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Carmen gave a little gasp. “Oh!”
Then her hand stole mechanically to the rose flaming upon her bosom. “I––I guess I know why I bought this now,” she said softly. Quickly unpinning it, she extended it to the man. “I was bringing it to you, wasn’t I?” she laughed. “It’s a ‘President’ rose.”
The picture was one that would have rejoiced an artist: the simple girl, with her tumbled hair and wonderful face, standing there in the glorious sunlight, holding out a single rose to the chief executive of a great nation.
The President bowed low and took the proffered flower. “I thank you,” he said. “It is beautiful. But the one who gives it is far more so.”
Then he bade his companion take the two horses to the stable, and motioned to Carmen to accompany him.
“I was just returning from my morning ride,” he began again, “when you happened––”
“Thingsneverhappen,” interrupted the girl gently.
He looked at her with a little quizzical side glance. “Then you didn’t happen to be in the way?” he said, smiling.
“No,” she returned gravely. “I was obeying the law of cause and effect.”
“And the cause?” he pursued, much interested.
“A desire to see you, I guess. Or, perhaps, thenecessityof seeing you. And because I wanted to see you in the interests of good, why, evil seemed to try to run over me.”
“But why should you wish to see me?” he continued, greatly wondering.
“Because you are the head of a wonderful nation. Your influence is very great. And you are a good man.”
He studied her for a moment. Then:
“You came down from New York to talk with me?” he asked.
“I think I came all the way from South America to see you,” she said.
“South America!”
“Yes, Colombia.”
“Colombia! There is a revolution in progress down there now. Did you come to see me about that? I can do nothing––”
The girl shook her head. “No,” she said, “it’s to prevent a revolution here in your own country that I think I have come to see you.”
They had by now reached the door of the Executive Mansion. Entering, the President summoned a maid, and turned the big-eyed girl over to her. “Bring her to my office,” he directed, “when she is ready.”
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A little later the nameless girl from Simití again stood before the President of the United States.
“I have an important conference at ten,” he said, glancing at a clock. “But we have a few minutes before that time. Will you––may I ask you to tell me something about yourself?” he ventured. “You are feeling all right? No bad effects from the accident?” he added, looking apprehensively at her while he set out a chair.
The girl drew the chair close to his desk and sat down. “I know nothing about accidents,” she said quietly. Then, turning quite from that topic, she drew the President quickly into her thought and carried him off with her as on a magic carpet.
The man listened in rapt attention. From time to time he turned and stared at his strange visitor. At other times he made notes of points which impressed him. Once he interrupted, when she made reference to her past life. “This priest, Josè de Rincón, might he not have been imprisoned as a political offender?”
“I do not know,” the girl replied tenderly. “My foster-father, Rosendo, did not mention him in the two letters which I have received.”
The President nodded; and the girl went rapidly on. Soon she was deep in the problem presented by Avon.
But at the mention of that town, and of its dominating genius, the President seemed to become nervous. At length he raised a hand, as if to end the interview.
“I fear I can do nothing at present,” he said with an air of helplessness. “My influence is quite limited.”
“But,” she protested, “you have the public welfare at heart. And can you not see that public welfare is the welfare of each individual?”
“I know Mr. Ames well,” the President replied, somewhat irrelevantly. “He, like all men of great wealth, presents a serious problem, doubtless. But he himself, likewise, is confronted by problems of very trying natures. We must give him time to work them out.”
The girl sighed. “It’s like getting at the essence of Christianity,” she said. “The world has had nearly two thousand years in which to do that, but it hasn’t made much of a start as yet. How much time does Mr. Ames require? And how many more lives must he sacrifice?”
“But,” the President resumed reflectively, “after all, it is the people who are wholly responsible for the conditions which exist among them. They have the means of remedying every economic situation, the ballot. It is really all in their hands, is it not? They elect their public officers, their judges, and their lawmakers.”
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Again the girl sighed. “You too,” she said, “take refuge in the cant of the age. Yes, the people do try to elect public servants; but by some strange anomaly the servant becomes master the moment he enters the door of office. His thought then centers upon himself. And then they, and you, sit helplessly back and cry, No use! And if the people rise, their servants meet them with a hail of lead. It’s really childishly ridiculous, isn’t it? when you stop to consider it seriously.”
She leaned her elbows upon the desk, and sat with chin in her hands, looking squarely into the eyes of the President.
“So you, the head of this great nation, confess to utter helplessness,” she slowly said. “But you don’t have to.”
A servant entered at that moment with a card. The President glanced at it, and bade him request the caller to wait a few moments. Then, after some reflection:
“The people will always––”
The door through which the servant had passed was abruptly thrown open, and a harsh voice preceded the entrance of a huge bulk.
“I am not accustomed to being told to wait, Mr. President,” said the ungracious voice. “My appointment was for ten o’clock, and I am here to keep it.”
Then the newcomer stopped abruptly, and stared in amazement at the young girl, sitting with her elbows propped upon the desk, and her face close to that of the President.
The latter rose, flushed and angry. But Ames did not notice him. His attention was centered upon the girl who sat looking calmly up at him. A dark, menacing scowl drew his bushy eyebrows together, and made the sinister look which mantled his face one of ominous import to the person upon whom it fell.
Carmen was the first to break the tense silence. With a bright smile illuming her face she rose and held out a hand to the giant before her. “Good morning, Mr. Ames,” she said. “We meet pretty often, don’t we?”
Ames ignored both the greeting and the extended hand. Turning upon the President, he said sharply: “So, the Express seeks aid in the White House, eh?”
“No, Mr. Ames,” said Carmen quickly, answering for the President. “It seeks to aid the White House.”
Ames turned to the girl. “Might I ask,” he said in a tone of mordant sarcasm, “how you learned that I was to be here this morning? I would like to employ your methods of espionage in my own business.”
“I would give anything if youwouldemploy my methods in your business,” returned the girl gently.
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The President looked in embarrassment from one to the other. “I think, Miss Carmen,” he said, “that we must consider our interview ended. This next hour belongs by appointment to Mr. Ames.”
A peculiar expression had come into Ames’s features. His thought had been working rapidly. Here was an opportunity for a telling stroke. He would play it. His manner suddenly became more gracious.
“Let her remain, Mr. President,” he said in a tone pregnant with meaning. “I am glad to have a representative of the New York press with us to hear you express your attitude toward the cotton schedule.”
The President caught the insinuation. His hand was to be forced! His indignation mounted, but he checked it.
“The schedule has been reported out of committee,” he replied briefly. “It is now before Congress.”
“I am aware of that,” said Ames. “And your influence with Congress in regard to it?”
“I am studying the matter, Mr. Ames,” returned the President slowly.
“Shall the Avon mills be closed pending a decision? Or, on the assumption that Congress will uphold the altered schedule, must the Spinners’ Association begin immediate retrenchment? As president of that Association, I ask for instructions.”
“My influence with Congress, as you well know, Mr. Ames, is quite limited,” replied the hectored executive.
“It is not a question of theamountof your influence with that body, Mr. President,” returned Ames coldly, “but of how you will employ that which you have.”
Silence lay upon them all for some moments. Then Ames resumed:
“I would remind you,” he remarked with cruel insinuation, “that––or,” glancing at the girl, “perhaps I should not make this public.” He paused and awaited the effect of his significant words upon the President. Then, as the latter remained silent, he went on evenly:
“Second-term prospects, you are aware, are often very greatly influenced by public facts regarding the first election. Of course we are saying nothing that the press might use, but––well, you must realize that there is some suspicion current as to the exact manner in which your election was––”
“I think you wish to insinuate that my election was due to the Catholic vote, which you controlled in New York, and to your very generous campaign contributions, do you not? I see no reason for withholding from the press your views on the subject.”
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“But, my friend, this is an age of investigation, and of suspicion toward all public officials. And such rumors wouldn’t look well on the front pages of the press throughout the country. Of course, our young friend here isn’t going to mention them to her superiors; but, nevertheless, they ought to be suppressed at once. Their effect upon your second-term prospects would be simply annihilating. Now I am in a position to greatly assist in the matter of––well, in fact, I have already once offered my aid to the Express. And I stand ready now to join with it in giving the lie to those who are seeking to embarrass the present administration. Miss Carmen is with us––”
“Mr. Ames,” the girl quietly interrupted, “I wishyouwere withus.”
“But, my dear girl, have I––”
“For then there would be no more suffering in Avon,” she added.
“Ha! Then it was you who wrote that misleading stuff in the Express, eh? I might have known it! May I ask,” he added with a contemptuous sneer, “by whose authority you have visited the houses occupied by my tenants, without my permission or knowledge? I take it you were down there, although the cloudy weather must have quite dimmed your perception.”
“Yes,” she answered in a low voice, “I have been there. And it wasverycloudy. Yes, I visited your charnel houses and your cemeteries. I saw your victims. I held their trembling hands, and stroked their hot brows. I fed them, and gave them the promise that I would plead their cause with you.”
“Humph! But you first come here to––”
“It was with no thought of seeing you that I came to Washington, Mr. Ames. If I cross your path often, it must be for a purpose not yet revealed to either of us. Perhaps it is to warn you, to awaken you, if not too late, to a sense of your desperate state.”
“My desperate state!”
“Yes. You are drunk, you know, drunk with greed. And such continuous drunkenness has made you sick unto death. It is the same dread disease of the soul that the wicked Cortez told the bewildered Mexicans he had, and that could be cured only with gold. You––you don’t see, Mr. Ames, that you are mesmerized by the evil which is always using you.”
She stood close to the huge man, and looked straight up into his face. He remained for a moment motionless, yielding again to that fascination which always held him when in her169presence, and of which he could give no account to himself. That slight, girlish figure––how easily he could crush her!
“But you couldn’t, you know,” she said cryptically, as she shook her head.
“Couldn’t what?” he demanded.
“Crush me.”
He recoiled a step, struck by the sudden revelation that the girl had read his thought.
“You see, Mr. Ames,” she continued, “what a craven error is before truth. It makes a coward of you, doesn’t it? Your boasted power is only a mesmerism, which you throw like a huge net over your victims. You and they can break it, if you will.”
“Miss Carmen!” exclaimed the President. “We really must consider our interview ended. Let us make an appointment for another day.”
“I guess the appointment was made for to-day,” the girl said softly. “And by a higher power than any of us. Mr. Ames is the type of man who is slowly turning our Republican form of government into a despotism of wealth. He boasts that his power is already greater than a czar’s. You bow before it; and so the awful monster of privilege goes on unhampered, coiling its slimy tentacles about our national resources, our public utilities, and natural wealth. I––I can’t see how you, the head of this great nation, can stand trembling by and see him do it. It is to me incomprehensible.”
The President flushed. He made as if to reply, but restrained himself. Carmen gave no indication of leaving. A stern look then came into the President’s face. He stood for a few minutes in thought. Then he turned again to his desk and sat down.
“Please be seated,” he said, “both of you. I don’t know what quarrel there is between you two, and I am not interested in it. But you, Miss Carmen, represent the press; Mr. Ames, business. The things which have been voiced here this morning must remain with us alone. Now let us see if we can not meet on common ground. Is the attitude of your newspaper, Miss Carmen, one of hostility toward great wealth?”
“The Express raises its voice only against the folly and wickedness of the human mind, not against personality,” replied the girl.
“But you are attacking Mr. Ames.”
“No. We attack only the human thought which manifests in him. We oppose the carnal thought which expresses itself in the folly, the madness of strife for excessive wealth. It is that strife that makes our hospitals and asylums a disgraceful170necessity. It makes the immigrant hordes of Europe flock here because they are attracted by the horrible social system which fosters the growth of great fortunes and makes their acquisition possible. Our alms-houses and prisons increase in number every year. It is because rich men misuse their wealth, trample justice under foot, and prostitute a whole nation’s conscience.”
“But the rich need not do that. They do not all––”
“It is a law of human thought,” said Carmen in reply, “that mankind in time become like that which has absorbed their attention. Rich men obey this law with utmost precision. They acquire the nature and character of their god, gold. They rapidly grow to be like that which they blindly worship. They harden like their money. They grow metallic, yellow, calloused, unchanging, and soulless, like the coins they heap up. There is the great danger to our country, Mr. President. And it is against the human thought that produces such beings––thought stamped with the dollar mark––that the Express opposes itself.”
She hesitated, and looked in the direction of Ames. Then she added:
“Their features in time reveal to the world their metallic thought. Their veins shrivel with the fiery lust of gold. Their arteries harden. And then, at last, they crumble and sink into the dust of which their god is made. And still their memories continue to poison the very sources of our national existence. You see,” she concluded, “there is no fool so mired in his folly as the man who gives his soul for great wealth.”
“A very enjoyable little sermon, preached for my benefit, Miss Carmen,” interposed Ames, bowing to her. “And now if you have finished excoriating my poor character,” he continued dryly, “will you kindly state by whose authority you publish to the world my affairs?”
“God’s authority, Mr. Ames,” returned the girl gently.
“Bah! The maudlin sentimentalism of such as you make us all suffer!” he exclaimed with a gesture of disgust. “Hadn’t we better sing a hymn now? You’re obsessed with your foolish religious notions! You’re running amuck! You’ll be wiser in a few years, I hope.”
The girl reflected. “And may I ask, Mr. Ames, by what right you own mines, and forests, and lands? Divine right, I suppose.”
“By the divine right of law, most assuredly,” he retorted.
“And you make the law. Yes, divine right! I have learned,” she continued, turning to the President, “that a bare handful of men own or control all the public utilities of this great171country. It doesn’t seem possible! But,” abruptly, “you believe in God, don’t you?”
He nodded his head, although with some embarrassment. His religion labored heavily under political bias.
She looked down at the floor, and sat silent for a while. “Divine right,” she began to murmur, “the fetish of the creatures made rich by our man-made social system! ‘The heavens are thine, the earth also is thine: as for the world and the fullness thereof, thou hast founded them.’ But, oh, what must be the concept of God held by the rich, a God who bestows these gifts upon a few, and with them the privilege and divine consent to oppress and crush their fellow-men! What a low order of intelligence the rich possess! An intelligence wherein the sentiments of love and justice have melted into money!”
“Mr. President,” put in Ames at this juncture, “I think we have spent quite enough time moralizing. Suppose you now indicate your attitude on the cotton tariff. I’d like to know what to expect.”
Carmen glanced quickly up. Her sparkling eyes looked right into the President’s. A smile wreathed her mouth. “I admire the man,” she said, “who dares to stand for the right in the face of the great taboo! There are few men nowadays who stand for anything in particular.”
“Look here!” exclaimed Ames, aware now that he had made a mistake in permitting the girl to remain, “I wish my interview to be with you alone, Mr. President.”
Carmen rose. “I have embarrassed you both, haven’t I?” she said. “I will go. But first––”
She went to Ames and laid a hand on his arm. “I wish––I wish I might awaken you,” she said gently. “There is no victim at Avon in so desperate a state as you. More gold will not cure you, any more than more liquor can cure a slave to strong drink. You do not know that you are hourly practicing the most despicable form of robbery, the wringing of profits which you do not need out of the dire necessities of your fellow-beings.”
She stopped and smiled down into the face of the man. His emotions were in a whirl. This girl always dissected his soul with a smile on her face.
“I wish I might awaken you and your poor victims by showing you and them that righteousness makes not for a home in the skies, but for greater happiness and prosperity for everybody right here in this world. Don’t you really want the little babies to have enough to eat down there at Avon? Do you really want the President to support you in the matter of the172cotton schedule, and so increase the misery and sorrow at your mills? You don’t know, do you? that one’s greatest happiness is found only in that of others.” She stood looking at him for a few moments, then turned away.
The President rose and held out his hand to her. She almost laughed as she took it, and her eyes shone with the light of her eager, unselfish desire.
“I––I guess I’m like Paul,” she said, “consumed with zeal. Anyway, you’ll wear my rose, won’t you?”
“Indeed I will!” he said heartily.
“And––you are not a bit afraid about a second term, are you? As for party principle, why, you know, there is onlyoneprinciple, God. He is the Christ-principle, you know, and that is way above party principle.”
Under the spell of the girl’s strange words every emotion fled from the men but that of amazement.
“Righteousness, you know, is right-thinking. And that touches just that about which men are most chary, their pocketbooks.”
She still held his hand. Then she arched her brows and said naïvely: “You will find in yesterday’s Express something about Avon. You will not use your influence with Congress until you have read it, will you?” And with that she left the room.
A deep quiet fell upon the men, upon the great executive and the great apostle of privilege. It seemed to the one that as the door closed against that bright presence the spirit of night descended; the other sat wrapped in the chaos of conflicting emotions in which she always left him.
Suddenly the President roused up. “Who is she?” he asked.
“She’s the bastard daughter of a negro priest,” replied Ames in an ugly tone.
“What––she? That beautiful girl––! I don’t believe it!”
“By God, she is!” cried the thoroughly angered Ames, bringing a huge fist down hard upon the desk. “And I’ve got the proof! And, what’s more, she’s head over heels in love with another renegade priest!
“But that’s neither here nor there,” he continued savagely. “I want to know what you are going to do for us?”
“I––I do not see, Mr. Ames, that I can do anything,” replied the President meditatively.
“Well––will you leave the details to us, and do as we tell you then?” the financier pursued, taking another tack.
The President hesitated. Then he raised his head. “You say you have proof?” he asked.
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“Proof?”
“Yes––about the girl, you––”
“Damn the girl!” almost shouted Ames. “I’ve got proofs that will ruin her, and you too––and, by God, I’ll use ’em, if you drive me to it! You seem to forget that you were elected to do our bidding, my friend!”
The President again lapsed into silence. For a long time he sat staring at the floor. Then he looked up. “It was wonderful,” he said, “wonderful the way she faced you, like David before Goliath! There isn’t a vestige of fear in her make-up. I––we’ll talk this matter over some other time, Mr. Ames,” he finished, rising abruptly.
“We’ll talk it over now!” roared Ames, his self-control flying to the winds. “I can ruin you––make your administration a laughing-stock––and plunge this country into financial panic! Do you do as I say, or not?”
The President looked the angry man squarely in the eyes. “I do not,” he answered quietly. “Good morning.”
CHAPTER 13
“It’s corking! Simply corking!” cried Haynerd, when he and Hitt had finished reading Carmen’s report on her first few days in Washington. “Makes a fellow feel as if the best thing Congress could do would be to adjourn for about fifty years, eh? Such freak legislation! But she’s a wonder, Hitt! And she’s booming the Express to the skies! Say, do you know? she’s in love, that girl is! That’s why she is so––as the Mexicans say––simpático.”
“Eh? In love!” exclaimed Hitt. “Well, not with you, I hope!”
“No, unfortunately,” replied Haynerd, assuming a dejected mien, “but with that Rincón fellow––and he a priest! He’s got a son down in Cartagena somewhere, and he doesn’t write to her either. She’s told Sid the whole story, and he’s working it up into a book during his odd moments. But, say,” turning the conversation again into its original channel, “how much of her report are we going to run? You know, she tried to head us off. Doesn’t want to attack Ames. Ha! ha! As if she hadn’t already attacked him and strewn him all over the field!”
“We’ll have to be careful in our allusions to the President,” replied Hitt. “I’ll rewrite it myself, so as not to offend her or him. And I––but, by George! her reports are the truth, and they rightfully belong to the people! The Express is the174avowed servant of the public! What she finds out belongs to all. I see no reason for concealing a thing. Did I tell you that I had two inquiries from Italian and German papers, asking permission to translate her reports into their own columns?”
“No? Jerusalem! We’re becoming famous! Did you wire her to see Gossitch and Mall?”
“Yes, and Logue, as well as others. And I’ve put dozens of senators and congressmen on our mailing list, including the President himself. I’ve prepared letters for each one of them, calling attention to the girl and her unique reports. She certainly writes in a fascinating vein, doesn’t she? Meanwhile, she’s circulating around down there and advertising us in the best possible manner. We’re a success, old man!” he finished, slapping the city editor roundly upon the back.
“Humph!” growled the latter. “Confine your enthusiasm to words, my friend. Say, what did you do about that liquid food advertisement?”
“Discovered that it was beer,” replied Hitt, “and turned it firmly down.”
“Well, isn’t beer a food? Not that we care to advertise it, but––”
Hitt laughed. “When that fellow Claus smoothly tried to convince me that beer was a food, I sent a sample of his stuff to the Iles chemical laboratory for analysis. They reported ninety-four per cent water, four per cent alcohol––defined now as a poisonous drug––and about two per cent of possible food substance. If the beer had been of the first grade there wouldn’t have been even the two per cent of solids. You know, I couldn’t help thinking of what Carmen said about the beer that is advertised in brown bottles to preserve it from the deleterious effects of light. Light, you know, starts decay in beer. Well, light, according to Fuller, is ‘God’s eldest daughter.’ Emerson says it is the first of painters, and that there is nothing so foul that intense light will not make it beautiful. Light destroys fermentation. Thus the light of truth destroys the fermentation which is supposed to constitute the human mind and body. So light tries to purify beer by breaking it up. The brewers have to put it into brown bottles to preserve its poisonous qualities. As Carmen says, beer simply can’t stand the light. No evil can stand the light. Remarkable, isn’t it?”
“Humph! It’s astonishing that so many so-called reputable papers will take their advertising stuff. It’s just as bad as patent medicine ads.”
“Yes. And I note that the American public still spend their annual hundred million dollars for patent medicine dope. Most of this is spent by women, who are largely caught by the mail-order175trade. I learned of one exposure recently made where it was found that a widely advertised eye wash was composed of borax and water. The cost was somewhere about five cents a gallon, and it sold for a dollar an ounce. Nice little profit of some two hundred and fifty thousand per cent, and all done by the mesmerism of suggestive advertising. Shrewd business, eh? Nice example in morality. Speaking of parasites on society, Ames is not the only one!”
“And yet those fellows howl and threaten us with the boycott because we won’t advertise their lies and delusions. It’s as bad as ecclesiastical intolerance!”
Carmen spent a week in Washington. Then she returned to New York and went directly to Avon. What she did there can only be surmised by a study of her reports to Hitt, who carefully edited them and ran them in the Express. Again, after several days, she journeyed back to Washington. Her enthusiasm was boundless; her energy exhaustless; her industry ceaseless; and her persistency doggedly unshakable. In Washington she made her way unhindered among those whom she deemed essential to the work which she was doing. Doubtless her ability to do this and to gain an audience with whomsoever she might choose was in great part due to her beauty and charming simplicity, her grace of manner, and her wonderful and fearless innocence, combined with a mentality remarkable for its matured powers. Hitt and Haynerd groaned over her expenses, but promptly met them.
“She’s worth it,” growled the latter one day. “She’s had four different talks with the President! How on earth do you suppose she does it? And how did she get Mall and Logue to take her to dinner and to the theater again and again? And what did she do to induce that doddering old blunderbuss, Gossitch, to tell her what Ames was up to? I’ll bet he made love to her! How do you suppose she found out that Ames was hand in glove with the medical profession, and working tooth and nail to help them secure a National Bureau of Health? Say, do you know what that would do? It would foist allopathy upon every chick and child of us! Make medication, drugging, compulsory! Good heavens! Have we come to that in this supposedly free country? By the way, Hitt, Doctor Morton has been let out of the University. Fired! He says Ames did it because of his association with us. What do you think of that?”
“I think, my friend,” replied Hitt, “that it is a very serious matter, and one that impinges heavily upon the rights of every one of us, when a roaring lion like Ames is permitted to run loose through our streets. Can nothing stop him!”
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“I’ve centered my hopes in Carmen,” sighed Haynerd. “She’s my one last bet. If she can’t stop him, then God himself can’t!”
Hitt turned and went into his office. A few moments later he came out again and handed an opened letter to Haynerd. “Some notes she’s sent from Washington. Mentions the National Bureau of Health project. It hasn’t escaped her, you see. Say, will you tell me where she picks up her information?”
“The Lord gives it to her, I guess,” said Haynerd, glancing over the letter. “What’s this?”
“‘Reverend Borwell and Doctor Siler are down here lobbying for the National Bureau of Health bill. Also, Senator Gossitch dropped a remark to me yesterday which makes me believe that he and other Senators have been approached by Tetham with reference to sending an American ambassador to the Vatican. Mr. Ames favors this.’”
“‘Reverend Borwell and Doctor Siler are down here lobbying for the National Bureau of Health bill. Also, Senator Gossitch dropped a remark to me yesterday which makes me believe that he and other Senators have been approached by Tetham with reference to sending an American ambassador to the Vatican. Mr. Ames favors this.’”
Haynerd handed the letter back to Hitt and plunged into the papers on his desk. “Don’t say another word to me!” he exclaimed. “This country’s going stark, staring mad! We’re crazy, every mother’s son of us!”
“It’s the human mind that is crazy, Ned, because it is wholly without any basis of principle,” returned Hitt with a sigh.
“Doctor Siler! I beg your pardon!”
“Eh? Why, Miss Carmen!” exclaimed that worthy person, looking up from the gutter, whither he had hastened after his silk hat which had been knocked off by the encounter with the young girl who had rounded the corner of Ninth street into Pennsylvania avenue and plunged full into him.
“Oh, I’m so sorry, Doctor! I was coming from the Smithsonian Institution, and I guess––”
“Don’t mention it, Miss Carmen. It’s a privilege to have my hat knocked off by such a radiant creature as you.”
“But it was so stupid of me! Dreaming again! And I want to offer my––”
“Look here, Miss Carmen, just offer yourself as my guest at luncheon, will you? That will not only make amends, but place me hopelessly in your debt.”
“Indeed I will!” exclaimed the girl heartily. “I was on my way to a restaurant.”
“Then come with me. I’ve got a little place around the corner here that would have made Epicurus sit up nights inditing odes to it.”
The girl laughed merrily, and slipped her arm through his. A few minutes later they were seated at a little table in a secluded corner of the doctor’s favorite chophouse.
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“By the way, I met a friend of yours a few minutes ago,” announced the doctor, after they had given their orders. “He was coming out of the White House, and––were you ever in a miniature cyclone? Well, that was Ames! He blew me right off the sidewalk! So angry, he didn’t see me. That’s twice to-day I’ve been sent to the gutter!” He laughed heartily over his experiences, then added significantly: “You and he are both mental cyclones, but producing diametrically opposite effects.”
Carmen remained seriously thoughtful. The doctor went on chatting volubly. “Ames and the President don’t seem to be pulling together as well as usual. The President has come out squarely against him now in the matter of the cotton schedule. Ames declares that the result will be a general financial panic this fall. By the way, Mr. Sands, the Express correspondent, seems to be getting mighty close to administration affairs these days. Where did he get that data regarding a prospective National Bureau of Health, do you suppose?”
“I gave it to him,” was the simple reply.
The doctor dropped his fork, and stared at the girl. “You!” he exclaimed. “Well––of course you naturally would be opposed to it. But––”
“Tell me,” she interrupted, “tell me candidly just what you doctors are striving for, anyway. For universal health? Are your activities all quite utilitarian, or––is it money and monopoly that you are after? It makes a lot of difference, you know, in one’s attitude toward you. If you really seek the betterment of health, then you are only honestly mistaken in your zeal. But if you are doing this to make money––and I think you are––then you are a lot of rascals, deserving defeat.”
“Miss Carmen, do you impugn my motives?” He laughed lightly at the thought.
“N––well––” She hesitated. He began to color slightly under her keen scrutiny. “Well,” she finally continued, “let’s see. If you doctors have made the curative arts effective, and if you really do heal disease, then I must support you, of course. But, while there is nothing quite so important to the average mortal as his health, yet I know that there is hardly anything that has been dealt with in such a bungling way. The art of healing as employed by our various schools of medicine to-day is the result of ages and ages of experimentation and bitter experience, isn’t it? And its cost in human lives is simply incalculable. No science is so speculative, none so hypothetical, as the so-called science of medicine.”
“But we have had to learn,” protested the doctor.
“Do you realize, Doctor,” she resumed, “that the teaching178and preaching of disease for money is one of the greatest curses resting upon the world to-day? I never saw a doctor until I was on the boat coming to New York. And then I thought he was one of the greatest curiosities I had ever seen. I followed him about and listened to him talk to the passengers. And I learned that, like most of our young men, he had entered the practice of medicine under the pressure of dollars rather than altruism. Money is still the determining factor in the choice of a profession by our young men. And success and fortune in the medical profession, more than in any other, depend upon the credulity of the ignorant and helpless human mind.”
“Do you deny that great progress has been made in the curative arts?” he demanded. “See what we have done with diphtheria, with typhoid, with smallpox, and malaria!”
“Surely, Doctor, you can not believe that the mere temporary removing of a disease isrealhealing! You render one lot of microbes innocuous, after thousands of years of experimentation, and leave mankind subject to the rest. Then you render another set harmless. Do you expect to go on that way, making set after set of microbes harmless to the human body, and thus in time, after millions of years, eradicate disease entirely? Do you think that people will then cease to die? All the time you are working only in matter and through material modes. Do you expect thereby to render the human sense of life immortal? I think a sad disappointment awaits you. Your patients get well, only to fall sick again. And death to you is still as inevitable as ever, despite your boasted successes, is it not so?”
He broke into a bantering laugh, but did not reply.
“Doctor, the human mind is self-inoculated. It suffers from auto-infection. It makes its own disease microbes. It will keep on making them, until it is educated out of itself, and taught to do better. Then it will give place to the real reflection of divine mind; and human beings will be no more. Why don’t you realize this, you doctors, and get started on the right track? Your real work is in thementalrealm. There you will find both cause and cure.”
“Well, I for one have little respect for faith cure––”
“Nor I,” she interposed. “Dependence upon material drugs, Doctor, is reliance upon thephenomenaof the human mind. Faith cure is dependence upon the human mind itself, upon thenoumenon, instead of thephenomenon. Do you see the difference? Hypnotism is mental suggestion, the suggestions being human and material, not divine truth. The drugging system is an outgrowth of the belief of life in matter. Faith179cure is the belief of life and power inherent in the human mind. One is no higher than the other. The origin of healing is shrouded in mythology, and every step of its so-called progress has been marked by superstition, dense ignorance, and fear. The first doctor that history records was the Shaman, or medicine-man, whose remedies reflected his mental status, and later found apt illustration in the brew concocted by Macbeth’s witches. And think you he has disappeared? Unbelievable as it may seem, it was only a short time ago that a case was reported from New York where the skin of a freshly killed black cat was applied as a remedy for an ailment that had refused to yield to the prescribed drugging! And only a few years ago some one applied to the Liverpool museum for permission to touch a sick child’s head with one of the prehistoric stone axes there exhibited.”
“That was mere superstition,” retorted the doctor.
“True,” said Carmen. “Butmateria medicais superstition incarnate. And because of the superstition that life and virtue and power are resident in matter, mankind have swallowed nearly everything known to material sense, in the hope that it would cure them of their own auto-infection. You remember what awful recipes Luther gave for disease, and his exclamation of gratitude: ‘How great is the mercy of God who has put such healing virtue in all manner of muck!’”
“Miss Carmen,” resumed the doctor, “we physicians are workers, not theorists. We handle conditions as we find them, not as they ought to be.”
“Oh, no, you don’t!” laughed the girl. “You handle conditions as the human, mortal mind believes them to be, that’s all. You accept its ugly pictures as real, and then you try desperately through legislation to make us all accept them. Yet you would bitterly resent it if some religious body should try to legislate its beliefs upon you.
“Now listen, you doctors are rank materialists. Perhaps it is because, as Hawthorne puts it, in your researches into the human frame your higher and more subtle faculties are materialized, and you lose the spiritual view of existence. Your only remedy for diseased matter is more matter. And these material remedies? Why, ignorance and superstition have given rise to by far the larger number of remedies in use by you to-day! And all of your attempts to rationalize medicine and place it upon a systematic basis have signally failed, because the only curative property a drug has is the credulity of the person who swallows it. And that is a factor which varies with the individual.”
“The most advanced physicians give little medicine nowadays, Miss Carmen.”
180
“They are beginning to get away from it, little by little,” she replied. “In recent years it has begun to dawn upon doctors and patients alike that the sick who recover do so, not because of the drugs which they have taken, butin spite of them! One of the most prominent of our contemporary physicians who are getting away from the use of drugs has said that eighty-five per cent of all illnesses get well of their own accord, no matter what may or may not be done for them. In a very remarkable article from this same doctor’s pen, in which he speaks of the huge undertaking which physicians must assume in order to clear away themateria medicarubbish of the ages, he states that the greatest struggle which the coming doctor has on his hands is with drugs, and the deadly grip which they have on the confidence and affections both of the profession and of the public. Among his illuminating remarks about the drug system, I found two drastic statements, which should serve to lift the veil from the eyes of the chronic drug taker. These are, first, ‘Take away opium and alcohol, and the backbone of the patent medicine business would be broken inside of forty-eight hours,’ and, second, ‘No drug, save quinine and mercury in special cases, will cure a disease.’ In words which he quotes from another prominent physician, ‘He is the best doctor who knows the worthlessness of most drugs.’
“The hundreds of drugs listed in books onmateria medicaI find are gradually being reduced in number to a possible forty or fifty, and one doctor makes the radical statement that they can be cut down to the ‘six or seven real drugs.’ Still further light has been thrown upon the debasing nature of the drugging system by a member of the Philadelphia Drug Exchange, in a recent hearing before the House Committee on municipal affairs right here. He is reported as saying that it makes little difference what a manufacturer puts into a patent medicine, for, after all, the effect of the medicine depends upon the faith of the user. The sick man who turns to patent medicines for relief becomes the victim of ‘bottled faith.’ If his faith is sufficiently great, a cure may be effected––and the treatment has beenwholly mental! The question of ethics does not concern either the patent medicine manufacturer or the druggist, for they argue that if the sick man’s faith has been aroused to the point of producing a cure, the formula of the medicine itself is of no consequence, and, therefore, if a solution of sugar and water sold as a cure for colds can stimulate the sufferer’s faith to the point of meeting his need, the business is quite legitimate. ‘A bunch of bottles and sentiment,’ adds this member of the Drug Exchange, ‘are the real essentials for working healing miracles.’”