I decline to
believe it, and you fall back upon your platform resource of
proclaiming that I believe nothing; that because I will not bow
down to a false God of your making, I deny the true God! Another
time you make the platform discovery that War is a calamity, and
you propose to abolish it by a string of twisted resolutions tossed
into the air like the tail of a kite. I do not admit the discovery
to be yours in the least, and I have not a grain of faith in your
remedy. Again, your platform resource of representing me as
revelling in the horrors of a battle-field like a fiend incarnate!
Another time, in another of your undiscriminating platform rushes,
you would punish the sober for the drunken. I claim consideration
for the comfort, convenience, and refreshment of the sober; and you
presently make platform proclamation that I have a depraved desire
to turn Heaven's creatures into swine and wild beasts! In all such
cases your movers, and your seconders, and your supporters - your
regular Professors of all degrees, run amuck like so many mad
Malays; habitually attributing the lowest and basest motives with
the utmost recklessness (let me call your attention to a recent
instance in yourself for which you should blush), and quoting
figures which you know to be as wilfully onesided as a statement of
any complicated account that should be all Creditor side and no
Debtor, or all Debtor side and no Creditor. Therefore it is, Mr.
Honeythunder, that I consider the platform a sufficiently bad
example and a sufficiently bad school, even in public life; but
hold that, carried into private life, it becomes an unendurable
nuisance.
Pages:
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259