Thoughts of a fool
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THOUGHTS OF A FOOL
THOUGHTS OF A FOOL
BY
EVELYN GLADYS
CHICAGO AND LONDON
E. P. ROSENTHAL AND COMPANY
1905
CONTENTS
MY GENEALOGY 9
HOW SMART I AM 15
WHAT CAN YOU EXPECT? 27
ON THE GROUND FLOOR 41
THE MAN TO BE 53
SUCCESS 61
SHOES, PIGS, AND PROBLEMS 71
DEMOCRACY 85
PRESSING HIS TROUSERS 103
POTATOES 113
BUZZ-SAWS, SHORTCAKE, AND RIGHTS 121
IN WONDERLAND 129
INVENTORY 137
LIFE’S MESSAGE 145
SYMBOLS AND TAGS 153
OCCULTISM 163
THE FLY AND THE DONKEY 171
NET BALANCE 177
THE UNIVERSAL SECRET 183
WHERE I FOUND HIM 189
FREE LOVE 201
OSTRACIZED 213
MY FIRST CASE 229
BOILED CABBAGE 243
“IT IS FINISHED” 251
MY GENEALOGY
The reason for my foolishness was analyzed. “Her mother is to blame.”
“It is her father,” says another. “Bad training,” says the third. I
don’t know what the fourth said, but I assure you that my parents
and their ancestors are not to be held responsible for me. There is
a conviction that abides with me that I did not inherit any foolish
notions. I think all of them are my very own. For my ancestry is
replete with scintillant examples of the wisdom of the various eras
through which man has progressed.
Tracing my pedigree back to the beginning of history, and even into
prehistoric times, I find that I descend from illustrious houses on
both sides. One of my progenitors was a great military chieftain.
His brother was a high priest of Baal, at that time one of the most
respectable of the gods. His son was a learned judge. He had a daughter
whose beauty was the envy of all heathendom. She is said to have had
red hair and green eyes, and perhaps my own auburn locks--but this is
scarcely germane to the subject in hand--and she was virtuous and holy.
She avoided doing anything that could be subjected to criticism. She
would not associate with men, because men in her day were abominably
wicked. She never broke her vow to refrain from marriage; and her son
was just as holy as she was. The military chief crucified a rebel, that
his son, the judge, had condemned, and the vast majority of the people
of the country voted him a medal. By the time the judge’s son had grown
to manhood the people, who were very changeful in those ancient times,
repented of the medal their fathers had bestowed on the sapient judge,
and the son contributed it to a fund that was being gathered for the
erection of a monument to the memory of him that had been crucified.
He also helped to support the priests who were now preaching that
the man who had been done to death in his father’s day and at his
father’s judgment was a prophet and a martyr. He demonstrated his good
citizenship by helping to stone to death another rebel, who in turn
also became the central figure in a religious system. And all the way
down through my lineage, my forebears have been crucifying rebels,
and building temples in their names after a generation or two. Thus
my forefathers have always protected the gods of their day against
innovations, and erected new gods when they discovered material for
deification in the victims of their righteous wrath. At any rate, they
were always right and respectable while they lived. Respectable people
are always right. To be respectable it is necessary to choose to be
right while we live, no matter how wrong our actions may be considered
after we are dead.
If we are to take our choice between being right while we live and
being right after our death, the respectable people will always choose
to be right while they live. To be right after you die you will have
to be disreputable sometimes while you live, and thereby suffer
inconvenience. So he chose to be right while he lived.
The same story repeats itself again and again. The son following the
opinion of the public as it changed, and praising the dead one his
father helped execute. And so on along the line up to the more recent
eras, the history of which is being taught in the public schools.
The children in our schools of to-day are taught to revere the names of
the rebels of the past, and to crucify the rebels of our own day. All
of which goes to show that no matter how far I delve into the past of
my ancestry, they never violated the canons of true respectability.
Mother still has a manuscript certificate to prove that she and all
her people were loyal subjects of King James of blessed memory--and
my father has a peck or more of medals that have come down to him as
testimonials of the favor which our house has ever enjoyed in the
eyes of royalty. This genealogy ought to admit me anywhere. So I
cannot understand why the nice little daughters will not play with me.
However, the sons are not so distant, and I am just fool enough not to
care so very much about the daughters after all.
HOW SMART I AM
When a person feels he knows a thing or two which other people have
been too stupid to discover, he is a wise person. Then a feeling comes
to him--a kind of a desire to enlighten the public concerning the
things they do not know; incidentally--how smart he is.
The public, also desiring to be wise, facilitates the spreading of that
which the wise know, by establishing schools, colleges, universities,
and academies, and by instituting lecture courses. The choicest method
with which to unload wisdom is by the book route. Endowments are
secured for public libraries, book stores are opened, and publishing
houses grind out the wisdom of the wise. If your name is inscribed on
a book-cover you are then officially wise and are eligible to be a
bohemian. It gives you a license to get drunk, to borrow money, and
to be a free lover. There are only two other classes that are lucky
enough to be equal to the book-writer and also enjoy the privileges of
bohemianism--they are the actors and painters. All are included under
the name of “Artist.” The politician also claims the privilege, but he
really is not entitled to it.
There is much wisdom in the world. In order to have even a slight
comprehension of the extent of it, visit the public and private
libraries and see the heavy laden shelves. Then let a publisher tell
you the percentage of the manuscripts which are not printed, add them,
and multiply the result by ten thousand; it is doubtful if even then
you will be anywhere near the mark.
When I discovered that I was awfully smart I decided to unload my
wisdom on the public in the shape of a book. I know that I am wise, yet
I am modest. I do not think that I am so wise as the other wise people
think they are; but many facts presented themselves to convince me that
I am smarter than the wise people I meet. They are specialists; they
are up on one line, and they talk and write about that particular line.
If you ask a person who has written a book on economics, concerning
art, he will tell you that in economics he knows it all; as for
art--you will have to go elsewhere. You will rarely find a person who
will admit that he is wise in more than one thing. But I confess that
I am the proud possessor of a department storehouse of wisdom where
you can find any subject you may desire. Another point which I have
discovered in my favor is that their knowledge is not absolute. When
a person places before you the fact that he is wise you can generally
find another wise man who will prove that the facts produced by the
other fellow are not facts at all; and that number two is the one who
has the wisdom which you thought number one had; then you are likely to
hear number three contradict number two, and he in turn asks for the
applause to which wisdom is entitled.
By the discovery of old fossils a system of physical geography is
established. By the discovery of some more fossils we overturn that
system and establish another. This morning I read that more fossils
have been discovered, which means that we are wrong again. I am
convinced that there are any number of old fossils that are walking
around everywhere; and from this I conclude that wrongness is universal.
The knowledge which I possess is absolute, and of such a character
that any number of fossils are not capable of upsetting it. The
most important point which I discovered in my favor, and not to be
overlooked is, that the wise do not transfer to others the knowledge
which they claim to possess. Therefore it seems to me that the value of
what they claim to possess is overestimated.
An artisan, when he knows how to make something, it matters not what
it is, can transfer to you that which he knows. Then you too become
the possessor of that knowledge. A farmer can teach you how to farm, a
shoe-maker who knows how to make shoes can transfer his knowledge to
you; then you know how, and in turn can teach others, so they too are
able to make shoes. But suppose you are anxious to know something about
spiritualism, theosophy, or any other thing that would come under the
name of “religion”--occult, psychic, or cosmic. It requires a lifetime
to read the books on those subjects. After reading them through you
possess the knowledge that the writer of them claims that he knows
something concerning something which he calls by a certain name; but
you don’t know the something, neither do you know what the something
he claims to know is; neither do you know that he actually knows the
things he claims he knows. After all, you have only his statement that
he knows. The same is also true of all the sciences and everything
which would come under the name of wisdom. They cannot transfer their
knowledge to you.
The critic who writes and talks about art asks us to reverence him;
not for the thing he makes us know--he cannot do that. He wants us to
appreciate him for the something which he claims he possesses and which
we lack; and for the life of us we cannot comprehend what it is that
we lack. When the musical critic tells us about the atmosphere and the
lights and the shadows of the “Aria” sung by the great barytone, or
when the great critic tells us about the sharps, flats, half-notes,
and symphony which he discovered in the beautiful pictures, he has not
transferred his beautiful knowledge to us. We only stand before him
with bared heads and admire his cleverness; but he has not wisdomized
us; we did not get smart by hearing his discourse. The more we hear him
the smarter he appears to us, and the “foolisher” we feel we are.
A critic (after confessing to him that I did not know a thing he was
talking about), thinking to pacify me, once said: “Don’t despair, you
will yet cultivate an appreciation of art.” And I wonder if the people
who have cultivated a taste for olives are any happier than I who
cannot relish them. If wisdom is great from the fact that it satisfies
a craving for a cultivated desire and not a natural one, then why not
cultivate the itch for the pleasure of scratching yourself?
I have tapped the thought-waves which radiate from the greatest minds
of the world--the ones living as well as the ones who have gone before,
and the ones who are yet to come--and it does not satisfy me. I went
to see Bernard Shaw’s Candida, and while I agree with him that there