We are the product of the labor and sacrifice of age—labor and sacrifice which unknowingly worked out its own destiny in shaping ours. In our turn we toil to-day that future generations may have such heritage as we will to bequeath to them. Shall we permeate their lives with the dreariness of drudgery, the weariness of eternal struggle, the unworthiness of our fellow men and the hopelessness of reward? Or shall we live each day in joyousness of spirit, in happy accomplishment of duty, in serene confidence in the worth of mankind, believing that “God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world,” attracting to ourselves the happiness and sunshine we radiate? Which is the better legacy to our posterity? [Illustration] Common folks cannot understand so-called high-class music, nor the figures of these newfangled dances, and, therefore, they are in a condition which is beautifully illustrated by a tale I used to hear before politics snatched me baldheaded. At an old-time country dance, the fiddlers rosined their bows and took their places on the platform. The floor manager rose and imperiously shouted: “Get your partners for a cotillion! All you ladies and gentlemen who wear shoes and stockings will take your places in the center of the room; all you ladies and gentlemen who wear shoes and no stockings will take your places immediately behind them; and you barefooted crowd must jig it around in the corners.” [Illustration] THE PARADISE OF FOOLS [Illustration] PART X Why mourn and brood over broken fortunes and the calamities of life? Why tarry in the doldrums of pessimism, with never a breeze to catch your limp and drooping sails and waft you on a joyous wave? Pessimism is the nightmare of the world. It is the prophet of famine, pestilence and human woe. It is the apostle of the Devil, and its mission is to impede the progress of civilization. It denounces every institution established for human development as a fraud. It stigmatizes law as the machinery of injustice. It sneers at society as hollow-hearted corruption and insincerity. It brands politics as a reeking mass of rottenness, and scoffs at morality as the tinsel of sin. Its disciples are those who rail and snarl at everything that is noble and good, to whom a joke is an assault and battery, a laugh is an insult to outraged dignity, and the provocation of a smile is like passing an electric current through the facial muscles of a corpse. God deliver us from the fools who seek to build their paradise on the ashes of those they have destroyed! God deliver us from the fools whose life-work is to cast aspersions upon the motives and characters of the leaders of men! I believe the men who reach high places in politics are, as a rule, men of sterling worth and intelligence, and upon their shoulders rest the safety and well-being of the peace-loving, God-fearing millions.