The madonna of Pass Christian

Front matter

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Table Of Contents

CHAPTER. PAGE.

I. The Sirens’ Isle, - - - - - 7

II. Argonauts who did not all safely pass the Sirens’

Contents

CHAPTER.

PAGE.

XXVII.

Chapter I. The Sirehs^ Isle

“ She has a bosom as white as snow,

Take care !

She knows how much it is best to show,

Beware! Beware! ”

— Longfellow.

Across from Bay St. Louis, Miss., Feb. 1, 188 — . My Dear Meeks:

When one is a gambler, on an excursion from his New Orleans place of business by the Gulf Coast railroad to Biloxi — where, as the beer and music flow, he will hail and befriend simple countrymen with that trustfulness and welcoming frankness which betokens the Man of Confidence; or, not being a gambler, when one is a Wall street shepherd, shearer of lambs, whacker of bulls, and raiser of stock out of the reach of savage bears, and who, by political economy, has realized on a margin of his pastoral labors enough for a Mardi Gras trip to New Orleans; or, when one is a bank president, interested in railroads to Canada, and is now, in the cold winter, flying like the swallows to sunny Mexico, whence those who swallow will never homeward fly; or, when one of Gotham^s chosen

THE MADOHHA OF PASS CHRISTIAN.

people — the real and only Four Hundred, greatest of living wonders ever on exhibition — is on his Mobile way to the Comus ball of Shrove Tuesday, — such travelers will eventually reach a point on that coast railroad where a shrieking brakeman breaks open the car door, and, with a glance that is suspicious, forbidding and stern, yells:

""Pass Christian!”

When you quietly read this expression in the railroad guidOj you thought you knew what it meant. Your ingenious theory was that a small village, from its picturesque situation in some mountain pass, had become a fashionable resort. But you observe that there are no mountains, and, therefore, no pass, while the brakeman^s significant emphasis discovers the mysterious phrase to be a command to pass Christian, the Pilgrim, a tourist, who, in his Progress from the City of Destruction (alias, New Orleans), visited this Enchanted Ground, lay down to sleep in an arbor near a Palace Beautiful, and, being more tired than the Seven of Ephesus, still is sleeping.

""Do not wake him,” cries the brakeman. ""Move on, gamblers, swallows. Wall street breakers, and all the fashionable Four Hundred emissaries of Beelzebub; do not disturb our Christian, now so restful, calm and drowsy.”

But, perhaps, like the beasts that perish, when driven one way you are frantic to go the other. Instead of sighing, ‘"I pass,” you take up hand luggage, shake off the dust from your feet and depart from that car.

Your train stops at night — 10 o^clock. Underestimating in the dark the distance from the car step down to

THE sirens’ isle.

the depot platform, you stumble, dropping cane, umbrella, valise, band-box, shawl-strap, revolver, cordial and yourself — coming on the stage where the actress. Fashion, is the star performer, with an ungraceful and very low bow. Tempted to invoke maledictions which are not Christian upon the Pass which is termed so, you arise to hear a voice from the darkness pronounce you a Mexican Guff !”

Sure that no gentleman would rail thus at another’s misfortunes, you gather up valise and other personalty and turn away with your well-bred, quiet dignity. But a few strides further and the same strange taunt:

Mexican Guff ! ”

Shadows of the depot hide from your growing wrath your invisible foe. Naturally indignant at the groundless slander; arguing that, whether a Guff or not, at least you are no Mexican one, in the elasticity of innocence you carom off in a third direction. Whereupon a solitary individual, though not one of the other conspirators, yet charges you with being a Mexican Guff. Their surprising unanimity causes you to doubt your identity, until a clever thought strikes you and you ask your interlocutor what in Pass Christian he means?

^^De Mexican Guff Hotel, suh, is de only one heah, suh, and so we all runs fo’ it. Drive yo’ right up, suh?”

And you are swiftly borne away. The carriage rolls easily and noiselessly over the soft turf road. As the air is chilly on some of these winter nights, you enwrap yourn

THE MADONNA OF PASS CHRISTIAN.

self in your cloak. The dewy, soft, night-blue sky, like the mighty petals of a great blue violet, bends over you, with its pollen of golden star-dust. Its fragrance seems to breathe upon you, as your conveyance whirls diagonally across a pasture where the cows are lying, whisks around a corner and bowls smoothly along a dim avenue; stately trees, like soldiers, line and guard the way, and their black outlines silhouette the sky. Driving between them, you enter a shadowy perspective — a long dim vista of gardens, cottages, detached buildings, or formless, dusky masses, which are — you donT know what. The gentle Southern night softens all contours, blending structures with shrubbery, farm-houses with outlying groves, hazy cotton-fields and meadows glistening with dew. Far away, above distant foliage, the tall white ghost of a slender church spire rises, with ocean mists eddying around it like fluttering phantom garments.

Swiftly approaches the end of the road, its perspective terminating in a glimpse of moonlit water and a sound of the sea. From over bluffs ahead you catch the inspiring scent of the salt breeze, as the carriage stops at a side verandah of the Mexican Gulf Hotel. There bright lights, attentive servants, amiable hosts and cheerful, blazing hearth fires greet you.

Then there is somewhat else to welcome you, Meeks, which I announce for your especial benefit. Consider this marked Confidential,^^ ‘‘Strictly personal,"' “Sub rosa," and, as a greater than I used to say, “ Burn this."

Do you remember those mythical maidens who, on an

THE SIRENS^ ISLE.

ocean island, dwelt in a mead by its seashore, and whose enchanted songs tempted daring mariners to destruction? Charmed to their death by the sweet magic of voices which could ‘‘still even the winds,” forgetting home, country — all but the fatal, “ wondrous harmonies from the rocking branches of the willow trees,” — these rash men would abide in this “ blooming flowery mead,” ravished by its songstresses, until, naturally, they died the death. In time the yellow strand became whitened with the bones of musical enthusiasts — awful lesson, by the way, to those who, though sane, will yet listen to Valkyries and the Music of their infernal Future.

Do you recall them ? Yes ? Well, these beautiful maidens now are here. Their names are Mrs. Ribold, Mrs. Rakeless and Mrs. Tweaser. They each have husbands, and yet, they have them not. Forlorn Mr. Ribold wanders alone in Cuba. Should he come here, Mrs. Ribold would go there — yea, even to a warmer place by far, before she would yield to his conjugal entreaties.

And Mrs. Rakeless ? Is in the act, as you lawyers say, of Us pendenSy i. e., pending a suit for separation for alleged “cruelty” from the unsympathizing Mr. R. The latter, a very misguided man, was so absurd as to be jealous of his pretty wife ; and that innocent, corroded by suspicion and sensitive to distrust, at length sued her uneasy spouse to keep him beyond arm^s length. Thus, out of sight, in blissful ignorance, he knows no cause for jealousy. I need not say whether his want of confidence was cruel, to all concerned.

THE MADONNA OF PASS CHRISTIAN.

As to Mr. Tweaser, accounts differ. Some assert that he was secured in a lunatic asylum, there to become mad at leisure ; others, that he hides in equatorial Africa at the source of the Nile. Still others aver that he keeps bachelor^s hall (or hall to that effect) in Greenland, with a Mr. Langtry.

The oracle predicts that so long as these aforesaid maidens arrest male passengers^ attention, they will live, and continue, at the Mexican Gulf, but no longer. If wise as Ulysses, who made his seamen lash him to the mast when his ship sailed past the sirens’ isle, — if, like him, you are lashed by faithful companions here to some pillar of this hotel’s verandah, then you will not yield. But, if you are not under Ulysses’ restraint, they will not, as in the old myth, cast themselves into the sea with vexation, and you will not depart, I prophesy, before your bones are whitening on the strand.

Yesterday I was at billiards with one of them. How tenderly and enchantingly she murmured :

“ Love comes like a summer sigh,

Gently o’er me stealing! ”

Then she gave a side glance and looked down.

Beware ! take care ! ” said Longfellow.

I met your Chicago sweetheart in New Orleans. As you know. Miss Lind is to come here after Mardi Gras.

Having given you an account of some of Pass Chris-

THE SIRENS^ ISLE.

tian^s beauties — landscape and other — according to your request of the 15th ult., which was duly received and is at hand, I have the honor to be.

Very truly,

Ned Rattler.

To SiMOH A. Meeks,

Attorney and Counsellor-at-Law,

Kansas City, Mo.

CHAPTER IL

ARGONAUTS WHO DID NOT ALL SAFELY PASS THE SIEENS’ ROCK.

“Mortal, sneer not at the devil,

Life’s a short and narrow way.

And hot torture everlasting Is no error of the day.” — Heine.

It was a cold, wild, February night. Upon Hew Orleans the rain had fallen thick and heavy all day, with little intermission for many days. Toward evening a chilly north wind had sprung up, which gained in strength, until, under its violence, the down-pour had sullenly slackened and finally ceased. The heavy banks of rainclouds and scud over the city began to drive toward the Gulf and out to sea. The sky partly cleared, and at length the thin, sharp sickle of the new moon cut its way through to the arch of the world below. It gleamed brightly down upon leafy St. Charles avenue, where the dripping trees, unused to the exceptional weather, shuddered in the rising gale. It glanced upon the fantastic architecture of the ambitious new library, and, what was before a dull pile of gloom, under its Midas’ touch now sparkled with golden frost-work. Then it glimmered upon the smooth, grass-grown mound, where St. Charles avenue circles around the column and statue of the General of the Armies of the Confederacy.

ARGONAUTS.

Like a sudden inspiration in the mind of a commander with whom the battle is all but lost, it kindled the bronze features of the Confederate chieftain as with the gladness of emerging from a night of defeat. A pale, dim lustre enveloped the still figure with a spectral glory. From its support below, invisible in the shadow, it rose aloft, as if this ascension were the resurrection, and the grassy mound beneath were a grave; while the calm expression of final victory in the veteran face above told that with him, now, it was as though Appomattox had never been.

Beyond the Lee Circle and the monument, up St. Charles street, the moonlight wandered, gilding a pillared verandah here, or a stately flight of steps and noble gateway there; silvering creole balconies and their festoons of hanging vines, glinting their clinging raindrops into jewels, until dewy wistaria, climbing clematis and sprays of jessamine had become encrusted with emeralds and rubies, and until the wizard from the moon had decorated the windows all along the street, and thrown many a diamond necklace over the faces of each Southern home. Nor did the kindly light neglect to comfort the chilly orange blossoms on its way and cheer the shivering violets. The blossoms that night were drooping sadly, as if feeling that they must surely die of the cold and rain.

But when it reached a dark, solemn house, a*s staid and dignified as General Lee, and a generation older, the celestial rays merged into the more brilliant terrestrial glow that streamed from within until they disappeared there altogether. This proud mansion, of the period of

THE MADONNA OF PASS CHRISTIAN.

the old South, dated back to the time when St. Clair and Evangeline were there. It stood at some distance back from the street and high above it, upon a raised court, as if St. Charles street of the new South, with its impertinent innovations and appallingly mixed populace, must be haughtily kept at a respectful distance. A dense growth of orange trees in the court veiled the house. Before the door the blackened trunks and branches of two gaunt trees crazily rattled and rustled and croaked their indignation at the change in Southern times. Buddy light blazed through the lofty windows and the arch over the doorway, darted out upon the glossy foliage, and, piercing through, shone for any homeless Argonaut who might be abroad in that desolate night, like the luminous Golden Fleece in the sacred grove at Colchis. But instead of the hissing of the dragon, which watched over the mythical light, there came now the welcome sound of music. Harps and violins mingled with the night-wind, songs and gay voices, revelry and laughter joined in the chorus, while the curtain of foliage drew aside from one window and disclosed there a shadow dance of waltzers.

For this was the night when Mrs. SlidelFs Thursday Evening Dancing Club held its weekly meeting. Mrs. Slidell, the widowed mistress of this retreat, traced her lineage through one of the oldest of Southern families, and was closely related by marriage to the feeble old man then composing querulous histories and magazine articles at Beauvoir. But fallen was Jefferson Davis. Fallen with him was slavery. Gone with the slaves were the

ARGONAUTS.

means for using the family plantation, which, therefore, had been sold at a sacrifice long ago. Major Slidell had been b.idly wounded at Gettysburg, and after lingering as an invalid some years after the war among its dreary ruins, quietly rejoined those comrades left on the battle-field. The money obtained by selling their lands had been unfortunately invested, for a Southern lady of the old regime was not a tradesman of the Stock Exchange. And now, all that remained for the widow and her three daughters was to give dancing lessons and take boarders. Thus the brilliancy of the home of some of the haughtiest of Southerners on that bleak February night was caused only by a dancing class and a parlor full of lodgers. Upon this prosy ending did the traveling moonbeams fall.

You all would never have ^spected it, though, to look at them gals,^^ said Mrs. Gunn, suddenly, as she scratched her head reflectively, like one of the old heathen philosophers. This lady sat by the open hearth fire in the back parlor, among an observant group of Northern guests. They looked through the folding doors that opened into the Grand Salon,” and which displayed, like a tableau, the prettiest scene imaginable. The graceful, indolent, flower-like beauty of Southern girls was blooming there in full perfection. It seemed not so much a gathering of mere human merry-makers, as a beautiful garden of dancing flowers, who, endowed with animal life by some good fairy, were now revelling in the happiness of their new blessing.

THE MADOi^NA OF PASS CHRISTIAN.

^‘Now, did you ever, in all your born days, see a jollier gal than that ^ar Miss Grace, a-worryin^ over that stupid country kangaroo from Lafourche Crossin^ ?” continued Mrs. Gunn, v/hose language was as realistic as her originality was striking. Grace is a-tryin^ to beat into her head, er — I should say, er — her lower limbs, how to dance that ^ar polky, but Spears like she’s not goin’ on full kilt to any land o’ Jordan.”

No. The harps and violins were thrumming out the ‘‘Echoes of the Mississippi,” which the country kangaroo apparently regarded as a wild variety of gallop, not differing greatly, perhaps, from a Comanche’s war step. Her essays, accordingly, scattered terror and confusion among the flowers. The views which she held, Miss Grace, with an amiable smile and a few cheering words, was patiently striving to correct.

“I’m from Mississippi. Our family was a Kemper — from old Guv’nor Kemper,” continued Mrs, Gunn (she was always continuing), introducing herself to a newly-arrived boarder as a sort of floor manager and mistress of ceremonies ; “ but we’re as pore as the rest of ’em. We’re all pore alike, and we all have to give dancing lessons and take boarders, and work and dig ; so we all do, and so it’s no disgrace, and so no one’s prouder than anyone else.”

The speaker having thus partially described herself, in her lucid manner, it remains to be added that she was the one Southern boarder at Mrs. Slidell’s. This good-natured, shrewd, incompletely educated lady had certain individualities. One was that she gloried in being “ pore mean-

ARGONAUTS.

ing that she had little of this world^s goods. In this she spoke the literal truth. But in describing herself as a dancing-teacher, and a digger, Mrs. Gunn conversed metaphorically. Connicted,^^ as she would often lemind her hearers, with old Gov^nor Kemper,” who, she would add in a redundant way and with a singular accent, was ‘^one of her four fathers,” she was not likewise ^^connicted” with that tribe of Indians professionally known as Diggers. Also, for reasons peculiar to her, it was physically impossible for her to be a dancing-master. Her amorphous person had contours unknown to solid geometry or Greek sculptors, but which were, approximately, hemispherical. She was rarely seen to walk, but when she so ventured, it was with a stoop forward and a gait precipitous and headlong. It was better for Mrs. Gunn to stand than to walk ; better to sit down than to stand, and better to lie than to dance. When in her customary attitude, as at present, in a low chair, slightly leaning forward at an angle, she seemed fearfully and wonderfully made. Like that short piece of ordnance, thick and wide, with which modern warfare throws bombs, she sat, as would a mortar, inclined from the vertical, and always ready for action. As her weight was incalculable, she would have found difficulty in giving object lessons in the lighter, freer dances. To complete the description, it should be added that Mrs. Gunn’s conversational fire, by no means infrequent, was like that of the bombarding implement of war — lengthy and curvilinear, and much prolonged before coming to its end. Her attire was of black silk, glossy as

THE MADONNA OF PASS CHRISTIAN.

the coating of a man-of-war^s breech-loading rifle, and when she introduced herself the breech-loader was trained, so to speak, upon young Mr. and Mrs. Turtle, of 8t. Louis.

The young Turtles were listening with polite attention. One heart, one soul, seemed to animate them. Each was the other^s reverberation. Evidently, both wanted to familiarize themselves with as many phases of the manysided South as possible. They regarded Mrs. Gunn as one phase. When that lady had finished her last remark their dulcimer voices together chimed harmoniously:

Thus encouraged, the rural Mississippian continued: “Now up in Yazoo, on our plantation (which b"longed to ole Guv"nor Kemper) we all have to do all our own wu"k. You can"t get those niggers to do a blessed stroke, mo" than"ll keep "em in close. As for vittles, why law bless your heart, they"ll steal "em, yes they will, all they don"t raise. Will wu"k a Monday, earn a dollar, then lay off a week, a-stealin" pigs, pears, potatoes, chickens, sheep, an" the bread out o" your mouth, an" everything they can lay hands on. Why don"t you ketch "em? Can"t do it. How? S"pose they "11 testify against each other? 0 yes! Once in a while you do convict "em. Then what? Shut "em up. In State pen. Farm "em out. But "spose they care a picayune? They like it. They gets board an" lodging free — free of charge. Lives better than at home. And then ignorant? Why law bless your soul ! ""

“Now, Mrs. Gunn, will you tell us, please, — speaking of law — whether or not law in New Orleans was not well

ARGONAUTS.

enforced by Ben Butler, during the war, and whether or not, the Southerners do now regard him as having done his duty This question was put, ” as he would have termed it, by a young gentleman who sat near, who addressed it as to a discursive witness on the stand; meanwhile turning his head sideways towards the other boarders, just as a lawyer watches the effect upon his jury of an important and decisive question. Mr. Meeks had just graduated from a law school and had recently been admitted to the bar of Kansas City. When Mrs. Gunn was in danger of overloading the circle of boarders with words which she thought necessary to elucidate any particular train of thought, Mr. Meeks would distract her attention by some question as remote as possible from the subject in hand.

‘^Gen. Butler," replied the unsuspecting witness, ^'was a native of Liberia. Many old Southern people recollec’ old Ben, the barber, who kep’ a shop in Poydras street, and migerated to Liberia a many year ago. Gen. Butler was his son. Of course a nigger was utterly incompatible of ruling New Orleans. We all favor him more now since he has returned many of them spoons which he stole. A lady friend of mine wrote him for hers, which he embizzled, about two years ago, and said she’d give him Dixie and have the law on him if he didnT give ^em back. What do you suppose? He did. Seven days from the time she wrote that there letter a man come with some spoons and a letter signed Ben Butler, Himself, apologizing for having been tempted and led astray and saying that he would take

THE MADOHHA OF PASS CHRISTIAN.

no more. That was when ole Ben was a democrat. I hear tell that he’s changed to rip-publican now, so I kinder think we won’t get back no more of them spoons which he stole. Another lady friend of mine — ” .

At this point Mr. Meeks propounded the following question :

“ What you allege as to General Butler’s propensity to commit larceny, madam, reminds me of the unrepentant thief on the cross. I beg your pardon for the interruption, but Prof. Hung, of Chicago, very recently gave an interesting lecture in the Central Music Hall on his want of faith in hell. Will Gen. Butler, and did the unrepentant thief, go there at death? If so, where is that place, and what?” and here Mr. Meeks again cocked his head to one side, like a robin or a crow.

‘‘It’s a place as hasn’t such a equitable climate as Louisiana; but I shouldn’t think any lawyer wouldn’t need to question me much ’bout that air. I guess a good many a frequenters of a bar where they sells no lickers has got there a-ready. I knew a lawyer as died onct, an’ he was so bad that it took three preachers to bury him, an’ when they was a lowerin’ of the coffin, quick as yah please — puff! puff! an’ there was a strong smell of fire an’ brimstone, an’ the coffin become light all to onct, an’ they knew the devil had come an’ smuggled off the body. They didn’t open the empty coffin out of respect to the feelin’s of his relatives, an’ jes’ buried the coffin, as it were. But the man he had gone off to everlastin’ torments, where the fire dieth not an’ the worm is not squelched, but the

ARGONAUTS.

smoke of ^em ascendeth for ever and ever. Another lawyer as I knew —

'^The use of fire for torture,” interrupted Meeks, seeing that it was high time to dam up this talking mill sluice, an utterly unnatural and monstrous abuse of that ele ment, sprang up among men of devilish and unnatural cruelty. It remained for a later age to adopt the belief of those rabbis who crucified the man Jesus, that the Creator would abuse the powers of fire (for ever!) for the same fiendish purposes for which they abused it for an hour or two in the case of some writhing and shrieking victim. The torture of worms, Herodotus says, was tried now and then by old Persian despots. The mind of man has, as yet, so far recoiled from imputing so refined a barbarity to the Supreme Being as to suppose, in some confused inconsistent way, that the fire, of course, is fire; but the worm — they donT know about.”

As Meeks argued, a pretty girl who sat near him watched him with eager, admiring eyes. At the conclusion of his last remarks, which effectually parried Mrs. Gunn^s onslaught on fellow members of his bar, he said to his pretty companion in an undertone:

Greta, listen closely, and the last vestiges of your belief in an orthodox hell will, I hope, be swept away.”

Well,” exclaimed Mrs. Gunn, I donT know nothing ^bout it yet, but as I am a strait out-an’-out Tiscopal, I believe as all liars an^ mos' lawyers will be cast into the sea of glass mingled with fire an’ brimstone an’ worms, as the good books an’ the church articles say, for ever and ever.”

THE MADONNA OF PASS CHRISTIAN.

'‘The Church of England,” replied Meeks, “by the deliberate expunging of the forty-second article, which affirmed endless punishment, has declared it authoritatively to be an open question. Since the Keformation it has been open in the English church, and the philosophical Plato nists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries always considered it as such. The Christian Church has never really held it exclusively until now. . It remained an open question till the age of Justinian, 530 A. D., and, signihcantly enough, until two hundred years after that, when endless torment for the heathen became a popular theory. Purgatory sprung up synchronously by its side, as a relief for the conscience and reason of the Church. The doctrine nowhere occurs in the Old Testament, nor any hint of it.”

“ That ainT so,” asserted Mrs. Gunn. “ The holy Isaiah prophesies ffiout fire an^ worms.”

“ That expression concerning unquenched fire and undying worms refers to the dead corpses in the valley of Hinnom or Gehenna, where the offal of Jerusalem was burned perpetually. The Apocalypse simply repeats the imagery of Isaiah, but asserts distinctly the non-endlessness of torture, declaring that in the consummation not only death, but hell also, shall be cast into the lake of fire.”

Mrs. Gunn shook her head doubtfully.

“The doctrine of endless torment,” continued Meeks, “was a historical fact, brought back from Babylon by the rabbis. It was a very ancient primary doctrine of the Magi, an appendage of their fire kingdom of Ahriman,

ARGONAUTS.

and may be found in the old Zends, long prior to Christianity. St. Paul accepts nothing of it — never making the least allusion to the doctrine.

How ^bout the sheep and the goats ? asked Mrs. Gunn, explosively.

That parable,” replied Meeks, speaks expressly of nations. Neither you nor 1 are a nation. So do not be disquieted. Gibbon^s Decline and Fall of the Eoman Empire shows how true those words came, if you accept them as prophesy. Isaiah talks of the fire of God, and its effect on nations. This Jesus quoted. Such figures cause more reverence than do a literal interpretation of the Scriptures, if, as a church woman, you hold that the Old Testament is not contrary to the New.”

^^Ain’t there something ■’bout Lazarus and the rich man^s bosom, and flames and torments, and wanting a drop of water to cool his parched an^ burning tongue? What do you think of that?” asked Mrs. Gunn, exultingly.

^^Assuming that the Scriptures are true, which I do not admit,” said Meeks, '"Dives is there represented as still Abraham^s child, under no despair, not cut off from Abraham's sympathy, and under a direct moral training, of which the fruit appears in being gradually weaned from the selfish desire of indulgence. The impossibility of his interchanging places with Lazarus, in their spiritual state, is self-evident; that is the impassible great gulf. But nothing is said against Dives rising out of his torment when he has learned its lesson. The common interpreta-

THE MADOHHA OF PASS CHRISTIAN.

tion is merely arguing in a circle, assuming that there are but two states of the dead, ^Heaven and Hell,’ and then trying at once to interpret the parable by the assumption, and to prove the assumption from the parable. The old Crusaders wanted to hold that an* infidel went straight to hell. But the good kind man named Jesus came not to promulgate the doctrines of Tartarus. This immoral superstition is borrowed from the old brethren and rabbis, and the Christian (!) Tartarus is ten times as cruel and immoral as Yirgil’s, but of which no apostle seems to know anything whatever.”

^^Then,” said Grefa, ‘Mvhat does all this about fire and worms mean?”

‘^Whether physical or spiritual they must,” he replied, in all logical fairness, be supposed to do what fire and worms really do; that is, destroy decayed and dead matter, and set free the elements to enter new organisms. They are purifying agents in this life. Worms prevent putrefaction, hinder infectious epidemics, devour decaying matter and render it innoxious — finally transmuting it into new, living and healthy organisms. The office of fire in this world is much the same — to devour dead matter. On this physical earth, there is no other fire, no other worms, than these beneficent ones. If a metaphorical fire and worms, they must be like this, or your Bible uses words at random, or deceptively. Perhaps, into some unquenchable fire, will be cast, hereafter, all shams, lies, pedantries, hypocrisies, tyrannies, false doctrines, and the fat women who love them too well to give them up. Such a lie is the concep-