In the effort to excuse himself, this repressed personality evolved a philosophy of fatalism. Man was merely a machine, and could not help doing what he did. This was put into a book, “What is Man?” But then he dared not publish the book! “Am I honest?” he wrote, to a friend. “I give you my word of honor (privately) I am not. For seven years I have suppressed a book, which my conscience tells me I ought to publish. I hold it my duty to publish it. There are other difficult tasks I am equal to, but I am not equal to that one.” He did publish the book at last, but anonymously, and with a preface explaining that he dared not sign his name. He, America’s greatest humorist, had a duty laid upon him; he saw that duty clearly--how clearly we learn from a story, “The Mysterious Stranger,” a ferocious satire upon the human race, published after his death. In this book Satan asks: “Will a day come when the race will detect the funniness of these juvenilities and laugh at them--and by laughing at them destroy them? For your race, in its poverty, has unquestionably one really effective weapon--laughter. Power, money, persuasion, supplication, persecution--these can lift at a colossal humbug--push it a little--weaken it a little, century by century; but only laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast.... As a race, do you ever use it at all? No; you lack sense and the courage.” Such was the spiritual tragedy going on in the soul of a man who was going about New York, clad in a fancy white costume, smiled upon and applauded by all beholders, crowned by all critics, wined and dined by Standard Oil millionaires, dancing inexhaustibly until three or four o’clock in the morning, and nicknamed in higher social circles “the belle of New York.” Mrs. Ogi from Mississippi reads this onslaught upon Mrs. Ogi from Elmira; and her husband wonders a little while he waits. But she only smiles, and remarks: “In our family the men have a traditional saying: ‘It’s all right to be henpecked, but be sure you get the right hen!’” CHAPTER CI SMILING AMERICA We come now to an American artist who played the part of his own wife; that is to say, Ogi and Mrs. Ogi combined in one person.