ankle.
He would have them all wounded in time,
then he would complete the climb in safety
while his enemies nursed their wounds at
the foot of the bluff.
Meanwhile, the numbness in the uplifted
arm grew apace, creeping up the forearm,
to the wrist, thence to the hand that
clutched the buckhorn overhead in the ice-
wall.
The green fire-balls were growing less
and less numerous. The leaping and snap-
ping less and less often. Axe met flesh and
bone only occasionally now. He was win-
ning the battle! Centering all his will on
his now almost senseless left hand with its
death-like grip on the foot of steel, he was
about to try for the one step that must mean
victory when something happened a thing
that turned his blood to ice and ended the
night's carnage. He knew it, it had come
at last. He had felt it, for the first time,
alas too late!
In striking an excessively powerful blow
at a pair of eyes wider apart than the rest,
he had leaned too far out, and though blow
met blow, and steel met flesh, cleaving a
lupine skull in mid-air, the knife had
broken at the hilt!
CHAPTER II.
THE TALE OF AN UNTOLD LOVE.
Call my son and tell him all my story,
Wisdom only may I leave behind.
Reason 's torch shall more than golden glory
Light the future where the past was blind.
Ben Page, trail-worn and weary, poked
his nose through the stunted growth of
scrub timber that fringed Lamb Swamp,
glanced across the valley to the little hut
of logs on the knoll and glided easily on
over the smooth snow in the bottom, after
the manner of men long used to meshed
foot-gear and heavy pack.
No light gleamed welcome from the cabin
window, so Jason must be asleep he de-
cided. He would give him a real stunning
surprise! The rough miner grinned boy-
ishly as he contemplated a practical joke on
his unsuspecting old companion, forgetting
in his eagerness both hunger and pain of
trail.
It was not yet daybreak and he did not
notice the big snowshoe tracks that ran
across the knoll to the southwest. Had he
seen these he must have recognized them
among thousands. Only one person in all
the North country possessed such enormous
bows, and that person was Jason Sands.
Their owner had wrought those very bows,
(24)
THE TORCH OF REASON. 25
riving them from the greenhouse of Mother
Nature, and fashioning them in conformity
with his great size and weight, and with
his own hands. Also, he had filled them
with rawhide of his own killing and curing.
Ben Page crept stealthily, like a thief,
upon the silent habitation of his old friend.
As he drew nearer a great longing welled
up in him, a longing to clasp once more the
great, warm hand that he knew to be an
honest one, knowing he would be welcome
with the same eagerness and friendship he
had found so warm and generous before he
went away. He could hear his heart thump-
ing exultantly as he strode nervously over
the creaking snow. Stepping out of his
snowshoes he tiptoed to the door and
listened. How should he awaken him, call
like a wolf? No, he might get shot! Fire
off his rifle then, beat against the door
wildly and finally burst storming in upon
him with great hullaboo like a drunken
Indian ? No ! This would never do, either.
Such conduct would be unbecoming and un-
dignified ; besides, he was a friend who was
returning repentant to seek reinstatement
in his old comrade's affections. Not only
this, but he was all to blame for the fuss
he knew it ; and with the thoughts of it the
hot blood flushed his face with honest shame
and a lump got in his throat. Oh no, it
wasn't fear! but just suppose he wasn't
welcome! What if he were not forgiven!
26 THE TORCH OF REASON.
Ben had seen men apprised of their unwel-
come to the hospitality of Jason Sands, and
the sight was not a pleasant one. What
ailed him, anyway! Was it the dampness
in the morning air? It gathered on his
forehead like ice-water.
Then courage returned. Or was it his
manhood reasserting itself? Anyway, he
was a fool ! he knew Jason Sands, and with-
out further trepidation he pushed open the
door and stalked in. All was silent there-
silent, and dark, and cold. A lighted match
revealed it all Jason Sands was gone!
The life of Ben Page had not been strewn
with roses. Many disappointments had
been his ; but what shall we say of the black
despair that bore in upon him in the cold
silence of that forsaken solitude !
"Gone!" he cried aloud, again and again
in his sorrow, while the weight of his shame
engulfed him and crushed him down like
an avalanche.
Puzzled and alarmed, the derelict adven-
turer proceeded to light the grease-lamp
for a hurried investigation. With mining
outfit pick, shovel and mud-boots in the
corner, he was not in the shaft. His rifle,
pack and snowshoes were missing from
their customary places, obviating the likeli-
hood of foul play or suicide. There re-
mained but one plausible deduction the
man of many sorrows had struck for the
outside.
THE TORCH OF REASON. 27
Three months back thev had quarreled
over religion, and Ben had packed kit and
run off in a silly funk of wounded feelings
more imagined than real. Shame con-
quering anger at last, he had returned,
sure of being forgiven and welcomed, for
the heart of Jason Sands was big, and his
great love was as deep and as broad as the
universe.
He had rescued Ben from the very jaws
of death, shared cabin and chuck with him,
nursed him back to life and health, later
making him partner in the "Broken Bone,"
only to be deserted by him in the very hour
when they needed each other's co-operative
heir) in successfully working the mine. Ben
had begun it, starting in mildly for him by
calling Jason an anarchist and a damned
infidel, and winding up with the charge that
all unbelievers were just alike and that they
were all going to hell along with the scien-
tists and the Socialists! Jason had denied
nothing, only smiling, noncommitally, and
in an off-hand sallv referred to what he
termed "churchianity" as the "F. F. P."
worsh ir> * ' Fight-worship, Fund-worship,
and Phallic-worship."
Ben loved Jason, and would gladly have
died for him ; but this was too much. He
frankly told Jason what he thought of
" Protestant devils," forgetting in his fool-
ish -passion that it was not to the Pope, but
to this particular devil, that he owed his
very life.
28 THE TORCH OF REASON.
Over in a dry bed back of the " Pound"
Claim, forty miles north from the " Broken
Bone," Ben had been pegging away in an
old hole, deserted by Lon Downing, but to
little purpose. Though he had worked in-
cessantly and painfully, keeping up a con-
stant burning day and night, it was a dis-
couraging venture, yielding little profit. He
had been on foot since early dawn of the
preceding day, without food or sleep; and
upon discovering the little cabin deserted,
tumbled into his old bunk of fir boughs and
in the next breath was sleeping. He slept
the sleep of the dead until the yellow glow
of the mid-day sun streaming through the
solitary window straight into his eyes,
awoke him. He blinked perplexedly ; looked
at his watch hastily, bounded to his feet
and agilely began neaping dry pitchwood
against a green backlog, half burned but
cold, in the stone fireplace. At the touch
of a match the flames leaped up, quickly
filling the little shell with warmth and a
flaring red light.
Now, he knew he was hungry. Seizing
the coffee pot he opened the door to fill it
with snow
"Well, by God!" exploded the startled
miner, as a great gray form slunk away
under a scrub fir and made for the ridge.
In a flash, rifle had replaced coffee pot, and
when a second later the little Savage carbine
spank spank spanked into the frosty
aphony, it spit out the lives of three great,
"And when a second later the little Savage carbine 'spank-
spank spanked' into the frosty aphony, it spit out the
lives of three great husky timber wolves."
THE TORCH OF REASON. 29
husky timber wolves ere they could reach
cover over the scruff of the ridge thirty
yards away.
Men who carry their lives in their hands,
learn, with danger staring them in the face,
to make every second count. To miss a
shot or a blow, often is to sever the slender
thread by which life dangles hazardously
over the chasm of death. To live and thrive
in an hostile environment one must know
the art of such living, become expert in the
most compatible means of self-defense, dis-
trust all and spare none. This is life as it
is, but not as it ought to be. A poet once
said:
"Of all sad words of tongue or pen,
"The saddest are these it might have been."
To which Joaquin Miller, the poet of the
Sierras, has added two more lines, which
seems to bring the lament fully up to date
and places a period at the right hand of
all things in our social life that are cruel
and wrong:
"But sadder still are these to me
"It is, but hadn't ought to be."
There were no more wolves in sight, but
wolf tracks and wolf signs were every-
where. There must have been hundreds of
them only a few hours since, where were
they now, and why had he not heard them?
' ' Must a picked me up down there in that
black hole," he theorized. "I sure must a
bin puttin' in the licks after hittin' that
30 THE TORCH OF REASON.
there bunk, or else I clean croaked and then
come to with the sun or I'd a heard 'em.
Soundly indeed had the spent traveler
slept, for their numbers had been many and
their yelpings wild and furious. They had
surrounded the cabin and kept vigil until
mid-day, when suddenly they disappeared,
leaving behind them three of their number
three old she wolves too heavy to run.
These the hunter had shot; and dragging
them to the door proceeded to dispossess
them of their warm coats before the bodies
should have time to freeze.
"Fine and dandy," he observed, blowing
his breath against the wiry gray fur, part-
ing it to the skin after the manner of the
expert fur buyer.
"Nice and warm for my little old bunk.
Too damn bad the rest of the cussed tribe
had other engagements; I'd a had tails a
flutterin' all over this hangout and a
blanket fit to wrop a baby up in."
The science and dispatch with which the
skilled woodman peeled off their pelts was
a marvel. Fairly jerking them out of their
hides, he flung gray skin one way and blue
carcass the other. The task was a small
one and quickly over. This done, he break-
fasted to a quart of boiled snow and a
pound of broiled moose steak, lit his bone
pipe and fell back in his hollow-log chair
and lost himself in a deep, silent reverie.
The scenes of the old days all came troop-
THE TORCH OF REASON. 31
ing back over the back track in regular
order. The day and night in the tree; the
rescue; the warm cabin; the nursing back
to life; the partnership in the mine, and
then the quarrel. Jason had laughed at him,
then tried to reason with him ; but Ben was
stubborn, and when the futility of further
argument became apparent, Jason insisted
on giving him all the dust the joint prod-
uct of their toiling and freezing and starv-
ing in the frozen hole on the " Broken
Bone." That was three months ago. Now
here he was again, this time alone !
With Jason, his one friend and com-
panion gone, he felt himself helplessly at
the mercy of whatever cruel fate might
have in store for him, with not as much as
one single word in parting left to cheer him.
And then Ben remembered a woodcraft
injunction that was a law with Jason
Sands: "Never leave camp without some
word left behind in parting." It was a
safety measure, and one never to be vio-
lated where the atmosphere of death per-
meated every breath one breathed, and
where every life was a law unto itself.
" Maybe he did, then," he reflected hope-
fully. Animated with this straw hope, he
sprang to his feet and began a hurried
search of the old camp. He had not far to
look. Beaching under the lower (Jason's)
bunk, which was wider than the one above,
Jie drew forth a large bundle of letters,
32 THE TORCH OF REASON.
papers, etc., comprising a collection of
many documents not unfamiliar to him, ex-
cept, that, tucked under the rawhide rope
on the outside, was a smaller package,
across the entire length of which was writ-
ten, simply: "Ben," in the unmistakable
hand of Jason Sands. It proved to be a
letter, and it read :
"On the Broken Bone,
"April 22nd, 1910.
"Benjamin B. Page,
"Dog Cove, Alaska."
"My dear old pard, and brother:
"I am leaving you, Ben, forever. I am
leaving the Broken Bone, the gold, the
wolves and the frost, and I am running
away. All I have left behind belongs to you.
I hate to leave you in this way, but there
are things we have to do. It has been lone-
some, Ben, since you went back on me, and
I have thought of so many things that were
but dead memories of the bitter past. I
have thought, and worked, and fought, and
worried through the long, cold months
alone; now I am tired of it all, and I am
going to say goodbye.
"I have stood it as long as I can this
frozen and whited hell now I am going-
back under the sunshine where the roses
bloom, and where it will be less trouble to
dig a grave. I am sorry it must be so, old
boy, for I once tried to help you, and you
know we were a help to each other and only
THE TORCH OF REASON. 33
quarreled once; but I know you, like all
the others, have turned against me. Besides,
you want to stay for the gold, so I am going
to slip quietly away. Fear not for me, Ben,
should you ever think of the old times and
me. Take care of yourself, for life is a
transient and fleeting thing. Nothing shall
happen to me that need cause you pain, but
I shall always think of you.
"The mine is yours; I am done with it.
I found it and gave half of it to you for I
liked you and wanted company. Also I
found you, as you will recall ; and if I helped
you when you needed a hand, make me a
silent promise now: Should you ever make
a strike here, and I know the Bone has a
pocket if only you can locate it, promise me
you will try to forget your childish anger
and come out into the world and help me
find my boy. If it turns out that I am
never heard from, Ben, will you not try to
find him and tell him all my story that you
are now about to learn from me ? Tell him
how I fought out the fight, living only for
Mm, that I might find him and teach him of
the ways wherein I have grown wise.
"Tell him of the long winter nights and
of the weary, hungry days. Tell him of the
fang-beasts of the forests and of the fang-
beasts of civilization. Say to him, that his
father did not desert him the truth but
that it was life or death with me and that
I had to go. I chose to prolong my life that
34 THE TORCH OF REASON.
I might help in the Great Revolution help
hasten the day when all mankind shall be
one mighty phalanx of peaceful workers
and happy brotherhood, singing with the
god of love in a reunited and fearless world.
Tell him that I love him, Ben, that I would
crush him to my breast, would plead with
him, aye, that I would die for him; but he
is gone from me now, is lost in the crowd
in the swirling, insane mob and I may live
to see him, alas, never more.
"I loved my boy, Ben, and I love him
still. Now that I come to think of it over
again think back down the dead years that
are gone I can see his little happy face
alight with joy and laughter, and the frousy
head of red, silken curls shaking in the sun-
light to the patter of his chubby feet. In
fancy once again I feel the tiny, soft hands
pulling at my face, or patting my shoulder
at end of day; and the sparkling eyes of
just this morning, now ablink with sleepy
things and ready for pillow and the little
evening prayer.
"I have not been happy, Ben, since the
damned authorities took our home away.
(Home, did I say? Yes, it was a home, the
kind of home a lone, helpless boy could
make for a more lone and helpless babe.)
And then they took my child away also.
Tore him from me with the aid of the 'law!'
This, after I had rescued him from the
'Goodwill Farm/ where that she hell-bird
had decreed that he must go.
THE TORCH OF REASON. 35
"Then I cursed the law, Ben. The law
that stabbed me in the back; the law that
smote me with a mailed fist; the law that
murdered my every hope with the murder
of my baby's mother the law that robbed
me of my birthright and my love that
blotted out my home.
"Since then we have drifted apart. I
could not find my boy, though I have
searched the world over. It is the one bat-
tle in which I have failed.
"I could not get to tell you of these
things before, for I did not wish to cause
you pain; but the bereavement has become
more than I can bear, and I feel a sense
of helplessness after all my long, vain
search, and I want my boy to know.
"Call my son, Ben, and tell him all my
story. Somewhere among the crashing
ruins of Capitalism's ever falling wrecks
you may find him, and perchance, the little
pat-a-cake hands of yesterday are now feed-
ing some grim iron monster in the mills or
on the steel rails of wage-slavery. No
longer is he the dimpled babe of tender
years, but the handsome youth unfolding
into ripe young manhood. Somewhere sub-
merged in the depths of their social jungle
they have him, and I fear for him, Ben.
There were none to fear for me.
"There were none to guide my footsteps
in the ways of wisdom, and so I made the
blunders. When I should have been learn-
36 THE TORCH OF REASON.
ing the science of life I was being driven
among the gears. When I fainted at my
ill-appointed task they scourged me with the
lash of hunger, and when I paused to dream
of my lost childhood they called me lazy
and a shirk. So I sweat my blood for my
masters, while their pampered sons and
daughters basked in the sweet southern sun-
shine ; on the palm beaches at the seashore,
or in the mountains among the fragrant
breezes and the green, shady forests.
"Call my son, Ben, for wisdom only may
we leave behind. Call him and teach him
love and life, and the new liberty that is to
be. Teach him the secret of health, and
woodcraft, and how to till the soil. Help
him in the building of strength and beauty ;
for the morning of his day is come and
there is work to do that we must leave un-
finished. You told me once that you could
never repay me the debt you owed me for
saving your life. You can pay it a million
times, Ben, if only you will hear my voice.
It is not me to whom you owe the debt, but
to yourself. When you have been true to
yourself you will have done your duty to
your fellowmen. There is no such thing as
debt and credit. There is but robbery and
injustice.
"I would teach and guide my son, and
help him over the unsmooth trails, for
many dangers lurk hidden along the whited
ways. It is not to dodge the pitfalls into
THE TORCH OF REASON. 37
which I fell that I would teach him, nor
would I have you perfume the bottomless
pits of poverty, whence arise the unsweet
smells that profane the very breath of life :
but I would have him learn to damn and
forsake the outlived codes and creeds of
a dead, and archaic past; fill up and destroy
the polluting cesspools of their social hells,
making a fairer and a safer way.
"I have gone the route alone. I have
done the best I knew. There is much I have
done, and much I might have done ; the day
is waning now with my work still just be-
gun. The structure is incomplete and the
frost of life's winter is in my hair. At
the prime of life I am an old man! It is
not that I am old, Ben, but that the task
is old. My years are few enough, but those
years have all been overtime years. The
years they crowded into me and the life
they crowded out of me. They speeded up
the machine, and up, in turn, the machine
speeded me. The l truth' thev taught to me
I later learned to be a lie. The while they
sang to me of 'freedom,' thev shackled me
a slave. The 'liberty' they bragged about
I found was only on paper, and burns
vellow with sulphurous smells on the
Fourth of July; and the only liberty I can
boast is liberty to starve.
"Call my son, Ben, for Reason's torch
shall more than golden glory light the fu-
ture where the past was blind.
38 THE TORCH OF REASON.
"Knowledge is good to have, Ben, but
Truth is crowning glory. Knowledge is
not always truth, but truth is always knowl-
edge. The error of the race lies not in that
men know too little, but that tliey knoiv too
much that is not true. The greatest truths
are yet untold, and the greatest force in
life is the all-conquering power of love.
The most blessed thing in life is love, for
love is peace and acquiescence. The great-
est crime is the crime of teaching a lie.
Poverty is a crime, and profit is the cause
of crime. Ignorance is the cause of pov-
erty; slavery is the cause of ignorance;
false teaching is worse than ignorance, and
falsehood is taught for profit!
" 'Tis sad to learn at twilight that all
day long we toiled to build upon the sand;
and sadder still at twilight of life to learn
that all of life had been no more than but a
baneful lie.
"All they made me learn at such fright-
ful cost I have had to unlearn again. The
years I spent in training mind were years
of waste to me, for they were cultivating
brains to sell like cabbages are raised for
market. Three times a year, Ben, with my
labor I built a home, living the while in a
dirty, rented shack. But the homes I built
were for the masters and they were built,
like my education, to sell. The 'Labor
Market,' this sort of thing is called the
process of buying and selling brains! The
THE TORCH OF REASON. 39
traffic still flourishes, for youth is full of
optimism and hope; and the same old lie
they crammed me with they're teaching
still.
" 'Hands on vests,' the sign boards in
their windows read, and in their news-
papers their ads were many. 'Hands on
vests,' 'hands on shirts,' and 'mill hands,'
were common calls for help, but never did
they advertise for brains. They were wise
the bread-masters they knew the brains
would have to come along too, a sort of
'boot' thrown in for good measure along
with the 'hands' that must be worn out for
profit. The brains were a part of the deal,
and all the deals were made, arbitrarily, by
tlie masters!
"Hands on vests, indeed! And hands on
plows, too. Hands on shoes ; hands on coats,
bread, homes and all. Fashioning the
world's wealth into perfect things of use,
while the hands of the masters of wage-
slavery were ever busy, not on 'vests,' but
at the throats and in the pockets of their
worshiping, submissive hirelings.
"Think of it, Ben! Upon this auction
block of human souls I stood, blind and
dumb, like horned cattle are marketed, and
watched them traffic in my wealth of man-
hood my hands, mv brains, my labor
verily, my life was but a commodity, and
for all this they loaned me back my board
and clothes. I say loaned, because my
40 THE TORCH OF REASON.
wages were only so much loaned money
which had to paid right back again into the
same channels from which it came to me,
for the necessities of life, and with another
profit added to the profit on the wages,
which wages were so many drops of my own
heart's blood.
"Oh, I was a good animal until I awoke,
and I peddled out my muscle and my sweat
for a pauper's chance to live. They prated
to me of 'honest labor,' and I prided myself
in that I could do more work in a day than
any two men I had ever known, and do it
better. This was because I was ignorant,
Ben, but they called it 'thrift and fru-
gality ! ' It is a siren song they sing to their
satisfied slaves, which they call 'the dignity
of honest toil!' They accompanied this al-
luring refrain with the rhapsodic syncopa-
tion of 'Industry's Merry Hum,' burnt
much red fire and waved numerous sizes of
mottled rags made in sweatshops to befuddle
and awe the mild-eyed herd upon whose
backs they rode.
"Oh, the pity of it all! Oh, the waste of
it all ! Oh ! the crime the unspeakable, un-
pardonable, damnable crime of this
thrice damned mockery: their 'Christian
Civilization ! '
"And then there was Erma! Erma, the
beautiful, the pure and the true. Erma,
with her warm, red lips and her fairy
tresses. Erma, the light of a new world to
THE TORCH OF REASON. 41
me, the living water of youth, and love, and
feminine sweetness. Erma, the queen of
my dreamland wherein bloomed roses ever-
lasting. And mingled with the meadow
smells, her perfumed breath upon my
cheek, where, in subdued chorus, cricket-
song and frog-pond melodies sped the fad-
ing day at twilight's peaceful hour, we
pledged a tryst of love that Erma, my dear-
est Erma carried to a virgin's grave.
"It was the rath outbursting of a purer
love than which this world has never
known, away back there among the dear
hills of old New Hampshire, Ben, in the
long ago.
"Erma was a farmer's daughter and we
lived near together. In school she used to
hold her slate so I could see and helped me
with my lessons. We pranked as only
lovers will, in all the honeyed lore of youth-
ful lovecraft, rich and rare from Love's un-
published story. For every teacher's rigid
rule she knew a cunning ruse ; and I 've seen
her miss in spelling just to keep me at the
head. Also she knew all the secret things
that Mother Nature hides from city folk,
and all the shady glades wherein the wild
flowers grew were known to her.
"She could find the coolest springs; and
often when we used to romp the woods to-
gether, she'd take some hidden trail among
the aromatic verdure, where, with breezes
purled with bird-song overhead and fox-
42 THE TORCH OF REASON.
glove blooming underfoot, we'd wile away
to one more mossy glen, there to tell the
things that only lovers know.
"And then came the crash! A bolt of
lightning from the clear sunshine ! The sun
went out! The moon went out! The stars
hid their faces in shame ! Of course it was
ignorance, that, together with false-teach-
ing, backed by self-interest, it is ever so.
The secret was out at last! We were
'caught,' that's what they called it, and so,
an illiterate, wrathful mother proceeded to
vent her savage fury on her youthful off-
spring. Suspicion had long been growing,
and now she would have to own up! We
had thought to be forgiven when the time
came, but we were lame in our reckoning.
We were unschooled in the mercenary arti-
fices of match-making mothers. 'Whom
God hath joined together' suddenly be-
came an alien injunction. That 'marriages
are made in Heaven' was weak defense
against the more practical theory of dollars
and cents. So they proceeded to tear us
asunder and our hearts asunder. They
descended upon us and snatched her from
me as a she wolf tears a mother ptarmigan
from the nest of her coming brood.
"Erma had called to me through the
parlor window and I knew the hour was
come. There was the ring of confidence in
her sweet voice, mingled with just the faint-
est note of challenge for their benefit, and
THE TORCH OF REASON. 43
all pitched in a sad, unnatural key, hysteri-
cally clarioned with passionate appeal, and
modest but thrilling with righteous victory
a victory she believed with all her heart
was now at hand. Oh, she was the very soul
of optimism, was this sunny-haired spirit
of the hills. Alas for the optimism of
innocence !
"The magnitude of the situation and the
task devolving upon me for the moment
unnerved me. At sound of her voice my
heart stopped, sank, and then fluttered up
into my throat, sending the boiling blood
to the very sight of my eyes in a blinding
shower of white-hot meteors. But it was
only for a second, and when I rallied and
strode into the room I was as calm as a tree.
"In the middle of the room stood old
Bart Tannerhill, ox-goad in hand, the irate
she dragon, fists on hips beside him; while
cowering in a corner, her big, soft eyes
aswim with tears, crouched Erma, my child-
wife. At sight of me she bounded to her
feet like a wounded fawn, swept through
them like a sunbeam and into my arms.
God ! How I loved her, my darling, in that
prophetic moment! I can hear her heart
now, Ben, as it beat wildly in her terror
against my breast. I can see again the up-
turned face and trembling lips, as they flew
to meet mine in the trustful embrace she
gave me.
" 'Tell them, dear,' she said amid her
44 THE TORCH OF REASON.
sobbing, 'tell them all; I have, and they
won't believe me.'
"And I did tell them. And when I had
finished they believed me, for, although I
dreaded the ordeal, once begun it was the
happiest moment of my life. In that mo-
ment I was a king! a Hercules a god! I
knew we were right, and in that right I was
invincible. I could have won a world.
God, aye, a million Gods could not have
phased me. There she was, my natural
mate, clinging to me for protection. Upon
me she had cast her very life. Her every
ounce of unrestrained womanhood, pulsat-
ing the purity of the great love and trust
of her, and it was all for me. I lived for
her and she for me. I was ready to fight
for her, I gladly would have died for her,
or I would have gone to hell for her ! Who
would not?
"Here was life. Here was womanhood.
Here was happiness and love and com-
panionship with youth and beauty, one
woman who was real, and whole, and true.
"It was at this point that the hand of a
jealous rival dealt his cowardly blow. I
was standing with my back to the door,
oblivious to the danger that lurked behind,
until Erma screamed and made as if to
spring. I shall never forget the look her
features wore. She had seen, but not in
time. Some would have fainted; but not
she. My arms were about her when she
THE TORCH OF REASON. 45
gave the alarm, but she freed herself with
the agility and strength of an acrobat. Giv-
ing me an heroic jerk forward to save me,
she tried to spring at the fiend. I turned
just as a flash of lightning and deafening
roar of thunder crashed down upon me, into
me and through me. It was all done in a
second's time, but in that brief space the
heavens and earth burst and fell together;
I was crushed under the debris like an egg-
shell, and then I knew no more.
"When again I knew, I was gliding
smoothly through space. All the stars were
in motion, diving, shooting, rising and mov-
ing all about me. Next I was aware of a cool,
soft touch like snowflakes in summer fall-
ing gently on my forehead. Then, faintly
at first, came low, tremulous sounds creep-
ing into my ears, sounds that were mellow
and endearing. Never was music wrought
of mortal hand to match such as this. How
long I was listening to the far-awav mur-
murings I never knew. Presentlv I dared
to open mv eves, just the merest peep; it
was all I could do. The lids would not
obey mv will to open them more. I floated
through the silverv starlight gradually be-
coming conscious of a sweet, radiant vision.
It was neither the stars, the moon, nor the
sunshine. It was grander than all these
rolled together. It was a heavenly vision.
T fhon^nt T was in heaven, and that angels
were ministering to some silly whim of my
46 THE TORCH OF REASON.
ephemeral desires. I could see more plainly
as my eyes grew accustomed to the light,
and I saw that the vision was feminine and
very near me. Tenderly the beautiful white
face bent down and laid fuzzy, moist lips
upon my mouth. I tried to raise my arms
to draw her to me, but they were arms, not
of flesh and muscle, but of stone! Also, I
tried to give back the kisses in generous
measure; but again the command of my
will was disobeyed. My tongue was on fire,
but my lips were frozen ! Then my eyelids
became mysteriously leaden and scraped
cruelly down over the eyeballs shutting out
the stellar glory and her unearthly beauty.
All was black night again. The sweet
sounds died away; the soft caresses ceased,
and I toppled over a deep, dark void and
fell down, down, down, into the unstarred
night of eternity.
"But the sweet vision in some way found
me out, and came the radiant face through
the black night, dispelling the last shadow
with her coming, like the dissolving views
of the stereopticon. The cool hand was
laid again on nrf forehead, and my icen lips
were being melted with her hot, moist
kisses. The warm sunshine came and fell
in golden flood upon her billowy hair. I
still thought I was in heaven, and that this
fair creature was the goddess Aurora come
to bring thp, morning of the Great Day.
THE TORCH OF REASON. 47
"Then came the soft murmurings again.
The sounds growing louder and more dis-
tinct with the clearer sense of returning
consciousness.
"' Jason! O Jason, dear,' someone was
calling, someone far yonder on the hillside,
so faintly and distant seemed the voice. I
was scarcely sure I heard at first, but as
the calling continued and my ears took on
the repeated resonance, I began to under-
stand. I made a mighty effort to throw off
the leaden weights from my eyes, and the
dizzy stupor from my feverish brain, and
did succeed partly, when with my returning
sight came the most excruciating pain. But
in the next instant the r>ain was forgotten.
The mist had cleared. It was Erma! She
was bending over me, crying over me, pray-
ing for me and calling to me to come back
to life and to her again.
"It was her blessed hand that had bathed
my forehead. How may I describe the
scene of jov that followed my awakening!
It were profanity to attempt it. Such glad-
ness never shone through the soul of
woman. It was a joy not of earth. I tried
to smile and tell her with my eyes that I
knew and would live. She understood, and
with fingers tearing at her breast, her eyes
streaming with tears, she burst into a par-
oxysm of hysterical laughing, crying and
screeching, that was the very effervescence
48 THE TORCH OF REASON.
of the insanity of human delight. The dear
child was mad and overwhelmed with joy.
"I had heen shot! shot in the back by a
cowardly, moral pervert, and without warn-
ing. The lead had torn clean through me,
splashing my blood in Erma's face and
hair. She had thought me killed, but she
would never give up in her effort to make
me live. It was in the evening just at sun-
set, and when I regained consciousness, it
was at sunrise the following morning. Oh,
the dear child, Ben ! She never left my side
during all that lapse of time, but had worn
herself out working and worrying over me
to save my life. When at last the victory
was won and T opened my eves and looked
nt her and smiled, she saw that I knew. Tt
was too much for her overwrought condi-
tion. She became hysterical and fell in a
swoon by the bedside.
"In the excitement of the quarrel with
the Tannerhills over our secret, we had not
noticed a carriage drive ur>, and when the
shambling slouch of Pert Perry's ape-like
hulk sloughed into the hallwav to listen to
it all, he had completed the slinking ven-
ture without noise and unobserved. Erma,
having asked me to tell them all, I had just
wound up by saying, defiantly, that we were
now man and wife, and that I would pro-
tect her with my life and that nothing
should come between us, not even the Perry
parasites. It was at this point that the
THE TORCH OF REASON. 49
rejected suitor leaped into the room and
shoving a 44-Colt between my shoulders
fired. Erma had tried to give warning, but
it came too late.
"The would-be assassin was never appre-
hended, but he subsequently met the same
fate he tried to settle on me at the hands
of a woman he had previously wronged a
poor mill girl who had loved him and sur-
rendered her confidence to him, only to be
forsaken and cast aside. From this she had
gone down the line; and in making his es-
cape from the attack on my life, he had
fallen into her hands in a house of ill-fame,
where the race teaching of revenge got in
its deadly work.
"Erma nursed me back to life and in two
weeks I was out again; but the Tannerhills
were obdurate and set. There was no rea-
soning with them. Erma was not of age,
and that settled it. It was her turn now,
for her heart was broken. They kept her
under lock and key as criminals are kept
in prison. They made the minister con-
fess, then got him kicked out of church for
helping us conceal our secret marriage.
You see, Ben, it was a devilish violation of
the creeds, the codes and the conventions.
It was the rankest heresy of the accepted
law of private ownership of parent in child
until the child is old enough to be grand-
parent. Health, strength and youth stood
for nothing. Beauty stood for nothing.
50 THE TORCH OF REASON.
Love stood for nothing. Even life itself
stood for nothing. Only the codes, the
creeds and the conventions stood for some-
thingthese and the dividends that were
to accrue from the sale of their beautiful
daughter into white slavery, for this only
is what marriage can mean where love does
not exist, but where the motive for such
prostitution is gold v
"Ah! we had not consulted the authority.
We had not drawn a check to the law. We
had not harkened to the merry jingle of
clinking coin. But we had looked into each
other's eyes and therein read the old, old
story. We had ripened in the summer of
each other's sunshine. We knew we loved
and wanted each other. In our natural de-
sire we saw only success and we never con-
sidered the possibility of failure. We had
heard Love calling to us through the dawn
of youthful glory and we had gone straight
to the goal. Into our plan of life we had
not invited death. In our house of love
we made no room for hate. Heaven was of
our own making, and when we had built it
we had nothing left with which to build a
hell. Or else we had forgotten to build a
hell. Perhaps we were too ignorant, too
happy, or too young for that. Possibly we
were not sufficiently well civilized as yet.
Anyway, as I said before, we had heard
the voice of Love calling out to us from the
wilderness of soul-starvation, and we had
THE TORCH OF REASON. 51
gone to meet it, and we did meet it. We
met it in the same good old way that true
lovers have ever, and will ever continue to
meet it. Yes, we met and knew it, basked
our souls in it even worshiped it, in spite
of code, creed and convention. In spite of
their fearsome wailings and their tyranni-
cal dictums. In spite of their clanking
marionettes, their stereotyped heavens,
their horned devils and their orthodox hells.
"Yes, Ben, they murdered Erma, my
Erma. The loss of her, coupled with the
shame of their social crime, drove me stark
mad. For years I drifted in a daze of men-
tal bewilderment. My 'friends' sneered at
me, ridiculed me and tried in all manner
of ways to discredit and disgrace me.
Whenever they dared, they took advantage
of me to further their own sordid ends;
and when I thrashed them for their double
dealing they ran away into safety to stab
me in the back with their javelins of
slander.
"It was then that the panderers and the
demagogs would appear. With each suc-
cessive turn of the wheel of fortune they
came or went as the case might be, hanging
onto my broad shoulders whenever I was
prosperous, and deserting me to a man in
my hour of adversity. They all turned
against me, Ben, even my brothers turned
against me and shamefully malinged and
scandalized me, calling me black sheep and
trying to magnify their own puny lives by
heaping odium upon mine.
52 THE TORCH OF REASON.
"So I learned that, in a society enslaved
under a system of economic strife and self-
interest, there can be little friendship
worthy of the confidence of honest men and
women. After that, I slipped down into
the scathing, festering abyss of this graft-
ing commercialism in a desperate effort to
drown the memory of an assassinated love
among the shifting sands of hived humanity
inhumanity gone mad for gain.
"Nature had been kind to me, Ben, as
well you know. Over well built and thewed
like the things that roam the wild, I knew
not fear, and the poisoned fang held its
terrors, but not for me. I could take the
world by the horns, as it were, and wrestle
it to the bent of my will. Also, I could hold
my own in a fight; but I was poor, and all
my people were poor; so this, Ben, was the
secret of the crash. Had I been rich like
the Perrvs. all would have been well with
the Tannerhills. Born up among the stars
on the snow-capped crest of the White
Mountains, we knew not the crooked ways
of the taloned financier, and so we were of
plebian cast! We were not of the blue
blood tribe like the saffron-faced and saf-
fron-livered Perrys. We were just common
dirt like the Tannerhills. Producers till-
ers of the soil were we. The language of
the Stock Exchange were Sanscrit to us:
but we knew how to do the useful things of
life, and life's labor, as we knew it, was a
joy, and we were happy.
THE TORCH OF REASON. 53
"But plain mountain dirt was not good
enough for their only daughter. For such
as she there must be found finer clay ! Down
in the town men wore neat-looking white
cuffs and black, shiny foot gear. Also they
curled their mustaches and talked fast and
loud. The pretty girls of the village wore
much fine raiment and worked seldom. This
was the place for Erma! Here she must
become refined and stately and dignified.
" 'She'd shine in a ballroom and them
fine gentlemen would look at her, I bet,'
her mother used to say.
" 'Cut out to be a lady sich as don't have
to work,' old Aunt Ellenor encouraged.
But Erma, mind you, had never been con-
sulted in the matter and possessed ideas of
her own that she thought best to confide
only to one she knew she could trust.
"The banker old man Perry was rich,
and this banker had a son. It was for him
that they murdered Erma, my Erma. Al-
though an imbecile, deformed and bald,
they had favored him, implanting hatred in
her young heart with such favor. But he
could sport many a white diamond and held
office in the Republican party. Also he
could get drunk, beastly drunk; and this
was the fine gentleman over in the village
that tried to court my Erma, and whom her
mother had picked for her to wed. For
this cancerous, parasitic offal, they pro-
ceeded to tear us asunder and from each
other's love, breaking our hearts Enna's
54 THE TORCH OF REASON.
and mine and when it must have been all
in vain, and forever too late.
"She never saw her child, Ben, this little
love mother this virgin purest of the
pure. She never saw the flowers again!
But when the silver clarion rings down the
pathway of the future in Freedom's joyous
reveille, there in the pantheons of Love and
Truth, and Virtue, shall men bare their
heads in reverence and sing of such as she,
whose chastity was not for price ; whose soul
was the fountain of love Humanity's God
and whose bosom rose and fell with the
surge of maternal grandeur.
"When the news was brought to me I
hurried to her fought my way to her.
They barred the door on me and I went
through it like a tornado. I was no fledg-
ling at twenty, Ben, and wise men hesitated
to oppose me. But they would not let me
see our child. They spirited it away. Of
course I could not stay. But the speck of
life would live, and the fire of life, virile
with the surge of health and purity the
heritage of a reciprocal and youthful love
would not go out. They tried to kill it,
and still it lived and thrived. They starved
it, but it stayed with them and in spite of
them. Then its tormentors hit upon a happy
medium ; they would freeze it to death ! Ah !
the very thing ! Why had they not thought
of so simple a thing before! So they left
it on a doorstep a far drive from home and
THE TORCH OF REASON. 55
in the night; but it's blood was red. It was
of that breed. Moreover, and to help thwart
their devilish purpose it would seem, a
winter thaw set in that very night; and
when the next morning the good farmer's
wife opened the door to sweep back the
snow, it put up its tiny red hands to 'go
to mamma,' and smiled up at her like a
beauty rose dropped in the snow.
"They were rid of it at last, the brat (so
they thought), but the neighbors knew!
They had heard, for it was in the country.
"Back it went again. Then the Smiths
got it and the town paid its board. 'Town
pauper,' it went down on the books. Later
old 'Spot' condemned it to go to the County
Farm. But in this last wanton crime I
baffled them. Leland had written at the
last minute and I rose like a revolution. I
swept them back and fled with my boy on
the very day they had him all bundled up
to go. It was like the pardon that comes in
the nick of time in the stories and moving
pictures. It was chance, mere accident, but
in that accidental coincidence of time,
thought and action, the whole future course
of a human life was changed, environed and
reconstructed.
"But, Ben, I am wearying you. This
letter is longer than I had planned, and yet
it is all too short. Briefly, I have told you
the story I denied you when we quarreled,
when you, with your childish superior as-
56 THE TORCH OF REASON.
sumption boasted of your devil charms and
your ancestral lineage, and called me names
because I shrank from telling the sad
secrets of my gloomy past. It is the story
of only one more of the heart-breaking,
home-wrecking crimes of riot-ruling Capi-
talism. Capitalism, the social criminal of
which men sing; for which men pray; and
for which men vote. It is but one more of
the millions of cold-blooded outrages of a
misguided civilization for which men shed
their blood; for which they fetter their
wives and children in slavery; from which
a nation gasps in poverty, leaving a pauper
heritage to the generations yet unborn
generations destined to be poorer than each
predecessor with a heritage stained with
the shame of every unspeakable crime in
the criminal category since the race began.
It is the story of how they broke two loving
hearts. It is the story of two broken homes.
It is the true story of how they murdered
as pure and as holy a virgin as ever
mothered a Jesus. And it is the tale of the
scattered fragments of their pious ravage
cast upon the four winds of a groaning
world.
"I have wandered over the earth in a
trance. I have made friends easily, for
they could read the open book; but I have
lost them more easily, for they could not
understand.
"My life and home ruined, with the es-
sence and goal of life destroyed, I fought
THE TORCH OF REASON 57
the unequal fight. The odds were against
me. The dice were loaded, and with the
chasm of desolation ever yawning before
me, I have been but chaff in the tempest.
To-night, dear old pal, I am lonely, lonely,
and sad and blue. I am thinking of my
sweetheart my one love who sleeps over
the river and over the mountains. Far away
there in the old churchyard they laid her.
Under the weeping willows and among the
white stones she's resting with the kiss of
blessed peace upon her brow, and with the
kiss I pressed to her cold, white lips life's
last love token.
"I see again the smile she gave me at
the parting. It was her last. She wears
it still. It was her answer to my promise,
Ben, the promise I have kept for twenty
years, and which shall not now be broken.
Bless her trusting soul! She had faith
that we shall meet again among the flowers
and the wildwood in a new home among the
stars. Who shall blame her for this faith?
It was her early teaching, even as it was
mine. I will keep that promise, Ben, and
if, when I go, I shall find the dear one knew,
then I can meet her as when we parted; and
she shall know me then as she knew me in
the old days when we were young.
"I will not desecrate her dear memory
with a violation of her confidence. It was
not her wish, but mine that I make the sac-
rifice. When first her burning cheek fell
limp against my own, her round, white
58 THE TORCH OF REASON.
arms trembling on my neck, I kissed her
in her shining hair and spoke the words that
shall stand unmoved against the wrath of
man, and God, and Heaven and Hell. Here
are the words, Ben ; say them over and over
again, and if you live to grant my wish and
find my boy, call him to your side and teach
him the sacred words with all their grand
meaning: l l will ~be true, I will ~be true!'
"And now I long for the sound of the
night winds through the treetops, and the
smell of the sweet grasses where we roamed
and sang together. There lies buried my
world with my Erma. White lies her lily
bosom, whiter than the white snows above
it. There she waits for me, and I am going
home.
"Forgive me for running away from you,
Comrade, and now good-bye."
"JASON SANDS."
"P. S. Please try to get this package
out on the down mail at your first oppor-
tunity. I have addressed it to her brother,
who is my friend, Mr. Leland B. Tanner-
hill, the only survivor of the family. You
will find the dust to pay carry and postage
in a cartridge box at the foot of my bunk.
I have used your name as a return address
in case of non-delivery, and should it come
back to you, you preserve it and turn it
over to my boy should he ever turn up. His
name is Quimby Sands."
"JASON."
THE TORCH OF REASON. 59
EKMA,
THE BELLE OF THE WILD WOOD.
(A Retrospection)
Belle of the Wildwood, my angel-haired Erma,
Nymph of the Fountain of Beauty to me ;
Mocking birds sigh for her sorrows and murmur
"Erma, sweet Erma, the belle of the lea."
Eyes like the stars in their blue-mantled glory,
Cheeks like the roses abloom in the snow ;
Telling again of the old pretty story,
Darling you loved me, you loved me I know.
Pictures appear on the screen oft returning,
Visions of paradise when you were near;
Ever my life with the love-fires aburning,
Erma, will cherish your memory dear.
Sadly the moon and the stars purple gleaming,
Lonely my exile wherever I roam ;
Oft as of old I return in my dreaming
Tearfully calling she beckons me home.
Nightly I weep by the camp-fire aglowing,
Whippoorwill calls to his mate in the dell ;
Driven forever to wander just knowing,
Erma, I love you, my fairy-haired belle.
CHAPTER III.
THE EVER PRESENT MENACE.
I have drunk of the strife
In the battle of life
From the chalice at Poverty's well;
In the blistering flare
Of the hell of despair
I have seen that my tongue may not tell \
With the breaking of the knife, Jason
Sands did not fall down to be eaten by the
wolf-pack.
With the feeling in his left hand and arm
entirely gone, the time had come when he
must either try for the final climb, or else
give up and be torn to pieces alive. To give
up a fight once begun were the ethics of
weakness and spelt defeat and death. He
was not one of the giving-up kind.
Knowing that he was within reach of the
shelf, and that only a thin crust of ice lay
between him and safety, he had planned
with the dealing of that last terrific blow to
spring for the final landing, and at the
same time bring the axe up over and for-
ward in contact with the crust with enough
force to break it through. It was the act of
this combination of spring and double blow,
that had thrown the extra tension on the
thin steel. It snapped like glass; but the
trained will of a master mind defied the
(60)
THE TORCH OF REASON. 61
shock, and as the ponderous hulk swayed
clear of the ice-wall, it shot forward and
upward, the free, right foot lodging square-
ly in the step made for it by the axe, as
both axe and arm to the elbow crashed
through the crust of the crevice, giving him
a full arm hold on the solid rock.
Thus the battle ended and he was safe
for the night, at least.
Jason paused in his new position and
rested long enough to smile down at the
defeated brutes with their fiery eyes in the
darkness there, then cleared the snow from
his bracket perch and took account of the
situation. There was his pack securely
strapped in its customary place on his back.
How it ever got there was beyond him. He
distinctly remembered having removed and
left it with his carbine and snowshoes when
before that last drink from the falls, and
the memory of it ended there. But here it
was, and in it there was moose meat cut
thin, and he was hungry. Also it contained
the five boxes of cartridges and his Indian
blanket. But his Savage was down there
on the ice, and the only ammunition availa-
ble was about fifty shots for the Auto-
matic. " That '11 help some," he said,
slipping off the bloody mitten and feeling
of the holster at his hip. He was silent a
moment, then fishing a quantity of the
moose meat from the pack, continued: "I
hate to disappoint you, you patient, saintly
62 THE TOECH OF REASON.
dears, for I know you must be hungry after
such, violent exercise; but I'm not quite
ready yet, and if you'll stick around here
till morning, we'll open the show with a
farce comedy, and I'll sing you a sweet
lullaby all in one key, and one you forgot
to get down on the program."
The pain in his foot worried him not a
little; but he was hungry and spent, and
sick. The blood creeping back into the
paralyzed arm felt like ice water. He did
not look a last time to see if the green fire
balls were gleaming up at him; he knew
they were, without looking. He would not
hector them. Wait till morning ! He would
show them!
The shelf cleared of snow, and his un-
thinkable repast greedily devoured, though
it was frozen with the hardness of stone,
and with the Boreal batteries blazing their
Northern Lights above and the gray angels
of death keeping vigil below, he rolled him-
self in his warm blanket and slept.
The nights are long up under the North
Star, and Jason's sleep was not a peaceful
one. What with the events of the day how
could one be expected to sleep soundly!
With the repose of the conscious mind, came
the reign of the sub-conscious, or dream
mind. Strangely enough, he did not dream
of wolves not the fanged kind, the kind
that were waiting to eat him at the foot of
the cliff but he dreamed back down the
THE TORCH OF REASON. 63
trail of the past, with all the long train of
disasters through the whole horrible laby-
rinth of his chance existence of crushing,
debasing toil.
Dreams with Jason Sands were no new
menace to trouble his peaceful slumbers.
When had he ever been free from them!
He had worked and worried and thought,
and fought, and failed! His brain had be-
come a veritable perpetual motion. It
would not stop thinking, and he could not
stop it. Asleep or awake it rambled on just
the same in spite of him. The machinery
of his brain seemed like the machinery of
the hosiery mills, and the weave rooms, and
the shoe factories in which he had worked.
There, when his day's work was done,
a night shift w^uld come on to operate
the machines in the factory, as the night
shift of demons came now to operate the
machinery of his brain. But the factories
and the machines were owned by others-
parasites who did no useful work ; while his
brain belonged to him, or ought to belong
to him, and why could not the torment cease
now that he had rebelled and become an
exile! Crudely, and in a vague way, he
knew the chemistry of the brain, and he
knew that all this everlasting nightmare of
somni-slavery was a result of long years of
servitude in wage-slavery under the lash
of hunger. Each separate brain cell had
received and retained these weary impres-
64 THE TORCH OF REASON.
sions as the dry plates of photography re-
ceive and retain impressions through the
lens of the camera. That's what the brain
was for to receive impressions then to de-
velop and direct the mind and body
accordingly.
He would close his eyes, and instantly the
power would come on, and away would fly
the pulleys, the gears and the belts. An-
other operator would step in and work his
tired brain through another long shift, and
things had gotten so he was powerless to
prevent it. Thoughts would flit rapidly one
after another, and with each shifting scene,
he could feel a twitching of the eyeballs.
This twitching of the eyeballs was more
than an annoyance, it was painful, and
brought on dull, sick headaches. He would
try to control his eyes, commanding them
to be still, and centering all his mental
forces on the effort; but success would be
only temporary, and presently the demons
of unrest would be turning at the cranks
again, and the twitching and jerking and
flitting would begin again, and the snap-
ping, crashing, buzzing sounds would get
back in his ears, to damn his every moment
with their diabolical activity.
Dreams! Dreams! Dreams! Oh! the
dreams and the pictures, and the visions
and the horrors, the noises, and the tears,
and the pain! And oh! the poverty, and
the pictures of the poverty! An endless
THE TORCH OP REASON. 65
chain and endless moving picture film of
vivid flashes from scenes of life and death
that threatened to unbalance his mind and
drive him mad.
From a day's toil in the frozen earth he
would sink into his bunk of fir boughs,
eyes heavy and weary for sleep, but no
sleep would come to him. No sooner would
he stretch himself for the sleep his eyes
craved, than open they would pop, and open
they would stay, far into the night; while
his aching muscles and tired bones turned
and twisted and flopped and thrashed
around, as the whistles blew and the bells
clanged, and the street cars screeched and
ground around corners in the helter-skelter
chaos of muddled civilization. The more
the ache and pain, the more, it seemed, his
sleepy eyes rejected the very sleep he could
not live without. And then he would spring
up, light the grease lamp and shiver
through a pile of old manuscripts he had
written, rewritten, and which he ever found
himself rereading, rewriting, correcting and
revising, and tying up again. Some were
songs, songs of labor, and of labor's woes.
Some were baby lullaby s, and some were
love songs, tender and full of sweet appeal.
Other poems there were among them, and
stories, philosophy, science and letters of
address. This nightly task performed, he
would return to the bunk half frozen and
fall into a sleep that was not a sleep at all
66 THE TORCH OF REASON.
asleep in body, but with mind alert and
active to wake at dawn with lagging spir-
its, sodden, discouraged, and blue!
But these were moods. They came only
periodically, and it was while obsessed by
one of these unhappy broodings with its
reminiscences of sorrow, that the lure of
the old home had come upon him with a
force he could not resist. He knew it was
a weakness, but suffered himself to be
whelmed by it, and finally yielding to its
subtle wooings as a blind man yields to the
touch of a little child's hand.
On the trip to Dawson, he had planned
to camp only every other night, with hope
that the excessive strain of trail and pack
might break down the momentum of his
brain and induce sleep. He hoped to es-
cape the dreams, for he needed all his
strength for the long tramp over the snow.
Alas, he was doomed to failure in this fond
hope like all others ; for no sooner were the
scenes of the day just ended shut out, than
came galloping on the heels of the wolf
fight, the whole miserable phantasmagoria
of infernal horrors, associated here and
there with a glint of joy and beauty, the
more to aggravate the pestilence of the
black drama.
Strangely enough, the joy pictures were
the first on the program. A boy again, he
was playing yacht race on the white sandy
shores of Squam Lake, sending out his toy
THE TORCH OF REASON. 67
canoes with their birch-bark sails, under
the frowning visage of old Bald Ledge.
There were the two "Kattlesnakes," tower-
ing, like the nude nipples of some adaman-
tine goddess, basking in the summer sun-
shine, or lying dormant in her crystal robes
of brumal splendor. He was a strapping
youth, and it was autumn. The corn was
yellow, and the vast maple forests were
dreamily nodding their tinted tresses to the
drowsy year. The eagle soared higher in
his dizzy round above the mountain, and
there was cider-making at the old Smith
mill.
On Ace Enos' Point he was hunting
squirrels with old Bob, or lining bees with
Arthur Godfrey, and rolling rocks from the
top of West Hill through Steve Bennett's
sap house, for the mischief that was in him,
and that had to come out of him.
And still on went the dream. The roar
of the little river did not disturb him, and
the pain in his swollen foot was forgotten
along with the wolf fight and the frost. He
was transported far from the jagged cliff
where his tired body rested, and in fancy
once again he was at the Red Gate, splash-
ing home through the rain with his brothers
from The Bridge. A vision of the Otter
Islands came next. There were his
brothers, wrecked, and he was flying to the
rescue! The lake was afoam and the sky
black and lowering. With blanket and pad-
68 THE TORCH OF REASON.
die he was running for his canoe, Omar and
Sam heading him off for fear of his life,
while the storm increased in fury, and the
boys clung manfully to the wave-swept reef.
So far it was not an important dream.
He was familiar with all this thing, but it
went merrily on as dreams have a habit of
doing, and as moving pictures are thrown
on a screen by the biograph. There was
Uel Bragg 's tribe, first, second, and third
crops. And his fox hounds that hunted
rabbits, and his rabbit hounds that ran only
foxes. There were many mouths in this
tribe : Frank and Ben and Joe and Mamie,
Emma, Alice, Fred and' Harry, Hannah,
Bob, Pink and Bogy, Spot and Spiver!
And a dozen or so more he could not recall
twenty-three in all oh, yes! and the
"Nimshi!" But they were a good lot of
kids, he decided, only full of the devil, as
the old man used to say, and hard to keep
track of especially the "Nimshi." Used
to bore their ears, Uel told the neighbors,
and made them wear a tin tag with a num-
ber on it, so he could tell when they were
all at home at night.
Whisk! He was over to Carrie Page's
(dear, dear Carrie!), in her hillside home,
where all were welcome and where all was
free. There was Charles Densmore, old
Ezra, and the Old Squaw under the trees
by the boulder. Down the dusty road was
the old schoolhouse. It was recess time,
THE TORCH OF REASON. 69
and there was Winnie, with her winsome
ways and wisdom, and her vari-hued brood
of chattering human chicks. * * * To
the bonfire on the ice. The skating party,
and the crowds of rustic youths and hoary
patriarchs. He was cutting fancy scrolls
with Mamie Smith and the Piper girls-
Nina and Lil and, oh, the jealousy of
Johnny Reynolds! Now he was leading
Otis Scruton and "Long-legs" Charlie a
merry race around Croag's island, while
Oilman Thompson smoked his T. D., and
passed the cider to Frank Marsh and Elder
Sinkler, with Jennie and Alice leading in
the merriment and song. * * *
Down to John's. Up to Susan-Marl's.
A Euchre party at Carry- Ann's Euchre,
Pitch, and Seven-up with Nina nudging
under the table, and Gilpin slipping the
Joker to Hen, Warren Leivitt "rubbering,"
and "Cud" Wilder keeping tally. That
was twenty-five years ago, before Sue
Jones' girls were married off, and when
there was peace and quiet in the land, and
the farmers were happy and free.
And now it was a dance. Ah! the coun-
try dances! Over at John Downings, on
the Neck. At the Harbor. Up to The
Bridge. Away to Hardback on a hay ride.
A husking at Frank Jewell's. Here he was
again, living over all the old times, singing
the old songs and dancing the old inspiring
dances with the same old-fashioned maid-
70 THE TORCH OF REASON.
ens, with their freckled necks and freckled
noses, the rosy glow of rural health and
rampant beauty in their round, hard
cheeks. The fiddler in the entry rasping
out "A Turkey in the Straw," and beating
a rhythmic "thump, thump, thump," with
his cowhide boot, at the same time calling
off: "Barlance yer pardner'n swing up
7 n daown th' center awl hands
'round." Eawny Fred Killyard prying
himself around a ten-foot circle, one foot
stationary, the other doing the prying, after
the manner of a spring cockrel in a pullet
pen, and taking with him in a mad embrace,
little Bosie Brown, her feet a full yard off
the floor. Oh, the freckles and the frolic!
The apples and the cider! The red ear of
corn and the kiss behind the door! Oh, the
yesterday of life! Oh, the sweet, sad
visions made sadder by their very sweet-
ness of the joyous days of these recrudes-
cent transpositions amid the silent scenes
of wasted years, years that can never come
back again never, never more!
Following all of which there came an-
other dream another vision. It were a
mercy if only it might have been but a
dream a vision. The picture came rapidly
in regular order off the reel, flashed vivid
and unerring on the mental canvas with all
the realism of this wonderful mutoscopic
sub-consciousness, and it came this night
as it had come a thousand times before to
THE TORCH OF REASON. 71
torture him and scourge him on toward his
grave: The divine form and radiant fea-
tures and sweet womanly grace of one too
pure and true for life in a cruel world of
beastly immorality and tinseled fraud. He
saw again the liquid, hazel eyes with their
heavy, dark lashes, beaming upon him full
of love and beauty. He stretched forth his
hands for the warm, soft press of the tender
hands that used to fondle his tangled locks
while he laved his greedy soul in the lavish
gift of her girlish wif ehood. It was the old
hope of home and happiness that for twenty
empty years had hungered his famished
life, rustling dryly in his broken heart, like
autumn leaves that cling on icy boughs in
winter to rustle coldly in the sleet and wind.
Again he saw himself the round, rose-
cheeked youth, asurge with the red fluid-
fire of his nomadic strain, arm in arm,
cheek to cheek, and heart to heart with this
stainless rural beauty, basking in the hal-
lowed sunshine of each other's wholesome
love. All was hope. All was love. All was
promise, and his faith in man and God had
not been scant nor shaken. Flushed with
youth and health, and conscious of a mod-
est, manly pride both in himself and in his
sweet, young bride, all the world was beau-
tiful and filled with joy and plenty. * * *
And then came the old crash !
The world stopped, gasped, trembled in
space then burst asunder! The heavens
72 THE TORCH OF REASON.
fell down and the earth shot up to meet
them ! Crashing and smashing they fell to-
gether, and the dream went on. The stars,
in a fusing meteoric galaxy of sputtering,
sizzling fire, went spilling out over the
world, mingling with the mangled frag-
ments of human hearts, crushed, and torn
and bleeding, and all festooned with gilded
crosses and broken swords. Books with
brassen clasps and with pages loose and
fluttering, pages red with the blood of
virgins, were being swept along into a great
whirlpool together with red-labeled bottles
from which spurted redder wines and yel-
low liquors. Bald-headed priests were
trampling on the upturned faces of crying
children. Mighty-muscled workingmen
were beating back pussy, hog-like creatures
in smooth black broad-cloth, who were
snatching bread from the mouths of pale-
faced women and naked babes.
And still the merciless Gehenna persisted.
With the suffocating fumes of burnt pow-
der choking him, a stream of white-hot
metal poured through him from a cannon's
mouth behind his back, worlds, rolling and
tumbling through burning ether, swirled
and curved and met in mid-air. Moun-
tains shook and crumbled to dust. Lakes
boiled and stood on end. The mighty ocean
was sucked up into space and spilled out
over the world with all the live sea monsters
and fishes shredded to pulp and wriggling
THE TORCH OP REASON. 73
in the throes of death. Forest trees hurri-
caned through the blistering tempest roots
uppermost; and into this stifling cata-
clysmic caldron where fetid smoke curled
in inky billows shot through with incessant
flames of tongued lightning, Jason Sands
was pinioned, helpless, speechless, and
alone !
Consciousness left him. Down he sank
into the boiling mass, down, down, for a
million years! Then he was alive again.
His ears caught far soft sounds. A spirit
hand, cool and gentle, bathed his scorched
forehead. Something touched his rigid lips
and left a drop of sweetest nectar there.
He opened his eyes, and there, beaming
down upon him sweetly but sadly stood the
one divine figure, and when he smiled she
stretched her white arms out to him in
silent longing. He could see her clearly
now. The sun was shining on her glorious
head, the promise of a sacred love oft re-
peated still radiating from the windows
of her dear soul. Surely he was not dead,
for it was Erma ! But at that moment came
a great shock greater than all others which
had gone before. The earth staggered,
heaved and was parted at their feet, leav-
ing a great and widening gulf between
them. On the brink of the black maw she
stood wildly calling. His heart was being
torn as with talons. But he could not go
her, and she could not come to him! * *
* *
74 THE TORCH OF REASON.
There was a movement on the shelf in
the cliff. A great red hand pushed back the
folds of a frosted blanket. Eyes stared up
into the blood-red sunshine eyes that were
sunken, and sad, and wet with icy tears.
Minutes passed and there was no further
movement. The eyes glared bewilderingly,
the hand fingered the soft, mealy snow, and
then the huge form of Jason Sands sat
erect. The next instant he was on his feet.
Bending over the cliff he looked down where
the night before he had hovered between
life and death. The wolves were gone ! Not
one remained.
" Clear case of cold feet," he said, "I
wish they had waited for me ! Providence,
your discipline is lax, and your emissaries
are becoming unruly."
The awakened dreamer was not long in
deciding what to do. His foot was badly
swollen and paining him. It needed imme-
diate attention, but the best he could do was
to loosen his mocassin and hurry to the
Porks where stood Frank Durgen's old
cabin, and where he could have heat and
shelter. There he would hold up for a day
or two and give it proper dressing.
The weather had moderated, and the first
faint hint of breaking winter was in the
air.
At the Forks, he found the cabin occu-
pied by an Indian a small young squaw.
Her man, she said, had gone to Dawson for
THE TORCH OF REASON. 75
grub, and she was looking for him to return
every day. They had run out of flour two
months back, and the Canadian half-breed
had packed the dust and left her, promising
to be back with the supplies in fourteen
days. It was three hundred miles, with
spring trail and open country.
"Took the dust with him, did he?" re-
peated Jason after the guileless squaw.
Then he changed the subject abruptly.
That, then, was the secret of it! But he
had not the heart to tell her, for he saw
that her trust in the scoundrel was still un-
shaken, and he could afford to be merciful.
She would go to Dawson to look him up !
In fact, she was packed and ready to start
when Jason arrived.
"All right," he said, "take this letter
with you and I will give you much dust. I
would go, too, but" and he pointed to his
swollen foot and the Indian knew. Open-
ing his pack Jason poured her two hands
full and heaped them up, from a sack of
yellow gold a full thousand dollars.
"There," he said, "this is yours. Find
the doctor and lay this letter in his hands.
And see," he admonished her, "many days
must I suffer great trouble. Dawson is very
far." The simple child of Nature read his
meaning ere he had spoken ; and turning on
her tiny snowshoes bade him keep watch
and said:
76 THE TORCH OF REASON.
"Toy bring Long Hair, sure, quick! Toy
no 'fraid. Big Snow count sleep small
(holding up her ten fingers), Indian foot
much swift." With this she was gone, and
the man of many troubles was alone.
Ten days later Dr. Spanto and Jack
Philips, accompanied by the young squaw,
and with an outfit of twelve husky dogs
and a well-laden sled, pulled into the Forks.
It had snowed, but there were no tracks
outside the little log hut.
In his early days Spanto had house-
boated the Mississippi River from St. Louis
to the Gulf of Mexico; and in those days
the happiest of his life he would main-
tain he had first met Jack Philips and
Jason Sands. Later, they had met in Daw-
son, Jason bound for a mythical El Dorado
as yet undiscovered, and farther to the
North, while the happy Spanto was con-
tent, as he put it, to "fry his bacon and
wallop his dodger in his own skillet, and
over a fire of his own making." And in
Dawson City he preferred to mine the miner
moderately in return for his profes-
sional skill, to the more arduous methods
of pick and fire-hole. Jason had not seen
him in four years; but he knew him to be
a true blue friend and comrade, and if
still in the north country Toy would find
him and he would move heaven and earth
to come to his aid.
Jack Philips was also a Socialist, one of
the kind that can usually be found working
THE TORCH OF REASON. 77
at it. Also he was a close friend of Jason's,
and when the doctor told him of their old
friend's plight, Philips threw down every-
thing and joined the rescue party in the
three-hundred-mile race with death.
Jason and Philips had met in St. Louis,
and, although they disagreed on about
everything with the exception of Social-
ism, they railroaded together between St.
Louis and Kansas City, and became firm
friends. And now here they were meeting
again in this God-forgotten corner of the
world, after many years and many hard-
ships in the individual strife for life.
After seeing the squaw on her way, Jason
turned his attention to his wounded foot.
Removing mocassin and socks he was horri-
fied at the sisrht. Also the r>ain multiplied
a thousand fold with the free circulation
and the warm of the fireplace. At first
sierht of the dark purple gash he felt the
color recede from his face and he knew he
was going to faint. There was a nasty
sickness at the pit of his stomach and he
was weak and vacillating. "Blood poison!"
he said aloud. "And probahlv rabies, and
possiblv lockiaw!" Jason Sands had seen
this thing before, and "he knew the route of
the victim of mad wolf -bite.
Tn the half-breed's bunk he found raw
tobacco. This he soaked in hot water and
bound on the wound: but the next dav the
foot was worse, and then he soaked the
foot in hot water, the next thing in line
78 THE TORCH OF REASON.
to do ; but on the fifth day it began to turn
black, and then he literally boiled the flesh
from the bones!
When on the tenth day after the fleet-
footed Indian girl had gone on her flying
errand, she returned with help and stormed
into the little shack, it was a pitiful sight
that met their horrified gaze! The cabin
was poorly lighted, and it was some mo-
ments before their "snow eyes" accustomed
themselves to the sudden change. The doc-
tor was the first inside the door, and at his
first step he put his foot on something that
moved under his weight and nearly threw
him. A lighted match revealed a naked
human foot! The desperate miner had
waited until the last minute, and then, with
his pocket knife, he had amputated the
wounded foot at the ankle and tossed it
toward the door!
Juarez Spanto was an Aztec Indian.
Born in Old Mexico, he was a lineal de-
scendant from the once great and powerful
tribe of that name, which ruled that
southern empire in the days before the
Spanish conquest. He was a finely knit
specimen of the now rapidly disintegrating
breed, of medium height and with glossy
black hair that hung in massive waves below
his square shoulders. The practice of medi-
cine with him was a pastime. He had in-
herited the love of it from his semi-savage
forebears. It was the Science of Herbs, and
THE TORCH OF REASON. 79
there was an herb for the cure of every ill.
When he saw what Jason had done he was
furious; but later agreed that, in all prob-
ability, and in the absence of the more
scientific treatment, it was the only imme-
diate means of relief, and that it had saved
the man's life.
"I suppose the Christian Scientists would
have us believe that there was never any-
thing very seriously wrong with the foot,
and that a little heavy thinking would have
been sufficient to restore the foot as good as
new, 'eh, Jack?" challenged the Physicist.
"The Christian Scientist mav be off his
trolley in some respects, like all the rest of
us ; there are few perfect in this world. But
I am of the opinion that he would deny the
necessity of hacking off that foot, and I
think T should agree with him," replied the
unruffled Jack.
"I believe," ventured Jason, "they claim
that 'good' is everything powerful, and
that everything else is what they term
' error.' Therefore they might be expected
to say, that, although the wolf had bitten
the font, the flesh being 'error' a 'temporal
unreality' must have surrendered to
'good.' which is all powerful, being 'reality,'
and 'infinite.' They could, on that assump-
tion, reason that, the result of the bite could
not have been serious owing to the fact that
the bite being simply contact of tooth with
flesh, and that both being 'error matter,'
80 THE TORCH OF REASON.
and therefore 'unreality,' must have been
subordinate to 'good' which reposes in the
mind."
" There are many so-called ills," re-
sponded Jack, "that are merely an un-
natural condition of mind."
Neither Jason nor the doctor seemed as
yet fully converted to the think-remedy
"faith, and the doctor sacreligiously offered
the suggestion that, had the man fallen
down among the several hundred ferocious
beasts, and had they deigned to connect
their many-fanged "error" with his one
flesh "error," according to past history
anent the reputation of the wolf, it must
have required some hot stepping on the part
of his mental "divinity" to dissuade them
and convince them of the "error" of their
ways!
The Jason told a story on the Christian
Scientists: "One day," he said, "there
were two little girls at play, when the
mother of one of the little girls called to
her. 'I must go,' said she, 'for papa is
sick, and mamma needs me.' 'Aw, he ain't
sick,' encouraged the other, 'he only thinks
he's sick!'
"The next day the two little girls met
again, meanwhile the man had died. 'How
is your papa to-day?' sympathetically
inquired the one whose people were
' scientists. '
THE TORCH OF REASON. 81
" 'Oh!' replied the other, tears filling
her swollen eyes, 'he just thinks he's
dead!"
But Jack Philips, with his new-found
"bug" theories, as Jason characterized
them, was honest, and his fealty to the
cause they both loved was none the less
manifest and sincere because of their re-
ligious discrepancies. In this particular
faith, like all the faiths, creeds, and doc-
trines that had attached themselves to the
race and found favor, he knew Jack was
but a seeker after the truth, and that his
present philosophy of life false or true
was simply a transition through which
eventually he would pass, and which
would land him high and dry above the fog.
For Philips was a thinker, as well as a
doer, and possessed a big, broad intellect,
and a generous, loving heart. He loved all
mankind with the genuine love of a brother,
a friend, and a comrade, and with a love
that was constant and real. More men like
Jack Philips could only result in making
the world a better and a sweeter place in
which to live. The great goodness and faith
of this simple-hearted boy-man only the
more seemed to bear Jason out in his theory
that, man, to-day, is not the man he desires
to be, and that he will be under conditions
more compatible with his ideals and aspira-
82 THE TORCH OF REASON.
tions. He believed man is ever hopeful of
the future. That he has ever striven for a
goal which is an idealism wherein want
shall be unknown, and where every man
may look squarely in the eyes of every
other man, knowing he is his friend.
Before amputating the foot, Jason had
thrown an extremely effective tourniquet
on his leg just below the knee with the raw-
hide lacing of his mocassin. This precau-
tion had saved his life. He had not acted
in time in the heroic application of the
knife, and the poison had reached the thick
muscles of his calf before he performed the
operation at the ankle. The flesh was the
color of creosote. The eye of the trained
physician and physicist needed but one
swift look. Flashing a silent threat at
Philips, he motioned Toy forward with his
long instrument case. With a few positive
orders to her, he turned to Philips with
sweet serenity but firmness withal and com-
manded: "Jack, the wafty stuff don't go.
Cut it out! Steady, now, there's not a
minute to lose!" And Jack was silent.
When three months later the Aurora
blew her screechy whistle, for "all aboard
for down river," four passengers, the last
to go on board, hustled up the gangplank
together. The man in the lead wore
crutches of enormous size, and his hair was
the color of pure, white silk. Also his left
trousers' leg was pinned up at the knee.
THE TORCH OF REASON. 83
The man was too big and wide for the gang-
way, and had to edge his way between the
narrow railings sidewise. The next in line
was a big, jolly, good-looking boy-man with
laughing eyes and a handsome double row
of pearl white teeth set in a generous mouth
above a square, strong jaw. His every look
and movement bespoke manliness, courage,
and great strength. Immediately behind
him came a tall, spring- jointed, soldierly
looking man with long black hair and
swarthy skin; and following close on his
heels came a small, pretty featured and
neatly attired woman. She was also
swarthy, but less swarthy than the man
with the long hair, and her great dark, sen-
suous eyes and rose-tinted cheeks, belied
the purity of the Indian blood and clearly
reflected the infusion of the Spanish strain.
A great throng had pressed to the water's
edge, for Dawson City was celebrating a
wedding! God-speeding honeymooners re-
quires much rice and many old boots; and
though rice sold at a dollar a pound in
Dawson, the quantity available was copious,
and littered the deck along with the old
boots until the footing in that quarter be-
came extremely perilous. It was an eager
sea of faces that clamored for a last look
at the happy couple, and it was not without
difficulty that the big boy-man finally per-
suaded the blushing Toy and grinning
Spanto to appear at the starboard rail, as
84 THE TORCH OF REASON.
the little stern-wheeler slued into the cur-
rent and headed for the salt water two
thousand miles away.
It was the month of August. The brief
northern summer was at an end, and the
more brief autumn was drearily dreaming
out its evanescent reign.
To all but Jason Sands the trip down the
wild Yukon was a delightful and romantic
caprice. There was a time when to him it
also would have been delightful; but that
was when he was a whole man and possessed
two legs and as many feet to walk on. Now
what was he but the relic of his former self
a dereliction? It was all the same to
him now. Each day was like its prede-
cessor, and hours were so many cogs in the
wheel of Time.
To the dare-devil Spanto, it revived vast
recollections of other days days of his
early exploits and adventures on his house-
boat in company with Billy Kirkendoll on
the riotous waters of the Old Mississippi.
Jack Philips was full of sunshine and op-
timism, and the passengers were uproar-
ously entertained with his jovial compan-
ionship and inexhaustible wealth of wit and
good stories. The little bride was radiant
and happy. Her other man had lost all
their dust on a game of chance in a gamb-
ling hell, and then lost his miserable life
in a fight. When she went to the Mexican
Spanto and related the circumstances, he
'To all but Jason Sands, the trip down the wild Yukon was a
delightful and romantic caprice."
THE TORCH OF REASON. 85
looked long and thoughtfully into the
brightly burning embers of his warm fire,
and a dark cloud gathered on his brow.
Then, laying a hand gently on the bowed
head before him said, simply: "Toy, come!
I will be your man, and you shall be my
Toy. You are good. I have much dust.
We will be comrades." Whereupon the
diminutive daughter of the wild dried her
eyes, and fetching her blanket, laid it on
his bed.
But poor Jason! He was an object of
pity! He would sit for hours on deck,
gazing steadily with a far-off look in his
paternal eyes, oblivious to all save the
anguish that ate into his heart and that was
eating the heart out of him. In spite of
all the rest of the little party could do to
cheer him, he seemed constantly growing
dispirited and morose. As the days went
by, he became the very embodiment of dis-
suasion and sadness. " Brace up," Jack
Philips would chirrup, " forget it, old boy,
the blues don't get you anything, only
nearer Salt Creek, and this craft ain't head-
ing right to fetch that harbor; so come out
of it, Comrade, and let's have a song."
"Think of it," chimed in the doctor one
day, "only for little Toy,' here, you would
not be with us now. But here you are, a
million times better than a dead man, and
we are not going to desert you. We will
see you through in safety, and you are
86 THE TORCH OF REASON.
going to be with us when we take the world
from the thieves who have stolen it, and
when we usher in the Co-operative Com-
monwealth."
But Jason understood. And the more
they tried to jolly him along, the deeper his
grief sunk him in the quagmire of despond-
ency. It seemed there was no escape for
him, for the crew, and all the other pas-
sengers got the habit, and no one could pass
him without parroting that detestable
"brace up!" "Cheer up!" "Be jolly!"
"Forget it!" "Smile!" "Remember there
are others worse off than you!" "Laugh
and the world laughs with you!" and all
that garrulity of fools.
"How in hell can a man laugh?"
It was a beautiful afternoon, all hands
were seated aft, the little boat coughing
merrily along, when at a bizzare outburst
of laughter from some of the crew, Jason
turned to Jack Philips and literally took
his breath away with the foregoing explo-
sive interrogation. For a moment the
happy-hearted Jack was speechless. The
Mexican shot a swift glance at Toy, and
that humiliate child of piety suppressed a
little scream, and looked generously tol-
erant but mildly reproachful at Jason
Sands.
"Oh! Big Snow," she chided, "Toy no
hear Big Snow talk fire-talk before. Toy
no like fire-talk. Please, Big Snow, try
THE TORCH OF REASON. 87
laugh small. No be sorry. Toy sorry!
Great Padra much sorry!"
Here the little tamed wildling crossed
herself, and came and knelt beside Jason's
chair.
"You are right, Toy," he said, "and I
am sorry right now; for it is not manly to
use so great an invention as the language
of the human tongue in wasteful, senseless
phrases. Besides, Toy, you believe that God
heard me swear, and that he is worried
about the welfare of my wicked soul ? And
that if I am good, and don't swear, we shall
all meet in the Happy Game Preserve up
yonder where there is plenty dust and much
big hunting; eh, Toy?" The unsophisti-
cated Toy looked up at the cruel jester
wide-eyed, and with the joy of conquest
beaming from an unsullied soul and nodded !
"Poor little wounded birds," he thought,
"how easily their gilded wings are broken;
but their superstitions and prejudices
never! Oh, the obeisance of a blind belief I
Alas for the fetish of faith, and the igno-
rance, and the false teaching!" The kind-
hearted man of sorrows laid a hand on her
raven-black hair and spoke to her in pure
charity: "Toy, you have made me under-
stand. I shall be a better man. When I
die and go to Heaven I shall tell the
good saints of you, and how you made your
little feet fly to save my life; and if I
should happen to be the first to go, I will
88 THE TORCH OF REASON.
tell the Great Padra that you are very good
and are coining too. And now you run and
sit beside Doc, for he's beginning to be
sorry too!"
Turning to Philips with feigned impa-
tience, but without repeating the question,
he demanded, naively: "Why don't you
answer, Jack?"
"It's easy enough to laugh, Comrade, the
world is beautiful and life is sweet, and
everything would look bright to us if only
we had love in our hearts. Look at me. I
love everybody and everything, and every-
body loves me. It was the teaching of the
Nazarene." The doctor "huhed," audibly,
and Toy fidgeted in evident anticipation of
a volcanic eruption from that direction and
Jack went on:
"You see, Comrade," he said, "hate has
ruled the world so long that all mankind
has come to look upon life as a fight, and
we hear much about 'the struggle for life.'
Men meet, not as brothers, but as enemies-
antagonists. As if there were not room
enough in the world for all of us to live in
peace and amid plenty! I am a Socialist,
because I recognize the injustice of the
capitalist system, and the inevitability of
its downfall and the establishment of the
more sane and equitable system of co-opera-
tive human endeavor. But there is no rea-
son why we who know the causes of things,
as well as the remedy and the method of
THE TORCH OF REASON. 89
/
the application of that remedy, should cling
longer to the old hate philosophy. Love
will accomplish much more good for the
cause than can be achieved by any other
method."
"How about the fellow I catch picking
my pockets?" fumed the Aztec. "How
about the conscienceless degenerate who
violates my confidence and my friendship?
How about that rat-eyed cur that dragged
her (pointing to Toy) from her people,
beat and starved her, then finally shook her
three hundred miles from nowhere, went on
a drunk and to an unmarked grave? Ex-
pect a sane man to love cattle of that stripe?
I tell you it is unnatural and impossible.
A cada malo su did malo!"
"You are right, Doc, and you are wrong.
It is true, as you say, that, 'the evil doer
shall know his evil day.' But in the sur-
rendering of the point, my position only
becomes the stronger. Listen: I am not a
believer in the crime of punishment. Man
does not commit evil from choice, but be-
cause of necessity, or what he imagines to
be necessity. Evil is not of human nature
but of Inhuman nature. It is the beast-man
and not the god-man at riot in the china-
shop of human morals. Man is ever fleeing
away from the Beast. He is ever seeking
higher levels. 'The evil conscience needs
no accuser;' and the evil day of the evil
doer shall be the day when he reviews his
90 THE TORCH OF REASON.
shameful handiwork in the light of truth
and reason."
"But there are some men, I tell you, who
are absolutely devoid of conscience. Right
and wrong to them has become simply a
question of, 'how much will it pay.' Morals
don't enter into the deal at all. It is simply
a viewpoint, anyway, an economic view-
point, focused from a selfish angle. These
men are a menace to society; do you mean
to tell me that you want such men to run
at large, and that they should not be
punished?"
"Man is a creature of environment, Doc,
and his course in life is shaped by his con-
tact with life, not from the inner promp-
tings of his better nature. He is molded
from without, not from within. Eead
Twain's 'What is Man?'
"No, I do not believe in punishment. We
have been punished too much already
usually for the crimes of others. A man
cannot be blamed for fighting for his life.
For he finds himself being fought, and until
the cause of the fight is removed, the fight
will go on, and on, and he who will not
fight must submit to inevitable annihilation.
But he who fights for more than life fights
in ignorance, and he should be suppressed
and educated, not punished. Under a sane
and equitable arrangement of industrial
and economic co-operation, he would not
THE TORCH OF REASON. 91
need to fight; so, instead of strife and hate,
his course would be governed by peace and
love."
"Oh, I understand all that. Say, you
make me tired! You always run away off
on a round-about rampage among a lot of
parenthetical sidetracks, to begin expound-
ing Socialism to me! As if I were not a
Socialist already, but some ignorant chief
justice, senator or professor, or even a
Roosevelt ! What I cannot understand, and
what you have a habit of dodging, is, how
you can expect we are to love and treat
gently, the brutal fiend who interferes with
our personal efforts to earn an honest liv-
ing. I know it is the capitalist system
which brutalizes men all of us more or
less the whole race. But if one of the more
brutal and ignorant of the beasts oozes a
stilletto down the back of my neck and
takes my watch and dust, I want you to
explain to me by what process of mental
hypnotism I may so twist the law of self-
defense as to excite in me a great and undy-
ing love for this particular human hyena?'*
"Very well, old boy, I will tell you once
for all, and if you will follow me closely,
then think it over for a long time seri-
ously, now, Doc you will see that I am
right, and instead of hating this poor, weak
brother, you will come to pity, and even to
love him. You will find yourself reaching
out to him with the torch of reason, just
92 THE TORCH OF REASON.
as I am doing. This is Love conquering the
world Love, the God of Humanity."
At this point Jason began to exhibit un-
mistakable signs of a deep, and growing in-
terest in the discussion an interest such as
he had not manifested in anything since
the loss of his good left leg. He liked
Philips, but he had never been able to see
through this love-of-an-enemy logic, and he
was all attention now that it was about to
be laid bare.
The little boat had passed Fort Yukon,
which is the junction of the Yukon and
Porcupine rivers, where the waters widen
out into what amounts almost to a shallow
lake, long and narrow, and filled with small
islands for a distance of ten or more miles.
This lake-like stretch of sluggish water is
called "The Flats," or, more properly
speaking, "Yukon Flats." Navigation
through "The Flats" is always considered
a dangerous procedure at best. The hun-
dreds of sand bars are constantly shifting,
and it is not an infrequent occurrence for
steamers to scrape their bottoms on these
bars, or go aground dead. Complete wrecks
are matters of current history.
At Fort Yukon, Capt. Anderson shipped
a larsre consismment of bullion from the
Fort Yukon Mining and Milling Co. for the
'Commercial Trust Co., of Washington, at
Seattle.
There was nothing out of the ordinary in
the appearance of any of the six passengers
THE TORCH OF REASON. 93
who came aboard at that point, more than
that they were rough-looking men, unshaven
and generally unkempt in accord with the
custom of miners of that north country.
But the Mexican, Spanto, eyed them
sharply. Toy exhibited an unmistakable un-
easiness whenever they appeared on deck,
and, somehow, Indians seem to know.
Jason noticed her watching them and re-
marked to Philips that there was something
out of tune aboard ship. And while the
crowd drew near to hear Jack preach, he
turned to his comrade and remarked, in a
low whisper:
"Jack, there is a born criminal a man
with an inherited aspiration to kill. He
might easily be the son of a priest, sucking
his first milk from, and cradling his head
on the hairy breast of a she gorilla. " As
he spoke he pointed over his shoulder to a
hercules with a thick mat of black whiskers
and beady black eyes which almost came out
of the same socket, and which seemed to
see everything at once without looking at
anything in particular.
"Hell," he went on, "will heave a sigh
of relief when that blessed brigand joins
the golden harp orchestra up among the
immaculate wing-wafters of the favored
few."
"Man," Philips began again, "is but an
animal. But he is a progressive animal.
Also, he is the most virtuously ignorant of
94 THE TORCH OF REASON.
all the animal kingdom, for he is the only
species in the universe which has to be
''civilized.' 7 All other forms of life come
into the world with an inherited instinct
for life's full measure, an intelligence that,
in many respects, by far surpasses that of
man. Now, then, man has to be taught.
He may be taught truth, or he may be com-
pelled to believe a lie instead of the truth.
If he is taught the truth in the beginning
he will be progressive and you can never
hang a lie on him; but he will soar on to
heights of intellectual grandeur, leading
his fellows up and out who flounder in the
fog of error and false teaching. Teach him
a fie in the early days of his life when his
mind is plastic and susceptible, and the task
of unlearning that lie and replacing it with
truth is by no means an easy one. Es-
pecially becomes this a task when the victim
absorbed it from a source in which he had
grown to confide, as in the case of the suck-
ing babe who comes to know and turns in
confidence' to its mother's breast.
" Capitalism is a false teacher of life. It
is a liar! Life under such a regime is a
lie. It teaches, not life, but death. It
teaches, not truth, but error and falsehood.
It muddles the brain, confuses the intellect,
and drives men to crime, loads them down
with disease and puts them into premature
graves. It sets every man against his
brother in the so-called struggle for life.
THE TORCH OF REASON. 95
It poisons the generations that are, with
adulterated foods, and it poisons the gen-
erations yet unborn with ignorance and
mental pollution. It suppresses and holds
down Art, Literature, Science and Love,
and rides, rough shod over the morals of
the race. It teaches race-hatred and class-
hatred; it fosters prostitution and per-
petuates slavery wherever it holds sway.
"Now, a Socialist is a progressive person
who has found out some new truth, who has
repudiated the old lie, and who is moved
by the spirit of human welfare to teach
that truth to his fellows. Should he, then,
continue to hold on to the old false reason-
ings unreasonings of the old hate and
antagonisms of Capitalism, or do you not
think more interest may be engendered in
behalf of the new education by projecting
the more transcendent expedient of sym-
pathy and brotherly love? How may we
best reach the ignorant and the vicious and
the apathetic, by force and hatred? Which
of the two teachers will be the more suc-
cessful with the pupil; the one who mani-
festly loves and takes pleasure in the teach-
ing, or he who wields the big stick and hues
to the rigid rule?"
"Then it is a matter of tactics, pure and
simple, is it an expedient for the gaining
of your selfish ends that you would have
those whom you are pleased to class as
ignorant believe you love them?" piped a
96 THE TORCH OF REASON.
little weazened, nervous man, one of the
six who came aboard at the Fort.
"No, my friend," Jack replied, "it is
grand and ennobling to love all nature and
all things in the universe; and a more piti-
ful sight I cannot conceive than the man,
in a world of progress and knowledge, so
ignorant and purblind as to openly oppose
those who are giving their lives for his best
interests. They are men who are trying to
help him on to a higher plane, and he bites
the hand that would save him. I pity such
a creature. More, I love him; for he is a
member of the race my race : and I never
forget that I once was like him, and as
ignorant as he possibly more so. It is my
duty to love him, because he is blind, and
being blind, he is helpless to see his way.
We who know and can see are strong. Some
day we all shall see, and then there will be
no weaknesses and no error among men."
"Say, Jack, why don't you go back to St.
Louis, take out a license and go to preach-
ing? You've about got me converted to
that loveology dope of yours, already,"
cynically teased the exasperating Spanto.
"And," he frolicked on, gaily, "if to love
the guy that pinks you in the back is such
fine medicine for the regeneration of the
race, what's the matter with teaching the
habit to that particular individual, and in-
fusing him full of the love idea, first? And
the trust barons'? And all the rest of the
THE TORCH OF REASON. 97
grafters and other first citizens and unhung
criminals? Now honest, Jack! You've
signed a big contract. There's pretty much
everything else in this world in great pro-
fusion except real love. I'm beginning to
pity you I am, really, Jack. But this may
be taken to mean that you are winning all
the time; for, you know," pestered the
merciless Spanto, "pity is one of the ingre-
dients in the love-compound, and when ad-
ministered without ether, acts directly on
the palpi of the epidermis, exercising a
laxative influence on the lariats of the
heart. ' '
At this grotesque sally the crowd laughed
heartily at what they appeared to take for
a good one on Philips; but the sunny Jack
only grinned good-humoredly, and slying a
cunning wink at the Indian bride came back
at the recreant and somewhat tardy bene-
dict, with: "I think you'd better give in,
Doc, if that last splurge of yours is the best
you have to offer. For recent events seem
to indicate that, even the biggest rogues are
sometimes the least immune from the in-
trenching meshes of the love-compound, as
you are pleased to term it. " A little ripple
of merriment escaped the lips of the modest
Toy, who sprang up and darted forward
and around the pilot house. At this the
fun broke out anew, and everybody turned
on the herb-man. "Take the money,
Jack," he surrendered, "I'm stung! And
98 THE TORCH OF REASON.
now that the question is before the house,
let someone tell us what this thing love is,
anyway."
Up to this point Jason Sands had re-
mained silent and passive. Love, to him,
was a sacred thing. To treat the subject
lightly, were desecration. When the flurry
of levity had subsided, he turned to his
comrades, removed the sombrero from his
hoary head and opened his mouth to speak,
just as the piercing scream of a woman,
followed by a splash and a smothered gur-
gle, silenced every tongue and struck terror
to the hearts of all. Instantly there was a
shock ! The boat shivered, rose on her heel,
and amid belching billows of yellow smoke
and the sound of crashing wood came the
roar of a stunning explosion ! Confusion
that's the word mad riot and indescrib-
able confusion reigned. To add to the hor-
ror, if such were possible, rose the cry of
"ship on fire," and "the ship is sinking!"
It was twilight. The smoky haze in the
southwest marked where the sun had been
an hour ago. The murky shadows falling
on the river through the nude treetops on
the bank, looked like the wagging jaw of
some snag-toothed giant witch gloating over
the ill-fortunes of the race. All were
thrown off their feet when the bow went
skyward. When the ship righted and
lurched forward again, it was at an angle
of several degrees, and with a jolt and a
THE TORCH OF REASON. 99
shudder that rolled all hands in a heap
against the engine house.
The boat had been blown up with some
high explosive, and when she righted after
the frightful impact of the charge, she
trembled, balanced her ponderous hulk
briefly like a drunken sailor then dived
with her broken nose straight for the bot-
tom of the river!
CHAPTER IV.
THE LAST LEAF.
Far through the boding gloom
Suddenly a great light appeared!
It was a queer-looking piece of first-class
mail matter that Lone Mooney, the new
rural carrier, left at Raven Roost one
glorious September afternoon, and it was a
puzzled and deeply interested mountain
farmer who received it.
Leland Tannerhill was not a literary
beacon. His mail was a very inconsiderate
item of importance in the daily mull of his
lonely life. So, when the slattern youth
rudely kicked a huge package over the
wagon wheel at him without thawing out
enough to pass the time of day, he eyed the
numerously stamped and generously pen-
ciled thing with wonderful scrutiny. It was
a new one on him, and he was clearly
stumped.
Leland was a subscriber to the Ash-
worth Item, Happjon-an's Aberrant, and
the Montly Gopherhole, the latter, an al-
leged journal for tillers of the soil, pub-
lished at O'Pallon, 111. The Item was the
"old reliable," printing the "news," which
news comprised: Births, Deaths, and such
(100)
THE TORCH OF REASON. 101
other information as interests nosey people,
and sheriff sales, etc.
The Aberrant was all its adapt cognomen
implied, and more. In addition to its
local column, which never failed to inform
its readers that, Buttertoad Smith, of
Centre Harbor Neck, was visiting "rela-
tives and friends" at Hinklyville; that
Tommy Soagden, of Kittery, would spend
a few days at the Tie Eanch near Foggs
Station, all sandwiched in between the mar-
ket fluctuations on cow peas, labor and
Berkshire shoats. It was, like its profligate
editor, a notorious liar. It strictly ab-
stained from printing anything resembling
truth, satisfying its gormand lust for scan-
dal by attacking the character of every de-
cent citizen who was not a subscriber, and
some who were. Also, it was a past master
at misrepresenting the opposition political
parties, fairly engulfing itself with parox-
ysms of benevolent solicitude for the
" worthy " poor, just prior to election.
However, it was a fair sample of the
average country newspaper, and its inflic-
tion on the rural populace was, with few
exceptions, borne, either in silent contempt,
or with grudging tolerance.
These three publications if such they
may be called, together with an occa-
sional spavin cure almanac, tnx assessments,
and the monthly pew rent duns, comprised
Leland's regular annual mail. A letter he
102 THE TORCH OF REASON.
had not received since far beyond his
recollection.
No word of greeting spoken, the rickerty
old buggy cramped around the well curb
in the middle of the dooryard and was
slowly squeaking along toward the gate at
the end of the lane, when Tannerhill sud-
denly straightened up, and pushing back a
sweat-begrimed palm-leaf hat, called sharp-
ly: " What's your hurry, Lone? I hain't
seen you f er some time. How 's yer father ? ' '
At first sound of the man's voice, the old
grey mare seemed suddenly to remember
something! She sat back in the britchen
with a "chug," all four feet braced on the
steep incline, and stopped short. Like-
wise, the wagon stopped. Then the new
government attache, together with the as-
sorted and classified mail he had stacked up
on the seat beside him for handy delivery,
stopped that is, began to stop stopped
after a while, a little farther on down the
hill! The rawney sapling scrambled from
under the horse's feet, and Leland turned
his back and laughed, silently, though per-
ceptibly, with his shoulders an eccentric-
ity characteristic of some generously mod-
est and charitable men. Meanwhile, angry
youth and grey mare proceeded to go
through the formality of adjusting their
respective differences of opinion concerning
mail clerk etiquette, lax horsemanship and
general horse sense. When the ether had
THE TORCH OF REASON. 103
cleared, the older man ventured, by way
of oiling the troubled waters: "When d'ge
start in fer Uncle Sam, boy? Like the
job?" Ignoring the other's interrogations,
the novice United States wage-slavepro
tern. red and wrathful, shied a casual ob-
servation at the smoking sun, prophesied
the intelligence that it looked "laowry fer
tumorrer," clucked, softly, to old Kate and
went weaving easily down Winding Hill.
The stoic Leland watched the receding out-
fit cross the last pitch-pole at the bottom
and go clattering off on the New Eoad and
in to the Jewell woods.
There are some things slower than others
in this world, and things do not move with
as much celerity in the New Hampshire
hills as they do at Reno and on Wall Street.
Tannerhill did not open his mail at once,
but seated himself on the well-curb and re-
garded it long and thoughtfuly. Painstak-
ingly he spelled out the characters blurred
and soiled among the stamps that made
up his name and address.
"Who this side o* the Promised Land
can thet air be frum!" he meditated. Then
espying the return address in the upper
left hand corner, he paused, traced it out
with a gnarled index finger and read.
Tf Not Delivered In Six Months, Return to
BENJAMIN B. PAGE
High Heath,
"Broken Bone Mine,"
Alaska, U. S. A.
104 THE TORCH OF REASON.
Leland Tannerhill was a good man. It
was said of him that he could not kill a
chicken without shedding tears. It was his
boast that he had never struck a living
thing a blow in all his life. Also he boasted
he could pick up any hen on the place, any-
where, and at any time of day or night. All
the animals about Raven Roost attested
their confidence in their master's love and
kindness, by every conceivable form of
friendly demonstration. Even the wild
robins knew him as their friend and would
eat from his hand. Imagine, then, the sur-
prise of the great Brahma rooster, when he
sauntered up to peck at the rawhide ends
on the gruesome bundle, and like lightning,
and without warning, got a vicious kick
from one of Leland 's size-10 cowhides. So
indignant and frightened was the lordly
chanticleer, that he squalled out the cus-
tomary danger signal in case of hawks with
such vehemence as to enlist the entire barn-
yard population in a wild discordant chorus
that lasted an hour. But Leland Tanner-
hill heard it not. Too absorbed was he in
a futile effort at fathoming the mystery of
the strange prize that had come so far
through the mails, unsought, unannounced,
and from a stranger.
Long and silently the good man sat there
in the shade of the great maple and cudg-
eled his brain with thought. Carefully
turning the mental pages, he ran back over
THE TORCH OF REASON. 105
the long, weary years of an uneventful life,
but years, forsooth, filled with sadness,
loneliness, and toil. Vainly did he try to
recall some ancient promise of a forgotten
friend; counting them back, one by one, as
they had died off, and all he could think of
among the living. It was no use. They
were gone! None of the chums he could
think of bore the unfamiliar name of Ben-
jamin B. Page, and the mystery deepened
with each rereading of the alien legend in
the upper left hand corner of the soiled
paper wrapper.
Twice had he started to open it, turning
it over and over to find the right end of
the string, and twice had he subsided with
great gravity and meditation. "Page,
Page! Benjamin Page!" ponderously re-
peated the baffled recluse, over and over
again, as if to familiarize his tongue with
the strange articulation, the better to resur-
rect a possible memory long since dead
of some person by that name.
Slowly raising his snow-white head, Le-
land Tannerhill looked out over the vast
panorama to the horizon before him. He
knew every intervening hill, lake, river and
valley. Also, he knew, as he soliloquized,
" every neighbor old and new for forty mild
around; but Mr. Page must a bin afore my
time, or else he's somebody thet went off.
out West when I was too young to recollect,
maybe. Anyway," he concluded, "nobody
106 THE TORCH OF REASON.
I ever knowed ever had any sich a bell
lamg on 'em, and the marster on't is, thet
they should know me, whoever they be. ' '
Raven Roost (so named by old Bart
Tannerhill's beautiful daughter) stood, like
a fort, on the top of a low lying hill among
the higher mountains. The buildings were
at the far end of a lane leading up the
west slope from a tiny schoolhouse on the
main thoroughfare and painted red, the
back sill of which rested on a granite ledge,
while the front was propped up with piles
of cobble-stones six feet high, and that wab-
bled and threatened to collapse and send it
tumbling down into Dan Willoughby's sap
orchard.
The Tannerhills had helped to settle the
country in the early days of the flint-lock
and the bow. But the strain had dwindled.
Of the latter generation there were but two
children: Erma, whose name for twenty
years had not been spoken, and Leland, the
only survivor. He was a big man, with
great freckled hands and a big warm heart ;
but he had never married. He had stayed
there on the old place alone after the others
had gone, one by one, visiting never, and
being visited seldom more often, he was a
sad and silent man. He was the last leaf on
the tree the last leaf, and it was autumn!
He turned his eyes westward, and there
stretched the Prescott range, with Mount
THE TORCH OF REASON. 107
Prospect in the foreground. Looking to
the south, he could see Sheapards and the
Asquam Castle on the summit. To the
east in the valley lay beautiful Squam
Lake, stretching its clear waters with its
three hundred and sixty-five islands from
i "Joe's" point, under the Lone Pine Hill,
to Bearcamp on the north, and under
the dark brok of old Chickwolnepy. He
could count up all the old schoolmates.
And he ran over the list to make sure:
There were the Sanborns, and the Mudgetts,
the Bennetts, and the Howe boys, George
and Olando. And then there was "Ginger-
bread Red," who lived on the Mountain
Brown place, and who wore the fuzzy red
homespun breeches dyed with butternut
bark. Bill Low and the Wallaces, Hattie
Smith and Mamie Stevens yes, and the
Lee girls, Hattie and Susie. O, he could
remember them all right, but they were
gone!
That was in the old days before the city
folks came and bought up all the country
for summer camps. It was different now.
Every one of the wild, wooded islands in
the lake had been gobbled up and were
covered with cottages. Every farm on the
white sandy shores of the dear old lake
was in the clutches of millionaires, who
carried their heads high and their noses
higher, as if they smelt a stink. The pam-
pered sons and daughters of these plunder-
108 THE TORCH OF REASON.
ing parasites tore through the hills in their
great touring cars, frightening the country
horses and killing the farmers' fowl with
impunity.
Raven Boost was severely shunned. In
fact, it was said to be haunted. That the
old Puritan mansion had gained its un-
canny reputation because of having been
named by his beloved sister, Erma, was no
secret to Leland. She had so named it in
honor of Poe's Raven, which, being a
poet of rare genius herself, she used to
declare to be the masterpiece of the "Poor
Poet of Sorrows." Haunted or not haunt-
ed, Leland Tannerhill continued to live
alone in the big square house, in peace, and
unafraid. Cultivating as much of the rich,
black soil as one man could comfortably
care for, he allowed the rest to grow up to
bushes. Owing no man a cent in all the
world, he had no enemy as far as he knew
on earth. Moreover, and as he had grown
to realize with the passing years, he had no
friends. "Not a single, solitary soul in all
the world since the days of Sis and Jason
Sands," he would cry aloud. "I am here
alone ! Jason was the last and he too must
be dead."
A glance toward the west revealed but
half of the red disk slipping down behind
Plymouth Mountain. The chickens so
noisome just now had gone to roost under
the cow-shed by the barn, and were quar-
THE TORCH OF REASON. 109
reling because the older cockerels, as usual,
were unmercifully pecking the immature
youngsters and crowding them off the
perches. They did this nightly in their
selfish efforts to gain some vantage point
beside a plump, red-combed pullet.
It was getting late.
The shadows grew longer and deeper
over the glassy lake. The melancholy tinkle,
tinkle of the brass cowbell in the lane grew
louder among the sleepy nightsounds of the
verdant mountain. Leland heard, and knew
that old Bess was at the pasture bars with
her load of pure, rich milk. Night was
coming on. It was time to do the chores.
With the woodbox refilled, the milk
strained and put away and a fresh pail of
water on the sinkboard, Leland drew his
chair up to the kitchen table and turned
all his attention to the bulky thing before
him. Taking from his pocket a wire nail,
he proceeded to untie the moosehide thong,
picking out each knot and foregoing the
cutting of any, abundant though they were
and hard. The string off whole at last,
there was yards of it. "Five, eight ten,"
he calculated, as he economically untwisted
every quirk and wound it around his big
left hand, then into a tight ball. He was in
no hurry. It could not escape him, this
new-found treasure from the top of the
world, and he would take his time and learn
all about it as he went along. Minutely
110 THE TORCH OF REASON.
examining the thin rawhide through his
reading glasses, he critically ran the ball
of his thumb along the grain side for hairs,
then he tried to break it. He wound sev-
eral feet of it around his hands and pulled
on it with all his might over the bend of
his knee. But the faithful rawhide the
one cord that never breaks though the day
was dry, stretched beautifully and the tell-
tale red marked where it sank deep into the
toil-hardened hands, but it would not break.
"Buoy 'tunder!" blasphemed the pious
Leland. "Thet air thing never growed on
no caow, ner hoss, nuther!" And then he
tried it once more. This time standing up
and taking several turns around his hands,
he dropped the loop under his boot, and
with all his terrific strength he pulled-
hands, arms, back and legs until his face
purpled and the tears came ; but the slender
rawhide went with him and came back and
was not broken. The saving farmer smiled
his pleasure, walked to the corner where a
clock ten feet high was standing where it
had stood for fifty years, opened the door in
the bottom and dropped the ball in among
the weights.
Turning sharply to face the clock, the
man started as if a sudden thought had
struck him, as a reminder of a tardy mis-
sion that must be fulfilled. "Your 're late
tonight, Leal.," he admonished himself.
Then lighting a smoky lantern, though it
THE TORCH OF REASON. Ill
was not yet dark, and slipping a small,
black object under his arm from the mantel-
shelf, he shot a swift weather-glance at the
sky through the west window and was gone.
He did not lock the great oaken door.
In fact, it was never locked. He paused a
moment among the rose-bushes, then turn-
ing into a well-worn path was soon lost
among the trees. This was his nightly er-
rand. He had not missed this duty but
once in twenty years, and that was when
the fever had him on his back.
It was far into the night when the red
glow of the lantern came out of the maple
growth above the meadow and vanished
into the old house. And what of his sur-
prise on returning to find a second package
from Alaska addressed in a different hand
but bearing the same return address as the
first! The two were lying side by side on
the table, and the only way to account for it
was that the carrier had overlooked the
smaller one on his first trip, and had called
on his return and left it while Leland was
absent. It was unimportant anyway. He
would lose no time in idle speculation.
Tearing the wrapper from the first, he fell
upon a strange collection of letters, papers,
poems and songs, essays and stories; all
save the letters bearing the unmistakable
signature of Jason Sands. Also there was
a letter addressed to himself, and with
greedy haste and trembling hands he
opened it and read:
112 THE TORCH OF REASON.
"Alaska, April 22nd, 1910.
" 'Broken Bone' mine.
"Dear Leal:
"It has been a long time since yon heard
from me, for they have kept me moving on
and on, always moving on from place to
place over the earth, hither and yon like
the chaff on the winds of the wild prairie.
This is the fate of the man who works for
wages. This is the fate of the man who
dares to dream. It is the fate of twenty
millions of human souls in America, and I
am one of them!
"I have never ceased to think of you, as
I have never ceased to think of our dear
lost Erma. I remember your promise to
me on the day that she said goodbye, that
you would keep the roses she loved so
dearly bloomin g above her cold clay. I
know you have not forgotten, and I am
coming back to see you once more and to
tell you that I cannot find our boy.
"Four years ago I came to this grave of
last resorts, where everything is frozen all
the time and where the fire went out on the
first Saturday night when God quit work
on the world. There is gold enough here to
plate the earth, and I have some of it; but
it is all frozen in, and only a few succeed
where many fail.
"Tonight I shall start afoot for Dawson,
four hundred miles away. The boat will
take me down the river from there, and
THE TORCH OF REASON. 113
once on the outside, I shall lose no time
in reaching you.
"This package contains all my personal
property save what is in my pack and on
my back. I am entrusting all to my friend
and partner, Benjamin Page, who will have
it mailed to you by the first dog outfit
through the pass. I thought it safer this
way, as I am going on foot and alone and
you never can tell. Take care of it till I
see you, old boy, for, as you will see, there
are some things therein contained more
sacred to me than life itself. I have kept
them, spitball notes and all, and they have
gone with me wherever my feet have trod.
You are at liberty to read them, for you
know all the sad story and you and I are
one.
"If nothing happens I should reach
Raven Roost early in September; so be
on the lookout for me, and remember I am
your old friend and brother,
" JASON" SANDS."
So it was from Mm at last! Leland Tan-
nerhill's joy knew no bounds! He read the
missive over and over, again and again. He
was coming home Jason Sands! His
heart beat faster, and he could hear it
pounding against his breast like a drum.
He laid the letter down, and with lamp in
hand entered the front room, whose
weather-worn shades had not been opened
since the last funeral, and turning the
114 THE TORCH OF REASON.
leaves of an ancient plush-covered album
until he came to an old-fashioned double
picture, he gazed reverently upon the two
faces. With the album still open before
him, and palsied with emotion, he sank to
his knees, raised aloft his trembling right
hand in earnest appeal and cried out wildly,
almost incoherently: "O Heavenly Father!
Keep Jason Sands and fetch him back safe
to me. I want to see him once more here,
and then I'm willin' ter go!" Then draw-
ing the picture from its old place in the
album, he turned it over and read two
names written in a clear, bold hand on the
back "Erma and Jason." Below the line
this, also, was written in a soft, feminine
hand and with violet ink: "He, and She."
"There they be, the two on 'em," he said,
great tears clinging to his sun-browned
cheeks.
"If God only knowed how thet man has
suffered he'd give her back to him now I
know," he went on hysterically. "No two
children ever lived thet thought as much of
one another as them air two lovin' ones did,
and there weren't none better ever drawed
the breath o' life than either on 'em." Poor
Leland! His broken heart was bleeding
anew. For if ever a brother loved a sister
it was he; and no brother could have more
loved Jason Sands than did this brother of
Erma. In the picture, Jason was seated
in a rustic chair, his great shoulders thrown
"He gazed reverently upon the two faces/'
THE TORCPI OF REASON. 115
back advertising the secret pride their pos-
sessor felt in the consciousness of his manly
strength and in the companionship of his
handsome mate. And there just back of
him, stood the beautiful young creature,
eyes aglow with happiness, her arm stealing
slyly around his shoulder and just the tips
of her fingers showing through his curly
hair. She was loving him there in the pic-
ture.
"Poor Erm," he said, "You're in
Heaven, God bless ye, and I'll try to wait;
but I only hope it won 't be long arfter Jase
comes. I'm tired, Erm, I be, God help
me!"
Closing the album he went back to his
letters in the kitchen. He knew her hand-
writing, and all the letters addressed to
Jason he piled together. He had seen them
all before. In fact, he had helped her in
their writing, keeping watch at the head
of the stairs for the old folks and stealing
away to Jason's with them at dead of night
when all was still. It was a clandestine cor-
respondenceclandestine with the cunning
codes of lovers' sweet intrigue. Drawing
a thin one from among the many thick ones,
he began to read again the faded lines
across the soiled envelope, but it was too
much! The arms stretched out across the
table and the snow-white head sank down
upon them. Heavily the massive shoulders
heaved with emotion as the lonely and be-
116 THE TORCH OF REASON.
reaved brother sobbed out the bitter an-
guish of his broken heart. The hours of
night slipped swiftly away with the tolling
of the old clock in the corner. The shoul-
ders ceased their heaving, and began to rise
and fall evenly with the deepdrawn breath-
ing. The goddess of rest had mercifully
touched the troubled brow and the sinless
son of sorrow was sleeping.
It was the breakfast call of old Bess in
the barnyard three hours later that aroused
him from his slumber to face two burning
lamps and the sun an hour high over Red
Hill.
To milk and get the cow out, feed the
chickens and the pigs, was the work of but
half an hour. Meanwhile, water boiled in
the teakettle, and with a breakfast of ham-
and-eggs, biscuits, coffee, and a pint of
warm fresh milk, Leland attacked the sec-
ond package, which as yet he had not
opened. The first thing to catch his eye
was this letter from Ben Page :
"Mr. Leland Tannerhill,
"Dear Sir:-
"I don't know you nor you don't know
me; but when you get this you will know
that I ain't no schoolmarm. I wouldn't
bother nobody with my poor writin', only,
you see, Jason Sands was my pard, and he 's
cut traces and flew, and I'm skat and wor-
ried about him, for wolves is thicker 'n hell
hereabouts and nothin' but them and sich
THE TORCH OF REASON. 117
fools as I be can live here. God never
cal'lated on nothin' but them there gant-
gutted hellcats and jack rabbits for this
yere country, and Jason showed good sense
in quittin'.
"But that ain't what I started out to tell
about, exactly, and right here I want you
to know that it ain't no snap for me to
write letters no how. So, the whole thing
in a nut shell, as they say, is, that I got
mad like a damn fool and run off from
Jason, and while I was makin' faces at
myself and ponderin' over comin' back,
Jason he ups and lights out. He left a
letter for me that it took me four days to
read and that nobody can understand, and
wanted me to mail all his stuff to you.
I reckon he's struck for Dawson and
the outside, and probably will fetch up at
your place if he ain't eat up on the way
out, and if he ain't, most probably he allows
to hit the first boat down behind the ice.
I wisht he had a waited; for the hole he
was burnin' was jist a foot from a pocket
when he quit, and when I struck it the
yeller showed on the pick pint like it was
plated; and that there hole looks like the
show winder of a city hawk joint. I picked
up a hatful in fifteen minutes, and the sam-
ple I'm sending you you keep and write as
soon as you get it, so I will know you get
the rest of Jason's literchure dope and the
Indian moccasins and the rest I dug out
of his bunk and stuffed in the bundle.
118 THE TORCH OF REASON.
"I ain't goiii' to fret much about him,
for Jason Sands ain't af eared of no thin'
and he can fight wolves to beat hell. But he
was a good pardner, and I kinder feel bad
about the way I acted, and miss him after
three years with him, fightin' agin God's
carelessness and them there ravin' fiends
and only one spat. He was a regular crank
on poetry, and used to tear it off to me by
the yard of a evenin', sad and pityful like
by times, specially that purty stuff 'bout
love and sich like. I tell you it would nigh
break a body's heart and give you the Jim-
mies to hear it when the spirit took him.
He never used terbarker, nor drinked, and
never sent out for much but pencils and
paper and cartridges, no time; but he sure
did like to write.
"Now he never told me a word about his
inner secrets until he writ that letter, but
he was allus rantin' about politics and
economics and that there rot, and I think
he must be a arnikist, and is agin religion;
for we fit over the Bible and what he said
religion was invented for. He said religion
was invented by some barbarians or thieves
or suthin', so as how them slick cusses that
never does nothin' but work with their
brains could rob everybody that worked
with their hands by makin' the laws to suit,
and the damn fools would think it was
God's will! I come right back at him good
and hard and asked him to tell me how we
THE TORCH OF REASON. 119
ever could get along without them high-
flown gentlemen that's rich to hire us if
we driv 'em off and took possession as he
proposed, and he hollered and laughed like
a idiot and asked me what in hell I wanted
somebody to hire me to burn my own hole
and then to wash up my own dust for?
"Anyway, there wern't no better than he,
take him all round, ever walked the earth,
even if he don't believe in God. Mebbe
he had good reasons for thinkin' that way
after all, for he claimed to be one of them
there scientist philos'fers or whatever you
call 'em, and there ain't no use argyin agin
'em for they got you skinned erry way you
tackle 'em. Besides, suthin' had hit him
purty hard sometime in his life, for he
wern 't happy a minute while I knowed him,
but was allus mopin' around like he hadn't
a friend on earth. His letter shows it too,
and I guess I was wrong.
"Now I never was much on mind readin'.
But the way that there letter winds up, it
don't appeal to me as bein' jist right, some-
way; and so, if you get this o. k. before
he lands, I'd kinder keep an eye out for
your old friend for he saved my life wornst
when I was froze and starved most to death
up on the Hedghog. I'll never forget him,
even if he did say he'd rather go to Hell
with a clean record than to Heaven along
with them there 'Big Stick' square deal
fakirs that got the Maine blowed up.
120 THE TORCH OF REASON.
"You and him must a bin good friends,
for lie allus spoke of you whenever he got
the blues and had them awful dreams.
"Yours truly,
"BEN PAGE."
"P. S. There's a fortune in sight on our
property Jason's and mine, and half
on't is hisn; for he divided his chuck with
me when he needed it all his self, and I
can't tech his half now we've struck it rich
and luck's changed. I'm sending the letter
Jase left for me, to you, and if you say so,
I'll go to Dawson and sell the mine and go
on a sure enough hunt for that boy of his.
Or we'll wait and leave it all to his dad,
whichever you say.
"B. P."
Tannerhill was thoroughly aroused. The
prospect of Jason coming thrilled him and
filled him with boyish glee. But Page's
letter displeased him. In fact it nettled
him.
"Gold!" he fairly growled, and repeated
the ugly word again and again. "He sent
me a sample, did he! Well, I'm much
'bliged, Mr. Page. But I don't need it jist
yit, and as fur's writin' to you's concerned,
we'll see to thet later." Whereupon, he
returned to the task of going through the
packages.
"Gold!" Give him the "pizen" stuff and
he would make jshort work of it! Hadn't
he seen enough trouble on account of it?
THE TORCH OF REASON. 121
What of Her, his poor, lost sister! What
of the banker down in the village who died
in rags after spending a fortune shielding
that coward son of his that shot Jason, only
to read in the papers that he in turn got
himself shot in a "fast" house in Boston!
"Gold!" he fumed on. " Torment their
money! It can never give back what it
took from me and Him. Jason 'n her'd a
bin happy only for the greed o' thet cussed
yarler dross. Mother couldn't see through
it though, how thet them air young
folks was goin' to be happier with their
likes for one another, than Sis would a bin
to be the wife o' that sponge-faced worm-
head with all his tainted gold. And to
think thet Jason Sands would run away off
up there on top o' the north pole, a
freezin' and a starvin' to death is beyend
me, by Judas! It's curis, mighty curis!"
The man was much agitated. And when
a huge bright nugget rolled out from among
the letters and papers and fell with a leaden
thud to the floor, he snatched it up with the
evident intention of throwing it, either into
the stove or through the window; but hesi-
tated, then raised it to the light. The coun-
tenance of the man underwent a lightning
change. First it was anger, then surprise,
and now it was curiosity! Wildly he re-
garded it with open mouth and bulging
eyes, as if it were the touchstone of eternal
youth and beauty from the Celestial Realms.
122 THE TORCH OF REASON.
There is something inexplicably attrac-
tive about the first sight of virgin gold.
Moreover, there is an irresistability about
it that is positively compelling. More espe-
cially is this true when viewed in large,
bulky lumps, and this one weighed a full
pound.
During the Klondike rush of '98, he had
read in the Gopher Hole how that men
had gone mad at sight of gold; and now
here it was, the very stuff! And Page had
scraped it up in handfulls ! Also, he knew,
in a vague way, that pure gold was worth
about twenty dollars an ounce and if this
lump weighed a pound and there was no
mistake on that point then, " sixteen times
twenty bein' three hundred and twenty, thet
air homely hunk o' rubbish's wurth mor'n
my caow and hoss put together, and all the
herd's-grass in the barn to boot," he mathe-
matized. It was soft and leaden and he
could mark it easily with his thumb nail.
"Jist so much metal," he said positively,
"a part of the earth's composition and
clean 'nough until made into money and
stamped by the government, and then it's
rank pizen and cussed forever and eternal."
The next moment it had gone to join the
rawhide thong in the bottom of the old
clock. Seizing his hat the agitated farmer
bolted out of doors and went about his
neglected duties.
THE TORCH OF REASON. 123
But Leland Tannerhill had little appetite
for work. His brain was in a whirl, and
he found himself going hurridly about the
farm from one thing to another, commenc-
ing a dozen jobs and completing none. Fi-
nally, he gave it up and returned to the
house.
"It's no use," he reasoned, "I'm all up-
sot, and my nerves has clean got the better
o' me. If suthin' ain't done I'll be out of
my head and over the bay afore Jason gits
here." Half an hour later saw him on the
road to Ashworth, holding in on as hand-
some a four-year-old as ever pawed tan-
bark.
Leland was no sport. Neither was he
vain; but if ever child loved red candy, he
loved to sit behind a good horse and he
was never known to be without one of the
best. He loved fine animals for the pure
love of them; and, as he often said, "It
costs no more to feed a good horse than a
scrub, so why should a man be satisfied with
slabs when there's plenty of good clean
timber?"
At The Bridge he halted long enough to
read a notice a fellow with a red button on
his coat was tacking up on Nate Whitten's
horse shed, then went sailing around Lit-
tle Squam and past the Qusump Mills,
Black Raven scarcely touching the ground,
his glossy black coat flaked with foam. Once
124 THE TORCH OF REASON.
in the village, he drove straight to the
Holiness Tavern, the only hostelry in the
place, and was met at the door by "Landy"
Cotton the genial 'and prosperous pro-
prietor. He threw the reins over the dash-
J3oard, and in stepping from the buggy was
jerked off his feet by the fidgeting colt who
had taken fright at Rec Cotton's sput-
tering auto. Leland was unhurt, however,
and the frightened animal was soon quieted
by Carl Huckins, after Charlie the parrot
had sung out "Whoa," from his cage under
the porch.
Leland little dreamed of what his im-
promptu visit to Ashworth that sunny Sep-
tember afternoon portended. It was des-
tined to mark an epoch in his lonely life,
an epoch of unfoldment from the empty
husks of his saharial isolation to the oasian
dream of human brotherhood, only to be
dashed to destruction at the very moment
when life would seem worth the living!
Had he possessed more adequate means of
social and intellectual intercourse, the
events that were staged for the near future
must have been an open book to him and
the disaster averted. As it was, he had
never seen a Socialist paper. The pity of
it! More the pity aye, the shame of it-
he had never met a Socialist, and none of
the comrades had ever called on him! He
had never heard the blessed message of
Socialism's grand mission of human justice
THE TORCH OF REASON. 125
explained. He had been shunned and left
alone in his ignorance and sorrows to nurse
and nourish them, pining away the empty
years without hope, and with only his in-
herited prejudices, superstitions and fears,
while those who might have saved him and
added his honest support to their ranks,
had not yet learned the wisdom of classified
propaganda. When finally the truth broke
through to him, it came with a suddenness
that blinded him and plunged him head-
long on to the reef of self-abnegation.
As he fell from his carriage he did not
notice the skulking hulk of the rat-eyed
lawyer Jibbs in company with the editor
of the Aberrant, as they reeled around
the corner from an alley dive in the rear of
the house. Had he known what devilish
doings the rum-soaked maggots of their
degenerate brains were scheming for the
coming night, Leland Tannerhill might well
have hesitated ere he accepted Cotton's in-
vitation to remain over for the lecture.
"I don't know what benefit it's goin' to
be to me if I do stay and hear the lies
them politicians tell. I hern 'em for forty
year, and a body can tell aforehand jist
what they are comin' at." He had replied
to Cotton's coaxing.
"What do you know about Socialism,
anyway?" bluntly blurted out a member of
the local committee on arrangements.
"Wai, I hain't heard much about it,"
126 THE TORCH OF REASON.
truthfully apologized the other, "but if
what the papers says is true, I guess I've
hearn about all I care to of them air crit-
ters thet wants to get 'lected ter office, no
marter which party they belong to. They're
all alike, purty much, same's the French-
man's kittens."
"How's that?"
" 'You put it all in ze bag, you shake
him all up, ze first one come it out, all 36
rest jes ze same.' '' At this point Ross San-
born and Dr. Sweeney came into the office,
and in reply to a suggestion from Cotton
that possibly this party the Socialist party
might be different, Leland ranted on, to
the effect that, once elected, they have no
further use for working people until elec-
tion day rolls around again, and added,
hotly: "I tell ye it ain't no use talkin',
them air rich bucks has got everything fit
ter own, and a poor man is friz out these
days. Friz out, I say. And the dimmer-
crats and the republicans, and the pro'bi-
tionists, Socialists and what all, are six o'
one and half a dozen o' tother. The whole
tormented parcel on 'em is rottern'n To-
phet! The country is gone clean ter the
dogs and they ain't no hope for nobody thet
has to work for a livin'. There'll be an-
other war, soon, and it'll be right ter hum
here I'm af eared. God pity them air pus-
guts thet corners all the grain and cotton
and sich thet we have to live on, when the
THE TORCH OF REASON. 127
honest folks thet digs it all out o' the sile
gets their eyes open to the mischief. I, fer
one, will never shoulder a gun, 'less they
come where I be; but, then, I'm one of
them fools thet ain't in favor of spillin'
human blood, ye see."
"My dear sir, you're a Socialist and
don't know it! Come up to the meeting
tonight, and if I fail to convince you of the
fact, I promise you I will leave the lec-
ture field and start a popcorn stand or open
a Chinese laundry on a desert isle," put in
a tall, fine-looking stranger with a bronzed
skin and wearing a wide-brimmed Stetson.
"Mr. Tannerhill, shake hands with Mr.
Stanley Lark, of Texas. This is the gen-
tleman who speaks tonight in the Town
Hall. Pardon me for neglecting to make
you acquainted, and now you will excuse
me, for I have to meet the train from
Boston." Thus volunteered the affable host
by way of rescuing the situation.
"So you're from Texas, be ye, one o'
them wild and wooly Westerners? Well I
swaw! Say, you don't look 'ziff you had
any horns growin' out of your head, and
I hope I hain 't 'fended nobody for I meant
well enough, and jist to show you, my
friend, thet we ain't a lot o' barbarians
here in the weakkneed East, come with me
for a sort drive this afternoon," invited
the hermit of Tannerhill Hill. "I've got to
go hum," he resumed, "and put up the
128 THE TORCH OF REASON.
caow and milk afore thet spoutin' o' yourn
begins, for I want you to understand thet
1 have got the best caow in Carroll county,
and she hain't laid out a night since I
owned her. If you're from Texas, you know
enough to know thet it spiles 'em and dries
'em up to go without bein' milked." And
without giving his new-found friend time to
either accept or protest, he called to Ree
Cotton: "Here, Bee, harness up the Raven
and fetch him around. I'm going to give
this 'ere long-horn a balloon full of good
old New Hampshire air thet ain't mixed
all up with soft coal smoke and sewer-gas."
Ordinarily Leland was a man of reticence
and solemnity; but, somehow, he seemed to
warm up to this sweet-toned son of the
plains, with his thrilling handshake and
his wholesome, genuine smile.
Five minutes later they were fairly flying
along toward Raven Roost mansion at a
three-minute clip, the big Texan truly ad-
miring the clean-limbed black stallion reel-
ing off the miles through the changing scen-
ery of the mountain road. Leland, com-
panion-hungry and therefore susceptible,
readily unbosomed to him the pain of all
his sad story; and ere the great gate at the
foot of the lane swung open to admit them
to the Raven Roost mansion, the two
big-hearted boys-grown-up had become firm
friends, aye, comrades; in a friendship and
comradeship such as Leland had not known
since the days of Erma and Jason.
THE TORCH OF REASON. 129
Stanley Lark has a way of walking right
up to the door and into the hearts of men ;
and when those two big children of God's
perfounaed acres started for the lower field
to visit the potato patch, they were keeping
step side by side, Stanley's long arm across
Leland's shoulder an irresistible demon-
stration of the great love and comradeship
that dwells in the hearts of god-men such as
these, who live above the fog, where the
soul-habitations of real humanity welcomes
man above the dollar.
They looked over the farm, looked at the
pigs, at the chickens and the flowers, and
after cooling their lips from a spilling
oaken bucket at the old well, Leland opened
the shutters and they entered the front
room.
Over the organ in the west corner of
the spacious parlor with its old-fashioned
fireplace and antique furnishings, hung a
large crayon portrait. In front of this the
visitor paused, looked inquiringly at his
host, then turned without speaking and
gazed at it long and silently.
"Thet's Her, there was only two on us,
and it seems she had to go. I s'pose it was
God's will, and I hadn't ought to complain;
but some way I hain't never been quite
able ter f'give the old folks for the part
they played in her takin' off. Mother was
all sot on her havin' thet white-livered
young buzzard of old 'Muskrat' Perry's.
Said he'd make a good 'catch!' Mebbe he
130 THE TORCH OF REASON.
would, fur's his devilish gold went, but
ruther'n ter see poor Sis have ter have
him ter put up with, and ter be motherin'
children by sich vermin as he, I'd sooner
she'd be dead, if I'm punished ferever in
Hell-fire and brimstone fer sayin' it!"
The other made no sign that he had
heard, vouchsafing no reply, and the be-
reaved brother continued: "Thet's her
organ. Jason worked in Featherick and
Berth's mill at Ashworth fer a dollar and
ten cents a day and bought it and give it
to her 'fore they was married on the sly.
She took it wonderful, and larnt in no time
so she could play like she was gifted. And
then they turned agin Jason and it killed
her. Oh! Erin, poor Erm!"
Atremble and weeping, the last of the
Tannerhills turned and looked out over the
valley to a little hill where the white stones
glistened in the sunlight a mile away. Up
to this point the entranced visitor had not
spoken; but here, and without taking his
eyes from the lovely face that smiled down
at him from the canvas on the wall, he ex-
claimed aesthetically: "My God! My God!
what a beautiful woman, what a beautiful
woman! And you tell me her parents sep-
arated her from her natural mate! No
wonder it killed her. She was too sensuous
-too much alive." And under his breath
he said more that his host did not hear !
'Yes, she sartin was above the average
in good looks. So was he ; and to see them
THE TORCH OF REASON. 131
air two together was worth a body's while,
knowin' as how they thought so much of
one another and seemed so well in every
way and strong/'
"It is a pity! A sad and crying pity!"
solemnly declared the big Texan. Then
seated himself at the organ and laid hands
on the tarnished ivory keys.
Leland drew up a chair and was silent.
Softly at first, then in drowning billows
the mellow music rose and fell, rolled and
trilled and subsided, rose and rolled again
to the magic touch of the inspired player,
as out from his great soul in mighty re-
quiem poured a flood-tide of Mozartian
sorrows sorrows, tears, and joys.
From the mad horrors of a midnight
dream of the martyred Poe, rolled back
the black thunder-clouds of misery to the
happy laughter of little children waking
to the gladsome reveille in man's Pierian
Dawn. Next an opera from Wagner. Then
an Italian serenade. Now a sweet baby
lullaby. Finally, far out of the long for-
gotten lyric-lore of the 3 r esterday of youth,
he called up the tender notes of an old love
tune. On, and on, over the keys the
trained fingers flew, mingling all the
pent-up emotions of the human heart with
the Eolian strains of the Astrial Realm, as
if held to the sweet cadence by Euterpe's
seraph hand. Leland, his hoary head bowed
upon his hands, the sunlight streaming in
golden flood down upon his snow-white
132 THE TORCH OF REASON.
locks, moaned and sobbed as the silvery
notes poured a torrent of medleyed woe and
bliss, sorrow and joy, hope and promise,
into the empty gulf of his silent past. And
when at last he could stand it no longer,
he fell on his knees and passionately im-
portuned High Heaven in silent prayer!
The music stopped. Both men bowed
heads in silence. Then laying a hand on
the troubled brow, the Texan said : "Come !
Come, Comrade! We have lived long
enough in the dead, and dusty past. Your
dear sister is dead was murdered. She
was murdered, I say! Murdered in cold
Wood! but not by her people as you think
I am charging. I will tell you all about it
later. Come, I know it all! Listen! I am
going to sing you a song."
With a shivering shock the old organ
burst into life anew. Came then the voice
of the singer, a clear baritone, sonorous
with cultured excellence and full of yearn-
ing and appeal. He sang a song of toil, of
the tramp, tramp, tramp of weary feet.
" March on! March on!" Who has not
heard it? Who has not felt the hot
blood surge and rage in fiery sympathy
at the sound of it? The singer was now
at the zenith of his physical and musical
efficiency. The old organ rocked and
pitched to the terrific strength of the
storming player, as he swayed and reeled
under the scorching fury of his own vol-
THE TORCH OF REASON. 133
canic will. The purple veins stood out on
his neck and forehead like huge welts, as
the impassioned harmony pleaded for the
rights of men in Labor's righteous cause.
It seemed that all the world-old wrongs of
Mammon's riot rule were centered in that
grand rebellion.
It was the voice of the slave crying up
from the abyss of fettered centuries for jus-
tice that had never come! It was the
weeping wail of the widowed wife and the
orphaned child, mingled with the brutal
din of the bloody battlefield. It was the
reverberating voice of defiance from the
torture-chamber and the burning stake. It
was the bitter story of the empty sleeve and
the empty lives of the myriads of disin-
herited poor. And finally, it was the blessed
promise, coupled with the heroic challenge
of the workers of the world; and at the
words: " Liberty or death!" Leland Tan-
nerhill leaped to his feet, eyes aflame, his
white hair shaking to the tremble of his
massive head! The man was wild beside
himself with emotion! In fact, he was,
like the musician and the music, clearly
mad! Mad and transported back over the
gruesome path of man's inhumanity to his
fellow-man. Mad with a madness born of
the wrongs of the tyrant reign of graft and
gold and greed ! Mad with the madness for
love, for life, and for home ! Mad with the
desert-thirst of long hungry years of loneli-
134 THE TORCH OF REASON.
ness and burning drouth ! And hysterically,
joyously mad, because of the letters of
Jason, and for his new found friend with
his great optimism and his irrefutable
philosophy of life.
The music and the singer ceased as ab-
ruptly as if suddenly shot out of the world.
The Texan rose to his feet, and seizing the
agitated mountaineer affectionately by the
arm strode with him out of the room.
" Don't! Don't, Comrade!" he said. "You
must not. be unnerved. If you knew what
I know, you would be happier, even in the
midst of your sorrows, than those vampire
capitalists down there on that smooth water
in their handsome yachts, and with their
private ownership in other men's lives.
There is a great future for us. I will tell you
all about it tonight when I tell it to those
poor devils who are grinding out their lives
in the woolen and cotton slave pens of Ash-
worth."
Leland gazed down at the great sheen of
silvery water, speckled with its emerald
islands and tiny crafts. "Tell me Mr.
Comrade Lark, what thet was you sung ter
me? O Lord, O Lord! I never heard the
like, and it jist sort o' overcome me, en-
tire."
" 'The Marseillaise.' France's national
hymn, and the international battle-song of
Labor. It is very popular with the Social-
ists, and is pretty generally conceded by
THE TORCH OF REASON. 135
everybody to be the most inspiring piece of
music ever written/'
"Socialists is purty much all poor folks,
ain't they, Texas'?" (Leland was himself
again.) The Texan grinned, but not at
the interrogation, and his host continued:
"I've hearn as much, and if they be, I'm
for 'em more o'r less anyway. Give me my
kick at the top dog every time, 'specially
when he's big agin as the one down. And
now you come with me, I've suthin to
show you." Whereupon he led the way
into the kitchen and straight to the old
clock. Opening the door at the bottom, he
ran his arm down, clawed around a mo-
ment, and brought out the nugget and flung
it down heavily on the table. The Texan
seized it, looked it over sharply and ex-
claimed: "Gold!"
"There ye go, 'gold!' thet's the name
on't, and where thet come frum they say
a body can scrape it up in gobs. Read thet
air letter." Here he handed the other Ben
Page's letter from Alaska, and when he
had read it he sat back in his chair and
meditated thoughtfully.
"What will you do, Comrade?" he said
finally. "I ought ter write, I s'pose, and
say suthin ^bout gettin' thet stuff from
Page, and tell him what he ought ter do
with the mine; but I hate ter undertake it,
I'm a poor hand at penmanship, and a let-
ter I hain't hed ter arnswer fer no knowin'
136 THE TORCH OF REASON.
when. Don't you want to do the job for
me, bein's how you're right here, and know
all the circumstances and probably more
used ter thet sort o' thing than I be?"
Stanley replied that he would be very
glad to be of service in the matter, and after
a few suggestions from Leland proceeded
to write the following letter:
"Raven Roost R. F. D. No. 2,
"Holiness, N. H., Sept. 10, 1910.
"Mr Benjamin Page,
"Broken Bone Mine,
"High Heath, Alaska.
"Dear Sir:
"The two packages from you and my old
friend, Jason, Sands, came safely to hand,
and please accept my thanks for your
prompt action and deep interest, as mani-
fested, and for your devotion to Jason and
his interests.
"Jason has not yet reached this place.
I shall look for him from how on with
great anxiety, but have no doubt that ere
this reaches you he will have arrived safely
home; in which event you shall be notified
immediately.
"As to the mine, I would say, hold on to
it until further communications from here,
providing you can endure the hardship;
but in case of your inability to do this, I
would suggest that you make an effort to
realize on it as handsomely as possible,
and then come right here, where you will,
THE TORCH OF REASON. 137
in all probability find Jason awaiting you.
"However, use your own judgment in the
matter, as I have every confidence that,
being on the ground, such judgment would
be more sane and efficient than any I could
possibly render from this point.
"Trusting all will come out right in the
end, and with best wishes, I remain,
"Yours very truly,
"LELAND B. TANNERHILL."
"He'll get thet about next year at this
time, if the letter don't git wore out afore
it gits to him, and if he ain't eat up by
wolves fust," said Leland, "and now if
you'll come and hold the light while I skim
a couple o' pans of milk fer the pigs, I'll
show you milk thet is milk, the kind thet'
grows on a real caow and not related ter
the brand they pump out o' the Mississippi
sewer, 'cording ter the tell of them thet's
been there." Here Leland led the way to
a big, airy cellar, cool and clean.
In one corner, all bricked off and ce-
mented, with long rows of shelves filled
with old-fashioned earthen pans, was the
milk-room. "Them four on the top shelf
was sot this mornin', and these 'ere six
b'low is last night's milk; we won't tech
any o' that air, but these 'ere bottom ones
is thirty-six hours old comin' six o'clock
tonight, and if it ain't sour (trying it on
his finger) and it ain't, I'll show you suthin
thet, if you Texas folks can beat it, 111 sell
138 THE TORCH OF REASON.
out and buy a jint o' thet Pan-handle alki-
liar country o' yourn, and go to raisin' post
holes and revolution seeds along with the
rest o' you red-flaggers. " Whereupon he
ran a case-knife around the edge of the
pan freeing the cream from it, flopped the
edges into the middle then lifted the whole
mass of thick, yellow stuff on the case-
knife and carried it across the room to a
large-mouthed stone jar and dropped it in.
" How's thet, Texas?" he challenged,
"and jist ter show thet thet air ain't nothin'
extra, what d'yer think er this 'ere?" As
he spoke he lifted a pan of the "last
night's" setting from the shelf, placed it
on the cellar bottom, and taking an egg
from the basket under the butter table, held
it to the full height of his long reach above
his head and let it fall, spat, into the
middle of the pan. It simply made a dent,
but did not go through the cream. Taking
another pan from the bottom row, he ran
the knife around the edge, threw down the
knife, and deliberately seizing it with thumb
and fingers in the center, lifted the half-
inch of leathery matter intact from the
blue milk underneath and deposited it with
the first in the stone jar.
"The only thing I have to say, is, that
I'd like to own the cow that gave that
milk," decisively and emphatically declared
his enthusiastic visitor, "and she is worth
five hundred dollars with the wink of an
THE TORCH OF REASON. 139
eye, or I'm a maverick. Where did you
get such a critter, Comrade, and what breed
is she?"
"Gutter off old Sam Massey thet lived
yender there on the Langdon place by thet
big wilier tree," replied the owner, as they
emerged from the rollway with the blue
milk for the pigs. "She's one o' two twins
he rize from a Black Dutch heifer calf,
gi'n him, so he used to tell, by a rich woman
in Boston when he w r as in the oyster bus-
iness there. Imported from Germany, so
she told him, and the twins was half Black
Dutch and half Jersey. Sam was alms a
great hand ter brag about what little he
hed, and one night I happened in there
when he was duin' the chores, and he
showed me the tricks I jist showed you, and
run on about the breed until I offered ter
trade him old 'Charlie' thet was a hoss I
owned at thet time and a bran new side-
hill plow ter boot. He took me up, and 1
got the caow. She'll be ten year old come
another spring, if he knowed what he was
talkin' about and didn't lie. And she'll
stay with me a while longer yit, and I guess
you won't blame me fer wantin' ter hang
on ter her, when you see the mess she gives
when we milk her tonight."
Nor did the Texan blame him for his
fancy of the fine old "Bess," when, at milk-
ing time, he sat on a stone in the barn-
yard, and saw Leland draw a brimming ten-
140 THE TORCH OF REASON.
quart pail of milk from her. And when,
ten minutes later, they were in the milk-
room, each drinking a full quart of the
pure rich lactage food, he marveled no more
at the rugged healthy glow of his big com-
panion.
"I allus set here and drink my drink o'
milk, warm from the caow," he explained,
"and half the time thet's all I eat fer a
meal. My 'pinion is folks eats tue much
stuff thet ain't good fer 'em, 'specially meat
and sich like. And in the cities I've hear'n
they 'dulterate the milk and pizen it ter
keep it from sourin'; is thet so, Comrade
Lark?" Stanley replies that the charge
was far from being a slander, and added:
"That gives me an idea. Comrade Tanner-
hill, and I propose to make a point on that
city milk question in the course of my re-
mark tonight. Millions of babies are either
poisoned with improper foods, or else die
from starvation for lack of proper and ade-
quate nourishment every year in the big
cities of this country, and in the face of
ample and numerous so-called pure food
laws."
"Why don't they take 'em to the country
where there's plenty of-
"Pure milk, pure air, pure water, and
peace and quite and health?" interrupted
the Texan. The other looked mystified, and
Lark continued: "I'll tell you why a poor
widow with several small children, working
THE TORCH OP REASON. 141
for three dollars a week in a garret sweat-
shop cannot do it. I will tell you why the
family whose head is blistering his naked
pelt over molten metal in the steel mills
for nine dollars a week, paying gas and
water privileges five times in excess of their
real value, paying a fat landlord two rents
for half a shelter unfit to kennel a decent
dog in, paying the ever-growing high prices
for food adulterated at that and coal,
and shoddy clothing cannot do it. I will
tell you why the young couple with a fairly
decent salary
' ' Stop, stop ! I 've hear 'n enough ! ' ' inter-
rupted the other, "I was to Boston once,
a good many years ago, and things looked
bad enough to me then. I guess they're
wus now. God help 'em. I tell ye they're
lost! All I can think on is another rebel-
lion, or suthin' but I hope I'll be gone afore
it gets here. It's beyend me, I swaw!"
"I don't guess it will be merely a rebel-
lion, Comrade, it will be a revolution,"
sweetly corrected the Texas giant, his hand
on the other's shoulder, and with eyes ablur
with emotion. "Not a rebellion, but a
Revolution! A peaceful, and bloodless Rev-
olution/ '
"I tell ye it's beyend me; but if you fel-
lers has got the remedy I'll jine hands
with ye and do my part, and thet's all the
best on us can promise." The discussion
thus ended, and as the hour for supper
142 THE TORCH OF REASON.
was approaching, with eight miles to drive
back to town to hear his first Socialist lec-
ture, Leland hitched up Black Kaven, and
with the golden purple glory of the autumn
verdure painted on the forest hillsides, a
divine splendor in the velvet twilight, the
two men rode together in silent admiration
and the drive was all too short.
Upon entering the buggy the Yankee
passed the reins over to his Southern friend,
and when at the end of thirty minutes'
driving they were seated in the dining room
of the Holiness Tavern, the plainsman said :
"That colt of yours has a future, Comrade,
if you want to get it out of him. He's
fast, brainy, and easy on the bit. Has he a
record ?"
"You bet he has, and a good record at
thet. He's done all my plowin' and hauled
all the hay, and done the other farm work
since he was two yearold. Hain't never
been hurt in the mouth, and was never
struck a blow. He don't know a whip from
a clothesline. Thet's the way he's been
brought up. Yes, he's blooded, though, a
son of old General Lion, and Scott Rogers
says he'd make a trotter."
"He is certainly a fine animal, and adver-
tises his early training in his every move-
ment. Early training, you know, is every-
thing with animals, as with men, Comrade
Tannerhill. The love of things that are
real is bred on the farm, mark that. I am
THE TORCH OF REASON. 143
glad that I met you, for you are an ideal-
ist."
As the hour approached for the lecture,
the hotel office began to fill up with the
town boys and nearby farmers. Ed Horri-
gan and Babe Merchant started a hot discus-
sion over baseball, and were joined imme-
diately by barber Brooks and Fred Brown.
Leland and his companion seated themselves
at a small table and commenced a game of
checkers, the interest in which terminated
the baseball question, and the affable Texan
saw to it that there were no dull drags for
lack of good story-telling. When the hour
arrived for the doors to open for the speech,
they all marched to the Town Hall, Rec
Cotton and Will Huckins in the lead, with
Mina Blake, the "hen" man, Harry Porter
and Frank Hughes plying questions thick
and fast to the Texan as they walked to-
gether under the rising autumn moon.
When the hall was reached Leland was in-
vited to a seat by the side of the speaker
on the stage, and after a brief introduction
by the local secretary, Jennie Drew, the
stranger from the Southwest walked for-
ward to the footlights and began to speak.
CHAPTER V.
THE SON or JASON SANDS.
Stood one like the Roman soldier
With ashes in his hair ;
Radiant buoyant the other,
"With his sun-kissed locks and fair.
'Twere frost and the summer sunshine
The vernal and the sear;
The song of the beryl springtime
The dirge of the dying year.
The Aurora was in the hands of robbers !
Aye, worse than robbers; they were des-
perate men yeggmen were they! The
mining of gold was not their -profession.
Thev were disciples of the philosophy of
death. There were six of them, the six who
came aboard at Fort Yukon. They had
planned the robbery well, timing it to come
off at dusk, and near the north bank in
shallow water. Taking advantage of their
opportunity when all hands were huddled
aft on the starboard quarter, and while the
Socialists were vying with one another to
the delight of all, they had slipped forward,
one-by-one, to consummate their diabolical
plot.
(144)
THE TORCH OF REASON. 145
Gold they had come for the gold that
was shipped aboard at the Fort. The lives
of men were scant consideration and not to
be reckoned in save as a menace. They
had brought "p^p," and the boat was to
be run on a sandbar and blown up as she
struck. This would cause a panic and add
to the general confusion, and the killing
would be easier and less cold-blooded. At
least, it would have that appearance.
They were in the North country for the
same purpose that other men were there;
for the same purpose that Jason Sands, the
Mexican, Toy, Jack Philips, and the rest
were there; they were there for gold. It
was an individual, free-for-all scramble,
without order, without system, without or-
ganization and without principle. To win
meant life, and the luxuries of life; but to
lose meant starvation, frost and death. In
earlv life they had begun the competitive
strife in earnest and with honestv of pur-
pose. Thev had failed. They had been
victims of the dishonest, and now they re-
solved to become the victors.
The initial opening of the drama of
death, was the killing of Capt. Anderson
in the wheel-house and the placing of one
of the gansf at the helm. This was accom-
plished without commotion, as was the cor-
ralling of the crew in the engine room,
where they were held at pistol's point while
the old tub was being run aground, when,
146 THE TORCH OF REASON.
unarmed as they were, they could be easily
shot in the general mixup of the wreck.
Luck favored them, it would seem, up to
the point where Toy ran forward and en-
tered the pilot-house where she expected to
find Captain Anderson, and did a dead
man!
It was an inopportune moment. The
wires had been strung and the sack of
explosive lowered in place over the bow by
two of the gang when the job was bungled.
The man at the battery had just received
orders from " Bluebeard," the leader, not
to open the current until she struck, unless
in case of discovery, when at the first alarm
he was to " touch her off" without warning.
Quick as the agile Indian had been seized
by the brute in the pilot-house, she had
been quicker; and as he thrust her over the
rail her right hand flashed out, then came
the scream and the explosion. The two
men at the bow were blown to atoms, Toy
thrown overboard, and the robber who had
thrown her overboard had sheathed the
slender blade of her poniard in his cruel
heart.
With the killing of Capt. Anderson, this
made five persons dead, and only three of
the six desperadoes left to deal with. The
nose of the ship was on the bar, everything
was confusion aboard, and then the firing
began !
THE TORCH OF REASON. 147
When the passengers fell in a heap from
the shock of the explosion, it was just at the
parting of day and the beginning of night.
It was not dark, but the murk of approach-
ing darkness lowering gloomily over the
river, palled misshapen shadows through
the uneven landscape, Hke the prowling
ghosts of graveyard lore that nightmare
through our dreams, as we roam again with
the hairy men of yesterday in the mystic
caverns of our slumber horror-lands.
The doctor was the first to his feet
quickly followed by Jack Philips in a mad
rush for the pilot-house whence had come
the shriek of Toy, when, almost instantly
and without warning, a strange, great light
came over the land. Far to the northwest
a giant pillar of white fire streamed
straight up into the heavens, then at a point
that seemed hundreds of miles from earth,
shot down a shaft of the same white fire
from the very summit on an angle of 45
degrees to the earth. It was a marvelous
sight and one never to be forgotten. It
was so instantaneous and unearthly that all
on board were blinded temporarily so
white with daylight had everything become.
It was pure daylight no! that don't ex-
press it. Whiter than daylight; that's it.
It was whiter than the whitest thing in the
world. If daylight is white light, this light
was whiter than all the daylight that had
ever been in all the ages of the world rolled
148 THE TORCH OF REASON.
into one day. Nothing like it had ever
been; and it came and rested on the wreck
in the river and the whole country for miles
around was lighted with its unearthly bril-
liancy. At sight of it there was a lull in
the carnival of destruction ; but it was only
for a moment, and then the slaughter was
resumed.
The three pirates still living unapprised
of the fate of their mates, rushed among
the unarmed passengers firing off their pis-
tols, spreading death and terror in their
wake and sparing none ; but their reign was
destined to be of short duration. With the
coming of the new strange light was re-
vealed the secret of the supposed accident.
The truth was not recognized immeditely
by all, but Jason Sands knew. And when
the Mexican, Spanto, who had rushed after
his young bride at her cry of distress drew
her tiny dagger from the breast of the vil-
lain who had drowned her, he, also, knew.
Jack Philips was made to realize it a mo-
ment later when he looked down the barrel
of an eighteen-inch Colt. It was Jason
Sands who saved his life. Jason had seen
the movement and interpreted its meaning
in the eye of the black-bearded hercules
just as the smoking revolver left the level
of its latest victim's heart. That was
enough for Jason. He did something.
Though with only one leg and both his
crutches lost in the melee, he sprang a full
THE TORCH OF REASON. 149
six feet and drove his huge right fist half-
way to the elbow into the thick chest of the
bearded devil just as he pulled the trigger.
There was a crunch of bones, a loud report,
and then a splash in the river thirty feet
distant on the port quarter.
Jason fell on his face against the ship's
rail from his own momentum, but was
quickly up again. Jack Philips was stag-
gering from the shot that plowed a furrow
from brow to crown through the scalp and
just grazing the skull. He was drenched
in blood, a thin stream still cataracting
down over his face, he presented the ap-
pearance of having been struck between
the eyes with a huge cleaver. On the deck
lay the doctor, face downward. The two
remaining assassins, their guns clubbed,
were maneuvering to brain the optimistic
Jack, when, of a sudden, his whole de-
meanor changed. There was a flash of the
arms, the two robbers dropped their guns
and crumpled up limp with eyes and
tongues protruding as the powerful fingers
of Jack's calloused hands sunk deep into
their throats. The fight was over. When
their faces purpled he let go of them, and
they clattered down on the deck among the
victims of their frightful butchery. This
completed the last act in the unspeakable
tragedy. With hands clutching at his
bloody forehead, his face blanched with
ashen pallor, the big, soft-hearted boy-man
150 THE TORCH OF REASON.
who had obeyed the Great Law at last and
fought for his life, pitched forward and
fell at full length topmost of the heap of
dead!
Among all the erstwhile peaceful com-
pany but one remained standing. Jason, it
was, and he felt a great sickness coming
over him. He was weak and faint ; for, had
he not killed a man? He had hoped never
to be guilty of such as this. That he had
done it in self-defense, and in defense of
his comrade's life were no apology. "I
have killed a man," he cried aloud, "and
he is down there in the water with poor
Toy." Then he contemplated the bloody
havoc of the evening with thoughts that
may not be told of human tongue!
The blood stood in jelly-like pools around
the dead. The deck was a shambles,-
shambles is no name for it. It was a satur-
nalian murder f est ! But the radiant angu-
lar light through the gathering darkness
persisted, looking down in a soft, silent
flood like the tail of a comet roosting high
up on a column of pure radium.
There was a movement at the base of the
pyre of mangled humanity, and Jason
leaped to the spot and was bending over
the doctor, when a great hissing noise got
in his ears a sound like escaping steam.
Before he could turn round it was over-
head, and as he looked his eyes met the
blinding glare of a winged meteor, huge
THE TORCH OF REASON. 151
and white, and as hot as it was white. It
stopped immediately above the wreck and
beat its bat-like wings against the air like
some antediluvian monster poised to dive
for its living prey. Then the white light
and heat went out, and in the ray of the
other light he could make out a gigantic
bird of metal. There it hung, flapping its
terrible wings, its long, slim body station-
ary as if depended by an invisible cable
from above.
At this point a powerful voice sang out
as with authority. A long, door-like plate
on the underside of the monster which
looked like the chutes coal teams carry
opened, and a man in black tights slid down
the chute and into the river. Then the
iron bird fell back a few yards down stream
with the current and hovered nearer the
water. From the opening in the belly a
rope was lowered, just as the man in the
black tights came to the surface bearing a
heavy burden in his arms. It could be
seen that he wore a heavy belt and that the
rope had a bright hook dangling at the
end. But the man fastened the hook in the
belt of the body he bore, then sank back
into the water again. Up the body was
jerked, and Jason could see it was that of
the black-bearded hercules he had knocked
overboard. Again the rope dropped, still
farther down stream fell the winged mon-
ster, and again the man in the black tights
152 THE TORCH OF REASON.
came up. This time he also had a burden
but it was not so big, and around the
shapely figure clung the wet, feminine at-
tire of the pretty Indian bride. Up the
diver was jerked, the dripping bundle in
his arms; then the mysterious thing of the
air came and stood by the side of the wreck.
At this point, to Jason, the world faded
into space; everything got black, and he
knew no more.
One hour later, Jason Sands, Jack Phil-
ips and Juarez Spanto slid down the chute
of the Comet to the life-net of the Agitator
anchored in Norton Sound, five hundred
miles away.
Jason opened his eyes for the first time
since his collapse on the Aurora. He was
lying on thistle-down. ! He knew it was
thistle-down, for he could sense the furry
fibers tickling his cheek and the giant thistle
upon which he rested was nodding gently
in the breezes and the morning sunshine!
As further proof that he was in fairyland,
he toyed with the elusive stuff which por-
ridged through his fingers like soap lather
on his shaving brush. He was in a strange
and wonderful place ; he knew that, for out
of the heavens glowed a blended, garnet-
emerald light that seemed to be the very
walls of his new world. At first he thought
he was dead and that his spirit was being
wafted among the planets and into Para-
dise. He was lying in a hospital hammock
THE TORCH OF REASON. 153
on the Agitator, the most wonderful ship
ever conceived in the fertile brain of man.
For some moments the puzzled man lay
still on his back and stared at the strange
liquid glow that came from nowhere and
yet from everywhere. He dared not
move or speak for fear of waking up
to find it all a dream. But men were
speaking. He could hear voices, and such
voices he had never heard before. They
were surely the voices of men, and in that
they were merely human voices was not the
marvel ; but that there was a quality of tone
about their manner of speech belonging not
to human tongue. They were the voices of
men, he knew that, but never of mere earth-
men! Mellow, they were, and musically
sweet, like the tuned reeds of some perfect
musical instrument muted with a mute of
silver. Jason moved his hands just to make
sure he really lived, and a voice at his
pillow a voice that had all the elements
of a suppressed laugh in it called out, en-
couragingly, "Professor, this comrade will
live."'
"Of course he will live, Captain/' came
the positive re joiner. Then Jason felt a
hand grip his own, and raising his eyes he
beheld, though indistinctly, a tall, hand-
some youth of perhaps twenty, smiling
down at him from eyes that were wide apart
and full of warmth and love.
" Where am I?" queried the perplexed
154 THE TORCH OF REASON.
Jason. "I am not a sick man, what does it
all mean?"
"It means that you and your comrades
have had a very tight squeeze, and that you
are now safe among comrades and friends;
and if you will wait and rest I will tell you
all about it. And now, here is a drink of
cold water. Take this, and then we will all
turn in and have a good night's sleep."
Jason looked at the young man at his
side and wanted to protest and insist that
there was nothing really serious the matter
with him; but there was something in the
manner and voice of the frank, calm boy
that forbade the rebellion. Besides, there
was the goblet of sparkling cold water, and
he wanted it.
The heavy head sank back on its pillow.
The youth touched a button in the wall,
and softly the tinted glow melted away
through a mellow twilight and into a sky
of inky blackness. Almost simultaneously
with the fading of the tinted light there
came over him a sense of sweetest rest
such as he had never known in all his life
before. The quiet was so intense as to
produce a psychic musical harmony of the
inert molecules of the very etherical silence.
He knew he could hear the music, but it
was so infinitely delicate and fine that with
abated breath and ears straining he was
barely able to sense it. It was like water
dropping among musical combs far on the
THE TORCH OF REASON. 155
mountain side. Or was it seraph hands
playing some heavenly authem on musical
glasses of rarest crystal? It came into his
ears at times like the fuzzy tones of the
horse hair reeds he used to fix between the
window sashes when a hoy, and that no one
could acount for save himself. Then it would
tinkle merrily for a space, like midget
gnomes dancing their fantastic pirou-
ettes in tiptoe twirls along fiddle-strings.
And finally, it rippled away into space like
the silvery waters of a peaceful woodland
lake, nimbly nibbling along the pebbly
shores of its wild abode. All the world was
in tune. He smiled happily as he contem-
plated it; then he closed his eyes and in-
vited sleep.
At daybreak next morning, Jason awoke
to find himself swinging gently in a bed
hanging from above. The ship was roll-
ing lazily to the even swell of the green
waters of Behring Sea. Dimly he could
hear the breaking billows spraying on the
rugged shores of the Sound. Also, the wild,
ricketting notes of sea-birds reached his
ears, mingled with the voices of men on
the strange ship. He rocked his head, and
from either side of the space he rested in
he could look far out through the fine
meshes of screens that seemed made of
white silk thread, and he could see the vast
expanse of ocean as the ship rose and fell
with the rising and falling of each rolling
156 THE TORCH OF REASON.
wave. He was practically out of doors.
But there was no uncomfortable chill in the
air, though he knew the degree of tem-
perature out there must be low. Moreover,
the air that came to him through the white
silk screens was deliciously blent with the
salten odors of the sea, odors such as only
those who fare the mighty ocean know.
He felt no pain, but was conscious of a
great hunger; and in reply to a jovial
"Good morning, Comrade," that came from
somewhere in that same laugh-suppressing
voice he had heard in the evening, he sat
bolt upright and replied: "I don't know
who you are, nor where I am; but I'm
hungrier than a graven image."
"My name is Hautier, Comrade, and you
are on board the Agitator, a ship belong-
ing to the Socialist party, which party is
the political expression of the great Inter-
national Co-operative Democracy, or Inter-
national Socialist party. I am the captain
of this ship, and of course, I am a Social-
ist. We are comrades. You shall know
more of us for we are cruising the world
in the interest of the new science and I
learn from the professor that you are to
accompany us if you so desire. And now
you may prepare for breakfast, for I un-
derstand you slept well through the night
and that you are able to go on deck."
With this the captain touched a red spot
on the wall and the swinging bed sank -until
THE TORCH OF REASON. 157
it rested on the floor. Ten minutes later
Jason Sands was on the open deck where
he found the doctor and Jack Philips had
preceded him.
Captain Hautier, a stocky blonde French-
man and the son of a Communard, was
speaking, while Jack and the Aztec ap-
peared fairly beside themselves with ex-
citement.
"No, no, they are alive I tell you," the
captain was saying. And Jack was pro-
testing: "But he killed him I tell you, and
I choked two of them to death!" At
the same time the doctor was almost
screeching: "They drowned her, sir; did
they not throw her overboard?"
Speechless, Jason rushed forward to
learn that the Aztec's young bride was alive,
that the two men Jack had strangled were
alive, and that the robber chief he had
knocked overboard was alive and were all
on board and doing as well as could be
expected under the circumstances!
It was no easy task to quiet the joy-
crazed Spanto. He wanted to be rushed at
once to the bedside of his young wife; for
was he not a physician? But the captain
persuaded him that it would be best to
wait. The child was sleeping, he told him,
and besides, she was very low, life hanging
by a mere thread which any sudden excite-
ment might be the means of snapping.
"Listen here," he said, "and I will try
158 THE TORCH OF REASON.
to make it all clear but wait! here comes
Symbols to tell us breakfast is waiting be-
low." (Symbols was the Japanese cabin
boy, whose right name was Yama Yama.
Captain Hautier had nicknamed him
"Symbols" because the silk costumes he al-
ways wore were embroidered with green
dragons.) The little Jap led the way to the
long mess-room, his baggy pa jama trousers
fluttering around his bare ankles like spit-
sheets in a hurricane.
Introductions and handshakes were the
order of the moment and they were both
abundant and generous. There were glad-
some greetings from twenty robust sailor
lads garbed in white linen, who grinned
like happy children when Captain Hautier
promised Jason Sands the surprise of his
life when the professor should appear.
With this, Symbols whirled and shot
through the door, to plunge headlong into
the young scientist who caught him up and
spanked him playfully as he entered the
mess-room. Swiftly the lithe figure of the
rose-cheeked prodigy glided forward to the
long table, the entire ship's company sa-
luting him in chorus with : ' ' Good morning,
Comrade Sands." The almost feminine
features flushed with the glow of perfect
health and rampant vigor, and the clear
eyes sparkled childishly as he bent a rapid
succession of responsive smiles on all, and
in a voice vibrant with virility and cultured
THE TORCH OF REASON. 159
excellence lie greeted them with cordial so-
licitations for their good health.
Captain Hautier arose, a grotesque grin
stretching from ear to ear across his broad
face. The boy scientist was in the act of
taking his seat at the table when the stocky
navigator raised his hand and stayed him.
Then waving Jason to his feet with great
pseudo-solemnity after the manner of the
jester that he was, proceeded to introduce
the two men, thus: ''Professor Sands,
shake hands with Comrade Jason Sands of
New Hampshire." Then turning to Jason
he continued: "This young man is Com-
rade Professor Quimby Sands, also from
New Hampshire. He is the inventor of
this wonderful ship with all of its ma-
chinery and devices for life-saving and life-
giving, as well as the airship that rescued
you and your party last night, and the
great optiscopo graph, or right-angle-tri-
angle radium ray. Who knows but that
you two boys may be related?"
The two men were facing each other.
The one huge, and broad and grey, the
other young, fully as tall but less broad,
and possessing a gorgeous wealth of curly
auburn hair. Suddenly the battered patri-
arch leaned forward, his face the color of
chalk! He was staring at a small peculiar
scar over the other's left eye. No man
spoke but every breath was stayed. It was
a pregnant moment! All eyes were on
160 THE TORCH OP REASON.
Jason Sands, who was shaking as with a
palsy. Into his sad, far-gazing eyes, a new
light appeared. They were riveted on the
prototype of his erstwhile self before him.
The other seemed to have turned to marble.
It was a magnificent sight, this picture of
vigorous youth and hoary age. Presently
two pairs of pale lips parted. Four hands
shot out to embrace as with a single im-
pulse. Four eyes filled with tears tears of
joy and victory, as two voices cried out in
unison :
"My father!"
"My boy!"
A scene for the gods was this! There
was not a dry eye at that moment. Even
Jocular Joe, the blithe salt-dog of the sea,
fell a victim of his own buffoonery, and
laughed acrying as father and son, arm-in-
arm, headed for the private den of the
wizard prince. Neither man spoke, but the
younger waved a hand as they passed from
view and all understood. Also Symbols
knew, and flew to give orders for a lunch
for two to be served, for the first time, in
the wonderous muted "tune" room which
his beloved "Fessor," as he called him,
termed his "Laboratory."
Jason Sands had found his long lost son.
He had found him in the most marvelous
manner and under circumstances rivaling
in their startling character the fabled ro-
mances of the Arabian Nights. Strangely
THE TORCH OF REASON. 161
enough the father and son were the first
on deck after the morning meal. What
with the rapid turn of rapidly occurring
events, the rest were prone to long-drawn-
out discussions and much merrymaking.
With the beautiful silver-like vessel rid-
ing at anchor on the peaceful waters of the
Sound, they sat in the August sunshine of
that north latitude and listened, each to the
other's story of the separation that had
been so cruel and so long. Who in The Image
shall come to paint the picture of that
grand reunion? Who of tongue or pen the
yearning of their souls may tell? Many
partings there have been, but reunions such
as this had seldom come. Who but loved
ones that have parted can ever understand ?
Men in human form there be who never
understand, and they are not all men who
wear the human form: the mental helots
at the two poles of society the brutalized
rich and the brutalized poor both human
infusoria! These can never understand.
The subservient hireling can never know.
O shame on him who knows not he is a
slave! Shame on him who cannot shed a
tear! Shame on him who fears a healthy
dream ; who dare not think a rebel thought ;
who will not read the printed page! How
hardly may such ever know, or feel, or
come to understand?
Joe Hautier, the big, jolly captain (and
a bigger "jolly" than he was a captain),
162 THE TORCH OF REASON.
came suddenly upon little Yama Yama
hiding near, and listening eagerly to the
fervored conversation of father and son,
as they reviewed each his futile efforts of
the past to find each other. It was evident,
though he had been among the Americans
less than a month, that the chubby Jap-
anese understood the new, strange compan-
ionship of his dearly loved rescuer and the
older man with only one leg, for he was
clearly weeping. The boy was an orphan.
His father and two brothers had bought the
badge of " patriotism " dearly with their
blood at Port Arthur. When the news
came home to the little mother, she was
lying on a sick bed. She had been taught,
and likewise she had taught her sons, that
it was noble and glorious to both kill and
be killed in battle! The very foundation
of all religions is cemented to "civiliza-
tion" with the blood of wars. She called
little Yama Yama to her side and told him
she was going to die. "My son," she said,
"it is good to die." "Harken, my son, for
I, your mother, am dying. The Russians
killed your father who built our little home
here among the flowers. They killed your
brothers who taught you to build temples
to Buddha in the soft sands of the seashore.
It is glorious! Would that you, too, my
son, had been older. Grow strong and
brave, my son, that thy blow may fall hard
upon a beating heart, and thy red blood
THE TORCH OF REASON. 163
splash hot on the face of thy, perchance,
more powerful adversary. "
The babe had listened to her dying words,
and his every wakeful moment he dreamed
of the flashing sword and the crackle of
musketry, and of the hot blood-splashings,
and of the day when he, too, might become
a brave soldier, to feel the hot splash upon
his own cheek as he vanquished a less for-
tunate fellow in battle, or yielding up his
own, as the Great Mikado should direct.
No amount of influence aboard the Agita-
tor had, as yet, sufficed to change him,
although he loved, and was in turn loved
by all; for these teachings were the last
words of his mother, and "was she not his
mother?"
The Agitator had found the boy starving
while cruising the western waters for pic-
tures. Her regal spirit, the young scientist,
picked him up and made him cabin boy
if cabin boy on board the Agitator that
service may be called. Captain Joe loved
the bright lad with all his great, fond heart ;
for Joe had none to call him sire, and like
all who near the Summit where no flowers
grow to bless their coming, he was begin-
ning to starve for children. But he liked
to tease the little cherub, and to startle him
with his clown-like frown; for Joe Hautier
had never been tried for bein^r a handsomp
man!
164 THE TORCH OF REASON.
"Here, you young tadpole," he snapped
in mimic anger, "I caught you that time!
Spying on shipboard, 'eh?" Down went
the innocent Jap on knees and face, his
tiny hands clasped above his head, as he
implored his holy commander not to chop
off. his miserable head, a punishment he
firmly believed his awful offense warranted.
Back and forth he groveled, his little black
eyes fairly hanging from the bias slits in
his yellow cheeks. The poor waif prom-
ised by all the gods and Buddha, and all
the snakes, frogs, and dragons, and a whole
lot of other things of which the droll
Frenchman was unfamiliar, that never
would he do it again, never, never! if only
his worthless head might be spared.
"Yama Yama Symbolee, la lo lee Jap!"
wailed the simple heathen. "Him falla
Lushian killela ! Poor Yama Yama ! Him
twola bloula samee Lussian warlee killela!
Poorlee Symbolee Yama Yama ! O Capta
Ota, gomen! gomen!"
"Sure little hun, I will forgive you,"
soothingly the bluff seaman cried; "and
now forget it and climb up here and get
in your old 'Capta Ota's' vest pocket and
sing me a heathen song all in that monkey
tongue of yours." And stooping to the
sobbing child the bronzed sailor gathered
up the little lump of foreign drift-wood
and tenderly caressed away the penitent
tears.
THE TORCH OF REASON. 165
"I hope that will teach you a lesson,"
he chided himself when it was all over and
he was alone. "Poor kid! And to think
that I once was that innocent and ignorant
myself! Who have I to thank that I did
not stay that way? There are millions of
them millions of them, poor little orphans
-victims of capitalistic butchery," he
added sorrowfully.
Ere the water had dried from Toy's
dusky tresses subsequent to her rescue from
the Yukon River, she was breathing easily
and resting painlessly on a swinging cot in
the Agitator's hospital. When taken from
the water the girl was dead. She had been
drowned! but the modern methods of ex-
tracting water from the lungs, together
with the Sands method of acceleratory cir-
culation and forced respiration, had never
failed where positive death of the blood
corpuscles from coagulation in the heart
had not already taken place. It did not
fail now. A human life in perfect health
had been snatched from the red fangs of
death; but the good priest said it was the
works of the Devil, and that God's law had
been confounded and His will defied!
It was while seated in his laboratory test-
ing the temperature and adjusting the sen-
sitive electrical machinery to the Cosmic
Tune, that young Sands had noticed a
slight disturbance of the seism ographic
needle, followed by the report of the ex-
166 THE TORCH OF REASON.
plosion recorded on the sounding board of
the oscillophone. With a swift movement
he opened the shutter, and the wonderful
ray of white light that had given the na-
tives such a needless scare, was playing
on the wreck ere the smoke lifted.
It came to him while reading Spencer,
wherein he says: "Life is the continuous
adjustment of internal relations with ex-
ternal relations," that, Life is simply a
chemical tune played upon the Great Harp
Change. All things in the Universe were
so much chemical substance, animated into
cellular activity and correlated, specialized
and united in organisms according to tem-
perature and environment from within and
from without. Nothing was "made," and
fixed, and set up to be, but everything
was a growth, an evolution, a transforma-
tion a change. Man was simply one note
in the Great Tune, Life. And to be a per-
fect note he must be in perfect tune with
the Great Law Change.
The planets are in tune, was his theory,
and the planets are at peace with each
other. "Man," he replied to the good
priest, "is sadly out of tune with Life.
This is why he withers, sickens, weakens,
fails and dies. I have given this girl back
her life only by restoring her to tune with
Life, and you tell me I have beaten down
the parapets of Heaven, overthrown the
authority and destroyed the law of God!
THE TORCH OF REASON. 167
Well, then, if it is God's will that the
innocent become victims of cold-blooded
murder for profit, and further, if it be
true that I have overruled the Supreme
Court of Heaven, blasted the mandates of
its saintly congress and vetoed the dictum
of such a god, then I am greater than he,
and henceforth he will have to show me,
as they say in Missouri. I am highly
delighted to become a rebel under such cir-
cumstances, and I have only love and pity
for the dumb dupes who will meekly tol-
erate such a deadly invasion of their rights
without resenting the bald insult to their
intelligence. "
Now in the case of " Bluebeard" it was
different. There was neither air nor water
in his lungs, but they were full of bones
instead. The bones Jason had broken were
turned in, piercing the lungs and inflicting
ample wounds to cause death in the ordi-
nary man; but this was no ordinary indi-
vidual. Jason's blow had wrought a
complete disarrangement of the functional
organisms, and caused a discordant panic
to take place among the cell life which
rendered the big man temporarily helpless.
But with the broken bones quickly re-
placed, the lungs freed of dead blood, and
with the scientific treatment he received at
the hands of the Agitator's surgical me-
chanics, the big beast refused to lay quiet,
and when the other two robbers were
168 THE TORCH OF REASON.
turned over to the authorities the following
afternoon he went with them to answer,
unjustly, for one more of Capitalism's so-
cial crimes. The three repentent men made
full confessions to the officers in the pres-
ence of the good priest, thus obviating the
annoyance of detaining the Comet's crew
as witnesses at the trial.
"It is with deepest regret that we are
compelled to turn these poor hoys over to
you to have their wretched lives jerked out
at the end of a rope," the scientist said, as
the pudgy commander of the Revenue Cut-
ter blustered authoritatively up and down
the Agitator's deck.
"It is the law, sir; it is the law, and these
murderers must pay the penalty as they
justly deserve. They must be punished,
sir; and they'll get what's coming to them,
sir, and don't you forget it, sir," thundered
the red-faced thug in water-cop uniform.
"Yes, it is the law!" sadly reflected the
other, "the law that sees only effect, and
never concerns itself with cause. It is the
law of self-interest. The law of ' might
makes right' the law of the strong ruling
the weak with an iron hand! It is the
law which punishes 'crime' with more
crime, aggravating rather than lessening
the disease it pretends to cure. It belongs
to the Dark Ages, and has no place among
civilized men of this progressive period."
THE TORCH OF REASON. 169
"Do you mean to tell me, sir," exploded
the United States authority on contraband
rum, "fur-fishes" and opium smuggling,
"that you milk-and-water mollycoddles
would abolish all law, insult the dignity of
Uncle Sam, and turn the country over to
thieves, murderers and scoundrels and let
them go unpunished? That's Socialism, is
it?" he stormed on, "if I had my way I
would plant a mine under you anarchists
and blow you all to kingdom come. So
that's your game, 'er?"
Jason Sands, who, a moment ago, was
seated gazing disinterestedly far out to
sea, drew up and eyed the squat boss of
the North Pacific through narrowed lids
from which a strange light gleamed! He
had noticed a slight curling of his son's
lip as that young man turned to flash a
silent signal to Capt. Hautier, while the
bland Father Munne rubbed his fat hands
gleefully, and it could be seen where his
economic interests blended.
"Why don't you answer the Government
Officer, sir?" the good priest challenged.
"Are you afraid to reply to the honorable
commander's most pertinent question, sir?"
"No. I am not afraid to speak," re-
sponded the Agitator's inventor, still sadly.
"Among other things, my early teaching
was to the effect that God favored some
men with more brains than others, and that
those so favored were his chosen people,
170 THE TORCH OF REASON.
who should always look with tolerance and
due consideration on the feeble-minded.
My heart suddenly overflowed with a great
pity; for the moment, my tongue was en-
gulfed and in pure charity my speech was
drowned. How may the tongue of reason
answer to the logic of fools? Men who
absorb their ideas from the same source
from which their cheques are drawn may
not be expected to pose as paragons of jus-
tice and virtue. And if it were true that
the Socialists propose to turn the country
with its 100,000,000 souls over to a worse
gang of 'robbers, murderers and scoun-
drels' than which at present have the na-
tion and its people by the throat, I confess
I am at a loss to know where this side of
Hell they are to be found."
"And now you, Captain Mullock," Jason
volunteered, stepping close beside that irate
functionary, "are but a creature a uni-
formed watchdog of a robber plutocracy
which makes criminals out of honest men
and the children of honest parents, then
turns around and jails or hangs them to
hide its own guilt, distracting, thereby, the
wrath of the ignorant populace from the
real offenders while it piously soaks the
crimson stains from its taloned claws with
the crocodile tears of religious hypocrisy."
As he departed with his three hapless
prisoners, Capt. Mullock indulged in a
hasty brain-storm of eagle-scream patriot-
THE TORCH OF REASON. 171
isin, furiously swearing he would blow all
kinds of hell out of the Agitator and her
whole " red- throated "outfit if they were
anywhere on the horizon at sunrise.
"We will not be here, Captain Mullock,"
the boy assured him, "for," said he, "we
are billed to exhibit our horns to the graft-
ers of Victoria, British Columbia, and
Seattle, Washington, to-morrow night, and
as it is a stroll of some four thousand miles
we shall have to get an early start this very
evening in order to visit along the way and
make it a pleasure trip for our new-found
friends. But perhaps we shall meet again,
so cheer up, the worst is yet to come."
"And now you get back to your old
booze tub and don't let's hear another yip
out o' you, or I'll boil you like a lobster
in a pot," Captain Hautier commanded.
And with this he pressed his hand inside his
spotless linen coat, and up shot the mighty
white pillar of flame for a space, then down
came the angular pillar like a white sun-
beam and played upon the other craft, re-
vealing its black hulk through the darkness
like a phantom ship on a desert sea.
As the brass-buttoned giver of orders
(taken from higher up) pushed off from the
Agitator, her grinning commander gave
another signal, and the angular ray was
joined by another electro-radium shaft shot
straight out from the ship like the boom
of a mainsail. With this the ray began to
172 THE TORCH OF REASON.
spin around the government cutter like
skip-waters around the head of an adder.
At the first impact there shot up a gigantic
water-spout hundreds of feet in height.
Added to this came a hissing and sizzling
noise like boiling water mingled with es-
caping steam, or like cold water spilled on
a red-hot stove. Around and around the
fire-shaft flew, until it resembled a great
cornucopia of daylight in the midst of
midnight. The water boiled, foamed and
leaped high up in the air, while the little
wooden craft rocked and pitched, rolled and
floundered, the crew wildly yelling the
while with fear.
Captain Mullock shook his fat fist back
at the Agitator, and fumed, swore and
snarled in a loud voice that nobody could
hear or understand.
Having thus amused himself to his
heart's content, Captain Hautier once
more pressed his hand inside his coat and
the boom-like ray was cut off and the
boiling ceased, though clouds of steam con-
tinued to rise for many minutes there-
after. Once on board his ship, Captain
Mullock was seen to rush madly among his
crew shouting orders and waving his short,
fat arms like a bear in a bee's nest. Plac-
ing a small disk-shaped affair to his lips,
Joker Joe called out to him: "I say,
'Dewey,' when is the firing to begin?" But
the only reply that came back was the un-
THE TORCH OF REASON. 173
mistakable rumble of anchor heaving, and
in a remarkably short space of time the
"Terror" was under way and rapidly dis-
appearing into the darkness down the
Sound.
A reception and entertainment on board
the Agitator had been announced for that
very evening, and boat after boat from the
shore had already pulled along side with
its load of wonder- wrought humanity.
The performance with the triangle ray was
resumed, and many marvelous and beauti-
ful colorings were added to the radio-
activity. Then came the electro-magnetic
currents, which vitalized the radium pillar
and its auxiliary triangle, causing it to
spread out into a perfect figure four, not
unlike in appearance an enormous sail of
white fire, reaching into the very heavens
and stretching far out over the sea and
land. Without the electro-magnetic cur-
rents the light was perfectly cold and harm-
less; but with this well-known power as an
accompaniment, a terrific heat was gen-
erated that nothing on earth or in earth
could withstand. Also a splendid thunder
and lightning display was as simple and
easy of manipulation as the turning of a
switch or the pressing of an electric but-
ton. And the wonders of this new dis-
covery did not stop here. In fact its uses
were almost limitless ; and among the many
benefits with which it was come to bless
174 THE TORCH OF REASON.
mankind, were the creating of a cool, vital-
izing shower of rain in the brightest and
hottest day in summer, or the coldest day
in winter. It could dispel the darkness
and cold of a winter 's night, turning it
into a warm and perfect day; and when
young Sands first conceived of it, it had
been simply his intention to create a better
means of lighting for great cities. But in
this hope he had met with only partial
success, for, as yet, he had not perfected
the tMnbreUa ray upon which he still exper-
imented all of his spare time.
The night was now dark, and the next
number on the program was the Comet.
'Twas this the natives had come to see.
There was a bustle of excitement amid-
ships when a small aluminum tube pushed
itself up through the center of the whale-
back deck and announced in a loud voice, a
thousand times clearer than ever came
from the throat of man, that the Comet
was about to appear, and for all hands to
crowd aft and stand still.
The adjustable observatory or "crow's
nest," was occupied by the two Sands',
Jack Philips, the Mexican and his young
bride, and little Symbols, who clung close
to the wizard, that he might be safe while
missing nothing of the performance. Pres-
ently came the sound of slipping bolts, then
the whole fore half of the long, narrow
deck opened in a scalloped, or saw-tooth
THE TORCH OF REASON. 175
line in the center, the two forward quarters
sliding back and down inside the hull. In
less time than it can be told a huge black
thing of metal that looked like a giant gnat,
pushed up through the opening and leaped
into the air like a kangaroo. With the
leap into the air came the spreading of a
pair of great, bat-like wings, and in the
same instant the whole frightful thing from
nose to tail, became a living streak of bind-
ing flame and was gone!
Nothing like the speed of that meteor-
bird is possible of description. In an in-
finitesimal fraction of a second, and with
a whistling hiss that almost paralyzed the
hearing, it was far out over the rolling
sea. Up it shot into the sky, up and up.
and still up! Rocket is no name for it.
There is no name for it! Its course was
marked by a mile of crooked lightning.
Then at a dizzy height, miles above the
ocean and miles to the westward of the
ship, it righted, toned down its radiance
to a mere glow of red, beat its wings for a
few moments against the night and dived
straight down like a falling star and
plunged head-on into the black billows of
Behring Sea!
Breathless silence, then the screams of
women mingled with hoarse outbursts of
terror and monstrous oaths from the toil-
hardened men arose from the appalled
spectators in a discordant explosion of
176 THE TORCH OF REASON.
heart-felt fear. Up to the point where the
infernal thing dived for the water, the
Agitator had remained wrapped in dark-
ness; but when the Comet disappeared
below the waves, the exact spot was marked
with the index point of the great finder ray,
which had been manipulated from the ship
with the unison and accuracy of a trained
marksman. There on the Agitator stood
the pillar of radium, and from its topmost
apex and hinged like a jackknife blade, as
it were, with the " blade" rapidly shutting
up into the radium handle, streamed down
the angular -finder the same ray that had
anticipated the wreck of the Aurora, and
saved the lives of her survivors in the
Yukon River. This done, and quicker than
thought, the pillar was cut off, as the " knife
blade" of light shut up. Then up from the
very bowels of the Deep rose the Comet, all
her lean length aflame. Over the ship it
flew, dived again into the water, rose and
circled and cut and dodged, like the hissing
lash of a whip of fire in the hands of some
mighty giant, madly flogging the earth and
sky, so swiftly and terribly did it cut the
Northern night.
Of a sudden the thing came from some-
where out of the darkness with all her
lights out, and there she stood, flapping her
thin wings above the deck, a moment later
to settle down on her supports, finally to
disappear into the maw of the Agitator,
THE TORCH OF REASON. 177
from whence she came. Of course the
crowd clamored for a look at close range;
but there was a long programme, and in
five minutes all hands were seated in the
long auditorium of the little theater, in-
cluding the good priest from up the Sound.
"My remarks will be brief," the speaker
was saying. "But you want to know who
we are and why we have come among you
with our strange ways and our stranger
ships and philosophies. We are but men.
We are Socialists agents of the Co-opera-
tive Commonwealth. That is an economic
and political system opposed to Capitalism,
and we are agitating for the purpose of
enlightening men that they may help
Progress to dig a grave for that rotting old
carcass. We are presenting you with this
free entertainment on our ship for the pur-
pose of showing you that there is something
better in this world than frost and gold.
We are come to bring you good news. In
the literature that you will receive free at
the door in passing out, you will find
mapped out a plan whereby man may
safely live among his fellows without the
haunting fear of being eaten by his more
powerful brother.
Under Socialism, the cost of living will
never rise, compelling those whose scarred
hands have created all the wealth of the
world to eat garbage.
178 THE TORCH OF REASON.
"I read about a fellow here in this north
country one time, who had to eat his moc-
casins when game got scarce, and finally he
had to fall back on his leather suspenders.
I bet that when he was scabbing the job on
an overtime shift trying to masticate that
dainty repast, he thought of what 'Honest
Abe' said about men eating their bread in
the sweat of other men's faces. Abe might
have said ' backs' instead of ' faces,' but he
didn't, and if those suspenders were good
ones the rail splitter had one on that guy
all right!
"But game won't be scarce under Social-
ism only the skin game. That's the only
game that pays under Capitalism. That's
the reason capitalists are always rich and
you always poor. You raise all the skin
and then hand the knife over to the capi-
talist. He takes your pelt off at every
skinning time every election and then
you settle right down to hard work again
growing another hide. You do this
every four years, and the only thing you
ever kick about is when some one touches
you on the sore spot where your scalp comes
off.
"There is a certain tree growing in
South Africa, the bark of which is a
valuable commercial commodity. Each year
the corporations dealing in this commodity
hire the natives to peel the bark off, and
the tree immediately proceeds to grow a
new bark, which is again taken off the next
THE TORCH OF REASON. 179
year. Now the amount of bark a native can
peel in a day is worth to the company one
thousand dollars; and for performing; this
slight daily service the God-ordained cor-
poration generously gives the "free born"
native thirteen cents.
"Problem No. 1. Which gets the worst
skinning, the tree or the native. (Silence,
protracted and almost uncanny silence.")
"Problem No. 2. Which do you think
is the first to tumble to the racket, the 'free
born' native or the tree. (More of the
same.)
"I will tell you who gets the worst of it,
and you will be surprised to learn that it
is the 'free born' native. And it is the
tree which first wakes up, for, after seven
vears of this kind of 'thrift and industrv'
it refuses to grow another bark. But do
vou think that big, husky, 'free born,'
living, breathing man ever gets tired of giv-
ing his pretty master nine hundred and
ninety-nine dollars and eighty-seven cents
everv blessed twenty-four hours for the
'inalienable right' to slave ten hours of it
for thirteen cents'? Never! No 'dividing
up' for him! To abolish his master and
turn the whole forest over to himself would
be 'free love' and the 'destruction of the
home!' They have worked this old gag on
him so long one would think he would begin
to tumble; but then, they have been throw-
ing the same hooks into you fellows for lo,
180 THE TORCH OF REASON.
these many moons, and you have not
awakened!"
"Some on us is beginnin' tue, by cat,
and don't you forget it!" drawled out an
old Forty-niner, and the larger half of the
grizzled miners applauded and laughed.
"Read our literature. It will help you
out of poverty. It will tell you how that
every human creature shall have a home.
It will tell you how that every love shall
find a lover's mate; how that every life
shall be secure in peace and plenty, and
how that happiness shall reign throughout
the earth for all mankind.
"The day is at hand when you people
who brave the Northland won't have to live
out all your lives trying to get warm. It
strikes me that if I had to freeze to death
I would hate to be a whole life time doing
it. Down on the Gulf Coast, where I have
a ranch, the only thing we have to look out
for is wind. It blows so hard down there
out of the Gulf that the farmers have to
shingle their cows to keep the salt water
out of the milk. The crops, you know, all
grow on a slant inland, and we build our
houses that way, on a bias, so the chamber
windows will be on the ground floor, and
so the children won't have so far to fall
when the houses blow away, you see," per-
sisted the jesting Joe.
"Yaw, haw, haw! Ah don't guess you're
overshootin' a whole lot, stranger. Ah'm
THE TORCH OF REASON. 181
f'm Corpus Christ! myself; wow!" bawled
out a lank individual with an aquiline nose
and a wash smile. When the rest of the
Texans had sufficiently subsided, the fun
flowed on, with everybody in good spirits
and perfectly at ease.
"The reason I am telling you all these
things is just to show you the difference
between the place where I sometimes live,
and this graveyard where you people come
to die while trying to get a little something
to live on. You miners burn holes in the
earth here in Alaska, but we don't do that
in Texas. The sun does that for us. But
we do have to break out the roads every day
there, the same as you do here; only it's
sand and alkali instead of snow, and our
forests are all found under ground, like
"good" Indians. But we never eat our
boots in Texas, for to die without our boots
on is the worst disgrace a Texan can
suffer," he said.
The assemblage comprised a curious
heterogeny of impatient humanity, whose
applause at the captain's spicy remarks was
loud and genuine. There were both men
and women, yes, and many little children
of all ages and sizes. Men with bearded
faces, and faces red, brown, black and yel-
low. Top boots, moccasins and stockinged
feet. Wool suits, skin suits, fur suits and
calico; and some wrapped in blankets.
Then on came the pictures 1
182 THE TORCH OF REASON.
There were the contrasted rich and poor,
to show the wide economic and social gulf
between these two classes of capitalistic
society. These colored slides were made
from photographs taken in St. Louis (the
city that has to be " boosted"), where dead
horses lay for weeks in the streets, both
summer and winter; and where dead men
lay where they meet death until they freeze,
between the rails of trolley lines. Here
were scenes from the wretchedest slums
anywhere to be found in the "Land of the
Free and Home of the Brave!"
First came a West End mansion costing
$3,000,000, and owned by an ex-gambler,
now a corporation judge.
Out in front stood a fine $15,000 auto-
mobile, and happy children played games
on a beautifully kept lawn among the
flowers and fountains, and all around were
nice graveled walks and many shade trees.
The next was a scene from the East Side
slums in the city of New York. A tenement
house of crumbling red brick, one of a
single block in which were herded twenty
thousand starved souls. Children of all
ages, and in great numbers, swarmed the
festering, narrow streets like rats; some in
rags, and some without even these to cover
their pitiful nakedness. Ash barrels and
barrels of swill littered the three-foot side-
walk. Into these swill barrels the arms of
snotty urchins were being thrust to the
THE TORCH OF REASON. 183
elbows for food, while hundreds were madly
fighting each other for a grab at the rotting
garbage. Dead cats and dead rats, mingled
with heaps of accumulated pollution,
clogged the narrow alleys, and from every
window sweltered bedraggled, half-starved
mothers holding bat-faced, naked babes
which looked like ventriloqual figures, save
for the gaudy raiment of which they had
none.
Following this frightful scene the opera-
tor showed the interior of another mansion
the home of a society queen!
In a gorgeous dining room, seated at a
sumptuous feast, with butler and many
servants standing at attention, the bawd-
attired mistress of a screw-tail terrier fed
that ten-thousand-dollar beast sponge cake
and cream from her own plate, while her
shrimp of a husband dabbled mincingly in
venial acquiescence over his squab on toast
at the foot of the table.
In the wake of this social example of
twentieth century Gomorrahism came the
vivid picture of a garret abode up under
the skylight in a squalid hive down in the
Ghetto. Lying there on a heap of soiled
rags in the corner, gasped the emaciated
wreck of a starving washerwoman dying
from the white plague! In her bony arms
was clasped the nude body of her dead
baby, whose thin, white lips still clung to
a dry .nipple on her flabby breast !
184 THE TORCH OF REASON.
At the sight of these horrors of Christian
civilization the audience of honest work-
folk shuddered and groaned, audibly cursed
and tearfully wept!
It was at this point that the good priest
from up the Sound sprang to his feet and
wildly gesticulating, demanded that these
" scurrilous and defamatory" pictures be
stopped. Waving his arms and angrily
shouting from his seat among his par-
ishioners, he screamed: "You are a gang
of devils and are disturbing the public con-
fidence! The government ought to adopt
positive measures if need be to have you
and your seditious practices suppressed."
And as he was not ejected for this he cour-
ageously ranted on: "You're a menace to
the foundations of society! The conditions
are as they are because it is God's will!
When he wants them changed he will come
in his wrath amid fire and thunder, wield-
ing a two-edged sword! The wicked shall
be judged and
"A men!" squeaked a wheezy old geezer
of perhaps ninety. Thus reinforced, the
Godly hierarch victoriously climaxed: "The
ways of the Lord are not of our inferior
understanding! Verily, he worketh strange
miracles among his children, that they may
know he is a jealous God, whom all must
both love and fear! Kemember this and
bow submissively to your burdens, arduous
The bawd-attired mistress of a screw-tailed terrier fed that
$10,000 beast sponge cake and cream from her own plate."
THE TORCH OF REASON. 185
though they be and unending: 'The poor
ye have with you always.'
"Dos vos no lie, mein schguy pilot
friendt. Ve vill haf poor deffls mit uz
alvays schoost so long as ve let you schleek
deffls shdeer oor eyes up ud ver schtars vile
you pig oor poggets und schdeal oor dusd,
und vile der vrrrrich deffls vrrrride on oor
backs," clanged out a fat Dutchman, stand-
ing the while and shaking a ham-like fist
in the bloated face of the well-nourished
priest.
Symbols peaked out from behind the
wings and grinned, and the orchestra struck
up the Marseillaise, and from the boxes on
either side of the stage went up a subdued
chuckle.
The operator, at a signal from the pro-
fessor, started the motion pictures, and if
the Romist was stirred at the colored slides,
he was desperately mad now. The films were
ten times worse than the stereopticon views,
and showed the frightful hells of child
slavery in the cities. The maimed and dead
on the unspeakable battlefield. The pov-
erty-stricken miners up from the depths
of the cold, wet earth. And finally, a long
line of "chesty" workingmen, dressed in
their Sunday best, each smoking an " elec-
tion" cigar and voting still once more for
the very system by which they are per-
petually, legally and systematically robbed.
186 THE TORCH OF REASON.
But the holy man made no further outbreak
and the pictures continued.
"We will show you how the ill-fated
Aurora looked ten seconds after she was
blown up," Captain Joe was promising.
"You see, the optiscopo graph is not only
almost everything else, but it is also a de-
vice for the taking of motion pictures. It
is always loaded, and we never leave it for
a moment without an operator." All the
horrors of that aw'ful ride to death, the
fight with the robbers when Jack Philips
choked two of them into insensibility after
Jason had knocked the chief overboard, and
then the rescue was run off. But the sur-
prise of all came when the exact reproduc-
tion of the recent exhibition of the Comet
was thrown on the screen of the little float-
ing theater. Also there was the captain of
the Terror, pulling for dear life for his
government ship, while the water leaped
and boiled around her, just as it had all
occurred only an hour since. It was all so
wonderful that the crowd sat, for the most
part, motionless and speechless with awe.
As the astonished and delighted natives
filed out upon the deck, each was presented
with the classified literature of the new De-
mocracy together with a copy of the Appeal
to Reason, a red-hot Socialist paper pub-
lished at Girard, Kansas, and enjoying the
modest circulation of a million. This was
the paper whose editor, Fred. D. Warren.
THE TORCH OF REASON. 187
had been sentenced to serve six months in
jail and to pay a heavy fine for two specific
reasons, viz. : First, because he was a man,
and second, because he dared to stand face
to face against the Beast and fight for the
rights of the disinherited workers of the
world, hurling defiance in the teeth of the
most corrupt, but withal, the most powerful
government on earth.
The good priest from up the Sound was
the last over the rail, and as the ray went
up to light the boats ashore, he was seen to
gesticulate wildly as he harangued his
rapidly diminishing followers, and what he
promised to have done to the Agitator when
she should arrive at Victoria, as recorded
on the registers of her wireless telephones,
may be more lawfully imagined than said!
CHAPTER VI.
BEASON AND A STONE.
Through midnight murk the craven coward crept
With Judas mien to shame the graveyard ghoul ;
Nor warning gave; but e'en as jackals prowl,
Or dastard Tarquin slunk to couch befoul
And ravage virtue while the household slept,
He struck with unseen hand his brother down !
And in night's shroud of gloom and Stygian gown,
Apostate to his soul, the scurvy lown
Fled stealthily, the while a people wept!
"You tell us Socialism is against the
Church, " the speaker was saying. "When
cornered, you admit that you know nothing
about Socialism. And this is your idea of
knowledge and philosophy! But I say to
you here tonight, that Socialism is against
everything that interferes with religious
liberty.
"Socialism is opposed to everything that
fetters intelligence with the shackles of su-
perstition and fear.
"Socialism is at war with ignorance,
falsehood and slavery, and everything that
hangs like mill-stones around the neck of
Progress.
"Socialism is opposed to the sword and
the Gatling gun. It is opposed to war, and
the spilling of blood. It strikes at poverty
and drunkenness, and the hangman's noose.
(188)
THE TORCH OF REASON. 189
It seeks to abolish crime and the causes of
crime. It will do away with profit and pull
down the Golden Calf of Mammon. It will
make child slavery impossible. It will make
poverty impossible. It will make ignorance
impossible, and it will banish the ghosts
of danger and insecurity forever from hu-
man society.
"If the Church is in favor of any of
these it is against Progress and humanity.
"If the Church is in favor of the few
rioting in idle luxury off the toil of the
many it stands for an exalted parasitism
on the one hand and slavish pauperism on
the other.
"If the Church stands for an idle class of
gold-spurred vermin riding on the backs of
the masses of starving poor, it is at war
with liberty. It is against peace and the
security of the home. It is arrayed in
battle royal against Progress and human
justice, and, I say, if such be true, Social-
ism will hit it one everlasting swat !
"I am ashamed of you hypocrites who
parrot the sayings of the Galilean. I am
ashamed of my brother and my sister who
can read the story of one starving newsboy
and excuse their complicity in the crime by
blaming the outrage onto God. It may be
God's will that there are ten millions of
hungry half-naked children in these glorious
United States tonight; but if it is, then I
190 THE TORCH OF REASON.
am proud to announce that I deny and re-
pudiate that kind of a god.
"The god you worship and the church
you are afraid Socialism will pull down,
may stand for seven millions of starving
unemployed workingmen continually tramp-
ing the streets of the great cities under the
starry folds of Old Glory ; but the god with
whom Socialists are chummy doesn't spell
his name with the same number of letters.
The god of Socialism is the God of
Humanity.
" Socialism will not interfere with any
man's religion. It will not demand that a
man be soused in ice-water to the danger
of his life that his soul may legally under-
take to sprout a crop of pin-feathers. But
it will make it intellectually possible for
him to get next to the raw deal that is being
pulled off on him, and then if he still pre-
fers the deception to what he knows to be
the truth, why, no one will be to blame but
himself.
"Socialism will not oppose any man's
faith. He may believe what he pleases so
long as he is satisfied to enslave only him-
self with such belief. Pretty much all the
Socialists with whom I am accquainted are
slow to make believe a thing they have
found to be a lie. This may seem like in-
sanity to the orthodox mind; but then, the
orthodox mind is to progress what lead is
THE TORCH OF REASON. 191
to a life-preserver. It is belief, belief, and
still more belief!
" Belief has been the miasma of deca-
dence polluting the social atmosphere for
forty thousand years. Socialists seek not
belief but knowledge! Belief is uncertainty,
knowledge is reality. If I know a thing
I do not have to believe it. It has then
become fact and requires not belief, but
knowledge to sustain it.
"A theory may look like truth, but no
scientist will accept it as such without a
thorough scientific investigation and analyt-
ical test; if it stands the test of a scientific
analysis, it becomes known and classified,
and is a reality. If, on the other hand,
it fails to make good under the searching
light of reason, it will be relegated to ob-
livion by thinking people, and only the faith
of fools will be pinned to its shoddy sham.
"The science of the future will be the
science of Self. And that which will not
stand the test of a scientific analysis will
have to go.
"To believe a thing is to doubt it. To;
know a thing is to realize it.V If we did
first doubt it we would not and could not
believe it. Belief is one individual's guess
plagiarized by another individual who
hadn't enough brains to make a good,
healthy guess for himself.
"Of all the venial, garrot-eyed things
that crawl on belly through Capitalism's
192 THE TORCH OF REASON.
slimy social drain, the unblushing "saint"
who deceives an innocent child into believ-
ing a malevolent lie is the most despicable
of all the long list of sneak- thieves, -snatch-
baggers and false friends that ever attached
feed end to the economic larder of our
social structure. He is literally a social
barvel ! It is said that all things have their
double. If this be true, and if this con-
scienceless charlatan and depraved moral
papsucker can be matched anywhere among
the leeches, perverted pimps and reaction-
ary deadwood that clutters the path of
Progress, I can not think where, unless it
be with the brutal father who violates the
virginity of his own daughter; the un-
natural mother who deserts her helpless
offspring, or the savage beast that devours
its first-born young.
' ' But, under Socialism, if a man wants to
believe he is a jackass he shall have that
privilege, and no one will make himself
ridiculous by criticizing the harmless bray-
ings of an honest ass.
"If you want to believe you are the rein-
carnated spirit of a devil-fish you will be
protected in that right, so long as you don't
try to get some of the same superstitious
soup into me, otherwise you will quickly be
shown to a padded cell as a means of public
safety.
"If you want to imagine that you are
better than I am, and that you are bound
THE TORCH OF REASON. 193
to grow a pair of immaculate wings while 1
am to be doomed, dammed and devoured in
red-hot brimstone, it won't get you very
far into trouble so long as you keep your
feet out of my trough. But if you insist
on me agreeing with you before I could
have a job of useful work, I shall see to it
that you are straightway apprehended and
suppressed as a public nuisance.
"Under Socialism a man may know a
great deal provided he possesses the mental
capacity for thought; if not, then he may
still believe a great deal! He may believe
there is a god and six devils on every street
corner. He may believe that souls are
feathered things, and that God don't con-
sider the body worth a damn! If you want
to believe there is a (rod who demands that
you both fear and love him, you may under-
take the paradoxical gymnastics of such a
mental performance, and contort your cer-
ebral machinery until the safety valve blows
out. You may believe there is a heaven and
a hell, or as many as you like; and if you
believe you are going to Heaven and want
to go there, you may go to Heaven a.nd take
your trunk, or you may go to Hell if you
want to. But you won't have any right to
take me with you if I am satisfied to stay
here."
Ashworth was a small place, a manu-
facturing town built on a small stream
among the hills. There were saw mills and
194 THE TORCH OF REASON.
tanneries and a glove factory there. Also
there were cotton mills, hosiery mills, a
grist mill and a woolen mill; and it was in
this latter roaring slave pen that Jason
Sands had worked eleven hours a day when
a mere lad, "twisting in" warp for twenty-
seven looms. He had not been there very
long when he invented a new process, which
process was promptly stolen from him. And
then he was discharged for having the
audacity to protest. It was said to be a
"hot" town ! That is to say, it encompassed
more crime, vice and drunkenness to the
square inch than other towns of its size
which were considered less "hot."
Canadian-French were given the prefer-
ence over the natives in the mills, for, hav-
ing no ideas of free government, they could
be depended upon to vote as told and they
would not join a union. Moreover, they
would work for anything offered them and
no thought of dissatisfaction ever crept
into their skulls; for they were, every
mother's son of them, good and devout
Catholics.
And so, while the soil was fertile enough,
it was so choked with inherited ignorance
and intellectual weeds that Socialism had
taken root very slowly, and then only after
a long and tedious uphill propaganda by a
handful of courageous comrades. The lec-
ture which Leland Tannerhill had come to
attend was the first of its kind ever ad-
THE TORCH OF REASON. 195
vertised in the community, and the task our
friend from the Southwest was up against
was not an envious one.
"I opened this discourse with the state-
ment that Socialism is an economic and
political question," the big Texan resumed,
"and you leap to your feet and demand to
know what the Socialist position is con-
cerning religion. Did you ever ask any of
the bell-weathered flock of the Republican
or Democrat parties a question like that?
No! That question has never been trotted
out for the purpose of combating the poli-
tics of any but the Socialist. You know
better than to interrogate any of the old
partyites on this ticklish point. You know,
only too well, their position on the Church.
They stand for it, and they stand on itl
And when its morals become too slippery
for firm footing, as is frequently the case,
they proceed in self -protection to clap on
the lid and sit on it.
"The Church has always been found on
the side of Capitalism; and Capitalism has
ever been found on the backs of the
workers.
"It is none of your business what I be-
lieve regarding religion. That is my own
private affair. If your church is what is
claimed for it, i. e., 'builded on the solid
rock of righteousness, ' it is in no fear from
evil influences surely not from the peace-
ful Brotherhood of Man. 'The works of a
196 THE TORCH OF REASON.
just God cannot be destroyed.' It is only
the sham that fears the light of reason.
Does your church fear the light? If you
want to enrage a beast show it red. If you
would discomfort a fakir uncover his fraud.
If you wish to frighten a murderer let him
see blood LOOK AT YOUR HANDS!"
The gentleman who had croaked out the
old familiar "Socialism will destroy re-
ligion" bug, was seated away back in the
rear of the hall where the light was dim;
but Stanley could see that he wore a seedy
old broadcloth coat of the ancient orthodox
country preacher cut, that he was old, and
all hunched up in a heap like a hermit crab
in a hank of wet kelp. With his last re-
mark the speaker had reached far out over
the audience to shake an accusing finger at
him, and the crowd, which up to this point
had remained deathly still, broke out in ap-
plause and every one turned to see what
the "Old Scorpion," as he was called, would
reply.
For forty years the old Shylock had kept
a country store at Merrydeath Crossroads,
and it was while engaged in the traffic of
human necessities that he had acquired the
additional nom de nique of "Margin Bead-
eye." This was for the double reason that
first, his little round eyes retired far up
near the timber line of his rennet-bag face,
where they looked for all the world like
two black beads just showing through their
THE TORCH OF REASON. 197
pus-dripping lids. And secondly, because
lie was always whining to his customers
that there was no " margin" (of profit) on
the goods be sold them on credit at five
times their actual value. The " scorpion"
part was of more recent origin, and had
been honestly earned by him in payment for
his hatred of children and the eagerness
with which he would "sting" every one
with insult and abuse with whom he did
not agree. Nevertheless, he was the main
pillar of the richest church in the town,
and while he still wore the same old
clerical coat for best that he appeared
in on the first Sunday of his arrival
from God only knows where he was re-
puted to be the owner of more rents than
all the rest of the community put together.
But the eminently respectable gentleman-
retired, had evidently had enough, for he
did not reply. On the other hand, he sought
the first opportunity when the house was
engaged in an outburst of enthusiasm, to
slink out into the autumn night.
Stanley Lark was at his best. He had
heard the pathetic story of Tannerhill that
afternoon, and if ever orator were in-
spired it was he. He drew a parallel of
the Sands-Tann'erhill case, staging it in a
western town and using no names, but the
audience understood ; and as his voice rang
out clear and powerful with the terrible in-
dictment of the capitalist system, which
198 THE TORCH OF REASON.
system he showed to be the cause of those
two broken homes, his audience swayed and
reeled in sympathy with his emotional elo-
quence, and many a tear of pity and shame
was seen to fall as they gazed on the silvery
locks of the last of the Tannerhills and
realized the sorrow and hopelessness of his
empty years.
"I am going to tell you the true story
of the travels and adventures of a quart
of milk," he said. "It is the history of
all milk born in the country that gets
canned and finds its way into the big cities.
You farmers milk it from the cow fresh
and pure. You sell it here delivered at
the railroad station for three cents a quart.
It goes to Boston on the train, is separated
from its cream, dumped into a machine and
'raised' to two quarts, drugged with soda,
formaldehyde a deadly poison " weight-
ed,' colored and thinned with dirty water,
and then sold for twenty cents to working
people. But that is only a part of its his-
tory. It has now only just started on its
deadly career. A hollow-eyed wife and
mother finds it at five o'clock in the morn-
ing at the foot of a pair of rickety back-
stairs at the door of the rented shack. John
uses two teaspoonfuls in his cup of coffee.
Those two spoonfuls of 'milk' contain sev-
enty millions of deadly disease germs. And
John has stomach trouble! Another man
THE TORCH OF REASON. 199
gets John's job, and the coffin trust gets
John.
"But even that isn't all. In a crib at the
bedside, the blue, birdlike hands of an in-
fantJohn's and Mary's clutch feebly at
the rubber nipple of a nursing-bottle. And
then it cries faintly, but with as much
strength as it possesses, and Mary conies
to bring some of the thin, blue stuff, some
of which ten days ago was being milked
from a real cow on a New Hampshire farm.
The hungry babe greedily devours the taxi-
dermized fluid, and with each swallow that
the tiny throat takes in, goes thirty mil-
lions of bacteria along with the rest of
the deadly dope. This is murder! But it
is Capitalism the profit system and you
voted for that system, and when you voted
for that system you became the accomplice
in crime, aiding and abetting in the annual
murder of three millions five hundred
thousand innocent babes in these United
States of America, through the sale of im-
pure milk alone. What will your children
think of their fathers who assisted in the
1 slaughter of the innocents?'
"In a few years Socialism will be here
to change all this, and then what shall be
said of men who voted for and placed the
seal of license and respectability upon every
crime known to mankind rather than ' shift
their politics!'
200 THE TORCH OF REASON.
"I know a man out west on an Arkansas
ranch who is afraid that Socialism will
compel him to * divide up ! ' He told me so.
There are a lot of people haunted with the
same old familiar ghost. He showed me
over the farm, and presently we came to
a queer-looking iron machine, all painted
and striped red and blue. It was a beau-
tiful thing, and at first sight I thought it
was some kind of a musical instrument.
'That is a separator,' he explained. 'It
separates the cream from the blue milk.'
Why do you separate it? I asked. 'O, the
cream goes to Galveston and is sold to the
rich,' he answered. And the blue milk? 1
inquired. 'That stuff,' said he, jerking his
thumb in the direction of a large tank of
it, 'that ain't fit for sellin', I don't guess;
we eats that ourselves.' How much did
you pay for that machine? I next quizzed.
'Three hundred dollars,' was the answer.
Ladies and gentlemen, I stared at that man ;
and while he did not look it, I realized that
I had located a genuine, and very rare liv-
ing specimen of the now almost extinct
Anencephalious Cebine.
"Here was a man owning a splendid
farm of as fertile soil as ever lay out of
doors, Who had given Capitalism three hun-
dred dollars for a machine guaranteed to
separate him from the best his farm pro-
duced, the cream, as it were, while he and
his wife and little ones had to skimp along
THE TORCH OF REASON. 201
on the blue milk! And this man, who as-
sured me he was a good Democrat, would
not vote for Socialism for fear he would
have to i divide up!' No wonder he was a
Democrat! Any one who knows as much
as that man knows can be a good Demo-
crat ! If he hadn't of known any more than
to want that good cream for himself and
family, he would have been fool enough
to be a Socialist. But he'll die that way.
The great and wise die young! He con-
vinced me that he was killing himself with
work, creating cream for his masters and
starving to death the while amid plenty on
a diet of whey.
" According to the figures of the United
States Statisticians on Agruculture, a forty-
acre farm in Arkansas will raise enough
per annum to keep in first class condition
three hundred healthy men. This man
owned one hundred and sixty acres of the
best land in the state. He had worked it
early and late for thirty years and was
poor. In the thirty years, according to the
aforesaid reliable statistics, he had pro-
duced enough with his labor, conservatively
speaking, to keep him comfortably for
three thousand and three hundred years in
abundance. And still this man didn't know
enough to know that he was being skinned.
Any person who knows as much as he does
knows almost enough to be a Republican!
Some of you people may know this mental
202 THE TORCH OF REASON.
prodigy, his name is E. Z. Mark, and speci-
mens of his kind may still be found
throughout the United States, especially in
the rural districts."
It was a good story, and well told; and it
was evident that the speaker from Texas
knew what he was talking about. He was
making a decided hit with the farmers in
his audience.
Leland was all attention. He liked
Stanley Lark, and knew he was a good man.
Also he knew he was speaking the truth,
and he resolved right then and there to
cast his lot with the Socialists and vote
with them from now on. Life had sud-
denly assumed a new aspect. There was
hope after all. These Socialists were dif-
ferent. They were not politicians, they
were idealists philosophers. In, and under
and beyond their politics there was a
greater thing than politics. There was a
goal, which goal was an Idealism. They
were a political party, but the political part
was simply the legal machinery to be oper-
ated for the purpose of constructing execu-
tive policies, and the ballot was the legal
instrument for capturing the powers of
government from the other political par-
ties, which parties simply changed works ru
the process of "separating" the wealth
from the workers. The political party,
then, was but a means a conveyance by
which the millions of disinherited workers
THE TORCH OF REASON. 203
were to ride to victory in the possession
of the reins of government, and come into
their own. He had wondered how they
were going to do it, and now here was the
secret. The speaker had made it all clear
on that point when he said: "You desire
to know 'how we are to do it!' The ques-
tion is a remarkable one, and I must confess
that I am astounded. After voting, all your
lives, for political parties, you have to come
to a Socialist to inquire how political par-
ties get into power!"
The wit who had propounded this ar-
chaic, and time-worn socraticism, was the
shyster lawyer, Jibbs. The speaker had
gone to some length by way of making the
deep, dark secret clear to his musty, be-
sodden brain, and when he had finished
there was no mistaking his meaning. "I
will tell you how we are going to try to do
it," he said, "and unless we are prevented
by fraud, we will eventually win by this
peaceful method. We will establish the Co-
operative Commonwealth only after a ma-
jority of citizens have expressed their de-
sire for Socialism through having voted
the Socialist ticket at the ballot box.
"The Socialist party is a regularly or-
ganized political party with local head-
quarters in every city and town in the
country. The name of our party is in-
scribed on the national ballot beside that of
the Republicans and Democrats. Every
204 THE TORCH OF REASON.
voter who votes, sees our name before him,
and he can vote as easily for Eugene V.
Debs, as he can for continuous perf ormanoe
Bill Bryan, Rafty Taftus, or Titmouse
Ted, the man who thinks he is the rein-
carnated Caesar, and who believes he is
destined to be Emperor I. of America. But
Socialism appeals to intelligence, and no
one will vote the Socialist ticket who is too
ignorant to comprehend the principles of
the philosophy of Socialism. When these
principles are understood by the voters they
become Socialists. When once a man be-
comes a Socialist, he will vote the Socialist
ticket, first, last, and all the time ever after,
and never any other.
"You don't have to know very much to
be a Socialist. You don't have to know
who invented the hobble skirt for women,
nor why Jeffries chewed gum at Reno.
Neither is it necessary that you post up on
the science of Astronomy as practiced by
the tree people ten million years ago. But
you must know that you are being robbed
and that you want to stop the robbery.
You will surely have to pass that important
examination, and w r hen you have mastered
political and social economy to that extent,
you will know enough to vote with the
Socialists and your ultimate graduation is
as certain as that capitalist politicians will
steal. If you feel that you cannot qualify
under these circumstances, stick to the
THE TORCH OF REASON. 205
Republicans and Democrats until you arc
sucked dry; for all you have to know to
be a good partisian of either of these is:
you must knoiv your master's voice!
"When more Republicans and Democrats
vote the Republican ticket than vote the
Democratic ticket, the Republicans win,
and go into power in the government.
When more Democrats and Republicans
vote the Democratic ticket than the Repub-
lican ticket, the Democrats win, and go into
power. When more voters learn what So-
cialism means than vote both the Repub-
lican and Democratic tickets the working
class will win and go into power in the
government, and on that day will end the
history of political corruption, otherwise
known as graft.
"The reason the Socialists will have to
have more votes to win than both the other
parties named, is, that they are both one
in interest, and will fuse at the last ditch
to beat their common foe the Socialist
Party. They are both capitalist parties,
the right and left wings of the same old
bird of prey Capitalism. The only reason
for their dual existence is that, they must
have some sensational means of fooling you
at each election, and in order to keep the
wool pulled over your eyes so that you can-
not see with which hand they pick your
pocket. They maintain a sham political
fight, knowing that you will be too deeply
206 THE TORCH OF REASON.
interested in watching the fun and choos-
ing imaginary sides to think of building up
a party of your own. Besides, at each elec-
tion they pull all the wool off your backs,
and, you know, you must have time for it
to grow out again, so as to be in trim for
another plucking."
Next he told them of governments, and
why they were instituted among men. "You
all know the popular theory," he said,
"that all governments are for the purpose
of 'securing the greatest good to the great-
est number/ 'the inalienable rights of life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,' and
all that fine-sounding bunk? We've been
fed on that old warmed-over handout until
it reminds me of the story of the city guy
who went to the country to engage in the
poultry business. Of course he had never
seen a hen, but that didn't make any dif-
ference. Well, he was getting along all
right until the village fool paid him a visit
one day and advised him to mix sawdust
with the cornmeal for feed to cut expenses.
Then the village fool told a neighbor and
the neighbor called and volunteered the
same economic bill of fare. Also the neigh-
bor told another neighbor, and the other
neighbor called on the new hen man and
parroted the same dope, told another
neighbor, and so on until the excounter
jumper hen man laid in a goodly supply
of sawdust from the mill up the brook and
THE TORCH OF REASON. 207
began feeding his flock the new diet, with
the result that, all the chickens hatched had
wooden legs.
"Now that's exactly what has happened
to you. Your fathers and mothers were
slaves, you were conceived on an empty
stomach, nurtured on a diet of political
whey, with the result, not that you have
wooden legs, but wooden heads."
Stanley was noted for his good stories,
and for the good-natured sarcasm with
which they were told. Everybody laughed
at this one, except those of the grim Re-
publican ring and a puny gentleman with
feminine shoulders and a receding chin,
and wearing a collar that buttoned in the
back. These soft-palmers seemed to grow
shorter in their seats, and it could be seen
that hatred, bitter and venene hatred,
gleamed from beneath their shadowy brows.
"We are regularly fed and fattened on
this cerebral embalming fluid by your lying
old-party press, just prior to each annual
killing at the polls. Moreover, the high-
salaried old-party spellbinders periodically
claw space and steer your eyes on the 'blue
dome of high Heaven,' holding up first the
'fool dinner pail,' then the 'tariff' bug, and
lastly, when all others fail, the bloody shirt
of war.
"Shame on you workingmen! You fall
for each and every one of these old empty
husks, year after year, while prices go up
208 THE TORCH OF REASON.
and your income goes down; and you
march to the mournful notes of the muted
funeral dirge to lay away your worn out
dear ones over yonder on the hill among
the white stones and the weeping willows.
"But you will not become Socialists, for
to be a Socialist, from your point of reason-
ing, is to be a 'turncoat!' Now you have
been educated to believe that a turncoat
was about the most disloyal and traitorous
slave in the whole yoked caravan of God-
fearing, hocus-pocus worshiping citizenry.
Your father on his deathbed told you that
a i turncoat' was a political backslider who
had sunk so low in the scale of stand-pat-
dom as to actually dare to change masters!
Such were treason indeed!
"When your Republican master has be-
come expert with the political knife in
taking your economic hide off, why take
the knife away from him and give it to the
Democratic master? If I have to be
skinned, I'd rather have the job done by
an expert than a bungler whose hand is
out and all atremble with stage-fright.
"The Socialist disclaims the honor of
being a 'turncoat.' He is one who, seeing
the old coat worn threadbare, discovers the
thing to be nothing but shoddy anyhow, and
so, instead of 'turning' the old coat for
another threadbare wearing on the wrong
side, flings the thing away bodily, and de-
mands a new garment out of whole cloth.
THE TORCH OF REASON. 209
He is not a 'turncoat/ but a rebel slave,
awakened from his long cataleptic inertia
to demand that a stop be put to the skin-
ning. He is no longer satisfied to be lulled
to sleep for the purpose of being legally
robbed. The rags of a political coat
fashioned to fit his dead progenitors do not
hang well on his broad shoulders. The
picture-hero, 'Toothy Ted,' glorifies a 'pros-
perity for the man with patches on his
pants!' Patches are not good enough for
Socialists. I am a Socialist, not because I
am a ' turncoat, ' nor because I want patches
on my pants; but because I want a whole
new suit of political clothes, made by the
scientific economic tailors of our twentieth
century needs, and not the ancient reform
patches of dead men who lived in the un-
citied and uncultured days of hand tools
and hand methods.
"Socialists are horrified at war and the
prospects of war, terming it murder and a
relic of barbarism. But these old boiler-
plate spielers these 'saviors' of the nation
grow purple in the face while 'viewing
with alarm' the 'dangerous' doctrines of us
human coral-workers, whom they are
pleased to term 'dreamers,' and 'visionary
impossibilists.!' How your manly chests
swell with an inherited family pride when
you listen to these old whiskey-logged pro-
curers lavishing their abundant praises on
this 'grand Rep(hic)ublican form o'
210 THE TORCH OF REASON.
gov'ment th' greatest, most glo (Me) rious,
most pow'ful 'n most prosp'rous (Me)
gov'ment under th' starry can(Mc)opy of
high (Me) Heaven!' "
While his masters were laying the wires
to buy Ms " election" to the Senate, Bol-
liver, of "Ahowa," was freighted through
that country on a speaking tour. Stand-
ing on an elaborate grandstand covered
with colored bunting and built for the oc-
casion in front of the Hilton Hotel, in
Madison, Maine, after delivering himself
of a vile tirade of vicious abuse of the
" dangerous and troublesome Socialists,"
he raised both hands in reverence to a huge
American flag stretched clear across the
street, and with the yellow froth of un-
controlled anger spurting from his lying
lips, hysterically yelled: "I view with
alarm the seditious schemes of these dis-
satisfied traitors to our American institu-
tions. These hair-faced, wild-eyed, red-
throated Socialists- Anarchists, these flan-
nel-mouthed free-lovers and destroyers of
the home! And I point with pride to Old
-Glory, whose virtuous, star-spangled folds
wave triumphantly over the Land of the
Free and the Home of the Brave. I point
with pride to the fact that the sun never
sets where her heroic colors defiantly float;
and I point with pride still once again, to
the one million, five hundred thousand
graves in the South, as a result of the glori-
THE TORCH OF REASON. 211
ous victory of the 'Boys in Blue' when the
Republican party saved the nation in the
early sixties/'
Stanley knew the story, and he told them
some more just to show that he knew what
he was talking about. Bolliver followed
his Madison speech with a meeting in
Skowhegan the next night, where, as it so
happened, James P. Carey, Socialist, mem-
ber of the Massachusetts Legislature for
five consecutive terms, was speaking for
the Socialists on the streets. "I will tell
you this story precisely as they told it to
me," said Lark, "for 1 would not care to
lie about a dead man, especially when the
whole truth is too terrible to be told, and
too damning to be believed.
"The near-senator Bolliver advanced to
the footlights in the crowded Opera House,
heroically grabbed a couple of handfuls of
imaginary whiskers from the face of an
imaginary Socialist agitator immediately
in the imaginary front of him, and after
a magnificent display of physical dexterity
in demolishing the straw terror of his tem-
pestuous brain, he fairly shrieked: 'When
the Socialists get their little heads above
the grass we will find adequate means of
successfully dealing with them!'
"A runner reported this intelligence to
Comrade Carey on the Public Square, and
Carey rested from his speaking long
enough to dictate back the following reply:
212 THE TORCH OF REASON.
'Unfortunately for you and your adequate
means, Socialists cannot boast of kinship
with such as you who crawl on your bellies
through the grass. They are not serpents
hiding in the tall grasses to strike the
poison fang into the vitals of misled vic-
tims. When workingmen become enlight-
ened to their own interests, they will mow
down the swales of ignorance, uncovering
your foul nests of deceit and corruption.
But your heads will be in no immediate
danger! Whenever the pollypod of decep-
tion and false teaching has been leveled, the
only visible sign of you will be the pollu-
tion and bones you have left behind and
the holes where you will have burrowed in
to shed your scaley yellow skins.'
" Senator Bolliver is now peacefully rest-
ing from his fruitless labors, while the
grass grows rank and green above his
harmless clay, and the terrible Socialists
continue to spread their 'seditious' doc-
trines in increasing volume, and Jim Carey
is still on the job."
Then he told them more about govern-
ments, and how that every so-called Re-
public was only a Monarchy under another
name. "We have the American Au-
tocracy," he said, "the most absolute ty-
rannical monarchy that ever rode the backs
of a subjugated people. We are ruled not
by a king, but by the kings!" - the Kings
of Coin.
THE TORCH OF REASON. 213
From this lie took them all through the
long list of Monarchies, Republics, and re-
ligious dictatorships that had ruled the
world from the days of the Tree People
before Adam, to our present cliff-dwelling
civilization in our skyscraped and sewer-
slummed Injunction Republic. He told
them of the family groups, banded to-
gether for self-protection from wild ani-
mals; of the communal groups banded to-
gether for protection and self-interest
against the hostile groups of other tribes;
of the invention of fire, of money, religion,
and dictatorial power. Up over the long,
painful staircase of time he led them,
step by step, through every successive
stage of civilization, showing the many
changes and revolutions that had come and
gone in the slow process of evolutionary
progress. He told them that man had
progressed, not because, but in spite of,
his governments, his religions, and his
"friends."
"All governments were enforced forms
of slavery," he told them. "Government
began when the first male brute bit, clawed
and lorded it over his female mate. Then
came the battle against nature for food,
when the strong enslaved the weak as
burden bearers and tillers of the soil. The
biggest hairy brute in the group enslaved
all the lesser hairy brutes, weighting their
heads down with yokes of wood to keep
214 THE TORCH OF REASON.
them from running away, and clubbing
them to their tasks or to death as pleased
his savage fancy.
"But the colony grew and the slaves mul-
tiplied, and then came the subordinate of-
ficers the lesser chiefs appointed by the
greater the lieutenants, police, soldiers or
whatever you are pleased to call them.
Anyway, they had stayed with us, and the
system of slavery had stayed with us. The
difference between then and now being in
degree and method only. Then it was a
hairy beast-man, nude, going authorita-
tively among the workers with a rude club,
prodding here and braining there, and tak-
ing orders from a more fearful beast-man
higher up.
"Now it is a smooth-shaven man-beast,
garbed in a blue uniform, going among
workingmen with a neatly turned and nicely
polished l big-stick,' a tin label pinned
over his yellow heart to show that he car-
ries a license to kill, clubbing heads or
yoking the hands with iron handcuffs,
hanging them with ropes or shooting and
gutting them with muskets and bayonets
as the case may be. The former was a
crude, and wasteful barbarism crude be-
cause undeveloped, and wasteful because
slaves were few and hard to hold. The
present system being simply a more refined
and scientific barbarism, with thousands of
years of improvement in method, and a
THE TORCH OF REASON. 215
thousand times more cruel than the old.
Then a rebellious slave was crashed to
earth, roasted and eaten; now he is i black-
listed,' discharged and turned loose to
starve. Then slaves were hunted and
driven into pitfalls, yoked and watched day
and night to prevent their escape ; now they
are advertised for in the newspapers and
often a riot call has to be rung in for the
police to keep them from mobbing their
masters for a job of work!
"And then money was invented.
"Beautiful shells and pretty pearls
these were the first 'medium of exchange/
Added to which came horns, skins, bones
and a thousand devices and implements of
both use and beauty. Upon this coinage of
the realm were engraved the first images,
pictures and heiroglyphics, and thus 'Art'
was born. It was not Art for Art's sake,
for it was done by slaves who found favor
with the beast-man-higher-up, and so the
'government' stamp was placed on the
tribal specie. This form of human exploi-
tation is still in vogue, only in a more
fraudulent and intensified degree. In those
days a shell was a shell. Now, a dollar is
63 cents and they may not be scraped up
generously on the sea shores.
"Out of all this, stealing, and diverse
forms of grand and petty robbery legal
and illegal evolved, as a result of which
the land is filled today with those boasted
216 THE TORCH OF REASON.
'free institutions' of which we hear so
much the great American bull pen, or
penitentiary, the poorhouse, insane asy-
lum, the 'free lunch,' and the potter's field.
"On the heels of money came religion.
"Of course! Neither could have existed
long without the other, and so, when light-
ning accidentally struck among the slaves
one day killing the most unruly and rebel-
lious of them, God was invented. It was an
invention by man destined to serve the
double purpose of creating that time-hon-
ored institution known as the 'Divine
Right of Kings,' and to foster supersti-
tion and ignorance in the slave, through
fear of the Great Hot Noise, whose control,
through the benevolence of the Great Noise-
maker, henceforth was to reside in the
hands of the Big Chief, -Hairy Beast-Man!
"Governments have improved much since
the days of the wooden slave yoke," the big
Texan told them. "But they have ever
been governments by the masters for the
enslavement of the slaves. The masters
never needed any governing. They were
always above government they were the
government! Without masters there could
be no slaves, and without slaves the masters
would have to work and earn their own
living like honest people. The masters
were always agreed class-conscious, as it
were and never fell out except through
jealousy or greed, and then they proceeded
THE TORCH OF REASON. 217
patriotically, to set their slaves to fighting
on the 'glorious field of battle!*
"The United States Government was
formed by plutocrats, ' ' he told them. ' * They
were the sporadic embryo of a multiplicity
of money-kings, which money-kings were
to rule this nation as no monarchy was ever
ruled before. There was not a working-
man among them. It was not a majority
rule, but a minority rule they established.
The Declaration of Independence was fine-
sounding phraseology; but the Constitution
was a document drawn up and signed by
pirates and smugglers, and the Supreme
Court was simply the kennel of Wall
Street, whose watch dogs were there to
guard stolen goods and growl back the
people from the gate whenever they men-
aced the Money-Bags.
Then he asked them if they had ever read
"The Spirit of the American Govern-
ment," by J. Allen Smith. Also he wanted
to know of them, if they had ever heard of
Kirkpatrick, and his "War What For?"
But, as nobody scratched, he kept firing
away until, finally, Bert Tarbarrel, the
Hinklyville bully and Democrat ward
heeler for Slab City, courageously chal-
lenged: "How about Thomas Jefferson 1 ?
Tell us about him. Wasn't he the greatest
Democratic statesman or any other states-
man for that matter that ever lived?"
218 THE TORCH OF REASON.
" Possibly," circumvented the wary
Texan, "and lie might easily have qualified
as a preacher, or even a priest/' he added,
naively. "Among the many great states-
manlike proclivities accredited to Jeffer-
son," he explained, "was his Platonic love
of the negro. Especially Platonic seems
to have been his avidity for the carbon-
skinned aboriginal of the feminine gender.
He so loved the odoriferous wench that he
wept regretfully on his deathbed that there
was no surety, under the Slave Code, that
his beautiful mulatto daughters would not
be 'coerced' and sold on the auction block
into the rice swamps, or at the 'harem
price!' Of course, Thomas Jefferson was
a white man. But the mother of his mu-
latto children was a negress, as black as the
ace of spades and as oily and effluvious as
a university donation from John D. Rocke-
feller.
"Yes, Jefferson was a great man," he
concurred. "He penned this declaration:
'All men are created equal.' Also, he seems
to have done all he could paternally to live
up to that declaration. As further evi-
dence if any were needed that Thomas
Jefferson was a great and good man, be-
sides being the common-law husband of a
negro slave and the father of a whole nest
of little black slavelings, he is still accred-
ited in some quarters with being the
THE TORCH OF REASON. 219
illustrious sire of the Democratic jackass
and the despairing refuge of the few frag-
mentory derelicts of that decadent Jeffer-
sonian Democracy, whatever that may
mean. If this doesn't answer your ques-
tion/' tantalized the merciless iconoclast,
"dig up a copy of 'The American Slave
Code' (suppressed), by William Goodell,
turn to page 375 and read how this same
Thomas Jefferson waited until death-struck
to pen a clause in his last will and testa-
ment, conferring freedom on his own mu-
latto offspring Ms own flesh and blood
so far as the Slave Code permitted him to
do, and 'humbly' imploring the legislature
of Virginia to confirm the bequests, 'with
permission to remain in the state, where
their families and connections are' then
dying under such a cloud of shame and
uncertainty."
Ashworth was a Eepublican town. That
settled it ! Bert Tarbarrel, ex-factory slave
driver, gambler, town blaggard and beater-
up of defenseless country boys, had met his
Waterloo. The crowd hooted him out of
the hall, and when the "Shoofly" from
Boston slowed up at that place on its mid-
nightly run through the New Hampshire
hills to Canada, a dark form swung on to
the blind baggage and was pulled into the
night, never to return.
"Socialists are not necessarily better
men, but they know more. They know
220 THE TORCH OF REASON.
some of the vital things of life. Some of
the things they know are so! They know
what they want, and they are the only peo-
ple in the world who do. They know that
you want the same conditions that they
want; but you don't know that. They know
how to get the things for all men that they
know all men want; but your ignorance is
in the way, and they know they can accom-
plish the regeneration of the world only
after a majority have come to know what
they know. They know that they are slaves,
and that they are being 'divided up' from
the product of their labor. This knowledge
has resulted in their becoming unwilling
slaves. They are not 'satisfied with their
lot!' They haven't a lot. They have only
a little! That's because they belong to the
working class. The working class creates
a lot, but owns a little. It's only those
who create little that own a lot. The less
one creates under Capitalism, the more he
may own. The capitalist creates nothing
and owns everything. That's because you
believe something that isn't true. You
believe you are free and independent
citizens.
"You believe that you are all equal be-
fore the law, and that every boy born in
America has an equal chance to become
President of the United States (I suppose
all at the same time) ! You hear this from
the moment you are a pip in the shell to
THE TORCH OF REASON. 221
the day when they fold your calloused
hands and send you back to the potato
patch for the count. It comes to us from
every point of the compass: the school-
room, the pulpit, the newspaper, the public
library, the courts and the fireside: 'This
is the greatest government that ever was,
ever ought to be, ever can be, anywhere at
any time for anybody!' That's what you
tell me when I come to you with the great
truths of Socialism, and as long as your
masters succeed in making you believe that
each of you is a sovereign individual, his
warm seat between your shoulders is se-
cure. He doesn't believe this, and that's
why he doesn't like a Socialist.
"You tell me the reason the capitalists
have all the money is because they have
the brains. That's right! That's the only
time you ever tell a Socialist the truth.
This is not because you are dishonest and
prefer to misrepresent the facts in the
case, but it's because you don't know any
better. The reason the capitalist has more
brains than the working man is because the
capitalist develops his own brains, and uses
them in his own interest. The capitalist
works with his brain! You workers spend
all your time developing your hands, and
when you need brains you use your mas-
ter's! If you used your own brains your
masters would have to use their hands.
222 THE TORCH OF REASON.
This would never do, for then, who would
there be to hire you?!!!
"Without some one to own our jobs and
to drive us to work, tell us when we are
so tired we cannot work any longer, and
to take away from us eighty-three dollars
out of every one hundred we have created,
we would all starve to death! That's clear
enough, isn't it?
"This earth was here when we came.
(We will not quarrel at this time over how
it came to be here, we will go to Science
for the answer to that question.) The
earth was of no value until man came out
of it to possess it. Values were created
when man saw that he had to exercise his
muscles or starve. Nothing was of value
in the earth until man fried his sweat
under the burning sun and maimed his
manly beauty in his crude efforts to stay
alive. In the early struggles of this bi-
pedaled god, when, with his big stick in
hand, he strode forth into the jungle for
food, it is not recorded that he encountered
signs reading: 'Keep off the grass, private
property,' etc. Neither is there mention
made in any of the literature, or the public
press of that time, of meat trusts, oil trusts,
or any other trusts or distrusts to bribe
legislators and poison the race with adul-
terated foods. Nor had the divorce court
become a necessary adjunct to the heaven-
ordained institution of matrimony. All
THE TORCH OF REASON. 223
these and many other great, and munificent
inventions have come to us as a result of
the ' confidence ' which those who do all the
useful work have placed, with such guile-
less faith, in the confidence games of others
who work the workers by the splendid work
they do with their brains!.
"You want to know what Socialism is.
There is no such thing in all the world;
and the places where Socialism has been
tried and failed exist only in the fertile
imagination of such asses and liars as the
Boy Orator of the Platt, and Tse Ted, the
hero of Pot Hill.
" Socialism is the offspring of Capital-
ism. It could not have existed prior to
Capitalism, and cannot exist with it. They
are two distinct systems, and are diametri-
cally opposed to one another. If you would
know what Socialism is to be, you must
first know what Capitalism is. Without
this knowledge thoroughly digested, Social-
ism were impossible of your comprehen-
sion.
"How many of you can tell me what
Capitalism is? You have lived under its
iron sway all your lives, ever since the
invention of machinery came to displace
hand labor; and not one of you can tell me
one of its fundamental principles. You
may be excused in this, for the truth is,
that it has no principle. That is why the
old parties stand for it. If it had any prin-
224 THE TORCH OF REASON.
ciple the Republican and Democratic par-
ties would not be wholly unprincipled. But
Capitalism possesses one redeeming virtue :
it is absolutely selfish, and operates entirely
in self-interest, When you workers get
wise to the game, you will get into that
game, and then the rotten old system will
fall before you in one round.
"Capitalism is a system of murder and
robbery, legalized and made respectable by
law, and inflicted on the many by the few.
Its beneficiaries are few, but its votaries
are many. Under its codes the minority
rule the majority, while the majority have
no voice or power. This remarkable state
of affairs is manipulated through the de-
ception of what is misnamed ' representa-
tion.' The minority who own everything,
nominate all the candidates for office, and
the majority who own nothing vote them
into power, pay their salaries, only to be
promptly robbed by them to fatten the
purses of their masters the minority.
This is called ' representative government'!
This is requiring an intelligent person to
exercise a phenomenal stretch of generous
imagination; but, somehow, you accomplish
the remarkable feat year after year, and
never tumble!
"It is said that a chain is as strong as
its weakest link; and that beggars get all
they deserve. Who shall say that such a
* representative' government is not as rep-
THE TORCH OF REASON. 225
resentative as is deserved by a people who
will fight each other to perpetuate if?
" Surely such a magnanimous and aspir-
ing people ought not to be molested in the
possession and enjoyment of what they
vote for!
"You have voted for poverty for your-
selves and you've got it. You have voted
for plenty for your masters and theyVe
got it. You have voted for hell and we're
all in it! But I don't like it, and I want
to get out of it. That's one reason why
I am a Socialist.
"As I said before, you ought to have
what you voted for, and you've got it; but
I did not vote for it, yet have it, and must
suffer the tortures of hell along with ninety
millions of others who did not vote for it.
It is a beautiful situation wherein almost a
hundred millions of innocent men,, women
and children have to surrender their indi-
viduality, prostitute their manhood and
womanhood, maim their flesh and bones in
the mills and marts of wage-slavery, for
the folly of a handful of honest, but de-
luded voting, unthinking, toiling serfs."
Under the scathing arraignment of their
pet political systems the shyster lawyer
Jibbs, and the coterie of political hybrids,
including Editor Happyman, of the Aber-
rant, Sheriff Larding, and old Ben East-
ern, the local land pirate, became almost
livid with inburning rage. From the tre-
226 THE TORCH OF REASON.
mendous applause that frequently inter-
rupted his sledge-hammer Sailings, it could
plainly be seen that the crowded house was
with him to a man, save for a dozen or so
of those smoothly groomed gentlemen in
the front rows, who owned the town, body
and soul, and who had " taken in" the So-
cialist meeting partly for a joke, and partly
to start a fight in which the meeting was
to be broken up and the local organization
demoralized and driven out of town. It
had all been arranged in advance, and was
to come off on schedule time, just as the
speaker was winding up his discourse.
The gray-haired hermit of Tannerhill
Hill had several times been seen to clap his
hands furiously, and actually shout, "Hur-
rah for the Socialists!" as the Texas her-
cules hurled his stinging rebuke into the
very teeth of the leader of the Republican
Ring, who, on more than one occasion, had
tried to confuse him. And Leland Tanner-
hill was known to be a Republican! No
man could accuse him of ever having been
a "turncoat," but here he was, seated on
the rostrum with a half-dozen common
town laborers all Socialists and wildly
approving the "ranting harangue of a
flannel-mouthed agitator ! ' '
"It is hard to tell," resumed the South-
erner, "what Socialism is, there being none;
but it is not hard to foresee what it will
be. Socialism will be an operative plan of
THE TORCH OP REASON. 227
co-operative ownership among men, of the
publicly used necessities of human life. It
will be an Industrial Democracy.
"Capitalism is the antithesis, or opposite
of public ownership. Its very life depends
on the competitive traffic in the collectively
used wealth of the nation. Capitalism is
private ownership and exploitation of the
common property of the people. It may
legally and lawfully be engaged in by any
individual who can steal enough money to
go into the business. This is done for pri-
vate profit at public expense. Socialism
would not permit this individual robbery of
the Public. Only the Public itself would
be in business, and then only for the Public
Good, and not for private profit. Not only
is Capitalism a system of private owner-
ship and exploitation of public utilities,
but the whole list of private necessities is
included in its monopoly on human life.
Capitalism is, everything for profit ; Social-
ism will be, everything for use. Socialism
would have the people own the government ;
Capitalism is ownership of the people by
the government. Under Capitalism, a po-
litical tool who plans the blowing up of a
battleship with its sleeping crew, may be-
come President of the nation; under So-
cialism, there will be no battleships to blow
up and no especial glory could come from
shooting an unarmed banana boy in the
back. Socialism will not be what some
228 THE TORCH OF REASON.
cunning, confessed murderer and Ms pri-
vate retinue of lawless understrappers
deign to make it; it will be what is de-
manded by organized society.
"Man is a social animal.
" Under Capitalism, society is supposed to
be the reflex of some touted individual in
public life. Therefore, when a great killer
succeeds in killing his way into the chief
magistracy of the executive service, every-
body buys a gun, the teeth are worn 'open-
face,' and Sunday-school children march to
church in uniform, a bible under one arm
and a shotted rifle on the other ! This is the
religion of Jesus Christ under this Twen-
tieth Century 'reign of terror!' It says to
the 'sinner': 'Read this book and do as I
say, or I'll blow hell out of you!' This is
said to be 'Individualism,' and under its
'patriotic' influences life becomes an option
between ' race suicide, ' and race murder !
"Under Socialism, the individual will be
the reflex of Society, and Society will be the
reflex of its emancipated and reawakened
will
"You want to know how Socialism is
going to 'work.' In God's name, tell me
how Capitalism works? Socialism will not
work, it will be worked by Society. Cap-
italism works, all right. It 'works' both the
individual and Society!
"It is said, 'a carpenter may be known
by his chips, as well as by the structure he
THE TORCH OF REASON. 229
builds/ Capitalism has built your modern
society ; look at its handiwork ! It is a house
of ill-fame. Look at the 'chips' of its build-
ers! They are fifty millions of human
wrecks, festering in ignorance and poverty.
A race disinherited on an opulent earth.
Do you think Socialism or any other 'ism'
could beat that? "
"So you p'ose t' (hie) equalize every-
body 'n bring all to a dead level, 'n pull a
white man down to the same plane with a
(hie) nigger, 'eh?" drawled out Lawyer
Berrill, Chairman of the Republican Town
Committee, who had evidently been holding
back to sober up for this grand and decisive
blow. This caused a stir among the other
members of the gang, and Stanley Lark
knew there was mischief in the wind. He
buttoned his coat and drew his tall figure up
to its full height, and looking the old wolf
squarely in the face, replied: "When Social-
ists advocate a system so peaceful as not to
require an army and navy to force it down
the throat of Society, they are accused of
being 'anarchists' and 'inciting to violence!'
When Socialists aver that every man and
woman should be so prosperous and secure
in life as to enable them to marry the love
of their choice and rear a happy family
without fear of hard times and poverty, they
are accused of being 'free lovers,' with a
desire to 'break up the home!' When So-
cialists affirm the inalienable right of every
230 THE TORCH OF REASON.
human creature to work at useful labor with
a guarantee that the full value of the prod-
uct of their toil shall be theirs to be enjoyed
by them, they are charged with being * dead-
levelers,' whatever that may mean.
" There is nothing in the Socialist pro-
gram to interfere with your chances of be-
coming just as good as the blackest negro
that ever wet-nursed a millionaire, or spilled
sweat in a white man's soup. In the North
you go to school with them, work with them,
and vote with them. In Washington your
President eats with them. In the army and
navy you fight with them, and in the South
you sleep with them. Take your wife out
and show her the little yellow faces that
mingle with the white faces of her own chil-
dren in the streets. Then accuse us Social-
ists of advocating 'race equality/ and warn
the black man against Socialism because it
promises him an honest job of work!"
At this last, the crowd went fairly wild.
Everybody knew old Berrill, the man that
Jim Carey had handled so unmercifully in a
debate over in Skowhegan, and the cheering
at his discomforture by another Socialist
was long and hearty. Amid such shouts as,
'That's right," "Hurrah for Socialism,"
"We're with you," etc., "Monkey" and
"Dutchy" Boston, two Old Town gamblers
and theatrical baggage thieves, now mem-
bers of the Eepublican "Ring," arose, and
crowding their way to the footlights, shook
"Swish! the whip cut the air. The bully came to four hours
later in the hospital!"
THE TORCH OF REASON. 231
their fists at the smiling Texan. "Dutchy,"
a two-hundred-pound bully, who had once
traveled with a leg-show, as bouncer on the
door, bawled out so loud that all could hear
above the confusion: "Youze aughter be
hosswhipped, ye Panhandle hayseed!"
Tossing him a silver dollar in full view of
the vast audience, and without the slightest
show of anger, the speaker exclaimed: "It
is an experience I have never enjoyed,
brother ; here is a dollar it will buy a good
whip."
The bruiser took Stanley at his word.
Out of the hall he tore, to return five min-
utes later with a long horsewhip. The crowd
was on its feet now, and no one saw the
shyster lawyer Jibbs when he slunk out by a
rear exit. Boston sprang upon the stage.
Swish! the whip cut the air! * * * The
bully came to four hours later in the hos-
pital!
Pandemonium reigned! Sheriff Larding
drew his revolver and was in the act of
shooting, when Rec Cotton sprang upon him
like a panther and bore him down. Leland
and the Texan both rushed forward simul-
taneously to disarm the drunken sheriff,
when there was a crash of glass from one
of the windows ! The next instant a blood-
stained stone ricochetted from a hoary tem-
ple and bounded across the stage to the
proscenium. Leland Tannerhill uttered a
groan, staggered backward and fell at full
length on the floor !
CHAPTEE VII.
MIND, THE MASTER.
Rebellious at his fettered task,
At break of dawn Pierian
Nor master sought his leave to ask
Arose a slave a god a man !
Quimby Sands, so rumor had it, was not
an obedient child. Not that he was an in-
corrigible, but having ideas, as all healthy
children will, he early began to think orig-
inal thoughts and to do things in his own
original way. This was accredited to a
" stubborn will" by the knowing ones, and
when the minister paid his regular monthly
visit, they would shake their heads with
melancholy gravity and predict all kinds of
dire calamity for any community where
town "poppers" held their heads so high!
The good minister said that probably he was
"spunky," and that his "spirit would have
to be broken I ' ' This spirit-breaking process
was frequently undertaken, and very assidu-
ously persisted in by means of the ox-goad,
and cowhide routes; but the uncowed son-
of-his-father developed spine instead of
hinges in his neck, and when the pious sages
reached what looked like either the "break-
ing" point or death, the clear hazel eyes of
the unconquered boy would flash a challenge
(232)
THE TORCH OF REASON. 233
of defiance in the teeth of his torturers, for
he was the son of Jason Sands.
He was a healthy boy, and he loved the
country with its wooded hills and grassy
meadows. He loved the wild flowers and
the running streams and the songs of the
thrushes and the bobolinks; and all the
wild things that moved shyly and noise-
lessly through the dank mosses of the deep
forests. But he hated work. He wondered
why the kindhearted farmers who lived
among all these rare beauties never loved
them. He knew they did not, for they
never talked of them and only talked of
work, and money; and the rough tasks
meted out to him he shrank from with
loathing.
Rock picking among the sharp stubble
when the fingers would bleed and the back
ache, was distasteful to him. The filthy
chores among the cattle and hogs around
the tumble-down barn; the slow and un-
handy method of doing things after the
manner of their grandfathers; all these
crude, wasteful and unscientific struggles
with simple nature he hated; and in his
progressive child-mind he marveled that
older men did not find out other ways to
make the work a lighter burden.
Fatherless and motherless, he had none
to protect and advise him; and with the
kicks and cuffs of strangers hurrying
through the world, he was buffetted from
234 THE TORCH OF REASON.
place to place until lie fetched up in the
streets of Boston, a green country boy ten
years old, with a two-dollar suit of clothes,
cowhide boots and an empty stomach.
It was here that, after starving for days
in the streets, he learned to sell papers and
shine shoes. Later, he "suped" in the thea-
ters, and it was discovered that he pos-
sessed a voice of great quality, and he
learned to sing. Also he secured a place in
a grocery and provision store in the Back
Bay, where he worked long hours for three
dollars a week. Over an oil lamp in his
attic room at No. 10 Grotton street, which
room cost him one dollar a week, he cooked
his simple food when his long day was
done; and from the balance of his meager
wage, together with the fifty cents per night
for "suping" (which was sometimes really
paid him), he managed meanly to live and
to continue his daily round of hustle, over-
worked and half -starved though he was.
Moreover, he learned to save, even from
this scanty income; and out of his saving
fund he dressed himself neatly, if a three-
dollar suit of shoddy store clothes may be
said to be neat, and bought old books from
the " second-hand man" around the corner.
But fourteen hours a day for three dol-
lars a week began to make him think, after
a long time, and when he mustered up pluck
enough to think out loud in the presence
of his boss, the store raised his pay.
THE TORCH OF REASON. 235
With another whole dollar every week
added to his former three, he bought some
white pocket handkerchiefs of the seven-
for-a-quarter quality from a faker on the
street, and some fifty cent under-flannels
the first he had ever worn. Also he bought
more and better books.
He read everything he could lay hands
on; for nothing seemed right in all the
world, and he felt that somewhere in some
of the vast porridge of printed things that
great men had said, there must be told the
reason for so much apparent useless wrong.
He used to read the Holy Bible to the
old people on the farm before running
away, and he knew it almost by heart. He
had read it through twice before he was
ten years of age, it being his nightly task
to read a chapter to them, because their
sight was poor. But that was a long time
ago, he decided, and he would be fair, now
that he had gained what was said to be his
independence. So he began by rereading
the Holy Bible, and soon became filled with
great wonder and desire. The whole of
his young life had been spent among pious
church folk, and he had always attended
and loved his Sunday-school ; but here were
whole chapters in God's Holy Book from
which no minister he knew had ever drawn
a text, and he wondered why. But in his
note book he took down a few quotations
from Jeremiah 25, 27-28; Isaiah 63: 6; Ex.
j THE TORCH OF REASON.
21, 2-8, 20-21 ; 2 Thess. 2, 11 ; Deut. 14, 21 ;
Gen. 16, 1-4; Gen. 19, 30-37; Gen. 30, 1-22;
Gen. 38; 2 Sam. 11, 2-6; Ezek. 14, 9; 1
Kings 22, 20-23; Luke 14, 26; Luke 12, 51;
Mat. 10, 34-35; Jer. 48, 10; Deut. 20, 16-17;
Num. 31, 17-18; Num. 33, 52-55; Deut. 2,
24-25-34; Deut. 3, 3-6; Josh. 6, 2-21; Josh.
8, 18-28; Josh. 12, 24; Matt. 10, 34; Ps.
137, 9; Isa. 13, 15-18; Nah. 3, 10; Zach.
14, 2; Hosea 13, 16; 2 Sam. 12, 15-18; Lev.
26, 22; Ex. 20-5; Col. 3, 18; Col. 2, 8; 1
Cor. 8, 1; Eccl. 1, 18; 1 Cor. 4, 10; 1 Cor.
14, 38; Rev. 22, 11; Eev. 12; Eom. 13, 1-3,
and numerous others. The source from
whence men's prejudices arose had always
puzzled him, but it puzzled him no more.
And when he had read these Scriptures over
three times more, he knew that he was no
hero, and he blamed the preachers no more.
In after years he often thanked the day
when he resolved to reread the Scriptures,
and he regretted not that he had paid a
dime for this Holy Bible at the old second-
hand man's.
Into the sciences next he delved, and the
errors he unearthed among the works of
the so-called great professors astounded
him, child though he was.
In his old geography he remembered of
having read that coal was the prehistoric
deposit of infusorial vegetation that had
fallen from the bottom of floating islands
in lakes ! To verify this supposed inf orma-
THE TORCH OF REASON. 237
tion he snatched a lump of it from the
first coal-wagon he saw passing in the
streets, and from experiments covering
many years, but which were ever persist-
ently pursued, he discovered that coal was
simply solidified, liquified wood. Even the
insects and animals were maligned and lied
about. And when he made one shocking
discovery after another to the effect that
all the simplest fundamentals of common,
everyday things were either not known or
else ignored, feared, or misunderstood, how
hardly shall we censure him for coming to
doubt the orthodox theory of organic life?
Spencer and Darwin were not dry read-
ing for this intellectual glutton. He learned
much from them. They were not alto-
gether right, but they were on the right
track. Schopenhauer, Nietsche and Lom-
broso were geniuses ; but he criticized them
all, and when he had read Ibsen, Nordau,
Kant, Ward and Carlyle, he began to real-
ize life as it had not appealed to him be-
fore.
He loved Voltaire and Tom Paine. The
one for his great bravery, and the other
for his great honesty. Huxley came in for
his share of glory, also for criticism, and
Hegel he devoured with painstaking relish,
after which, and in spite of himself, he
found himself reading the Apocryphal
mythologies, and everything beyond and
in between, from lightning-worship to
238 THE TORCH OF REASON.
Christ, and from theology subdued to the
" divine right of dividends."
After five years of ceaseless work and
constant study, he began to feel growing
into him a great longing for strange sights
and things other than those of the daily
grind. He was fifteen, now, and from all
the hundreds of volumes he had read he
had acquired a vast wealth of knowledge.
Great men had lived in the world, and some
of them had left great books behind them;
but there was nothing awe-inspiring about
any of these, and the wonders of lay con-
ventionality had long since lost their power
to charm this untamed spirit of rebellion.
Quimby Sands was a wonderful boy.
The common studies were a waste of time
with him. Tobacco, intoxicating drinks and
degenerate associations he shunned as a
pestilence. With the increase of his pay
from four dollars a week for the second
six months, to twelve dollars a week at
the end of five years, he had moved into
better quarters, employed a private teacher
twice a week, dressed in the best style and
saved several hundred dollars. More than
once he shocked his teachers by cutting
rough-shod across lots to the conclusion of
some seeming deep problem, giving the an-
swer ere the trained scholar completed the
entangling plot. He soon made the re-
markable discovery that he knew more than
his instructors, who could not endure the
THE TORCH OF REASON. 239
humiliation of being corrected in their long
drawn-out meanderings through pages of
figures for a result a mere boy could achieve
with a single, lightning-like flash of the
brain. This he could do, and without pencil
or chalk. There was something wrong with
the systems of education. This was an im-
portant discovery and he would read more
and try to find out the causes of things.
After thousands of years, some one had
made the unpopular discovery that the
world was round. A thing he knew the
first time he went in swimming! For giv-
ing this valuable astronomical information
to the world, the genius who had dared to
announce it served fourteen years in prison
as his reward! Galileo was his name, and
the reason he was imprisoned was that his
philosophy upset the orthodox theory of
Society, which society, singularly enough,
held that the world was flat!
In the so-called Natural Histories the
skunk was described as being capable of
"throwing" his fetid fluid by some unex-
plained skunkesque flip of the tail, and
there the marvelous explanation ended.
This lie everybody parroted and the skunk,
the farmers' best friend, was hunted and
killed wherever found. He knew the story
was a lie ; for was he not born on the same
farm with hundred of these little friends?
As a matter of fact the skunk being an
animal which feeds upon natural vermin,
240 THE TOECH OF REASON.
did nothing offensive if left unmolested in
Ms nightly quest for food ; but he possesses
a perfect double-barrel atomizer, and when
attacked, and in self-defense, is able to
spray a small circle in his immediate vicin-
ity with the aforesaid fetid fluid, and with-
out spilling a particle of the fluid on
himself, the tail playing no part in the
performance, whatsoever.
From elaborate colored plates there were
printed pictures of snakes in the act of
climbing trees by winding their bodies
around the trunks! How silly! And the
lazy, "z-ee, z-ee" buzz of the locust in the
tree-tops, as he opened and shut the trap-
door of his wonderful sounding-box to vari-
ate the music of his vibratory snare-drums,
they said was the working of some inexpli-
cable function of the wings! They were a
lot of old fossils who went on the theory
that all things were always exactly as they
are, arriving at conclusions from cursory
investigations, at best. Or else their de-
ductions were based on the dead and un-
scientific data of other old fossils who had
dipped their pens in the mystic fog of su-
perstition, charging the mystery of all nat-
ural phenomena above their ossified under-
standing together with each eonian epoch
to the " frivolous wrath of an avenging
God!"
However this all might be, Quimby
Sands, while yet a sapling youth, knew that
THE TORCH OF REASON. 241
the world had accepted as fact much that
was untruth and great misinformation. If
the wise men would lie and display this
ignorance so unmercifully about these little
things of which any farmer boy might be-
come informed, what might be expected of
them when it came to the big problems of
our social and political life !
From the very beginning all he had heard
was: "Have faith and believe, don't ask
questions, believe and believe it; have faith
and don't doubt it!" But he had doubted,
and they had planted doubt in his heart the
very moment they commanded him to be-
lieve, and so he became an investigator.
Next, he fell upon the histories; the en-
cyclopedias, and their government records,
devouring them greedily. They were horrors
-simply HORRORS! If the lies of the
"scientists" had nettled him, what of his
shame and disgust of these brutal incarna-
tions of fiendish inhumanity among men!
He found the histories so-called simply
the printed accounts of bloody deeds of
"war heroes." From cover to cover these
horror books reeked with nothing but the
red and stench, the blast and roar, the
groans and ruin of the "glorious" battle-
field. Pictures in many colors there were,
of the hurricane of shot and shell, when the
blistering flare of the red-throated cannon
vomited hell-fire into the blue and grey-
garbed breasts of the sons of workingmen.
242 THE TORCH OF REASON.
Here was a double-page plate in four
colors said to be the "faithful" reproduc-
tion of a certain great General's " glorious"
victory over another General presumably
less great ! Judging it from its color scheme
alone, it were a beautiful picture. It was a
work of art worthy of a better cause. What
both impressed and shocked the boy most
was the artistic and ever-persistent attempt
at the portrayal of this bloody thing,
-glory."
Seated upon a beautiful white charger
in the foreground, his right hand, from
which a broken saber is seen falling, raised
heroically above his head, is pictured a
splendid specimen of physical manhood.
He wears the hated grey! On his manly
head now thrown back painfully in the
throes of death rests a plumed chapeau,
and from the middle of his back, dripping
crimson from its sharp point, protrudes a
foot of polished steel.
Just fronting this white charger, and
prancing majestically with fore feet in air,
a magnificent black stallion champs a foam-
ing bit, bearing a gaunt rider in the North-
ern blue. The bullet-like head is hatless,
showing an ugly red gash from the stroke
of a saber, reaching from eye through a
cleft ear and losing itself far behind in the
scrubby hair. The shabby blue uniform fits
sloppily over the brawny hulk. The teeth
are gnashed together inside a diabolical
THE TORCH OF REASON. 243
grin which matches splendidly the devilish
gleam of murder in the bloodshot eye.
The background of this picture is nothing
if not a cyclonic confusion of cannon smoke,
flying limbs and arms, splashing brains and
spurting gore, with myriads of fight-drunk
madmen slashing at each other's throats
and blindly rushing headlong upon bayonet
and sword.
Over this turmoil of Christian diabolism,
and with staffs leaning aggressively toward
each other is pictured two mottled symbols
of soiled fabric waving and being waved
and flaunted in the demoniacal visages of
these insane, unsane, inhuman idiots.
The handsome white charger, jammed
back on his haunches, is being seized by the
bridle by a half-naked negro. Spattered
all over his immaculate side is to be seen
the red brains of a young infantry-man in
grey, whose headless body is crumpling up
in the act of falling across the stomach of a
wounded comrade.
Into the mouth and throat of another
wounded soldier, whose eyes are squirting
from their sockets, is planted the right hind
hoof of the prancing black steed of the vic-
torious blue. Reaching his long arm far
forward, the "heroic" rider is in the act of
pushing four feet of crooked steel straight
through the middle of his unfortunate
brother in grey. It was beautiful ! It was
grand! It was Heavenly!
244 THE TORCH OF REASON.
What a splendid sight 1 What an in-
spiration, he thought, to the "Toy Scouts, "
a Christian organization among children
and fostered by every church for the pur-
pose of teaching boys the Heaven-hallowed
glory of legalized murder. He felt sick and
guilty as he read on through the bloody
pages of these morbid narratives. And
when he had finished without finding any-
thing relating to the useful people of the
world, except that they mined all the lead,
made all the powder, fashioned all the war
implements and then shed all the blood,
furnished all the unmarked graves, all the
widows and orphans, all the broken homes,
all the patriotism but received none of the
"glory," he began to wonder what it was
all about. Then, by merest accident, he
came upon "The History of Civilization."
(Julian Laughlin, St. Louis.) At the age of
eighteen this Apollonian iconoclast had
sailed around the world, had mastered seven
languages, excelled in both art and music,
and was astonishing the civilized world
with his revolutionary inventions and his
unorthodox revelations regarding organic
life. He had familiarized himself with
four thousand different religious creeds,
from each of which he learned that every
one is going to Hell who does not espouse
that very particular creed !
Becoming historically acquainted with
one thousand and sixty-seven only living
Gods, all of whom promised everlasting
THE TORCH OF REASON. 245
damnation to the unbeliever of their own
particular doctrine, the problem of dodging
the fate of the transgressor under such cir-
cumstances was the only obstacle to his
freedom of thought. So he resolved to leave
the damning of souls to the older profes-
sionals, while he went into the God business
for himself. He would save bodies while
they yet had souls in them; for without
healthy bodies there could not be souls
worth the saving.
Nineteen only sons of the only living
God, he had disinterred in his travels
around the world. Jesus Christ being
among this list, and all having been cruci-
fied by the " rabble." Not for anything
they had ever done, but for what they had
said that was either misunderstood or else
that conflicted with what some one else had
said, usually some one who had been dead
several thousand years!
He landed in St. Louis during the finan-
cial panic of 1907, when four hundred po-
licemen were stationed in the basements of
the several banking institutions, armed to
the teeth, and with orders to shoot to kill
should a "run" be started by the deposi-
tors. "John Smith" and "John Doe"
cheques were the only available medium of
exchange, which cheques were simply so
much white paper, and as worthless as
gummed labels so far as real value was
concerned. The money of the people had all
246 THE TORCH OF REASON.
been stolen or hoarded by the big gamblers,
and when the bottom fell out of their wa-
tered stock speculation grafts, their "con-
fidence" in each other's confidence games
played out, and money was said to be
"tight!"
Up to this time he had never met a So-
cialist, knew little of them, and less of their
program. Had he been in touch with the
new political economy he would have better
understood the causes of panics and why
the subtle games of the wily stock robber
sometimes fail in the midst of what appears
to be a period of "unprecedented pros-
perity." Also he would have found the
real essence of social justice awaiting its
application to modernized civilization.
He had his hard-earned money in the
Missouri Valley Trust Co., and when that
bank refused to honor his draft for fifty
dollars, he called on the president, one Mr.
Eeckonbridge Bones, who flatly admitted to
him the unlawful practices of his institu-
tion, pleading guilty to it, and going to the
limit of unreason by declaring such refusal
to be an act of outlawry, he wanted to know
what in hell there was going to be done
about it! The words of the smug banker
riled the honest youth. He was angry, and
he could feel the hot blood rushing into his
face at the defiance of the old villain who
was literally holding him up as a wayfarer
is held up by a highwayman. There was a
THE TORCH OF REASON. 247
scene, which wound up by the cheque being
honored and o. k.'d by the president, the
same Mr. Reckonbridge Bones.
No! young Sands was not arrested! On
the contrary, he was invited into the pri-
vate office of the chiefs, where he was prom-
ised every consideration in the future, pro-
found regrets having been expressed at the
"slight misunderstanding that had just
eventuated ! ' '
This was his first jolt. This was what a
great banking house could do to the Public !
This was what the police were for, then!
" Still Bill" gave the snap away to him
later, after they became acquainted, for
Bill was a Socialist Cop, and said he didn't
give a damn who knew it.
Quimby Sands had gotten his first real
slap in the face by the Mailed Fist of Capi-
talism. Of course the system had hit him
before, but not openly and in broad day-
light. It came as a revelation to him. It
made him think, and in the thinking, he
thought the thoughts of the rebel and his
eyes saw red.
Who were these bankers, anyway? How
came they to be so rich and powerful ? How
was it that in the soft hands of these rich
rascals resided so much power? Around
the corner in his great red touring car spun
Ann Souser Brush, the South Side suds
maker. His car had just killed a man!
Why was he not arrested? Why didn't
248 THE TORCH OF REASON.
the panic hit him ? Then there was Francis
R. Golliah, the multimillionaire tax dodger
and apostate to the public confidence, call-
ing for a thousand dollars in gold!
These, and others, were some of the rebel
thoughts that came trooping through his
brain. He saw the people starving. What
was meant by "hard times'?" Why did
that big furniture house fail? Why did
the Goosie-Rottenhimer Shoe Factory shut
down? What were panics for, and why
were they permitted in a Republic ?
These things began to interest him.
Theology had interested him mightily;
but theology treated of things after
death. Here was life, and the problems
of life. These things were here and
now! They were real! They dealt with
man's means of life here on earth, and
while he still might be alive. Funny the
school books never taught about these
things! Somebody was running the gov-
ernment, and it wasn't run right. Who was
at the head of things, anyway? The bank-
ers seemed to be, for the newspapers were
full of "finance" and "slump" talk; and
there was a whole lot about the tariff, the
trusts, religious revivals and how a work-
ingman might live comfortably on six cents
a day. To make a long story short, who-
ever was at the helm were either fools or
criminals, sleeping drunkards or raving
madmen, and it was time for a change.
THE TORCH OP REASON. 249
They were running things wide open and
the country was going to ruin. Whoever it
might or might not be, he figured it out that
it could not be the fault of labor, for he
knew there wasn't a single working man or
woman in political office in the country.
In all his studies he had begun at the
wrong end of life. That was the fault of
the educators. They were paid to teach
only what supported the accepted theories,
which theories were the pillars of the
Ruling Regime. It was beginning to get
clear to him this social and political struc-
ture wherein operated a subtle cleavage of
the toiler and his toil's reward. A revolu-
tion was fermenting within him. Not from
any studied or natural promptings from
within, but from the social atmosphere
without.
Was America a land of the free? It
might be "The home of the brave," for
one had to be somewhat brave to live at all ;
but liberty, as it really existed, consisted of
one's ability to stay out of jaill Of free-
dom there was none. Not even freedom of
thought. To be a thinker was to be an un-
desirable citizen; and an intelligent person,
if allowed freedom, was a menace to the
stability of sound government! Sound gov-
ernment meant the same as sound money.
It consisted chiefly of sound! This "sound"
the working man got, while the Kings of
High Finance got the cash!
250 THE TORCH OF REASON.
An intelligent, thinking people were an
undesirable quantity in the perpetuation of
such a reign, for only through the ignorance
of a misled majority could such a pestilen-
tial fraud be masqueraded under the guise
of Democracy. But here was a mental out-
law who dared to break that law. Here
was a mere youth who would defy that law.
One who dared to dream, and in the dream-
ing to create a new a rebel law!
"And a little child shall lead them."
So it came to pass that Quimby Sands
created, educated and organized "The Cadet
Democracy."
Now the generally accepted interpreta-
tion of the term, "cadet," being "young
soldier," the hair-splitters and jealous
fault-finders were on their feet to cry the
name down ; but after awhile some one with
brains and a little moderation looked the
word up in Webster's and found it was from
the French, meaning "younger brother."
Then it very naturally swept the country
like a cloud burst. Also the Cadet Demo-
crats were copied abroad, and in six months
it was a world movement, out of which was
born "The International Industrial De-
mocracy." This latter being an organiza-
tion of and by the International Socialist
Party.
Now the orthodox cadet hopes some day
to become a great killer of men at so
many dollars per month! But Quimby 's
THE TORCH OF REASON. 251
cadets were different. They comprised the
torch and flame of clean young manhood
and clean young womanhood of the nation
and the world. They were the very sinew
and soul of the universe.
There were no dexterous, one-hand ciga-
rette rollers, crap shooters, or weaklings in
the Cadet Democracy. Hollow chests and
sallow faces there came into it, but they
soon developed spirit, pride, and a manly
wholesomeness, that defied weakness; and
the hollow chests became full chests; the
sallow faces turned to rose-cheeks, and the
shiftless, idle boy and languid, tired girl,
were quickly transformed into two blos-
soms of budding health and glowing
virility.
The Cadet Democrats had a principle
a principle with a purpose. They were
not animated with the blood-thirsty aspira-
tions of the soldier cadet. On the contrary,
their function was two-fold, viz.: to draw
the deadly charge from the shotted musket
of the "Toy Scouts," and to shoot Socialist
propaganda into the plastic brain of every
child and youth male and female under
twenty-one years of age in the nation. For
this they were destined to become famous
as the ''Red Cadets."
E. G. Lewis, founder and Mayor of Uni-
versity City, creator of the biggest printing
establishment in the world and founder of
"The American Woman's League," and the
252 THE TORCH OF REASON.
"Women's Democracy," was not a Social-
ist, though he was destined to be. He was
an honest man, however, and he owned the
St. Louis Evening Moon. So when the
Cadet Democrats were organized and the
other newspapers "knocked," the Moon
was fair. This aroused the ire of Pulse-
squeezer's Daily Roast-Besmirch, whose
columns fairly reeked with slanderous vi-
tuperation, climaxing by pinning this "red"
bouquet on the school children of St. Louis,
because they dared to organize for the
study of life's real problems. But Quimby
Sands was both alive and alert to the situ-
ation, and lost no opportunity to make cap-
ital out of any move the enemy might make.
He knew it "was an intended insult, and his
blood boiled; but he sprang into the fight
like a young panther; and in a letter to the
Moon, he told the people why red was the
symbol of Socialism, explained why the
banner of Jesus was of a "crimson hue,"
pointed out that, whereas the blood of all
men was red, it proved a common origin
and a universal brotherhood. The Moon
printed the truth, and the fight was over.
The boy did not seek the fight, but once
begun he would either win or else go down
and out to everlasting defeat. But "de-
feat" was not in Sands' vocabulary! And
Quimby was the son of his father!
For his conversion to Socialism, this
young fire brand gave the credit to Jack
THE TORCH OF REASON. 253
London. Jack had made him think! After
reading "THE CALL OF THE WILD," "THE
SEA WOLF," and "THE WAR OF THE
CLASSES," he fell upon "MY LIFE IN THE
UNDER WORLD," "THE IRON HEEL" and
"MARTIN EDEN." These were great books.
Especially good were the "THE CALL OF THE
WILD," "THE IRON HEEL" and "MARTIN
EDEN." Other books Jack had written,
books by the dozen, including "THE GAME,"
"BURNING DAYLIGHT" and "THE KEMPTON-
WACE LETTERS," this latter being a wonder-
ful love classic.
Jack London, in his estimation, was the
greatest living literary genius. Here at
last was one man who knew how to write
of life life real, and red, and raw. The
more he read London, the more he knew of
life; and the more he knew of life the more
he loved life and all mankind. But more
than all other men among men did he love
Jack London.
The years came and went and the "Red
Cadets" grew. They were a sure enough
organization now. In America there were
ten millions of them! Every school was a
chapter house, and whenever they wanted
new books or new studies, they called a
meeting of the School Board and got what
254 THE TORCH OF REASON.
they wanted. If the School Board slept
on their mandates they called a strike. O
you couldn't fool the kids! Besides, there
was "The Red Cadet/' a juvenile daily
newspaper, edited by young Sands and
which went to the home of every citizen of
the Cadet Democracy; said what it pleased,
defiantly challenging the lying old party
press to refute it. Nothing could stop the
"Red Kids" now. Every mother's son of
them wore the beautiful red and gold uni-
form of the organization on all public oc-
casions, and a handsomer sight was never
seen than when at the inauguration of their
first president, 20,000 of them, uniformed
and equipped for "active service," formed
in line and marched to the City Hall in St.
Louis. All traffic ceased. The police tried
to clear the streets, but were powerless. It
was a new one on them! It commanded
the respect of the press, and it made the
grey beards sit up.
Quimby Sands was an inventive genius.
At nineteen he invented the Comet, and her
phenomenal aerial exploits staggered the
world. Also, his name had become famous
in every land and stories were written of
his creations in every tongue. Presidents
entertained him; kings sought him; women
worshipped him and the Church feared
him! For was he not an "incarnate devil?"
Look at his Eed Cadets!
THE TORCH OF REASON. 255
With the established record of being the
greatest inventive genius the world had
ever seen, small wonder that capital un-
sought came flowing in on him when he
announced to an awakening world his in-
tention to build a sea-going submarine
utility ship propelled directly by explosion.
The newspapers got hold of it, and every
Sunday supplement blazed with four col-
ored cartoons of his prowess with this new
fire-propelling engine.
Quimby was young, and when the pledged
donations came flooding in upon him to the
appalling amount of $20,000,000, he became,
momentarily, overwhelmed with elation. It
seemed everybody wanted to give him all
the money they had. Everybody wanted
to help build the great new " battleship, " as
they would have it. The world was on its
knees at his feet, and of course his fortune
was made !
But a thing happened just at this junc-
ture that put him to the crucial test, a test
that unmasked the real stuff of him and
denuded his grand character of every ves-
tige of capitalistic veneer of which from
the sudden association of great w r ealth he
was in danger of becoming enamored. The
devilish cunning with which monied men
cast their capitalistic bread upon the waters
of opportunity was revealed to him with all
its subtle charlatanry.
256 THE TORCH OF REASON.
He was in Boston again. In the office of
Young's Hotel he was in the act of shaking
hands with Copper King Eawson, who had
subscribed liberally to the " fire-ship " fund,
when a bright-looking lad in a scarlet and
gold uniform sidled up and slipped a copy
of the "Red Cadet" into Rawson 's hand.
Reporters with their cameras were ever
dogging the heels of the great stock gam-
bler, and next morning all the Boston
papers carried a double-head quarter-tone
of the Rawson-Sands hand-shaking, with
the title page of the "Red Cadet" plastered
all over the picture as clear as a black eye.
That settled it! It was Quimby Sands^
founder of the "Red Cadets/' and Socialist
agitator, being entertained like royalty by
Tom Rawson. That was enough to know
about Rawson! He, too, must be a
Socialist !
The "Red Cadet" was known from Cape
Horn to the North Pole, and from the
Philippines to Labrador and around the
world. Loved by every wholesome boy and
girl capable of intelligent reasoning, it was
the most popular and widely circulated
juvenile magazine on earth. Also it was
the most bitterly hated.
"It is all off," phoned the Boston Capi-
talist that afternoon, "I have stopped pay-
ment on that cheque for half a million.
You see, I can't afford to have my name
connected with -you people. And had I
THE TORCH OF REASON. 257
known of your political leanings, you could
not have interested me. I am wiring the
truth of the deception to the Associated
Press, and henceforth I am not to be
considered."
One week from that announcement, the
entire subscribed fund, with one single ex-
ception, had been withdrawn in like man-
ner. The single exception being $10,000 in
gold from one Joe Sworoski, Polish tailor,
who had known young Sands when he lived
in the attic room on Grotton street. Also,
the good old man had loved and befriended
him in many ways. Joe was a Socialist;
though Quimby up to this point had been
unaware of it, and when the boy related the
circumstances of the fund retraction mean-
ness to him, the old man shrugged his
shoulders and laughed. But he reassured
him that all would come out right in the
end, and that nothing could prevail to keep
him down now that the common people had
become acquainted with the charge that he
was a Socialist.
Here it was, the capitalist mind laid bare.
You could not trust them. They were out
for the coin, and whenever they loosened
up it was only for the purpose of getting a
tighter hold. History was full of it their
duplicity why had he not remembered.
They could never fool him again, the
cowards !
258 THE TORCH OF REASON.
Five days later he received a long, en-
couraging letter from the secretary of the
National Executive Committee of the Ca-
det Democracy, promising that if he would
write up the Rawson episode for the "Red
Cadet/' that paper would show the money
changers what an organized nation of
school children could do. Accompanying
the letter was a draft for $5,000, subscribed
by the Founders' Key at St. Louis, and the
work on the Agitator began forthwith.
One year from the insidious slander by
the capitalist press that Tom Rawson and
the young American wizard, Sands, were
plotting to upset the existing social order
and establish anarchy, the wonderful new
air-burning submarine the Agitator was
launched in the Mississippi River. By this
time five thousand "Keys" of the Cadet
Democracy had been established in the
United States; the school boys and girls of
five other countries had placed orders for
similar ships; but not a single Foundation
of the International Industrial Democrats
had as yet been established in the country.
"Foundations" there were in varied pro-
fusion foundations of millions of dollars
wrung from the faces of the mulcted poor
the Carnegie, Rockefeller and Sage
"Foundations," together with the soft-soap
Gullet "shaving" device which smelled of
Standard Oil "WORLD CORPORA-
TION."
THE TORCH OF REASON. 259
Fakes and shams there were in abun-
dance ; but the United States had been hum-
bugged so long that the Light of Reason
was inky midnight; Truth was insanity,
and to possess knowledge was to be ''bug-
house!"
In every other country on the globe the
I. I. Ds. were thriving and slowly but sure-
ly sucking the vitality out of Capitalism;
but they had never been heard of here !
The cruise of the Agitator down the Mis-
sissippi and around the Horn, including all
the island possessions, the visit to Japan
for pictures and to the Alaska Coast con-
sumed another whole year ; and when father
and son met on board the Red Cadet's queer
new ship in the far waters of Norton Sound
in the year 1910, Quimby Sands had passed
the twentieth milestone. He stood erect, a
tall, broad-shouldered, broad-minded hand-
some boy, master of matter and an uncom-
promising social Revolutionist and cham-
pion of the rights of men.
It was at this point that the Socialist
Party of Canada at its 1910 national con-
vention, adopted a resolution pledging the
party support to these Co-operators, thence-
forth. Secretly, its members were in sym-
pathy to a man ; but their assistance had all
been individual, and purely voluntary. Now
the Industrial and Cadet Democratic Co-
operators had gone on record as part and
parcel of the Socialist Party and the wrath
260 THE TORCH OF REASON.
of the plutes knew no bounds. Up to this
stage, the Industrial Democrats were not
considered a political organization.
With the Socialists pledging their united
affiliation, it was thought best to hold a
national convention of their own, when a
reciprocal resolution in favor of Socialism
and the Socialist Party, declaring for po-
litical action, might be passed. The date
agreed upon, it was decided to favor the
Pacific coast, and so Victoria was settled
on, and the date fixed for September the
8th. Young Sands, founder of the Red
Cadets, and now world-famed scientist, had
promised to deliver the unity address, and
on the night of September 7th, after the
evening's entertainment, and accompanied
by his new-found father, Dr. and Toy
Spanto, Jack Philips, and his crew, he gave
the signal to Captain Hautier, and the
Agitator turned into a thing of hissing fire
and sinking into the rolling waters of the
northern sea, began her long run through
the Aleutian Islands.
"Quimby, are you not afraid of hitting
an island or a sunken reef, running at such
terrific speed in the night and under water ?
There are thousands of tiny islands spat-
tered all over this course on the map,"
Jason cautioned, as his son pointed to the
speed dial which indicated a rate of two
hundred miles an hour.
THE TORCH OF REASON. 261
"No, father. There is absolutely no
danger of such an ancient calamity befall-
ing any modern ship equipped with the
finder ray. Look," the boy commanded,
pointing to a mirror-topped table in the
center of the operating room. From a
small tube with a funnel-shaped extremity,
located immediately above the center,
streamed down a white glow that flared out
over the polished glass, into which gazed a
young sailor, who never raised his eyes, nor
gave the slightest sign of perception to any
of his surroundings, save the one object in
the glass before him. He was the helmsman,
Billy Self, by name, and one of the few
the very few men among men, who was real,
constant, and loyal. Perhaps this may be
accounted for by the fact that Billy was
one-fourth Cherokee Indian. Quimby first
met him in St. Louis, and made the dis-
covery that he was a mechanical genius, and
later he was engaged to take charge of the
electrical construction of the Agitator, and
so became one of the crew.
Jason bent down over the strange con-
trivance, and there in the mirror beheld
what looked for all the world like a minia-
ture mill-pond full of islands, with a firefly
-belly up swimming smoothly near the
bottom which seemed covered with tiny
white shells.
"What is it," he ventured, finally, "a
game?" The eyes of Billy Self fell a little
262 THE TORCH OF REASON.
nearer the mill-pond, and the corners of
Quimby's mouth almost suggested a smile
as he replied: "No, father, not exactly,
see! It is the Agitator, and this is the
ocean. See how our fire lights up the bot-
tom? And this is the finder ray. We are
now off Pt. Romanof , where the north fork
of the Yukon empties into Pastol Bay. And
that thing that looks like a trip-hammer off
there to the northwest, is St. Lawrence
Island. This is Nunivak, and yonder there
are the Priblofs covered in springtime with
seal."
Jason bent closer to view the incompre-
hensible phenomenon before him, his pride
in his son mingled with the bewilderment of
each new mystery, so overwhelmed him that
for some minutes he was speechless.
"It is all very simple, father. Just
imagine you are a mile above us and peer-
ing down with eyes that pierce the dark-
ness like the radium glow you see there in
the mirror; things would look precisely as
they do in that mill-pond, as you call it.
It is the angular ray that is doing the look-
ing down instead of you in this case, and
what it sees it reflects on the lens of a
powerful vitascope, which, in turn, projects
the picture down that tube by means of a
thousand tiny mirrors and through a lens
to the table, and what you see before you is
the result. Thus we have the remarkable
THE TORCH OF REASON. 263
ability to see ourselves as others see us,
so to speak.
"Just get a firm hold on something now,
keep your eyes on the mill-pond, and I will
show you something. " So saying, the son
drew a small disk, the size of a silver dol-
lar, from his pocket, and placing it to his
lips, though the captain was nowhere to
be seen, commanded: "Captain Hautier,
circle the ledge on the port, at three fathom,
full speed."
"Ay, ay, sir." And back came the
order :
"Billy, three fathom around that knob
on port wide open."
"Ay, ay, sir," as Billy Self laid his
fingers to the key board at the edge of the
table. There was a veering and a forward
lurch, when the ship seemed to slip from
under foot, and rolling to her left side until
her decks were vertical, spun around the
small island and .picking up her former
course raced away like a porpoise, throw-
ing a shaving of boiling water and white
steam a thousand feet in the air. There it
was in the mirror as clear as sunshine ; and
there was the long stream of white foam
stretching far behind, like a necklace of
pearls girdling the green billows as the
ocean 's breast rose and fell to the even pulse
of the harnessed sea.
"We are now traveling at the rate of
five hundred miles an hour," explained the
264 THE TORCH OF REASON.
inventor prince, "and you must know that
because of the fierce blast of exploding gas
coupled with our great speed, we are not
touching the water at all. At this rate we
should arrive off Seattle in eight hours.
But we are in no such a hurry."
A few words to the commanding officer
as before, and the Agitator settled back into
her former position near the bottom and
took up her old gait of two hundred miles.
It was a wonderful performance; but
what impressed Jason Sands more than
everything else was the perfect harmony,
discipline, and the unaccountable just-
rightness of everything in connection with
his son's strange ship. There was no con-
fusion. Everyone knew everything. Every-
thing worked without friction. It was
neither too hot nor too cold, and all were
well and happy.
There was a something in the pregnant
atmosphere of that wonder-craft that had
not as yet been explained. There was a
mystery about it, a sweet, aesthetic ego that
seemed to guard each truant vibration with
the mastery of infinite love and perfect
peace.
The very walls had ears.
There were no loud shoutings, yet officers
conversed freely though separated and from
any part of the vessel.
Light was everywhere whenever wanted,
but of lamps there were none.
THE TORCH OF REASON. 265
Music played out of the very air one
breathed, and sleep came at the bidding
sleep that was sound, and dreamless, and
sweet.
What did it all mean? Jason Sands
would know! but it was midnight, his sec-
ond night on board a floating heaven a
heaven built out of the brain of his son
his only, and greatly beloved son.
His stateroom was like the inside of a
huge eggshell, standing on its thickest end,
and hanging in his cot from the dome above,
was like a canary on a swinging perch in
a cage.
No sooner had he stretched himself in
repose, than on came the restful garnet-
emerald tint, and from somewhere far dis-
tant came tinkling, liquid sounds, the same
sounds and the same tint that he had mar-
veled at the night before.
He could smell the salten odors now, and
as he strove to keep awake that he might
listen to the sweet, faint music and view
the mellow tints, the colors faded away,
leaving an azure sky with the stars all in
their places, and out of which on the Eas-
tern horizon rose the yellow, Northern
moon.
Mountains, snow-capped, appeared as
the moon got higher, and a delightful cool
pervaded the night. He thought of the old
mountain home of his blighted childhood;
but the music was sweet, and the thoughts
266 THE TORCH OF REASON.
did not make him sad. He thought of the
storm on the lake with his brothers at dead
of night, and of the haven of refuge in the
Karns cove; of Ben Page and the "Broken
Bone," and of the night on the shelf with
the wolves. They were all fond memories
now; and -as the playing ceased and the
darkness grew apace, heavier hung the rest-
ful lids, and sleep, profound, and peaceful
sleep, huddled him in her mystic arms, as
a mother fondles upon her soft bosom the
cheek of her slumbering babe.
"More inventions," explained his son
next morning. "Inventions, not for the
enslaving of men, but for man's mastery of
the Universe."
"To enjoy the day, man must be wakeful;
but at nighttime he should sleep. In order
to sleep fully and properly, the senses must
be in tune with the peculiar chemistry of
the night darkness. The very name-
Day, is enough in itself to suggest activity ;
while to speak of Night is to suggest rest
and sleep," he said. "Imagine one sleeping
perfectly in a great city!
"Sleep is as essential as breath, and the
generation which gets little of sleep gets
little of life. I have found a way of sepa-
rating the physical consciousness from the
intangible, or sub-consciousness, by creating
a harmony between the cellular activity of
the living body and the inert nebular ego.
"The tints, the stars and moon and the
THE TORCH OF REASON. 267
mountains you saw were simply pictures
thrown on the transparent walls of your
room from the outside, and what appeared
like music was played on the fine metal
wires attuned to catch the minute strains
of melodies played, not by human hands,
but by the cycles of the living spheres.
"My inventions are not contrary to Na-
ture, but in accord with Nature.
"Man has strayed far from life because
he has strayed far from Nature. I would
lure him back to the fold by transporting
him far remote from the deadly crash and
maddening roar of his congested cities, and
so I have made a sleeping-room that pro-
duces this desired effect. All may possess
them when things are made for use instead
of for profit and that day is at hand."
They were among the Aleutians now, the
day was beautiful, and the Agitator was
flitting in and out among the bays and small
islands, running at low speed, and only half
submerged. The picture men were on deck,
and the ship was being maneuvered skill-
fully among a herd of walrus, when a low,
deep rumbling, like the distant reverbera-
tions of a world exploded from within, rose
above the surging breakers. The sea parted
and rolled back beneath the Agitator's very
feet. Up from the nether regions belched
a deluge of molten vomit, as with the
travail of Hell a redhot mountain reared
itself out of the bubbling ocean another
268 THE TORCH OF REASON.
obsidian babe born the son of a Vulcan
sire.
Jason Sands and his son were seated in
the latter's private laboratory when the
first murmurings of the eruption were re-
corded on the delicate instruments of that
wonder-chamber. Simultaneously with this
the marine seismograph became violently
agitated and a sharp, bell-like signal rang
throughout the vessel. At a key-board
abo TT e which was the one word: "Comet,"
flew the right hand of the young scientist,
with the left he jerked down a lever, la-
beled: "Full Speed Ahead."
"Hang on, father," he cried, sharply,
"the doors of Hell are opening right under
us, for this is the so-called volcanic belt,
where the number of these islands fluctu-
ates over night like the price of foodstuffs
on the stock exchange. I've sent up the
Comet for pictures, and as soon as we're
straightened out we'll go on deck and see
what a new earth-babe looks like all warm
and smoking. I have never seen one, and
what we may see here in the reflector is not
satisfying. Come on, now, here we are, as
motionless as the progress of the St. Louis
Million Population Club."
Sure enough, when they reached the deck
the ship was rolling stationary on the sun-
silvered sea, and the sight of the flashing,
fluttering scooting little Comet, dodging
hither and yon through the smoke and fall-
THE TORCH OF REASON. 269
ing cinders, as she gathered moving pic-
tures of the wonderful scene, was a treat
better imagined than the butchery of words
can describe.
At a distance of three miles to windward,
the intense heat could be felt, as the stream
of glowing lava spewed out over the crest
of the great cone and into the water. Into
the heavens, as from the stack of a mam-
moth locomotive, shot up a tower of black
smoke and red stones, while far to the
south-east spread out an ever- widening
cloud of fine, white ashes, hanging like
open-work lace on the evenly moving wind.
And with the sun shining through this veil
of earth-ashes was effected an aurora bore-
alis, rivaling in magnificence the wondrous
beauties of the boreal circle. Who shall
arise to disprove it when the scientist who
is not for sale, announces to the world that
this is the Auroro Borealis that for centu-
ries has lured the adventurer to death among
the Arctic snows? We shall see ere this
narrative ends. And we shall know the
mysteries of the North Pole: for be it
known that the Agitator can sail as smooth-
Iv and as swiftly through a mountain of
ice as through the tropical waters of the
Torrid Zone. Also we shall know the secret
of the hidden fires under the earth and
under the sea. The History of the histories
shall be opened and the diary of Nature
read in the Light of Reason rebellious,
evolutionary, scientific, revolutionary
Reason.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE JUVENILE DEMOCRACY.
Every eye with gladness beaming,
With the love-light flashing gleaming
Banners, one-hued, all astreaming
In the Dawn of Brotherhood !
With her blood-red banner waving and
the great -finder ray feeling out the channel
in the strange waters, the Agitator, her aux-
iliary, the Comet, gracefully flying on
ahead, slipped into Queen Charlotte Sound
through Georgia Strait and dropped her
feet into the mud at the bottom of Victoria
harbor.
Once departed from the zone of quake
and volcano, the route had lain hard by the
picturesque Alaskan Peninsula through
Shelikof Strait and among the wave-eaten
crags all the way to the Beautiful British
Columbia city.
From the mainland an Empire cheered
them an Empire? Nay, a Democracy!
From every harbor craft colored lights
and bunting floated until it seemed that all
Canada, aflame with red, had poured out
her citizenry to do them honor.
A hundred thousand voices in mighty
chorus cleft the air to the fiery strains of
the Marseillaise, played on a thousand
bands. Above the human forest soared the
(270)
THE TORCH OF REASON. 271
beautiful little aluminum Comet, playing
her powerful searchlight in all the colors of
the rainbow, and illuminating the harbor,
while a lighter from H. M. S. Homewrecker
came alongside to take the Agitator's party
ashore.
The industrial Democrats, or, as they
were more commonly called, The Co-opera-
tors, had just completed their magnificent
new Coliseum in Victoria City, and in it
were gathered twenty thousand eager souls.
Each fired with the new enthusiasm, and all
animated with a single motive a single
purpose. It was a grand pageant. No con-
quering hero of old was ever more honored.
For weeks the entire press of the Dominion
had been flevoting pages to the exploits and
successes of the Agitator, and now it was
the survivors of the Aurora and the spat
with the captain of the Terror only
yesterday.
Across the border in the United States,
little or nothing was known of them. The
press of that judge-ravaged land being
owned from editor to "devil" by the com-
mercial interests, the people never heard
much of the Socialists and Co-operators but
knocks. So when the Industrialists carried
Canada for Socialism, the facts were
adroitly and malevolently misrepresented
or diplomatically suppressed through the
old familiar journalistic trick of the "con-
spiracy of silence."
272 THE TORCH OF REASON.
In the Coliseum there were no curtains,
flies, wings or other scenery. Instead of
these there were contrived vapor rays, upon
which played the most marvelous color
effects from picture machines radium
lighted. It was like the thick veil of a col-
ored mist possessing the power of the
mirror to reflect whatever the lens might
throw upon it. Where the drop curtain
should have been, spread out the restful
tinted glow of the strange garnet-emerald
effect which had so puzzled Jason Sands
in his stateroom on the Agitator. Not a
lamp was visible in all that great playhouse ;
but light, mellow and soothing, blended ar-
tistically throughout the auditorium in
every known color effect, or melted into
midnight at the whim of a keyboard opera-
tor in the "light-house."
From open spaces all around the upper
dome the pure air came in through the same
fine white silk screens through which the
salten odors had blown in Jason's quarters,
when he first awoke in his swinging cot in
Norton Sound. The white silk screens be-
ing simply thin shafts of electro-radium
through which the cool winds streamed,
warming as they streamed. It was the new
method of heating and lighting that had
come to take the place of coal and other
dirty fuel. It was one of the inventions of
a Red Cadet, whom the Canadian Govern-
ment had instantly recognized and honored ;
THE TORCH OF REASON. 273
for things under the rule of the Co-opera-
tive Democracy were created for use and
not for commercial exploitation, and Gen-
ius, for the first time in the history of the
race, was honored and set free. The new
discovery, called volt-o-sheen, was inex-
pensive once the proper chemicals were set
in action, and lasted a lifetime. The smoke
nuisance was ahated, coal mining was abol-
ished, and the race lifted up a long jump
from poverty, toil and disease.
All the new houses of the I. T. Ds. were
equipped with volt-o-sJieen, and through
corrugated floors all dust and bad odors
were pumped off, the suction being regu-
lated to correspond with the intake of pure
air at the dome. This pure air, coming in
through the electro-radium screens, was
heated to the right temperature, and drawn
straight down and out through thin slits
under foot, then off through other white-
hot rays, thus performing the lung service
of those within and returning to commingle
with and resume its travel through space,
purified and revitalized. No dust ever rose
above the soles of the feet, and the air was
always sweet and pure in the theaters and
other buildings of the new Democracy.
Brooms and vacuum cleaners had been
swept away, and housewives were no longer
coal-stoking, broom-wielding soldiers of
drudgery.
274 THE TORCH OF REASON.
During the wait before the lecture the
audience was treated to thirty minutes ex-
hibition of motion pictures and music. The
lights went out, and on a screen of non-
illuminous vapor played the tragedy of the
Yukon River, the rescue, the eruption, and
the birth of the new island among the
Aleutians. Next followed some beautiful
panoramics from Japan. Then came a
mighty explosion of human enthusiasm,
when, and without warning, on came the
lights to reveal the stage a horticultural
vista of floral effulgence.
Seated in couples where tropical verdure
stirred to the wing-flittings of humming
birds, were a thousand Red Cadets in their
uniforms of scarlet and gold; and in the
center of all, amid festoons of gorgeous
red roses sat the modest young scientist.
Between the Governor-General of the Do-
minion of Canada and the Mayor of Vic-
toria he was seated the boy scientist, the
son of Jason Sands. He it was whose brain
revolt had wrought with genius to free his
class and lift humanity up and out of the
hell of wage-slavery.
The Mayor of the city was the chairman
of the evening, and he lost no time in in-
troducing the Governor-General. They
were both social revolutionists, and their
speeches were short, rapid and full of
humor and good cheer. The Governor-
General paid the Red Cadets, of whom
THE TORCH OF REASON. 275
Quimby Sands was chief, the compliment
of having made it intellectually possible for
Canada to become one of the first Socialist
Democracies on earth. And then came the
introduction.
With the pronouncing of his name the
tall athletic figure of the young god-man
glided swiftly forward to begin his address.
The storm of applause that greeted him
amounted almost to a frenzy. From his
box on the right Jason Sands could look
out over the vast throng that filled every
inch of space in that huge hall. "To see
my son," he exclaimed exultantly to him-
self, "to see my son, my boy! My boy!"
He was thinking of the old days once more,
days of barbaric insecurity and the battle
of life-and-death, when after having been
left stranded in the Albion House in Hali-
fax, Novia Scotia, by that old fraud, "Prof.
Harrington," he had fought a prize fight
with one Scanlon, in an old barn on the
outskirts of the city, to get money with
which to pay the skipped board bill and to
get out of town. Wherever this old faker
acquired the bogus title of "Prof." was a
mystery. He always reminded Jason of
Davy Crockett's " Thimblerig, " and
palmed himself off on the unsuspecting
public as a sort of nut-shell magician,
barn-storming country towns where he held
forth his prize-package performances be-
decked in a seedv Prince Albert coat from
276 THE TORCH OF REASON.
which dangled a glittering array of brass
medals and French paste.
Jason had first met the sleek villain in
the Victoria Hospital. Blood poisoning
they said it was, and it had resulted from
overmuch meat eating. Here "Thimblerig"
had fled for safety and to recuperate from
a near-lynching from which he had escaped
in his own home town. Jason, who was
slow to find out wrong in men, had helped
the "snap" showman on to his feet with
his last dollar, only to be " touched," then
later deserted by him for his trouble.
As his son stood there bowing to the
thunderous roar of applause, he could not
help contrasting the scene with the dingy
suffocating hives in which he had sung
while traveling with the aforesaid Harring-
ton "straw" outfit. Also his thoughts re-
verted to the Victoria Hospital, where they
had put him to bed in a ward cot upon
which had died, only the night before, a
sailor whose hip had been eaten out with an
abscess. The bed had not been "changed,"
and when he tried to turn over he experi-
enced a sensation akin to what might be
imagined of one lying on a sheet of Tangle-
foot fly paper. He threw off the covers.
The stench was awful! With an heroic
effort he rolled out of bed, the sheet and
mattress still pasted to his side, and there
heaped up in a thick puddle on the floor,
and hanging in great gobs from the under-
THE TORCH OF REASON. 277
side of the mattress, was the accumulated
pus from the dead sailor's abscess, alive
and squirming with maggots.
This was nothing like his thistle-down
dream while swinging in that fluffy bird's
nest cot on the Agitator, he decided. How-
beit, this was Capitalism. But the day of
Capitalism was fast fading into oblivion.
When he thought of the perfect health
of his son and the crew of the Agitator, he
could not help turning to the other pictures
back in the departed years, when he had
been caught in the seething vortex of Chi-
cago's insane swirl. There, packed in a
lodging house with hundreds of others like
canned fish, all the beautiful theory
of "free-born Americanism" had been
squelched in him. And between mal-prac-
tice, which operated to abort human souls,
and political graft, the function of which
was to suck blood from the living progeni-
tors of those throttled souls, was welded the
middle link, poverty, in the awful social
chain.
Next it was the army of the unemployed.
Sandwiched among the cliff-dwelling hordes
down in the congested rookeries of the un-
der-world, he had seen sick babies literally
eaten alive with rats and flies; while on
couches of dirty straw sprawled scurvy
dogs licking the oozing pus from the syphi-
litic sores of these dead babies' mothers.
278 THE TORCH OF REASON.
He contrasted all this with the beautiful
homes of the Co-operators and the happy
picture before him; but the old drama per-
sisted. He closed his eyes that the trans-
position might be the clearer, and the pic-
tures flashed forth as sharp as cameos.
There were the ups and down of toil and
idleness; jobs and no jobs. Working half
time or loafing, with the annual rush at end
of season. Then his genius would revolt
and with his scant savings he would make
an investment. But feasting on fat viands
during the successful lulls between periods
of panic and poverty, only served to sand
his rebel brain with more rebellion; and
when once again the unequal circumstances
of an unjust environment matched him to
battle with the Pale Lady of Starvation, he
called her fake "equality" bluff with a
challenge of protest surcharged with trea-
son and red revolution. Then it was that
he would mount a soap-box on the street
corner, and with the irrefutable logic of
Socialism furiously harangue the ignorant
multitude whose votes outnumbered those
of their masters ten to one.
But after suffering the taunts and jeers
of these besodden slaves until forbearance
ceased to be a virtue, he would disappear
from these pestilential fens of brutish toil
and criminal fecundity, and peacefully in
his cabin on the mountain side he would
sleep long and sweetly to the roar of tern-
THE TORCH OF REASON. 279
pest and crash of thunder, or to the melan-
choly hoot of the glare-eyed owl. Twere
music in his ears, he remembered, con-
trasted with those bra in- wrecking bedlams
of the urban hells in which he had stifled.
While the joy-mad crowd yelled and
clapped he went as in a dream through the
whole frightful drama back to the mother,
then again to their boy who was bowing
and smiling to the mightiest audience Jason
had ever seen. He remembered the promise
he had made to her as she lay with glazed
eyes in her last hour of earthly pain. He
had kept that promise, and surely he had
not lived in vain. All his suffering was
nothing contrasted with the joy of that glad
moment. Slavery in their shoe factories
from Lynn to San Francisco, and including
the foul "penitentiaries" of St. Louis, was
nothing; frost was nothing; hunger was
nothing, and had he lost both his good legs
in the wolf fight, still would he now be
supremely happy that he had lived to feast
his eyes on the proud scene before him.
There in the sinewy tower of youthful
virility among those flowers, he saw him-
self as Erma had seen him on that eventful
day when they first looked into each other's
eyes, there to read the unwritten chapter
of a pure and reciprocal love.
"It is the shoot from the root of the
tree," he mused. He was talking in a mon-
otone to himself, oblivious to all save the
280 THE TORCH OF REASON.
sapling counterpart of his younger self be-
fore him.
Back his thoughts went, back there to
the old Holiness Town House where he was
"Moderator," addressing the town meet-
ing ! His gaze was riveted on the stage, but
his thoughts were far away. He was
aroused from the dreams of his childhood
when an exquisitely beautiful young girl
in robin 's-egg blue and with corn-silk
blonde hair, advanced and pinned a luscious
red rose on the lapel of his son's coat. The
cheering burst out anew. The young man
drew the blushing maiden to him and kissed
her in her shining hair, and the crowd went
wild! His father looked on and a great
longing welled up in him. He remembered
how that Erma had done this same thing
to him at the church festival, and how he
had seized and kissed her on the forehead
to the delight of the rustic young folk of
the long ago.
"I see it all," he philosophized. "It is
I, the stuff of me, the ego of me, aye, the
very soul of me, coming down to him liv-
ing in him just as I am the living proto-
type of my father."
But the skein was only in the spinning.
The story but begun. What had there been
two instead of one? Or had Erma lived,
what then ? What had there been six, eight,
ten a dozen boys and girls? O, it were
all the same, plural instead of singular,
An exquisitely beautiful young girl in robin's-egg blue and
with corn-silk blond hair, advanced and pinned a luscious
red !!>*< on tlu> lapel of his son's coat, and the crowd
went wild!"
THE TORCH OF REASON. 281
souls, not soul, there was no limit, only in
death.
This, then was the Secret age old and
age sought the offspring, the shoot, the
seed, the egg the soul! Or a soul for every
offspring, shoot, seed, or egg. They were
numberless. The greater the multiplicity
of progeny, the more prolific the tree of
procreation, and the larger the number of
its living souls. Each a soul of its soul, in
turn to number their souls according to the
fruitfulness of the tree. It was an endless
chain this racial soul-fabric and it must
go on, and on, and up, and up, to the very
heights. But to die childless were to die
soulless ! He had not lost his soul, for there
before him it stood, his son, though he had
but the one. Here was the answer at last:
earth, the home of the soul! It was a chal-
lenge !
Jason was leaning far out over the gold
railing of the box, eager to catch the first
words that should fall from his son's lips.
As the storm of greeting subsided, Quimby
turned and caught his father's eye. There
was a glitter of moisture there, like the
glitter of dew on the frostflower petals in
autumn on the mountain. It was the glit-
ter of the dew of joy.
The scientific construction of the build-
ing was such that, with its devices of bal-
ance for the harmonizing of sound, the
faintest vocal articulation was clearly audi-
282 THE TORCH OF REASON.
ble throughout the remotest reaches of its
vast interior. Like all the intricate ma-
chinery he had invented, which worked
smoothly and noiselessly, the theory of
Tune was his hobby. There was much on
the printed page about it, but young Sands
it was who had reduced the theory to a
practical science. It was Temperature,
Tune, Chemical Tune Life. Everything
was a correlation. There were no separate
substances or independent particles set
apart by themselves; all were but frag-
mentary members of the one great organ-
ism, and with disunited action or obstructed
scope, only confusion and discord must
result.
All the homes of the Industrial Demo-
crats were built with this idea of "tune"
molded into the very cement of their every
wall. Wood, brick and stone had gone with
the ox cart and the wooden loom; and only
glass and cement and metal had remained.
These could not burn down, but would last
forever. Wall paper, lace curtains and car-
pets also had been relegated, together with
all the rest of the germ-laden trash and
trumpery of an out-lived civilization, the
existence of which had depended on its
ability to market perishable clutter to an
impoverished and enslaved people for the
profit the traffic yielded.
But what was the speaker saying?
THE TORCH OF REASON. 283
"You call me 'Professor,' but I am not a
professor. Any one may be called a pro-
fessor, for to be a professor is but to pro-
fess something. Some profess what they
are not, others are what they profess not
to be. I am not a professor, but a doer.
I have found out means of bringing light
out of darkness. I was born in darkness
and ignorance, like the rest of my race ; but
I smarted under the lash of hunger, and
the befuddling word-wine of the sooth-
sayers was abomination to me. I was a
seeker after knowledge.
"In the workshop of Nature I served an
apprenticeship to the Force god. There I
learned that all not of force was decadent. "
Then he went through the whole con-
structive program of the universe, showing
that it was the law of force organic force
that shot up the mighty oak from the
tiny acorn, dry and inanimate. It was
force, he said, organic force, the activity of
chemical good health through contact under
temperature, that was responsible for the
rejuvenation, revitalization and perpetua-
tion of all life. Even the planets were kept
in their respective places in the great cos-
mos, like gears in a monster machine,
through the operation of this same law and
by the same force that attracts and repels
in the two poles of the magnet.
Then there was the thing, Love. This
also, was force, the greatest, grandest, but
284 THE TORCH OP REASON.
withal the most subtle of forces amalga-
mate. The forces of shot and shell, bayonet
and billy, tyranny and superstition, faded
into insignificance in the brilliancy and
force of the Love electrodes.
Love had ever been enslaved, he charged,
with the enslaving of the hands; but then,
Love was -young. Also Love was ignorant.
But Love was the ripening virgin of human
brotherhood, and was at that very moment
tugging at the thongs, and the yoke was
even now falling from her bruised, white
neck. What of the new Industrial Democ-
racy ? It was the birth of the Co-operative
Commonwealth a brotherhood a love civ-
ilization.
"Love is coming of age," he announced,
when again they would let him continue.
When the maiden attains her majority she
will be eligible in wedlock; then will her
champion appear to claim her for his mate.
This will be Love wedded to Humanity, the
long betrothed starvelings between which
for a thousand years has stood the bloody
myrmidons of the robber king, Merchand."
Jason was all attention. Both poet and
philosopher himself, the words of his son
were rarest morsels of mental nourishment
to his hungry ears. This is what he would
have liked to say, but the boy had said it
better. He was cultured, Jason was not.
One the rough diamond, the other the pol-
ished gem. He could strike the staggering
THE TORCH OF REASON. 285
blow, but the other could speak the flaming
word. One had lived the life, the other
was the life. The father had read out of
the books, the son was reading into them.
One was the past and the present, the other
the present and the future. Jason mar-
veled at the smooth delivery of each clean-
cut word, and the throng swayed under
their magnetic voltage like willow tendrils
in an April wind.
Jason looked at Jack Philips. That
sunny boy-man was showing all his double
row of white teeth in a pleased and satis-
fied smile which was the very essence of
undignified delight. He knew the stuff of
Jack, and it was to laugh and love that
Jack lived. But there was the Aztec, Span-
to, burning into the scene with his big
black eyes afire with passion. On his arm
clung the Indian bride of his, wide-eyed but
crying. It was too much for her. The
good priest had pictured Heaven to her, but
nothing like this had she ever dreamed of
earth. These strange men these Social-
ists were not angels, she knew that, but
somehow they did not belong to earth. It
was all too good to be true. Besides, some
of these men were un-Christian unbe-
lievers some of the best of them. Even
there were avowed Atheists among them;
but then, all this was true of the multitudes
of men she had known, only it seemed that
always these ungodly scientists managed to
286 THE TORCH OF REASON.
make their point, right or wrong, and were
genuinely unafraid. How different with
the hypocrites, she thought. They were
always quarreling among themselves, and
ever ready to start an argument.
But the crowd was cheering again. What
was it Quimby Sands was saying, the while
he pointed to his father in the box? He
had been telling them passionately of the
years of double search of father and son
each for the other, of the struggles and
perils of his father, and the story of his
dead mother whom he had never seen. Si-
lent and motionless, they sat, or sympatheti-
cally aroused with the dynamic passion at
his righteous rebellion. He told them the
story of his early struggles, and the press
of the wrongs seemed to weigh them down
like a Jehovan wrath.
There were many Amp.-rica.Tia in the audi-
ence, and they listened to the story of the
Red Cadets, and how they came to be born,
with keen interest. The distribution of
classified literature, he told them, was the
function of the Red Cadets. This, and
health culture, along with the study of self.
It was not in the books, but Quimby Sands
had written it into his classified literature.
Classified literature meant classified litera-
ture. It didn't mean a conglomeration of
bewildering generalities, extravagant per-
sonalities and incomprehensible statistics
cheaply printed on the poorest paper and
THE TORCH OF REASON. 287
addressed to "You workingmen ! " It
meant -what it said for instance: "THE
GOD OF THE SOD." This was a 100-page
pamphlet on farming. It was printed on
good, strong paper calculated to stand the
shuffle, and it told all about farming, from
the time the first crooked stick was made
to scratch the earth, and before, all the way
up through the hand-hoe, the hand-sickle
and the bucket of seeds, to the mighty auto-
mobile gang-plow, steam seeder, reaper and
thresher. It told the farmer what the
farmer wanted to know. Yea, it told him
more than he knew he wanted to know. It
told him that he was the creator, sustainer
and the unthroned god of the earth.
This book sold for 25 cents, and wher-
ever it was sold it did the work it made
SOCIALISTS. Through it Socialism was
carried to the tiller of the soil cooked to suit
his taste, and served in a style especially
attractive and interesting to Mm. It was
the business of the Red Cadets to see that
every farmer bought and paid for a copy
of this book; and this it was, more than
anything else, which had won Canada to
Socialism.
Then there was "THE CITIES UNDER
THE SEA." This was a 100-page booklet
for carpenters. It began back of man, back
and beyond and beneath, down under the
sea, and told first of the coral workers, and
how that they were united and always
288 THE TORCH OF REASON.
worked together. From these it told of the
tree people, and of their nests. Next it
went into the hills among the cave folk,
then out on the plains under the skin tepee
and the dugout. Finally it took the reader
into the modern mansions of the monied
parasites whose fabulously grand abodes
may be pointed out in any big city, on the
Hudson River above the Palisades, at Bar
Harbor, Newport, or on the sunny shores
of the Pacific. This book was for the
builder and his art. There was nothing left
out, it told it all. Moreover, it told it in a
lanugage spoken by the modern carpenter.
In fact it pled his cause and in the plead-
ing it laid the remedy for his unrealized
dreams of a beautiful home for himself and
his loved ones in his lap.
And so through the list: The barber, the
baker, the boilermaker and the biscuit
shooter. None were forgotten, and it
showed what was, is, and will be. Not be-
cause some men wanted it, fought for it,
and that it was a good thing; but because
there were underlying forces in the very
meat and marrow of man's social being
that had been, is still, and will continue to
be compelling it. Each special classified
propaganda pamphlet for each separate
trade, profession or calling, treated the sub-
ject to the same end, but in a different set
of words, and always apropos the particu-
lar job at which one worked. It showed
THE TORCH OF REASON. 289
that the population of the earth had in-
creased since the days of the hand tool, and
that the hand tool had passed with the
onward march of the race up and into the
huge factory. With the coming of the ma-
chine had come the increase in the product
of each pair of hands. But with the fac-
tory owned by the masters, the creators
were dispossessed. In other words, the pri-
vate ownership of the public means of life
had become inadequate to the public needs,
these pampnlets taught, and the time was
come when the workers must either unite
and possess the earth and all the machinery
of social needs collectively, or else the race
must starve to death for the pleasure of a
few plutocratic masters.
When young Sands first conceived of
classified literature, he forthwith proceeded
to tell it to his " friends," as, before he got
his eye teeth cut, he had always ran to
them to tell them of his inventions. It was
sympathy and encouragement that he
wanted, but, as in the case of his inven-
tions, he had gotten neither. Only jealousy
gave they him, coupled with an attempt to
pull him down to their pigmy level.
But the Red Cadets were more than prop-
agandists. They were an organization.
In every town and city, in every state and
nation their "garrisons,' or Capitol houses,
with a single exception, had gone up to float
the crimson banner of universal brother-
290 THE TORCH OF REASON.
hood, and that single exception was the
United States. Here, their birthplace, they
were slandered, ridiculed, and held down to
the level of the low order of capitalistic
intelligence prevalent of the low order of
governmental administration. Especially
low was the order of intelligence in St.
Louis. It manifested itself everywhere.
There was no congenialty or sociability
there. Of course, ignorance was responsi-
ble for this. It is always ignorance and
the consciousness of ignorance that seals
the lips and glints the eyes. An " East-
erner" was spotted on the instant in St.
Louis. He always held his head erect and
wore his handkerchief in his hip pocket.
Let an Easterner reach for his pocket hand-
kerchief in public, and every one automat-
ically reached for his gun. Street car con-
ductors insulted passengers with impunity,
and the cats and dogs killed on the trolley
lines remained to be trampled into the
muddy streets until carried away by flies
and maggots. But out on the corner of
Lindell Boulevard and Newstead avenue
was built the largest and most magnificent
Catholic Cathedral in America. It cost
three million five hundred thousand dollars ;
and a five minutes' ride distant, naked
babes were subsisting on a diet of swill.
In St. Louis, the home of the Red Cadets,
there were twenty thousand of them; but
they were forbidden to erect their own Cap-
THE TORCH OF REASON. 291
itol building. That they were a " conspir-
acy," was the decision of a corporation-
owned judge, and not being citizens "of
age," were held to be irresponsible! But
they were undeterred by such rulings, how-
ever, and the good work went on, and the
Socialist vote continued to rise with the
distribution of the classified literature sold
by the live boys and girls right under
the very noses of their masters. But of all
the classified pamphlets written by Jason
Sands' son, probably the one entitled,
"THE HOLLOW ORIFICE" was the
most effective. It was a terrible indict-
ment against war, and many a Boy Scout
had been seen to smash his gun and tram-
ple his cheap cotton uniform as a result of
reading this frightful tale of blood.
And so, with the coming of classified lit-
erature and the Red Cadets had come the
Canadian victory, he told them.
"But you want to know what is to be
done in the case of the United States," he
resumed. "Well, there they have not as
yet learned the simplest rudiments of co-
operation. They are great on division, sub-
traction, limit and boundary lines, but, al-
though having themselves taught it for a
hundred years, they have not learned the
meaning of the motto of every lodge and
other organization on earth: 'United we
stand, divided we fall/ But speaking of
boundaries, let me tell you a story.
292 THE TORCH OF REASON.
"The imaginary boundary lines that the
God-fearing nations have conveniently
drawn around themselves," he said, "are
but the unnatural barriers erected by the
robber chiefs and maintained but for the
purpose of legalized private plunder. They
are perpetually operated to keep the work-
ers divided with race hatred, that they
may the more easily sic them to fighting
whenever a war may be profitably pulled
off on the tame public." Then he referred
to the boundary between Canada and the
United States as a geographical spite fence.
It was an insult to their pratings of "Love
thy neighbor as thyself."
"Such epithetical derogations as 'John
Bull/ 'Yank,' 'Canuck/ and all that vin-
dictive vernacular, must soon drop from our
vocabulary," he prophesied. "Socialism
knows no boundaries, but wherever they
may be, Socialists are brothers Com-
rades."
Recalling a very interesting, though not
generally well-known bit of American his-
tory, he told them the story of the "Great
British- American hog war ! " It most prob-
ably was the first time it had been told by
a Socialist on the Canadian side, and from
the levity it engendered the Socialist posi-
tion on boundaries seemed sound.
"Across the Strait, there in the Sound,"
he went on, "lies the beautiful little island
of San Juan. On that speck of dirt a part
THE TORCH OF REASON. 293
of the earth that God is said to have con-
cocted from less material and then given to
all men occurred a very silly fracas, once
upon a time, which came near plunging
these two great Christian nations into a
bloody war. A hog was the cause of it all !
Imagine two mighty nations going to war
over a hog ! The hog was said to have been
a 'blooded' hog. Which, I presume, is to
say, that he was an importation from 'The
Other Side.' As if all self-respecting hogs
weren't blooded. However, I guess the
'blooded' point was well taken, for I am
acquainted with both blooded and blood-
less, as well as some Woody hogs myself.
Some hog all the money, others all the oil,
and still others, all the food from the
mouths of innocent children, and then for
good measure root up the homes of work-
ingmen who exhibit enough spine to dare a
healthy protest.
"Among the hogs without blood, but
through whose slimy veins sloughs the cold
maggot- water of graveyard affinity, is the
hloody old Sus scrofa, Diaz, who for thirty
years wallowed, with cloven hoof and tushes
red and dripping, through the broken heart
of poor, groaning Mexico as Bill Reedy
says: 'Our sister Republic, God save the
mark!' This grizzled swine, whose every
grunt meant the death of a patriot, is now
well-nigh blind and toothless, and his
scrawny bristles once black as the pouch of
294 THE TORCH OF REASON.
night-shade that serves him for a heart, are
now a yellow-grey, like the grey of the
dreaded timber angels of the Arctic. But
he still grunts and wallows, and out of the
skulls of babies and widowed mothers he
drinks the sweat and blood of his mur-
dered slaves. Once upon a time a time
that went down in history on a page draped
in mourning a 'great' President of the
United States of America journeyed thither
to that land of weeping stones to fondle
and caress, and press the foul-smelling hoof
of that bloody, unblooded monstrosity, 'in
the name of the people of the United
States!'
"But I am straying from the aforesaid
history apropos the great British- American
hog war.
"The island of San Juan belongs to a
well-known group which had always been
considered a part of the territory of your
Uncle Sam; but the Hudson Bay Co., the
first great North American trust, con-
ceived a sly trick by means of which the
fertile little spot might be successfully
stolen, and so arbitrarily planted over it
the Union Jack. That its population con-
sisted chiefly of Americans made no differ-
ence to the rough necks. The company's
agent, a Cockney Briton, had an old razor-
back and that John Bull hog ate the
Yankee's cabbage; the Yankee shot the
blooming porker and the war was on. Up
THE TORCH OF REASON. 295
drew the imposing fleet of H. R. H. Queen
Victoria. It was a warlike spectacle, and
it demanded restitution from the man who
had so wantonly slain a British subject!
But I guess the, Yankee nomad hadn't the
price, or else he wanted some fun; any-
way, he loaded his old musket again in-
stead. That ended the great British-Amer-
ican hog war.
"It is not impossible that some among
you have forgotten that, on the island of
San Juan, over there in Puget Sound, flew
the last British flag above United States
soil. That was in the year 1859. "
"Good jawke, awld man, and bloody wull
tawld," laughed a lank Englishman with a
mop of yellow hair and wearing a grin that
came dangerously near severing his head
at the ears. This story put the house in a
jocose mood, and a ripple of levity flowed
over it, during which the lank individual
sprang up in his seat, and waving his arms
wildly for recognition, shouted: "You Saw-
shalists as wull as anarchists all fly the
sime flag, naow yer naow, dawntcher naow.
Would yer mind tulling us abaowt th' Red
Flag, plyse ? Of course, I naow, yer naow.
But there may be some Hermericans 'ere oo
dawnt naow, dawnt yer naow."
"It is said that wolves, prey-birds, bulls
and other forms of gore-spilling beasts hate
and fear red," the speaker replied. "When
any of these see red it acts on their nerves
296 THE TORCH OF REASON.
like fire on powder. They explode. Fear
is generally associated with guilt, and cun-
ning is the pander of cowardice and crime.
"The Red Flag is not embellished with
the skull and crossbones, nor mottled,
striped or crossed with many hues. There-
fore, it is not a fit emblem of 'patriotism'
in a society where the street pavements
reek with the brain-spatterings of police
club brutality, and where the young sons
of the nation are drilled by the church,
armed by the government, uniformed at the
expense of their impoverished parents and
incited to pose as living targets for the
machine-gun, the cannon and the torpedo.
Honest work folk are not afflicted with
terror at the sight of red flags or any
other flags. Like pure women and inno-
cent children they are without fear, and the
fluttering hues of banners give them no
cause for alarm.
"It is written that 'a troublesome fellow'
was once spiked to a cross of wood because
he taught the 'rabble' that all men were
brothers. He said that because the blood
of all was red, it bespoke a common parent-
age. The same story teaches that 'his rai-
ment was spotless and his banner was the
color of blood.' No wonder the myrmidons
of the owning class followed him about to
catch words out of his mouth with which
to crucify him!' It's a wonder that the
present generation of 'vipers and hypo-
THE TORCH OF REASON. 297
crites' don't try to twist the Christian
religion into a ' seditious doctrine of
anarchy ! '
"Every Capitalist government under the
sun has a different flag. This is as it
should be; for how otherwise could their
uniformed dupes be befuddled into killing
each other in battle? This Heaven-hal-
lowed pastime of pumping lead into one
another is never indulged in by the money-
mongers who rule the nation. Their func-
tion is to give orders. There would be no
profit in it for them to lay out on the wet
ground o' nights hunting each other with
guns. This exhilarating exercise is bene-
ficial only to working men! That's what
'patriotism' is for. This is one of the * in-
centives' that Socialism cannot stimulate.
"To. the grafting ghoul who fattens on
the bread out of the mouths of children, the
Red Flag is a signal of gravest danger ; but
to the toiler it is a sheen of hope and love
and blessed peace. To the one it bodes
death, to the other it symbolizes joy, and
life, and home. To the tyrant it reflects
the Eaw Head and Bloody Bones of a mil-
lion battlefields, filling his golden dreams
with terror, as in his subconscious fantasy
he beholds his rusting riches stained red
with the life fluid of the many victims of
his cruel greed. To the builders of the
world it radiates the cheery smiles of happy
children in homes where armless sleeves
298 THE TORCH OF REASON.
and tales of carnage never more shall cast
a gloom.
"The Bed Flag was once a thing of
snowy whiteness; but their rule of ruin
splashed upon it the innocent blood of mar-
tyrs, dyeing it a crimson hue. What of the
Inquisition? What of .the Commune?
What of John Brown? What of Love joy?
Their blood is there look at your hands!
you workingmen who once voted for Cap-
italism. What of Russia? What of Fer-
rer? What of Mexico? What of the mil-
lions of poor, misguided mothers' sons who
'have been blown to twitching fragments of
slippery pulp with shot and shell, while the
money Shylocks who coin their quivering
flesh into clinking gold were feasting in
mansions across the seas, far beyond the
roar of war's red hell and away from the
smell of blood?
"The Red Flag is the badge of my
father's manhood
"Three cheers for Jason Sands," went
up the yell!
Like a marine volcano the chorus burst
into thunderous applause, followed by the
three rousing cheers: "Hurrah! Hurrah!
Hurrah! for Jason Sands Jason Sands!
Jason Sands! Speech, speech ."
But the speaker raised his hand for si-
lence, then continued: "It is the deed of
my heritage, it is the coat of arms of the
class that toils. I see in its folds the
THE TORCH OP REASON. 299
promise of love to a weeping world. I
know that I am represented there. It is
the symbol of freedom. Its very fabric is
damp with the sweat of your faces. My
mother's tears are there. The virginity of
your sweet sisters is protested there, and
the stifled moan of the unborn babe, throt-
tled by the bony hand of poverty in its
mother's womb, is trembling there.
"What of the victims of the late human
carrion who sent troops to Pullman? If
he had had his way the blood of honest
Debs would now be there; and that the
heroic blood of Haywood did not saturate
its sacred weft is not the fault of the bar-
barian of "big stick" infamy, who, for
seven years so foully disgraced the public
trust. What lisping babe can be found who
does not know that the Eed Flag of human
brotherhood is the International emblem of
peace, love, and liberty, that will soon float
over an awakened world at the birth of the
Co-operative Commonwealth 1 ?
"If the anarchists wish to adopt the Red
Flag, it is well. It is better to be an anar-
chist under a Socialist flag than a wage-
slave under a Capitalist rag. When all the
anarchists become Socialists there will no
longer be any Republican or Democratic
parties.
Before I had read the history of Chris-
tian civilization, trailing it back down the
back track of its butchers who were called
300 THE TORCH OF REASON.
'heroes,' I was a Republican. After I had
read that I was an anarchist. Then some-
one lied and told me Socialism and anarchy
were the same, so I studied Socialism and
became a Socialist.
"This beautiful amusement house is one
of the cornerstones of the Industrial De-
mocracy. I am glad to participate in its
dedication. It is a thing of social wealth.
It proves to me that at last the selfishness
of human nature is being understood and
applied intelligently. While it is true that
selfishness is the motive force behind every
action of every form of life, selfishness
until now was always individual, and there-
fore destructive, mean and inhuman. With
the Co-operative Democracy has come the
collective selfishness. Collective well-being
means collective happiness; and out of the
pool of this social abundance is absorbed
the individual self desires, and the self
defense of individual competition falls
from the individual like husks from the
ripened corn.
We are met here to-night to learn from
one another. This is another demonstra-
tion of intellectual selfishness. It is grand !
It is beautiful! It is glorious! In the
selfishness of the brute as exemplified
through the Capitalist system, men meet
that they may become wise in ways where-
by they can legally destroy each other.
This is what they call 'individuality.' It
THE TORCH OF REASON. 301
is not rightly named. Its real name is
individual 'barbarity.
"We Socialists were long called dream-
ers, by our friends the enemy. But I say
to you that this is the age of the dreamer.
They soon shall know that it is the dreamer
who is the true progress-god of the dawn-
ing civilization. They shall know that the
dreamer is the toiler, and that the toiler
shall be the dreamer, and that both toiler
and dreamer shall be one. The dreams of
the future shall be day-dreams. They shall
be dreamed with eyes open and out loud in
the broad open light of a world without
fear ; a world without superstition, without
ignorance and without chains."
"Man, like the love-eyed animals, is
essentially a social species. But his so-
called social systems are not systems of
social peace. Instead of social organiza-
tions, he constructs competitive congestions.
In direct opposition to the constructive
harmony of his inherent nature, he has per-
mitted the few degenerate prey-beasts
among his family to fasten him down to a
divided confusion of ideas, to which he
foolishly bows like the idol worshiper and
the savage.
"This obeisant prostitution of intellect
and ideals, is called patriotism! And the
savagery of old which yoked the race in
chattel slavery, was nothing in comparison
with the mental servility of the pawns of
302 THE TORCH OF REASON.
this our 'representative' form of govern-
ment.
" Imagine a wolf representing a hare!
Can you conceive of the fish-hawk repre-
senting the interests of the fish upon whom
he feeds? Thinks of a workingman voting
for a representative in political office, who
possesses millions of dollars the accrued
profits from the traffic in uneaten bread-
bread snatched from the hungry mouths of
his own "patient wife and innocent children.
Such indeed were a pitiful sight !
"I recognize the fact that my body is a
great living organism of wonderfully
wrought and ever active machinery. I ar-
rived at such a knowledge of this human
institution through the studv of Science.
I found that the great organism called the
human body is but the social structure com-
posed of uncountable billions of minute cell
life, all joined together to make up the
whole r>erfect working, breathing, happy
man. Tf one single cell among these num-
berless billions becomes injured, every
other cell in this body will rush to the
rescue and repair the injury, or the whole
organism is likely to become diseased and
to disintegrate, and finallv to perish. I
would have the whole organism live a splen-
did, full, hap-ov life, by making it possible
for every cell making up the aggregate of
this bodv to be well fed, well exercised and
well rested.
THE TORCH OF REASON. 303
"I love life. This is some more of the
great selfishness of Socialism. How may
I obtain that life? That has ever been the
race question through all the ages. My
answer is, let man organize socially for the
perfection of economic conditions which
will make for life. What are conditions'?
Social contact among men a Society com-
posed of the creators of wealth a Society
of one class a Society in which the inter-
ests of one will be the interests of all a
Social Society.
"The science of Socialism is the science
of Self of Life. If you want a more tech-
nical definition go to the Latin. There you
will find what 'social' means (companion).
The 'ism' suffix being simply a term con-
struction, the value of which is to signify
that state of companionship which recog-
nizes more than one companion a collec-
tion of companions a society of compan-
ions Socialism.
" 'Brotherly love' is not Socialism. So-
cialism will not be achieved because of such
fine sentimental phraseology. Socialism
will be first, and will pave the way to broth-
erly love. Socialism will obtain in the
affairs of men because of selfishness, and
because of selfishness only the selfishness
that is as broad as space and as generous
as sunshine. Selfishness is the vital essence
of all force, and Force is the very ego of
all things not dead.
304 THE TORCH OF REASON.
"There used to be a peculiar reasoning
among working people to the effect that,
'should the worker get the full product of
his toil as Socialism proposes, he would
suddenly lose all desire to live, become lazy
and dissipated, and finally lay down and
die from starvation!' Every Socialist has
been importuned a thousand times to de-
sist from his disasterous course, because, it
was urged, unless those who do all the work
of the world are perpetually robbed of
eight-tenths of what their hands create,
there would be no ' incentive ' and all hands
would become discouraged and go on a pro-
tracted drunk!
"This same intellectual mastodon used to
assure us that, to work for another for
seventeen per cent, of one's labor product
were quite the proper thing because it gave
one work! But to have an industrial plan
whereby the worker worked for himself
collectively, retaining all of the one hun-
dred per cent, of his created wealth, would
be to ' divide up!'
"I have lain awake of nights trying to
analyze and classify this marvelous men-
tality, but in vain. In all science there is
no chemistry to analyze such a brain, and I
very much doubt if posterity will be able
to solve the dark mystery during the active
cycles of earth's futurity.
. "Come on board the Agitator and I will
show you what Life means. I will show
THE TORCH OF REASON. 305
you Tune. I will show you Individuality.
I will show you Peace, Harmony, Selfish-
ness and Love. There is where we work
at all of these. We are all trained indi-
viduals. There we make no 'mistakes.'
No punishments are inflicted there. We
are guilty of no 'sins' or 'crimes.' There
you will find Knowledge. There you will
become acquainted with Science. There
you will observe Balance. On board that
ship the obstructions are all removed.
'Self -denial' is not written in our code.
We know no styles or fashions. 'Morals'
and 'immorals' are not down in our vo-
cabulary. There are no different qualities
with us, everything is of the best quality
everything is good.
"We are out for life. With us it is 'good
Lord' and 'good Devil,' just so neither
comes between us and life. Self-culture
and organization keep us in perfect tune
with our economic interests, and everybody
smiles.
"There are no long faces in our com-
pany. Neither have we any special hours
for devil charming. When the devil sees
us coming he hunts a new latitude and
boxes his compass for a stern view. Or-
ders, as such, are unknown under the dis-
cipline we maintain; but signals there be
which are understood and heeded, it means
safety. Safety means greater life selfish-
ness.
306 THE TORCH OF REASON.
"We are all workers aboard the Agita-
tor. But we are all agreed upon some-
thing. Every man is self -trained and self-
disciplined, we have an objective point a
goal in view. When we start that ship we
first have decided that we want to go some-
where. Then we all go that particular
way. One-half of us do not try to run the
ship northward while the other half battle
with the first in the effort to drive her in a
southerly direction. In our feeble-minded
imagination, we fancy that every man Jack
of us is equally necessary in accomplishing
any desired result with every other man
Jack of us. Thus we are not brought to a
'dead level,' but to a live level.
" There is no graded parading of aris-
tocratic dignity in our world. We are men.
"I invented the Agitator and the Comet
because I could not help inventing them.
Creation is purely a selfish motive with
me. Constructive work makes me happy,
and I want to be happy. I resolved to give
my inventions to mankind, so that, by mak-
ing the happiness general I would have
some chance of getting mine. Anything
short of such a plan is short of life, is
short of liberty, is short of individuality.
And anything short of individual happi-
ness, in any degree, is slavery, and slavery
in all its forms must go."
In the very front row and in the end seat
on the left of the center aisle, was seated a
THE TORCH OF REASON. 307
little scrub of a man, who fidgeted con-
stantly, never for an instant taking his eyes
off the speaker, except occasionally to flash
an evil glance at Jason Sands. Immediately
back of him sat two gentlemen in black
broadcloth. The youthful orator had not
noticed them, probably because of his ultra-
enthusiasm; but they had not escaped his
father. From his bitter experiences with
this sleek species, coupled with the thou-
sand other dangers which for forty years
had kept him primed and cocked for trouble,
the alert Jason knew he could classify them
the moment he laid eyes on the cut-throat
trio. From where he sat he could size
them up; and he whispered his suspicions
to the Aztec doctor, only to be rebuked by
Jack Philips with a mild fling at his "over-
sensitiveness. " But Joe Hautier pricked
up his ears, and, though no one saw him do
it, slipped a hand inside his spotless linen
coat. Symbols sat up from dozing on
Toy's lap and ventured that there was
"sumpling doing." He had detected the
faint clicking sounds and recognized them
as the same clicking sounds he had heard
the night before, when the captain gave the
secret signal that "boiled" old Mullock
and his revenue tub Terror in Norton
Sound. Instantly with the clicking sounds
flew open a small shutter in the lighthouse,
and the white illumination changed to the
soft garnet-emerald, then back again to the
308 THE TORCH OF REASON.
white. The changes were so rapid and so
soon over that none save the captain of the
Agitator, the inventor and the operator in
the lighthouse noticed the thin, needle-like
point of white that shot for a fraction of
a second through the garnet-emerald glow
and touched the crown of the fidgety man
in the front row. Moreover, Captain Joe,
the inventor and the lighthouse operator
alone knew that the needle-like ray was a
"rangefinder."
The meeting was warming to its close.
The inspired speaker had poured forth his
best effort, dropping periods rapidly and
pungently. The one-hundred piece orches-
tra was essaying its instruments, and the
thousand male and female singers were
shuffling their music for the Marseillaise
in the grand finale. That human sea of
twenty thousand heads was billowing and
rolling to the classical eloquence of the
scholarly discourse. They had followed
him back through all the sad plethora of
a thousand years of grinding toil and sor-
row. Warming with the warmth of his
child love, and burning with him in the
wild fire of his dynamic portrayal of the
myriad wrongs of each robber regime. The
climax came when, rising to hitherto unsur-
mounted heights he eulogized his father's
name in a recapitulation of the perilous
and discouraging events culminating in
their recent reunion. And referring to
TIIK TORCH OF REASON. 309
his giant white-haired sire as the Spartacus
of the Social Revolution he concluded, with
sweetest sarcasm: "There is a much par-
roted mouthing more or less popular,
characterized as 'hero-worship.' It is a
baneful and contagious disease! I do not
know its originator, but I think I have
located its cause. It appears to be a germ
malady whose bacteria belong to the papo-
tenacio family, which are always largest
at the feed end. Strangely enough, the
germ is giffonic, existing only in the woof
of fright-wigs worn by those who parrot
it. If appearances are a criterion, none of
these fearsome, stentorian-tongued guar-
dians of approbate piety appear in any
immediate danger of becoming objects of
attack by this particular imaginary pesti-
lence. For sake of argument, it were gener-
ous to agree with the hero-worship
Nemesis, that heroes never existed, and
that bravery never existed; but there were
charity in such acquiescence! Some day
I am going to write a short treatise on
Jealousy. Then you will see the un-
lime-lighted 'parrots' hunting a new classi-
fication !
"You will never find a hero among
mockers."
With this last cool challenge to the fault-
finding destructionists, and with the right-
eous pride, generation-proof and genera-
tion-inherited, flushing cheek and flashing
310 THE TORCH OF REASON.
from eye, he pointed to where his father
the victor of a thousand unsought battles
was seated, and with clarion resonance,
cried: "Behold a hero!"
They were magic words. They brought
the crowd to its feet as if impelled by steel
springs. Up went the yell: "Speech!"
" Speech!" " Jason Sands!" " Jason
Sands!"
Jason heard the clamor, and with swift
retrospection he swept back over the years
to the street corner and the soap box. Hur-
riedly he compared his early digressions in
the midst of many a motley crowd to the
conversational excellence of his son's poig-
nant rhetoric, and wondered if he could
really make a speech. But there was no
denying them. "I'm in for it," he ac-
quiesced, and with the throng madly hur-
rahing he made his way to his son's side,
and with both crutches under his left arm,
he raised his great right hand for silence.
It could be seen that his huge bulk shook
with great emotion. The crowd still yelled,
and he leaned and rested half his weight
on his x son's shoulder.
The old Spartan was fighting another
battle. Was it to be his last! Like a
storm-struck ship on a hidden reef for a
moment he floundered, then righted on the
crest of a mighty wave of fresh enthusiasm,
and stood motionless before them like an
adamantine sentinel on a storm-swept shore.
THE TORCH OP REASON. 311
For fully ten minutes pandemonium
reigned. As one surge of applause upon
another rose and fell, an old glad twinkle
got in his eye, but he did not smile. All
the smile had gone out of him and was
buried and frozen in the north snows along
with his amputated foot. For twenty
years the only smile he had known was the
brute smile of battle; and with his last
great fight with the wolves had gone that
smile forever.
But who was hissing! Quimby knew,
for he had seen them at last the two
well-nourished gentlemen in black broad-
cloth, and he remembered the threat of
Father Munne. With lips parted in a
hideous snarl, their fat faces blue with
hate, they hissed both son and father while
twenty thousand others cheered. The little
fidgety man in front exhibited unmistakable
signs of fear; but as no attention was paid
to the hissing, he sank a little lower in his
seat and the two men on the stage stood
motionless.
There was a lull, followed by the in-
troduction. Came another stunning out-
burst, then silence. In a deep bass voice,
clear as a glass bell, but with just the
slightest tremolo in it, the old rebel gladia-
tor began.
"Why would you hear me?" he protested.
"Look at me! I am an old tree! I grew
high up on the mountain. I have faced the
blast of torrent and tempest; and I have
312 THE TORCH OF REASON.
stood firmly against both quake and deluge.
But it is autumn. My limbs are shat-
tered and my trunk rift with the stroke
of strife. Over the hill the sun for me
is going down. It will rise on the morrow,
but only for him (laying his gnarled right
hand on his son's auburn head). Winter
is at hand; and when it comes, like an
old tree I shall fall in the snow.
"It is good to be here, and it. is good to
be loved. I have found my son, or rather
he has found me, 'and I shall live with him
on his strange ship; but when the hour
strikes, he will take me back to Her. I
have tried to live to see Socialism, and now
my dream is coming true.
"You are all so happy! That is as it
should be. I am happy too what is left
of me for these boys have fulfilled the
promise, and surely 'ye shall inherit the
earth' have inherited the earth. This
grand demonstration proves to me that
those who cried out in the wilderness cried
not in vain.
T _
"Blasphemy-
" Devil," interrupted first one and then
the other of the two groomed gentlemen
in the black broadcloth, leaping to their
feet with clenched fists and bloodshot eyes.
" 'Ere! 'ere!" remonstrated the yellow-
haired Englishman, and a dead silence like
the premonition of doom fell upon the
house. Jason and his son stood like petri-
THE TORCH OF REASON. 313
fied trees, and Captain Hautier, followed
by Spanto and Philips jumped into the
audience from their box, just as the little
fidgety man jerked a huge black revolver
from somewhere about his person in the
act of dropping a shot into the duo on the
stage, when the blackness of an ocean cave
displaced the colored lights, and a thin,
needle-like shaft of lightning-blue white,
flashed, meteor-like from the lighthouse
straight, with unerring accuracy, and struck
the loaded gun in mid-air. There was a
puff of white smoke and a faint sound
like flushed powder; a splash of molten
steel and lead on the aluminum floor,
together with the charred remains of the
right hand of the little fidgety man burned
off at the wrist!
Amid the hysterical screams of fainting
women and cries of "fire" and "murder"
from excited men, the operator in the light-
house touched two keys, one labeled
"LIGHT," the other "PANIC." Captain
Joe and the doctor made a spring for the
stage, just as the lights came on; but
Philips did not understand, and was so
caught with the crowd in the amphitheater.
With the return of the lights, out dropped
the whole bottom of the coliseum, taking
the entire audience with it. Down, down,
down into darkness it fell, so rapidly that
every tongue was stilled and every breath
stayed with the indescribable sensation of
dropping feet first into a bottomless pit!
CHAPTER IX.
FOUR YEARS AROUND THE WORLD.
I stood, at twilight, while the pall
Of battlements their shadows flung
Athwart the bullet-eaten wall,
Where dying Communards had sung;
And there in fantasy, like ghosts,
The murdered myriads arose,
And marshalling their battered hosts,
Forever tyrants to depose,
Unfurled the Banner of the Free
The blood-red Flag of Liberty !
Ten seconds after the bottom fell out of
the coliseum, Jack Philips found himself
afloat in a huge barge along with twenty
thousand others on a subterranean lake.
And in ten minutes more the barge had
become the bottom of the coliseum again,
and he and the rest were seated as before,
while the music and singers rendered the
grand old Marseillaise. But neither the
little fidgety man nor the two groomed
gentlemen in black broadcloth were present !
It was just one more of the life-saving
inventions of the New Time. It operated
to prevent disaster in case of accident of
whatever name or nature. Everything
was invention under the new order, and
it was surprising how many geniuses were
bobbing up, now that profit in human labor
was in Canada a thing of brutal history.
(314)
THE TORCH OF REASON. 315
To appreciate this new device, one had
but to recall the many holocausts under
Capitalism, including the Pemberton mill,
the Columbus school, the Bellville convent,
the Iroquois theatre, and the Triangle
shirtwaist factory. In all of these, as in
thousands of others now forgotten, hun-
dreds had been burned and crushed to
death for no other reason than that safety
devices cost a little money.
None of the buildings of the Co-opera-
tors were inflammable, but the heads of
men were still inflammable, and there was
no precaution too great to be undertaken
by the Socialists.
It was no trouble to have these subter-
ranean lakes and gardens, driveways or
tunnels. With the electro-radium ray, a
mountain could be fused into gas and made
to disappear in a few minutes ; and to burn
tunnels and cavities in the earth for any
purpose was but to play the ray on the
desired point. All matter being simply
congealed gas, and gas being lighter than
air, all one had to do to get rid of matter
was to know the process by which it became
reduced to its original state. It was simply
a question of getting the fire hot enough.
When the ray was turned on a granite
wall or a clay bank, the stone or clay
glowed, turned white, then with a sputter-
ing hiss retreated and vanished before the
terrific heat like snow struck with a stream
316 THE TORCH OF REASON.
of hot water. Thus ditches were dug,
mines sunk, and surface lands leveled.
Also all the foul fever swamps and stagnant
pools were in this way eliminated and des-
troyed.
It was this same fire-force that propelled
the Agitator and the Comet. Back of the
thin, semi-circular slits in their hulls, which
slits looked like thumb-nail marks on a wa-
termelon, or spoon bowl thrusts in the but-
ter, were aluminum-steel compartments into
which was forced a highly combustible
gas made from earth and sea water, and
stored in hydraulic tanks abroad. Each
semi-circular slit slanted astern, and had
the invention consisted of this alone, with
the compartments filled with air instead
of the highly combustible gas, a maximum
speed of a hundred miles an hour would
have been as easy as running at a ten-knot
clip under steam or gasoline with any of
the old-fashioned tubs of commerce. Think,
then, of the awful resistance of this ex-
plosive gas coming in contact with the water
and being ignited by the electro-radium
ray as it escaped!
Quimby had seen rockets cleave the sky,
and with a little study he came to know
the force of a burning stream of gas. All
the aerial crafts he built were submarines
as well, and when running at full speed
the exploding gas operated so rapidly and
fiercely that the ships themselves never
THE TORCH OF REASON. 317
got time to touch the water at all. It
was blown back faster than its own pres-
sure could act against the displacement of
the craft. They burned vacuums in either
water or air, and through vacuums of their
own burning they traveled; thus eliminat-
ing friction, their speed was regulated only
according to desire. Its limits had never
been tested, as no one could be found rash
enough to undertake the possibility of
stopping after such a test. This was the
way of lightning. It was, indeed, a system
of rapid transit.
The untutored never would have sus-
pected that the entire seating capacity of the
I. I. Ds' theatres were built upon boats,
and that these boats in turn were resting
on ball-bearing toboggan slides, fifty per
cent, out of perpendicular, and a hundred
feet above underground lakes, seas or
rivers. When the keyboard operator in
the lighthouse touched the ivory disk la-
beled " PANIC," he released an electric
clutch that held suspended the coliseum's
auditorium as the human hand may seize
and hold on to an iron ring. To over-
power and manacle the godly trio that
had caused the trouble, clutch and draw
up the audience to its original place, was
the work of but moments. Compressed air
did the trick, and compressed air never
failed.
It seemed there was no escape for these
318 THE TORCH OF REASON.
scientists, these ungodly heretics, these
inventors who were continually upsetting
the accepted order of things with their un-
understandable mechanical devices and
their "devilish" theories concerning or-
ganic life. Wherever they went it was
the same. Trouble was ever there to greet
them. They tried to avoid it by every
conceivable precaution and kindness, but
the disturbers tracked them like hungry
wolves. It were ever so. Past history
was full of it. Men, like animals, had al-
ways shied at things they were too ignorant
to comprehend, and these the cunning
preyed upon by perpetuating their foolish
fears.
Four years, it was, since that little
episode in Victoria, and the Agitator,
stowed with motion picture films, curios,
historic data and wood and stone specimens
from the far and hidden archives of earth,
was lying heavily from her over-weight
in the landlocked harbor of St. Johns,
Newfoundland.
It was September. They had spoken
the "White Squadron" of the Gloucester
fishermen, home-bound, off the Banks the
day before, for the weather is not fine for
cod fishing on the Grand Banks of New-
foundland after September. Gloucester
still lived by fishing, and still ate meat;
for was it not a part of the great United
States?
THE TORCH OF REASON. 319
But Newfoundland, once but an unde-
veloped island, inhabited ever so sparsely
by rough fisher folk, uncultured and poor
with the poverty of dirt, was now a ve-
ritable tropical paradise, and one of the
most popular summer resorts on the North
Atlantic Coast. Egg-shaped lay St. Johns
just behind a winrow-like range of fossil-
sandstone mountains that overhung the
South coast, reached through a narrow
cut in Signal Mountain, which cut looked
as if it had been sawed out with a cross-
cut saw.
Seal and cod fisheries had been the
island's chief industries back in the days
of civilized barbarism; but now the seal
oil tanks were gone, and Water street, with
its ramshackle canneries and stinking fish
offal, was a transformation to beautiful
palm gardens, with sparkling fountains
and automobile boulevards.
Up the hill, north of the harbor, where
the quaint old city used to lean toward
the sea, terraces of magnificent cement
and colored glass mansions dotted the slope,
surrounded by shade trees and flower
gardens, and all kept green and growing
both summer and winter by means of the
electro-radium ray. Cold, wintry winds
screeched and howled down the bleak coast
in winter, with all their customary fury;
but when they struck the screen of "live
light" that ran around the cit}^ like a
320 THE TORCH OF REASON.
Chinese wall, the coldest blizzards became
summer zephyrs, and snow storms turned
to warm showers in the heart of zero
weather.
This was modern Newfoundland. It
was some of the " modernism" feared and
fought by the regalian candle-gloomers
with their incense nonsense and their tom-
tom, torn-foolery of the worm-eaten yester-
day. But there was one primal relic of
the weak-kneed past that Newfoundland
still clung to and cherished. How hardly
may we censure her, when we recall that
the aforesaid relic came to her honestly
down the back stairs of a long line of
ancestral back-moss and obsolete monkey-
shines? The relic was the town crier!
The office had been a lineal perpetuation
for three hundred years. Ever since the
first hobgoblin yarns of witchcraft lore
sent their meandering ghosts excursioning
through the superstituous brains of their
long since moldy forebears, the town crier
of St. Johns had been the annually re-
appointed joke. Regularly each hour
through the sleeping streets tottered his
shriveled form, lantern in hand, his long
white whiskers gyrating, like hoar-moss
in the wind from his palsied jaw. He
was always a good old man too old to be
anything but good and his voice always
trembled like the gurgle of death.
It was more than twenty years since
THE TORCH OF REASON. 321
Jason and old "Thimble-rig" Harrington
had played in the STAR OF THE SEA
HALL, but the crier was the same old
crier, and he looked just the same. Time
apparently had wrought no change in him.
All changes in him had been made and he
was beyond change.
They had put up at THE KNIGHTS'
HOME, a Water street hostelry of Dicken-
sonian antiquity, where the servant girls
were required to carry the guests' trunks
upstairs to their rooms, and servant girls
at that time got "two-and-six" a month!
Every nightly hour, in a wheezy mono-
tone, the whole town was awakened by the
crier on his lonely rounds, with the follow-
ing or similar assinine intelligence droned
out in a protracted drawl that sounded
for all the world like a squeeky gate hinge
in an east wind: " E-e-e-e-eleven o'clock,
and a-a-a-a-11 is well, and all is well, and
all is well except a drowned goat in the
harbor. H-e-e-e's dead."
They had been around the world the
Agitator and her party and in three
months they would be tied up at St.
Louis, on the Mississippi River.
From Victoria, just four years ago, they
had cruised down the Pacific Coast to San
Francisco, thence to Honolulu the Philip-
pines, Australia, New Zealand and around
the Horn. Cutting in and out among the ten
thousand islands of the tropic and semi-
322 THE TORCH OF REASON.
tropic Pacific, had eaten up the first year.
But the motion pictures secured were the
rarest and most valuable ever collected.
Added to these were the wonderful deep
sea shells and other marine curiosities of
the South Seas. The Agitator could dive
to any depth, and with her powerful lights
turning Neptune's treasure chambers into
noon-day, they robbed the jewel caskets
of Amphitrite of their choicest pearls and
photographed the strange marine life for
the motion picture schools of the new
Democracy.
From Tierra Del Fuego they slipped
up the east coast of South America to
Buenos Aires, Rio De Janeiro and into
the South Atlantic ocean to the island of
St. Helena, the speck of rock in the vast
expanse of blue ocean made famous by the
exile and disgrace to its lonely shores of
the murderer Napoleon in 1815. Here a
blear-eyed, tip-seeking old fraud conducted
the visitors to the "very spot" where the
Corsican beast was wont to sit dreaming
France-ward, pointing out, with officious
dignity, the "very rock" upon which the
conquered conqueror loved to sit, daddling
his royal toes in the ticklesome sudsy surf.
Up the Congo next they sailed. Then
back around Cape Town to Madagascar,
Zanzibar, Ceylon and Bombay.
Here they were in India, the land where
religion had become mayhem, and where
THE TORCH OF REASON. 323
social cast ranged from the strata of straw
with its insigna of cow dung, to bejewlled
Gaekwar in his robe of gold, his harem
and slaves, sipping the wine of pearls and
sitting above the law. Here it was at
Delhi, back in 1911, that 200,000,000 sub-
jugated starvelings laid belly down with
faces in the dust, and spent $100,000,000, to
rehearse the coronation farce of England's
bigamist king the last parasitic monarch
ever crowned and while that barbaric
fantasma was being staged, 6,000 of India's
poor surrendered their lives to the Pale
Lady of Starvation. Westward and north-
ward the course now lay, through the gulf
of Aden and into the Red Sea.
In the Congo they did not tarry. One
month was long enough for them. Quimby
Sands wanted to go there to confirm the
tales of cruelty told of old King Leopold
to the natives. Here he found a million
square miles of tropical paradise being
ravished of its natural beauties and re-
sources as with a pestilence. Whole na-
tions of blacks were still groaning under
the yoke of chattel slavery, tens of thou-
sands of whom had been maimed for life
by the uniformed Myrmidons of this old
bloody beast King Leopold of Belgium.
"Go up the Congo," Jason had advised
his son, "and you will see sights that will
make your blood run cold." Jason knew,
for he had been shanghaied aboard a
324 THE TORCH OF REASON.
French blackbirder on the Gold Coast back
in the '90s, and the thoughts of the "nig-
ger" blood he had seen wantonly spilled
nauseated and unnerved him.
For the slightest disobedience or irregu-
larity, a hand or foot was chopped oft';
and for any diminution in the quantity
or quality of service rendered subsequently,
oif came the head of the poor unfortunate
to satisfy the cruel lust of one of Capital-
ism's most successful Christian gentlemen.
All this was being done in the civilized
process of "developing" the country. Of
course, it was because Leopold was a great
and good king that he so loved these help-
less colored slaves! He loved them in the
same sense and degree that the American
wage-slave is loved by his Wall Street
masters: It is because they love him so
that they "give" him work! And it is
because they love him so that they give
him a "lockout" and the police club when-
ever the market is supplied and there is
no longer a profit in loving him.
The Congo country was an open store-
house of good things free-lying on the
bosom of earth, to be had for the taking.
So old King Leopold furnished the finan-
cial backing of the Henry M. Stanley ex-
pedition of robbery and blood, which, in
1877, did spotter service for him, and paved
the way for the international wolf-pack
known as the African International As-
THE TORCH OP REASON. 325
sociation. With this Capitalistic machine
greased with the gore and sweat of both
black and white slaves, at a conference in
Berlin in 1885, fourteen great Powers were
agreed upon the methods and tactics by
which they were to pour their mercenaries
and hirelings into the Congo to exploit
it of its riches. This pact, or greater
wolf -pack, was called the "Great Charter
of the Congo Free State." Which, trans-
lated into understandable diction, meant, the
free license of fourteen nations to legally
devastate and murder, enslave, rob and lay
waste to one of the richest lands under the
shining sun.
But the Congo was not alone. What
of the Boer war? England " Merry Eng-
land" -it was which slaughtered and well-
nigh exterminated a whole nation of peace-
ful happy farmers in that awful war of
commercial piracy. Jason was in New
Orleans at the time, and was commissioned
by the government to go up the Mississippi
River for mules, which mules were to be
sold to the British government and shipped
to South Africa. All capitalist govern-
ments were the same, and all were engaged
in the same business of enslaving the work-
ing class and in keeping the people divided
that they might the more easily control
and legally rob them.
But it was different now. All the great
nations were Co-operative Industrial
326 THE TORCH OF REASON.
Democracies. Socialism had come every-
where at about the same time. One ex-
ception there was, however: the great
United States! The most enslaved and
capital-ridden Autocracy on earth, the
people were sound asleep, dreaming the
sweet but archaic dreams that their grand-
fathers had dreamed of liberty from the
tyrant rule of a foreign king.
It was their very dreams of liberty that
kept them enslaved and asleep. Their
liberty was liberty in their dreams only.
How could they know that they were asleep
when they trusted all their thinking to
their rich masters? Their masters told
them they were wide awake, and that they
were "free-born voting sovereigns." How,
then, could they know that they were
slaves? Didn't their masters know best?
Look at them! They wore sleek black
clothes and plug hats and all that sort of
thing. Of course, they were the smartest,
elsewise how could they wear diamonds
and stop at the best hotels ? But they were
waking up that is, the children were.
The Red Cadets was proof of this.
Through the Suez Canal, past Cairo and
into the Mediterranean, then up the Nile
they explored, and with the aid of the
Comet and her powerful ray, they were
able to give to the world the secret of the
Pyramids and the Sphinx. The tombs of
Cheops and his successors they were, and
THE TORCH OF REASON. 327
were made of cement, instead of blocks
of stone, as was commonly but erroneously
supposed.
In those days, when these kings' tombs
were built, the soul was said to be simply
the breath the only thing given up at
death and it was supposed to be breathed
up, or to go into some beast, bird, reptile
or vermin anything that happened to be
nearest at the moment of its flight. This
creeping, crawling or fluttering thing then,
according to theory, hustled away with its
precious charge to somewhere or other,
anywhere wherever Heaven happened to be
located temporarily, for the convenience
of the sorceresses who lived by teaching it.
After 5,000 years of meandering about the
country in the aforesaid fashion, it was
supposed to be brought back to its original
owner and breathed again into the nostrils,
when, straightway he would become himself
or herself again, as the case might be.
In order to have all of this fine melo-
dramatic phantasm staged and opened on
schedule time, of course, the carcasses
of these cruel old tyrants had to be mum-
mified and entombed.
But that was the 'belief of the tune, and
it answered as well as anything to keep
the ignorant submissive and satisfied with
their misery. Besides, it gave the slaves
work! Pyramids and sphinxs had to be
built, otherwise how could they preserve
328 THE TOECH OF REASON.
and have to worship the carion of their
beloved rulers'? All of this about the sor-
ceresses and their accepted fetish was in
the books, and the books were on the shelves
of the Public Libraries of every nation on
earth; but there they stayed, dust-laden,
and were never read.
For a thousand miles through the sleepy
Land of Egypt up the sluggish Nile with
first Agitator, then Comet, they explored,
and the sights of ancient wreck and ruin,
when the shaved pates with their temporal
power had taxed the people either to death
or out of the country, filled them with
shame and sadness. There were the stately
halls and temples, upon whose vast walls
still clung the priceless paintings and
wonderful engravures of two thousand
years ago; and upon whose crumbling
floors wild beasts munched the red bones
of their fresh-killed prey. On the broad
cement steps, still intact, sprawled slimy
crocodiles, basking in the silent desert sun,
and from behind fallen columns in the
swale the brooding mud hen left her nest
to squawk frightfully away among the
water reeds.
Next it was through the historic old
Dardanelles and the Turkish Bosphorus
at Constantinople, and into the Black Sea.
To Naples and Rome they cruised in a
day. It was from this latter ancient city
that the Pope had been driven out to take
THE TORCH OF REASON. 329
refuge from the wrath of his long-suffering
people in the United States. Thither he
had hied himself at the behest of his
American allies, the Wall Street Adminis-
tration. Taking up his new berth in the
great $3,500,000 cathedral at St. Louis,
his business was to unionize all remaining
religious creeds under Roman Catholic dic-
tatorship. This accomplished, Church and
State formed a clandestine collusion for
the purpose of combating Socialism. All
this were inevitable. The dynasties and
systems of earth had ever germinated with-
in themselves the fires of their own dissolu-
tion. It was history. This, then, was the
last stand of the Beast. It marked the
beginning of the end. This, the fall of the
Papacy, happened in the year of 1914.
They visited Marseilles and historic old
Toulon in South France, then whirled
around through the Gibraltar Strait. Here,
in response to a request from the Comrades
of the surrounding country, the Agitator
gave them a hand in the demolishing of
that famous, or infamous rock, which Great
Britain for a century had boasted could
not be taken.
Modern civilization had decreed that it
must be done away with to aid posterity
in forgetting the crimes of war's brutal
history. Wars were no more and the causes
of war lingered only as a shuddery memory
of the nightmare past.
330 THE TORCH OF REASON.
Running a half-mile out to sea, the Agita-
tor focused first her range finder, then
turned on the mighty electro-radium pillar
in its most violent form. The night was
dark and the " fireworks" splendid. The
performance lasted fully a minute. The
noise was beyond description it was awful !
All the thunderbolts of time loaded into
one huge bomb and exploded without warn-
ing could not have matched it. Imagine
it if you can; but then, there are some
things beyond imagination. Gibraltar, a
solid mountain of rock, fused into gas
in a minute! It must have been beyond
belief back a half-century. This brought
down a torrent of rain; and when morning
came the great Eock of Gibraltar was no
more.
France, in 1910, polled* 1,106,047 So-
cialists votes and seated 76 members in
her Parliament. This was the shot that
toppled the throne of greed. But greed
was heavily entrenched, and only for the
fact that the workers were united did
they win the third Commune. This time
it was not a "Paris" Commune, but a
French Commune. They had learned
their lesson well these French hewers of
wood and drawers of water. No more
reaction for them. The Paris shambles of
'71 was remembered.
(* Official figures presented to the author by Morris
Hillquit International Secretary of the Socialist party in
1011.)
THE TORCH OF REASON. 331
When the Sands party arrived, all Paris,
yea, all France, was in celebration of the
new victory, and the coming of the Ameri-
cans was welcomed with the best that
human labor afforded. What impressed
Jason Sands most was the sacred devotion
with which these Frenchmen consecrated
their lives to principle and cause. The
spirit of it fired him. It was in the air.
The sun reflected it. The birds sang of
it. The warm showers bathed the earth
with it. It was the soul of the French
Revolution. He had heard his father
speak of it, for his people, on his father's
side, were French, and had been driven
out of France for having taken part in
the slaughter of the aristocrats in that
same revolution. He had always felt it
in the inner man of him, but he had never
lived it before. Here one could sense it
with every breath. Men trod lightly the
pavements pavements that had run red
because labor had had to learn its lessons
in red. Women still shuddered at the cry
of children, and mothers paled wide-eyed
to see a petal fall from a red French rose.
Standing in the Square Du Pere-La-
choise, his attention was riveted on what
at first looked like an incomplete bit of
masonry an unfinished wall. Upon closer
approach it proved to be a monument
erected sacred to the memory of the mar-
tyred Communards, 40,000 of whom the
332 THE TORCH OF REASON.
masters had lined up against a deadwall
and shot to death. This monument was
calculated to immortalize a section of the
very deadwall against which the brains and
hearts of those 40,000 Socialists and their
wives and babies had been shot out. There
were the bullet holes which had eaten deep
into the very stone of that deadwall.
Wonderfully wrought in bas-relief upon
that wall-monument, and reflecting the
silent horror and hopeless, expectant
doom of those victims of a tyrant's wrath,
the modern sculptor had portrayed all but
the crackle of musketry and moan of death.
Here was a mother sinking to her knees,
a sucking babe clasped to her nude breast,
both shot through with a dozen holes. On
this square of cold stone, a young herculene
son of France, his head defiantly thrown
back with honest pride in that he had
been chosen to die for the Commune, stands
holding apart his shirt front to receive
the volley of lead lead that had been
mined and molded by workingmen! Here
was a severed hand; there a mutilated
face; on the next cube a dying patriarch,
his bald skull riven and torn where the
leaden missiles had ploughed it through.
But all this was only so much stone.
Like what must the real thing have been!
History says they uttered no cowardly
alarm. But these cold stones did cry out,
more eloquent cried they in their silence
THE TORCH OF REASON. 333
than rang the death sentence that sent
their righteous souls into eternity.
Jason felt a hand laid gently on his
right arm, and looking down he recog-
nized the form, but not the features of
Captain Hautier. Joe was at home in
Paris, but the Commune had turned him
adrift. "Come," he said, "I will show
you where my father stood and faced them,
cursing their craven souls to Hell, after
the cowards in uniform, who obey orders,
had pumped into him a pound of lead.
He was ironed to my mother and my sister,
and when their brains splashed upon his
broad breast, he held them in his mighty
arms until they shot him down. But I
was too young; they overlooked me in the
cradle where her tender care had laid me."
They were now at the very deadwall
which the sculptor of the memorial monu-
ment had tried to imitate. Here came
the working class of Paris once a year to
decorate the wall in memory of their
martyred comrades. Some of the faded
decorations still clung to pegs driven into
the bullet holes. Withered garlands of
flowers, crosses and wreaths there were,
whose crumpled petals littered the ground
at its base. Jason looked at Joe and beheld
the face, not of the blvthe navigator of the
Acfitator, but of a lion at bay. It was
but a flash across that intervening vista
to those days of slaughter. As he stood
334 THE TORCH OF REASON.
before that mural sentinel, which loomed,
a silent witness to a nation's crime, he
saw not sculptured faces and breasts of
stone, but the living and livid mutilated
flesh and bone of those murdered Com-
munards. Every floral cross and wreath
became a rigid form; and into the dark
orifices where leaden missiles had gouged
out the solid stone, came the horror stare
of virgin 's eyes, alternating with the stead-
fast gaze of the militant heroes who had
scorned the blindfold rag.
He saw his father as his mother and
sister must have seen him, a battered god,
glowing with triumph in the hour of defeat ;
crushed but never conquered; killed, per-
chance, but living still, while the corpses
fell beside him with everv volley from the
firing squad, in the mad dream that ran
riot through his imaginative brain. Fan-
tasy possessed him; and mingled with the
hoarse curses of the veterans grown old in
toil, he could hear the death-gasp of the
women and children shot down like herded
beasts in the dust.
Born with the blood-infusion of the
Commune in his veins a heritage nurtured
with his mother's milk he was a Com-
munard; and he was living the reincarnated
battles of his crucified corn-patriots, and
awaiting in his fancy, as did his sire in
reality, for the volley that should bring
him down. Yonder rode the haughty com-
THE TORCH OF REASON. 335
mander, whose sin-ill voice rang cruelly
in the sun-risen dawn, as between the
long lines of manacled citizens his black
charger pranced. "Step out!" he could
hear the buzzard hiss, "you look intelligent;
step out!" Which mandate meant: you
are to be shot to death against a deadwall !
And the citizen thus addressed would take
three paces forward. "Away with him"
or her, would scream . . . .* And thus per-
ished 40,000 Paris workfolk, whose ultra-
optimism and lack of self-wisdom had cost
them both their lives and their cause.
That was forty years ago ; but its history
could never die. "Step out, you look in-
telligent," unconsciously lisped the ashen
lips of the Frenchman ; and Jason repeated
mechanically, "step out, you look intel-
ligent!" To be intelligent, that was the
crime, for to be intelligent was to be a
menace to the authority of tyranny.
Jason thought of the Dick Military Law
in America, with its mandate of "shoot
or be shot at the order of the President!"
Then a sickness came stealing over him,
and Joe saw in his face that he had aged.
It was twilight when they turned to
go, and with the falling shadows and falling
dew came strange whisperings through the
(The military fiend who gave the orders to have the
Communards shot, and whose name, for mercy's sake, is here
suppressed, because he subsequently became a Socialist and a
member of the French Parliament.)
336 THE TORCH OP REASON.
stilly night, whisperings such as only Com-
munards may hear.
Through the English Channel they sailed
and up the Thames to London, then into
the Baltic Sea to St. Petersburg, where the
last of the Russian butchers had been
driven into the sea. The German Empire
next they visited, after which a year was
spent among the lesser nations, teaching
them co-operation and helping them on to
their new Socialistic feet.
In Berlin they visited the great national
Zoo, and had the pleasure of making the
acquaintance of " Dutch" Bill, the subdued
"war lord" and deposed Emperor, who had
been given a job as animal feeder. For
Bill just simply could not live away from
both blood and gunpowder, and the com-
rades were disposed to be generous.
Now here they were in the waters of
Newfoundland, with but one more great
mission unperformed. This accomplished,
Jason Sands, together with his son, would
revisit the old home high up among the
New Hampshire mountains.
In each port visited, they had been the
recipients of every known form of welcome
from the united hosts of the I. I. Ds. As
they sailed out past the "links" into the
open sea, their farewell from St. Johns
was no less demonstrative. Jason watched
the receding city on the hill, aflame with
THE TORCH OF REASON. 337
red silk banners, suddenly cut off from
view as they rounded the southwestern
promontory. St. Pierre, Miquelon, loomed
up before them as they dropped Cape Race
and shot across Placentia Bay. Jason re-
membered that other September back there
on the "Broken Bone," when he had
packed sack and fought wolves that night
on the ice-wall. Also he thought of Leland
Tannerhill, and wondered what he must be
thinking of him and his promise to be home
early in that September now four years
agone.
But it was of Ben Page that he most
was thinking. What of his old partner,
whom he had left at the top of the world
and alone ? Suppose Ben had followed him
and fell in with the grey devils he had
baffled? Or what if he had never returned
from the "Hedgehog?" How could he
know that Leland had ever received that
letter? Perhaps Ben had succeeded in get-
ting out, and that he had made his way to
Raven Roost in safety, and that he was
still there waiting for him! He reproved
himself that he had not cleared up this
matter at once and set himself right with
his conscience and his old friends. But
here they were foaming past St. Pierre, the
Agitator throwing up a white crest of boil-
ing spray in a wake that aimed northward
of Cape Ray and the Anticosti Islands.
338 THE TORCH OF REASON.
It was one of those dreamy, sunny after-
noons when men are glad with life. The
sea, oft so wild and turbulent here in the
St. Lawrence Gulf, rolled drowsily and
peacefully, while myriads of feathered sea
things of every name and nature squawked
and scaled the cliffs and sky, af right at the
strange porpoise-like monster that ripped
so swiftly through them as they skimmed
the foam-crested swells.
Miquelon was deserted. Once the ren-
dezvous of "wool-pullers," with the coming
of Socialism smuggling was a trade that no
longer paid; consequently the business was
abandoned. St. Pierre was the headquar-
ters and had belonged to France. A bald
knob of barren rock, without a leaf or
shrub of green to relieve the forbidding
aspect of its ashen grey, it was an unin-
viting haven to any whose ideals rose
higher than the code of the blackjack and
the ethics of the thief. Here was "made,"
bottled and labeled with the importers' la-
bel of a fictitious French winer, "BEST
OLD EXTRA DEY CHAMPAGNE,"
etc., which sold well to the tin horn sports
of Boston and New York as the "clear
quill!"
Smugglers were seldom caught. They
were indeed "wool-pullers." How could
they be expected to be punished when the
officials of every government on the civil-
THE TORCH OP REASON. 339
ized earth were the ringleaders of the
smuggler fraternity, and who furnished the
srovernment stamp of cancellation at the
"port of entry" to the moonshiners to be
used as needed?
As they feathered foam through the
Strait of Belle Isle and dashed into the
Labrador Current, Jason acquainted Cap-
tain Joe with his wish, and to his surprise
he found the brusque navigator eager for
the adventure. The crew, also, he found
ready to a man for the search, although
they had been absent years from their re-
spective homes without rest or furlough.
It was only a matter of a few thousand
miles, his son reassured him, a mere outing
of not more than a week at the outside.
Besides, it was right on their way to the
north pole, whither they were bound.
They would find Ben Page, positively
declared Quimby Sands to his adoring
father, for nothing could elude the eye of
the little Comet, and he would pilot her
himself. Jason should go along, and if
still in the North country, they would bring
him safely back.
Through Davis Strait and Baffin's Bay
and out into the frozen Arctic Ocean sped
the wonderful thing of fire, frightening
the Eskimos along the old trail of the
former (fake) pole hunters, melting her way
as she went. Ice was no hindrance to the
340 THE TORCH OF REASON.
progress of the Agitator. She could dissi-
pate an ice floe ten miles in advance with
her finder charged and focused, and it was
beautiful the way she mowed down the
bergs.
They had squandered a full thirty days'
running in and out among the bays and
islands, from the Hudson Bay to Beaufort
Sea, astonishing and amusing the natives,
and being in turn entertained by them,
Tales of frightful cruelty and exploitation
of them by the pole-fakers they told. They
were not pole-liunters, but thieves. They
came to the settlements with their ships
laden to the waterline with cheap trash for
trading. A package of needles costing ten
cents in Boston or New York fetched a
polar bear skin; and for a cast-iron sheath-
knife an Eskimo gave up a black fox.
Candy, whisky and tobacco of the cheapest
quality, these great American humbugs had
swapped off on the helpless and unsophisti-
cated children of the snows, carrying away
in return all their store of fur, ivory and
curios, along with all the best dogs, sledges
and young men.
Each year the ships came laden with
trashy trinkets, departing to leave behind
the pallor of poverty, shaming the cold red
glow of the somber midnight sun. There
was no limit to Capitalism. It reached its
taloned tentacles out to the remotest cor-
ners of earth, feeling among the cold crags
THE TORCH OF REASON. 341
and colder icebergs, it cruelly picked the
pockets of the simple frost folk, leaving
them to strive hungrily and forlornly
through the frozen six months night.
Then back would go the "explorer," or
rather, the exploiters, to civilization, to be
wined and dined and decorated with col-
lege degrees, insignias of honor and gold
braid. Society women kissed them; news-
papers lauded them; cities presented them
with their keys, and the rostrum welcomed
them. To one of these eminent pole-finders,
the Thieves' League of St. Louis once gave
$20,000 for a lecture at its centennial cele-
bration. Later some one yelled "fake!"
whereupon the Thieves' League came out
with the astonishing information to the ef-
fect that they had known all along he was
a fake, but that they knew he would draw a
crowd !
All this was said to be scientific research !
And the people fell for it regularly, as they
fell for all the rest of the snides and hum-
bugs upon which their muddled mentalities
were annually fed.
But all that thing was a brainstorm of
history. Here was the Agitator at the
magnetic vortex under the North Star.
They had found Ben Page, frozen to death,
and he had been dead in the snow four
years. Now it was a dash for the pole.
It was the last of the summer solstice in
the land of the midnight sun, and over the
342 THE TORCH OF REASON.
frozen end of the world was coming the
long cold sleep.
They were in latitude 85 north, on the
75th meridian. Here both mercury and the
spirit glasses froze, and the cold was im-
measurable. Everything was dark with the
blackness of ink, save for the Aurora Bo-
realis, which flashed only at intervals, then
subsided, like the geysers of the Yellow-
stone. With the power of all her electro-
radium currents playing full blast into the
ice-pack, and with Jack Philips, Doctor
Spanto and his Indian wife, Jason Sands,
his son and little Yama Yama huddled
around the mirror scope in the operating
room, Captain Joe signaled Billy Self for
speed, and away they shot, straight into a
mountain of ice and snow.
"At full speed straight into a mountain of ice!"
CHAPTER X.
THE RAWHIDE THONG.
Farewell ! Farewell ! the sands run low,
The Hand of Time the Hour hath marked;
A doleful knell tolls o'er the snow
As on a mystic sea, embarked
On phantom ship, goes out into the Night
A spectral voyager on his spectral flight !
Dimly in a window on the hillside, a
smoky lamp burned low into the gray
dawn. Faithful and long it had kept its
beacon vigil for one who never came.
Down the bald mountain screeched the
wintry winds, piling the white snow high
against the oaken door and sifting in un-
welcomely through the generous crevices of
the weather-beaten old mansion, it built
white pyramids on the worn floor and
frosted the black coals in the cold fireplace.
The window was thick with frost; but
the warmth of the smoky little lamp had
kept its glowing shape melted through
though the night was cold.
A lone mouse, spurned on by hunger,
came out of her hole in the corner, scam-
pered timidly toward the open kitchen
door, struck the thin frost flakes and scam-
pered back again to disappear into the cel-
lar from whence she came.
(343)
344 THE TORCH OF REASON.
It was a bitter north-easter in the New
Hampshire hills, the fiercest of all the year.
Stretched upon an ancient patchwork
coverlet, a great brown hand jerked pal-
siedly. It was not as brown as in other
days, and where once the horns of honest
toil thickened the broad palm, the flabby
yellow skin now hung loosely around the
hubbly bones. On a pillow, frayed, and
soiled with age and unceasing service,
shook feebly from side to side a white head
across whose sunken temple ran a deep red
scar.
It was Leland Tannerhill!
On the night the packages came from
Alaska, bringing the letters from Jason
Sands and Ben Page, Leland had trimmed
and filled the little lamp and placed it in
the window where his old friend might see
it when he should come over the hill a mile
away. Vaguely he knew that a welcome
beacon in the window of a loved one had
lightened many a weary foot, though none
had ever gleamed for him. Stanley Lark
had marveled at the delicate pains with
which the thoughtful farmer polished the
globe and turned the wick just so high ere
they left for the lecture on that eventful
night; but when again he turned into the
lane by the red schoolhouse, that lamp beck-
oned a joyous greeting to him.
When the shyster lawyer, Jibbs, fled the
town after hurling the missile that felled
THE TORCH OF REASON. 345
the good old man, he left the village in a
state of awful terror and confusion. Never
had there been such excitement. Rumors,
red and terrible, were rife on every tongue.
Murder, arson, abduction and robbery were
included in the program of crime, and all
these were systematically charged to and
fastened momentarily on the Socialists!
Next morning out came the Aberrant with
a lying Extra which wound up with the
usual capitalistic coloring in a flaring ar-
ticle with a full page caption and all in
heavy black type:
SOCIALIST RIOTERS TURN LEC-
TURE INTO HOLOCAUST
OF MURDER.
GUN FIGHTER FROM TEXAS MEETS His
MATCH IN BLOODY DUEL WITH OUR
HEROIC SHERIFF LARDING!
OLD TURNCOAT TANNERHILL, THE RAVEN
ROOST HERMIT, BEATEN AND
LEFT FOR DEAD!
Madison Jibbs Missing, Windows Shat-
tered with Flying Lead. Six Maimed
Men in Hospital! Many Arrests Al-
ready Made, with More to Follow!
On another page appeared the following
editorial, as if one malevolent lie had to be
backed up by another:
346 THE TORCH OF REASON.
" FODDER FOR THE NOOSE AND
THE DUNGEON.
<<.- The fact ig ^ L e i an( i TannerMll
is and always has been a drunkard. We
say it literally and unequivocatingly a
low-down drunkard.
"On Saturday noon he drove up to the
Tavern, his General Lyon trotter all af oam,
and so beastly drunk that he could not
stand. Falling out of his buggy into the
arms of the proprietor, he had to be car-
ried inside and put to bed. Only for the
charity of kindly disposed citizens a no-
table characteristic of our people, by the
way his spent and affrighted animal would
have run away, so eager it seemed to be
rid of its cruel master. Evidence of the
horrible beating it had received revealed
itself in the long rope-like welts that ran
from flank to withers the length of its beau-
tiful black body. It is a crying shame that,
under the virtuous folds of Old Glory and
our sacred Republican institutions, so
shameful an outrage can find tolerance in
our model city.
"Now, we feel it won't be necessary for
the Aberrant to dwell further on the un-
godly record of this old hypocrite. The
history of the Tannerhills and the Sands'
is too well known to require further com-
ment. However, suffice it to say in passing,
and lest we forget, that old TannerhilPs
red-headed sister was notoriously a com-
THE TORCH OP REASON. 347
mon bawd. After wrecking the life of our
most respected and beloved citizen and
banker, Mr. Pert Perry, whom she with
her cattish cunning succeeded in infatuat-
ing, she died having a bastard kid by Jason
Sands. This Jason Sands, by the way, was
another of the same stripe of vermin and
great cronies with the Tannerhills until he
ran away to avoid fathering the brat. Since
his disappearing act twenty years or more
ago, no trace of him has ever reached these
parts. Rumor has it, however, that he
worked all over the country mostly in shoe
factories under the alias of Alfred Allen;
but this has never been confirmed.
"At the Town Hall last night, mob vio-
lence and red-throated anarchy ran riot.
The Socialists-anarchists, in the height
of a florid outburst from the big Texan
fire eater, leaped to their feet, shot out the
lights, and in the turmoil of mad confusion
following shouts of 'to hell with the con-
stitution'; 'down with women and chil-
dren'; 'divide up the property'; 'damn the
capitalists,' etc., they succeeded in fatally
wounding old Tannerhill one of their ac-
cursed dupes; damaging the Town Hall
the city's property to the tune of hun-
dreds of dollars, and in some mysterious
manner making away with our most prom-
ising young lawyer, Madison Jibbs. The
two Boston boys are lying at death's door
in the Hardback hospital, and a disgrace
348 THE TORCH OF REASON.
has been heaped upon this pious com-
munity that a hundred years cannot efface.
"A further account of the devilish doings
of these bloody disturbers of the public
confidence and morality will be found on
another page in this issue. It is the hope
of the editor of this, the people's faithful
journal, that all good citizens will unite
in a grand effort to bring the law to bear,
purge our skirts of this crying shame and
live down the disgrace we have so inno-
cently suffered at the hands of these cloven-
hoofed degenerates. Let this God-fearing
people arise and scour the country for these
foreign terrorists, that they may be brought
to justice as an example and warning to
others of their ilk."
This was the Aberrant. Nay, this was
the Press. Thus it was that public opin-
ion was moulded and made moldy by the
lying Scribes and Pharisees of Capitalism.
From out their whited sepulchres through
these vitriol-tongued mouthpieces issued
forth such as this and voluminous other vi-
tuperative misinformation, until the un-
thinking populace had become prejudiced,
poisoned, and turned like tempered steel
against both truth and reason.
But the Aberrant was not a marker in
comparison with the daily press. There
were pandering sycophants in the editorial
sanctums of these mercenary old journal-
istic prostitutes beside which the puerile
THE TORCH OF REASON. 349
one-horse editor of the Aberrant looked
like an angel chick just pipping the shell.
For four of the bitterest months that ever
mortal flesh and blood bore up under,
Leland Tannerhill clung to life. When the
bloody stone brought him down, Rec Cotton
saw and knew the thing to be done. Rec
was a happy-go-lucky good fellow, who
knew how to both laugh and fight. His
heart was big and always in the right place.
He had known Leland Tannerhill since his
first memories, and he knew he was a good
man. While others wrung their hands and
whined their "poor fellows" and "too
bads" into ears that heard not, Rec lit out
for a doctor and to fetch Black Raven.
With the hurt hurriedly dressed, his head
swathed in bandages improvised from the
Texan's suit case, Leland absolutely refused
to stay, announcing that he was ready and
feeling able to take the eight-mile ride back
home. Rec offered to go along and drive;
but the plainsman needed no introduction
to horses, and with his wounded comrade
securely encircled in his long left arm, he
straightened the eager young stallion
around the north-east corner back of the
old brick Post Office and headed straight
for Raven Roost.
The moon was just dropping down be-
hind the Bridgewater mountains. Like a
huge prehistoric serpent lay the long, nar-
row mill pond above the old grist mill dam.
350 THE TORCH OF REASON.
Crouching black and shadowy along the
roadside, dorsaled and scaled with snags
and stumps, it looked like a sleeping dragon
mounted by sleeping spooks. The colt was
fresh and only the darker objects were visi-
ble, momentarily, as they sped on into the
night.
"Give him his head, Comrade; I always
do. Kave knows the way and never makes
a blunder.' Hosses sees in the night,"
weakly volunteered the wounded man, and
Stanley let a foot of the lines slip through
his fingers. That was a familiar sign, and
the horse understood. He evinced his grati-
tude by a playful toss of the head and a
marked increase in speed.
It was late, as time is reckoned in the
country, and they had a straight road.
Black Raven, though only a colt, was one
of those intelligent animals which learn
from experience how to take advantage of
reserve energy. When he cut around Al
Willoughby's and pitched over the gravelly
knoll above Eben Howe's, he was trotting
beautifully, taking the little buggy along
with its two heavy occupants smoothly with
his great strength, and at a three-minute
clip, which he had never for once slackened.
But when he lit into the stretch of straight,
level road at the foot of Winding Hill, the
splendid creature fairly flew! He seemed
scarcely to touch the ground. With this
spurt of speed was generated a momentum
THE TORCH OF REASON. 351
which carried them half way to the summit,
and within one pitchpole of the old water-
ing-trough. This gained, he drank deeply
of the gurgling water that flowed freely out
of a cool spring in the hillside and tumbled
from a wooden spout into the mossy trough,
to go spilling generously over the brim and
off down the mountain on its winding way
to the lake.
The Westerner knew how to handle trou-
ble. He had been there before. Up to this
point in the journey little had been said,
for there really was nothing relevant to
talk about of which both men were not
equally familiar. Besides, neither man was
in a very talkative mood.
The night was cool, but Stanley was hot
hot in more ways than one and he
wanted some of that laughing water that
he knew was cold and sweet and pure.
Wishing to appear conservatively un-
solicitous, though inwardly he was deeply
concerned for his companion's condition, he
ventured, offhandedly: "How goes the bat-
tle, old boy; shall we have a drink ?" To
his great amazement the only response was
a childish giggle, uncanny and machine-
like! More than anything else, it resem-
bled the mechanical jangle of a phonograph
reproducing the record of a laughing boy.
The next thing Stanley knew, and without
warning, over the wagon wheel went Le-
land Tannerhill, with the agility of a mon-
352 THE TORCH OF REASON.
key, falling face down where the trough
overflowed in the weeds and mud.
To prevent this last calamity were im-
possible, so unexpectedly had it occurred.
The Texas leaped after the delirate suf-
ferer; the colt ran away, and there they
were!
With the horse and buggy gone, and in
the dark, the task of getting the helpless
and wounded man home was no holiday
celebration, even for a man of Stanley
Lark's size and strength. He could toss a
bale of cotton, or shoulder a mule ; but here
was a man who was his match, and the man
was out of his head! He babbled like a
schoolboy, laughed like a maniac, and ab-
solutely refused to budge an inch away
from that old watering trough.
The aim of the shyster, Jibbs, had been
at him, Stanley knew that. That it had
found a different mark mattered not in
the least to the cowardly perpetrator. The
stone had done its work, and the cur had
made good his escape.
"Here, Jason. Catch him! Catch him!
that green frog. Cracky! ain't it hot?
Let's peel off and get'n the tub!" These
and other childish incoherences were some
of the wild wanderings voiced in rapid suc-
cession, as the demented victim of a would-
be assassin, in fancy, played again as he
had played there in his boyhood with his
one male companion in the shade by the
THE TORCH OF REASON. 353
old watering-trough. He was living back
in the yesteryears of his youth, and Stanley
Lark was Jason Sands of course! Who
else could he be ? For he never played with
any other boy.
It mattered not that it was dark. He
guessed he knew where he was and what he
was doing ! It was hot out there in the sun,
he told his companion, and when they
wanted him to spread hay they could sing
out! He addressed Stanley as "Jase," and
they were going to have some fun in that
old trough and that's all there was about it!
The Socialist agitator knew something of
crazy people. Strategy counted for more
than force in a crisis like this, he decided, so
began overhauling his wits for a cunning to
match the cunning of insanity. The situa-
tion was becoming clear to him. He must
humor his unfortunate comrade, take ad-
vantage of every opening, and gradually
win him around deftly with some sort of
harmless deception, now that he was help-
lessly a madman, and therefore irrespon-
sible.
They were high up on the hillside and the
sky was clear. The moon had gone down;
but large objects were more or less dis-
tinctly visible in the starlight, mingled with
the shadowy forms of the trees by the road-
side. Stanley could make out that Leland
was getting his clothes off, and he hadn't as
yet taken that drink of water. Here was a
354 THE TORCH OF REASON.
chance to test a trick and he lost no time in
availing himself of it.
"Come on, Leal, let's have a drink 'fore
we get in," he invited, assuming his most
careless manner, speaking rapidly at the
same time and in his most captivating, boy-
ish tones. His change of manner acted like
magic. The battle was won. It was now
only a question of time and the application
of tactics.
"All right, Jase; you first. Catch it out
of the spout; tastes better," came the in-
sant rejoinder, and Stanley smiled in spite
of himself and obeyed the command.
Nothing like that drink of crystal water
that sparkled coldly in the autumn star-
shine had ever passed his lips ! In the years
that came and went he often thought of it,
and once while lost in a sand storm on the
funeral trail across the baked desert of
Death Valley, the memory of it came to
him, with his tongue black and swollen,
driving him water mad.
He was still drinking of it when his in-
jured companion, giggling and prattling,
advanced to the far side of the overflowing
trough and leaned forward, white and nude
as an iceberg. What was to be done! It
would never do to let a sick man jump into
that trough. It was like ice water. It
might mean his death. Raven Boost was
not so far; why not seize and overpower
him at once and stop the farcical per-
THE TORCH OP REASON. 355
f ormance ? He had taken the case in hand,
promising to see his friend through; but
he had not bargained for such as this.
Nevertheless, he had gone on record. And
a sick man a comrade was his charge.
He never knew just why he did it, but
the thought flashed up in his brain like
lightning, and like lightning out flashed his
hands into the trough, splashing gallons of
the cold water flush in the other's face. It
was an heroic remedy. But, and as its
author ever after maintained, its admin-
istration was, if not cowardly, then unbrave,
to say the least, and startling. However, it
did the work as, most probably, nothing else
under the circumstances could have done.
What transpired during the next half
hour always was a mystery to Stanley Lark.
But it was all very clear to Leland Tanner-
hill. With the douche of cold water came
the return of sanity, and with this departed
every ounce of his great physical strength.
Uttering a piteous groan, he clapped both
hands to his bruised temple and tottered
backward. But his alert guardian was
there, and in some mysterious way
cushioned the fall.
During the lucid intervals between
periods of delirium spanning the black
chasm from September to December, wait-
ing for the fulfillment of Jason Sands'
promise, the one inspiring memory had
been the splendid heroism and staunch
356 THE TORCH OF REASON.
friendship of Stanley Lark. Stanley had
stayed with him a whole week after the un-
fortunate Town Hall calamity, cancelling
his lecture dates, he worked manfully and
alone to restore him to his former self;
for, in a measure, he could not help feeling
partly to blame along with the shyster
lawyer Jibbs. Had he not invited him to
that fatal lecture the thing might not have
happened.
Leland never forgot with what apparent
ease and patient tenderness the brawny
plainsman lifted him and bore him home
in his arms that night from the watering-
trough. Black Raven had gone straight to
the big barn doors and waited. It was his
first runaway, and it was a good thing they
had left the gate open at the foot of the
lane, Leland told his rescuer, when the
affair was over and he lay restfully once
more in his old-fashioned rope bed.
Stanley's first thought upon reaching
Raven Roost was for a doctor. But when
he made known to Leland his intention to
return to the village for one the rugged
mountain hermit protested vigorously.
"What's the use, friend," he objected. "I
ain't goin' ter be sick? I'm jist kinder
laid off fer'er spell, 'pears like. Tain't no
marter ter make a great touse about. Be-
sides, I hain't had no doctor a pill-putterin'
'round here since no knowin' when. I
never did have much use fer 'em myself,
THE TORCH OP REASON. 357
since the fever had me under cover. Old
Doctor Tucker used to come over the moun-
tain from Hardback ter see mother, and
they had him for Erm; but he hain't been
here since they went, and most likely he's
been took off his self by this time. We've
all got ter go at the apinted time, brother.
Don't be af eared. I ain't, but I do wish
Jase would come fust; someway suthin'
tells me I hain't long fer ter stay now, and
mebbe God knows best."
The next day was the Holy Sabbath.
Over in Ashworth the mill whistles were
silent, but there was an unusual stir in the
sleepy streets and the church bells rang
with excxessive vigor and persistence.
Especially furious clanged the great bell in
the tall steeple of the Catholic House of
God on the hill. There was something in
the wind, everybody knew that. They al-
ways rang that way for a fire, and once
they had done so when a Bengal tiger es-
caped from the Dingaling Sisters Circus;
but on this quiet September Sabbath morn-
ing there were neither circuses nor fires in
town. What did it mean?
There was " Dirty Dowie" and young
Ramo the rummv out with the Aberrant
Extra! Evidently it was a good thing
for them. They were tearing wildly through
the streets, madlv yelling, "A-a-a-a-b'rran,
tuxtry. A-a-a-all about tV Socialist riot!"
It seemed their very lives depended on the
358 THE TORCH OF REASON.
sale of each and every single accursed copy.
It was a great message that went up to
God from the gold-crossed spire of the
Ashworth Catholic Church on that autumn
Sunday morning! Father Glennon, the
good priest, was at his best. He told his
gentle flock all about the wicked Socialists
and what Socialism was! Many of the
more progressive of the bead-prayers had
attended the forbidden lecture the night
before, and now they were attending an-
other. They had disobeyed the injunction
of the priest-craft, and the holy father had
gotten wind of it. The very air was preg-
nant with forebodings of dire calamity!
Every ear was strained, all were wide-eyed,
and every mouth hung open.
Father Glennon knew what Socialism
was! He told them so! That was proof
enough ! All they had to do was to believe
it, and this they did, in total It was im-
mense ! And it could be seen that the virus
took! It was like swill cast before hungry
swine; they ate it up head, hide, horns
and tail!
Of course, that he had never read not
even seen a single scientific work on the
philosophy of Socialism made not the
slightest difference. Socialism was not in-
cluded in the canons of the toe-suckers,
and that was enough to know about it!
Papal encyclics always contained references
to it, of late, but such references were only
THE TORCH OF REASON. 359
for the purpose of admonishing that this
evil thing, Socialism, must not be thought
about nor read.
Father Glennon was a good man. He had
never committed murder, as far as was
known, and that half of younger Hinkly-
ville resembled him only intensified the
loyalty of the young wives of his parish,
and aroused no suspicion in the minds of
their scapular-charmed husbands. Besides,
he was good looking, fat and oily. Well
nourished, he looked satisfied and exuded
an opulential fragrance that lent charm
to the external grace of his unctuous avoir-
dupois. In other words, he was bland and
solid, and his appearance made a "hit."
Moreover, he was dearly beloved and highly
respected, as good men should be. That his
word was taken for law was not to be won-
dered at. So, when he told his congregation
that the Socialists were not men but devils,
who could be rash enough to doubt him ?
To the rich thieves comprising the busi-
ness element of his Rome-ruled herd, he
turned, with the dangerous intelligence that
Socialism would destroy incentive! To the
slaving beasts of burden the "ninety
and nine" per cent. he loudly proclaimed
that Socialism would compel them to
"divide up!" The humor of the paradox,
singularly enough, was lost on the farmed-
out intelligence of his insolvent citizenry.
None of them owned anything, the most of
360 THE TORCH OF REASON.
them owed something, but none of them
knew that all of them were less than thirty
days from the poorhouse, should they
chance to lose their precious jobs!
All the Aberrant had said he repeated to
them. Then he told them a whole lot of
other things for which the Aberrant hadn't
the space. Socialism was ungodly, he ex-
plained. He would prove it to them, all
unmindful of the superfluity of such proof.
To do this he quoted adequately from the
hierarchical screeds, wherein, as by the
Holy Bible, anything can be proved, dis-
proved, defended or condemned.
He told them that Socialism was
born in a barroom on a free-lunch counter;
sired, he said, by delirium tremens; wet-
nursed by anarchy and christened in a mug
of sour beer! O, he had its pedigree all
right, he assured them of that, even if he
hadn't any respect for his tongue! He
characterized Socialism as the "Red Spec-
tre of Discontent," and said it was rapidly
rearing its horned head over the "glorious
land of the free" like a destroying angel!
At this his worshippers were horrified,
and looked it. They stared at one another,
shuddered and crossed themselves, an old
woman fainted and the good priest trooped
bravely on! When the holy man of God
had finished, the Socialist philosophy was
demolished; all the agitators, including
Stanley Lark, had been drawn and quar-
THE TORCH OF REASON. 361
tered, burned at the stake or hanged, as
pleased his pious fancy, and the avenging
God of Romanism rode triumphant astride
a white thunder cloud over a chastened and
humble world!
The editor of the Aberrant was not a
Catholic. But he was a capitalist from his
throat up and he was there. He knew on
which side his bread was buttered! All the
Protestant churches were poor, having
dwindled until their following consisted of
the venerable old, a few female scandal-
mongers of the middle aged and their
adopted and impressed progeny, and a few
sallow things of the masculine gender but-
toned up neatly in black frock coats. But
their was scarcely a healthy-looking indi-
vidual among the extraneous farrago of in-
sipid human tailings. While on the con-
trary, the Catholic church was powerful;
had and knew how to get the "stuff," and
could "deliver the goods" on election day.
It was a beautiful fall Sabbath up on the
wooded hills, and Stanley slept like an
anchor in a calm. At ten o 'clock he slipped
off the old hair lounge, and the fall awoke
him. But Leland slept on. The Texan did
the chores after the manner of the West;
rustled up a prodigious layout of coarse
but wholesome grub for two, then he called
Leland. Hearing no response, he repeated
the summons several times. Finally he
re-entered the room where the bachelor of
362 THE TORCH OF REASON.
sorrows lay still in the soft shaded light,
laid a hand gently on the white forehead
and spoke. There was no movement or
sound to indicate that he had heard, and the
effort was repeated, this time a little louder,
and accompanied by a gentle shaking of the
head. Still there came no indication of
consciousness, and the only sign of life
manifest was in the deep-drawn breathing
that lifted the huge chest evenly with the
respiratory puissance of a sleeping god.
At 12 o'clock Stanley went back to the
kitchen and attacked the lunch. He knew
he was hungry; but never before had he
eaten like that. In just fifteen minutes he
had swept the board of everything but the
dishes, going back twice to the brick oven
for more beans and oh! such beans!
Baked beans, that's what they were, and
they were such baked beans as only a New
Englander can bake. Stanley had spoken
in every town, city and jerk-water cross-
roads in the United States, and he had
eaten some baked beans! He had come to
know that the term was an elastic one,
possessed of as many meanings as there
were states, and as many variations of each
separate meaning as there were towns in
each separate state. The cooking of beans,
like the shaping of intelligence, was largely
environmental. On the plains they were
whatever the packing houses had happened
to wrap tin around, and were labeled
THE TORCH OF REASON. 363
"Boston Baked Beans," whether canned in
Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City or
Honolulu.
Raven Roost mansion, like all the old
puritanic homes, was built to stand. Its
frame was of oak timbers a foot square,
hewn and mortised by hand in the days
before saw mills and machinery were known
in the land. In each of the four corners
stood an oaken pillar two feet in diameter
at the base, tapering to twelve inches at the
top. Out into the finished rooms protruded
the sharp angles of these great posts, pre-
senting the appearance of the architecture
of a wooden ship. The ten-foot brick
chimney with its four separate compart-
ments was built pyramidal up from a twen-
ty-foot base on the very cellar bottom. In
each of the four great rooms on the main
floor an open fireplace served the double
purpose of supplying warmth in winter and
ventilation in summer. Built into the
chimney above the one in the kitchen was
a big brick oven big enough to accommo-
date a cord-wood stick, and variously used
to smoke hams, try out fat in killing time,
and as a hiding place for the jam. Also
it was here that the regular Saturday baked
beans and brown bread were cooked; and
as Leland Tannerhill was more vegetarian
than cannibal, it was more for this than for
any other purpose that he had kept it in
364 THE TORCH OF REASON.
commission after the advent of the modern
cooking range.
Ever since the Pilgrim Fathers first
hacked rye among the stumps and stones on
the New England coast, it had been the
custom each Friday morning to heat up the
brick oven. This heating up process had
become a fine art among the old standbys,
and consisted of a stuffing with dry beach
or maple, cordwood length, touching off
with a handful of pitchwood, then to be
left alone, the dampers set just so, and just
so long. The gathering of this pitchwood
was also an important factor in the process
of bean baking, and a year's supply of it
was always sagaciously laid in store from
the roots of dead Norway pines on the
mountain.
Each Friday night at bed time the ashes
had to be drawn, and with the great oven
a cherry red, the beans and brown bread
were sealed up in it and left without further
attention for twenty-four hours.
"Bakin' beans in the ground may be well
enough fer some folks; but give me my old
brick oven and plenty o' good dry wood,
and come rain or snow they ain't no outs
about it, and it never falls," Leland had
boasted the night before, as he dumped a
pint of red molasses on top of an eight-
quart stone pot of yellow-eyes and clamped
down the lid. "Some par-boils 'em fust,
but thet spiles 'em fer me. I allus soak
'em over night, 'n soak a pound of half fat
THE TORCH OF REASON. 365
and half lean pork ter get the salt out, then
slap the
