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I read in another book an account of the same transaction. They tell us
the Supreme Brahma made up his mind to make a man, a woman, and a world;
and that he put this man and woman in the island of Ceylon. According
to the description, it was the most beautiful isle that ever existed;
it beggared the description of a Chicago land agent completely. It was
delightful; the branches of the trees were so arranged that when the
wind swept through them they seemed like a thousand aeolian harps, and
the man was named Adami, and the Woman's name was Heva. This book was
written about three or four thousand years before the other one, and all
the commentators in this country agree that the story that was written
first was copied from the one that was written last. I hope you will
not let a matter of three or four thousand years interfere with your
ideas on the subject. The Supreme Brahma said: "Let them have a period
of courtship, because it is my desire that true love always should
precede marriage"--and that was so much better than lugging her up to
him and saying, "Do you like her?" that upon my word I said when I read
it, "If either one of these stories turn out to be true, I hope it will
be this one."

They had a courtship in the starlight and moonlight, and perfume-laden
air, with the nightingale singing his song of joy, and they got in love.
There was nobody to bother them, no prospective fathers or mothers-in-
law, no gossiping neighbors, nobody to say "Young man, how do you
propose to support her"--they got in love and they were married, and
they started keeping house, and the Supreme Brahma said to them: "You
must not leave this island." After awhile the man got uneasy--wanted to
go west. He went to the western extremity of the island, and there the
devil got up, and when he looked over on the mainland he saw such hills
and valleys and torrents, and such mountains crowned with snow; such
cataracts, robed in glory, that he went right back to Heva. Says he:
"Come over here; it is a thousand times better;" says he: "let us
emigrate." She said, like another woman: "No, let well enough alone;
we have no rent to pay, and no taxes; we are doing very well now, let
us stay where we are." But he insisted, and so she went with him, and
when he got to this western extremity, where there was a little neck of
land leading to this better land, he took her on his back and walked
over, and the moment he got over he heard a crash, and he looked back
and this narrow neck of land had sunk into the sea, leaving here and
there a rock (and those rocks are called even unto this day the
footsteps of Adami), and when he looked back this beautiful mirage had
disappeared.

Instead of verdure and flowers there was naught but rocks and sand, and
then he heard the voice of the Supreme Brahma crying out cursing them
both to the lowest hell, and then it was that Adami said: "Curse me, if
you choose, but not her; it was not her fault, it was mine; curse me."
That is the kind of a man to start a world with. And the Supreme Brahma
said "I will spare her, but I will not spare you." Then she spoke, out
of a breast so full of affection that she has left a legacy of love to
all her daughters: "If thou wilt not spare him, spare neither me,
because I love him." Then the Supreme Brahma said--and I have liked him
ever since--"I will spare both, and watch over you and your children
forever." Now, really this story appears to me better than the other
one. It is loftier; there is more in it than I can admire. In order
to show you that humanity does not belong to any particular nation, and
that there are great and tender souls everywhere, let me tell you a
little more that is in this book. "Blessed is that man, and beloved of
all the gods who is afraid of no man, and of whom no man is afraid."
Think of that kind of character! Another: "Man is strength, woman is
beauty; man is courage, woman is love; and where the one man loves the
one woman the very angels leave heaven and come and sit in that house
and sing for joy." I think that is nearly equal to this: "If you do
not want your wife, give her a writing of divorcement," and make the
mother of your children a houseless wanderer and a vagrant--nearly as
good as that.

I believe that marriage should be a perfect partnership; that woman
should have all the rights that man has, and one more--the right to be
protected. I believe in marriage. It took hundreds and thousands of
years for woman to get from a state of abject slavery up to the height
even of marriage. I have not the slightest respect for the ideas of
those short-haired women and long-haired men who denounce the
institution of the family, who denounce the institution of marriage;
but I hold in greater contempt the husband who would enslave his wife.
I hold in greater contempt the man who is anything in his family except
love and tenderness, and kindness. I say it took hundreds of years
for woman to come from a state of slavery to marriage; and ladies, the
chains that are upon your necks and the bracelets that are put upon your
arms were iron, and they have been changed by the touch of the wand of
civilization to shining, glittering gold. Woman came from a condition
of abject slavery and thousands and thousands of them are in that
condition now. I believe marriage should be a perfect and equal
partnership. I do not like a man who thinks he is boss. That fellow in
the dug-out was always talking about being boss. I do not like a man
who thinks he is the head of the family. I do not like a man who thinks
he has got authority and that the woman belongs to him--that wants for
his wife a slave. I would not have a slave for my wife. I would not
want the love of a woman that is not great enough, grand enough, and
splendid enough to be free. I will never give to any woman my heart
upon whom I afterwards would put chains.

Do you know sometimes I think generosity is about the only virtue there
is. How I do hate a man that has to be begged and importuned every
minute for a few cents by his wife. "Give me a dollar?" "What did you
do with that fifty cents I gave you last Christmas?" If you make your
wife a perpetual beggar, what kind of children do you expect to raise
with a beggar for their mother? If you want great children, if you want
to people this world with great and grand men and women they must be
born of love and liberty. I have known men that would trust a woman
with their heart--if you call that thing which pushes their blood around
a heart; and with their honor--if you call that fear, of getting into
the penitentiary, honor; I have known men that would trust that heart
and that honor with a woman, but not their pocket-book--not a dollar
bill. When I see a man of that kind, I think they know better than I do
which of these three articles is the most valuable. I believe if you
have got a dollar in the world and you have got to spend it, spend it
like a man; spend it like a king, like a prince. If you have to spend
it, spend it as though it was a dried leaf, and you were the owner of
unbounded forests. I had rather be a beggar and spend my last dollar
like a king than be a king and spend my money like a beggar. What is it
worth compared with the love of a splendid woman?

People tell me that is very good doctrine for rich folks, but it won't
do for poor folks. I tell you that there is more love in the huts and
homes of the poor, than in the mansions of the rich, and the meanest but
with love in it is a palace fit for the gods, and a palace without that,
is a den only fit for wild beasts. The man who has the love of one
splendid woman is a rich man. Joy is wealth, and love is the legal
tender of the soul! Love is the only thing that will pay ten percent to
borrower and lender both; and if some men were as ashamed of appearing
cross in public as they are of appearing tender at home, this world
would be infinitely better. I think you can make your home a heaven if
you want to--you can make up your minds to that. When a man comes home
let him come home like a ray of light in the night bursting through the
doors and illuminating the darkness. What right has a man to
assassinate joy, and murder happiness in the sanctuary of love--to be a
cross man, a peevish man--is that the way he courted? Was there always
something ailing him? Was he too nervous to hear her speak? When I see
a man of that kind I am always sorry that doctors know so much about
preserving life as they do.

It is not necessary to be rich, nor powerful, nor great to be a success;
and neither is it necessary to have your name between the putrid lips of
rumor to be great. We have had a false standard of success. In the
years when I was a little boy we read in our books that no fellow was a
success that did not make a fortune or get a big office, and he
generally was a man that slept about three hours a night. They never
put down in the books the names of those gentlemen that succeeded in
life that slept all they wanted to; and we all thought that we could
not sleep to exceed three or four hours if we ever expected to be
anything in this world. We have had a wrong standard. The happy man is
the successful man; and the man who makes somebody else happy, is a
happy man. The man that has gained the love of one good, splendid, pure
woman, his life has been a success, no matter if he dies in the ditch;
and if he gets to be a crowned monarch of the world, and never had the
love of one splendid heart, his life has been an ashen vapor.

A little while ago I stood by the tomb of the first Napoleon, a
magnificent tomb of gilt and gold, fit almost for a dead deity, and here
was a great circle, and in the bottom there, in a sarcophagus, rested at
last the ashes of that restless man. I looked at that tomb, and I
thought about the career of the greatest soldier of the modern world.
As I looked, in imagination I could see him walking up and down the
banks of the Seine contemplating suicide. I could see him at Toulon; I
could see him at Paris, putting down the mob; I could see him at the
head of the army of Italy; I could see him crossing the bridge of Lodi,
with the tri-color in his hand; I saw him in Egypt, fighting battles
under the shadow of the Pyramids; I saw him returning; I saw him
conquer the Alps, and mingle the eagles of France with the eagles of
Italy; I saw him at Marengo, I saw him at Austerlitz; I saw him in
Russia, where the infantry of the snow and the blast smote his legions,
when death rode the icy winds of winter. I saw him at Leipsic; hurled
back upon Paris, banished; and I saw him escape from Elba and retake an
empire by the force of his genius. I saw him at the field of Waterloo,
where fate and chance combined to wreck the fortune of their former
king. I saw him at St. Helena, with his hands behind his back, gazing
out upon the sad and solemn sea, and I thought of all the widows he had
made, of all the orphans, of all the tears that had been shed for his
glory; and I thought of the woman, the only woman who ever loved him,
pushed from his heart by the cold hand of ambition and I said to myself,
as I gazed, "I would rather have been a French peasant and worn wooden
shoes, and lived in a little hut but with a vine running over the door
and the purple grapes growing red in the amorous kisses of the autumn
sun--I would rather have been that poor French peasant, to sit in my
door, with my wife knitting by my side and my children upon my knees
with their arms around my neck--I would rather have lived and died
unnoticed and unknown except by those who loved me, and gone down to the
voiceless silence of the dreamless dust--I would rather have been that
French peasant than to have been that imperial impersonation of force
and murder who covered Europe with blood and tears."

I tell you I had rather make somebody happy, I would rather have the
love of somebody; I would rather go to the forest, far away, and build
me a little cabin--build it myself and daub it with mud, and live there
with my wife and children; I had rather go there and live by myself--
our little family--and have a little path that led down to the spring,
where the water bubbled out day and night like a little poem from the
heart of the earth; a little hut with some hollyhocks at the corner,
with their bannered bosoms open to the sun, and with the thrush in the
air, like a song of joy in the morning; I would rather live there and
have some lattice work across the window, so that the sunlight would
fall checkered on the baby in the cradle; I would rather live there and
have my soul erect and free, than to live in a palace of gold and wear
the crown of imperial power and know that my soul was slimy with
hypocrisy. It is not necessary to be rich and great and powerful in
order to be happy. If you will treat your wife like a splendid flower,
she will fill your life with a perfume and with joy.

I believe in the democracy of the fireside, I believe in the republicism
of home, in the equality of man and woman, in the equality of husband
and wife, and for this I am denounced by the sentinels upon the walls of
Zion.

They say there must be a head to the family. I say no--equal rights for
man and wife, and where there is really love there is liberty, and where
the idea of authority comes in you will find that love has spread its
pinions and flown forever. It is a splendid thing for me to think that
when a woman really loves a man he never grows old in her eyes; she
always sees the gallant gentleman that won her hand and heart; and when
a man really and truly loves a woman she does not grow old to him;
through the wrinkles of years he sees the face he loved and won. That
is all there is in this world--all the rest amounts to nothing--it is a
tale told by an idiot signifying nothing. You take from the family
love, and nothing is left. There must be equality; there must be no
master; there must be no servant. There must be equality and kindness.
The man should be infinitely tender towards the woman--and why?--because
she cannot go at hard work, she cannot make her own living. She has
squandered her wealth of beauty and youth upon him.

Now, if women have been slaves, what do you say about children? Children
have been the slaves of the slaves. I know children that turn pale with
fright when they hear their mother's voice; children of property;
children of crime, children of sub-cellars; children of the narrow
streets, the flotsam and jetsam upon the wild, rude sea of life--my
heart goes out to them one and all; I say they have all the rights we
have and one more--the right to be protected. I believe in governing
children by kindness, by love, by tenderness. If a child commits a
fault take it in your arms, let your heart beat against its heart; don't
go and talk to it about hell and the bankruptcy of the universe. If
your child tells a lie--what of it? Be honest with the child, tell him
you have told hundreds of them yourself. Then your child will not be
afraid to tell you when it commits a fault; it will not regard you as
old perfection, until it gets a few years older, and finds you are an
old hypocrite--and you cannot put a thick enough veil upon you but what
the eyes of childhood will peep through it; they will see; they will
find out; and when your child tells a lie, examine yourself, and in all
probability you will find you have been a tyrant. A tyrant father will
have liars for his children. A liar is born of tyranny on the one hand
and fear on the other. Truth comes from the lips of courage. It is
born in confidence and honor. If you want a child to tell you the truth
you want to be a faithful man yourself. You go at your little child,
five or six years old, with a stick in your hand--what is he to do?
Tell the truth? Then he will get whipped. What is he to do? I thank
Mother Nature for putting ingenuity in the mind of a little child so
that when it is attacked by a brutal parent it throws up a little
breastwork in the shape of a lie. That being done by nations it is
called strategy, and many a general wears his honors for having
practiced it; and will you deny it to little children to protect
themselves from brutal parents. Supposing a man as much larger than we
are, larger than child would come at us with a liberty-pole in his hand
and would shout in tones of thunder, "Who broke that plate?" Every one
of us--including myself--would just stand right up and swear either that
we never saw that plate, or that it was cracked when we got it. Give a
child a chance; there is no other way to have children tell the truth--
tell the truth to them--keep your contracts with your children the same
as you would to your banker.

I was up at Grand Rapids, Michigan, the other day. There was a
gentleman there, and his wife, who had promised to take their little boy
for a ride every night for ten days, or every day for ten days, but they
did not do it. They slipped out to the barn and they went without him.
The day before I was there they played the same game on him again. He
is a nice little boy, an American boy, a boy with brains, one of those
boys that don't take the hatchet-story as a fact; he had his own ideas.
They fooled him again, and they came around the corner as big as life,
man and wife. The little fellow was standing on the door step with his
nurse, and he looked at them, and he made this remark: "There go the two
damndest liars in Grand Rapids." I merely tell you this story to show
you that children have level heads; they understand this business.

Teach your children to tell you the truth--tell them the truth. If there
is one here that ever intends to whip his child I have a favor to ask.
Have your photograph taken when you are in the act, with your red and
vulgar face, your brow corrugated, pretending you would rather be
whipped yourself. Have the child's photograph taken too, with his eyes
streaming with tears, and his chin dimpled with fear, as a little sheet
of water struck by a sudden cold wind; and if your child should die I
cannot think of a sweeter way to spend an afternoon than to go to the
graveyard in the autumn, when the maples are clad in pink and gold, when
the little scarlet runners come like poems out of the breast of the
earth--go there and sit down and look at that photograph and think of
the flesh, now dust, and how you caned it to writhe in pain and agony.

I will tell you what I am doing; I am doing what little I can to save
the flesh of children. You have no right to whip them. It is not the
way; and yet some Christians drive their children from their doors if
they do wrong, especially if it is a sweet, tender girl--I believe there
is no instance on record of any veal being given for the return of a
girl--some Christians drive them from their doors and then go down upon
their knees and ask God to take care of their children! I will never
ask God to take care of my children unless I am doing my level best in
that same direction. Some Christians act as though they thought when
the Lord said, "Suffer little children to come unto me" that he had a
raw-hide under His mantle--they act as if they thought so. That is all
wrong. I tell yon my children this: Go where you may, commit what
crime you may, fall to what depths of degradation you may, I can never
shut my arms, my heart or my door to you. As long as I live you shall
have one sincere friend; do not be afraid to tell anything wrong you
have done; ten to one if I have not done the same thing. I am not
perfection, and if it is necessary to sin in order to have sympathy, I
am glad I have committed sin enough to have sympathy. The sternness of
perfection I do not want. I am going to live so that my children can
come to my grave and truthfully say, "He who sleeps here never gave us
one moment of pain." Whether you call that religion or infidelity, suit
yourselves; that is the way I intend to do it.

When I was a little fellow most everybody thought that some days were
too sacred for the young ones to enjoy themselves in. That was the
general idea. Sunday used to commence Saturday night at sundown, under
the old text, "The evening and the morning were the first day." They
commenced then, I think, to get a good ready. When the sun went down
Saturday night, darkness ten thousand times deeper than ordinary night
fell upon the house. The boy that looked the sickest was regarded as the
most pious. You could not crack hickory nuts that night, and if you were
caught chewing gum it was another evidence of the total depravity of the
human heart. It was a very solemn evening. We would sometimes sing
"Another Day has Passed." Everybody looked as though they had the
dyspepsia--you know lots of people think they are pious, just because
they are bilious, as Mr. Hood says. It was a solemn night, and the next
morning the solemnity had increased. Then we went to church, and the
minister was in a pulpit about twenty feet high. If it was in the
winter there was no fire; it was not thought proper to be comfortable
while you were thanking the Lord. The minister commenced at firstly and
ran up to about twenty-fourthly, and then he divided it up again; and
then he made some concluding remarks, and then he said lastly, and when
he said lastly he was about half through. Then we had what we called
the catechism--the chief end of man. I think that has a tendency to
make a boy kind of bubble up cheerfully.

We sat along on a bench with our feet about eight inches from the floor.
The minister said, "Boys, do you know what becomes of the wicked?" We
all answered as cheerfully as grasshoppers sing in Minnesota, "Yes,
sir." "Do you know, boys, that you all ought to go to hell?" "Yes,
sir." As a final test: "Boys, would you be willing to go to hell if it
was God's will?" And every little liar said, "Yes, sir." The dear old
minister used to try to impress upon our minds about how long we would
stay there after we got there, and he used to say in an awful tone of
voice--do you know I think that is what gives them the bronchitis--that
tone--you never heard of an auctioneer having it--"Suppose that once in
a billion of years a bird were to come from some far, distant clime and
carry off in its bill a grain of sand, when the time came when the last
animal matter of which this mundane sphere is composed would be carried
away," said he, "boys, by that time in hell it would not be sun up." We
had this sermon in the morning and the same one in the afternoon, only
he commenced at the other end. Then we started home full of doctrine--
we went sadly and sole solemnly back. If it was in the summer and the
weather was good and we had been good boys, they used to take us down to
the graveyard, and to cheer us up we had a little conversation about
coffins, and shrouds, and worms, and bones, and dust, and I must admit
that it did cheer me up when I looked at those sunken graves those
stones, those names half effaced with the decay of years. I felt
cheered, for I said, "This thing can't last always." Then we had to
read a good deal. We were not allowed to read joke books or anything of
that kind. We read Baxter's "Call to the Unconverted;" Fox's "Book of
Martyrs;" Milton's "History of the Waldenses," and "Jenkins on the
Atonement." I generally read Jenkins; and I have often thought that
the atonement ought to be pretty broad in its provisions to cover the
case of a man that would write a book like that for a boy.

Then we used to go and see how the sun was getting on--when the sun was
down the thing was over. I would sit three or four hours reading
Jenkins, and then go out and the sun would not have gone down
perceptibly. I used to think it stuck there out of simple, pure
cussedness. But it went down at last, it had to; that was a part of
the plan, and as the last rim of light would sink below the horizon, off
would go our hats and we would give three cheers for liberty once again.
I do not believe in making Sunday hateful for children. I believe in
allowing them to be happy, and no day can be so sacred but that the
laugh of a child will make it holier still. There is no God in the
heavens that is pleased at the sadness of childhood. You cannot make me
believe that. You fill their poor, little, sweet hearts with the
fearful doctrine of hell. A little child goes out into the garden;
there is a tree covered with a glory of blossoms and the child leans
against it, and there is a little bird on the bough singing and
swinging, and the waves of melody run out of its tiny throat, thinking
about four little speckled eggs in the nest, warmed by the breast of its
mate, and the air is filled with perfume, and that little child leans
against that tree and thinks about hell and the worm that never dies;
think of filling the mind of a child with that infamous dogma!

Where was that doctrine of hell born? Where did it come from? It came
from that gentleman in the dug-out; it was a souvenir from the lower
animal. I honestly believe that the doctrine of hell was born in the
glittering eyes of snakes that run in frightful coils watching for their
prey. I believe it was born in the yelping and howling and growling and
snarling of wild beasts, I believe it was born in the grin of hyenas and
in the malicious chatter of depraved apes, I despise it, I defy it and
hate it; and when the great ship freighted with the world goes down in
the night of death, chaos and disaster, I will not be guilty of the
ineffable meanness of pushing from my breast my wife and children and
padding off in some orthodox canoe. I will go down with those I love
and with those who love me. I will go down with the ship and with my
race. I will go where there is sympathy. I will go with those I love.
Nothing can make me believe that there is any being that is going to
burn and torment and damn his children forever. No, sir! You will
never make me believe you can divide the world up into saints and
sinners, and that the saints are all going to heaven and the others to
hell. I don't believe that you can draw the line.

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