Part 20 (2/2)

That swaghly important, at all events, to himself

He had been born; he lived; he would probably die--and if any huher record than that, he ed by the standard which I, for one, dare not disoas certainly as high as that of the average monarch or multi-millionaire But was I as es been approaching my camp in state? And if not, why not?

I ihty German encies such as this Then laying the pipe, so to speak, on the scent of the swag his past history, and essayed a forecast of his future destiny, in order to get at the valuation presu now ently seduced ions of the Larger Morality This is its hobby--caught, probably, from some society of Gere-battery, or accumulator, of such truths as ministers of the Gospel cannot afford to preach

Ah! (moralised the pipe) the man who spends his life in actual hardshi+p seldoenerally, by heredity or by the dispensation of Providence, an ornaenuine if ungraarbled form Little wonder, then, that such a plea is received with felicitous self-gratulation, or passed with pharisaical disregard, by the silly old world that has still so many lessons to learn-- sobutt of slender-witted jokers can fitly teach, and which he, the experienced one, is usually precluded fro by his inability to spell any word of two syllables

Yet he has thoughts that glow, and words that burn, albeit with such sulphurous fumes that, when uttered in a public place, they frequently render him liable to fourteen days without the option

And even though he be not a poor rogue hereditary; even though he uously scorned of devils; even though his descent into Avernus be, like that of Ulysses or Dante, te the upper air, to be the prophet, spokesman, and champion of the Order whose bitter johnny-cake he has eaten You must n't be surprised to find hi details which he

A sort of Irish pride will probably lead hih unavailable, resources during the period of his perdition

For one or the other of these reasons--orthographical inability, or Irish pride--the half is never told; therefore, as a rule, the reading public is acquainted only with sketchy and fallacious pictures of that continuous, indurating hardshi+p which finally sends reluctant Hope after her co-tenants of the box

And further, of this, my son, be admonished (continued the pipe): The more bitter the hardshi+p, the nominy lavished by the elect upon the sufferer--always provided the latter is one of the non-elect, and man

Yet this futureless person is the man who pioneers all industries; who discovers and unearths the precious ores; whose heavy footprints a, the wind-swept plains, and the scorching sand; who leaves intaglio iround, at every camp from the Murray to the Gulf; and whose only satisfaction in the cold which curls hi him nearly break his back in the effort to hold his shoulders together--is the certainty that in six months he will scrape away the hot surface sand, in order to sleep comfortably on the more temperate stratum beneath; he is theinvective, h-cloak of hie for the noblest work of God, namely, the Business Man

The successful pioneer is the otten pioneer is thea fool, built houses for wise ather moss

The former is the early bird; the latter is the early worm Like Rosalind's typical traveller, this worm has rich eyes and poor hands--the former often ophthalenerally dirty

Life is too short to admit of repeated blunders in the nu his one weak point, the dram of ale does its work And so, neither as pharisee nor publican, but rather as the pharisee's shocking exa bee, he toils and swears his hour upon the stage, and then , and the thriftless be at rest Little recks he then for lack of storied urn or animated bust, little that for his of the past, and there never was anything of the swell about him

Heaven help him! that nameless flotsam of humanity! (mused the pipe)

Few and feeble are his friends on earth; and the One who, like him, earied with his journey, and, like hi to His own parable, into a far country The swagman we have alith us--And comfortable ecclesiasticis the corave truth, that the Light of the world, the God-in-Man, the only God we can ever know, is by His own authority represented for all tinise in the e of Him as despised and rejected of hted down by fraternal neglect and oppression till a huher aspiration than that which prompts a persecuted animal to preserve its life for further persecution--such a person, I say, can have no place aeless Babel-contract

This special study of hardshi+p (resueneric study of poverty; for, as the greater includes the less, poverty includes hardshi+p, along with disfranchisement, social outlawry, proud man's contumely, and so forth; entirely without reference to the moral worth of the person most concerned In a word, poverty is, in the eyes of the orthodox Christian, a hell in the hand, better worth avoiding than two hells in the book, which latter reat institution of poverty (rue, loose way There are two kinds--or rather, the condition exhibits two opposite extremes of moral quality

There is a voluntary poverty, which is certainly the least base situation you can occupy whilst you crawl between heaven and earth, and which is not so rare as your sordid disposition ine

There is also a co down from discontented to contented And, paradoxical as itpole to voluntary poverty The discontented sub-variety is the perpetual troubler of the world, by reason of its ai the incidence of hardshi+p, and succeeding fairly well in its object Touching the contented sub-variety--well, possibly the Hindoo language lish falls entirely short

Compulsory-contented poverty is utterly, irredeenorantly blasphe God is to place His conceded ih-horse level, but because it teaches its babies, from the cradle upward, that a capricious Mu with a French name for its white-headed boy; moleskins, tied below the knee, for them, and a belltopper for the favourite of the family; the three R's for them, and the classics, ancient and modern, for the vessel chosen to honour; illicit snakejuice for theolden top for the other fellow

The adherents of this cult vote Conservative, work scab, and are rightly ter poor,” inasree of poverty, every ounce of indignity, and every inch of condescension they stagger under But their children don't deserve these things And just mark the sli poor” up to their work, pronounces upon thes obviously adherent only to that unquestionable guarantee of unselfish purpose, namely, voluntary poverty A subtle confusion of issues; but the person who hos of co to the undefileable at (continued the pipe) to Plato's beautiful thought, that no soul uided Hus in so els; in dispassionate survey of history's lurid record of distorted loyalty staining our old, sad earth with life-blood of opposing loyalty, while each side fights for an idea; in view of the zeal which fires the martyr-spirit to endure all that equal zeal can inflict; in conte enmity between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent, the Ormuzd and the Ahriman in man; in view even of that dis the best of both worlds,” and ”serving God and Mas, I cannot think it is anything worse than a locally-seated and curable ignorance which er to subvert a hunable as any norance is even st those educated asses who can read Kikero in the original than ast uneducated asses who know not the law, and are cursed

Remember (pursued the pipe, with a touch of severity) that Science apprehends no decimal of a second adequate to note, on the limitless circle of Tiiddiest pitch of human effrontery dares not carry beyond the incident of death any vestige of a social code now accepted as good enough to initiate a developh changing cycles till some transcendent purpose is fulfilled The ”love of equality”--that meanest and falsest of equivocations--sickens and dies, and the inflated lie of a social privilege based on extraneous conditions collapses, under the strict arrest of the fell sergeant, Death If we seek absolute truth-- which can never be out of place--surely we shall find it beyond the gates which falsehood cannot pass And here we find it conceded by all; for as s fade away, human vision clears, and truth becohed impartially the souls of Coptic lord and slave, before the pyraypt's plains; austere Minos meted even justice to citizen and helot, while the sculptured ideals of Attica slept in Pentelican quarries; Brah to deeds done in the body-- strictly according to deeds done in sorave to share aeons of sorrowful transh and low alike; Islae, which the righteous only cross in safety, while wicked caliph and wicked slave together reel into the abyss below The apotheosis of pagan heroes rested on personal h Calvinis the injustice of a civilisation which, of set purpose, excludes from the only redeuard whose besetting sin is poverty Yet John Knox's wildest travesty of eternal justice never rivalled in flagrancy theprinciple of a civilisation which exists merely to build on extrinsic bases an impracticable barrier between class and class: on one side, the redemption of life, education, refinement, leisure, comfort; on the other side, want, toil, anxiety, and an open path to the Gehenna of ignorance, baseness, and brutality Holy Willie's God, at least, heaps no beatitude on successful greed; and your Christian civilisation does so Dare you deny it?