SALMAGUNDI.
The daily press announces that there is to be another
Cleveland baby. It is to make its début some time this
month. "Mrs. Cleveland has been sewing dainty garments
all summer." "Presents of beautiful baby clothes are
arriving from friends and relatives." Same old gush,
gush, gush! slop, slop, slop! that has set the nation retching
three times already. Good Lord! will it never end?
The fecundity of that family is becoming an American
nightmare. Will the time ever come when a married
woman of social prominence can get into "a delicate
condition" without having the fact heralded over the country
as brazenly as though she had committed a crime? There
being little hope that the daily press—"public educator,"
"guardian of morality," etc.—will suffer a renascence of
decency, we can only appeal to Grover not to let it happen
again. He certainly owes it to the nation to apply the soft
pedal to himself. In no other way can he protect a long-suffering nation from seasickness, or his estimable wife
from the unclean harpies of the press. I do not believe
that Mrs. Cleveland is
particeps criminis in these pre-natal
proclamations to which the h'upper suckkles of New York
are so shockingly addicted. I do not believe that she cares
to have the public contemplating her profile portrait just
previous to a confinement. Of course it will be urged that
a woman of much native delicacy could never have married
so crass an animal as Grover Cleveland, have taken him
fresh from the embraces of an old harlot like Widow Halpin;
but these forget that he held the most exalted position
of any man on earth, and his $50,000 per annum had been
touched by the genie-wand jobbery—forget that
"—pomp and power alone are woman's care
And where these are light Eros finds a feere;
Maidens like moths, are eer caught by glare,
And Mammon wins his way where Seraphs might despair."
Probably she has regretted a thousand times that she
bartered her youth and beauty for life companionship with
a tub of tallow, mistaken at the time for a god by a purblind
public, but even though it be true, as often asserted,
that the old boor gets drunk and beats her, a woman could
scarce apply for divorce from a man who has twice been
president. Furthermore, association with such a man will
lower the noblest woman to his level. Every physiognomist
who saw Frances Folsom's bright face, its spirituelle
beauty, and who looks upon it now and notes it stolid,
almost sodden expression, must recall those lines of
Tennyson's:
"As the husband is the wife is; thou art mated with a clown,
And the grossness of his nature will have weight to drag thee down.
Cursed be the sickly forms that err from honest Nature's rule,
Cursed be the gold that gilds the straiten'd forehead of the fool."
Last month it was announced with typographical and
pictorial trumpet blasts that Mrs. Harry Payne Whitney
was about to present her gilded dudelet with a family
edition de luxe, and the Duchess of Marlborough to find an
heir to that proud title whose foundation was laid with a
sister's shame, the capstone placed by the pander's betrayal
of his rightful prince; and now before the world
can recover from its nausea, flaming headlines announce
that the Clevelands are about to refill the family cradle.
Hold our head, please, until we puke! Lord, Lord, is
there nothing sacred about motherhood any more? Is a
married woman no better than a brood-mare, her condition
fair subject for comment by vulgar stable-boys? We
thank thee, O God, that the South has not kept pace with
New York's super-estheticism—that when our women find
themselves in an "interesting condition" they seek the
seclusion of the home instead of telephoning for a reporter
and a chalk artist and exploiting their intumescence in
the public prints.
...
Thomas M. Harris, who claims to be 84 years old, has
writ a little yellow pamphlet entitled, "Rome's Responsibility
for the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln." I have
expended almost 5 minutes glancing over Mr. Harris
labored lucubations, and must confess that I have in that
time acquired more information—of its kind—than I ever
did in 5 hours before. Of the reliability of his statements
there can be no question, as most of them are grounded on
the testimony of "Father" Chiniquy—conceded to be
the most accomplished liar since Ananias gave up the
ghost. It was Chiniquy who first started the story that
the Pope was responsible for the assassination of President
Lincoln, and I am expecting him to prove that
Guiteau who gave the death-wound to Garfield, was a
Jesuit in disguise and acted on orders received from Rome.
Harris says that agents of the Confederacy in Canada—
whom he admits were not Catholics—employed Booth and
his accomplices to do the bloody business; that John
Wilkes Booth was a Catholic; that the priests were all
Southern sympathizers; that but 144,000 Irishmen enlisted
in the Federal army, of whom 104,000 deserted; that the
cellars of Catholic cathedrals are filled with munitions of
war to be used against the government, that Catholics hold
the bulk of the offices and dominate the American press.
Harris says other things equally awful and interesting.
I much fear that he got to thinking how many of his A. P.
Apes have broken into the penitentiary, and dreamed a bad
dream.
...
I once mentioned a little saweiety sheet, published in
New York, under the title of Town Topics, because it
afforded me a kind of languid pleasure to kick the feculent
sewer-rat back into the foul cloaca from which it had
crawled to beslime the ICONOCLAST. I must beg the patient
reader's pardon for again soiling my sandal-shoon with
what should only be touched with a shovel. I have been
receiving through the mails for some time past, both from
disgusted Northerners and indignant Southerners, a paragraph
clipped from its epecine columns where in some
mental misfit eager to do the Smart Alex act begs to be
informed what right Mrs. Jefferson Davis had "to address
a peculiar letter to the Queen Regent of Spain, demanding
the release of a party accused of a serious crime," then
adds: "If Miss Cisneros is released it will be because she
is innocent, and not because her case has been meddled
with by a party of irresponsible old freaks." I sometimes
wish the ICONOCLAST had no lady readers, that I might
freely express my opinion of such pestiferous pole-cats.
I dearly love the ladies, but they are awfully in the way
when only full-grown adjectives will do a subject justice.
If the
Tee-Tee editor had half the gumption of a Kansas
Gopher he would know that niether Mrs. Davis nor any
other American woman made such "demand." Perhaps he
did not know it,—if it be possible for the editor of such a
quintessential extract of utter idiocy to know anything—
but couldn't resist the boorish impulse to insult an aged
woman, because he's built that way. The case of Senorita
Cisneros appealed to the sympathy of every manly man
and noble woman throughout the world—to every living
creature within whose hide there pulses one drop of human
blood unblended with that of unclean breasts. Mrs. John
A. Logan, Mrs. Jefferson Davis and other magnificent
types of American womanhood,
humbly petitioned the
Queen Regent of Spain in behalf of the Cuban heroine.
And these noble women, whose names are respected in the
very brothels and boozing kens of Boiler Avenue, are
referred to by this foul parody on God's masterpiece as
"a party of irresponsible old freaks." Christ! is it
possible that aught born of woman—that any animal that can
learn to walk on its hinder legs—should sink to such
infamous depths of degradation! Yet this is the fellow who
was so concerned for the feelings of certain sawciety she-males who personated French prostitutes at the Bradley-Martin debauch, that when I criticized their brazen bid for
"business" he came near having hydrophobia. Did the
Tee-Tee trogolodyte contain within his anthropodial diaphragm
a single diatom of decency he would have applauded
Mrs. Davis' womanly act, else blocked the yawning
hole in his prognathic head with a flat-car load of compost.
If Mrs. Davis is permitted to petition the King of Kings
to have mercy on the miserable journalistic piano-pounder
for Gotham's high-toned honk-a-tonks, certainly she may
with propriety appeal to the substitute sovereign of a
nation of bankrupt assassins to spare Senorita Cisneros.
...
Lawd Chelmsfold, now inspecting the Canadian border
to ascertain what resistance it could offer in case of a
brush with Uncle Sam, is out with an interview in which
he says one great element of John Bull's strength is to be
found in the fact that our Anglomaniacs could never be
convinced "of the justice of any war that might spring
up between America and Britain." Lawd Chelmsford, like
most Englishmen, is a large, juicy chump. Of course our
Anglomaniacs are all traitors in posse, as their Tory
forbears were in esse, and would sympathize with "deah old
England, dontcherknow," should war be precipitated by
her burning all our coast cities without provocation; but
as Chimmie Fadden would say, "Dat cuts no ice." They
are but a few thousand in number, and in the whole caboodle
there's not a chappie who would fight should a
Digger Indian fill his ear with a bushel of buffalo chips,
squirt tobacco juice on his twousahs and throw alkali
dust in his optics. Lawd Chelmsford has suffered himself
to be deceived by the bloodless hermaphrodites employed on
such papers as Josef Phewlitzer's
Verrult and Belo's
double-barreled
Benedict Arnold. Still it is just as well to
know that John Bull considers that he can depend upon
the sympathy and assistance of our Anglomaniacs in case
of war with this country. While these fellows are slobbering
over "the mother country," the leading papers of
London are sneering at the United States as "a fourth-class power" and proclaiming that if it doesn't conduct
itself more to John Bull's liking, "it will soon feel the
iron hand beneath the velvet glove." Turn loose your
"iron hand," you old he-bawd—and you'll soon stick it
further under your own coat-tails than you did at Yorktown.
...
The New York Wail and Distress approves the scheme
of Spain, Italy and Germany, to establish a penal colony
for anarchists. Yes, yes, granny dear; but would it not
be much better to alter those conditions that produce
anarchists. Anarchy is simply a protest against oppression.
When enough people in a revolt against tyranny it
becomes a successful revolution and its promoters are
enshrined in history as worthy patriots. When a few men
strike blindly but desperately at the hydra and are over-powered, they are traitors or anarchists, rebels or rioters.
The Wail and Distress was once edited by a party who,
according to his father-in-law, "could be more kinds of a
d—n fool than any other man in the country," and it is
evidently maintaining its old-time reputation.
...
It is reported that a British company is about to secure
control of the Panama Canal. If it does so, John Bull
will practically have Uncle Sam surrounded, and it is
worthy of remark that, despite his tearful protestations
of friendship, he fortifies every strategical point regardless
of expense. What does he want with such Gibraltars as
those at Van Couver, Halifax, Bermuda, St. Lucia and
half a dozen other points if he loves us so dearly as
Anglomaniacs would have us imagine? It costs hundreds of
millions to construct and equip these fortifications, yet
they are not worth a dollar to him except in case of war
with this country. The fact is that he expects another
tussle with the Western Titan—intends to precipitate it in
his own good time—when India is quieted and he has
naught to fear from the continental powers of Europe.
Arbitration is the soothing lullaby which Anglomaniacs
are to sing to his unsuspecting "cousin" until he gets his
"iron hand" in order—weaves about him an anaconda-coil
of cannon. Despite all the milk-sick drivel anent "ties of
blood, language and literature," "community of interest
of the ger-ate and gal-orious Anglo-Saxon race,' ad infinitum,
ad nauseam, the cold facts of history prove that for
more than a century, England has been our implacable
enemy. Why? Wounded pride in the first place, commercial
rivalry in the second; but the chief reason is that
England desires to perpetuate its supremacy as a world
power, and sees growing up here a giant who will sooner
or later, as Napoleon said, "clip the lion's claws." The
best thing this nation can do is to quietly "fix" itself, and
then at the first provocation compel J. B. to pull his
freight completely out of the Western world. Uncle
Sam is an idiot to go practically unarmed while British
guns are pointing at his head from all directions. Arbitration
the devil! Dismantle that cordon of forts which you
have built for our benefit, and we may take some stock
in your Pecksniffian professions of friendship. "Actions
speak louder than words," says the old adage; and while
J. B.'s words are those of Achates, his acts are those of an
enemy. The voice is the voice of Jacob, but the hand is
the hand of Esau.
...
If the dispatches from Hogansville, Ga. be correct, the
present federal administration is depriving American citizens
of their rights to an extent that suggests the impudence
of Germany's swell-head emperor or the petty tyranny of
the Turk. It appears that a nigger postmaster was
appointed at that place who was persona non grata, and the
people employed at their own expense the ex-postmaster to
receive their mail for them from the moke. Although a man
has an inalienable right to appoint what agent he pleases
to receive his money or his mail, the ex-p. m. is to be
prosecuted for "conducting a post-office." They then ordered
their mail to an adjacent town and sent a private messenger
for it, but this was prohibited on the plea that
a only government has the right to establish a mail route."
To crown the infamy the people were not permitted to mail
their letters on postal cars. Here are three flagrant
violations of the rights of American citizens, and to compel
them to patronize a nigger Republican postmaster. The
first agent employed by the people was no more "conducting
a post-office" than is the ICONOCLAST. which receives
and distributes the mail of a dozen or more people. The
messenger sent to the adjacent town was no more running
a mail route than is the farmer who brings to town the
letters written by his neighbors and carries back those
intended for them. The postal department has discharged
its entire function when it receives mail, by whosoever
presented, and delivers it to those for whom it is intended
or to those duly authorized to receive it, and the
postmaster-general who permits the department to exceed that
simple duty and intermeddle with the rights of the people
should not only be impeached and removed from office in
one time and two motions, but taken by the slack of the
pantalettes and pitched headlong into the penitentiary.
It appears that the indignant people assaulted the nigger
postmaster. That is indeed to be regretted; still I can
but wonder that they do not shoot the whole umbilicus
out of every impudent tool of a petty tyranny who attempts
to prevent them mailing letters on postal cars while
that right is freely accorded to others. The whole affair
serves to accentuate the contention of the ICONOCLAST
that postmasters should not be appointed by successful
politicians, but elected by the people. If the latter can be
trusted to choose presidents, congressmen, etc. they can
certainly be trusted to select competent men to lick stamps
and shuffle postal cards. As matters now stand the wishes
of the people, who "pay the freight," are in no wise
respected—the pie is shoveled out to a horde of hungry
political heelers, not because of services rendered their
country, but as payment for their pernicious activity in
promoting the interests of a corrupt and conscienceless
party. Thus it happens that in about half the cases
federal officials are regarded with aversion by the people
they are supposed to serve. It is to be hoped that every
Southern white man who hereafter votes the Republican
ticket will have his
billets de amour clapper-clawed and
liberally scented by some big fat coon.
...
The Buffalo (N.Y.) Distress, commenting on the acquittal
of a negro near Barton, Ark., who killed another negro
for having criminally assaulted a woman of their own race,
wants to know if the law of justification would have held
good had the rapist been a white man. Had the
Distress
but paused to reflect that the white men of Arkansas are
free silver Democrats, it would not have indulged in a
supposition so far-fetched and foolish. Now in Buffalo,
which gave Cleveland to the country, and permits a
nigger-loving lazar like the editor of the
Distress to run
at large, almost anything in petticoats, from old Sycorax
to a malodorous coon, might be in some danger of assault
by so-called Caucasians.
...
There's every indication that another gigantic prize
fight fake will soon make a swipe for the long green of
the cibarious sucker. Were it not a violation of the law
of the land and the canons of the Baptist church to wager
money that we should give to the missionaries, I'd risk
six-bits that Corbett and Fitzsimmons get together within
a year and that the gamblers who are on the inside "make
a killing." For six months or more before their last mill
these two worthies chewed the rag, making everybody believe
that the battle was to be for berlud. The odds were
on Corbett, and he got lost in the shuffle as a matter of
course—just as Fitz did when he mixed it with Sharkey.
Now the rag-chewing has begun over again, and Bob is
doing the lordly contempt act just as Jeems did before
the late unpleasantness. He has "retired"—wants Corbett
to "go get er repertashun"—says "Corbett quit in
the last go like er cowardly cur." It will take time to
work the thing up, to resuscitate the old excitement, to set
fools to betting wildly on their favorite; but when the
pippin's ripe it will be pulled. There's not the slightest
reason for the existence of any personal ill will between
these pugs—it's all in the play, and being bad actors they
overdo the part of Termagant, do protest too much. It
is quite noticeable that in the "big fights" nowadays nobody
gets seriously bruised. It's easy enough to start
the claret, and an ounce o' blood well smeared satisfies
the crowd as well as a barrel. The result of the "fight"
will be determined beforehand—as soon as the managers
learn how they can scoop the most money. The best thing
you can do with your ducats is to send them to me with
instructions to bet them even that Bill McKinley's job
will soon fit Bryan. The man who bets on the result of a
prize-fight ought to have a guardian appointed.
...
A Los Angeles, Cal., correspondent informs me that the
editor of the Times of that town, who I trimmed up last
month for permitting impudent coons to insult Southern
white women through his columns, is named "Col." H. G.
Otis, and that during the war he commanded a negro
company. He also sends me the following extract from
the alleged newspaper published by the ex-captain of the
Darktown Paladins:
In considering the crimes of which some negroes are
frequently guilty it should not be forgotten that these traits
of violent sensuality are undoubtedly inherited from
mothers and grandmothers who were subjected to the lust
of their masters under the slavery system. In other words,
the sins of the fathers are being visited upon their children
to the third and fourth generation.
That is a vast improvement over the original statement
published by Coon-Captain Otis to the effect that Southern
white women seek black paramours, and that most lynchings
are caused by the guilty parties getting caught. It
is a matter of utter indifference to the ex-slaveholders
what this calumnious little fice says about them, if he
will but refrain from voiding his fetid rheum upon their
families. Doubtless some slaveholders were degraded sensualists,
but such were exceptions to the rule. Not one
yaller nigger in a hundred is the child of its mother's
old master. There were comparatively few mulattoes in
the South before the war, most of these were the offspring
of white overseers—and it is a notorious fact that a maority
of our professional "nigger-drivers" were from the
North. This is no reflection on the character of the
Northern people—these fellows were simply the feculent
scum, the excrementitious offscourings of civilization.
And now I remember that a second-cousin of mine in
Kentucky has an overseer from Ohio named Otis. A very
thrifty and choleric man was my cousin, and considering
a yaller nigger less valuable than a black one, he threatened
to subject his overseer to a surgical operation if
another half-breed pickaninny appeared on the place. I
do wonder if this "Col." Otis—who knew so much about
the management of coons that he was placed in command
of a colored company—can be the same fellow; also what
was the result of my relative's ultimatum? Can anybody
in Los Angeles tell me what state this "Col." Otis came
from, or send me a good picture of the ex-commander of
coons?
...
While the preachers were hustling out of the fever
infected districts of Louisiana, the Sisters of Charity were
hurrying in from points as far distant as San Francisco.
And what were the A. P. Apes doing? They were standing
afar off, pointing the finger of scorn at these angels
of mercy and calling them "prostitutes of the priesthood."
In this land every man has a perfect right to
entertain such religious views as he likes; but those who
defame women who cheerfully risk their lives for others'
sake should be promptly shot. "By their fruits ye shall
know them," says the Good Book; and while the Church
of Rome is producing Good Samaritans to wrestle with
the plague, the A. P. Ape is filling the penitentiaries. I
care nothing for the apostolic pretensions of the Pope
or the dogmas of the Priesthood; but I'm strongly tempted
to make a few off-hand observations with a six-shooter
should these papaphobes speak disrespectfully of the Sisters
of Charity in my presence.
...
Justice Van Fleet of the supreme court of California
recently rendered an opinion which indicates the utter
emptiness of our boast that in this land all men are equal
before the law. Because of the confusion or ignorance
of a new motorman, the young child of a plumber, playing
upon the track, was killed by an electric car. The parents
sued the company and were awarded damages in the sum
of six thousand dollars. Defendant took an appeal, which
the supreme court sustained, and the cause was remanded
on the ground that the damages awarded were excessive—
that the boy would probably have followed his father's
occupation, and an embryo workman is not, in Justice Van
Fleet's opinion, worth so much money! Measured by this
standard, what would have been the average "value" of
American presidents when they were boys? Now that
Justice Van Fleet is measuring human life solely by the
gold standard, perhaps he can tell us what a juvenile
Shakespeare or Webster is "worth." I have held to the
opinion heretofore that blood could not be measured by
boodle, that the children of the common people were of as
much importance in the eye of the law as the progeny
of the plutocrat—that the anguish of parents did not
depend on the length of the purse; but Justice Van Fleet
seems to agree with Kernan's weeping Canuck, that the
more siller one has the more deeply he feels the loss of a
son. He seems to need a powerful cardac for his heart and
a hot mush poultice for his head, being as fine a
combination of knave and fool, as one can easily find. Had the
supreme court declared that the plaintiffs in the case were
not entitled to a dollar I would heartily approve the
opinion; but to measure the "value" of a son by the
gain-getting capacity of its sire is simply monstrous. A
statute should be enforced impartially, without regard
to persons; but I should like to see the law so amended
that people could not trade upon their tears,
could not coin the blood of their relatives to
fill their pockets. A child should not be considered
a piece of property for which the accidental
destroyer must
pay, just as a railway company must cough
up the cash value of the cow it kills. As not one child in
a thousand ever returns to its parents the cost of its
rearing it cannot be urged that the plaintiffs in this case
were pecuniarily damaged one penny. All they had to
sell was "mental anguish," and that should never be made
a merchantable commodity. We have criminal courts to
deal with those who, through criminal negligence or otherwise
occasion death. It may be argued that when the
party killed has dependants for whom he or she is
providing, the slayer should be compelled to make good the
damage in so far as money can do it. I say
no—that if
there be blood guiltiness let the offender be punished in
accordance with our criminal code; if there be none then
is he blameless, and to deprive a person of his property
because of a harmless act is a crime. "But the dependants
should be provided for." Certainly they should; but not
through rank injustice to others. We are carrying entirely
too far the theory that the principal is responsible
for the acts of his agents. If the agent is guilty of criminal
negligence he is punished by one law and his principal
by another; if the agent blunders he is found not guilty
and discharged, yet his principal is punished for being a
co-partner in his innocence. It should not be forgotten
that the agent of a private company is also a representative
of that larger and more powerful corporation which
we call the state. The private company can do no more
than outline his duty and discharge him for dereliction;
the public corporation not only prescribes his duty but
imprisons or hangs him for neglect; the private company
is itself but a creation of the state which exercises over it
autocratic power while shirking responsibility. If I loosen
a rail on the "Katy" road and cause the destruction of
$100,000 worth of property the company must pocket the
loss, notwithstanding the fact that it is paying the state
for protection. If a dozen people are killed in the wreck
the relatives of the last one of them will sue for damages
and the state compel it to pay for its own failure to afford
that protection to which it is clearly entitled. What
then? Let the state issue life insurance at cost and compel
every person who has dependants to carry a policy
payable on the annual installment plan. For 5 or 6 cents
a day it can, without loss, issue a policy to every man in
America that will provide his family with the necessaries
of life for at least ten years after his death, and the man
who cannot pay that premium is worth precious little to
anybody considered purely from an economic standpoint.
If the state wants to bring damage suits for the slaughter
of its citizens, well and good; but for God's sake let us
get rid of the degrading spectacle of people hawking the
corpses of their relatives through the courts.