Good morning, my friends. Welcome back to the vlog. So today has been a crazy morning. I will just tell you that I'm losing my voice a little bit over the weekend. I did experience some coughing and tightness in the chest But I have been assured that I do not have you know what because I have no other symptoms no fevers nothing else And we have had a lot of weather change dust and other things happening in Arizona So I've been assured by my doctor and nurse friends that I am fine I do not have the you know what and that I just have some really bad allergies So I am in my classroom today, and it is Monday. It is 8 25 I have about 25 minutes until my first Google Meet, but I thought that I would try to do a Week in the life of a teacher online vlog because I have tried to vlog so many times in the last couple of weeks like a day in the life, and I just feel like My days look exactly the same that I'm running out of things to tell you guys that are new so This morning I I got to school a little bit late. I had two meetings I had a red meeting which is a review of existing data So we are going to be able to test a child So we were trying to review the data to make sure that the student was a little bit eligible for testing They are so that's great news And then I had a PD path meeting where I was discussing with my instructional assistant The path that I'm going to be taking for PD And so the path that I'm going to be taking is PBL and scientific topics so basically throughout the next school year I will be attending different professional developments and trainings that are themed around Project-based learning or science and then I just document it Provide evidence that I was there provide evidence that I'm using at my classroom things like that. So that was really fun and exciting Right now. I am working on my near pod for my Google Meet today I got my students started on Studies Weekly if you do not know what Studies Weekly is It is basically either a science or social studies. They used to have both I don't know if they have both anymore, but it is the resource curriculum that my school has adopted for the social studies teachers It's very cool It's got different articles videos to watch questions to answer and it's kind of like a point system So the students can earn coins as they answer questions if they answer them right they get more coins And so it is motivating for kids But that is our social studies curriculum. And so last week during my Google Meets I tried to get all my students logged into Studies Weekly So they all had an had an opportunity to get logged in So I'm hoping fingers crossed that today they all got logged in and so I created just a little Fourslide near pod just to check for understanding to check and see who actually got logged in and to see if anyone has copied My notes yet because my students are expected to watch my videos Do my assignments before or at least start my assignments before they see me during Google Meet because during Google Meet I like to check for understanding using near pod So I just created a quick little near pod. I'll show it to you guys Okay, so I just pulled information straight from Studies Weekly. So this is kind of what it looks like They read the article. There's a little Feature where they can have it read to them and they can make it slower faster So I really just pulled information from this article piece right here To create my near pod. So the first question is geography is a study of what so this is a poll To see what kids Remember so if they read this it will say geography is the study of earth and its people So they should be choosing a so it's just a poll. It doesn't really have like a right or wrong It's just to see like overall So I put rocks layers of earth and landforms which They're all part of the geosphere So that's going to confuse them. Hopefully I really want them to have paid attention. So we'll see This isn't graded by the way It's all for participation, but then this is a fill-in-the-blanks opportunity so the kids would Click and drag the words in this is just a quick check for understanding I'm trying to get some engagement in my near pods and then What are the five themes of geography just enter one that you can remember so as the kids enter them in they pop up I'm just gonna put You and then it pops up on the screen. So as the kids type in their answers They show up and then the last slide is another poll So I wanted to know did you log into studies weekly this morning? This one is supposed to be the very first slide. So I'm gonna have to go in and edit that But oh, yeah, I just click and drag it So now That is my little quick check for understand using your pod I love your pod near pod is a really cool Resource if your school has purchased it for you. I think there is a free version, but I think that my version that I have is the smallest or it might even be the free one Because I can only I only have so much capacity I could I can only store so many presentations in here before I have to delete them So I think that mine is a free version So you should be able to log in there and at least try it out and see if you like it But I'm gonna use that today I've been using it for quick check So I'm not really that concerned about saving them. I would like to have more capacity But it is what it is. I'm using it as I can also if you create your near pod assignments in Google slides You can save them as a Google slide and then when you're ready to use them in your pod just Add the activities in your pod and then you have it saved in Google slides. Anyways So I really want to do a classroom tour video But I'm waiting for a couple of things to arrive that I have ordered or that I have in Collaboration with a couple of companies one is called flexi spot I'm waiting for something very specific from them before I want to do my room tour because my room tour is going to be very like Virtual teaching heavy because that's just the environment that I'm in right now Nothing's really gonna change other than like where my teaching station is also if you've watched online or on sorry Instagram They did take our smart boards down as well as our projectors and they are installing giant television screens So I'm sort of waiting until that comes because that will change how everything kind of operates Like my desk space doesn't have to be like it is at after that So I might like turn my desk to face the window and then that way I have all of this floor space Available especially for when we come back to school if I do have to distance my students and their desks that is going to be very effective and then also my Virtual teaching station what I'd like to do is face the TV Have my Google meet station right here facing the TV So the kids would have this view behind me But I want to use the TV as a monitor so that I can see all of my kids at once So I would project my Google meet onto the television and then use that as my monitor instead of the computer screen Which I think is really cool also This is so cool. So we got our new district devices on Thursday last week They are the latest and greatest Lenovo education series think pads Which these are cool. I put my little frizzle sticker on it This is from Etsy But what I love about these is that the reason they're putting the television screens in here is because these can project to them No problemo But they've also given us these really stellar document cameras To use with our Lenovo. So I'm pretty stoked about this.  Okay Okay, so this is what the document camera looks like when it is all set up it does fold out and It can be adjusted. So it looks like this at first glance It's like what the heck is that supposed to be or what's it supposed to do? But let me show you the magic Okay, so the computer itself has a camera down underneath You just set it on the document camera and it Projects everything underneath now. The only thing I don't like about this setup is the fact that this is under here But you can adjust it But I don't like how like this thing is kind of in the way Because everything that I put on there will have to either rest on top of that thing or I'll have to like Project from down below if you guys catch my drift Um But I still think it's really cool I mean this is like definitely the latest and greatest and then like I said this will project Directly to my television screen. So potentially I can take this anywhere I want to like I can put it on a student's desk and a student can project their work I don't have to be like at a teaching station I could potentially teach from like any desk in the room any table in the room any surface in the room and Then we also have the stylus pen So we also have the stylus pen which you can use to Write with which I'm gonna have to learn where all of the tools are Oh Here we go Let's just say I want to use the red one. I can like draw right on The screen Obviously, this is messy because I need to configure with the pen and figure out all the settings and all that You can screenshot and then save it Basically the coolest stuff ever I need to always remember to put that back where it goes So, yeah, that is my new technology. So I'm actually getting ready to begin my Google Meet I've got 10 minutes. So I'm gonna go ahead and log into my Google Meet session I like to be the first one in there because then I have control Over-muting and kicking people out which I've never had to kick a student out, but unfortunately That does have to happen it will happen But I will be the one in charge of that. So I'm actually starting my Google Meet right now So I'm gonna put you guys down and I'm going to go ahead and get started with that See 10 minutes early the kids are already here trying to get in which is fine I'm gonna get started with that and then I'll check in with you guys in a minute Okay, so my first Google Meet is done Super exciting I wanted to stop real quick and show you guys my outfit of the day because I know that you guys love seeing these and you like Knowing where everything is from so I'm gonna just flip you guys around. So I am wearing this like dress from Target It's like a long I love dresses that cover my knees because I have really thick knees It's one of the pet peeves I have about my body But I like anything that will cover my knees. So this dress is from Target. It's an extra small Which I don't usually wear extra small usually wear mediums But I wanted it to fit nice and tight on the top because I wanted to wear this underneath t-shirts So I could just tie them up. I thought it would be cute They did have a few different colors, so I might go back and grab a couple more colors But I just paired it with this belt. This is super old I think it came with a pair of shorts from like coals or something and then my shoes are also from Target I wasn't going to get them, but because they're so chunky. They're actually very comfortable And I don't usually wear heels to work, but they are very comfortable And since I'm not really standing for most of the day, I thought that they would be fine And then I also got myself this Kendra Scott Necklace for my birthday. I got it from that boutique that I love in Prescott called fancy that but it is just the plain white glitter one And then my earrings are also from fancy that there are some really vintage buffalo coins and They are earrings so I got that from that boutique as well My glasses are from Glasses USA and they are linked down in my little like website shopping Link down below They're all organized by photo So if you find the picture of the glasses that you like you can click on them And they will take you directly to the link and where to buy them okay, I'm out of breath because I've been running around so what I think I want to do right now I have like two and a half hours before my next Google Meet Before I start planning for next week, which is what I like to do on Mondays is start planning What I'm gonna do in the next week. I think I'm gonna flip my desk around So that my face is facing the window because now that I don't have to worry about keeping my desk area like Adaptable for any teacher since we have all the new technology I can flip the desk and now it will not be facing this way since I don't really sit at it during the day when I have students And since it's just me in here, I'm gonna flip it to face the windows that I have more Walking space in this vicinity of the room so I think I'm gonna do that right now and then I will get hard to work at planning for next week Let's see if I can do this without knocking anything off of it.  Hopefully it will not fall off if I mount it to the cinder block wall Oh, I'm out of breath And then I think I'll probably keep this right where it is. I actually might just leave that The way it is because I don't really need it to be anything special a ton of floor space So that if I do need to distance my desks, I will be able to do so and have a little bit more room Okay, so I'm at my new desk space and this is my background which I love I love having this behind me And I also love being able to look at the window or out the window I do have my little fan here Because it does get hot But that's okay I'm loving it. I love being able to look outside when I'm working Inside Okay, so now that I've moved all of my stuff around I am going to work on Beginning to plan and prep for next week. So I think I'm going to stick with social studies for two weeks I just did two weeks of science So I think I'm going to move into two weeks of social studies this week. We started studying The five themes of geography and in the next weeks on studies weekly They have us digging deeper into each one And I think that this is like the perfect topic to be studying in social studies right now because we're online Because it is sort of more of a dry topic Rather than like actual historical Information things like that. I think that this is like the perfect thing to be working on with the kids Because it is very introductory like they need to be able to You know be able to find absolute location They need to be able to describe the human and physical characteristics of a place before they can do all of the other Skills in social studies that they need to be able to do So this is kind of perfect. We have four weeks left of digital learning Hopefully If we get to fall break and we still can't come back Which I doubt because two of the other districts in our area have opened and they're in school Um, I highly doubt we will be we will remain online But as soon as the kids come back in we will start Learning more like application stuff. So more historical events um more civics more You know economics all the good stuff So I'm gonna try to do Like I'm gonna try to get the next four weeks like prepared for So next week we'll do geography again And then we will continue with erosion and weathering And I'm gonna stick with erosion and weathering for the next couple weeks And then I'm gonna give my kids an earth science assessment I'm supposed to be done with earth science before the quarter's up But you guys there's so many things that I want to do with earth science that are more like in person That I just don't want to Do them online and then they flop. So I'm going to push Erosion as far as I can take it because I would really like to start doing demonstrations and stuff like that in my weekly videos And that's going to require a little bit more planning Than what I've been doing. So and I want to have the kids able like be able to do some projects at home some project-based stuff So I'm going to start planning for next week And then I once I have a plan in place I will stop and start grading for last week and then tomorrow and the rest of the week I will begin taping video lessons planning assignments Things like that that need to be done But studies weekly makes it really easy because it's already done. I just have to kind of Fill myself reading the article go through the questions and then have the kids answer them on their own. So that's Kind of simple. I like to put my own little twist on stuff as well So I'm going to do that for a while and then I'll catch up with you guys later Okay, guys. So it is 11 24 and I just got finished grading one of my periods quizzes from last week and I am happy to report that more than 90 percent of them scored like proficient or above so I think that would be They only missed three would be um And 80 percent and I only have like two Who got any lower than that? I have a few that have not taken it yet because They're in the list of students who are not doing anything Which is unfortunate for them. Um But I am getting ready to do my next google meet. So I'm going to start shifting all of my stuff around I um had a visit from my kindergarten teacher friend patrick Um, I want to get him on my channel at some point He is dating a friend of mine who works at my old school. So it's kind of like a built-in buddy Um, and so he popped in to say hello There are six kids down in the internet room So I don't think I mentioned this on the vlog yet, but we have an internet opportunity zone here at our school So kids can sign up to come here and use our internet. Um, and it's sort of like a child care situation So if their parents are not home with them, they have nowhere else to go They can come here for free and just sit in the internet opportunity area, which is Not the place I would want to send my child because it is very um boring looks like a testing room But anyway, there are six kids down there. We are going to take them some candy So I have some jolly ranchers and dum-dums in my candy jar So patrick's gonna pop by at like 12 15 Before I go live on instagram for lunch and we're just gonna take the kids some We're just gonna take the kids some candy just to kind of brighten up their day say hello and then I will come on Live instagram for lunch if you guys didn't know I do a live instagram teachers virtual teachers lounge A couple days a week. It's not every single day. I think it's usually mondays wednesdays and I think fridays I have No, so wednesday Monday tuesday wednesday, I think is when I'm able to do them I do have a few meetings during my lunch hour Which I might try to see if I can change those because I feel like at lunch time I should be able to stop working and eat and take a break but That's the plan for the day. Um, I feel good on grading. I have The two Grades in for the week and I think I might add a third one just for funsies and then um, I will be done grading for This week if I can finish grading today From last week that would be perfect because that means tomorrow and the rest of the week. I can just plan For the next coming weeks, which will be great If I could always grade on mondays Then I would have tuesday wednesday thursday friday to prep plan film do all that stuff So I think I might try to do that every monday It's just nice to be able to come in and like kind of hang slowly jump into school And have everything graded which is really nice because then I have all week To do makeups late work things like that So I wanted to talk a little bit about late work and redo assignments Let me just cross this thing up Okay, so my teammates and I met last week to talk about late work and reduce So we were accepting late work and reduce from pretty much anyone at any time But we realized that it wasn't very fair to the students who were getting things turned in on time And doing them correctly the first time So we decided to create a policy that is similar to what we would do in normal school So we are giving students a seven day grace period To turn in assignments or redo assignments So for example, if this week is week six I will only be accepting late work or resubmissions from last week. So week five Anything prior to week five is officially You cannot turn anything in late and you cannot redo anything from weeks four Three two and one you will have to just accept the zero But starting this week students can turn in assignments from week five as long as they're turned in by week six Friday So they can only be seven days old to be able to be graded so Technically the kids have like two weeks to do and submit and redo the assignments Which is nice because Some kids. Yeah, they had an internet issue or maybe they didn't have help on something They do have technically like 14 days from the release date Until that has to be turned in or resubmitted So it is giving kids a little bit more time But it is holding them accountable to where if they don't have it turned in by that 14th day There's nothing we can do for them. It's just going to have to be a zero And we do not do extra credit in this district. We are not allowed to give extra credit Um, now if a student's on IEP that's kind of different, but we still feel like 14 days is a lot of time to be um Giving them to do these assignments and turn them in I still do have quite a few students who are At a complete zero in the grade book for both science and social studies due to the fact that they're just not doing anything um, and they I have call parents I have emailed parents and Nothing is really changing. So that's kind of How this is working. I think I have like maybe two or three in each period So about less than 10 students out of about 80 that aren't doing anything. So I think that's pretty good They all come to my google meets, but they're not submitting assignments. So i'm not really sure why that is um But like I said, I've done as much communication as I possibly can and at this point it's kind of the balls in their court. So That's kind of what we've done as far as like Late work and reduce because we do want to let the kids have a chance to redo an assignment or a quiz um Because we would do that in class So we're going to just keep this policy rolling and then when we get back to school. We will also have that policy in place um seven day old assignments 14 days to submit them um And hopefully that will keep everybody accountable. So anyway, I'm going to transfer all my stuff up to the front Where I will be doing my google meets And uh, we'll see you guys after that All right, my friends. So it is now 156 I am done with my google meets for the day So at this point, I do have an hour between um now and my office hours I did order groceries to be picked up around two o'clock. So I am just going to pack up my stuff Run and grab my groceries real fast. I ordered the click list.  So Um, technically it's not like on the way home, but it is within like a five minute little stretch So I am going to go home and grab or sorry go grab my groceries and then go home and be there for office hours So every day, sorry monday tuesday and thursday I have office hours between three and three thirty And those are for any students or parents who are struggling with anything who have questions about an assignment Who have questions about online learning Pretty much anything that they need Um, I have office hour time for So I do have to be in a live google meet. I just go in the same google meet code That I have been using for all day. So my same google meet code works for all meets of the day Um, and so I just go in And I sit there and some days I have nobody And some days I have kids that just want to come in and chat with me Which I don't mind. Um, if they do that, but I do like to get some work done during these Um, office hours, so I'm trying to turn this light off. It's not turning off. I do like to get work done during these Um, office hours, so I've been telling the kids if they don't need help with anything or have questions That um, I will see them in the google meet the next day Because I don't want kids just coming in and like hanging out And chatting with each other, which is what they like to do So anyway, I'm going to end this vlog here. Um It's been a long day lots of Helping kids get into studies weekly, which we practiced last week. So I think they just forgot But mostly everybody got logged in today, which is great news I'm exhausted and this went from being a weekly vlog to I'm just gonna end it today because this is already like 20 minutes long So I will keep you guys posted on the classroom decor changes or not decor changes electronic changes I'm hoping they said sometime this week is when our monitors will be coming in So I'm hoping that they'll do the teachers who are teaching from school first That way we can use them because there are not very many teachers teaching on campus. A lot of them are at home And I just think it would be awesome if we could get first dibs on the new technology since we're here and we can actually use it So I'm gonna get going. I hope you guys enjoyed this vlog If you're not already don't forget to hit that subscribe button and click the notification bell so that you can be alerted anytime that I post Um, make sure that you're following me on instagram at apples and tiaras to see more daily updates and to join me for my Virtual teacher's lounge lunchtime with me today. I had Darren my very very dear friend Darren join me and that was a super blast um Every day I want you guys to think about something that made your day sparkle whether it was small Big even the smallest glisten can turn into a sparkle. So anything that was positive in your day I want you guys to be thinking about those Oh time to pick up groceries And um, all right you guys, thank you so so much for watching and I will see you in the next video Bye guys


Have you ever heard the expression a wolf in sheep's clothing? In the intricate web of human interactions, individuals who present themselves as genuinely nice and kind-hearted can sometimes conceal darker, ulterior motives and hidden agendas. Recognizing these individuals and deciphering their true intentions can be daunting, but doing so empowers us to navigate relationships with greater discernment and protect ourselves from potential harm. With that said, here are 5 psychology-backed warning signs that a seemingly nice person actually has bad intentions according to experts. Excessive Flattery One of the prominent signs of a person with potentially bad intentions is their tendency to so excessively flatter others. While compliments and praise can be genuine and well-intentioned, people who consistently shower you with exaggerated admiration and compliments may have a desire to manipulate or gain something from you. Explains clinical psychologist Dr. Melanie Greenberg. Such individuals often use flattery as a means to lower your guard and establish control over your emotions. Conditional Generosity The way of those who exhibit generosity with strings attached, once therapist Dr. Julia Brewer, a person with ulterior motives may appear exceedingly helpful and generous, but their acts of kindness often come with an unspoken expectation of reciprocation or future favors. They may keep a mental record of their deeds to exploit them later for personal gain rather than genuinely caring for your well-being. Liking this video so far, be sure to leave a comment, like and subscribe to let us know and support our work. Frequent Boundary Testing Another red flag that someone has darker hidden intentions is when they often push boundaries and test the limits of others' tolerance according to a Power of Positivity article. They make nice people intentionally engage in behavior that crosses the line of what is socially acceptable or respectful. By doing so, they engage how far they can go in manipulating and exploiting others. Though, pay close attention to how someone responds when their actions are confronted or when you assert your boundaries. If they consistently push back or show a lack of respect, it may indicate ulterior motives. Over-emphasis on control According to therapist Dr. Julia Brewer, some people may use kindness to try control you and manipulate situations to serve their own interests or put themselves in a more flattering light. Their seemingly nice demeanor may just be a mask to gain power and influence over those around them. So recognizing the constant need for control in an individual can serve as a vital sign of their hidden intentions. They may employ subtle tactics to assert dominance, such as making decisions without consulting others, imposing their opinions, micromanaging, and even emotional manipulation. Often under the guise of being nice or helpful. Inconsistent behavior Finally, but perhaps most importantly, always watch your back with people whose words don't align with their actions. A person with concealed intentions may exhibit a noticeable inconsistency, most often in how they engage in conversations about others. For example, someone who gossips about people they act friendly with are most likely insincere and inauthentic, explains therapist Hannah Rose. They often indulge in spreading rumors and stirring drama to manipulate social dynamics, create division, and divert attention from their own questionable actions. They may be overly charming and agreeable in one moment, but their actions fail to reflect their stated intentions, which indicates a lack of trustworthiness. Having the signs of hidden intentions in a person who presents themselves as nice can be challenging. However, by remaining vigilant and observant, it is possible to unveil their facade and uncover their true motives. It's important to remember that not everyone who appears kind is genuinely so. By being aware of these signs, you can protect yourself from potential harm and maintain healthier relationships based on trust and sincerity. So dear viewers, what are your thoughts on this video? What are some other warning signs you've encountered that a seemingly nice person actually has bad intentions? Let us know in the comments down below. And if you found this video helpful or valuable, please continue supporting our work by hitting like and subscribe. Till next time, Psych2Goers.


Damn, a book of Calumny, part one. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Damn, a book of Calumny by H. L. Menken. One. Pater Patrie. If George Washington were alive today, what a shining mark he would be for the whole Kamara of uplifters, forward-lookers, and professional patriots. He was the Rockefeller of his time, the richest man in the United States, a promoter of stock companies, a land grabber, an exploiter of mines, and timber. He was a bitter opponent of foreign alliances and denounced their evils in harsh specific terms. He had a liking for all forthright and pugnacious men and a contempt for lawyers, schoolmasters, and all other such obscurantists. He was not pious. He drank whiskey whenever he felt chilly and kept a jug of it handy. He knew far more profanity than Scripture and used and enjoyed it more. He had no belief in the infallible wisdom of the common people, but regarded them as inflammatory adults and tried to save the Republic from them. He advocated no sure cure for all the sorrows of the world, and doubted that such a panacea existed. He took no interest in the private morals of his neighbors. Inhabiting these states today, George would be ineligible for any office of honor or profit. The Senate would never dare confirm him. The President would not think of nominating him. He would be on trial in all the yellow journals for belonging to the invisible government, the hellhounds of plutocracy, the money power, the interests. The Sherman Act would have him in its toils. He would be under indictment by every grand jury south of Potomac. The triumphant prohibitionists of his native state would be denouncing him. He had a still at Mount Vernon as a debaucher of youth, a recruiting officer for insane asylums, a poisoner of the home. The suffragettes would be on his trail. Was sentinels posted all along the Acontink Road? The initiators and referenders would be bawling for his blood. The young college men of the nation and the New Republic would be lecturing him weekly. He would be used to scare children in Kansas and Arkansas. The Chautauquas would shiver whenever his name was mentioned. And what a chance there would be for that ambitious young district attorney who thought to shadow him on his peregrinations and grab him under the Man Act. 2. The reward of the artist. A man labors in fumes for a whole year to write a symphony in G Minor. He puts enormous diligence into it and much talent and maybe no little downright genius. It draws his blood and rings his soul. He dies in it that he may live again. Nevertheless, its final value in the open market of the world is a great deal less than that of a fur overcoat. Half a Rolls-Royce automobile or a handful of authentic hair from the whiskers of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. 3. The heroic considered. For humility and poverty in themselves, the world has little liking and less respect. In the folklore of all races, despite the sentimentalization of a basement for dramatic effect, it is always power and grandeur that count in the end. The whole point of the story of Cinderella, the most widely and constantly charming of all stories, is that the fairy prince lifts Cinderella above her cruel sisters and stepmother and so enables her to lord it over them. The same idea underlies practically all other folk stories. The essence of each of them is to be found in the ultimate triumph and exaltation of its protagonist. And of the real men and women of history, the most venerated and envied are those whose early humiliations were but preludes to terminal glories. For example, Lincoln, Whittington, Franklin, Columbus, Demosthenes, Frederick the Great, Catherine, Mary of Magdala, Moses. Even the man of sorrows, cradled in a manger and done to death between two thieves, is seen, as we part from him at last, in a situation of stupendous magnificence with infinite power in his hand. Even the Beatitudes, in the midst of their eloquent counseling of renunciation, give an unimaginable splendor as its reward. The meek shall inherit, what? the whole earth. And the poor in spirit, they shall sit upon the right hand of God. Four. The burden of humor. What is the origin of the prejudice against humor? Why is it so dangerous, if you would keep the public confidence, to make the public laugh? Is it because humor and sound sense are essentially antagonistic? Has humanity found by experience, that the man who sees the fun of life is unfitted to deal sanely with its problems? I think not. No man had more of the comic spirit in him than William Shakespeare. And yet, his serious reflections, by the sheer force of their sublime obviousness, have pushed their way into the race's arsenal of immortal platitudes. So too, with Aesop, and with Balzac, and with Dickens to come down the scale. All of these men were fundamentally humorists, and yet all of them achieved what the race has come to accept, as a penetrating sagacity. Contrary wise, many a haloed pundit has had his occasional guffaw. Lincoln, had there been no civil war, might have survived in history, chiefly, as the father of the American smuddy story. The only original art form that America has yet contributed to literature. Huxley, had he not been the greatest intellectual duelist of his age, might have been its greatest satirist. Bismarck, pursuing the gruesome trade of politics, concealed the devastating wit of a Molière. His surviving epigrams are truly stupendous. And Beethoven, after soaring to the heights of tragedy in the first movement of the Fifth Symphony, turned to the sargonic bullfiddling of the Cherzo. No, there is not the slightest disharmony between sense and nonsense, humor and respectability, despite the skittish tendency to assume that there is. But why, then, that widespread error? What actual fact of life lies behind it, giving it a specious appearance of reasonableness?  He may see a joke and love a joke, particularly when it floors and flabbergasts some person he dislikes. But the only way he can himself take part in the priming and pointing of a new one is by acting as its target, in brief. His personal contact with humor tends to fill him with an accumulated sense of disadvantage, of pricked complacency, of sudden and crushing defeat. And so, by an easy psychological process, he has led into the idea that the thing itself is incompatible with true dignity of character and intellect. Hence, his deep suspicion of jokers however adept their thrust.  He cannot separate the virtuoso of comedy from his general concept of comedy itself. And that concept is inextricably mingled with memories of foul ambuscades and mortifying hurts. And so, it is not often that he is willing to admit any wisdom in a humorist, or to condone frivolity in a sage, five, the saving grace. Let us not burn the universities, yet. After all, the damage they do might be worse. Suppose Oxford had snared and disemboweled Shakespeare. Suppose Harvard had set its stamp upon Mark Twain. Six. Moral indignation. The loud, preposterous moral crusades that so endlessly rock the Republic against the rum demon, against Sunday baseball, against Sunday moving pictures, against dancing, against fornication, against the cigarette, against all things sinful and charming. These astounding Methodist jahads offer fat clinical material to the student of mobocracy. In the long run, nearly all of them must succeed, for the mob is eternally virtuous, and the only thing necessary to get it in favor of some new and super-oppressive law is to convince it that the law will be distasteful to the minority that it envies and hates.  The farmer, who works eighteen hours a day and never gets a day off, is envious of his farmhand, who goes to the crossroads and barrels up on Saturday afternoon. Hence the virulence of prohibition among the peasantry. The hard-working householder, who on some bitter evening glances over the Saturday evening post for a square, an honest look at his wife, is envious of those gaudy drummers who go gallivanting about the country with scarlet girls. Hence the man-act. If these deviltries were equally open to all men, and all men were equally capable of appreciating them, their unpopularity would tend to wither. I often think, indeed, that the prohibitionist tub-thumpers make a tactical mistake in dwelling too much upon the evils and horrors of alcohol, and not enough upon its delights. A few enlarged photographs of first-class barrooms showing the rows of well-fed, well-dressed babooly happily moored to the brass rails, their noses and fragrant mints and hops, and their hands reaching out for free rations of olives, pretzels, cloves, pumpernickel, bismarck herring, anchovies, swertenmagen, weaners, smithfield ham, and dill pickles. Such a gallery of contentment would probably do far more execution among the dismal shudra than all the current portraits of drunkard's livers. To vote for prohibition in the face of the liver-portraits means to vote for the good of the other fellow, for even the oldest, Bibulomaniac, always thinks that he himself will escape. This is an act of altruism almost impossible to the mob man, whose selfishness is but little corrupted by the imagination that shows itself in his betters. His most austere renunciations represent no more than a matching of the joys of indulgence against the pains of hell. Religion to him is little more than synthesized fear. I venture that many a vote for prohibition comes from gentlemen who look longingly through swinging doors and pass on. In propitiation of Satan and their alert consorts, the lake of brimstone and the corrective broomstick. 7. Stable Names Why doesn't some patient drudge of a privat dozen compile a dictionary of the stable names of the great? All showdogs and race-horses, as everyone knows, have stable names. On the list of entries, a fast mare may appear as Zarina Ogla Federovna, but in the stable she is not that at all, nor even Zarina or Olga, but maybe Lil or Jenny. And a prize bulldog, champion Zoraster or Charlemagne XI on the bench, may be plain Jack or Ponto Infamy. So is celebrities of the genus Homo. Huxley's official style and appellation was the right honorable Thomas Henry Huxley, P-C-M-D-P-H-D-L-D-C-L-D-S-C-F-R-S, and his biographer tells us that he delighted in its rolling grandeur. But to his wife, he was always how? Shakespeare, to his fellows of his bank side, was Will, and perhaps Willie to Anne Hathaway. The Kaiser is another Willie. The Lades are so addressed him in their famous exchange of telegrams. The Tsar himself was Nicky in those days, and no doubt remains Nicky to his intimates today. Edgar Allen Poe was always Eddie to his wife, and Mark Twain was always youth to his. P.T. Barnum's stable name was Taylor, his middle name. Charles Lambs was Guy, Nietzsche's was Fritz, Whistler's was Jimmy, the late King Edwards was Bertie, Grover Cleveland's was Steve, Jay Pierpont Morgan's was Jack, Dr. Wilson's is Tom. Some given names are surrounded by a whole flotilla of stable names. Henry, for example, is softened variously into Harry, Hen, Hank, Hal, Henry, Henry, Henri, and Heiney. Which did Anne Bolin use when she cooed into the suspicious ear of Henry they? To which did Henric Ibsen answer at the domestic hearth? It is difficult to imagine his wife calling him Henric. The name is harsh, clumsy, razor-edged. But did she make it hen or rick or neither? What was Bismarck to the first teen, and to the mother he so vastly feared? Otkin? Somehow it seems impossible. What was Grant to his wife, surely not Ulysses? And Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Rutherford B. Hayes? Was Robert Browning ever Bob? Was John Wesley ever Jack? Was Emanuel Swendenborg ever Manny? Was Tadayusk Koskvisko ever Teddy? A fair field of inquiring vites. Let some laborious assistant professor explore and chart it. There will be more of human nature in his report than in all the novels ever written. Eight. The Jews. The Jews, like the Americans, labor under a philosophical dualism. And in both cases, it is a theological heritage. On the one hand, there is the idealism that is lovely and uplifting and will get a man into heaven. And on the other hand, there is the realism that works. The fact that the Jews cling to both, thus running as it were, upon two tracks, is what makes them so puzzling now and then to the golem. In one aspect, they stand for the most savage practicality. In another aspect, they are dreamers of an almost fabulous other worldliness. My own belief is that the essential Jew is the idealist. That his occasional flashing of hyena teeth is no more than a necessary concession to the harsh demands of the struggle for existence. Perhaps in many cases, it is due to an actual corruption of blood. The Jews come from the Levant, and their women were exposed for many centuries to the admiration of Greek, Arab, and Armenian. The shark that a Jew can be at his worst is simply a Greek or Armenian at his best. As a statement of post-mortem and superterrestrial fact, the religion that the Jews have foisted upon the world seems to me to be as vast a curse as the influenza that we inherit from the Tartars, or the democratic fallacies set afloat by the French Revolution. The one thing that can be said in favor of it is that it is not true, and yet we suffer from it almost as much as if it were true, but with it, encasing it and preserving it, there has come something that is positively valuable, something indeed that is beyond all price, and that is Jewish poetry. To compare it to the poetry of any other race is wholly impossible. It stands completely above all the rest. It is as far beyond the next best as German music is beyond French music, or French painting beyond English painting, or the English drama beyond the Italian drama. There are single chapters in the Old Testament that are worth all the poetry ever written in the New World and nine-tenths of that written in the Old. The Jews of those ancient days had imagination. They had dignity. They had ears for sweet sound. They had above all the faculty of grandeur. The stupendous music that issued from them has swept their barbaric deminology along with it, setting it not the collective intelligence of the human species.  A race of lawgivers, Bosch. Leviticus is as archaic as the code of Manu, and the Decalogue is a fossil. A race of seers, Bosch again. The God they saw survives only as a bogeyman, a theory, in uneasy and vexatious ghost. A race of traitors and sharpers, Bosch a third time. The Jews are as poor as the Spaniards. But a race of poets, my lords, a race of poets. It is a vision of beauty that has ever haunted them, and it has been their destiny to transmit that vision, enfeebled perhaps, but still distinct, to other and lesser peoples, that life might be made softer for the sons of men, and the goodness of the Lord God, whoever he may be, might not be forgotten. Nine. The Comstockian premise. It is argued against certain books, by virtuosity of moral alarm, that they depict vice as attractive. This recalls the king who hanged a judge for deciding that an archbishop was a mammal. Ten. Labial infamy. After five years of search, I have been able to discover but one book in English upon the art of kissing. And that is a very feeble treatise by a savant of York, Pennsylvania, Dr. R. McCormick Sturgeon. There may be others, but I have been quite unable to find them. Kissing, for all one hears of it, has not attracted the scientists and literati. One compares its meager literature with the endless books upon the other phenomena of love, especially divorce and obstetrics. Even Dr. Sturgeon, pioneering bravely, is unable to get beyond a sentimental and trivial view of the thing he vivisects. And so his book is no more than a compendium of mush. His very description of the act of kissing is made up of sonorous gavel about heaving bosoms, red lips, electric sparks and such like imaginings. What reason have we for believing, as he says, that the lungs are strongly expanded during the act? My own casual observation inclines me to hold that the opposite is true, that the lungs are actually collapsed in a pseudo-asmatic spasm. Again, what is the ground for arguing that the lips are full ripe and red? The real effect of the emotions that accompany kissing is to empty the superficial capillaries and so produce a lead-in pallor. As for such salient symptoms as the temperature, the pulse and the rate of respiration, the learned pundit passes them over without a word. Mrs. Elsie Clues Parsons would be a good one to write a sober and accurate treatise upon kissing. Her books upon the family and fear and conventionality indicate her possession of the right sort of learning. Even better would be a work by Hablock Ellis, say, in three or four volumes. Ellis has devoted his whole life to illuminating the mysteries of sex, and his collection of materials is unsurpassed in the world. Surely there must be an enormous mass of constructive stuff about kissing in his card indexes, letter files, book presses, and archives. Just why the kiss as we know it should have attained to its present popularity in Christendom is probably one of the things past finding out. The Japanese, a very affectionate and sentimental people, do not practice kissing in any form. They regard the act, in fact, with an aversion matching our own aversion to the rubbing of noses. Nor is it in vogue among the Muslims, nor among the Chinese who countens it only as between mother and child. Even in parts of Christendom, it is girt about by rigid taboos, so that its practice tends to be restricted to a few occasions. Two Frenchmen or Italians when they meet kiss each other on both cheeks. One used to see indeed many pictures of General Joffrey thus busing the heroes of Verdun. There even appeared in print a story to the effect that one of them objected to the scratching of his mustache. But imagine two Englishmen kissing or two Germans. As well imagine the former kissing the latter. Such a display of affection is simply impossible to man of northern blood. They would die with shame if caught at it. The Englishman like the American never kisses if he can help it. He even regards it as bad form to kiss his wife in a railway station or in fact anywhere in sight of a third party. The Latin has no such compunctions. He leaps to the business regardless of place or time. His sole concern is with the lady. Once in driving from Nice to Monte Carlo along the lower Cornish road I passed a hundred or so open taxi cabs containing man and woman and fully 75% of the men had their arms around their companions and were kissing them. These were not peasants remember but well-to-do persons in England. Such a scene would have caused a great scandal. In most American states the police would have charged the offenders with drawn revolvers. The charm of kissing is one of the things I have always wondered at. I do not pretend of course that I have never done it. Mere politeness forces one to it. There are women who sulk and grow bellicose unless one at least makes the motions of kissing them. But what I mean is that I have never found the act a tenth part as agreeable as poets the authors of musical comedy librettos and on the contrary side chaperones and the gendarmerie make it out. The physical sensation far from being pleasant is intensely uncomfortable a suspension of respiration indeed quickly resolves itself into a feeling of suffocation. And the posture necessitated by the approximation of lips and lips is unfailingly a constrained and ungraceful one. Theoretically a man kisses a woman perpendicularly with their eyes those windows of the soul synchronizing exactly. But actually on account of the incompressibility of the nasal cartelages he has to incline either his or her head to an angle of at least 60 degrees and the result is that his right eye gazes insanely at this space between her eyebrows while his left eye is fixed upon some vague spot behind her. An instantaneous photograph of such a maneuver taken at the moment of incidents would probably turn the stomach of even the most romantic man and force him in sheer self-respect to renounce kissing as he has renounced leapfrog and walking on stilts. Only a woman for women are quite devoid of aesthetic feeling could survive so damning a picture but the most embarrassing moment in kissing does not come during the actual kiss for at that time the sensation of suffocation drives out all purely psychical feelings but immediately afterward. What is one to say to the woman then? The occasion obviously demands some sort of remark one has just received in theory a great boon the silence begins to make itself felt there stands the fair one obviously waiting is one to thank her certainly that would be too transparent a piece of hypocrisy to flaccid a banality is one to tell her that one loves her obviously there is danger in such assurances and decide one usually doesn't and a lie is a lie or is one to descend to chatty common places the weather literature politics the war the practical impossibility of solving the problem leads almost inevitably to a blunder far worse than any merely verbal one one kisses her again and then again and so on and so on the ultimate result is satiety repugnance disgust even the girl herself gets enough and of part one part two of damn a book of Calamity this liver box recording is in the public domain damn a book of Calamity by H. L. Lincoln part two eleven a true aesthetic Herbert Spencer's objection to swearing of which so much has been made by moralists was not an objection to its sinfulness but an objection to its charm in brief he feared comfort, satisfaction, joy the boarding houses in which he dragged out his grey years were as bare and cheerless as so many piano boxes he avoided all the little vices and dissipations which make human existence bearable good eating good drinking dancing tobacco poker poetry the theater personal adornment flandering adultery he was insanely suspicious of everything that threatened to interfere with his work even when that work halted him by the sheer agony of its monotony and it became necessary for him to find recreation he sought out some recreation that was as unattractive as possible in the hope that it would quickly drive him back to work again having to choose between methods of locomotion on his holidays he chose going afoot the most laborious and least satisfying available brought to bay by his human need for a woman he directed his fancy toward George Elliot probably the most unappetizing woman of his race and time drawn irresistibly to music he avoided the fifth symphony and Tristan Unisled and joined the crowd of old maids singing part songs around a cottage piano John Tyndall saw clearly the effect of all this and protested against it saying he'd be a much nicer fellow if he had a good swear now and then that is if he let go now and then if he yielded to his healthy human instincts now and then if he went on some sort of debauch now and then but what Tyndall overlooked was the fact that the meagerness of his recreations was the very element that attracted Spencer to them obsessed by fear and it turned out to be well grounded that he would not live long enough to complete his work he regarded all joy as a temptation a corruption, a sin of scarlet he was a true aesthetic he could sacrifice all things of the present for one thing of the future all things real for one thing ideal 12. On Lying Lying stands on a different plane from all other moral offenses not because it is intrinsically more heinous or less heinous but simply because it is the only one that may be accurately measured forgetting unwitting error which has nothing to do with morals a statement is either true or not true this is a simple distinction and relatively easy to establish but when one comes to other derelictions the thing grows more complicated the line between stealing and not stealing is beautifully vague whether or not one has crossed it is not determined by the objective act such delicate things is motive and purpose so again with assault, sex offenses, and even murder there may be surrounding circumstances which greatly condition the moral quality of the actual act but lying is specific, exact, scientific its capacity for precise determination indeed makes its presence or non-presence the only accurate gauge of other immoral acts murder, for example, is nowhere regarded as a moral save it involves some repudiation of a social compact of a tacit promise to refrain from it in brief, some deceit, some perfidy, some lie one may kill freely when the path is formally broken as in war one may kill equally freely when it is broken by the victim as in an assault by a highwayman but one may not kill so long as it is not broken and one may not break it to clear the way some form of lie is at the bottom of all other recognized crimes from seduction to embezzlement curiously enough this master of morality at them all is not prohibited by the Ten Commandments nor is it penalized in its pure form by the code with any civilized nation only savages have laws against lying, per se 13. History it is the misfortune of humanity that its history is chiefly written by third-rate men the first-rate man seldom has any impulse to record and philosophize his impulse is to act life to him is an adventure not a syllogism or an autopsy thus the writing of history is left to college professors moralists, theorists, dunderheads few historians, great or small have shown any capacity for the affairs they presumed to describe and interpret Gibbon was an inglorious failure as a member of parliament Vucitides made such a mess of his military or rather naval command that he was exiled from Athens for 20 years and finally assassinated Flavius Josephus, serving as governor of Galilee lost the whole province to the Romans and had to flee for his life Momsen, elected to the Prussian land tag, flirted with the socialist how much better we would understand the habits and nature of man if there were more historians like Julius Caesar or even like Niccolò Machiavelli remembering the sharp and devastating character of their rough notes think what marvelous histories Bismarck, Washington and Frederick the Great might have written such men are privy to the facts the usual historians have to depend on deductions, rumors, guesses again, such men know how to tell the truth, however unpleasant they are wholly free of that purile moral obsession which marks the professor but they so seldom tell it well, perhaps some of them have and their penalty is that they are damned and forgotten 14. The Curse of Civilization a civilized man's worst curse is social obligation the most unpleasant act imaginable is to go to a dinner party one could get far better food, taking one day with another at child's or even in a Pennsylvania railroad dining car one could find far more amusing society in a bar room or a bordello or even at the YMCA no hostess in Christendom ever arranged a dinner party of any pretensions without including at least one intensely disagreeable person a vain and vapid girl, a hideous woman, a follower of baseball a stockbroker, a veteran of some war or other, a gaveler of politics and one is enough to do the business 15. Eugenics the error of the eugenicists lies in the assumption that a physically healthy man is the best fitted to survive this is true of rats and the pedicule but not of the higher animals, for example horses, dogs, and men in these higher animals one looks for more subtle qualities chiefly of the spirit imagine estimating philosophers by their chest expansions their blood pressures, their Wasserman reactions the so-called social diseases over which eugenicists raise such a father surely not the worst curses that mankind has to bear some of the greatest men in history have had them whole nations have had them and survived the truth about them is that save in relatively rare cases they do very little damage the horror in which they are held is chiefly a moral horror and its roots lie in the assumption that they cannot be contracted without sin nothing could be more false many great moralists have suffered from them the gods are always up to such sardonic waggeries moreover, only one of them is actually inheritable and that one is transmitted relatively seldom but among psychic characters one finds that practically all are inheritable for example, stupidity, fragility, avarice, peck-sniffery lack of imagination, hatred of beauty, meanness, poultrunery petty brutality, smallness of soul I here present, of course, the Puritan complex there flashes up the image of the good man that libel on God and the devil consider him well if you had to choose a sire for a first-rate son would you choose a consumptive Jew with the fires of eternity in his eyes or an Iowa right thinker with his hold full of bibles and breakfast food? 16. The Jaco's Gods what humor could be wilder than that of life itself? Franz Schubert on his deathbed read the complete works of J. Fenimore Cooper John Millington Singe wrote Writers to the Sea on a second-hand $40 typewriter and wore a celluloid collar Richard Wagner made a living during four lean years arranging Italian opera arias for the cornet Herbert Spencer sang bass in a barbershop quartet and was in love with George Elliott William Shakespeare was a social pusher and bought him a bogus coat of arms Martin Luther suffered from the Jim Jams one of the greatest soldiers in Hungarian history was named Hunyadi Janus 17. War superficially war seems an ordinantly cruel and wasteful and yet it must be plain on reflection that the natural evolutionary process is quite as cruel and even more wasteful man's chief efforts in times of peace are devoted to making that process less violent and sanguinary civilization indeed may be defined as a constructive criticism of nature and Huxley even called it a conspiracy against nature man tries to remedy what must inevitably seem the mistakes and to check what must inevitably seem the wanton cruelty of the creator in war man abandons these efforts and so becomes Morjovian the Greeks never represented the inhabitants of Olympus as suckering and protecting one another but always is fighting and attempting to destroy one another no form of death inflicted by war is one half so cruel as certain forms of death that are seen in hospitals every day 18. Moralist and Artist I dredge up the following from an essay on George Bernard Shaw by Robert Blatchford the English Socialist Shaw is something much better than a wit much better than an artist much better than a politician or a dramatist he is a moralist, a teacher of ethics, austere, relentless, fiercely earnest what could be more idiotic? than Cotton Mather was a greater man than Johann Sebastian Bach than the average college critic of the arts with his balder dash about inspiration and moral purpose is greater than George Brands or Saint Bouff than Eugene Brayou with his YMCA platitudinizing is greater than Mollier with his ethical agnosticism his ironical determinism this childish respect for moralizing runs through the whole of contemporary criticism at least in England and America Blatchford differs from the professional critics only in the detail that he can actually write what he says about Shaw has been said in heavy and suffocating words by almost all of them and yet nothing could be more untrue the moralist at his best can never be anything save a sort of journalist moral values change too often to have any serious validity or interest what is a virtue today is a sin tomorrow but the man who creates a thing of beauty creates something that lasts 19. Actors in France they call an actor a matouvou which anglicized means hey have you seen me the average actor holds the mirror up to nature and sees in it only the reflection of himself I take the words from a late book on the so-called art of mime by the editor of a magazine devoted to the stage the learned author evades plumbing the psychological springs of this astounding and almost invariable vanity this endless bumptiousness of the kebatan in all climes and all ages his one attempt is banal a foolish public makes much of him with all due respect nonsense the larval actor is full of hot and rancid gases long before a foolish public has had a fair chance to make anything of him at all and he continues to emit them long after it has tried him condemned him and bitten him to be damned there is indeed little choice in the virulence of their self-respect between a Broadway star who is slobbered over by press agents and fat women and the poor ham who plays thinking parts in a number seven road company the two are alike charged to the limit one more ohm or molecule and they would burst actors begin where militia kernels fifth avenue rectors and shataka orators leave off the most modest of them barring perhaps a few unearthly traders to the craft matches the conceit of the solitary pretty girl on a slow ship in their lofty eminence of pomposity they are challenged only by Anglican bishops and grand opera tenors I have spoken of the danger they run of bursting in the case of tenors it must sometimes actually happen even the least of them swells visibly as he sings and permanently as he grows older but why are actors in general such blatant and obnoxious asses such errant postures and windbags why is it as surprising to find an unassuming and likeable fellow among them as to find a Greek without fleas the answer is quite simple to reach it one needs but consider the type of young man who normally gets stage-struck is he taking averages the intelligent alert ingenuous ambitious young fellow is he the young fellow with ideas in him and a yearning for hard and difficult work is he the diligent reader the hard student the eager inquirer no he is in the overwhelming main the neighborhood fop and bow the human clothes horse the nimble squire of dames the use of more active mind emerging from adolescence turned to business and the professions the men that they admire and seek to follow are men of genuine distinction men who have actually done difficult and valuable things men who have fought good if often dishonest fights and are respected and envied by other men the stage-struck youth is of a softer and more shallow sort he seeks not a chance to test his metal by hard and useful work but an easy chance to shine he craves the regard not of men but of women he is in brief a hollow and incompetent creature a strutter and poser a pop and j a pretty one I thus beg the question but explain the actor he is this silly youngster grown older but otherwise unchanged an initiate of a profession requiring little more information culture or capacity for ratios in nation than that of the lady of joy and surrounded in his workshop by men who are as stupid and vain and as empty as he himself will be in the years to come he suffers an arrest of development and little intelligence that may happen to be in him gets no chance to show itself the result in its usual manifestation is the average bad actor a man with a cerebrum of a floor walker and the vanity of a fashionable clergyman the result in its highest and holiest form is the actor-manager with his retinue of press agents, parasites, and worshipping wenches perhaps the most preposterous and awe-inspiring donkey that civilization has yet produced to look for sense in a fellow of such equipment and such a history would be like looking for serviettes in a sailor's boarding house by the same token the relatively greater intelligence of actresses is explained they are at their worst, quite as bad as the generality of actors there are she-stars who are all temperament and balder-dash intellectually speaking, beggars on horseback servant girls well washed but no one who knows anything about the stage need to be told that it can show a great many more quick-minded and self-respecting women than intelligent men and why? simply because its women are recruited in the main from a class much above that which furnishes its men it is after all not a natural for a woman of considerable intelligence to aspire to the stage it offers her indeed one of the most tempting careers that is open to her she cannot hope to succeed in business and in the other professions she is an unwelcome and much scoffed at intruder but on the boards she can meet men on an equal footing it is therefore no wonder that women of a relatively superior class often take to the business once they embrace it their superiority to their male colleagues is quickly manifest all movements against puerility and imbecility in the drama have originated not with actors but with actresses that is, in so far as they have originated among stage-folks at all the Ibsen pioneers were such women as Helena Mojeska, Agnes Sorma and Janet Ochurch the men all hung back Ibsen it would appear of the superior alertness and took shrewd advantage of it at all events his most tempting acting parts are feminine ones the girls of the stage demonstrate this tendency against great difficulties they have to carry a heavy handicap in the enormous number of women who seek the footlights merely to advertise their real profession but despite all this anyone who has the slightest acquaintance and hope will testify that taking one with another the women have vastly more brains than the men and are appreciably less vain and idiotic relatively few actresses of any rank marry actors they find close communion with the strutting brethren psychologically impossible stockbrokers, dramatists and even theatrical managers are greatly to be preferred twenty Gustav Le Bon and his school in their discussions of the psychology of crowds have put forward the doctrine that the individual man cheek by jowl with the multitude drops down an intellectual peg or two and so tends to show the mental and emotional reactions of his inferiors it is thus that they explain the well-known violence and imbecility of crowds the crowd, as a crowd performs acts that many of its members as individuals would never be guilty of its average intelligence is very low it is inflammatory, vicious, idiotic almost simian crowds properly worked up by skillful demagogues are ready to believe anything and to do anything Le Bon, I dare say is partly right but also partly wrong his theory is probably too flattering to the average numbskull he accounts for the extravagance of crowds and the assumption that the numbskull along with the superior man is knocked out of his wits by suggestion that he too does things in association that he would never think of doing singly the fact may be accepted but the reasoning raises a doubt the numbskull runs amok in a crowd not because he has been inoculated with new rascality by the mysterious crowd influence but because his habitual rascality now has its only chance to function safely in other words the numbskull is vicious but a paltrune he refrains from all attempts at lynching acapella not because it takes suggestion to make him desire to lynch but because it takes the protection of a crowd to make him brave enough to try it what happens when a crowd cuts loose is not quite what Le Bon and his followers describe the few superior men in it are not straight way reduced to the level of the underlying stoneheads on the contrary they usually keep their heads and often make efforts to combat the crowd action but the stoneheads are too many for them the fence is torn down or the blackamore is lynched and why? not because the stoneheads normally virtuous are suddenly criminally insane nay but because they are suddenly conscious of the power lying in their numbers because they suddenly realize that their natural viciousness and insanity may be safely permitted to function in other words the particular swinishness of a crowd is permanently resident in the majority of its members in all those members that is who are naturally ignorant and vicious perhaps 95% all studies of mob psychology are defective in that they underestimate this viciousness they are poisoned by the prevailing delusion that the lower orders of men are angels this is nonsense the lower orders of men are incurable rascals either individually or collectively decency, self-restraint the sense of justice, courage these virtues belong only to a small minority of men this minority never runs amok its most distinguishing character in truth is its resistance to all running amok the third rate man he may wear the false whiskers of a first rate man may always be detected by his inability to keep his head in the face of an appeal to his emotions a whoop strips off his disguise end of section 2 part 3 of Damn, a book of Calumne this liver box recording is in the public domain Damn, a book of Calumne by H. L. McGinn part 3 21 an American philosopher as for William Jennings Bryant of whom so much pithful pro and con has been written the whole of his political philosophy may be reduced to two propositions neither of which is true the first is the proposition that the common people are wise and honest and the second is the proposition that all persons who refuse to believe it are scoundrels take away the two and all that would remain of Jennings would be a somewhat greasy bald headed man with his mouth open 22 clubs men's clubs have but one intelligible purpose to afford asylum to fellows who haven't any girls hence their general gloom their air of lost causes their prevailing acrimony no man would ever enter a club if he had an agreeable woman to talk to this is particularly true of married men those of them that one finds in clubs answer to a general description they have wives too unattractive to entertain them and yet too watchful to allow them to seek entertainment elsewhere the bachelors in the main belong to two classes A those who have been unfortunate in that war and are still too sore to show any new enterprise and B those so lacking in charm that no woman will pay any attention to them is it any wonder that the men one thus encounters in clubs are stupid and miserable creatures and that they find their pleasure in such banal sports as playing cards drinking high balls, shooting pool and reading the barbershop weeklies the day a man's mistress is married one always finds him at his club 23 Podellus adernum despite the common belief of women to the contrary fully 95% of all married men at least in America are faithful to their wives this however is not due to virtue but chiefly to lack of courage it takes more initiative and daring to start up an extra legal affair than most men are capable of they look and they make plans but that is as far as they get another salient cause of cannubial rectitude is lack of means a mistress costs a great deal more than a wife in the open market of the world she can get more it is only the rare man who can conceal enough of his income from his wife to pay for a morganatic affair and most of the men clever enough to do this are too clever to be intrigued I have said that 95% of married men are faithful I believe the real proportion is near 99% what women mistake for infidelity is usually no more than vanity every man likes to be regarded as a devil of a fellow and particularly by his wife on the one hand it diverts her attention from his more genuine shortcomings and on the other hand it increases her respect for him moreover it gives her a chance to win the sympathy of other women and so satisfies that craving for martyrdom which is perhaps women's strongest characteristic a woman who never has any chance to suspect her husband feels cheated and humiliated she is in the position of those patriots who are induced to enlist for a war by pictures of cavalry charges and then find themselves told off to wash the general's underwear 24. A Theological Mystery the moral order of the world runs aground on hay fever of what use is it, why was it invented? cancer and hydrophobia at least may be defended on the ground that they kill killing may have some benign purpose some esoteric significance, some comic use but hay fever never kills, it merely tortures no man ever died of it is the torture then an end in itself? does it break the pride of strutting snorting man and turn his heart to the things of the spirit? nonsense a man with hay fever is a natural criminal he curses the gods and defies them to kill him he even curses the devil is it's use then to prepare him for happiness to come for the vast ease and comfort of convalescence? nonsense again the one thing he is sure of the one thing he never forgets for a moment is that it will come back again next year 25. The Test of Truth the final test of truth is ridicule very few religious dogmas have ever faced it and survived Huxley laughed the devils out of the gathering swine dowy's whiskers broke the back of dowyism not the laws of the United States but the mother-in-law joke brought the Mormons to compromise and surrender not the horror of it but the absurdity of it killed the doctrine of infant damnation but the razor edge of ridicule is turned down by the tough hide of truth how loudly the barber surgeons laughed at Harvey and how vainly what clown ever brought down the house like Galileo or Columbus or Jenner or Lincoln or Darwin they are laughing at Nietzsche yet 26. Literary and Decenties the low graceless humor of names on my shelf of poetry arranged by the alphabet Coleridge and J. Gordon Colgler are next-door neighbors Mrs. Hemons is beside Lawrence Hope Walt Whitman rubs elbows with Ella Wheeler Wilcox Robert Browning with Richard Burton Rosetti with Cale Young Rice Shelley with Clinton Scholar Wordsworth with Georgie Woodbury John Keats with Herbert Kaufman Ibsen on the shelf of dramatists is between Victor Hugo and Jerome K. Jerome Suderman follows Harriet Beecher Stowe Madderlink, Shoulders Percy McKay Shakespeare is between Sardo and Shaw Euripides and Clyde Fitch Upton Sinclair and Sophocles Escalus and F. Anstay Denunzio and Richard Harding Davis Augustus Thomas and Tolstoy more alphabetical humor Gerhard Hauptmann and Robert Hitchens Voltaire and Henry Van Dyke Flaubert and John Fox Jr Balzac and John Kendrick Bangs Ostrowski and E. Phillips Oppenheim Eleanor Glenn and Théophile Gauthier Joseph Conrad and Robert W. Chambers Zola and Zanguel Midway on my scant shelf of novels between George Moore and Frank Norris there is just room enough for the two volumes of Daringforth by Frank A. Munsey 26. Virtuous Vandalism A hearing of Schumann's B-flat symphony of late otherwise a very caressing experience was corrupted by the thought that music would be much the gainer if musicians could get over their superstitious reverence for the mere text of the musical classics that reverence indeed is already subject to certain limitations hands have been laid at one time or another upon most of the immortal oratorios and even the awful name of Bach has not dissuaded certain German editors but it still swathes the standard symphonies like some vast armor of rubber and angel food and so imagination has to come to the aid of the flutes and fiddles when the band plays Schumann, Mozart, and even parts of Beethoven one discerns often quite clearly what the reverend master was aiming at but just as often one fails to hear it in precise tones this is particularly true of Schumann whose deficiency in instrumental cunning has passed into properb and in the B-flat symphony, his first venture into the epic form his failures are most numerous more than once, obviously attempting to roll up tone into a moving climax he succeeds only in muddling his colors I remember one place at the moment I can't recall where it is where the strings and the brass storm at one another in furious figures the blast of the brass, as the Bodvillian say, gets across but the fiddles merely scream absurdly the whole passage suggests the bleeding of sheep in the midst of a vast bellowing of bulls Schumann overestimated the horse power of fiddle music so far at the Eastering or underestimated the full kick of the trumpets other such soft spots are well known why then go on parroting Gaussheres that Schumann himself were he alive today would have long since corrected why not call an ecumenical council appoint a commission to see such things and then forget the sacrilege as a self-elected delicate from heathendom I nominate Dr. Richard Strauss as chairman when all is said and done Strauss probably knows more about writing for orchestra than any other two men that ever lived not excluding Wagner surely no living rival as Dr. Sunday would say has anything on him if after hearing a new composition by Strauss one turns to the music one is invariably surprised to find how simple it is the performance reveals so many purple moments so staggering an array of lusciousness that the ear is bemused into detecting scales and chords that never were on land or sea what the exploratory eye subsequently discovers perhaps is no more than our stout and comfortable old friend the highly world-born half-sprout Madame Sider with a vine leaf or two of C sharp minor or F major in her hair the trick lies in the tone color in the flabbergasting magic of the orchestration there are some moments in Electra when sounds come out of the orchestra that tug at the very roots of the hair sounds so unearthly that they suggest a caroling of dragons or beer fish and yet they are made by the same old fiddles that play the Kaiser Quartet and by the same old trombones at the Valkyrie ride like Witch's broomsticks and by the same old flutes that sob and snuffle in Tiddles serenade and in parts of Fjordsnot but Rojay must be rewritten by Strauss before a fjordshot is described there is one place where the harps taking a running start from the scrolls of the violins leaps slam bang through or is it into the firmament of heaven once when I heard this passage played at a concert a woman sitting beside me rolled over like a log and had to be hauled out by the ushers yes Strauss is the man to re-orchestrate the symphonies of Schumann particularly the B flat the Rhine-ish and the fourth I doubt that he could do much with Schubert for Schubert though he is dead nearly a hundred years yet remains curiously modern the unfinished symphony is full of exquisite color effects consider for example the rustling figure for the strings in the first movement and as for the C major it is so stupendous a debauch of melodic and harmonic beauty that one scarcely notices the colors at all in its slow movement mere loveliness and music probably says all that will ever be said but what of old Ludwig? har har here we begin pulling the whiskers of ball himself nevertheless I am vandal enough to wonder on sad Sunday mornings what Strauss could do with the first movement of the C minor more Strauss ever does it and lets me hear the result just once I'll be glad to serve six months in jail with him but in Munich of course and with a daily visitor's pass for Cousin Schor the conservatism which shrinks at such barbarities is the same conservatism which demands that the very typographical errors in the Bible be swallowed without salt and that has thus made a purile dreambook of parts of Holy Ritt if you want to see how far this last madness has led Christendom Astray take a look at an article by Abraham Mitri Ribbani an intelligent Syrian in the Atlantic Monthly of a couple of years ago the title of the article is the Oriental Manor of Speech and in it Ribbani shows how much of mere Oriental extravagance of metaphor is to be found in many celebrated passages and how little of literal significance this Oriental extravagance of course makes for beauty but as interpreted by pundits of no imagination it surely doesn't make for understanding what the Western world needs is a Bible in which the idioms of the Aramaic of thousands of years ago are translated into the idioms of today the man who undertook such a translation to be sure would be uproariously denounced just as Luther and Wycliffe were denounced but he could well afford to face the storm the various revised versions including the modern speech New Testament of Richard Francis Weymouth leave much to be desired they rectify many knife blunders and so make the whole narrative more intelligible but they still render most of the tropes of the original literally these tropes are not the substance of Holy Rift they are simply its color in the same way Myrtone color is not the substance of a musical composition Beethoven's eighth symphony is just as great a work in all its essentials in a forehand piano arrangement as in the original score every harmonic and melodic idea of the composer is there one can trace just as clearly the subtle processes of his mind every step in the working out of the materials is just as plain true enough there are orchestral compositions of which this cannot be reasonably said their color is so much more important than their form that when one takes away the former the latter almost seizes to exist but I doubt that many competent critics would argue that they belong to the first rank form after all is the important thing it is design that counts not decoration design and organization the pillars of a musical masterpiece are like the pillars of the Parthenon they are almost as beautiful bleached white as they were in all their original hues 28. A footnote on the duel of sex if I were a woman I should want to be a blonde with golden silky hair pink cheeks and sky blue eyes it would not bother me to think that this color scheme was mistaken by the world for a flaunting badge of stupidity I would have a better arm in my arsenal than mere intelligence I would get a husband by easy surrender while the brunettes attempted it vainly by frontal assault men are not easily taken by frontal assault it is only stratagem that can quickly knock them down to be a blonde pink soft and delicate is to be a stratagem it is to be a ruse of faint and ambush it is to fight under the red cross flag a man sees nothing alert in designing in those pale crystalline eyes he sees only something helpless, childish, weak something that calls to his compassion something that appeals powerfully to his conceit in his own strength and so he is taken before he knows that there is a war he lifts his portcullis in Christian charity and the enemy is in his citadel the brunette can make no such stealthy and sure attack no matter how subtle her art she can never hope to quite conceal her intent her eyes give her away they flash and glitter they have depths they draw the male gaze into mysterious and sinister recesses and so the male behind the gaze flies to arms he may be taken in the end indeed he usually is but he is not taken by surprise he is not taken without a fight a brunette has to battle for every inch of her advance she is confronted by an endless succession of dead man's hills each equipped with telescopes, semaphores, alarm gongs, wireless the male sees her clearly through her densest smoke clouds but the blonde captures him under a flag of truce he regards her tenderly, kindly, almost pittingly until the moment the jives are upon his wrists it is own optical matter, a question of color the pastel shades deceive him the louder he was sent him to his artillery God help I say the red-haired girl she goes into action with morning penance flying the dullest, blindest man can see her a mile away he can catch the alarming flash of her hair along before he can see the whites or even the terrible red browns of her eyes she has a long field to cross heavily under defensive fire before she can get into rifle range her quarry has a chance to throw up redoubts to dig himself in to call for reinforcements to elude her by ignominious flight she must win if she is to win it all by an unparalleled combination of craft and revolution she must be swift, daring, merciless even the brunette of black and penetrating eye has great advantages over her no wonder she never lets go once her arms are around her antagonist's neck no wonder she is of all women the hardest to shake off all nature works in circles causes become effects effects develop into causes the red-haired girl's dire need of courage and cunning has augmented her store of those qualities by the law of natural selection she is by long odds the most intelligent and bemusing of women she shows cunning, foresight, technique, variety she always fails a dozen times before she succeeds but she brings to the final business the abominable expertness of Eludendorf she has learned painfully by the process of trial and error red-haired girls are intellectual stimulants they know all the tricks they are so clever that they have even cast a false glimmer of beauty about their worst defect their harsh and gaudy hair they give it euphemistic and deceitful names auburn, bronze, Titian they overcome by their hellish arts that deep-seated dread of red which is inborn in all of God's creatures they charm men with what would even alarm bulls and the blondes by following the law of least resistance have gone in the other direction the great majority of them I speak, of course, of natural blondes not of the immoral wenches who work their atrocities under cover of a synthetic blondess are quite as shallow and stupid as they look one seldom hears a blonde say anything worth hearing the most they commonly achieve is a specious baby-like prattling an infantile artlessness but let us not blame them for nature's work why, after all, be intelligent it is at best no more than a capacity for unhappiness the blonde not only doesn't miss it but she is even better off without it what imaginable intelligence could compensate her for the flat blueness of her eyes lasanthus pallor of her hair the doll-like pink of her cheeks what conceivable cunning could do such execution as her stupendous appeal to masculine vanity sentimentality, eagolism if I were a woman I should want to be a blonde my blondness might be hideous but it would get me a husband and it would make him cherish me and love me 29. Alcohol envy, as I have said, is at the heart of the messianic delusion the mania to convert the happy sinner into a good man and so make him miserable and at the heart of that envy is fear the fear to sin, to take a chance to monkey with the buzzsaw this ineradicable fear is the outstanding mark of the fifth rate man at all times and everywhere it dominates his politics his theology his whole thinking he is a moral fellow because he is afraid to venture over the fence and he hates the man who is not the solemn proof so laboriously deduced by life insurance statistics that the man who uses alcohol even moderately dies slightly sooner than the teetotaler these proofs merely show that this man is one who leads an active and vigorous life and so faces hazards and uses himself up in brief one who lives at high tempo and with full joy what Nietzsche used to call the yog-seger or yes-sayer he may in fact die slightly sooner than the teetotaler but he lives infinitely longer moreover his life humanly speaking is much more worthwhile to himself and to the race he does the hard and dangerous work of the world he takes the chances he makes the experiments he is the soldier the artist the innovator the lover all the great works of man have been done by men who thus live joyously strenuously and perhaps a bit dangerously they have never been concerned about stretching life for two or three more years they have been concerned about making life and grossing and stimulating and a high adventure while it lasts teetotalism is as impossible to such men as any other manifestation of cowardice and if it were possible it would destroy their utility and significance just as certainly a man who shrinks from a cocktail before dinner on the ground that it may flabbergast his hormones and so make him die at 69 years 10 months and 5 days instead of at 69 years 11 months and 7 days such a man is as absurd a polltrune as the fellow who shrinks from kissing a woman on the ground and flora him with a chair leg each flees from a purely theoretical risk each is a useless encumberer of the earth and the sooner dead the better each is a discredit to the human race already discreditable enough bad nose teetotalism does not make for human happiness it makes for the dull, idiotic happiness of the barnyard the men who do things in the world the men worthy of admiration and imitation are men constitutionally incapable of any such pecsniffian stupidity their ideal is not a safe life but a full life they do not try to follow the canary bird in a cage but the eagle in the air and in particular they do not flee from shadows and bugaboos the alcohol myth is such a bugaboo the sort of man it scares is the sort of man whose chief mark is that he is always scared no wonder the Rockefellers and their like are hot for saving the working man from John Barley corn imagine the advantage to them of operating upon a flabby horde of timorous and joyless slaves afraid of all fun and kicking up horribly moral eager only to live as long as possible what mule-like fidelity and efficiency could be got out of such a rabble but how many Lincoln's would you get out of it and how many Jackson's and how many Grant's thirty thoughts on the voluptuous why has no publisher ever thought of perfuming his novels the final refinement of publishing already beddisoned by every other art Barabbas turned patronius for instance consider the bucolic romances of the hyphenated Mrs. Porter they have a subtle flavor of new moon hay and daffodils already why not add the actual essence or at all events some safe coal tar substitute and so help imagination to spread its wings for hall cane musk and synthetic bergamot for Mrs. Glenn and her neighbors on the tiger skin the fragrant blood of the red red rose for the ruffianish pages of Jack London the pungent hospitable smell of a first-class bar room that indescribable mingling of Marilyn Dry cigar smoke stale malt liquor radishes, potato salad and bloodwurst for the Dartmoor sagas of the interminable filipots the warm ammoniacal bouquet of cows poultry and yokels for the dodo school violets and Russian cigarettes for the venerable howls lavender and mignonette for Zola, Rochefort and wet leather for Mrs. Humphrey Ward lilies of the valley for Marie Corelli tuberoses and embalming fluid for chambers sachet and lip paint for but I leave you to make your own choices all I offer is the general idea it has been tried in the theater well do I remember the first weeks of Flora Dora at the old casino with a mannequin in the lobby squirting la flor de Flora Dora upon all us Flora Doran's I was put on trial for my life when I got home End of Part 3


I will start with our host, the ambassador of the United Arab Emirates to Turkey since 2016, His Excellency Khalifa Shaheen al-Malhar. He's a veteran diplomat. He was posted to Syria and Iran prior to that, but had also postings in Japan and the United Nations. We have the floor, sir. Thank you. Thank you very much. I would just start with thanking the organizers of this conference. And as we touch on the Middle East and the external powers, I would say that Middle East has been always of a strategic importance to the world powers and to international community as a whole. Because of its strategic location, because of its resources of energy, and because of that, the state of security and the stability of the region has its effects on the region as a whole and on the international community as well. And with the engagement of world powers in the Middle East comes also there's rivalries and there's competition among world powers. But also we have to acknowledge that there is a legitimate concerns and a legitimate interest of world powers in the development in the Middle East so far as the security and stability of the Middle East is concerned. Now, with that concern, we think there is a positive contribution world power can contribute to the future of the region. The Middle East and our region, especially during the last decade or so, has been going through a lot of crises, conflicts that took a lot of efforts and resources and shook the foundation of the national state institutions. Now, there is a consensus among Arab countries that any malicious intervention in the crises in the region only exacerbate these crises, exacerbate the conflicts and make a very complex situation more complex. So what we think that needed is to promote stability, to promote security and to promote peaceful resolution of conflicts and that's what we in MRS are focusing on. We have been always promoting stability in the region, working for the stability in the region and promoting stability that could lead to prosperity and to preserve security, a long term security of the region. And in that quest, we have promoted building bridges with all the countries and all the nations in the region and we have working for the peaceful settlement of conflicts for prosperity and for long term stability and security for the region. Now, we think that what needed from the world powers as well as the regional powers first to refrain from interfering into the internal affairs of the Arab countries, will assist into finding peaceful solutions to the conflicts and also assist into rebuilding the region. So with all the challenges we are facing in the region, there is more connection is needed to connect with all the countries to have dialogue and to promote peace and security and peaceful settlement of conflicts. Now, Abraham Accords is one example of that. And here I have to emphasize that Abraham Accords, when we signed the Abraham Peace Accords, we are giving an example how to solve the problems, how to solve conflicts rather than only managing the conflicts. And to work into a warm peace that reflects tangible results and gives tangible results to the population and that the region would see the benefits of peace. The other issue that we have been emphasizing that the Abraham Accords is not directed against any third party in the region. And with our emphasis on connections, on dialogue, on looking into the ways and means to mitigate the adverse effects of external intervention in the internal affairs of the Arab countries and into connecting and creating more space of cooperation, more space of promoting economic and investment and the well-being and the prosperity for all the regions, that would affect positively the quest for solving the conflicts and problems in the region. So I would stop here and then continue the over. So dialogue, search for prosperity and engagement. Thank you. And the UAE has been doing all of that.