CÆSAR'S COLUMN: A Story of the Twentieth Century, BY IGNATIUS DONNELLY.

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CÆSAR'S COLUMN A Story of the Twentieth Century.

BY IGNATIUS DONNELLY.

writing as

EDMUND BOISGILBERT,

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Reading this after his other two works, about Atlantis and Ragnarok respectively, one is in for a surprise. He was intelligent in more than one way.

He could see the writing on the wall about wave of leftist revolutions, although he didn't see it coming so fast. And he foretold aviation, television, and healthy food in an era when smoking was must for males, as was drinking.

Is he as racist here as in his other works? Hope not.

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Donelly reverts to his favourite form of racism, Hindu bashing. He quotes out of context, distorts, always misinterprets - and lies.

""If Nature, with her interminable fecundity, pours forth millions of human beings for whom there is no place on earth, and no means of subsistence, what affair is that of ours, my brethren? We did not make them; we did not ask Nature to make them. And it is Nature's business to feed them, not yours or mine. Are we better than Nature? Are we wiser? Shall we rebuke the Great Mother by caring for those whom she has abandoned? If she intended that all men should be happy, why did she not make them so? She is omnipotent. She permits evil to exist, when with a breath of her mouth she could sweep it away forever. But it is part of her scheme of life. She is indifferent to the cries of distress which rise up to her, in one undying wail, from the face of the universe. With stony eyes the thousand-handed goddess sits, serene and merciless, in the midst of her worshipers, like a Hindoo idol. Her skirts are wet with blood; her creation is based on destruction; her lives live only by murder. The cruel images of the pagan are truer delineations of Nature than the figures which typify the impotent charity of Christendom--an exotic in the midst of an alien world."

Donelly proceeds with further misusing Hinduism, Gods of Hinduism, and general racism.

""Let the abyss groan. Why should we trouble ourselves. Let us close our ears to the cries of distress we are not able to relieve. It was said of old time, 'Many are called, but few chosen.' Our ancestors placed a mythical interpretation on this text; but we know that it means:--many are called to the sorrows of life, but few are chosen to inherit the delights of wealth and happiness. Buddha told us, 'Poverty is the curse of Brahma'; Mahomet declared that 'God smote the wicked with misery'; and Christ said, 'The poor ye have always with you.' Why, then, should we concern ourselves about the poor? They are part of the everlasting economy of human society. Let us leave them in the hands of Nature. She who made them can care for them.

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" ... But even this condescension--to his unbounded astonishment--she declined with thanks. And then the silly little fool grew more desperate than ever, and battered up his poor brains with strong drink, and wept in maudlin fashion to his acquaintances. At last one of these--a fellow of the same kidney, but with more enterprise than himself--said to him: 'Why don't you carry her off?' Nathan opened his eyes very wide, stopped his sniffling and blubbering, and made up his mind to follow this sage advice. To obtain the necessary nerve for such a prodigious undertaking he fired up with still more whisky; and when the night came he was crazy with drink. Obtaining a carriage and another drunken fool to help him, he stationed himself beside the pavement, in the quiet street where Christina lived, and but a few doors distant from her house; and then, as she came along with her mother, he seized upon her, while his companion grasped Mrs. Jansen. He began to drag Christina toward the carriage; but the young girl was stronger than he was, and not only resisted him, but began to shriek, ably seconded by her mother, until the street rang. The door of their house flew open, and Mr. Jansen, who had recognized the voices of his wife and daughter, was hurrying to their rescue; whereupon the little villain cried in a tone of high tragedy, 'Then die!' and stabbed her in the throat with a little dagger he carried. He turned and sprang into the carriage; while the poor girl, who had become suddenly silent, staggered and fell into the arms of her father."

Donelly definitely did not invent this, nor did he write of someone of his own nation and race committing a crime that seems more in character with less civilised. He could have had a character of another race or creed commit this, but didn't.

As shocking as this is when anyone of a third world or islamic society commits it, it's far more so, not only that it could have happened in US, but that an author who was a congressman would publish a book in his own name with a mainstream character of upper middle class commit such a crime.

And even more so that such a book wasn't notorious but is mostly unknown!

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" ... "Bossy" especially was a wonderful cow. Never before in the world had there been such a cow as "Bossy." The children had tied some ribbons to her horns, and little Ole was astride of her broad back, his chubby legs pointing directly to the horizon, and the rest of the juveniles danced around her; while the gentle and patient animal stood chewing her cud, with a profound look upon her peaceful face, much like that of a chief-justice considering "the rule in Shelley's case," or some other equally solemn and momentous subject.

"And I could not help but think how kindly we should feel toward these good, serviceable ministers to man; for I remembered how many millions of our race had been nurtured through childhood and maturity upon their generous largess. I could see, in my imagination, the great bovine procession, lowing and moving, with their bleating calves trotting by their side, stretching away backward, farther and farther, through all the historic period; through all the conquests and bloody earth-staining battles, and all the sin and suffering of the race; and far beyond, even into the dim, pre-historic age, when the Aryan ancestors of all the European nations dwelt together under the same tents, and the blond-haired maidens took their name of "daughters" (the very word we now use) from their function of milkmaidens. And it seemed to me that we should love a creature so intimately blended with the history of our race, and which had done so much, indirectly, to give us the foundation on which to build civilization."

Donelly is as unashamed of abusing Sanskrit literature after claiming it fraudulently as European culture is unashamed of slaughter of cattle despite truth of what Donelly says above.

No, they aren't Aryan in true sense of the word, even if some migration and intermarriage gave them access to languages derived from Sanskrit.

More likely, it was migration from outskirts of India. Even more likely, it was due to marauders from West capturing people from outskirts of Indian civilisation as slaves, and subsequent cultural contact.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

To the Public

I THE GREAT CITY

II. MY ADVENTURE

III. THE BEGGAR'S HOME

IV. THE UNDER-WORLD

V. ESTELLA WASHINGTON

VI. THE INTERVIEW

VII. THE HIDING-PLACE

VIII. THE BROTHERHOOD

IX. THE POISONED KNIFE

X. PREPARATIONS FOR TO-NIGHT

XI. HOW THE WORLD CAME TO BE RUINED

XII. GABRIEL'S UTOPIA

XIII. THE COUNCIL OF THE OLIGARCHY

XIV. THE SPY'S STORY

XV. THE MASTER OF "THE DEMONS"

XVI. GABRIEL'S FOLLY

XVII. THE FLIGHT AND PURSUIT

XVIII. THE EXECUTION

XIX. THE MAMELUKES OF THE AIR

XX. THE WORKINGMEN'S MEETING

XXI. A SERMON OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

XXII. ESTELLA AND I

XXIII. MAX'S STORY-THE SONGSTRESS

XXIV. MAX'S STORY CONTINUED--THE JOURNEYMAN PRINTER

XXV. MAX'S STORY CONTINUED--THE DARK SHADOW

XXVI. MAX'S STORY CONTINUED--THE WIDOW AND HER SON

XXVII. MAX'S STORY CONTINUED--THE BLACKSMITH SHOP

XXVIII. MAX'S STORY CONCLUDED--THE UNEXPECTED HAPPENS

XXIX. ELYSIUM

XXX. UPON THE HOUSE-TOP

XXXI. "SHEOL"

XXXII. THE RAT-TRAP

XXXIII. "THE OCEAN OVERPEERS ITS LIST"

XXXIV. THE PRINCE GIVES HIS LAST BRIBE

XXXV. THE LIBERATED PRISONER

XXXVI. CÆSAR ERECTS HIS MONUMENT

XXXVII. THE SECOND DAY

XXXVIII. THE FLIGHT

XXXIX. EUROPE

XL. THE GARDEN IN THE MOUNTAINS

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REVIEW

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To the Public

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"I come to the churches with my heart filled with the profoundest respect for the essentials of religion; I seek to show them why they have lost their hold upon the poor,--upon that vast multitude, the best-beloved of God's kingdom,--and I point out to them how they may regain it. I tell them that if Religion is to reassume her ancient station, as crowned mistress of the souls of men, she must stand, in shining armor bright, with the serpent beneath her feet, the champion and defender of mankind against all its oppressors."

"Who is it that is satisfied with the present unhappy condition of society? It is conceded that life is a dark and wretched failure for the great mass of mankind. The many are plundered to enrich the few. Vast combinations depress the price of labor and increase the cost of the necessaries of existence. The rich, as a rule, despise the poor; and the poor are coming to hate the rich. The face of labor grows sullen; the old tender Christian love is gone; standing armies are formed on one side, and great communistic organizations on the other; society divides itself into two hostile camps; no white flags pass from the one to the other. They wait only for the drum-beat and the trumpet to summon them to armed conflict.

"These conditions have come about in less than a century; most of them in a quarter of a century. Multiply them by the years of another century, and who shall say that the events I depict are impossible? There is an acceleration of movement in human affairs even as there is in the operations of gravity. The dead missile out of space at last blazes, and the very air takes fire. The masses grow more intelligent as they grow more wretched; and more capable of cooperation as they become more desperate. The labor organizations of to-day would have been impossible fifty years ago. ... "

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March 25, 2022 - March 25, 2022.

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I THE GREAT CITY

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"[This book is a series of letters, from Gabriel Weltstein, in New York, to his brother, Heinrich Weltstein, in the State of Uganda, Africa.]"

"NEW YORK, Sept. 10, 1988"

This book was written a century before the date he gives above, and his imagination here is ahead of time in some ways, while reflecting his own in many others.

"But our admiration may be here, and our hearts elsewhere. And so from all this glory and splendor I turn back to the old homestead, amid the high mountain valleys of Africa; to the primitive, simple shepherd-life; to my beloved mother, to you and to all our dear ones. This gorgeous, gilded room fades away, and I see the leaning hills, the trickling streams, the deep gorges where our woolly thousands graze; and I hear once more the echoing Swiss horns of our herdsmen reverberating from the snow-tipped mountains. But my dream is gone. The roar of the mighty city rises around me like the bellow of many cataracts.

"New York contains now ten million inhabitants; it is the largest city that is, or ever has been, in the world. It is difficult to say where it begins or ends: for the villas extend, in almost unbroken succession, clear to Philadelphia; while east, west and north noble habitations spread out mile after mile, far beyond the municipal limits."

"As we approached it in our air-ship, coming from the east, we could see, a hundred miles before we reached the continent, the radiance of its millions of magnetic lights, reflected on the sky, like the glare of a great conflagration. These lights are not fed, as in the old time, from electric dynamos, but the magnetism of the planet itself is harnessed for the use of man. That marvelous earth-force which the Indians called "the dance of the spirits," and civilized man designated "the aurora borealis," is now used to illuminate this great metropolis, with a clear, soft, white light, like that of the full moon, but many times brighter. And the force is so cunningly conserved that it is returned to the earth, without any loss of magnetic power to the planet. Man has simply made a temporary loan from nature for which he pays no interest.

"Night and day are all one, for the magnetic light increases automatically as the day-light wanes; and the business parts of the city swarm as much at midnight as at high noon. In the old times, I am told, part of the streets was reserved for foot-paths for men and women, while the middle was given up to horses and wheeled vehicles; and one could not pass from side to side without danger of being trampled to death by the horses. But as the city grew it was found that the pavements would not hold the mighty, surging multitudes; they were crowded into the streets, and many accidents occurred. The authorities were at length compelled to exclude all horses from the streets, in the business parts of the city, and raise the central parts to a level with the sidewalks, and give them up to the exclusive use of the pedestrians, erecting stone pillars here and there to divide the multitude moving in one direction from those flowing in another. These streets are covered with roofs of glass, which exclude the rain and snow, but not the air. And then the wonder and glory of the shops! They surpass all description. Below all the business streets are subterranean streets, where vast trains are drawn, by smokeless and noiseless electric motors, some carrying passengers, others freight. At every street corner there are electric elevators, by which passengers can ascend or descend to the trains. And high above the house-tops, built on steel pillars, there are other railroads, not like the unsightly elevated trains we saw pictures of in our school books, but crossing diagonally over the city, at a great height, so as to best economize time and distance.

"The whole territory between Broadway and the Bowery and Broome Street and Houston Street is occupied by the depot grounds of the great inter-continental air-lines; and it is an astonishing sight to see the ships ascending and descending, like monstrous birds, black with swarming masses of passengers, to or from England, Europe, South America, the Pacific Coast, Australia, China, India and Japan.

"These air-lines are of two kinds: the anchored and the independent. The former are hung, by revolving wheels, upon great wires suspended in the air; the wires held in place by metallic balloons, fish-shaped, made of aluminium, and constructed to turn with the wind so as to present always the least surface to the air-currents. These balloons, where the lines cross the oceans, are secured to huge floating islands of timber, which are in turn anchored to the bottom of the sea by four immense metallic cables, extending north, south, east and west, and powerful enough to resist any storms. These artificial islands contain dwellings, in which men reside, who keep up the supply of gas necessary for the balloons. The independent air-lines are huge cigar-shaped balloons, unattached to the earth, moving by electric power, with such tremendous speed and force as to be as little affected by the winds as a cannon ball. In fact, unless the wind is directly ahead the sails of the craft are so set as to take advantage of it like the sails of a ship; and the balloon rises or falls, as the birds do, by the angle at which it is placed to the wind, the stream of air forcing it up, or pressing it down, as the case may be. And just as the old-fashioned steam-ships were provided with boats, in which the passengers were expected to take refuge, if the ship was about to sink, so the upper decks of these air-vessels are supplied with parachutes, from which are suspended boats; and in case of accident two sailors and ten passengers are assigned to each parachute; and long practice has taught the bold craftsmen to descend gently and alight in the sea, even in stormy weather, with as much adroitness as a sea-gull. In fact, a whole population of air-sailors has grown up to manage these ships, never dreamed of by our ancestors. The speed of these aerial vessels is, as you know, very great--thirty-six hours suffices to pass from New York to London, in ordinary weather. The loss of life has been less than on the old-fashioned steamships; for, as those which go east move at a greater elevation than those going west, there is no danger of collisions; and they usually fly above the fogs which add so much to the dangers of sea-travel. In case of hurricanes they rise at once to the higher levels, above the storm; and, with our increased scientific knowledge, the coming of a cyclone is known for many days in advance; and even the stratum of air in which it will move can be foretold."

" ... this hotel, called The Darwin, in honor of the great English philosopher of the last century. It occupies an entire block from Fifth Avenue to Madison Avenue, and from Forty-sixth Street to Forty-seventh. The whole structure consists of an infinite series of cunning adjustments, for the delight and gratification of the human creature. One object seems to be to relieve the guests from all necessity for muscular exertion. The ancient elevator, or "lift," as they called it in England, has expanded until now whole rooms, filled with ladies and gentlemen, are bodily carried up from the first story to the roof; a professional musician playing the while on the piano--not the old-fashioned thing our grandmothers used, but a huge instrument capable of giving forth all sounds of harmony from the trill of a nightingale to the thunders of an orchestra. And when you reach the roof of the hotel you find yourself in a glass-covered tropical forest, filled with the perfume of many flowers, and bright with the scintillating plumage of darting birds; all sounds of sweetness fill the air, and many glorious, star-eyed maidens, guests of the hotel, wander half seen amid the foliage, like the houris in the Mohammedan's heaven.

"But as I found myself growing hungry I descended to the dining-room. It is three hundred feet long: a vast multitude were there eating in perfect silence. It is considered bad form to interrupt digestion with speech, as such a practice tends to draw the vital powers, it is said, away from the stomach to the head. Our forefathers were expected to shine in conversation, and be wise and witty while gulping their food between brilliant passages. ... For, as you know, there are men who make fortunes now by preserving and breeding the game animals, like the deer, the moose, the elk, the buffalo, the antelope, the mountain sheep and goat, and many others, which but for their care would long since have become extinct. They select barren regions in mild climates, not fit for agriculture, and enclosing large tracts with wire fences, they raise great quantities of these valuable game animals, which they sell to the wealthy gourmands of the great cities, at very high prices."

" ... In a little while an electric bell near me rang; the bill of fare disappeared from the mirror; there was a slight clicking sound; the table parted in front of me, the electric knobs moving aside; and up through the opening rose my dinner carefully arranged, as upon a table, which exactly filled the gap caused by the recession of that part of the original table which contained the electric buttons. ... I then touched the button for another African state, Nyanza; and at once I began to read of new lines of railroad; new steam-ship fleets upon the great lake; of large colonies of white men, settling new States, upon the higher lands of the interior; of their colleges, books, newspapers; and particularly of a dissertation upon the genius of Chaucer, written by a Zulu professor, which had created considerable interest among the learned societies of the Transvaal. I touched the button for China and read the important news that the Republican Congress of that great and highly civilized nation had decreed that English, the universal language of the rest of the globe, should be hereafter used in the courts of justice and taught in all the schools. Then came the news that a Manchurian professor, an iconoclast, had written a learned work, in English, to prove that George Washington's genius and moral greatness had been much over-rated by the partiality of his countrymen. He was answered by a learned doctor of Japan who argued that the greatness of all great men consisted simply in opportunity, and that for every illustrious name that shone in the pages of history, associated with important events, a hundred abler men had lived and died unknown. The battle was raging hotly, and all China and Japan were dividing into contending factions upon this great issue."

Usual racism of US and of West, imagining everyone using English and concerned about Washington.

"It is laughable to read of those days when men were drugged with pills, boluses and powders. Now our physic is in our food; and the doctor prescribes a series of articles to be eaten or avoided, as the case may be.... "

He'd be surprised how very Indian that is, not in his words but related to Ayurveda from India.

"I had observed that the air of the hotel was sweeter, purer and cooler than that of the streets outside. I asked one of the attendants for an explanation. He took me out to where we could command a view of the whole building, and showed me that a great canvas pipe rose high above the hotel, and, tracing it upwards, far as the eye could reach, he pointed out a balloon, anchored by cables, so high up as to be dwarfed to a mere speck against the face of the blue sky. He told me that the great pipe was double; that through one division rose the hot, exhausted air of the hotel, and that the powerful draft so created operated machinery which pumped down the pure, sweet air from a higher region, several miles above the earth; and, the current once established, the weight of the colder atmosphere kept up the movement, and the air was then distributed by pipes to every part of the hotel. He told me also that the hospitals of the city were supplied in the same manner; and the result had been, be said, to diminish the mortality of the sick one-half; for the air so brought to them was perfectly free from bacteria and full of all life-giving properties. A company had been organized to supply the houses of the rich with his cold, pure air for so much a thousand feet, as long ago illuminating gas was furnished."

He describes free hot water from earth delivered to homes, and medically assisted facilities for ending one's own life.

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March 25, 2022 - March 26, 2022.

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II. MY ADVENTURE

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" ... I dropped the whip out of the window and fell into a brown study. I occasionally stole a glance at my strange companion, who, with the dress of extreme poverty, and the gray hair of old age, had such a manner of authority and such an air of promptitude and decision."

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March 26, 2022 - March 26, 2022.

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III. THE BEGGAR'S HOME

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""I see you are surprised; but there are many strange things in this great city. I was disguised for a particular purpose, which I cannot explain to you. But may I not request the name of the gentleman to whom I am under so many obligations? Of course, if you have any reasons for concealing it, consider the question as not asked."

""No," I replied, Smiling, "I have no concealments. My name is Gabriel Weltstein; I live in the new state of Uganda, in the African confederation, in the mountains of Africa, near the town of Stanley; and I am engaged in sheep-raising, in the mountains. I belong to a colony of Swiss, from the canton of Uri, who, led by my grandfather, settled there. seventy years ago. ... "

""But now that I have told you who I am, will you be good enough to tell me something about yourself?"

""Certainly," he replied, "and with pleasure. I am a native of this city; my name is Maximilian Petion; by profession I am an attorney; I live in this house with my mother, to whom I shall soon have the pleasure of introducing you."

""That was the carriage of Prince Cabano, the wealthiest and most vindictive man in the city. If you had been taken you would have been consigned to imprisonment for probably many years.""

Here he begins to sound very like Upton Sinclair. Was the latter influenced, a relative?

" ... An ordinary citizen has no more prospect of fair treatment in our courts, contending with a millionaire, than a new-born infant would have of life in the den of a wolf."

""But," I replied, rather hotly, "I should appeal for justice to the public through the newspapers."

""The newspapers!" he said, and his face darkened as he spoke; "the newspapers are simply the hired mouthpieces of power; the devil's advocates of modern civilization; their influence is always at the service of the highest bidder; it is their duty to suppress or pervert the truth, and they do it thoroughly. ... "

One can see this leading to holocaust, even though there's truth there about centuries of persecution of Jews.

""Now," said I, "who is this Prince Cabano, and how does he happen to be called Prince? I thought your Republic eschewed all titles of nobility."

""So it does," he replied, "by law. But we have a great many titles which are used socially, by courtesy. The Prince, for instance, when he comes to sign his name to a legal document, writes it Jacob Isaacs. But his father, when he grew exceedingly rich and ambitious, purchased a princedom in Italy for a large sum, and the government, being hard up for money, conferred the title of Prince with the estate. His son, the present Isaacs, succeeded, of course, to his estates and his title."

""'Isaacs," I said, "is a Jewish name?" "Yes," he replied, "the aristocracy of the world is now almost altogether of Hebrew origin."

""Indeed," I asked, "how does that happen?"

""Well," he replied, "it was the old question of the survival of the fittest. Christianity fell upon the Jews, originally a race of agriculturists and shepherds, and forced them, for many centuries, through the most terrible ordeal of persecution the history of mankind bears any record of. Only the strong of body, the cunning of brain, the long-headed, the persistent, the men with capacity to live where a dog would starve, survived the awful trial. Like breeds like; and now the Christian world is paying, in tears and blood, for the sufferings inflicted by their bigoted and ignorant ancestors upon a noble race. When the time came for liberty and fair play the Jew was master in the contest with the Gentile, who hated and feared him.

""They are the great money-getters of the world. They rose from dealers in old clothes and peddlers of hats to merchants, to bankers, to princes. They were as merciless to the Christian as the Christian had been to them. They said, with Shylock: 'The villainy you teach me I will execute; and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.' The 'wheel of fortune has come full circle;' and the descendants of the old peddlers now own and inhabit the palaces where their ancestors once begged at the back doors for secondhand clothes; while the posterity of the former lords have been, in many cases, forced down into the swarming misery of the lower classes. ... "

Here he's typical US product writing off not only English public school education but all ancient civilisations and knowledge thereof -

" ... In the old days our ancestors wasted years of valuable time in the study of languages that were no longer spoken on the earth; and civilization was thus cramped by the shadow of the ancient Roman Empire, whose dead but sceptered sovereigns still ruled the spirits of mankind from their urns. Now every hour is considered precious for the accumulation of actual knowledge of facts and things, and for the cultivation of the graces of the mind; so that mankind has become wise in breadth of knowledge, and sweet and gentle in manner. I expressed something of this thought to Maximilian, and he replied:"

And here an introduction to the theme of the book

""That civilization is a gross and dreadful failure for seven-tenths of the human family; that seven-tenths of the backs of the world are insufficiently clothed; seven-tenths of the stomachs of the world are insufficiently fed; seven-tenths of the minds of the world are darkened and despairing, and filled with bitterness against the Author of the universe. ... "

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March 26, 2022 - March 26, 2022.

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IV. THE UNDER-WORLD

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Startling title, but that's due to change in connotation since.

There's much reality, and a touch of Brave New World too. Perhaps Alddous Huxley, too intended to portray this reality when he wrote that.

"A half hour's ride brought us into the domain of the poor.

"An endless procession of men and women with pails and baskets--small-sized pails and smaller baskets--streamed along the streets on their way to work. It was not yet six o'clock. I observed that both men and women were undersized, and that they all very much resembled each other; as if similar circumstances had squeezed them into the same likeness. There was no spring to their steps and no laughter in their eyes; all were spare of frame and stolid or hungry-looking. The faces of the middle-aged men were haggard and wore a hopeless expression. Many of them scowled at us, with a look of hatred, as we passed by them in our carriage. A more joyless, sullen crowd I never beheld. Street after street they unrolled before us; there seemed to be millions of them. They were all poorly clad, and many of them in rags. The women, with the last surviving instinct of the female heart, had tried to decorate themselves; and here and there I could observe a bit of bright color on bonnet or apron; but the bonnets represented the fashions of ten years past, and the aprons were too often frayed and darned, and relics of some former, more opulent owners. There were multitudes of children, but they were without the gambols which characterize the young of all animals; and there was not even the chirp of a winter bird about them; their faces were prematurely aged and hardened, and their bold eyes revealed that sin had no surprises for them. And every one of these showed that intense look which marks the awful struggle for food and life upon which they had just entered. The multitude seemed, so far as I could judge, to be of all nations commingled--the French, German, Irish, English--Hungarians, Italians, Russians, Jews, Christians, and even Chinese and Japanese; for the slant eyes of many, and their imperfect, Tartar-like features, reminded me that the laws made by the Republic, in the elder and better days, against the invasion of the Mongolian hordes, had long since become a dead letter."

" ... Here we saw exemplified, in its full perfection, that "iron law of wages" which the old economists spoke of; that is to say, the reduction, by competition, of the wages of the worker to the least sum that will maintain life and muscular strength enough to do the work required, with such little surplus of vitality as might be necessary to perpetuate the wretched race; so that the world's work should not end with the death of one starved generation. ... "

" ... And most pitiable of all, the leering, shameless looks of invitation cast upon us by the women, as they saw two well-dressed men pass by them. It was not love, nor license, nor even lust; it was degradation,--willing to exchange everything for a little more bread. And such rooms--garrets, sheds--dark, foul, gloomy; overcrowded; with such a stench in the thick air as made us gasp when entering it; an atmosphere full of life, hostile to the life of man. ... "

This seems so unreal, for what's supposed to be a poor land that never saw humanity descend to this, it brings a realization of just how fortunate India has always been!

"I was shocked at these statements; and then I remembered that some philosopher had argued that cannibalism had survived almost to our own times, in the islands of the Pacific Ocean, because they had contained no animals of large size with which the inhabitants could satisfy the dreadful craving of the system for flesh-food; and hence they devoured their captives.

""Do these people ever marry?" I inquired.

""Marry!" he exclaimed, with a laugh; "why, they could not afford to pay the fee required by law. And why should they marry? There is no virtue among them. No," he said, "they had almost gotten down to the condition of the Australian savages, who, if not prevented by the police, would consummate their animal-like nuptials in the public streets.""

And here's why underworld came to have the later connotation -

" ... If it were possible we might trace back from yonder robber and murderer--a human hyena--the long ancestral line of brutality, until we see it starting from some poor peasant of the Middle Ages, trampled into crime under the feet of feudalism. The little seed of weakness or wickedness has been carefully nursed by society, generation after generation, until it has blossomed at last in this destructive monster. Civilization has formulated a new variety of the genus homo--and it must inevitably perpetuate its kind. ... "

How long before this came true, after his death? Certainly less than two decades!

" ... If there were enough of these outlaws they might establish a system of jurisprudence for the world under which it would be lawful to rob and murder by the rule of the strong right hand, but criminal to reduce millions to wretchedness by subtle and cunning arts; and, hoity-toity, the prisons would change their tenants, and the brutal plunderers of the few would give place to the cultured spoilers of the many."

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March 25, 2022 - March 26, 2022.

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V. ESTELLA WASHINGTON

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Donelly's curious bent shows its other direction here -

""Buying up women!" I exclaimed; "what are you talking about? This is free America, and the twentieth century. Do you dream that it is a Mohammedan land?"

""It isn't anything half so good," he retorted; "it is enslaved America; and the older we grow the worse for us. ... Mohammedanism--and we must do the Arabian prophet the justice to say that he established a religion of temperance and cleanliness, without a single superstition--never knew, in its worst estate, a more complete and abominable despotism than that under which we live. ... "

""'Women are not

"In their best fortunes strong, but want will perjure

The ne'er-touched vestal.'

""But he need not have confined this observation to women. The strongest resolves of men melt in the fire of want like figures of wax. It is simply a question of increasing the pressure to find the point where virtue inevitably breaks. Morality, in man or woman, is a magnificent flower which blossoms only in the rich soil of prosperity: impoverish the land and the bloom withers. If there are cases that seem to you otherwise, it is simply because the pressure has not been great enough; sufficient nourishment has not yet been withdrawn from the soil. Dignity, decency, honor, fade away when man or woman is reduced to shabby, shameful, degrading, cruel wretchedness. Before the clamors of the stomach the soul is silent.""

Here's a curious mix of Donelly's racist outlook with his leftist correction of definition of virtue imposed in abrahmic creeds.

" ... And remember, my dear fellow, that chastity is a flower of civilization. Barbarism knows nothing of it. The woman with the least is, among many tribes, mostly highly esteemed, and sought after by the young men for wedlock."

"My dear Maximilian," I said, "these are debasing views to take of life. Purity is natural to woman. You will see it oftentimes among savages. But, to recur to the subject we were speaking of. I feel very confident that the younger of those two women I saw in that carriage is pure. God never placed such a majestic and noble countenance over a corrupt soul. The face is transparent; the spirit looks out of the great eyes; and it is a spirit of dignity, nobleness, grace and goodness.""

It's not only that he defines beauty by blond blue eyed typification, a matter of preference - but that, as a true racist, he insists other virtues stick to thst physical colouring!

Here his imagination skips phones!

""Now," said he, "see what it is to have a friend. I can find out for you all that is known about her. We have members of our society in the household of every rich man in New York. I will first find out who she is. I will ask the Master of the Servants, who is a member of our Brotherhood, who were the two ladies out riding at the time of our adventure. I can communicate with him in cipher."

"He went to the wall; touched a spring; a door flew open; a receptacle containing pen, ink and paper appeared; he wrote a message, placed it in an interior cavity, which connected with a pneumatic tube, rang a bell, and in a few minutes another bell rang, and he withdrew from a similar cavity a written message. He read out to me the following: "The elder lady, Miss Frederika Bowers; the younger, Miss Estella Washington; both members of the Prince of Cabano's household.""

Paris still has the tunes he speaks of, now used only within government system.

He gives description of the girl, a curious mix of hus fetishes and facts of history.

" ... It read as follows:

"Miss ESTELLA WASHINGTON.--Aged eighteen. Appearance: Person tall and graceful; complexion fair; eyes blue; hair long and golden; face handsome. Pedigree: A lineal descendant of Lawrence Washington, brother of the first President of the Republic. Parents: William Washington and Sophia, his wife. Father, a graduate of the University of Virginia; professor of Indo-European literature for ten years in Harvard University. Grandfather, Lawrence Washington, a judge of the Supreme Court of the United States for fifteen years. Sophia, mother of Estella, née Wainwright, an accomplished Greek and Sanscrit scholar, daughter of Professor Elias Wainwright, who occupied the chair of psychological science in Yale College for twenty years. Families of both parents people of great learning and social position, but not wealthy in any of the branches. History: Father died when Estella was eight years old, leaving his family poor. Her mother, after a hard struggle with poverty, died two years later. Estella, then ten years old, was adopted by Maria, widow of George Washington, brother of Estella's father, who had subsequently married one Ezekiel Plunkett, who is also dead. Maria Plunkett is a woman of low origin and sordid nature, with a large share of cunning; she lives at No. 2682 Grand Avenue. She had observed that Estella gave promise of great beauty, and as none of the other relatives put in a claim for the child, she took possession of her, with intent to educate her highly, improve her appearance by all the arts known to such women, and eventually sell her for a large sun, to some wealthy aristocrat as a mistress; believing that her honorable descent would increase the price which her personal charms would bring. On the 5th day of last month she sold her, for $5,000, to the Master of the Servants of the so-called Prince of Cabano; and she was taken to his house. Estella who is quite ignorant of the wickedness of the world, or the true character of her aunt, for whom she entertains a warm feeling of gratitude and affection, believes that she is to serve as lady-companion for Miss Frederika Bowers, the favorite mistress of the Prince, but whom Estella supposes to be his niece."

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March 26, 2022 - March 26, 2022.

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VI. THE INTERVIEW

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Again, the racism -

" ... Mary appeared--an honest, stout, rosy-cheeked Irish girl, with the frank blue eyes and kindly smile of her people.

""Mary," said Estella, "you have always been kind to me. Do you love me sufficiently to tell me the truth if I ask you some questions?""

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March 26, 2022 - March 26, 2022.

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VII. THE HIDING-PLACE

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Donelly mentions Columbus correctly.

""This," said Rudolph, in a solemn whisper, "this is where they meet. This is the real center of government of the American continent; all the rest is sham and form. The men who meet here determine the condition of all the hundreds of millions who dwell on the great land revealed to the world by Columbus. ... "

True, Columbus didn't discover the land, even for Europeans - Vikings knew of it centuries before, and had colonies down to Waltham, Massachusetts, and further to Watertown. That they kept it their own secret, is why Columbus is supposed - by racists - to have discovered it, despite the land being populated by its natives.

But Donelly mentions in his prior work about an Irish monk who'd journeyed and gone up Ohio, stayed for a few years before returning, and being forced by Vatican to deny the journey and land - whence he'd journeyed to Vatican and provided evidence that, Donelly states, convinced them.

Why has Vatican remained silent over this, for centuries? Same reason they did over heliocentric model? Urge to hide knowledge from humanity?

Donelly seems to describe a room at the opposite end of the land, on Pacific Coast of US -

" ... The decrees formulated here are echoed by a hundred thousand newspapers, and many thousands of orators; and they are enforced by an uncountable army of soldiers, servants, tools, spies, and even assassins. He who stands in the way of the men who assemble here perishes. He who would oppose them takes his life in his hands. ... "

Following could be about Freemasons, or leftists.

"" ... I was educated at Heidelberg; I come of a wealthy family; but in my youth, while an enthusiastic lover of liberty and humanity, I became a member of a German branch of this now universal Brotherhood. I had my dreams, as many have, of reforming the world. But my membership, by a strange accident, became known, and I was forced to fly in disgrace, discarded by my relatives, to America. Here I lived in great poverty for a time, until the Brotherhood came to my assistance and secured me a servant's place in this house. I have gradually risen to my present position. While I am not so enthusiastic as I once was, nor so sanguine of the good results of the promised revolution of the proletariat, I have nevertheless seen enough within these walls to show me the justice of our cause and the necessity for Some kind of reformation. I could not draw back now, if I desired to; and I do not know that I would if I could. We are all moving together on the face of the torrent, and whither it will eventually sweep us no one can tell. ..."

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March 26, 2022 - March 26, 2022.

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VIII. THE BROTHERHOOD

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" ... This Brotherhood of Destruction, with its terrible purposes and its vast numbers, is a reality. If the ruling class had to deal only with a brutalized peasantry, they might, as they did in other ages, trample them into animal-like inability to organize and defend themselves. But the public school system, which, with the other forms of the Republic, is still kept up, has made, if not all, at least a very large percentage of the unhappy laboring classes intelligent. ... Nature, which knows no limit to her capacity for the creation of new varieties, and, dealing with hundreds of millions, has in numerable elements to mingle in her combinations, has turned out some marvelous leaders among these poor men. Their hard fortunes have driven out of their minds all illusions, all imagination, all poetry; and in solemn fashion they have bent themselves to the grim and silent struggle with their environment. Without imagination, I say, for this seems to me to be a world without a song.

"And it is to the credit of these great masses that they are keen enough to recognize the men of ability that rise up. among them, and even out of their poor, hard-earned resources to relieve them of the necessity for daily toil, that they may devote themselves to the improvement of their minds, and the execution of the great tasks assigned them. There is no doubt that if the ruling classes had been willing to recognize these natural leaders as men of the same race, blood, tongue and capacity as themselves, and had reached down to them a helping and kindly hand, there might have been long since a coming together of the two great divisions of society; and such a readjustment of the values of labor as would, while it insured happiness to those below, have not materially lessened the enjoyments of those above. But the events which preceded the great war against the aristocracy in 1640, in England; the great revolution of 1789, in France; and the greater civil war of 1861, in America, all show how impossible it is, by any process of reasoning, to induce a privileged class to peacefully yield up a single tittle of its advantages. There is no bigotry so blind or intense as that of caste; and long established wrongs are only to be rooted out by fire and sword. And hence the future looks so black to me. The upper classes might reform the world, but they will not; the lower classes would, but they cannot; and for a generation or more these latter have settled down into a sullen and unanimous conviction that the only remedy is world-wide destruction. ... "

" ... When the negroes of San Domingo broke out, in that world-famous and bloody insurrection, they found themselves, when they had triumphed, in a tropical land, where the plentiful bounties of nature hung abundant supplies of food upon every tree and shrub. But in the temperate regions of America and Europe these vast populations can only live by great toil, and if none will toil all must starve; but before they starve they will slay each other, and that means universal conflict, savagery, barbarism, chaos."

" ... Nature is not to blame. Civilization, signifying increased human power, is not responsible. But human greed,--blind, insatiable human greed,--shallow cunning; the basest, stuff-grabbing, nut-gathering, selfish instincts, these have done this work! ... "

" ... They will out, though the heavens and the earth came together! One might as well whisper to Niagara to cease falling, or counsel the resistless cyclone, in its gyrating and terrible advance, to have a care of the rose-bushes."

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March 26, 2022 - March 26, 2022.

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IX. THE POISONED KNIFE

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" ... No. 826 B."

""That," said Maximilian, "means the Prince Cabano." He continued to read:

""Startling events have occurred since I saw you. The former favorite mistress of 826 B, who was displaced by Frederika, is a French girl, Celestine d'Aublay. She resented her downfall bitterly, and she hates Frederika with the characteristic vehemence of her race. She learned from the talk of the servants that a new victim--Estella--had been brought into the house, a girl of great beauty; and that Frederika was trying to prevent 826 B from seeing her. A sudden thought took possession of her mind; she would overthrow Frederika just as she herself had been overthrown. Yesterday, Saturday afternoon, she watched for 826 B in the hallways and chambers. The snuffling old wretch has a fashion of prying around in all parts of the house, under the fear that he is being robbed by the servants; and it was not long until Celestine encountered him. She threw herself in his way."

""'Indeed,' said she, 'you care very little now for my pretty face, or that of any one else, since you have your new toy, Estella.'

""'Estella!' he repeated, 'who is Estella?'

""'Come, come,' she said laughing; 'that will not do! Master Rudolph brings into the house a young girl of ravishing beauty, and weeks afterwards you ask me who she is! I am not to be deceived that way. I know you too well.'

""'But really,' he replied, 'I have not seen her. This is the first I have ever heard of her. Who is she?'

""'Her name is Estella Washington,' replied Celestine; 'she is about eighteen years old.'"

" ... Estella, I find, has barricaded her door with her bedstead and the rest of the furniture. If she sleeps she will wake with any attempt to enter the room; but she is not likely, in her present state of high-wrought excitement, to sleep at all; and she will not touch the drugged food sent in to her. I have arranged with Frederika, who has great authority in the house, that on Monday night the two watchmen shall be furnished with some refreshment containing morphine; and when they are sound asleep, and the Prince busy with his guests, she or I will go to the room, carrying Estella's masculine disguise, and then bring her to my room, where she will join your friend.

""I do not think she is in any present danger. The poisoned knife is her safeguard. The whole household, after witnessing its terrible potency, fear it as they would the fangs of a rattlesnake. It was a lucky thought that left it with her."

""Do you think," I asked, after a pause, "that she will be safe until to-morrow night? Should I not go to her at once? Could I not see Rudolph and have her descend the rope-ladder, and I meet her and bring her here?"

""No," he replied, it is now too late for that; it is midnight. You can place full faith in Rudolph; his penetration and foresight are extraordinary. He will not sleep until Estella is out of that house; and his busy brain will be full of schemes in the meantime. The best thing we can do now is to go to bed and prepare, by a good long sleep, for the excitements and dangers of to-morrow night. Do not fear for Estella. She has ceased to be a child. In an hour she has risen to the full majesty of her womanhood.""

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March 26, 2022 - March 26, 2022.

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X. PREPARATIONS FOR TO-NIGHT

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""I do not propose that you shall go into that lion's den unsupported. We will have twenty of the Brotherhood, under Rudolph's management, scattered through the household, as servants; and three hundred more will be armed to the teeth and near at hand in the neighborhood; and if it becomes necessary they will storm the house and burn it over the villians' heads, rather than that you or Estella shall come to harm.""

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March 26, 2022 - March 26, 2022.

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XI. HOW THE WORLD CAME TO BE RUINED

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Donelly quotes prophesies published in North American Review and Century Magazine to the effect that rot in system might result in revolutionary changes.

""And here," Max added, "is the great work of Prof. Scheligan, in which he quotes from The Forum, of December, 1889, p. 464, a terrible story of the robberies practiced on the farmers by railroad companies and money-lenders. The railroads in 1882 took, he tells us, one-half of the entire wheat crop of Kansas to carry the other half to market! In the thirty-eight years following 1850 the railroad interest of the United States increased 1580 per cent.; the banking interest 918 per cent., and the farming interest only 252 per cent. A man named Thomas G. Shearman showed, in 1889, that 100,000 persons in the United States would, in thirty years, at the rate at which wealth was being concentrated in the hands of the few, own three-fifths of all the property of the entire country. The American Economist asserted, in 1889, that in twenty-five years the number of people in the United States who owned their own homes had fallen from five-eighths to three-eighths. A paper called The Progress, of Boston, in 1889, gave the following significant and prophetic figures: The eloquent Patrick Henry said: "We can only judge the future by the past." Look at the past:

"When Egypt went down 2 per cent. of her population owned 97 per cent. of her wealth. The people were starved to death.

"When Babylon went down 2 per cent. of her population owned all the wealth. The people were starved to death.

"When Persia went down 1 per cent. of her population owned the land.

"When Rome went down 1,800 men owned all the known world.

"There are about 40,000,000 people in England, Ireland and Wales, and 100,000 people own all the land in the United Kingdom.

"For the past twenty years the United States has rapidly followed in the steps of these old nations. Here are the figures:

"In 1850 capitalists owned 37½ per cent. of the nation's wealth.

"In 1870 they owned 63 percent."

""In 1889, out of 1,500,000 people living in New York City, 1,100,000 dwelt in tenement-houses.

""At the same time farm-lands, east and west, had fallen, in twenty-five years, to one-third or one-half their cost. State Assessor Wood, of New York, declared, in 1889, that, in his opinion, 'in a few decades there will be none but tenant farmers in this State.'

""In 1889 the farm mortgages in the Western States amounted to three billion four hundred and twenty-two million dollars.""

""How comes it that the people have so long submitted to these great wrongs? Did they not resist?"

""They did," he replied; "but the fruit of the tree of evil was not yet ripe. At the close of the nineteenth century, in all the great cities of America, there was a terrible outbreak of the workingmen; they destroyed much property and many lives, and held possession of the cities for several days. But the national government called for volunteers, and hundreds of thousands of warlike young men, sons of farmers, sprang to arms: and, after several terrible battles, they suppressed the revolution, with the slaughter of tens of thousands of those who took part in it; while afterwards the revengeful Oligarchy sent thousands of others to the gallows. And since then, in Europe and America, there have been other outbreaks, but all of them terminated in the same way. The condition of the world has, however, steadily grown worse and worse; the laboring classes have become more and more desperate. The farmers' sons could, for generations, be counted upon to fight the workmen; but the fruit has been steadily ripening. Now the yeomanry have lost possession of their lands; their farms have been sold under their feet; cunning laws transferred the fruit of their industry into the pockets of great combinations, who loaned it back to them again, secured by mortgages; and, as the pressure of the same robbery still continued, they at last lost their homes by means of the very wealth they had themselves produced. Now a single nabob owns a whole county; and a state is divided between a few great loan associations; and the men who once tilled the fields, as their owners, are driven to the cities to swell the cohorts of the miserable, or remain on the land a wretched peasantry, to contend for the means of life with vile hordes of Mongolian coolies. And all this in sight of the ruins of the handsome homes their ancestors once occupied! Hence the materials for armies have disappeared. Human greed has eaten away the very foundations on which it stood. And of the farmers who still remain nearly all are now members of our Brotherhood. ... "

""But have not the Oligarchy standing armies?" I asked.

""Yes. In Europe, however, they have been constrained, by inability to wring more taxes from the impoverished people, to gradually diminish their numbers. There, you know, the real government is now a coterie of bankers, mostly Israelites; and the kings and queens, and so-called presidents, are mere toys and puppets in their hands. All idea of national glory, all chivalry, all pride, all battles for territory or supremacy have long since ceased. Europe is a banking association conducted exclusively for the benefit of the bankers. Bonds take the place of national aspirations. To squeeze the wretched is the great end of government; to toil and submit, the destiny of the peoples.

""The task which Hannibal attempted, so disastrously, to subject the Latin and mixed-Gothic races of Europe to the domination of the Semitic blood, as represented in the merchant-city of Carthage, has been successfully accomplished in these latter days by the cousins of the Phœnicians, the Israelites. The nomadic children of Abraham have fought and schemed their way, through infinite depths of persecution, from their tents on the plains of Palestine, to a power higher than the thrones of Europe. The world is to-day Semitized. The children of Japhet lie prostrate slaves at the feet of the children of Shem; and the sons of Ham bow humbly before their august dominion."

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March 26, 2022 - March 26, 2022.

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XII. GABRIEL'S UTOPIA

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Donelly goes back to creed.

""But what would you do, my good Gabriel," said Maximilian, smiling, "if the reformation of the world were placed in your hands? Every man has an Utopia in his head. Give me some idea of yours."

""First," I said, "I should do away with all interest on money. Interest on money is the root and ground of the world's troubles. It puts one man in a position of safety, while another is in a condition of insecurity, and thereby it at once creates a radical distinction in human society.""

This doesn't work, even in the countries where religion supposedly enforces them. Banks simply keep the interest back outright, and call it by another name, such as gift.

The doctrine abusing "usury", making it a bad word, is one rooted with antisemitism.

Donelly goes to expound his favourite topic, his dislike of gold and silver.

""But," said he, "would not your paper money have to be redeemed in gold or silver?"

""Not necessarily," I replied. "The adoration of gold and silver is a superstition of which the bankers are the high priests and mankind the victims. Those metals are of themselves of little value. What should make them so?"

""Are they not the rarest and most valuable productions of the world?" said Maximilian.

""By no means," I replied; "there are many metals that exceed them in rarity and value. While a kilogram of gold is worth about $730 and one of silver about $43.50, the same weight of iridium (the heaviest body known) costs $2,400; one of palladium, $3,075; one of calcium nearly $10,000; one of stibidium, $20,000; while vanadium, the true 'king of metals,' is worth $25,000 per kilogram, as against $730 for gold or $43.50 for silver."

""Why, then, are they used as money?" he asked.

""Who can tell? The practice dates back to prehistoric ages. Man always accepts as right anything that is in existence when he is born."

""But are they not more beautiful than other metals? And are they not used as money because acids will not corrode them?"

""No," I replied; "some of the other metals exceed them in beauty. The diamond far surpasses them in both beauty and value, and glass resists the action of acids better than either of them.""

Donelly talks of war profiteers.

""It is recorded that when the great war broke out in this country against slavery, in 1861, there was a rich merchant in this city, named A. T. Stewart. Hundreds of thousands of men saw in the war only the great questions of the Union and the abolition of human bondage--the freeing of four millions of human beings, and the preservation of the honor of the flag; and they rushed forward eager for the fray. They were ready to die that the Nation and Liberty might live. But while their souls were thus inflamed with great and splendid emotions, and they forgot home, family, wealth, life, everything, Stewart, the rich merchant, saw simply the fact that the war would cut off communication between the North and the cotton-producing States, and that this would result in a rise in the price of cotton goods; and so, amid the wild agitations of patriotism, the beating of drums and the blaring of trumpets, he sent out his agents and bought up all the cotton goods he could lay his hands on. He made a million dollars, it is said, by this little piece of cunning. ... "

But he goes on to exalt the union soldiers as selfless fighters for a cause, and guesses that the profiteer's millions went to a stranger and his body was eaten by dogs. This is unlikely, in both cases, in toto.

Donelly proceeds to argue that, much like post, education and defense, government must provide needs of citizens.

Wonder if he was known as a hard core left winger?

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March 26, 2022 - March 26, 2022.

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XIII. THE COUNCIL OF THE OLIGARCHY

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Gabriel Weltstein, concealed behind cacti, hears and sees the prince speak to the conference, exposing that he has a spy in the Brotherhood.

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March 26, 2022 - March 26, 2022.

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XIV. THE SPY'S STORY

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""You can have no idea," said Andrews, "of the difficulty of obtaining information. It is a terrible organization. I do not think that anything like it has every existed before on the earth. One year ago there were fifteen of us engaged in this work; I am the only one left alive to-night."

"His face grew paler as he spoke, and there was a visible start and sensation about the council board.

""This organization," he continued, "is called 'The Brotherhood of Destruction.' It extends all over Europe and America, and numbers, I am told, one hundred million members."

""Can that be possible?" asked one gentleman, in astonishment.

""I believe it to be true," said Andrews, solemnly. "Nearly every workman of good character and sober habits in New York belongs to it; and so it is in all our great cities; while the blacks of the South are members of it to a man. Their former masters have kept them in a state of savagery, instead of civilizing and elevating them; and the result is they are as barbarous and bloodthirsty as their ancestors were when brought from Africa, and fit subjects for such a terrible organization."

""What has caused such a vast movement?" asked another gentleman.

""The universal misery and wretchedness of the working classes, in the cities, on the farms--everywhere," replied Andrews.

""Are they armed?" asked another of the Council.

""It is claimed," said Andrews, "that every one of the hundred millions possesses a magazine rifle of the most improved pattern, with abundance of fixed ammunition."

""I fear, my good man," said another member of the Council, with a sneer, "that you have been frightened by some old woman's tales. Where could these men buy such weapons? What would they buy them with? Where would they hide them? Our armories and manufacturers are forbidden by law to sell firearms, unless under special permit, signed by one of our trusty officers. The value of those guns would in itself be a vast sum, far beyond the means of those miserable wretches. And our police are constantly scouring the cities and the country for weapons, and they report that the people possess none, except a few old-fashioned, worthless fowling-pieces, that have come down from father to son."

""As I said before," replied Andrews, "I tell you only what I have gleaned among the workmen in those secret whispers which pass from one man's mouth to another man's ear. I may be misinformed; but I am told that these rifles are manufactured by the men themselves (for, of course, all the skilled work of all kinds is done by workingmen) in some remote and desolate parts of Europe or America; they are furnished at a very low price, at actual cost, and paid for in small installments, during many years. They are delivered to the captains of tens and by them buried in rubber bags in the earth."

""Then that accounts," said one man, who had not yet spoken, "for a curious incident which occurred the other day near the town of Zhitomir, in the province of Volhynia, Russia, not very far from the borders of Austria. A peasant made an offer to the police to deliver up, for 200 rubles, and a promise of pardon for himself, nine of his fellow conspirators and their rifles. His terms were accepted and he was paid the money. He led the officers to a place in his barnyard, where, under a manure-heap, they dug up ten splendid rifles of American make, with fixed ammunition, of the most improved kind, the whole inclosed in a rubber bag to keep out the damp. Nine other peasants were arrested; they were all subjected to the knout; but neither they nor their captain could tell anything more than he had at first revealed. The Russian newspapers have been full of speculations as to how the rifles came there, but could arrive at no reasonable explanation.""

It's startling to recall that he wrote this in late nineteenth century, story supposedly taking place in 1988, and he died before 1902, well over a decade before the Russian revolution.

""What became of the men?" asked Andrews, curiously.

""Nine of them were sent to Siberia for life; the tenth man, who had revealed the hiding-place of the guns, was murdered that night with his wife and all his family, and his house burned up. Even two of his brothers, who lived near him, but had taken no part in the matter, were also slain."

""I expected as much," said Andrews quietly.

"This unlooked-for corroboration of the spy's story produced a marked sensation, and there was profound silence for some minutes.

"At last the Prince spoke up:

""Andrews," said he, "what did you learn about the leaders of this organization?"

""There are three of them, I am told," replied the spy; they constitute what is known as 'the Executive Committee.' The commander-in-chief, it is whispered, is called, or was called--for no one can tell what his name is now--Cæsar Lomellini; a man of Italian descent, but a native of South Carolina. He is, it is said, of immense size, considerable ability, and the most undaunted courage. His history is singular. He is now about forty-five years of age. In his youth, so the story goes, he migrated to the then newly settled State of Jefferson, on the upper waters of the Saskatchewan. He had married early, like all his race, and had a family. He settled down on land and went to farming. He was a quiet, peaceable, industrious man. One year, just as he was about to harvest his crops, a discharge of lightning killed his horses; they were the only ones he had. He was without the means to purchase another team, and without horses he could not gather his harvest. He was therefore forced to mortgage his land for enough to buy another pair of horses. The money-lender demanded large interest on the loan and an exorbitant bonus besides; and as the 'bankers,' as they called themselves, had an organization, he could not get the money at a lower rate anywhere in that vicinity. It was the old story. The crops failed sometimes, and when they did not fail the combinations and trusts of one sort or another swept away Cæsar's profits; then he had to renew the loan, again and again, at higher rates of interest, and with still greater bonuses; then the farm came to be regarded as not sufficient security for the debt; and the horses, cattle, machinery, everything he had was covered with mortgages. Cæsar worked like a slave, and his family toiled along with him. At last the crash came; he was driven out of his home; the farm and all had been lost for the price of a pair of horses. Right on the heels of this calamity, Cæsar learned that his eldest daughter--a beautiful, dark-eyed girl--had been seduced by a lawyer--the agent of the money-lender--and would in a few months become a mother. Then all the devil that lay hid in the depths of the man's nature broke forth. That night the lawyer was attacked in his bed and literally hewed to pieces: the same fate overtook the money-lender. Before morning Cæsar and his family had fled to the inhospitable mountain regions north of the settlement. There he gathered around him a band of men as desperate as himself, and waged bloody and incessant war on society. He seemed, however, to have a method in his crimes, for, while he spared the poor, no man who preyed upon his fellow-men was safe for an hour. At length the government massed a number of troops in the vicinity; the place got too hot for him; Cæsar and his men fled to the Pacific coast; and nothing more was heard of him for three or four years. Then the terrible negro insurrection broke out in the lower Mississippi Valley, which you all remember, and a white man, of gigantic stature, appeared as their leader, a man of great daring and enterprise. When that rebellion had been suppressed, after many battles, the white man disappeared; and it is now claimed that he is in this city at the head of this terrible Brotherhood of Destruction; and that he is the same Cæsar Lomellini who was once a peaceful farmer in the State of Jefferson."

"The spy paused. The Prince said:

""Well, who are the others?"

""It is reported that the second in command, but really 'the brains of the organization,' as he is called by the men, is a Russian Jew. His name I could not learn; very few have seen him or know anything about him. He is said to be a cripple, and to have a crooked neck. It is reported he was driven out of his synagogue in Russia, years ago, for some crimes he had committed. He is believed to be the man who organized the Brotherhood in Europe, and he has come here to make the two great branches act together. If what is told of him be true, he must be a man of great ability, power and cunning.""

Did he just describe Stalin and Lenin?

Did he know of them?

""Who is the third?" asked the Prince.

""There seems to be more obscurity about him than either of the others," replied the spy. "I heard once that he was an American, a young man of great wealth and ability, and that he had furnished much of the money needed to carry on the Brotherhood. But this again is denied by others. Jenkins, who was one of our party, and who was killed some months since, told me, in our last interview, that he had penetrated far enough to find out who the third man was; and he told me this curious story, which may or may not be true. He said that several years ago there lived in this city a man of large fortune, a lawyer by education, but not engaged in the practice of his profession, by the name of Arthur Phillips. He was a benevolent man, of scholarly tastes, and something of a dreamer. He had made a study of the works of all the great socialist writers, and had become a convert to their theories, and very much interested in the cause of the working people. He established a monthly journal for the dissemination of his views. He spoke at the meetings of the workmen, and was very much beloved and respected by them. Of course, so Jenkins said, all this was very distasteful to the ruling class (I am only repeating the story as it was told to me, your lordships will please remember), and they began to persecute him. First he was ostracised from his caste. But this did not trouble him much. He had no family but his wife and one son who was away at the university. He redoubled his exertions to benefit the working classes. At this time he had a lawsuit about some property with a wealthy and influential man, a member of the government. In the course of the trial Phillips produced a writing, which purported to be signed by two men, and witnessed by two others; and Phillips swore he saw all of them sign it. Whereupon not only the men themselves, but the two witnesses to the paper, came up and swore, point-blank, that their alleged signatures were forgeries. There were four oaths against one. Phillips lost his case. But this was not the worst of it. The next day he was indicted for forgery and perjury; and, despite his wealth and the efforts of the ablest counsel he could employ, he was convicted and sentenced to twenty years' penal servitude in the state prison. His friends said he was innocent; that he had been sacrificed by the ruling class, who feared him and desired to destroy him; that all the witnesses had been suborned by large sums of money to swear as they did; that the jury was packed, the judge one of their tools, and even his own lawyers corrupted. After several years his son--who bore the same name as himself--Arthur Phillips--returned from the university; and Jenkins told me that he had learned, in some mysterious way, that this was really the man who, out of revenge for the wrongs inflicted on his father, was now the third member of the Executive Committee of the Brotherhood, and had furnished them with large sums of money.""

This could be almost Upton Sinclair, except he wrote, rather than do cloak and dagger. But his Lanny Budd is a sophisticated version of Arthur Phillips.

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March 26, 2022 - March 27, 2022.

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XV. THE MASTER OF "THE DEMONS"

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""I have here," replied the General, drawing a paper from his pocket, "a schedule of their demands, adopted at their last meeting." He handed it to the Prince.

""You will see," he continued, "that it ranges from $5,000 per year, for the common soldiers, up through the different grades, to $25,000 per year for the commanding officer." Not a man at the Council table winced at this extraordinary demand. ... "

"He was bowed out and the door locked behind him. The Prince returned to his seat.

""Gentlemen," he said, "that matter is settled, and we are safe for the present. But you can see the ticklish ground we stand on. These men will not rest satisfied with the immense concessions we have made them; they will demand more and more as the consciousness of their power increases. They know we are afraid of them. In time they will assume the absolute control of the government, and our power will be at an end. If we resist them, they will have but to drop a few of their death-bombs through the roofs of our palaces, and it is all over with us."

""What can we do?" asked two or three.

""We must have recourse to history," he replied, "and profit by the experience of others similarly situated. In the thirteenth century the sultan of Egypt, Malek-ed-Adell the Second, organized a body of soldiery made up of slaves, bought from the Mongols, who had taken them in battle. They were called the Bahri Mamelukes. They formed the Sultan's bodyguard. They were mounted on the finest horses in the world, and clad in the most magnificent dresses. They were of our own white race--Circassians. But Malek had unwittingly created, out of the slaves, a dangerous power. They, not many years afterward, deposed and murdered his son, and placed their general on the throne. For several generations they ruled Egypt. To circumscribe their power a new army of Mamelukes was formed, called the Borgis. But the cure was as bad as the disease. In 1382 the Borgi Mamelukes rose up, overthrew their predecessors, and made their leader, Barkok, supreme ruler. This dynasty held power until 1517, when the Ottoman Turks conquered Egypt. The Turks perceived that they must either give up Egypt or destroy the Mamelukes. They massacred them in great numbers; and, at last, Mehemet Ah beguiled four hundred and seventy of their leaders into the citadel of Cairo, and closed the gates, and ordered his mercenaries to fire upon them. But one man escaped. He leaped his horse from the ramparts and escaped unhurt, although the horse was killed by the prodigious fall.

""Now, let us apply this teaching of history. I propose that after this outbreak is over we shall order the construction of ten thousand more of these air-vessels, and this will furnish us an excuse for sending a large force of apprentices to the present command to learn the management of the ships. We will select from the circle of our relatives some young, able, reliable man to command these new troops. We will then seize upon the magazine of bombs and arrest the officers and men. We will charge them with treason. The officers we will execute, and the men we will send to prison for life; for it would not be safe, with their dangerous knowledge, to liberate them. After that we will keep the magazine of bombs and the secret of the poison in the custody of men of our own caste, so that the troops commanding the air-ships will never again feel that sense of power which now possesses them."

"These plans met with general approval.

""But what are we to do with the coming outbreak?" asked one of the councilors.

""I have thought of that, too," replied the Prince. "It is our interest to make it the occasion of a tremendous massacre, such as the world has never before witnessed. There are too many people on the earth, anyhow. In this way we will strike such terror into the hearts of the canaille that they will remain submissive to our will, and the domination of our children, for centuries to come."

""But how will you accomplish that?" asked one.

""Easily enough," replied the Prince. "You know that the first step such insurgents usually take is to tear up the streets of the city and erect barricades of stones and earth and everything else they can lay their hands on. Heretofore we have tried to stop them. My advice is that we let them alone--let them build their barricades as high and as strong as they please, and if they leave any outlets unobstructed, let our soldiers close them up in the same way. We have then got them in a rat-trap, surrounded by barricades, and every street and alley outside occupied by our troops. If there are a million in the trap, so much the better. Then let our flock of Demons sail up over them and begin to drop their fatal bombs. The whole streets within the barricades will soon be a sea of invisible poison. If the insurgents try to fly they will find in their own barricades the walls of their prison-house; and if they attempt to scale them they will be met, face to face, with our massed troops, who will be instructed to take no prisoners. If they break into the adjacent houses to escape, our men will follow from the back streets and gardens and bayonet them at their leisure, or fling them back into the poison. If ten millions are slain all over the world, so much the better. There will be more room for what are left, and the world will sleep in peace for centuries.

""These plans will be sent out, with your approval, to all cities, and to Europe. When the rebellion is crushed in the cities, it will not take long to subdue it among the wretched peasants of the country, and our children will rule this world for ages to come.""

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March 27, 2022 - March 27, 2022.

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XVI. GABRIEL'S FOLLY

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Gabriel goes Gandhian for a small moment!

"The Prince drew two or three of the leaders together, and they whispered for a few minutes. Then he went to the door and spoke to Rudolph. I caught a few words: "Not leave--alive--send for Macarius--midnight--garden."

"Rudolph advanced and took me by the arm. The revulsion had come. I was dazed--overwhelmed. There swept over me, like the rush of a flood, the dreadful thought: "What will become of Estella?" I went with him like a child. I was armed, but an infant might have slain me.

"When we were in the hall, Rudolph said to me, in a hoarse whisper:

""I heard everything. You meant nobly; but you were foolish--wild. You might have ruined us all. But there is a chance of escape yet. It will be an hour before the assassin will arrive. I can secure that much delay. In the meantime, be prudent and silent, and follow my directions implicitly."

"I promised, very humbly, to do so."

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March 27, 2022 - March 27, 2022.

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XVII. THE FLIGHT AND PURSUIT

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""O Estella," I cried, "pardon me. I would have sacrificed you for mankind--you that are dearer to me than the whole human race. Like a fool I broke from my hiding-place, and appealed to those hearts of stone--those wild beasts--those incarnate fiends--to spare the world the most dreadful calamity it has ever known. They proposed to murder ten million human beings! I forgot my task--my duty--you--my own safety--everything, to save the world."

"Her eyes dilated as I spoke, and then, without a trace of mock modesty, without a blush, she laid her hand upon my head and said simply:

""If you had done less, I should have loved you less. What am I in the presence of such a catastrophe? But if you are to die we can at least perish together. In that we have the mastery of our enemies. Our liberty is beyond their power.""

A flight and chase follows.

He's only using horse carriages throughout, even though he's gone to great lengths describing airlines of two kinds, anchored and otherwise. Did automobiles come later?

""I shall go with you most willingly," I said. "To tell you the truth," I added, "While I cannot approve of your terrible Brotherhood, nevertheless what I have seen and heard tonight satisfies me that the Plutocrats should no longer cumber the earth with their presence. Men who can coolly plot, amid laughter, the death of ten million human beings, for the purpose of preserving their ill-gotten wealth and their ill-used power, should be exterminated from the face of the planet as enemies of mankind--as poisonous snakes--vermin.""

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March 27, 2022 - March 27, 2022.

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XVIII. THE EXECUTION

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"Last night I had beheld the council of the Plutocracy. Here was the council of the Proletariat. The large heads at one end of the line were matched by the large heads at the other. A great injustice, or series of wrongs, working through many generations, had wrought out results that in some sense duplicated each other. Brutality above had produced brutality below; cunning there was answered by cunning here; cruelty in the aristocrat was mirrored by cruelty in the workman. High and low were alike victims--unconscious victims--of a system. The crime was not theirs; it lay at the door of the shallow, indifferent, silly generations of the past."

""Gabriel Weltstein," said the giant, in the same stern, loud voice, "each person in this room will now pass before you,--the officers last; and,--under the solemn oath you have taken,--I call upon you to say whether the spy you saw last night in the council-chamber of the Prince of Cabano is among them. But first, let me ask, did you see him clearly, and do you think you will be able to identify him?""

"Two strong men held the spy by his arms; they lifted him to his feet; he writhed and struggled and shrieked, but the hands that held him were of iron.

""Stop!" said the thin, strident voice I had heard before, and the cripple advanced into the circle. He addressed the prisoner:

""Were you followed to this place?"

""Yes, yes," eagerly cried the spy. "Spare me, spare me, and I will tell you everything. Three members of the police force were appointed to follow, in a carriage, the vehicle that brought me here. They were to wait about until the meeting broke up and then shadow the tallest man and a crook-necked man to their lodgings and identify them. They are now waiting in the dark shadows of the warehouse."

""Did you have any signal agreed upon with them?" asked the cripple.

""Yes," the wretch replied, conscious that he was giving up his associates to certain death, but willing to sacrifice the whole world if he might save his own life. "Spare me, spare me, and I win tell you all."

""Proceed," said the cripple.

""I would not trust myself to be known by them. I agreed with Prince Cabano upon a signal between us. I am to come to them, if I need their help, and say: 'Good evening, what time is it?' The reply is, 'It is thieves' time.' Then I am to say, 'The more the better;' and they are to follow me."

""Richard," said the cripple, "did you hear that?"

""Yes."

""Take six men with you; leave them in the brew-house cellar; lead the police thither; throw the bodies in the river."

"I was too much shocked by the awful scene I had just witnessed to do more than bow my head.

""There is one thing more," he continued, "we shall ask of you; and that is that you will repeat your story once again to another man, who will soon be brought here. We knew from Maximilian what you were about to tell, and we made our arrangements accordingly. Do not start," he said, "or look alarmed--there will be no more executions.""

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March 27, 2022 - March 27, 2022.

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XIX. THE MAMELUKES OF THE AIR

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Again, they use pen and paper. Donelly foresaw airplanes and bombings, but speaks neither of automobiles nor telephones, much less of cellphones or internet.

"The commander of the Demons and his escort withdrew. The president sat consulting his watch, and when he was sure that they were beyond hearing, he sprang to his feet, his eyes glowing and his whole frame dilated with excitement.

""Brothers," he cried out, "we have got the world in our hands at last. The day is near we have so long toiled and waited for! The Demons are with us!""

"In the carriage Maximilian was trembling with excitement. ... "

"When he grew quieter I asked him what day the blow was to be struck. Not for some time, he said. In the morning the vice-president would take an air-ship to Europe, with a cipher letter from General Quincy to the commandant of the Demons in England--to be delivered in case it was thought safe to do so. The cripple was subtle and cunning beyond all men. He was to arrange for the purchase of the officers commanding the Demons all over Europe; and he was to hold a council of the leaders of the Brotherhood, and arrange for a simultaneous outbreak on both sides of the Atlantic, so that one continent should not come to the help of the other. If, however, this could not be effected, he was to return home, and the Brotherhood would precipitate the revolution all over America at the same hour, and take the chances of holding their own against the banker-government of Europe."

"It had been my intention to return to Africa before the great outbreak took place. I could not remain and witness the ruin of mankind. But neither could I leave Estella behind me. Maximilian might be killed. I knew his bold and desperate nature; he seemed to me to have been driven almost, if not quite, to insanity, by the wrongs of his father. Revenge had become a mania with him. If he perished in the battle what would become of Estella, in a world torn to pieces? She had neither father, nor mother, nor home. But she loved me and I must protect her!

"On the other hand, she was powerless and dependent on the kindness of strangers. Her speech in that moment of terror might have expressed more than she felt. Should I presume upon it? Should I take advantage of her distress to impose my love upon her? But, if the Brotherhood failed, might not the Prince recover her, and bear her back to his hateful palace and his loathsome embraces? Dangers environed her in every direction. I loved her; and if she would not accompany me to my home as my wife, she must go as my sister. She could not stay where she was. I must again save her."

It's worth a note, Donelly has no thought about Africa desiring freedom or independence. He, perhaps all West, saw Africa and most of Asia as no different from Australia or continent across Atlantic or Pacific Ocean Islands - as space for Europeans to migrate and occupy, with use of "natives" as workers, not quite slaves, that here he seeks to liberate from rich via revolution.

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March 27, 2022 - March 27, 2022.

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XX. THE WORKINGMEN'S MEETING

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"The president of a labor organization had taken the chair before we came in. As I walked up the hall I was greeted with cheers, and invited to the platform. Maximilian accompanied me.

"A man in a blouse was speaking. He was discussing the doctrines of Karl Marx and the German socialists of the last century. He was attentively listened to, but his remarks aroused no enthusiasm; they all seemed familiar with the subjects of his discourse.

"He was followed by another workman, who spoke upon the advantages of co-operation between the employers and the employed. His remarks were moderate and sensible. He was, however, answered by another workman, who read statistics to show that, after a hundred years of trial, the co-operative system had not extended beyond a narrow circle. "There were too many greedy employers and too many helpless workmen. Competition narrowed the margin of profit and hardened the heart of the master, while it increased the number of the wretchedly poor, who must work at any price that would maintain life." [Applause.] "The cure must be more radical than that." [Great applause.]

"He was followed by a school teacher, who thought that the true remedy for the evils of society was universal education. "If all men were educated they could better defend their rights. Education meant intelligence, and intelligence meant prosperity. It was the ignorant hordes from Europe who were crowding out the American workingmen and reducing them to pauperism." [Applause. I

"Here a rough-looking man, who, I inferred, was an English miner, said he begged leave to differ from the gentleman who had last spoken. (I noticed that these workingmen, unless very angry, used in their discussions the courteous forms of speech common in all parliamentary bodies.)

""A man who knew how to read and write," he continued, "did not command any better wages for the work of his hands than the man who could not." [Applause.] "His increased knowledge tended to make him more miserable." [Applause.] "Education was so universal that the educated man, without a trade, had to take the most inadequate pittance of compensation, and was not so well off, many times, as the mechanic." [Applause.] "The prisons and alms-houses were full of educated men; and three-fourths of the criminal class could read and write. Neither was the gentleman right when he spoke of the European immigrants as 'ignorant hordes.' The truth was, the proportion of the illiterate was much less in some European despotisms than it was in the American Republic." [Applause from the foreigners present.] "Neither did it follow that because a man was educated he was intelligent. There was a vast population of the middle class, who had received good educations, but who did not have any opinion upon any subject, except as they derived it from their daily newspapers." [Applause.] "The rich men owned the newspapers and the newspapers owned their readers; so that, practically, the rich men cast all those hundreds of thousands of votes. If these men had not been able to read and write they would have talked with one another upon public affairs, and have formed some correct ideas; their education simply facilitated their mental subjugation; they were chained to the chariots of the Oligarchy; and they would never know the truth until they woke up some bright morning and found it was the Day of Judgment." [Sensation and great applause.]"

Donelly uses a name from India here next, for someone from Germany!

"As the reverend gentleman had proceeded the murmurs and objections of the audience kept increasing, until at last it broke forth in a storm of howls and execrations which completely drowned his voice. The whole audience--I could see their faces from where I sat on the platform--were infuriated. Arms were waving in the air, and the scene was like Bedlam. I requested the clergyman to sit down, and, as soon as he did so, the storm began to subside. A man rose in the midst of the audience and mounted a bench. Loud cries and applause greeted him. I could distinguish the name on a hundred lips, "Kelker! Kelker!" As I ascertained afterwards, he was a professor, of German descent, a man of wide learning, who had lost his position in the university, and in society as well, by his defense of the rights of the people. He now earned a meager living at shoemaking. He was a tall, spare man, with gold eyeglasses (sole relic of his past station), poorly clad; and he had the wild look of a man who had been hunted all his life. He spoke with great vehemence, and in a penetrating voice, that could be heard all over that vast assemblage, which, as soon as he opened his mouth, became as still as death.

""Friends and brothers," he said; "friends by the ties of common wrongs, brothers in misery, I regret that you did not permit the reverend gentleman to proceed. Ours is a liberality that hears all sides; and, for one, I should have been glad to hear what this advocate of the ancient creeds had to say for them. But since he has taken his seat I shall reply to him.

""He tells us that his religion is the one only thing which will save us; and that it is better for us to be miserable here that we may be happy hereafter. If that is so, heaven must be crowded now-a-days, for the misery of the earth is unlimited and unspeakable; and it is rapidly increasing." [Laughter and applause.] "But religion has had control of the world for nearly two thousand years, and this is what it has brought us to. It has been, in all ages, the moral police-force of tyrants." [Great applause.] "It has chloroformed poverty with promises of heaven, while the robbers have plundered the world." (Continued applause.] "It has kept the people in submission, and has sent uncountable millions through wretched lives to shameful graves. [Great applause.] "With a lot of myths and superstitions, derived from a dark and barbarous past, it has prevented civilization from protecting mankind; and, Nero-like, has fiddled away upon its ridiculous dogmas while the world was burning." [Great cheers.]

""When have your churches helped man to improve his condition? They are gorgeous palaces, where once a week the women assemble to display their millinery and the men to maintain their business prestige." [Laughter and applause.] "What great reform have they not opposed? What new discoveries in science have they not resisted?" [Applause.] "Man has only become great when he has escaped out of their clutches." [Cheers.] "They have preached heaven and helped turn earth into a hell." [Great cheers.] "They stood by, without a murmur, and beheld mankind brought down to this awful condition; and now, in the midst of our unbearable calamities, they tell us it is well for us to starve; that starvation is the especial gate of heaven; and that Dives deserved hell because he had plenty to eat while on earth." [Great cheering.] "And why do they do this? Because, if they can get possession of our consciences and persuade us to starve to death patiently, and not resist, they will make it so much the easier for the oppressors to govern us; and the rich, in return, will maintain the churches." [Sensation.] "They are throttling us in the name of God!" [Tremendous applause.] "Our sons march in endless procession to the prison and the scaffold; our daughters take their places in the long line of the bedizened cortege of the brothel; and every fiber of our poor frames and brains shrieks out its protest against insufficient nourishment; and this man comes to us and talks about his Old-World, worn-out creeds, which began in the brains of half-naked barbarians, and are a jumble of the myths of a hundred-----""

One may be surprised here if one has read Donelly's works on Atlantis and Ragnarok, but this is exactly the opportunity he's created to defend his own religion - none others, of course! - and sing paens thereof.

"Here a great uproar broke out near the end of the hall. A man had been caught secretly taking notes of the speaker's remarks. He was evidently a detective. On the instant a hundred men sprang upon him, and he was beaten and trampled under foot, until not only life, but all semblance of humanity, had been crushed out of him; and the wretched remains were dragged out and thrown upon the pavement. It is impossible to describe the uproar and confusion which ensued. In the midst of it a large platoon of police, several hundred strong, with their belts strung with magazine pistols, and great clubs in their hands, broke into the room, and began to deal blows and make arrests right and left, while the crowd fled through all the doors. Maximilian seized me and the poor clergyman, who had been sitting in a dazed and distraught state for some time, and dragged us both up a back stairway and through a rear exit into the street. There we took a carriage, and, after we had left the bewildered clergyman at his residence, Maximilian said to me as we rode home:

""You see, my dear Gabriel, I was right and you were wrong. That workman told the truth. You have arrived on the scene too late. A hundred years ago you might have formed your Brotherhood of Justice and saved society. Now there is but one cure--the Brotherhood of Destruction.""

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March 27, 2022 - March 27, 2022.

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XXI. A SERMON OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

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"Max and I entered the church together. It is a magnificent structure--palatial, cathedral-like, in its proportions--a gorgeous temple of fashion, built with exquisite taste, of different-colored marbles, and surrounded by graceful columns. Ushers, who looked like guards in uniform, stood at the doors, to keep out the poorly-dressed people, if any such presented themselves; for it was evident that this so-called church was exclusively a club-house of the rich.

"As we entered we passed several marble statues. It is a curious illustration of the evolution of religion, in these latter days, that these statues are not representations of any persons who have ever lived, or were supposed to have lived on earth, or anywhere else; and there was not in or about them any hint whatever of myth or antique belief. In the pre-Christian days the work of the poet and sculptor taught a kind of history in the statues of the pagan divinities. Bacchus told of some ancient race that had introduced the vine into Europe and Africa. Ceres, with her wheat-plant, recited a similar story as to agriculture. And Zeus, Hercules, Saturn and all the rest were, in all probability--as Socrates declared--deified men. And, of course, Christian art was full of beautiful allusions to the life of the Savior, or to his great and holy saints and martyrs. But here we had simply splendid representations of naked human figures, male and female, wondrously beautiful, but holding no associations whatever with what you and I, my dear Heinrich, call religion.

"Passing these works of art, we entered a magnificent hall. At the farther end was a raised platform, almost embowered in flowers of many hues, all in full bloom. The light entered through stained windows, on the sides of the hall, so colored as to cast a weird and luxurious effulgence over the great chamber. On the walls were a number of pictures; some of a very sensuous character; all of great beauty and perfect workmanship; but none of them of a religious nature, unless we might except one of the nude Venus rising from the sea.

"The body of the hall was arranged like a great lecture-room; there were no facilities for or suggestions of devotion, but the seats were abundantly cushioned, and with every arrangement for the comfort of the occupants. The hall was not more than half full, the greater part of those present being women. Most of these were fair and beautiful; and even those who had long passed middle age retained, by the virtue of many cunning arts, well known to these people, much of the appearance and freshness of youth. I might here note that the prolongation of life in the upper classes, and its abbreviation in the lower classes, are marked and divergent characteristics of this modern civilization."

"And then he went on to speak of the recent great discoveries made by Professor Thomas O'Connor, of the Oregon University, which promise to end the reign of disease on earth, and give men patriarchal leases of life. More than a century ago it had been observed, where the bacteria of contagious disorders were bred in culture-infusions, for purposes of study, that after a time they became surrounded by masses of substance which destroyed them. It occurred to Professor O'Connor, that it was a rule of Nature that life preyed on life, and that every form of being was accompanied by enemies which held its over-growth in check: the deer were eaten by the wolves; the doves by the hawks; the gnats by the dragon-flies.

""Big fleas had little fleas to bite 'em,

"And these had lesser still, ad infinitum."

"Professor O'Connor found that, in like manner, bacteria, of all kinds, were devoured by minuter forms of life. Recovery from sickness meant that the microbes were destroyed by their natural enemies before they had time to take possession of the entire system; death resulted where the vital powers could not hold out until the balance of nature was thus re-established. He found, therefore, that the remedy for disease was to take some of the culture-infusion in which malignant bacteria had just perished, and inject it into the veins of the sick man. This was like stocking a rat-infested barn with weasels. The invisible, but greedy swarms of bacilli penetrated every part of the body in search of their prey, and the man recovered his health. Where an epidemic threatened, the whole community was to be thus inoculated, and then, when a wandering microbe found lodgment in a human system, it would be pounced upon and devoured before it could reproduce its kind. He even argued that old age was largely due to bacteria; and that perpetual youth would be possible if a germicide could be found that would reach every fiber of the body, and destroy the swarming life-forms which especially attacked the vital forces of the aged.

"And then he referred to a new invention by a California scientist, named Henry Myers, whereby telephonic communication had been curiously instituted with intelligences all around us--not spirits or ghosts, but forms of life like our own, but which our senses had hitherto not been able to perceive. They were new forms of matter, but of an extreme tenuity of substance; and with intellects much like our own, though scarcely of so high or powerful an order. It was suggested by the preacher that these shadowy earth-beings had probably given rise to many of the Old-World beliefs as to ghosts, spirits, fairies, goblins, angels and demons. The field in this direction, he said, had been just opened, and it was difficult to tell how far the diversity and multiplicity of creation extended. He said it was remarkable that our ancestors had not foreseen these revelations, for they knew that there were sound-waves both above and below the register of our hearing; and light-waves of which our eyes were able to take no cognizance; and therefore it followed, a priori, that nature might possess an infinite number of forms of life which our senses were not fitted to perceive. For instance, he added, there might be right here, in this very hall, the houses and work-shops and markets of a multitude of beings, who swarmed about us, but of such tenuity that they passed through our substance, and we through theirs, without the slightest disturbance of their continuity. All that we knew of Nature taught us that she was tireless in the prodigality of her creative force, and boundless in the diversity of her workmanship; and we now knew that what the ancients called spirit was simply an attenuated condition of matter."

Donelly reverts to his favourite form of racism, Hindu bashing. He quotes out of context, distorts, always misinterprets - and lies.

Donelly proceeds with further misusing Hinduism, Gods of Hinduism, and general racism.

""Let us rejoice that out of the misery of the universe we are reserved for happiness. For us are music, painting, sculpture, the interweaving glories of the dance, the splendors of poetry and oratory, the perfume of flowers, all delicate and dainty viands and sparkling wines and nectars; and above all Love! Love! Entrancing, enrapturing Love! With its glowing cheeks--its burning eyes--its hot lips--its wreathing arms--its showering kisses--its palpitating bosoms--its intertwining symmetry of beauty and of loveliness.""

" ... I perceived that the whole congregation, men, women, children, preacher, clerks and ushers, were all advancing upon me with evil intent. I would fain have staid to have argued the matter out with them, for I was full of a great many fine points, which I had not yet had time to present, but Max, who never had any interest in theological discussions, and abhorred a battle with Amazons, seized me by the arm and literally dragged me out of the church. I continued, however, to shout back my anathemas of the preacher, and that worthy answered me with floods of abuse; and the women screamed, and the men howled and swore; and altogether it was a very pretty assemblage that poured forth upon the sidewalk.

""Come along," said Max; "you will be arrested, and that will spoil everything."

""But, my dear fellow," I replied, "it was a great comfort to me to be able to tell that old rascal just what I thought of him. And you can't tell--it may do some good."

""No, no," said Max; "the only preacher that will ever convert that congregation is Cæsar Lomellini. Cæsar is a bigger brute than they are--which is saying a good deal. The difference is, they are brutes who are in possession of the good things of this world; and Cæsar is a brute who wants to get into possession of them. And there is another difference: they are polished and cultured brutes, and Cæsar is the brute natural,--'the unaccommodated man' that Lear spoke of."

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March 27, 2022 - March 27, 2022.

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XXII. ESTELLA AND I

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" ... He must fly. One man could do nothing against such numbers. He could not leave the Princess Charming behind him: she would fall into the hands of the savages. He knew that she had trust enough in him to go to the ends of the earth with him. He had a sort of dim belief that she loved him. What should he do? Should he overcome his scruples and ask the lady of his love to wed him; or should he invite her to accompany him as his friend and sister? Would it not be mean and contemptible to take advantage of her distresses, her solitude and the very danger that threatened the land, and thus coerce her into a marriage which might be distasteful to her?

""Now, my dear Estella," I said, with a beating heart, "thus far have I progressed with my fairy tale; but I know not how to conclude it. Can you give me any advice?"

"She looked up at me, blushing, but an arch smile played about her lips.

""Let us play out the play," she said. "I will represent the Princess Charming--a very poor representative, I fear;--and you will take the part of the good Knight Weakhart--a part which I imagine you are especially well fitted to play. Now," she said, "you know the old rhyme:

"'He either fears his fate too much,

"Or his desert is small,

"Who fears to put it to the touch,

"And win or lose it all.'

""Therefore, I would advise that you--acting the Knight Weakhart, of course--take the bolder course and propose to Princess Charming to marry you.""

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March 27, 2022 - March 27, 2022.

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XXIII. MAX'S STORY-THE SONGSTRESS

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Max tells them of his own love story.

""I felt like a guilty thing, standing there, sharing in the happiness to which I had not been invited; and at last I stole down the stairs, and into the street. I need not say that all this had vastly increased my interest in the pretty singer. This picture of poverty associated with genius, and abundant love shining over all, was very touching.

""The next day I set a detective agency to work to find out all they could about the girl and her family. ... "

""I determined to find out more about the pretty Christina.""

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March 27, 2022 - March 27, 2022.

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XXIV. MAX'S STORY CONTINUED--THE JOURNEYMAN PRINTER

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" ... Christina was down on the bills for three solos. Each one was a triumph--encore followed encore--and when the performance closed the little singer was called before the curtain and another Danaë shower of silver and gold, and some bouquets, fell around her. When I went behind the scenes I found the happy girl surrounded by even a larger circle of admirers than the night before, each one sounding her praises. I called the manager aside. He knew me well as a rich young spendthrift. I said to him:

""'How much a week do you pay Christina?'

""'I promised her,' said he, 'five dollars a week; but,' and here he looked at me suspiciously, 'I have determined to double it. I shall pay her ten.'

""'That is not enough,' I said; 'you will find in her a gold mine. You must pay her fifty.'

""'My dear sir,' he said, 'I cannot afford it. I really cannot.'

""'Well,' said 'I will speak to Jobson [a rival in business]; he will pay her a hundred. I saw him here to-night. He has already heard of her.'

""'But,' said he, 'she has contracted with me to sing for three months, at five dollars per week; and I have permitted her to take home all the money that was thrown on the stage last night and to-night. Now I shall pay her ten. Is not that liberal?'

""'Liberal!' I said; 'it is hoggish. This girl has made you two hundred dollars extra profit to-night. She is under age. She cannot make a binding contract. And the money that was thrown to her belongs to her and not to you. Come, what do you say--shall I speak to Jobson?'

""'What interest have you in this girl?' he asked, sullenly.

""'That is no matter of yours,' I replied; 'if you will not pay her what I demand, to-morrow night she will sing for Jobson, and your place will be empty.'

""'Well,' said he, 'I will pay it; but I don't see what right you have to interfere in my business.'

""'That is not all,' I said; 'go to her now and tell her you have made a good deal of money to-night, by her help, and ask her to accept fifty dollars from you as a present; and tell her, in my hearing, that she is to receive fifty dollars a week hereafter. The family are very poor, and need immediate help. And besides, if she does not know that she is to receive a liberal salary, when the agents of the other houses come for her, she may leave you. Fair play is the wisest thing.'"

""The next morning, at daybreak, I hurried to the same detective I had employed the day before; he was a shrewd, but not unkindly fellow. I explained to him my plans, and we went out together. We took a carriage and drove rapidly from place to place; he really seemed pleased to find himself engaged, for once in his life, in a good action. What I did will be revealed as I go on with this story."

" ... They thanked him; and, explaining to him that the business of renting houses was something new to them, for heretofore they had lived in one or two rooms--they might have added, very near the roof--they walked off with the stranger. He led them into a pleasant, quiet, respectable neighborhood, and at last stopped before a small, neat three-story house, with a little garden in front and another larger one in the rear.

""'What a pretty place!' said the mother; 'but I fear the rent will be too high for us.'

""'Well, there is no harm in inquiring,' said the workman, and he rang the bell.

""A young man, dressed like a mechanic, answered the summons. He invited them in; the house was comfortably, but not richly furnished. They went through it and into the garden; they were delighted with everything. And then came the question they feared to ask: What was the rent?

""'Well,' said the young man, pleasantly, I must explain my position. I am a printer by trade. My name is Francis Montgomery. I own this house. It was left to me by my parents. It is all I have. I am not married. I cannot live in it alone; it is too big for that; and, besides, I think I should get some income out of it, for there are the taxes to be paid. But I do not want to leave the house. I was born and raised here. I thought that if I could get some pleasant family to take it, who would let me retain one of the upper rooms, and would board me, I would rent the house for'--here he mentioned a ridiculously low price. 'I do not want,' he added, 'any expensive fare. I am content to take "pot-luck" with the family. I like your looks; and if you want the house, at the terms I have named, I think we can get along pleasantly together. I may not be here all the time.'"

""I found my eyes growing damp; for I was thinking of the riotous profusion of the rich, and of the costly toys they heap upon their children; and the contrast of this poor man, unable to buy a single cheap toy for his family, and giving his chubby boy a rude iron hammer and nails, to pound into that poor stool, as a substitute for doll or rocking-horse, was very touching. And then I looked with some wonder at the straightforward honesty of the little maid, who, in the midst of the new, fine house, was not ashamed to talk so frankly of the dismal wretchedness and want which a few days before had been the lot of the family. She saw nothing to be ashamed of in poverty; while by meaner and more sordid souls it is regarded as the very abasement of shame and crime.

""Ole was pounding away at his nails.

""'Does he not hurt himself sometimes?' I asked.

""'Oh yes, she said, laughing; 'at first he would hit his little fingers many a hard rap; and he would start to cry, but papa would tell him that "men never cry;--and then it was funny to see how he would purse up his little red mouth, while the tears of pain ran down from his big round eyes, but not a sound more would escape him.'

""And I said to myself: 'This is the stuff of which was formed the masterful race that overran the world under the names of a dozen different peoples. Ice and snow made the tough fiber, mental and physical, which the hot sun of southern climes afterward melted into the viciousness of more luxurious nations. Man is scourged into greatness by adversity, and leveled into mediocrity by prosperity. This little fellow, whose groans die between his set teeth, has in him the blood of the Vikings.'"

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March 27, 2022 - March 27, 2022.

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XXV. MAX'S STORY CONTINUED--THE DARK SHADOW

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""Christina was very busy during the day with her teachers. She loved music and was anxious to excel. She had her lessons on the piano; she improved her mind by a judicious course of reading, in which I helped her somewhat; she went twice a week to a grand Italian maestro, who perfected her in her singing. And she took long walks to the poor neighborhood where she had formerly lived, to visit the sick and wretched among her old acquaintances, and she never left them empty-handed.

""At the theater she grew more and more popular. Even the rudest of the audience recognized instinctively in her the goodness which they themselves lacked. Every song was an ovation. Her praises began to resound in the newspapers; and she had already received advances from the manager of one of the grand opera-houses. A bright future opened before her--a vista of light and music and wealth and delight.

""She did not escape, however, the unpleasant incidents natural to such a career. Her mother accompanied her to every performance, and was, in so far, a shield to her; but she was beset with visitors at the house; she was annoyed by men who stopped and claimed acquaintance with her on the streets; she received many gifts, flowers, fruit, jewelry, and all the other tempting sweet nothings which it is thought bewitch the heart of frail woman. But they had no effect upon her. Only goodness seemed to cling to her, and evil fell far off from her. You may set two plants side by side in the same soil--one will draw only bitterness and poison from the earth; while the other will gather, from the same nurture, nothing but sweetness and perfume."

And even more so that such a book wasn't notorious but is mostly unknown!

"LATER.--A young man named Nathan Brederhagan, belonging to a wealthy and respectable family, and residing with his mother at No. 637 Sherman Street, was arrested this morning at one o'clock, in his bed, by police officer No. 18,333, on information furnished by the family of the unfortunate girl. A bloody dagger was found in his pocket. As the girl is likely to die he was committed to jail and bail refused. He is represented to be a dissipated, reckless young fellow, and it seems was in love with the girl, and sought her hand in marriage; and she refused him; whereupon, in his rage, he attempted to take her life. His terrible deed has plunged a large circle of relatives and friends into great shame and sorrow."

" ... I realized for the first time what the sunny-haired little songstress was to me."

" ... I rushed up the steps. Her mother met me in the hall. She was crying.

""'Is she alive?' I asked.

""'Yes, yes,' she replied.

""'What does the doctor say?' I inquired.

""'He says she will not die--but her voice is gone forever,' she replied.

""Her tears burst forth afresh. I was shocked--inexpressibly shocked. True, it was joy to know she would live; but to think of that noble instrument of grace and joy and melody silenced forever! It was like the funeral of an angel! ... She looked with dilated eyes into that dreadful vista. She saw again the hard, grinding, sordid poverty from which they had but a little time before escaped-she saw again her husband bent down with care, and she heard her children crying once more for bread. I read the poor woman's thoughts. It was not selfishness--it was love for those dear to her; and I took her hand, and--scarcely knowing what I said--I told her she must not worry, that she and her family should never suffer want again. She looked at me in surprise, and thanked me, and said I was always good and kind."

" ... I went to the window to hide the unmanly tears which streamed down my face.

""When she woke she seemed pleased to see me near her, and extended her hand to me with a little smile. The doctor had told her she must not attempt to speak. I held her hand for awhile, and told how grieved I was over her misfortune. And then I told her I would bring her a tablet and pencil, so that she might communicate her wants to us; and then I said to her that I was out of a job at my trade (I know that the angels in heaven do not record such lies), and that I had nothing to do, and could stay and wait upon her; for the other children were too small, and her mother too busy to be with her all the time, and her father and I could divide the time between us. She smiled again and thanked me with her eyes."

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March 27, 2022 - March 27, 2022.

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XXVI. MAX'S STORY CONTINUED--THE WIDOW AND HER SON

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""The next day, about ten in the morning, I went out to procure some medicine for Christina. I was gone but a few minutes, and on my return, as I mounted the stairs, I was surprised to hear a strange voice in the sick-room. I entered and was introduced by Mrs. Jansen to 'Mrs. Brederhagan,' the rich widow, the mother of the little wretch who had assaulted Christina. She was a large, florid woman, extravagantly dressed, with one of those shallow, unsympathetic voices which betoken a small and flippant soul. Her lawyers had told her that Nathan would probably be sent to prison for a term of years; and so she had come to see if she could not beg his victim to spare him. She played her part well. She got down on her knees by the bedside in all her silks and furbelows, and seized Christina's hand and wept; and told of her own desolate state as a widow--drawing, incidentally, a picture of the virtues of her deceased husband, which he himself--good man--would not have recognized in this world or any other. And then she descanted on the kind heart of her poor boy, and how he had been led off by bad company, etc., etc. Christina listened with an intent look to all this story; but she flushed when the widow proceeded to say how deeply her son loved her, Christina, and that it was his love for her that had caused him to commit his desperate act; and she actually said that, although Christina was but a poor singer, with no blood worth speaking of, in comparison with her own illustrious long line of nobodies, yet she brought Christina an offer from her son--sanctioned by her own approval--that he would--if she would spare him from imprisonment and his family from disgrace--marry her outright and off-hand; and that she would, as a magnanimous and generous, upper-crust woman, welcome her, despite all her disadvantages and drawbacks, to her bosom as a daughter! All this she told with a great many tears and ejaculations, all the time clinging to Christina's hand."

""And I took her by the arm, and firmly but respectfully led her out of the room, furbelows, gold chains and all. She did not feel at all satisfied with the success of her mission; but I saw her into her carriage and told the driver to take her home. I was indignant. I felt that the whole thing was an attempt to play upon the sympathies of my poor little patient, and that the woman was a hollow, heartless old fraud."

""'Mrs. Brederhagan,' I said, 'your vicious little devil of a son here has escaped punishment so far for his cruel and cowardly assault upon a poor girl. He has escaped through her unexampled magnanimity and generosity. But do you know what he has done to her? He has silenced her exquisite voice forever. He has ruthlessly destroyed that which a million like him could not create. That poor girl will never sing again. She was the sole support of her family. This imp here has taken the bread out of their mouths--they will starve. You owe it to her to make a deed of gift whereby you will endow her with the amount she was earning when your son's dagger pierced her poor throat and silenced her voice; that is--fifty dollars a week.'

""The widow ruffled up her feathers, and said she did not see why she should give Christina fifty dollars a week. She had declared that her son was not the one who had assaulted her, and he was a free man, and that was the end of their connection with the matter.

""'Ha! ha!' said I, 'and so, that is your position? Now you will send at once for a notary and do as I tell you, or in one hour your son shall be arrested again. Christina's mother knows him perfectly well, and will identify him; and Christina herself will not swear in court to the generous falsehood she told to screen you and yours from disgrace. You are a worthy mother of such a son, when you cannot appreciate one of the noblest acts ever performed in this world.'

""The widow grew pale at these threats; and after she and her hopeful son--who was in a great fright--had whispered together, she reluctantly agreed to my terms. A notary was sent for, and the deed drawn and executed, and a check given, at my demand, for the first month's payment.

""'Now,' said I, turning to Master Nathan, 'permit me to say one word to you, young man. If you ever again approach, or speak to, or molest in any way, Miss Christina Carlson, I will,'-and here I drew close to him and put my finger on his breast,--'I will kill you like a dog.'

""With this parting shot I left the happy pair.""

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March 27, 2022 - March 27, 2022.

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XXVII. MAX'S STORY CONTINUED--THE BLACKSMITH SHOP

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"I started out and made little excursions in all directions. At last I found the very place I had been looking for. It was about twelve miles beyond the built-up portions of the suburbs, in a high and airy neighborhood, and contained about ten acres of land. There was a little grove, a field, a garden, and an old-fashioned, roomy house. The house needed some repairs, it is true; but beyond the grove two roads crossed each other, and at the angle would be an admirable place for a blacksmith shop. I purchased the whole thing very cheaply. Then I set carpenters to work to repair the house and build a blacksmith shop. The former I equipped with furniture, and the latter with anvil, bellows and other tools, and a supply of coal and iron.

""When everything was ready I told Christina another of my white lies. I said to her that Mrs. Brederhagan, learning that her voice was ruined forever by her son's dagger, had felt impelled, by her conscience and sense of right, to make her a present of a little place in the country, and had deputed me to look after the matter for her, and that I had bought the very place that I thought would suit them.

""And so we all started out to view the premises. It would be hard to say who was most delighted, Christina or her mother or her father; but I am inclined to think the latter took more pure happiness in his well-equipped little shop, with the big sign, 'CARL JANSEN, BLACKSMITH,' and the picture of a man shoeing a horse, than Christina did in the flowerbed, or her mother in the comfortable household arrangements.

""Soon after the whole family moved out. I was right. A race that has lived for several generations in the country is an exotic in a city.""

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March 27, 2022 - March 27, 2022.

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XXVIII. MAX'S STORY CONCLUDED--THE UNEXPECTED HAPPENS

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" ... The day before yesterday I found the whole household in a state of joyous excitement. Christina had been enjoined to put the baby to sleep; and while rocking it in its cradle she had, all unconsciously, begun to sing a little nursery song. Suddenly she sprang to her feet, and, running to her mother, cried out:

""'Oh, mother! I can sing! Listen.'

"She found, however, that the voice was still quite weak, and that if she tried to touch any of the higher notes there was a pain in her throat.

""Afterward the old folks were called in, and I told them my whole story. And I said to them, moreover, that there was storm and danger ahead; that the great convulsion might come any day; and so it is agreed that we are to be married, at Christina's home, the day after to-morrow. And to-morrow I want my dear mother, and you, my dear friends, to go with me to visit the truest and noblest little woman that ever promised to make a man happy."

"When Max had finished his long story, his mother kissed and cried over him; and Estella and I shook hands with him; and we were a very happy party; and no one would have thought, from our jests and laughter, that the bloodhounds of the aristocracy were hunting for three of us, and that we were sitting under the dark presaging shadow of a storm that was ready to vomit fire and blood at any moment."

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March 27, 2022 - March 27, 2022.

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XXIX. ELYSIUM

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" ... Mrs. Jansen held back modestly at first, a little afraid of "the great folks," but she was brought forward by Christina, and introduced to us all. And then we had to make the acquaintance of the whole flock of blue-eyed, curly-haired, rosy-cheeked little ones, gay in white dresses and bright ribbons. Even Master Ole forgot, for a time, his enrapturing hammer and nails, and stood, with eyes like saucers, contemplating the irruption of outside barbarians. We went into the house, and there, with many a laugh and jest, the spectacled school-teacher was transformed into my own bright and happy Estella. The two girls flowed into one another, by natural affinity, like a couple of drops of quicksilver; each recognized the transparent soul in the other, and in a moment they were friends for life.

"We were a jolly party. Care flew far away from us, and many a laugh and jest resounded."

Donelly is as unashamed of abusing Sanskrit literature after claiming it fraudulently as European culture is unashamed of slaughter of cattle despite truth of what Donelly says above.

No, they aren't Aryan in true sense of the word, even if some migration and intermarriage gave them access to languages derived from Sanskrit.

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March 27, 2022 - March 27, 2022.

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XXX. UPON THE HOUSE-TOP

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"A few days after our joint wedding Max came running in one day, and said: "It is to be to-morrow."

"He gave each of us a red cross to sew upon our clothes. He was very much excited, and hurried out again.

"I had said to him, the morning of our marriage, that I desired to return home before the outbreak came, for I was now responsible for Estella's life and safety; and I feared that all communication of one part of the world with another would be cut off by the threatened revolution. He had begged me to remain. He said that at the interview with General Quincy it had been made a condition of the contract that each of the executive committee--Cæsar, the vice-president and himself--should have one of the flying air-ships placed at his disposal, after the outbreak, well manned and equipped with bombs and arms of all kinds. These "Demons" were to be subject to their order at any time, and to be guarded by the troops at their magazine in one of the suburbs until called for."

"He said to me that if I remained he would guarantee the safety of myself and wife, and after I had seen the outbreak he would send me home in his air-ship; and moreover, if he became satisfied that the revolution had passed beyond the control of himself and friends, he would, after rescuing his father from the prison where he was confined, accompany me with his whole family, and we would settle down together in my distant mountain home. He had, accordingly, turned all his large estate into gold and silver, which he had brought to the house; and I had likewise filled one large room full of a great library of books, which I had purchased to take with me--literature, science, art, encyclopedias, histories, philosophies, in fact all the treasures of the world's genius--together with type, printing presses, telescopes, phonographs, photographic instruments, electrical apparatus, eclesions, phemasticons, and all the other great inventions which the last hundred years have given us. For, I said to myself, if civilization utterly perishes in the rest of the world, there, in the mountains of Africa, shut out from attack by rocks and ice-topped mountains, and the cordon of tropical barbarians yet surrounding us, we will wait until exhausted and prostrate mankind is ready to listen to us and will help us reconstruct society upon a wise and just basis.

"In the afternoon Max returned, bringing with him Carl Jansen and all his family. A dozen men also came, bearing great boxes. They were old and trusted servants of his father's family; and the boxes contained magazine rifles and pistols and fixed ammunition, together with hand-grenades. These were taken out, and we were all armed. Even the women had pistols, and knives strapped to their girdles. The men went out and again returned, bearing quantities of food, sufficient to last us during a siege, and also during our flight to my home. Water was also collected in kegs and barrels, for the supply might be cut of. Then Max came, and under his orders, as soon as night fell, the lower windows, the cellar openings and the front door were covered with sheathings of thick oak plank, of three thicknesses, strongly nailed; then the second story windows were similarly protected, loopholes being first bored, through which our rifles could be thrust, if necessary. Then the upper windows were also covered in the same way. The back door was left free for ingress and egress through the yard and back street, but powerful bars were arranged across it, and the oak plank left ready to board it up when required. The hand-grenades--there were a pile of them--were carried up to the flat roof. Then one of the men went out and painted red crosses on the doors and windows."

" ... Max whispered to me that the blow would be struck at six o'clock in Europe and at twelve o'clock at night in America. The fighting therefore had already begun in the Old World. He further explained to me something of the plan of battle. The Brotherhood at twelve would barricade a group of streets in which were the Sub-Treasury of the United States, and all the principal banks, to wit: Cedar, Pine, Wall, Nassau, William, Pearl and Water Streets. Two hundred thousand men would be assembled to guard these barricades. They would then burst open the great moneyed institutions and blow up the safes with giant powder and Hecla powder. At daybreak one of Quincy's air-ships would come and receive fifty millions of the spoils in gold, as their share of the plunder, and the price of their support. As soon as this was delivered, and carried to their armory, the whole fleet of air-vessels would come up and attack the troops of the Oligarchy. If, however, General Quincy should violate his agreement, and betray them, they had provided a large number of great cannon, mounted on high wheels, so that they could be fired vertically, and these were to be loaded with bombs of the most powerful explosives known to science, and so constructed with fulminating caps that, if they struck the air-ship at any point, they would explode and either destroy it or so disarrange its machinery as to render it useless. Thus they were provided, he thought, for every emergency.

"At eleven he came to me and whispered that if anything happened to him he depended on me to take his wife and mother and his father, if possible, with me to Africa. I grasped his hand and assured him of my devotion. He then embraced Christina and his mother and left them, weeping bitterly, in each other's arms."

"I thought it must be nearly twelve. I drew out my watch to look at the time. It lacked one minute of that hour. Another instant, and the whole city was wrapped in profound darkness. Some of the workmen about the Magnetic Works were members of the Brotherhood, and, in pursuance of their orders, they had cut the connections of the works and blotted out the light."

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March 27, 2022 - March 27, 2022.

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XXXI. "SHEOL"

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"Suddenly there was a terrific explosion that shook the house. I could see a shower of stones and brick and timbers and dust, rising like a smoke, seamed with fire, high in the air, within the lines of the barricades. Then came another, even louder; then another, and another, and another, until it sounded like a bombardment. Then these ceased, and after a little time came the sounds of smaller explosions, muffled as if under ground or within walls.

""They are blowing open the banks," I whispered to Estella.

"Then all was quiet for a space. In a little while the bombardment began again, as if in another part of the territory inclosed in the barricades.

"And still there was not a soldier to be seen in the deserted streets near me.

"And again came other explosions.

"At last I saw the red light beginning to touch the clouds along the eastern horizon with its crimson brush. The fateful day was dawning.

"And then, in a little while, far away to the north, soft and dull at first, but swelling gradually into greater volume, a mighty sound arose; and through it I could hear bursts of splendid melody, rising and falling and fluttering, like pennons, above the tumult; and I recognized the notes of that grand old Scotch air, "The Campbells are Coming."

"It was the defenders of society advancing with the swinging step of assured triumph.

"Oh, it was a splendid sight! In all the bravery of banners, and uniforms, and shining decorations, and amidst the majestic and inspiriting outpouring of music, they swept along, the thousands moving as one. How they did contrast with that gloomy, dark, ragged, sullen multitude who had preceded them. And with them came, rattling along, multitudes of those dreadful machine guns--those cataracts of fire and death--drawn by prancing, well-fed, shining horses. And the lips of the gunners were set for carnage; for they had received orders to take no prisoners! The world was to be taught a lesson to-day--a bloody and an awful lesson. Ah! little did they think how it would be taught!"

"But I heard one officer cry out to another, as they passed below me:

""What's the matter with the Demons? Why are they not here?"

""I can't say," replied the one spoken to; "but they will be here in good time."

"The grand and mighty stream of men poured on. They halted close to the high barricade. It was a formidable structure at least fifteen feet high and many feet in thickness. The gray of dawn had turned into red, and a pale, clear light spread over all nature. I heard some sparrows, just awakened, twittering and conversing in a tall tree near me. They, too, wondered, doubtless, what it all meant, and talked it over in their own language.

"The troops deployed right and left, and soon the insurgent mass was closely surrounded in every direction and every outlet closed. The "rat-trap" was set. Where were the rat-killers? I could see many a neck craned, and many a face lifted up, looking toward the west, for their terrible allies of the air. But they came not.

"There was a dead pause. It was the stillness before the thunder."

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March 27, 2022 - March 27, 2022.

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XXXII. THE RAT-TRAP

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"I could see the soldiers looking to the west. I swept the sky with my glass. Yes, something portentous had indeed happened! Instead of the whole dark flight of thousands of airships for which the soldiers had been looking, there came, athwart the sky, like a great black bird, a single Demon.

"As it approached it seemed to be signaling some one. Little flags of different colors were run up and taken down. I turned and looked to the barricaded district. And there on the top of a very high building, in its midst, I could see a group of men. They, too, were raising and lowering little flags. Nearer and nearer swept the great bird; every eye and many a field-glass in all that great throng were fastened upon it, with awe-struck interest--the insurgents rejoicing; the soldiers perplexed. Nearer and nearer it comes.

"Now it pauses right over the tall building; it begins to descend, like a sea-gull about to settle in the waves. Now it is but a short distance above the roof. I could see against the bright sky the gossamer traces of a rope ladder, falling down from the ship to the roof. The men below take hold of it and steady it. A man descends. Something about him glitters in the rising sun. He is probably an officer. He reaches the roof. They bow and shake hands. I can see him wave his hand to those above him. A line of men descend; they disappear in the building; they reappear; they mount the ladder; again and again they come and go.

""They are removing the treasure," I explain to our party, gathering around me.

"Then the officer shakes hands again with the men on the roof; they bow to each other; he reascends the ladder; the air-ship rises in the air, higher and higher, like an eagle regaining its element; and away it sails, back into the west.

"An age of bribery terminates in one colossal crime of corruption!

""The Demons" moved slowly off. They had earned their money. The Mamelukes of the Air had turned the tables upon the Sultan. They retired to their armory, doubtless to divide the fifty millions equitably between them.

"The mob stood still for a few minutes. They could scarcely realize that they were at last masters of the city. But quickly a full sense of all that their tremendous victory signified dawned upon them. The city lay prostrate, chained, waiting to be seized upon."

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March 27, 2022 - March 27, 2022.

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XXXIII. "THE OCEAN OVERPEERS ITS LIST"

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"A sullen roar filled the air as this human cyclone moved onward, leaving only wrecks behind it. Now it pauses at a house. The captain consults his catalogue. "This is it," he cries; and doors and windows give way before the thunderous mob; and then the scenes are terrible. Men are flung headlong, alive, out of the windows to the ravenous wretches below; now a dead body comes whirling down; then the terrified inhabitants fly to the roofs, and are pursued from house to house and butchered in sight of the delighted spectators. But when the condemned man--the head of the house--is at last found, hidden perhaps in some coal-hole or cellar, and is brought up, black with dust, and wild with terror, his clothes half torn from his back; and he is thrust forth, out of door or window, into the claws of the wild beasts, the very heavens ring with acclamations of delight; and happy is the man who can reach over his fellows and know that he has struck the victim.

"Then up and away for another vengeance. Before them is solitude; shops and stores and residences are closed and barricaded; in the distance teams are seen flying and men scurrying to shelter; and through crevices in shutters the horrified people peer at the mob, as at an invasion of barbarians."

"Civilization is gone, and all the devils are loose! No more courts, nor judges, nor constables, nor prisons! That which it took the world ten thousand years to create has gone in an hour.

"And still the thunderous cyclones move on through a hundred streets. Occasionally a house is fired; but this is not part of the programme, for they have decided to keep all these fine residences for themselves! They will be rich. They will do no more work. The rich man's daughters shall be their handmaidens; they will wear his purple and fine linen."

"They do not, as a rule, steal. Revenge--revenge--is all their thought. And why should they steal? Is it not all their own? Now and then a too audacious thief is caught and stuck full of bayonets; or he is flung out of a window, and dies at the hands of the mob the death of the honest man for whom he is mistaken; and thus, by a horrible travesty of fate, he perishes for that which he never was nor could be.

"Think of the disgust of a thief who finds himself being murdered for an honest man, an aristocrat, and can get no one to believe his asseverations that he is simply and truly a thief--and nothing more! It is enough to make Death grin!"

"The people cannot comprehend it. They look around for their defenders--the police, the soldiery. "Where are they? Will not this dreadful nightmare pass away?" No; no; never--never. This is the culmination--this is the climax--"the century's aloe flowers to-day." These are "the grapes of wrath" which God has stored up for the day of his vengeance; and now he is trampling them out, and this is the red juice--look you!--that flows so thick and fast in the very gutters."

"Your ancestors, more than two centuries ago, established and permitted Slavery. What was the cry of the bondman to them? What the sobs of the mother torn from her child--the wife from her husband--on the auction block? Who among them cared for the lacerated bodies, the shameful and hopeless lives? They were merry; they sang and they danced; and they said, "Gods sleeps."

"But a day came when there was a corpse at every fireside. And not the corpse of the black stranger--the African--the slave;--but the corpses of fair, bright-faced men; their cultured, their manly, their noble, their best-loved. And, North and South, they sat, rocking themselves to and fro, in the midst of the shards and ashes of desolation, crying aloud for the lives that would come back to bless them never, nevermore."

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March 27, 2022 - March 27, 2022.

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XXXIV. THE PRINCE GIVES HIS LAST BRIBE

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"The Prince of Cabano, through his innumerable spies, had early received word of the turn affairs had taken. He had hurriedly filled a large satchel with diamonds and other jewels of great value, and, slinging it over his shoulders, and arming himself with sword, knife and pistols, he had called Frederika to him (he had really some little love for his handsome concubine), and loading her pockets and his own with gold pieces, and taking her by the hand, he had fled in great terror to the river side. His fine yacht lay off in the stream. He called and shouted until he was hoarse, but no one replied from the vessel. He looked around. The wharves were deserted; the few boats visible were chained and padlocked to their iron rings. The master of many servants was helpless. He shouted, screamed, tore his hair, stamped and swore viciously. The man who had coolly doomed ten million human beings to death was horribly afraid he would have to die himself. He ran back, still clinging to Frederika, to hide in the thick shrubbery of his own garden; there, perhaps, he might find a faithful servant who would get him a boat and take him off to the yacht in safety.

"But then, like the advancing thunder of a hurricane, when it champs the earth and tears the trees to pieces with its teeth, came on the awful mob."

"The last of the accumulations of generations of wrong and robbery and extortion and cruelty had sufficed to purchase their heritor a miserable death,--in the embrace of a thief!"

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March 27, 2022 - March 27, 2022.

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XXXV. THE LIBERATED PRISONER

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Max recounts avenging his father's imprisonment by fraud, after rescuing him.

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March 27, 2022 - March 27, 2022.

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XXXVI. CÆSAR ERECTS HIS MONUMENT

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""'I came, General, to ask you what we are to do with the dead.'

""'Kill 'em,' roared Cæsar, 'kill 'em, d--n 'em.'

""'But, General, they are dead already,' replied the officer who was a steady fellow and perfectly sober.

""Well, what's the matter with 'em, then?' replied Cæsar. 'Come, come, Bill, if they're dead, that's the end of them. Take a drink,' and he turned, unsteadily, toward the council-table, on which stood several bottles and demijohns.

""'But some of us have talked it over,' said the officer. 'A number of the streets are impassable already with the dead. There must be a quarter of a million of soldiers and citizens lying about, and the number is being added to every minute. The weather is warm, and they will soon breed a pestilence that will revenge them on their slayers. Those killed by the poison are beginning to smell already. We couldn't take any action without your authority, and so I came to ask you for your orders.'

""'Burn 'em up,' said Cæsar."

He was informed it was impracticable.

" ... But build the column, Bill--build it high and strong. I remember--hic--how they used to build houses on the Saskatchewan, when I was grubbing for potatoes there. They had a board frame the length of a wall, and three or four feet high. They would throw in stones, bowlders, pebbles, dirt, anything, and, when it was full, they would pour cement over it all; and when it hardened--hic--which it did in a few minutes, they lifted up the frame and made another course. I say, Bill, that's the way you must build Cæsar's column. And get Charley Carpenter to help you; he's an engineer. And, hold on, Bill, put a lot of dynamite--Jim has just told me they had found tons of it--put a lot of dynamite--hic--in the middle of it, and if they try to tear down my monument, it will blow them to the d---l. And, I say, Max, that long-legged, preaching son-of-thunder--that friend of yours--he must write an inscription for it. Do you hear? He's the man to do it. Something fine. By G-d, we will build a monument that will beat the pyramids of all the other Caesars. Cæsar's Column! Hoorrah!'"

Much more reminiscent of holocaust than of Russian revolution -

"The wagons rolled up, half a dozen at a time, and dumped their dreadful burdens on the stones, with no more respect or ceremony than if they had been cord-wood. Then the poor trembling prisoners seized them by the head and feet, and carried them to other prisoners, who stood inside the boxes, and who arranged them like double lines from a central point:--it was the many-rayed sun of death that had set upon civilization. Then, when the box was full and closely packed, they poured the liquid cement, which had been mixed close at hand, over them. It hardened at once, and the dead were entombed forever. Then the box was lifted and the work of sepulture went on.

"While I stood watching the scene I heard a thrilling, ear-piercing shriek--a dreadful cry! A young man, who was helping to carry a corpse, let go his hold and fell down on the pavement. I went over to him. He was writhing and moaning. He had observed something familiar about the form he was bearing--it was the body of a woman. He had peered through the disheveled hair at the poor, agonized, blood-stained features, and recognized--his wife!

"One of the guards raised his whip to strike him, and shouted:

""Here! Get up! None of this humbugging."

""I caught the ruffian's arm. The poor wretch was embracing the dead body, and moaning pitiful expressions of love and tenderness into the ears that would never hear him more. The ruffian threatened me. But the mob was moved to mercy, and took my part; and even permitted the poor creature to carry off his dead in his arms, out into the outer darkness. God only knows where he could have borne it."

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March 27, 2022 - March 27, 2022.

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XXXVII. THE SECOND DAY

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"It was a dreadful night. Crowds of farmers from the surrounding country kept pouring into the city. They were no longer the honest yeomanry who had filled, in the old time, the armies of Washington, and Jackson, and Grant, and Sherman, with brave patriotic soldiers; but their brutalized descendants--fierce serfs--cruel and bloodthirsty peasants. Every man who owned anything was their enemy and their victim. They invaded the houses of friend and foe alike, and murdered men, women and children. Plunder! plunder! They had no other thought.

"One of our men came to me at midnight, and said:

""Do you hear those shrieks?"

""Yes," I replied.

""They are murdering the family next door."

"These were pleasant, kindly people, who had never harmed any one. But this maelström swallows good and bad alike. Another came running to me, and cried:

""They are attacking the house!"

""Where?" I asked.

""At the front door."

""Throw over a hand-grenade," I said.

"There was a loud crash, and a scurrying of flying feet. The cowardly miscreants had fled. They were murderers, not warriors.

"All night long the awful Bedlam raged. The dark streets swarmed. Three times we had to have recourse to the hand-grenades. Fires sprang up all over the city, licking the darkness with their hideous tongues of flame, and revealing by their crimson glare the awful sights of that unparalleled time. The dread came upon me: What if some wretch should fire a house in our block? How should we choose between the conflagration and those terrible streets? Would it not be better to be ashes and cinders, than to fall into the hands of that demoniacal mob?

"No one slept. Max sat apart and thought. Was he considering--too late!--whether it was right to have helped produce this terrible catastrophe? Early in the morning, accompanied by three of his men, he went out.

"We ate breakfast in silence. It seemed to me we had no right to eat in the midst of so much death and destruction.

"There was an alarm, and the firing of guns above us. Some miscreants had tried to reach the roof of our house from the adjoining buildings. We rushed up. A lively fusillade followed. Our magazine rifles and hand-grenades were too much for them; some fell dead and the rest beat a hasty retreat. They were peasants, searching for plunder."

"At noon Max returned. His clothes were torn, his face pale, his eyes wild-looking, and around his head he wore a white bandage, stained with his own blood. Christina screamed and his mother fainted.

""What is the matter, Max?" I asked.

""It is all in vain," he replied despairingly; "I thought I would be able to create order out of chaos and reconstruct society. But that dream is past."

""What has happened?" I asked.

""I went this morning to Prince Cabano's palace to get Cæsar to help me. He had held high carnival all night and was beastly drunk, in bed. Then I went out to counsel with the mob. But another calamity had happened. Last night the vice-president--the Jew--fled, in one of the Demons, carrying away one hundred million dollars that had been left in his charge."

""Where did he go?" I asked.

""No one knows. He took several of his trusted followers, of his own nation, with him. It is rumored that he has gone to Judea; that he proposes to make himself king in Jerusalem, and, with his vast wealth, re-establish the glories of Solomon, and revive the ancient splendors of the Jewish race, in the midst of the ruins of the world."

""What effect has his flight had on the mob?" I asked. "A terrible effect. They are wild with suspicions and full of rumors. They gathered, in a vast concourse, around the Cabano palace, to prevent Cæsar leaving them, like the cripple. They believe that he, too, has another hundred millions hidden in the cellars of the palace. They clamored for him to appear. The tumult of the mob was frightful.

""I rose to address them from the steps of the palace. I told them they need not fear that Cæsar would leave them--he was dead drunk, asleep in bed. If they feared treachery, let them appoint a committee to search the palace for treasure. But--I went on--there was a great danger before them which they had not thought of. They must establish some kind of government that they would all obey. If they did not they would soon be starving. I explained to them that this vast city, of ten million inhabitants, had been fed by thousands of carloads of food which were brought in, every day, from the outside world. Now the cars had ceased to run, The mob had eaten up all the food in the shops, and tomorrow they would begin to feel the pangs of starvation. And I tried to make them understand what it meant for ten million people to be starving together.

""They became very quiet. One man cried out:

""'What would you have us do?'

""'You must establish a provisional government. You must select one man to whose orders you will all submit. Then you must appoint a board of counselors to assist him. Then the men among you who are engineers and conductors of trains of cars and of air-lines must reassume their old places; and they must go forth into the country and exchange the spoils you have gathered for cattle and flour and vegetables, and all other things necessary for life.'

""'He wants to make himself a king,' growled one ruffian.

""'Yes,' said another, 'and set us all at work again.'

""'He's a d----d aristocrat, anyhow,' cried a third.

""But there were some who had sense enough to see that I was right, and the mob at once divided into two clamorous factions. Words led to blows. A number were killed. Three wretches rushed at me. I shot one dead, and wounded another; the third gave me a flesh wound on the head with a sword; my hat broke the force of the blow, or it would have made an end of me. As he raised his weapon for a second stroke, I shot him dead. My friends forced me through the door of the palace, in front of which I had been standing; we double-locked it to keep out the surging wild beasts; I fled through the back door, and reached here.

""All hope is gone," he added sadly; "I can do nothing now but provide for our own safety."

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March 28, 2022 - March 28, 2022.

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XXXVIII. THE FLIGHT

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"The afternoon was comparatively quiet. The mobs on the street seemed to be looking for food rather than treasure. They were, however, generally resting, worn out; they were sleeping--preparing for the evening. With nightfall the saturnalia of death would begin again with redoubled force.

"We ate our dinner at six; and then Mr. Phillips suggested that we should all join in family prayers. We might never have another opportunity to do so, he said. He prayed long and earnestly to God to save the world and protect his dear ones; and we all joined fervently in his supplications to the throne of grace.

"At half past seven, equipped for the journey, we were all upon the roof, looking out in the direction of the west for the coming of the Demon. A little before eight we saw it rise through the twilight above the armory. Quincy, then, was true to his pledge. It came rapidly toward us, high in the air; it circled around, and at last began to descend just over our heads. It paused about ten feet above the roof, and two ladders were let down. The ladies and Mr. Phillips were first helped up to the deck of the vessel; and the men began to carry up the boxes, bales, trunks, money, books and instruments we had collected together.

"Just at this moment a greater burst of tumult reached my ears. I went to the parapet and looked down. Up the street, to the north, came a vast concourse of people. It stretched far back for many blocks. My first notion was that they were all drunk, their outcries were so vociferous. They shouted, yelled and screamed. Some of them bore torches, and at their head marched a ragged fellow with a long pole, which he carried upright before him. At the top of it was a black mass, which I could not make out in the twilight. At this instant they caught sight of the Demon, and the uproar redoubled; they danced like madmen, and I could hear Max's name shouted from a hundred lips.

""What does it mean?" I asked him.

""It means that they are after me. Hurry up, men," he continued, "hurry up."

"We all sprang to work; the women stood at the top and received the smaller articles as a line of men passed them up. Then came a thunderous voice from below:

""Open the door, or we will break it down."

"Max replied by casting a bomb over the parapet. It exploded, killing half a dozen men. But this mob was not to be intimidated like the thieves. The bullets began to fly; fortunately the gathering darkness protected us. The crowd grew blacker, and more dense and turbulent. Then a number of stalwart fellows appeared, bearing a long beam, which they proposed to use as a battering-ram, to burst open the door, which had resisted all previous attacks."

"The crowd yelled and the fire roared. The next house was blazing now, and the roof of the one nearest us was smoking. The mob, perceiving that we did not move, concluded that the machinery of the air-ship was broken, and screamed with joy as the flames approached us.

"Up, up, went bundle and package and box; faster, and faster, and faster. We were not to be intimidated by fire or mobs! The roof of the house next us was now blazing, and we could hear the fire, like a furnace, roaring within it.

"The work is finished; every parcel is safe.

""Up, up, men!"

"Max and I were the last to leave the roof; it had become insufferably hot. We stood on the deck; the engineer touched the lever of the electric engine; the great bird swayed for an instant, and then began to rise, like a veritable Phoenix from its nest of flame, surrounded by cataracts of sparks. As the mob saw us ascend, veiled dimly, at first, by that screen of conflagration, they groaned with dismay and disappointment. The bullets flew and hissed around us, but our metallic sides laughed them to scorn. Up, up, straight and swift as an arrow we rose. The mighty city lay unrolled below us, like a great map, starred here and there with burning houses. Above the trees of Union Square, my glass showed me a white line, lighted by the bon-fires, where Cæsar's Column was towering to the skies, bearing the epitaph of the world."

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March 28, 2022 - March 28, 2022.

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XXXIX. EUROPE

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"Max told me that we had had a narrow escape. Of the three messengers we had sent forth to General Quincy, but one reached him; the others had been slain on the streets. And when the solitary man fought his way through to the armory he found the Mamelukes of the Air full of preparations for a flight that night to the mountain regions of South America. Had we delayed our departure for another day, or had all three of our messengers been killed by the marauders, we must all have perished in the midst of the flames of the burning building. We joined Mr. Phillips, therefore, with unwonted heartiness in the morning prayers.

"The next day we came in sight of the shores of Europe. As we drew near, we passed over multitudes of open boats, river steamers and ships of all kinds, crowded with people. Many of these vessels were unfitted for a sea voyage, but the horrors they fled from were greater than those the great deep could conjure up. Their occupants shouted to us, through speaking-trumpets, to turn back; that all Europe was in ruins. And we, in reply, warned them of the condition of things in America, and advised them to seek out uncivilized lands, where no men dwelt but barbarians.

"As we neared the shore we could see that the beaches, wharves and tongues of sand were everywhere black with people, who struggled like madmen to secure the few boats or ships that remained. With such weapons as they had hurriedly collected they fought back the better-armed masses of wild and desperate men who hung upon their skirts, plying the dreadful trade of murder. Some of the agonized multitude shrieked to us for help. Our hearts bled for them, but we could do nothing. Their despairing hands were held up to us in supplication as the air-ship darted over them."

"We turned southward over the trampled gardens and vineyards of France. A great volcanic lava field of flame and ashes--burning, smoking--many miles in extent--showed where Paris had been. Around it ragged creatures were prowling, looking for something to eat, digging up roots in the fields. At one place, in the open country, I observed, ahead of us, a tall and solitary tree in a field; near it were the smouldering ruins of a great house. I saw something white moving in the midst of the foliage, near the top of the tree. I turned my glass upon it. It was a woman, holding something in her arms.

""Can we not take her up?" I asked the captain of the airship.

""We cannot stop the vessel in that distance--but we might return to it," he replied.

""Then do so, for God's sake," I said.

"We swooped downward. We passed near the tree. The woman screamed to us to stop, and held up an infant. Christina and Estella and all the other women wept. We passed the tree--the despairing cries of the woman were dreadful to listen to. But she takes courage; sees us sweep about; we come slowly back; we stop; a rope ladder falls; I descend; I grasp the child's clothes between my teeth; I help the woman up the ladder. She falls upon the deck of the ship, and cries out in French: "Spare my child!" Dreadful period! when every human being is looked upon as a murderer. The women comfort her. Her clothes are in rags, but upon her fingers are costly jewels. Her babe is restored to her arms; she faints with hunger and exhaustion. For three days, she tells us, she has been hidden in that tree, without food or drink; and has seen all dear to her perish--all but her little François. And with what delight Estella and Christina and the rest cuddle and feed the pretty, chubby, hungry little stranger!"

"But, after a time, we catch sight of the blue and laughing waters of the Mediterranean, with its pleasant, bosky islands. This is gone, and in a little while the yellow sands of the great desert stretch beneath us, and extend ahead of us, far as the eye can reach. We pass a toiling caravan, with its awkward, shuffling, patient camels, and its dark attendants. They have heard nothing, in these solitudes, of the convulsions that rend the world. ... They live and die as their ancestors did, ten thousand years ago--unchangeable as the stars above their heads; and these are even as they shone clear and bright when the Chaldean shepherds first studied the outlines of the constellations, and marked the pathways of the wandering planets.

"Before us, at last, rise great blue masses, towering high in air, like clouds, and extending from east to west; and these, in a little while, as we rush on, resolve themselves into a mighty mountain range, snow-capped, with the yellow desert at its feet, stretching out like a Persian rug.

"I direct the pilot, and in another hour the great ship begins to abate its pace; it sweeps in great circles. I see the sheep flying terrified by our shadow; then the large, roomy, white-walled house, with its broad verandas, comes into view; and before it, looking up at us in surprise, are my dear mother and brothers, and our servants.

"The ship settles down from its long voyage. We are at home. We are at peace."

Was the author geographically challenged, or expected his readers, his own country to not care? He's described Atlas mountains, and claimed residence in Uganda. That's like Rockies and Georgia.

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March 28, 2022 - March 28, 2022.

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XL. THE GARDEN IN THE MOUNTAINS

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"As soon as I had explained to my family the causes of our return--for which they were in part prepared by my letters to Heinrich--and had made them acquainted with my wife and friends, I summoned a meeting of the inhabitants of our colony--there are about five thousand of them, men, women and children.

"They all came, bringing baskets of provisions with them, as to a picnic. We met in an ancient grove upon a hillside. I spoke to them and told them the dreadful tale of the destruction of the world. I need not say that they were inexpressibly shocked by the awful narrative. Many of them wept bitterly, and some even cried out aloud--for they had left behind them, in Switzerland, many dear friends and relatives. I comforted them as best I could, by reminding them that the Helvetian Republic had survived a great many dynasties and revolutions; that they were not given to the luxuries and excesses that had wrecked the world, but were a primitive people, among whom labor had always remained honorable. Moreover, they were a warlike race, and their mountains were their fortifications; and they would, therefore, probably, be able to defend themselves against the invasion of the hungry and starving hordes who would range and ravage the earth.

"The first question for us, I said, was to ascertain how to best protect ourselves from like dangers. We then proceeded to discuss the physical conformation of our country. It is a vast table-land, situated at a great height far above the tropical and miasmatic plains, and surrounded by mountains still higher, in which dwell the remnants of that curious white race first described by Stanley. The only access to our region from the lower country is by means of the ordinary wagon road which winds upward through a vast defile or gorge in the mountains. At one point the precipitous walls of this gorge approach so closely together that there is room for only two wagons to pass abreast. We determined to assemble all our men the next day at this place, and build up a high wall that would completely cut off communication with the external world, making the wall so thick and strong that it would be impossible for any force that was likely to come against us to batter it down.

"This was successfully accomplished; and a smooth, straight wall, thirty feet high and about fifty broad at its widest point, now rises up between our colony and the external world. It was a melancholy reflection that we--human beings--were thus compelled to exclude our fellow-men."

"We decreed, secondly, a republican form of government. Every adult man and woman of sound mind is permitted to vote. We adopted a system of voting that we believed would insure perfect secrecy and prevent bribery--something like that which had already been in vogue, in some countries, before the revolution of the Proletariat."

"We decreed, next, universal and compulsory education. No one can vote who cannot read and write. We believe that one man's ignorance should not countervail the just influence of another man's intelligence. Ignorance is not only ruinous to the individual, but destructive to society. It is an epidemic which scatters death everywhere.

"We abolish all private schools, except the higher institutions and colleges. We believe it to be essential to the peace and safety of the commonwealth that the children of all the people, rich and poor, should, during the period of growth, associate together. In this way, race, sectarian and caste prejudices are obliterated, and the whole community grow up together as brethren. Otherwise, in a generation or two, we shall have the people split up into hostile factions, fenced in by doctrinal bigotries, suspicious of one another, and antagonizing one another in politics, business and everything else."

"The state owns all roads, streets, telegraph or telephone lines, railroads and mines, and takes exclusive control of the mails and express matter."

"The Demon returned yesterday from a trip to the outside world. Max's forebodings have been terribly realized. Three-fourths of the human race, in the civilized lands, have been swept away. In France and Italy and Russia the slaughter has been most appalling. In many places the Demon sailed for hundreds of miles without seeing a human being. The wild beasts--wolves and bears--are reassuming possession of the country. In Scandinavia and in northern America, where the severity of the climate somewhat mitigated the ferocity of man, some sort of government is springing up again; and the peasants have formed themselves into troops to defend their cattle and their homes against the marauders.

"But civility, culture, seem to have disappeared. There are no newspapers, no books, no schools, no teachers. The next generation will be simply barbarians, possessing only a few dim legends of the refinement and wonderful powers of their ancestors. Fortunate it is indeed, that here, in these mountains, we have preserved all the instrumentalities with which to restore, when the world is ready to receive it, the civilization of the former ages."

" ... Not far from here has arisen the beautiful village of Lincoln. It is a joy to, visit it, as I do very often.

"The wide streets are planted with trees; not shade trees, but fruit trees, the abundance of which is free to all. Around each modest house there is a garden, blooming with flowers and growing food for the household. ... "

" ... And the wolves have disappeared; and our little world is a garden of peace and beauty, musical with laughter."

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March 28, 2022 - March 28, 2022.

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Kindle Edition, 284 pages

Published (first published January 1891

ASIN: B000JQUAPA

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March 24, 2022 - March 28, 2022.

M.D. Chicago, F.J. Shulte & Co. [1890]

First published January 1, 1891

Original Title

Caesar's Column: A Story of the Twentieth Century

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B000JQUAPA

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Kindle Edition

Published October 4th 2009

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Public Domain Books (1 February 2004)

Language ‏ : ‎ English

ASIN B002RKT3OK

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4628938404

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Reviews - Books I Read - DRJG

Monday, March 28, 2022

CÆSAR'S COLUMN: A Story of the Twentieth Century, BY IGNATIUS DONNELLY.

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