THE HESPERIAN.
w
llur" is a parallel to a naval battle in "Salathicl." In the
latter story we find these words written: mid the huge
ship, disparting timber by timber, heaved and plunged
headlong into the bosom of the ocean. With a new
terror of the death I had so long resisted, I felt myself go
down. I was engulfed in the whirlpool. Every sensation
was horribly vivid; I had the full consciousness of life and of
the unfathomable depth into which I was descending.
The solid darkness, the suffocation, the furious whirl of the
eddy that spun me around its huge circle like an atom of
sand, every sense of drowning passed through my shattered
frame with an individual and successive pang. 1 was
darted to the surface a broken mast rolling by entangled
me in its cordage." This was the experience of Salathicl,
but if he had told Ben llur his story the accounts could not
have tallied much more nearly. This was the adventure of
Wallace's hero: "The floor, when he reached it, seemed to
be lifting and breaking itself to pieces; then in a twinkling
the whole after part of the hull broke asunder, and, as'if it
had all the lime been lying in wait, the sea leaped in, and all
became darkness and surging water to Hen Hur. The
darkness and the whirl and roar of water stupefied him.
Even the holding his breath was involuntary. Fath
oms under the surface the hollow mass vomited him forth,
and he arose along with the loosened debris. He gained the
top, filled his lungs with a great gasp, and climbed higher
upon the plank to which he held."
I might go on and show many other instances of similar
ity in the two books, but these arc enough. It will be seen
from reading the books that the plagiarisms if any exists, is
in minor passages. Hut I cannot believe that Wallace robbed
Crowly of his work. If he did, it was to his own detriment,
for those parts of 'lien Hur" which arc the finest, arc the
most unlike anything in "Salathiel . " If Wallace had read
the latter book, and had lliongnt his own work was to be
anything like it, he would never have written "A Tale of the
Christ," for he would have been wearied to such an extent,
that he would never have dared to inflict upon the reading
public a book with an equal lack of interest.
CURRENT COMMENT.
The celebration of the hundredth anniversary of the
inauguration of Washington is full of interest not only to
every American, but also to eveiy civilized man. One hun
dred years ago the repu'li is in experiment in the science
of government. Conser.iues the world over predicted all
manner of evil things. Ihey pointed to the abuse of power,
oppression, and anarchy, which ruined the Roman republic,
as evils inseparable from popular government. Democrats,
on the contrary, foretold a wonderful future for the infant
nation. They saw here a government in which all citizens
had equal political rights; a government without -a royal
family, a titled aristocracy, or a state church; a government
with a continent, rich in every variety of natural resource,
from which to carve out a farm for every citizen. If in addi
tion to all this they could have foreseen the wonderful increase
in productive power which has come with the multiplied
inventions, what would they not have foretold. It would have
seemed certain that poverty, with its train of evils, starva
tion, crime, drunkenness, and greed, would be unknown in
the republic that was to have an over-production of all the
things thaf help to civilize men. If there was to be a super
abundance of wealth, there would suiely be enough for every
one. Holh monarchist and democrat have been disappointed.
The little western republic has, without doubt, become the
foremost nation of the earth. A continent has been covered
with cities. Every state has its colleges. The railroad and
telegraph have become indispensable to our everyday life.
Chattel slavery has been abolished. Three wars have been
fought and won. Surely, the republic is a success.
Hut the picture has a somber shade. We have multi-millionaires,
but we also have tramps. We have many very
learned men and we have little children working in mines
and- factories. Never were private citizens so rich as here
and now, and yet a costantly increasing number of our
citizens regard a chance to work long hours for a bare sub
stance as a precious privilege. We have hardly fenced in
this great continent, the stories of natural wealth are not yet
touched and yet there arc, according to the American Fed
eration of Labor, a million idle men in the United States.
We have magnificent public buildings, private residences
that rival royal palaces, and tenement houses whose1 inmates
are doomed to death by the most infernal torture that man
can devise, death of body and of soul for want of the neces
saries of life. The small fanners of the East complain that
they cannot make a living and half the farms of the West
arc mortgaged. Our great cities grow in wealth and splen
dor and yet wc have labor organizations, mobs, and anarch
ists. Political power tends more and more to concentrate
itself in the hands of bummer politicians and machines.
Corruption in public as well as in private life is regarded as
quite the proper thing. Surely, the republic is not so much
of a success as it might be.
Dr. Warner in his lecture on the cause of pauperism
made it very clear that charity is not the remedy for this
social evil, that indiscriminate giving instead of alleviating
the condition of the poor, and thus tending to solve the
social problem, has a stiong tendency to cause the poor to
become paupers, and in this way to introduce a new and
troublesome lactor, the professional mendicant, into an
already too intricate problem. What men need is not the
ostentatious charity that gives for what Kuskiu would cal
the lewd sensation of it, but plain, simple, justice. The true
citizen will study the present organization of society, will
question fearlessly every social institution until he finds the
evil and when he has fouml it he will not rest until he has
persuaded men to remove it. He will, perhaps, be called a
crank by the thoughtless, or be crucified or hung by those
whose material interests arc assailed but he will have the
reward that conies to him who docs his duty.
Dr. Warner exhibited an elaborate gencological table of
a collection of families, more or less closely related to each
other, known as the tribe of Ishmacl, which has for the last
fifty years subsisted upon charit) . These families are para
sites, living upon the social organism, doing nothing to make
the world richer or better but existing at the expense of the
world's workers. It is true they live cheaply, have few
brown stone fronts, bioad cloth suits, fast horses, servants,
diamonds, splendid dinners, or things of this sort that come
only to those who arc industrious and honest and frugal, but
still they are a heavy weight upon the laborers of the
country.
There is In New York City a tribe that for a great many
years has done hardly anything that could, by any strotch of
imagination, be tegarded as productive work. . They have
produced veiy littlebut they have, consumed a great deal.
The tube of Astor is very much like the tribe of Ishmael.