Born Again by Alfred William Lawson (fiction book recommendations .txt) 📖

rushed from behind their fortresses to view the work of destruction. They had displayed fine marksmanship and were greatly pleased. Good shooting, said one of the brave fellows. Splendid, exclaimed another. But what shall we do with the cubs? asked the third. Better finish them also, remarked a fourth, as I am very fond of cub meat, and would like nothing better than a broiled steak from one of their little carcasses. After a few minutes' parley a decision was reached that it would be uncivilized to allow the little ones to wander about the jungle alone for fear that they might become the prey for other wild animals, so they killed them also; and filled their stomachs with them. And after they were through, a flock of vultures descended and finished the work. Men and vultures are somewhat alike in this respect; they both eat the flesh of carcasses. But a good word can be said for the vultures, however; they never kill.

CHAPTER IX

It is not my intention to give a full descriptive account of my peculiar journey around the world with Arletta, nor to recount the many strange things witnessed. Suffice it to mention that we visited nearly every country on the globe through the power of mind sight, and I was enabled to see any terrestrial occurrence as well as if having been on the spot in person. In fact, being under the direct influence of Arletta's perception, conditions appeared much more comprehensive to me than ever before and I felt like some great judge looking down upon the earth and its inhabitants with an impartial eye. And somehow these inhabitants did not seem to impress me as being in such a high state of intelligence as I had formerly been led to believe they were. Everywhere human beings were fighting and snarling amongst themselves like ferocious beasts. Their universal law granted the right of the strong to victimize the weak either through the power of physical or mental force. In fact it was considered a divine right for men of superior intellects to receive more of the fruits of the earth than those of smaller mental capacity. One-half of the world was over-fed while the other half was under-fed. Aside from a slight difference in political and religious theories, the characteristics of all the peoples of the world were the same; the predominant features being greed, vanity, egotism, intemperance, gluttony, fraud, theft, bribery, deceit, brutality, murder, superstition and filth. Even America, the much boasted land of the free, the country which God in his infinite wisdom had taken from the bad English and given to the good Americans, contained people with these traits, and the so-called great men of this country appeared like a lot of silly little pigmies engaged in an eternal quarrel over a few trinkets. Few of them could see further than their own noses unless it was to see something that would increase their own selfish desires. Equality, of which these people boasted so much, existed merely in their imaginations. The actual meaning of equality, as the Americans understood it, was that the physical and mental gladiators and weaklings alike were put into one great prize ring and given an opportunity to fight for their lives and nature's gifts. Those who were capable of battering down and trampling upon their adversaries were legally entitled to all the luxuries the earth provided and more than they could use, but those who were unfortunate enough to have been born weaklings and were unfit to cope successfully with the huge monsters in the ring, were crushed in the struggle.

Fraud was the slogan of the government officials and nearly all of them practiced it, from the highest to the lowest functionary. Money was the power behind the curtain and he who had the largest bank account was catered to like an over-grown hog surrounded by a lot of suckling pigs. "God helps those who help themselves" was their accepted motto. In other words, God helps the strong and not the weak. If the Creator gives any of His attention to the innumerable bickerings of these earthly microbes He must feel greatly flattered by having this splendid motto thrust upon Him, for according to it, one was supposed to go to the assistance of the man who could swim, while he who could not, must be left to drown.

A certain so-called great American, one Mr. Moundbuilder by name, expressed great faith in this doctrine. By employing thousands of his fellow men to do the hard work while he sat in an easy chair and confiscated the difference between what they earned and what he paid them, he accumulated several hundred million dollars for his own use. About the time he was ready to die he learned to his great sorrow that it was necessary to leave all this wealth behind. So he decided to bequeath it to only those who were sufficiently strong and willing to continue his policy of crushing the weak and incidentally erect some monuments to his own memory. After much consideration as to how the strong would derive the most benefit from his ill-gotten goods, he concluded that the weak-minded and sickly creatures who were bred from the system he abetted and the over-worked and under-fed laborer would have no opportunity to read books, so he established hundreds of Moundbuilder libraries and Moundbuilder universities in all parts of the world. To those who were already strong enough to reach a position where they could enter a university and did not really need his aid, the idea was a grand one, as it would help to increase their strength, thereby making it much easier for them to confiscate what the weaklings could produce in the future. Thus the plan to make the strong stronger, the weak weaker, and Moundbuilder immortal, would be perpetuated. But the cherished hopes of Mr. Moundbuilder in this respect will never be realized, for the day is not far distant when earthly mortals will be able to reason and then he will be recognized simply as a vain-glorious old humbug.

Another celebrated American who was classed among the great men of the day was a certain Mr. Porkpacker. This individual conducted an establishment where thousands of animals, bred for the purpose, were slaughtered daily. He had accumulated millions of blood-stained dollars in this way, and was generally conceded to be a man of great business ability. He was pointed out to the rising generation as one of the most successful men in the country whose example should be followed. Just pause a moment and think of it. Here was a man who directed a business where thousands of living things were murdered daily, set forth as a good example to follow just because he had secured millions of dollars by the operation. Oh, ye mortals! Man considers the wolf a blood-thirsty beast because he kills and eats the flesh of human beings for subsistence. What kind of a bestial monster would the wolf consider man if it saw him in his slaughter-house killing thousands of innocent beef, sheep and hogs daily? Or what would it think of civilized man if it saw him shooting myriads of tame and harmless pigeons for amusement, or broiling lobsters alive to satisfy his gormandizing desires? Perhaps the wolf would set man below its grade, if interrogated upon the subject. But tyrannical man, intoxicated by his own egotism and clinging to an elastic religion which allows him to act as he pleases, feels that his god created all these things for his special benefit. If the wolf could be questioned about the matter, it too might claim that its god permitted the killing and eating of man. Mr. Porkpacker was considered both great and good by his fellow beings, for each year he gave thousands of dollars for the erection and maintenance of the church and likewise contributed largely toward his pastor's salary. Would it be good policy then for the pastor to believe that it was wrong to kill sheep, when one of the large contributors was earning money in that business? No, no. So the church upheld the slaughter-houses and proved by the scriptures that they were simply doing what the savages had done thousands of years previously according to divine right.

Once I listened to my father preach a sermon on the beautiful innocence and purity of the lamb. For an hour he spoke feelingly of the many virtues contained by this gentle little creature and after he was through he immediately went home and filled his stomach with roasted lamb for dinner. Good Christians are anxious to know when the time will arrive that the lion and lamb will lie down together in peace and harmony. Possibly the lamb would like to know if the time will ever come when its carcass will not be utilized to appease the voracious appetite of the Christian.

In looking over the so-called great business men and financial swindlers of America they certainly presented a motley collection of physical and mental monstrosities. They spent so much of their time in the mad rush for dollars and how to spend them, that physical and mental improvement received very little attention. Their brains became stagnant for the want of proper training and their bodies were allowed to rot and become useless for the need of exercise. Some were so fat they could not walk, while others were too lean to stand. A great many of them used either canes or crutches as an aid to hobble along or vehicles to convey them from place to place. Nearly all were cripples, more or less; rheumatism, gout, paralysis and numerous other ailments being the cause of their helplessness. Few of them seemed able to understand that all these infirmities were directly caused by the want of proper exercise and from the gluttonous habit of overloading their stomachs with foods of many kinds and meat especially. Apparently it was beyond their comprehension that nature commanded them to improve their physiques for the benefit of coming generations. Men who professed to be athletes when they were past the age of thirty were considered childish, while the exponents of physical culture were generally looked upon as cranks. Eating, drinking and smoking were adapted as the best modes of recreation, while fishing and shooting pigeons, quail, squirrels and other harmless living things were regarded as good, healthy amusements. Of all the brutal methods of diversion ever adopted by man, fishing is perhaps the most cruel. If the reader does not think so, just stop for a moment and imagine yourself being hooked to a great line by the mouth and your body being drawn far up into space and into another atmosphere, there to strangle slowly to death. You would not like it, would you? Then why should the fish be treated so? Do you not suppose that the fish have feelings like yourself? Oh, if all my fellowmen could only have taken that trip around the world with Arletta and seen things as I saw them, cruelty in all its various forms would be a thing of the past. That trip and my subsequent experience with her proved to be the best education I could have received from any source. It taught me the real meaning of the word kindness, without which, not only toward human beings, but toward all living things, man will never rise above the savage state.

CHAPTER X

We were just twenty-four hours making our journey around the world, when suddenly I found myself once more gazing into the beautiful eyes of Arletta. While she bestowed a kindly look of sympathy toward me, her features plainly showed that her gentle nature had received an awful shock from the terrible and degrading sights we had witnessed. And there was much reason why this pure and lovable woman should be shocked at what we had seen, for even I, a worthless and hardened