STATE HORTICLTLTURAL SOCIETY. 347 



zeal would compass sea and land to make a proselyte, and when made, 

 two-fold more the child of hell than themselves. And so it is to-day; the 

 converted Indian slops over in depravity more than his exemplary teacher 

 — you know new converts always go it strong. 



An honest man enters by the door, a thief clambers in some other way; 

 and so it is with the man who feels that his duty to his fellow man has been 

 done; a peace within tells him th^t all is well, and so feeling he passes to 

 the evergreen sliores through an open doorway of a good conscience, but 

 not so with the nation's pious; they take an appeal to the court, the mur- 

 derous Arab courts, as corrupt as their diabolical deeds. I cannot say to 

 Heaven's court, although they claim, for theirs is a court before which 

 the shivering of the naked, the cries of the starving, the grief of the 

 slandered, the groans of the dying, and the blood of their murdered vic- 

 tims, are not allowed against them in the appealed suit, nor as a charge 

 for an after hearing. Yes, they sing and pray themselves around the 

 shores of an admitted undeserved heaven — thieves climbing up another 

 way as truly as was done 1800 years ago. With this addition to-day, that 

 in the appeal prayer guilt is admitted — base crime, crime deserving dam- 

 nation a thousand times over, and the only claim for mercy is cowardice 

 — not the courage to face just retribution. Yet this same creed claims to 

 be the true reformatory element of the world with the same tenacity and 

 boldness with which its prototype confronted Jesus Christ, who termed its 

 votaries whited sepulchres full of dead men's bones. 



In the prophets' day their hands were full of blood ; in Christ's day 

 they devoured widows' homes, but in our day, aside from the plunder and 

 slaughter of defenseless Indians and negroes with whisky and tobacco? 

 degradations unknown to the ancients, the souls, the life promptings of 

 millions are destroyed. Yes, the ruling moral of the nation allows the 

 luxuries of life to be converted into elements of degrading ruin, and then 

 charter men to deal the ruin out, whilst the millions pine with hunger 

 that the waste would have supplied. To reform we must inaugurate the 

 moral that the whole duty of man is to man — a moral that will save the 

 w^aste, and by saving stop the ruin the waste makes ; and not only save 

 the waste, but grow more and better, until the cry of hunger is heard no 

 more. 



The individual man is composed of a multitude of members, which a 

 neglect of either may endanger the health or the life of the whole, and so 

 it is with the human family, each one a part of the individual whole ; the 

 ruin of any part in time is sure to bring ruin to the whole. So it has 

 been from the earliest data down, and the programme of to-day is the 

 programme of the past, the only gain, the gain of vices, l^othing is a 

 gain that does not add comfort to the needy. 



All great nations that have rose and fallen, rose on the virtue of the 

 masses, and fell by the weight of their depravities, the fall dating from 

 the time that monopolies began to revel in superabundance, while the 

 masses pined with hunger. 



