Clover

  • A letter written to Col. Thomas Donaldson, of Philadelphia, declining an invitation to be a guest of the Clover Club of that city.

I regret that I cannot be “in clover” with you on the 28th instant.

A wonderful thing is clover! It means honey and cream,—that is to say, industry and contentment,—that is to say, the happy bees in perfumed fields, and at the cottage gate “bos” the bountiful serenely chewing satisfaction’s cud, in that blessed twilight pause that like a benediction falls between all toil and sleep.

This clover makes me dream of happy hours; of childhood’s rosy cheeks; of dimpled babes; of wholesome, loving wives; of honest men; of springs and brooks and violets and all there is of stainless joy in peaceful human life.

A wonderful word is “clover”! Drop the “c,” and you have the happiest of mankind. Drop the “r,” and “c,” and you have left the only thing that makes a heaven of this dull and barren earth. Drop the “r,” and there remains a warm, deceitful bud that sweetens breath and keeps the peace in countless homes whose masters frequent clubs. After all, Bottom was right:

“Good hay, sweet hay, hath no fellow.”

Yours sincerely and regretfully,

R. G. Ingersoll

Washington, D. C., January 16, 1883.

SUPERSTITION puts belief above goodness—credulity above virtue.

Here are two men. One is industrious, frugal, honest, generous. He has a happy home—loves his wife and children—fills their lives with sunshine. He enjoys study, thoughts, music, and all the subtleties of Art—but he does not believe the creed—cares nothing for sacred books, worships no god and fears no devil.

The other is ignorant, coarse, brutal, beats his wife and children—but he believes—regards the Bible as inspired—bows to the priests, counts his beads, says his prayers, confesses and contributes, and the Catholic Church declares and the Protestant Churches declare that he is the better man.

The ignorant believer, coarse and brutal as he is, is going to heaven. He will be washed in the blood of the Lamb. He will have wings—a harp and a halo.

The intelligent and generous man who loves his fellow-men—who develops his brain, who enjoys the beautiful, is going to hell—to the eternal prison.

Such is the justice of God—the mercy of Christ.

WHILE reading the accounts of the coronation of the Czar, of the pageants, processions and feasts, of the pomp and parade, of the barbaric splendor, of cloth of gold and glittering gems, I could not help thinking of the poor and melancholy peasants, of the toiling, half-fed millions, of the sad and ignorant multitudes who belong body and soul to this Czar.

I thought of the backs that have been scarred by the knout, of the thousands in prisons for having dared to say a whispered word for freedom, of the great multitude who had been driven like cattle along the weary roads that lead to the hell of Siberia.

The cannon at Moscow were not loud enough, nor the clang of the bells, nor the blare of the trumpets, to drown the groans of the captives.

I thought of the fathers that had been torn from wives and children for the crime of speaking like men.

And when the priests spoke of the Czar as the “God-selected man,” the “God-adorned man,” my blood grew warm.

When I read of the coronation of the Czarina I thought of Siberia. I thought of girls working in the mines, hauling ore from the pits with chains about their waists; young girls, almost naked, at the mercy of brutal officials; young girls weeping and moaning their lives away because between their pure lips the word Liberty had burst into blossom.

Yet law neglects, forgets them, and crowns the Czarina. The injustice, the agony and horror in this poor world are enough to make mankind insane.

Ignorance and superstition crown impudence and tyranny. Millions of money squandered for the humiliation of man, to dishonor the people.

Back of the coronation, back of all the ceremonies, back of all the hypocrisy there is nothing but a lie.

It is not true that God “selected” this Czar to rule and rob a hundred millions of human beings.

It is all an ignorant, barbaric, superstitious lie—a lie that pomp and pageant, and flaunting flags, and robed priests, and swinging censers, cannot change to truth.

Those who are not blinded by the glare and glitter at Moscow see millions of homes on which the shadows fall; see millions of weeping mothers, whose children have been stolen by the Czar; see thousands of villages without schools, millions of houses without books, millions and millions of men, women and children in whose future there is no star and whose only friend is death.

The coronation is an insult to the nineteenth century.

Long live the people of Russia!

MUSIC.—The savage enjoys noises—explosion—the imitation of thunder. This noise expresses his feeling. He enjoys concussion. His ear and brain are in harmony. So, he takes cognizance of but few colors. The neutral tints make no impression on his eyes. He appreciates the flames of red and yellow. That is to say, there is a harmony between his brain and eye. As he advances, develops, progresses, his ear catches other sounds, his eye other colors. He becomes a complex being, and there has entered into his mind the idea of proportion. The music of the drum no longer satisfies him. He sees that there is as much difference between noises and melodies as between stones and statues. The strings in Corti’s Harp become sensitive and possibly new ones are developed.

The eye keeps pace with the ear, and the worlds of sound and sight increase from age to age.

The first idea of music is the keeping of time—a recurring emphasis at intervals of equal length or duration. This is afterward modified—the music of joy being fast, the emphasis at short intervals, and that of sorrow slow.

After all, this music of time corresponds to the action of the blood and muscles. There is a rise and fall under excitement of both. In joy the heart beats fast, and the music corresponding to such emotion is quick. In grief—in sadness, the blood is delayed. In music the broad division is one of time. In language, words of joy are born of light—that which shines—words of grief of darkness and gloom. There is still another division: The language of happiness comes also from heat, and that of sadness from cold.

These ideas or divisions are universal. In all art are the light and shadow—the heat and cold.

OF COURSE ENGLAND has no love for America. By England I mean the governing class. Why should monarchy be in love with republicanism, with democracy? The monarch insists that he gets his right to rule from what he is pleased to call the will of God, whereas in a republic the sovereign authority is the will of the people. It is impossible that there should be any real friendship between the two forms of government.

We must, however, remember one thing, and that is, that there is an England within England—an England that does not belong to the titled classes—an England that has not been bribed or demoralized by those in authority; and that England has always been our friend, because that England is the friend of liberty and of progress everywhere. But the lackeys, the snobs, the flatterers of the titled, those who are willing to crawl that they may rise, are now and always have been the enemies of the great Republic.

It is a curious fact that in monarchical governments the highest and lowest are generally friends. There may be a foundation for this friendship in the fact that both are parasites—both live on the labor of honest men. After all, there is a kinship between the prince and the pauper. Both extend the hand for alms, and the fact that one is jeweled and the other extremely dirty makes no difference in principle—and the owners of these hands have always been fast friends, and, in accordance with the great law of ingratitude, both have held in contempt the people who supported them.

One thing we must not forget, and that is that the best people of England are our friends. The best writers, the best thinkers are on our side. It is only natural that all who visit America should find some fault. We find fault ourselves, and to be thin-skinned is almost a plea of guilty. For my part, I have no doubt about the future of America. It not only is, but is to be for many, many generations, the greatest nation of the world.

I DO not care so much where, as with whom, I live. If the right folks are with me I can manage to get a good deal of happiness in the city or in the country. Cats love places and become attached to chimney-corners and all sorts of nooks—but I have but little of the cat in me, and am not particularly in love with places. After all, a palace without affection is a poor hovel, and the meanest hut with love in it is a palace for the soul.

If the time comes when poverty and want cease for the most part to exist, then the city will be far better than the country. People are always talking about the beauties of nature and the delights of solitude, but to me some people are more interesting than rocks and trees. As to city and country life I think that I substantially agree with Touchstone:

“In respect that it is solitary I like it very well; but in respect that it is private it is a very vile life. Now, in respect it is in the fields it pleaseth me well; but in respect it is not in the court it is tedious.”

WHAT do I think of the lynchings in Georgia?

I suppose these outrages—these frightful crimes—make the same impression on my mind that they do on the minds of all civilized people. I know of no words strong enough, bitter enough, to express my indignation and horror. Men who belong to the “superior” race take a negro—a criminal, a supposed murderer, one alleged to have assaulted a white woman—chain him to a tree, saturate his clothing with kerosene, pile fagots about his feet. This is the preparation for the festival. The people flock in from the neighborhood—come in special trains from the towns. They are going to enjoy themselves.

Laughing and cursing they gather about the victim. A man steps from the crowd—a man who hates crime and loves virtue. He draws his knife, and in a spirit of merry sport cuts off one of the victim’s ears. This he keeps for a trophy—a souvenir. Another gentlemen fond of a jest cuts off the other ear. Another cuts off the nose of the chained and helpless wretch. The victim suffered in silence. He uttered no groan, no word—the one man of the two thousand who had courage.

Other white heroes cut and slashed his flesh. The crowd cheered. The people were intoxicated with joy. Then the fagots were lighted and the bleeding and mutilated man was clothed in flame.

The people were wild with hideous delight. With greedy eyes they watched him burn; with hungry ears they listened for his shrieks—for the music of his moans and cries. He did not shriek. The festival was not quite perfect.

But they had their revenge. They trampled on the charred and burning corpse. They divided among themselves the broken bones. They wanted mementos—keepsakes that they could give to their loving wives and gentle babes.

These horrors were perpetrated in the name of justice. The savages who did these things belong to the superior race. They are citizens of the great Republic. And yet, it does not seem possible that such fiends are human beings. They are a disgrace to our country, our century and the human race.

Ex-Governor Atkinson protested against this savagery. He was threatened with death. The good people were helpless. While these lynchers murder the blacks they will destroy their own country. No civilized man wishes to live where the mob is supreme. He does not wish to be governed by murderers.

Let me say that what I have said is flattery compared with what I feel. When I think of the other lynching—of the poor man mutilated and hanged without the slightest evidence, of the negro who said that these murders would be avenged, and who was brutally murdered for the utterance of a natural feeling—I am utterly at a loss for words.

Are the white people insane? Has mercy fled to beasts? Has the United States no power to protect a citizen? A nation that cannot or will not protect its citizens in time of peace has no right to ask its citizens to protect it in time of War.

OUR COUNTRY.—Our country is all we hope for—all we are. It is the grave of our father, of our mother, of each and every one of the sacred dead.

It is every glorious memory of our race. Every heroic deed. Every act of self-sacrifice done by our blood. It is all the accomplishments of the past—all the wise things said—all the kind things done—all the poems written and all the poems lived—all the defeats sustained—all the victories won—the girls we love—the wives we adore—the children we carry in our hearts—all the firesides of home—all the quiet springs, the babbling brooks, the rushing rivers, the mountains, plains and woods—the dells and dales and vines and vales.

GIFT GIVING.—I believe in the festival called Christmas—not in the celebration of the birth of any man, but to celebrate the triumph of light over darkness—the victory of the sun.

I believe in giving gifts on that day, and a real gift should be given to those who cannot return it; gifts from the rich to the poor, from the prosperous to the unfortunate, from parents to children.

There is no need of giving water to the sea or light to the sun. Let us give to those who need, neither asking nor expecting return, not even asking gratitude, only asking that the gift shall make the receiver happy—and he who gives in that way increases his own joy.

We have no right to enslave our children. We have no right to bequeath chains and manacles to our heirs. We have no right to leave a legacy of mental degradation.

Liberty is the birthright of all. Parents should not deprive their children of the great gifts of nature. We cannot all leave lands and gold to those we love; but we can leave Liberty, and that is of more value than all the wealth of India.

The dead have no right to enslave the living. To worship ancestors is to curse posterity. He who bows to the Past insults the Future; and allows, so to speak, the dead to rob the unborn. The coffin is good enough in its way, but the cradle is far better. With the bones of the fathers they beat out the brains of the children.

RANDOM THOUGHTS.—The road is short to anything we fear.

Joy lives in the house beyond the one we reach. In youth the time is halting, slow and lame. In age the time is winged and eager as a flame. The sea seems narrow as we near the farther shore.

Youth goes hand in hand with hope—old age with fear. .

Youth has a wish—old age a dread.

In youth the leaves and buds seem loath to grow.

Youth shakes the glass to speed the lingering sands.

Youth says to Time: O crutched and limping laggard, get thee wings.

The dawn comes slowly, but the Westering day leaps like a lover to the dusky bosom of the Ethiop night.

I THINK that all days are substantially alike in the long run. It is no worse to drink on Sunday than on Monday. The idea that one day in the week is holy is wholly idiotic. Besides, these closing laws do no good.

Laws are not locks and keys. Saloon doors care nothing about laws. Law or no law, people will slip in, and then, having had so much trouble getting there, they will stay until they stagger out. These nasty, meddlesome, Pharisaic, hypocritical laws make sneaks and hypocrites. The children of these laws are like the fathers of the laws. Ever since I can remember, people have been trying to make other people temperate by intemperate laws. I have never known of the slightest success. It is a pity that Christ manufactured wine, a pity that Paul took heart and thanked God when he saw the sign of the Three Taverns; a pity that Jehovah put alcohol in almost everything that grows; a great pity that prayer-meetings are not more popular than saloons; a pity that our workingmen do not amuse themselves reading religious papers and the genealogies in the Old Testament.

Rum has caused many quarrels and many murders.

Religion has caused many wars and covered countless fields with dead.

Of course, all men should be temperate,—should avoid excess—should keep the golden path between extremes—should gather roses, not thorns. The only way to make men temperate is to develop the brain.

When passions and appetites are stronger than the intellect, men are savages; when the intellect governs the passions, when the passions are servants, men are civilized. The people need education—facts—philosophy. Drunkenness is one form of intemperance, prohibition is another form. Another trouble is that these little laws and ordinances can not be enforced.

Both parties want votes, and to get votes they will allow unpopular laws to sleep, neglected, and finally refuse to enforce them. These spasms of virtue, these convulsions of conscience are soon over, and then comes a long period of neglectful rest.

THE OLD AND NEW YEAR.—For countless ages the old earth has been making, in alternating light and shade, in gleam and gloom, the whirling circuit of the sun, leaving the record of its flight in many forms—in leaves of stone, in growth of tree and vine and flower, in glittering gems of many hues, in curious forms of monstrous life, in ravages of flood and flame, in fossil fragments stolen from decay by chance, in molten masses hurled from lips of fire, in gorges worn by waveless, foamless cataracts of ice, in coast lines beaten back by the imprisoned sea, in mountain ranges and in ocean reefs, in islands lifted from the underworld—in continents submerged and given back to light and life.

Another year has joined his shadowy fellows in the wide and voiceless desert of the past, where, from the eternal hour-glass forever fall the sands of time. Another year, with all its joy and grief, of birth and death, of failure and success—of love and hate. And now, the first day of the new o’er arches all. Standing between the buried and the babe, we cry, “Farewell and Hail!”—January 1,1893.

KNOWLEDGE consists in the perception of facts, their relations—conditions, modes and results of action. Experience is the foundation of knowledge—without experience it is impossible to know. It may be that experience can be transmitted—inherited. Suppose that an infinite being existed in infinite space. He being the only existence, what knowledge could he gain by experience? He could see nothing, hear nothing, feel nothing. He would have no use for what we call the senses. Could he use what we call the faculties of the mind? He could not compare, remember, hope or fear. He could not reason. How could he know that he existed? How could he use force? There was in the universe nothing that would resist—nothing.

Most men are economical when dealing with abundance, hoarding gold and wasting time—throwing away the sunshine of life—the few remaining hours, and hugging to their shriveled hearts that which they do not and cannot even expect to use. Old age should enjoy the luxury of giving. How divine to live in the atmosphere, the climate of gratitude! The men who clutch and fiercely hold and look at wife and children with eyes dimmed by age and darkened by suspicion, giving naught until the end, then give to death the gratitude that should have been their own.

This text is from The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll (Dresden Edition, 1895), published posthumously in twelve volumes. View revision history for this transcription.