There is a story of an old hero who with his
companions fell among beautiful women and luscious wine, and, but
that the hero had been warned in time, they would all have been
turned into filthy animals by yielding to the allurements around
them. The temptation here is perhaps the same. I am not a hero;
and, though I too have been warned by the lessons I have learned
under our happy Constitution, I feel that I might easily become one
of the animals in question.
And, to give them their due, it is better than merely beautiful
women and luscious wine. There is a reality about them, and a
desire to live up to their principles which is very grand. Their
principles are no doubt bad, utterly antagonistic to all progress,
unconscious altogether of the demand for progressive equality which
is made by the united voices of suffering mankind. The man who is
born a lord and who sees a dozen serfs around him who have been
born to be half-starved ploughmen, thinks that God arranged it all
and that he is bound to maintain a state of things so comfortable
to himself, as being God's vicegerent here on earth. But they do
their work as vicegerents with an easy grace, and with sweet
pleasant voices and soft movements, which almost make a roan doubt
whether the Almighty has not in truth intended that such injustice
should be permanent.
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