Tag Archives: jesus

Pole Sitting and Golf

H.L. Mencken

Press of Atlantic City/August 30, 1929

The best psychologist in these parts is the Hon. William F. F. Broening, LL.B., imperial wizard of the Moose and, so I hear everywhere, the next Governor and Captain-General of the Maryland Free State. Long before anyone else paid any heed to the polesitter, he was out visiting the first champion and making a speech that will probably live as long as Lincoln’s harangue at Gettyburg. His intuitions in such matters are singularly apt and searching. It took him only ten seconds to perceive that pole-sitting would fetch Baltimore, and it took him only a minute or two more to reach the ringside. Has Baltimore got columns of valuable publicity out of the new Olimpiad? Then Dr. Broening has got the same. 

When I speak of this publicity as valuable I simply accept the local standard, formulated officially by the experts in this art and mystery. If it profits us to send out news that a new soap factory is to be opened on Locust Point, or that the Tall Cedars of Lebanon are to hold a parade, then why shouldn’t it profit us to send out the pioneers still bubbles and festers in Baltimore’s infantry? Dr. Broening, in his historic speech, was quite right, it takes more than mere patience to sit on a pole for ten days. It takes, for one thing, moral courage, for the prevailing moves are against it. It takes toughness, especially posteriori. Above all, it takes self-reliance.

When these high qualities appear in the young it is not time for the judicious to cough sadly behind their hands, it is time for them to get out their best jugs and make whoopee. For what the phenomenon has to teach, speaking concretely, is that the young are still sufficiently limber to leap from under the steam-roller. With playgrounds everywhere, manned by hordes of assiduous ma’ms, they yet prefer to make their own games even at the cost of wet skins, stiff knees and parental glares. Let us rejoice that this is so—that some, at least, escape the uplift. For one boy on a pole, contemplating the world with easy independence, is worth a thousand in a squad, laboriously drilling to pedagogical commands.

That the sport looks idiotic to most persons on the ground is a fact of no consequence, for that is how all sports look to those who take no hand in them. I confess that to me, at least, it seems a great deal less idiotic than golf. I can imagine myself, to serve some great public end, sitting on a pole in my back yard, but I can’t imagine myself playing golf even to save the republic from the Japs. Golf happens to be my pet abomination.

It not only seems idiotic to me; it also seems shameful. When I hear of a friend devoting an afternoon to it, with so many pleasant saloons open and willing. I am affected as I’d be if I heard that he had been converted at a Methodist revival. I regard it as an attentat against human dignity. It is a disgrace to the human race.

But this, of course, is only a prejudice, and fundamentally irrational. No doubt it is possible, given the right attitude of mind, to play golf with decency, just as it is possible to spit at a mark with decency. Maybe my low opinion of the game is due to a subconscious blood thirstiness—a secret resentment of the fact that it so seldom kills. All I can say on this point is that I am aware of no regret when I hear that some fat and elderly golfer, making an obscene show of himself in the hot sun, has staggered, turned blue and barged into heaven, to the relief of his heirs and assigns. If there were more such fatalities on the links, the game would better justify its existence. But even if a dead wagon followed every foursome I’d still not play it.

In any case, pole sitting is better, if only because it is not done at country clubs and in grotesque and unsightly costumes. The pole sitter pursues his chosen folly on his private estate, in the manner of a gentleman, and does not rig himself out like a movie actor on a holiday. If candidates for high office choose to come and make speeches to him, he hears them with dignity, but does not commit himself. He does invite them to join him. He does not talk pole sitting. He joins no club. If he is absurd, then it is only in the sense that everyone who follows undeviatingly a difficult course is absurd. If he is laughed at, then so was Columbus laughed at, and St. Simeon Stylites, and Lindbergh and Coolidge. 

Human beings, in fact, spend a great deal of their time laughing at one another. Every man seems absurd to his neighbor, not only in his diversions, but also in his sober labors. My own favorite object of mirth is one of the most austere and venerable figures in our society, to wit, the judge. If I frequent courtrooms very little, it is only because I have a high theoretical respect for his office, and so do not want to be tempted to laugh at him. That temptation, in his actual presence, is almost irresistible. There he sits for hour after hour, listening to brawling shysters, murkily dozing his way through obvious perjury, contemplating a roomful of smelly loafers, and sadly scratching himself as he wonders what his wife is going to have for dinner, all the while longing horribly for a drink. If he is not a comic figure, then there is none in this world.

Years ago, when I had literary ambitions, I blocked out a one-act play about a judge. Now that I am too old to write it I may as well give it away. The scene is a courtroom, and the learned judge is on the bench, gaping wearily at his customers. They are of the usual sort—witnesses trying to remember what the lawyers told them to say, policemen sweating in their padded uniforms, newspaper readers and tobacco chewers, and long ranks of dirty and idiotic old men, come in to get warm. In front of the judge a witness is being examined by a lawyer. To one side 12 jurymen snooze quietly. The place smells like an all-night trolley car on a winter night. 

The judge, unable to concentrate his attention upon the case at bar, groans wheezily. It is a dreadful life, and he knows it. Of a sudden the opposition lawyer objects to a question put to the witness, and the judge has to pull himself together. The point raised is new to him. In fact, it goes far beyond his law. He decides in loud, peremptory tones, notes the exception, and resumes his bitter meditations. What a life! What a finish for a man who was once a gay dog, with the thirst of an archbishop and an arm for every neck! What a reward for long years of toil and privation! A tear rolls down the judge’s nose. 

As he shakes it off his eyes sweep the courtroom, and a strange thrill runs through him. There, on the last seat, sandwiched between a police sergeant and a professional bondsman, is the loveliest cutie ever seen! There, in the midst of the muck, is romance ineffable! The judge shoots his cuffs out of his gown, twirls his moustache, permits a soapy, encouraging smirk to cover his judicial glower, and gives a genial cough. How thrilled the cutie will be when she sees that he notices her! What a day in a poor girl’s life! What an episode to remember—the handsome and amiable judge, the soft exchanges of glances, “Maude Muller” all over again. He coughs a bit louder. 

The cutie, glancing up, sees him looking at her. Paralyzed with fright, she leaps out of her seat, climbs over the police sergeant, and flees the courtroom. 

Maybe this play won’t seem as sad to you as it does to me. If so, forget it. But don’t forget that all of us are poor fish, and that the distance between the judge and a polesitter is not, after all, very great. All of us, in this world, play the parts of melancholy clowns, and appear ridiculous to the other clowns. If your taste in humor is bitter, try to picture to yourself an elderly and somewhat rheumy man, weighting nearly 200 pounds and full of all sorts of rare and valuable learning—picture such a man sitting in his underclothes on a hot, sticky night, writing such stuff as the foregoing. Yet the kingdom of Heaven is full of such fellows, and others swarm in Hell. 

The pole-sitters are no better and no worse. They are less dignified than judges, but more rational. They don’t know much, but what they know is true—that there are fewer flies in the air than on the ground, that hard boards grow softer when one is used to them, that people are easily entertained and easily gulled, that a statesman making a speech is a gruesome spectacle, that sitting on a pole is a great deal better than going to school. A judge knows more, but very little of it is true; his mind, if he sticks to his trade, becomes a junkheap of lugubrious nonsense. He, too, sits on a pole, but it teaches him nothing.

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Dr. France’s Platform

H.L. Mencken

Baltimore Evening Sun/April 27, 1931

I

BAPTISMAL and burial services are ingeniously (or is it ingenuously?) combined in the manifesto of Dr. Joseph I. France, candidate for the Presidency, issued to a somewhat unresponsive country on April 8. In the very same words which announce his candidacy he sets forth the reasons which will make his nomination and election impossible. Item, he calls for a revival of the Bill of Rights. Item, he calls for common honesty and common decency in high office, including especially the highest. Item, he—

But I have said enough, I think, to show that his chances of succeeding Lord Hoover are no greater—if,  indeed, they are as great—as those of Al Capone. The first alone is enough to damn him beyond redemption, for it arrays every great engine of opinion in the country against him, from the Supreme Court to all save two or three of the big newspapers, and from the American Legion to the bishops of state church. The Bill of Rights, quotha? I believe in all seriousness that it would be safer for an aspirant to the Presidency to advocate communism, cannibalism, or even Darwinism. In many American States they now jail men for less.

It is, however, the second item that really cooks Dr. France’s goose. Imagine a candidate trying to reach the White House by renouncing and denouncing “colorless compromise, weak negation and dishonorable equivocation!” Can it be that the hon. gentleman is actually as innocent as all that? If so, then let him give some study to the recent history of his country. He will discover that every President since Cleveland has got into office by one route or the other—that is, either by compromise, by negation or by dishonorable equivocation. Has he so soon forgotten that Dr. Wilson promised solemnly to keep us out of the war? The last candidate to fly and flaunt his true colors was the Hon. Alton B. Parker, Jr. and he was beaten ignominiously by the master trimmer, Roosevelt. Even Al Smith, let us remember sotto voce, was quite content to run as a wet on a platform that was dry, and with a client of the Anti-Saloon League as his runningmate.

II

I HALF suspect that Dr. France has more humor in him than is generally believed, and is simply trying to have some fun with Dr. Hoover, in whose knees and neck there is more rubber than in all the tire-factories of Akron. To a man of his principles the dodging, skulking, groveling type of politician is naturally revolting, and hence a fair target for ribaldry. But it is one thing to mock, and quite another thing to fetch the crowd. My fear is that Dr. France, like many an idealist before him, vastly overestimates the native decency of the American people. He seems to believe (or, at all events, to hope) that they are as much disgusted by the Hooverian politics as he is. But that is probably a gross error. They are really not offended by the Great Engineer’s limber efforts to hold his job for four years more. What offends them is simply his failure to perform a miracle.

Dr. France alludes to this failure in his manifesto—at events, so I interpret his reference to “self-advertised supermen.” But it seems to me that he makes far too little of it. That Hoover is immensely unpopular must be plain to everyone; indeed, there is evidence that it is plain to Hoover himself. The crowds in the movie parlors flatly refuse to applaud him, and so do the crowds in the streets; he had to go all the way to Porto Rico to hear really hearty cheers—and God knows what it cost young Teddy Roosevelt, in toil and moil, to produce them. The plain people blame him for all their present woes. He gets a black thought every time the roof leaks or the baby cries.

All this, of course, is very unjust to him. He is no more responsible for the present economic situation than he is for the downfall of poor Alfonso XIII, and he could not remedy it if he tried. But there are many evils that he could remedy, and very easily. He could clear out the gang of political harpies which now infests Washington, with the White House as its base. He could get some common decency into our dealings with Latin America. He could throw out the stupid hacks who pollute his Cabinet, and put in honest and competent men. Above all, he could abandon his “dishonorable equivocation” about Prohibition, and deal with it in a frank, sensible and self-respecting manner. But he does none of these things, nor anything like them. His one aim is to avoid every issue that is likely to bring him trouble in 1932, and to that end he is apparently willing to sacrifice everything that men of any dignity hold dear.

III

BUT, as I say, all of this arouses little, if any, public indignation. There is no sensitiveness to such dishonors in the communal breast. The wets, I fancy, would be quite content, and even thrilled, if the hon. gentleman came to the conclusion tomorrow that the Prohibition jig was up, and so deserted his Methodist friends between days, and began howling for personal liberty. Nor would the Methodists, I suspect, be greatly surprised. No one expects a President, in this one-hundred-and-fifty-fifth year of the Republic, to be a candid man. No one expects him to make any sacrifice of his personal fortunes to the common weal. No one expects him to be jealous of his honor.

No one, that is, save a few romantics of the school of Dr. France. They still look for honest leadership in the White House, and they count upon it to restore the American passion for justice and the dignity of American public life. France himself, it some incredible act of God put him in Hoover’s place, would strive magnificently to that end. Supreme Court or no Supreme Court, he would try to resuscitate the Bill of Rights, and make it once more a living force. He would deal honestly and courageously with the problems confronting him, if not always wisely. He would heave himself with groans and hallelujahs into a herculean effort to move the immovable, resist the irresistable, purge the unspeakable, and solve the insoluble.

He will never, of course, get the chance. He is as safely vaccinated against sueceding Hoover as I am against succeeding Pius Xl. But that is no reason, it seems to me, for laughing at him. If his somewhat grandiose programme does not voice the hopes of any considerable body of his countrymen, then it at least voices hopes that are honest, and honorable, and, in the best sense—a sense now almost obsolete in the United States—patriotic. The Republic that he dreams of would be a shade priggish, perhaps, but it would be far more worthy of a self-respecting man’s allegiance than it is today. There might be plenty of reason to be discontented with it, but there would be no reason to be ashamed of it.

IV

DR. FRANCE made a good Senator, and in difficult days. He stood against the Wilson holy war upon the Bill of Rights at a time when it took a lot of courage, and he never faltered. No Marylander of his generation has ever done more to establish and maintain the Maryland Free State scheme of things; he was battling for it pertinaciously long before most of those who now talk about it had ever heard of it. His reward was that he was thrown out of office to the tune of violent objurgations and revilings.

His concrete opponent, when he came up for reflection, was the Hon. William Cabell Bruce, another good Senator. It has always seemed to me to be a magnificently ironical fact that Dr. Bruce, who depicted him in the campaign as a kind of anarchist, was actually in full sympathy with most of his principles, and afterward maintained them with great vigor in the Senate. Some day, I hope, Dr. Bruce will review his speeches during that contest with a judicial eye, and make public amends to Dr. France. For the two men, at bottom, believe in precisely the same things: their only real difference is over ways and means of attaining them.

But this is a detail of politics, which is to say, of a science compounded of irrationalities. The important thing is that Dr. France, after eight years of retirement, has got into action again. He will not reach the White House, but there is plenty of work for him to do at home, and within the bounds of his own party. Under the leadership of that depressing nonentity, Dr. Goldsborough, it has become a mere rabble of professional jobholders, with a dismal sprinkling of prehensile Babbitts. It is years since Goldsborough last had an idea, and it will be years before he has another. If Dr. France heaves a bomb or two into that vacuum he will be doing something valuable to his party, and something also valuable to his country.

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On Religious Liberty

H.L. Mencken

Baltimore Evening Sun/July 6, 1931

The method of choosing grand juries in Baltimore, it appears, is as follows: When the time comes ’round each of the eleven judges of the Supreme Bench nominates two freemen of the town, along with one, two or three alternates, all of them men of discreet years, chosen for their notorious wisdom and rectitude. The names are canvassed by the whole bench, and if the two nominees of a given judge turn out to be eligible they are appointed forthwith. If not, resort is had to his alternates, or to the alternates of another judge. Thus twenty-two jurors are selected, leaving one more to make the legal twenty-three. This one more, in practice, is always a colored man of high tone, and finding him is delegated to that judge or those judges who happen to be Republicans. In this way the jury is completed.

Some time ago I received a note from one of the judges, a man who has known me for twenty-five years, saying that he was putting me down as one of his nominees. This proof of judicial confidence, I confess, flattered me, and I returned thanks at once. But at the same time my conscience, always delicate, induced me to suggest that I was probably ineligible. Here Is the substance of my letter:

Unless I misunderstand Article 36 of the Maryland Declaration of Rights, a grand juror must believe in what is commonly called the moral order of the world. That is, he must believe that there exists an eternal moral law, ascertainable mainly by revelation, and that any person who violates it will be punished inevitably, either in this world or the next. Inasmuch as I have doubts about this moral law, do not believe that violations of it, if it exists, are punished inevitably on this earth, and remain, at the most, of an open mind about a future life, I think I probably fall outside the specification . . . . In fact, so long as the Declaration of Rights remains as it is I seem to be unable to take any hand in any legal process in Maryland, either as witness or as juror.

I requested that this letter be laid before the Supreme Bench. What notion was taken upon it, if any, I do not know, for the learned judges carry on their deliberations in camera, but I observed that when the list of grand jurors was published my name was not on it. Inasmuch as I am unaware of any other ground for my disqualification, I can only conclude that I was disqualified, as I had myself suggested, on a ground purely theological.

II

No doubt it will surprise many Marylanders to hear that a religious test still exists in the Free State, and, what is worse, that it is actually a part of the Declaration of Rights, the very charter of our freedom. Yet I see no way to view the following passage in Article 36 as anything else:

. . . nor shall any person, otherwise competent, be deemed incompetent as a witness or juror on account of his religious belief provided he believes in the existence of God, and that, under His dispensation, such person will be held morally accountable for his acts, and be rewarded or punished therefor, either in this world or the world to come.

Plainly enough, this provision sets up a double test. In the first place every witness or juror must believe in the existence of God, which bars out all atheists at once, and all agnostics with them. And in the second place, he must believe that divine justice takes precedence of divine grace and mercy, which bars out all Moslems, and great numbers of Christians. It Is not sufficient for him to believe that the wicked may be punished post mortem: he must believe unqualifiedly that they will be punished. If he finds himself unable to believe it, then he cannot sit on any jury in the State of Maryland, or give evidence in any court of law or equity.

That this view of Article 36 is sound is proved by all the pertinent Maryland decisions. In Clare vs. the Slate (39 Md., 164), Stewart J., speaking for the Court of Appeals, held that a man be put on trial for his life only on the indictment of boni et legales homines, good and lawful men, and in The State v. Mercer (101 Md. 535) Schmucker, J., also speaking for the court, held that no disbeliever in “the existence of God and His dispensation of rewards and punishments” could be such a good and lawful man. And in Arnd vs. Amling (53 Md., 192) the court held that no disbeliever could qualify as a witness.

The decisions are quite dear and exactly to the point. They meet it squarely and state the law unequivocably. They are binding upon every judge in Maryland, and have been cited lately, and with approbation, by Owens, J., in Baltimore and by one of the judges in the counties. If any man stands indicted in the State today by a grand jury which included one unbeliever, then his indictment Is null and void. If any man has been convicted by a petit jury which included one, then his conviction is without force or effect. And if there was one unbeliever among the material witnesses against him, then he is still as good as innocent.

III

It will be observed that the definition of an unbeliever set up by Article 36 is very sweeping. The two halves of the test are not joined by or but by and. It Is thus not sufficient to believe “in the existence of God”; it is also necessary to believe that he maintains a complete judicial system for the detection and punishment of sinners, and that any man who escapes it in this world is bound to be laid by the heels In the next. In brief, believing in Hell is quite as essential as believing in God. The precise nature of Hell, of course, is not defined, but there is the thing itself as plain as day. Take it away, and the whole test falls to pieces.

The late Mr. Chief Justice Taft, if he had ever come into Maryland to testify in a lawsuit, might have been challenged and disqualified, for he was a Unitarian, and thus did not believe in Hell; in fact, his disbelief was used against him, especially in the Bible Belt, in the campaigns of 1908 and 1912. Nor is the disqualification of President Hoover at all certain, for he is a Quaker, and if the Quakers believe in Hell then they have surely managed to keep the fact a secret. I refrain, in delicacy, from pointing to any of our own great officers of state. The oath of office prescribed by Article I, Section 6 of the Constitution Includes no religious test, and so they are probably safe in their jobs despite a contradiction (and apparently unconstitutional) provision in the code of 1924. But suppose some of them that I could name were summoned to court as witnesses?

What would happen to most of the faculty of the Johns Hopkins is plain enough: they would be disqualified at once. I know a large number of these learned men, some of them with considerable intimacy, but I can recall none save Dr. Howard A. Kelly who has ever expressed any active and eager belief in Hell. Many of them, it may be, believe in God, but, as I have just shown, belief in God is not enough; it is also necessary to believe that God invariably rewards virtue and as invariably punishes sin. If it be admitted for an instant that any conceivable sinner may escape, then the test becomes mere vanity and nonsense, signifying nothing.

IV

Mr. B.H. Hartogensis, a learned member of the Baltimore bar, has been carrying on a campaign against religious tests, in Maryland and elsewhere, for many years, but his chief attention, naturally enough, has been directed to those which work a hardship on his own people, the Jews. Article 36, so far as I can make out, does not disqualify Jews—that is, if they be orthodox—for they unquestionably believe in the same God that Christians believe in, and they do not categorically deny the existence of Hell. But, it certainly works a dreadful slaughter of many other persons, including not a few of the highest eminence in these parts.

What is to be done about it I don’t know. At several times in the past skeptical legislators from the city have made efforts at Annapolis to submit Article 36 to the voters of the Stale for repeal, but always their resolutions have been killed by the pious county members. There is some question, indeed, whether a referendum would suffice to repeal the article, for it is not in the Constitution proper, but in the Declaration of Rights, and it may be that the Declaration of Rights cannot be molested save by a constitutional convention. We were to have one, but it was shelved at the last session. And even if it had been held, Article 36 might have survived.

In Alabama a somewhat similar test was lately got rid of by judicial interpretation. First the judges of the Court of Appeals decided that the dying declaration of an unbeliever could not be accepted in evidence, and then they granted a rehearing and decided exactly the other way (Haura Wright vs. the State). Perhaps, if a case under Article 36 were taken to our own Court of Appeals it might be induced to repudiate Its judgment in The State vs. Mercer. But that seems unlikely, for The State vs. Mercer was heard as recently as 1905, and Maryland Judges seldom change their minds so quickly. The only way out, I suppose, is to keep on agitating, as Mr. Hartogensis has been agitating for years. When complete religious freedom is established in Maryland at last he will deserve an equestrian statue 100 feet high.

Meanwhile, it should be pleasant for many Baltimoreans to discover that they can escape jury service without expense of becoming an honorary member of the Fifth Regiment or the nuisance of committing a felony or studying for the bar. Let those who are so inclined simply say that they do not believe in Hell, and the Judge on the bench will have to excuse them. If they ever get to Hell they will undoubtedly regret their denial sorely, but while they remain on this earth it will ease and gratify them no end.

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Wed Despite Opposition! Well, Of Course They Did

Annie Laurie

San Francisco Examiner/February 4, 1909

AND so they were married.

“Despite the opposition of parents,” the headlines tell us.

I hope it was “despite” the opposition and not because of it—that marriage.

If I wanted my daughter to marry a commonplace grocer with a big hank account, I would begin to “oppose” him with all the opposition I could muster.

I’d tell her he looked cold and cruel.

I’d say that he had secretive eyes and a deceitful nose. I’d swear I’d seen him somewhere In another country under another name. I’d hint that he was a Bluebeard. And that nobody could possibly find out how many times he’d been married. And some fine morning I’d wake up the proud mamma-in-law of a prosperous person who would let me run a bill for coffee and sugar for quite a while.

“In spite of opposition”—how many, many marriages have been made that would never have been even dreamed of if some one had not gone to work to try to prevent them!

AND the bride in this case, it appears, has $30 and the groom has but seven.

Well, what of it?

How many dollars did you have, Mr. Doting Parent, when you and the woman who’s worn your ring for so many years slipped down to the preacher’s and were married back there in the plain farming country?

You weren’t rolling in riches before you dared to fall in love, were you? And your sweetheart didn’t know and didn’t care whether you had $5 left, when you had paid the minister or not.

Your girl is no better than her mother and no worse, either.

She has just the same courage, and the same loving heart, and the same good sense that her mother had before her—and who are you to teach her to be mercenary and grasping, and self-seeking?.

EVERY once in a while, some one rises in public gathering and denounces the young people of today.

“The young men are selfish and the young women are mercenary,” declare the denouncers.

Fudge!

The young men and the young women are all right.

It’s the old men and the old women who are all wrong.

“My dear,” said a woman to me the other day, “you know how Genevieve was brought up petted, spoiled, indulged. Well, this man she’s married took her to Philadelphia on a business trip with him, and some one called on them and do you know that they had a back room at the hotel, and had worn the same dress to dinner three days in succession?”

And not all the arguments in the world would have convinced that poor old woman that Genevieve was so happy that she didn’t know whether she lived in a front room or a back one, and that she was too busy having fun to worry about her clothes.

MONEY—that’s about all you have when you’ve passed forty—money, and the poor substitutes for happiness that money buys—fine clothes, rich fare, soft living.

Let the poor old forties have the money, girls and boys; you take the real things of life, and take them gayly, with light hearts, as your mothers and fathers did before you.

There’s time enough for you to earn for the fol de rols and fil dols when you are so faded that can’t look neat in a myrtle gown and so jaded that a plain mutton chop and a stick of celery isn’t a good enough dinner for a king.

Walt till your own daughter is growing up before you let the little yellow money demon get you in his clutches. You’ll be past any particular harming by him by that time.

As for you, you newly married young people, a long life to you and not a day of regret in it.

You’ve set all the grumbling old fogeys a good example—an example of youth and courage and sincerity—and in my opinion the world is the better off for all such natural, simple, real people as you seem to be.

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Upton Sinclair Calls Marriage Slavery and Ceremony a Farce

Annie Laurie

Oakland Tribune/January 30, 1909

Upton Sinclair says he’s sorry he’s married.

He said it right out loud in a calm, matter-of-fact tone of voice.

I read about the Robins people—the couple who don’t believe in marriage and who have decided to take the world Into their confidence and proclaim that they have never been married at all, and that they never intend to marry at all—not nobody, nowhere, at no time—all because they believe that modern marriage is a hideous mockery, and a horrible sin. So I went down to Mr. Sinclair’s hotel to see what he thought about the Robins and their views of the marriage question.

Hears Amazing Thing

Mr. Slnclair was pleasant enough to invite me to a most delightful vegetarian luncheon and then I sat there and listened, with eyebrows that I did my best to keep vertical, to all kinds of amazing things—mostly about marriage.

“These Rabins must be people of great courage and fine character,” said Mr. Sinclair. “It takes grit to be a pioneer. Of course, they are doing the right thing. I have never believed in marriage. Who could, and know any married people at all? But I wasn’t brave enough to live up to my convictions.

“When my wife and I fell in love with each other, we talked the whole marriage business over very conscientiously. We both of us hated the idea of being tied together by either a religious or a legal ceremony, and we tried to make up our minds to set the right kind of example to the world.

“But we know that Mrs. Sinclair’s father and mother would go raving crazy if we did what our conscience told us was right. So to ease their minds we let some one mumble a few words over us—and made them  happy.

Calls Ceremony “Farce”

“l wish now we had done as these Robins people have had the courage and the fortitude to do—lived together without the farce of a foolish and obsolete ceremony.

“The world would have been that much farther ahead on the road to progress.

“We were young and foolish then, and now we have seen the world and know a great many married people—so we are a good deal ashamed of being married ourselves.

“Why am I so prejudiced against marriage?

“Why shouldn’t I be prejudiced against it? You might as well ask me why I am so prejudiced against slavery—or against thievery—or if it comes to that, against murder either.

“Marriage in this day is nothing but legalized slavery; that’s the most polite word to call it, I fancy.

“The average married woman is bought just exactly as much as any horse or any dog is bought.

“She is absolutely dependent upon her husband for her food and clothes, and she marries him just to get the very best food and clothes that she can command in the market.

“What are all these balls and parties—but bargain sales?

“This lovely blonde for half a million, a little shop worn, going at half price.

This gorgeous brunette on the bargain counter today, $20,000 a year will buy her. That’s what it all means—this display and parade and music and feasting and flowers. Every woman with a daughter is a match-maker, and she is looking for bargains, too.

“Talk about a fire sale rush—you just watch a young man with a good income or good prospects of a good income at a party, and you’ll see what the word ‘rush’ means.

“Women will never marry for love and for love alone until they become economically independent.

Independent Women

“A woman wage-earner will not marry for a home, when it gets to be as swell to earn your own living as it is to have some man earn it for you.

“Marriage of today is worse than a farce; it is a hideous tragedy.

“How many happy married people do you know?”

“About one couple in ten thousand.

“There’s So and So, a dissipated, selfish wreck—his wife lives with him rather than to go out and earn her own living.

“I don’t like to have my wife associate with women who do such things. I consider it immoral to encourage such horrible immorality.

“There is Thus and So, a morbid egotist, absorbing his wife’s very vitality and fairly eating up her very soul.

“There is Johnson buying bis wife pretty clothes, dressing her like a doll and making love to every woman he meets.

“She knows it, and she knows that he knows that she knows he knows it—but what’s the difference. A pair of pendant earrings at the right time or a new chinchilla coat—and it’s all right.

“Marriage! Faugh!”

“Marriage—ough! It really isn’t a subject to be discussed at the table.”

“But if all these people you speak of were not married to each other, Mr. Sinclair, only just living together, without a ceremony, do you think they would be happier then?” I ventured.

“They wouldn’t live together,” said Mr. Sinclair. “When they got tired of each other they’d quit.”

“And find some one else?” I queried, timidly.

“Perhaps,” answered Mr. Sinclair, calmly.

“And then?” I breathed in diffident but determined tones.

“And then,” said Mr. Sinclair, firmly, “what then? Nothing matters so long as the human race progresses. It may come through pain and through sorrow and through humiliation and through martyrdom, the progression, but come it must, and before we can climb very high on the stairs of progress we have got to leave the old-fashioned marriage contract at the foot of the steps.”

I found my dazed and somewhat bewildered way down the hill to Market street and down Market street to the little vegetarian restaurant kept and run by the Robins, Mr.—may I call her for this once again?—Mrs. Robins.

Eyes That Dream

Mr. Robins is a pale little man with a high, broad forehead, and a pair of dark eyes that dream, and Mrs. Robins is rather an attractive woman of the Swiss type, with large blue eyes, black lashed, plenty of black hair, a sweet smile and a great deal of fresh and perfectly natural color.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Robins, showing me to a seat at a plain little table at the end of the plain little restaurant, “I am the woman you read about in the papers. We didn’t want it to get into the papers, but since it was in why, we’ll have to make the best of it.

“No, I never married Mr. Robins. Yes, I have been called his wife for five years. I do not believe In marriage.

“It is a cruel and wicked slavery. want to be free; I could not bear to tie myself by any ceremony to any man.”

To Remain Happy

Mr. Robins smiled gently across a somewhat crumpled tablecloth and said very softly, “We are not separating because we are unhappy.

“We are separating because we are happy—and we want to keep happy.”

“Yes,” nodded Mrs. Robins, her large blue eyes afire with what looked like intelligent Interest. “That’s the way to keep happy—to separate.

“We have never quarreled, and we intend to part so that we never will have quarrels.

“Too much companionship is the worst kind of slavery. I want to live my life my own way, and I want this man I have loved for five years and love now to live his life, his own way; that’s all there is to it. There is no mystery—nothing but plain common sense. I despise the average married woman. I look upon her as a poor drudge, bought and paid for by her clothes and board.

Would “Improve World”

“When there are no more such women as she in the world the world will come nearer to being fit for honest, self-respecting women to live in.

“No true woman can be a helpless parasite and keep even a pretense of self-respect. Some day the world will see this, and then there will be no more marriage and no more misery, stunted, half-developed lives.”

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