Anna M. Fitch

“ Time rolls by, and against the door of the mausoleum where we buried our dead out of sight the years have piled events and emotions and distractions, and the passion which we once thought immortal becomes now an episode, and by and by a dream, and at last a vague and shadowy remembrance, and one day some new and mighty fact stalks forward, and sweeps away all obstructions, and the doors of the tomb are reopened, and the dead of our heart come forth, bringing to us sometimes the joys of life’s morning, and sometimes the bitterness of a new death. ”

“ If the settler lose his land, what matter whether the despoiler be a personal bandit armed with a rifle, or a corporate robber equipped with a land-office decision? If capital exempt itself from taxation, and place the burden of sustaining government upon the broad back of labor, will it alleviate the pain of the load to know that it is not the law of feudal vassalage but of modern politics which accomplishes the exaction? ”

“ Yet, while the physical Ellen Thornton thus passed out of the young man’s life, there came into his soul instead an ideal, whose influence was ever an inspiration to higher thinking, purer life, gentler judgments, and loftier deeds. Well has the poet said, “’Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” No man can be possessed by love for a good woman without being thereby moved upward on all the lines of existence. Damps cannot dim the diamond; its facets and angles of fire will never permit the fog to abide with them. ”

“ The ledge as it stood could not be worked without half a hundred men knowing its extent and value. No guards or bonds of secrecy would be adequate. The birds of the air would carry the tale. Even now a vagrant prospector or wandering mountain tourist might reveal the secret to the world.
Not in any spirit of self-seeking did David Morning ask himself these questions. All his personal wants, and tastes, and aspirations might be gratified with a few millions, which could easily be mined and invested before knowledge of his discovery could destroy or lessen the value of gold. ”

“ If the rattlesnake is coiled for ye, will ye strike first or wait for him to strike? If the wolf is waiting upon your doorstep, will you feed to him the babe he is seeking or will ye give him the knife to the hilt in his hot throat? The death of Lorin French would end this struggle, and your wives would cease to weep and your children to cry with hunger. Men, since God has so far forgotten you as to suffer this devil to live so long, why do you not remedy God’s forgetfulness? Are you ready to march now or do you want an old woman to lead you? ”

“ Clipped shillings, French assignats, and Continental and Confederate currency, were no more fiat money than are American double eagles or five-pound Bank of England notes. It is the stamp of the government, the fiat of its power, that turns the metal or the paper into money.”
“But do not all financiers consider inflation a disaster, Mr. Morning?”
“Inflation,” replied the gentleman, “whether of metallic or paper currency that is accepted by the world or by a great commercial nation as a legal tender, can do no harm except to those who loan money. A dollar is a mere term. ”

“ I believe in the wisdom and beneficence of exact justice. I believe that the skillful and rapid bricklayer is entitled to higher wages and greater opportunities of employment than his stupid and slothful associate, and that to deny the former his rightful advantage is an outrage upon justice, whether such outrage be perpetrated by an employer or a trades union. I believe that every man is fairly entitled to all the fruits of his labor, his skill, his good judgment, and his good luck. ”

“ The baron told me this morning that as Americans were a nation of plebeians, I would naturally suffer many disabilities even as the Baroness Von Eulaw, to which I replied rather hotly that honor and courage required no purple swaddlings to hide their proportions, and that we Americans sprang full created from the brain of regenerate thought, whereupon his manly fist gathered muscle for a moment, then as speedily relaxed, and he only slammed the door of his dressing-room between us. ”

“ Is it possible, thought Morning, forgetful for the moment of the purpose that had brought him there, that in this evening of the nineteenth century a cultivated woman, herself the victim of a system fiendish in its power to forge public opinion, and cruel as the Inquisition, should have the courage thus to look her awful destiny in the face tranquilly, and smilingly set upon it the cold white seal of conscience? ”

“ The daily history of every American family is one of almost unavoidable waste. In food, in fuel, in the labor of cooking, and in many other details of housekeeping, there is uneconomic use of both labor and materials. Probably one-fourth of the expenditure of every American householder who is able to keep one or more servants is unnecessary and wasteful, and where only one servant, or none at all, is employed, the health and beauty and life of the wife are expended in kitchen drudgery, and her opportunities of growth and culture are lost. ”

“ Even during the dull times which annihilated so many promising fortunes in Southern California, the attractions of Coronado Beach were sufficient to secure for it exemption from the dire distress which overtook other localities.
The company owning this enterprise successfully defied not only a bursted boom but the very forces of nature, for they riprapped the beach in front of their hotel, and baffled the Pacific Ocean, which, after gnawing up the lawn and shrubbery which fronted its restless waters, had set its foam-capped legions at work to undermine the foundations of the great ballroom. ”

“ Berlin, November 20, 1895. My Dear Mother: The grand ball, the mention of which seems to catch your fancy, is to be given at the Chateau d’Or, a magnificent edifice on the heights overlooking the river. Its turrets, and domes, and roofs, and arches, and balustrades, glitter against the background of bluest skies like shining gold—hence its name. Indeed, its architectural device is so cunningly conceived as to catch and fill the eye with radiant color like the facets of a diamond, while its proportions suggest all the beauties of form to be found in the scale of harmonized effects. ”

“ How easy seem the processes of nature with harmonized material for working out the thought! Nature never experiments; gravitation is her law, deflection is anarchy, and defiance a destroyer. Love, I deem, is only obedience to this law. Obscure as are its operations and subtle as its teachings are, any smallest portion of scholarship, leveled at the finding out, divested of preconceived ideas and personal bearings, but persistently and conscientiously agitated by scientific and organized effort, might revolutionize a world of error, and establish a sure basis for sentiment and social reform. ”

“ If our great newspapers, which are influential, which claim to be independent, and which ought to be free, are restrained from publishing articles advocating postal telegraphy, or criticising the management of a news corporation, what matters it that the 56freedom of the press is choked by a board of directors rather than a government censor? If the citizen dare not give voice to his views on public affairs, what matters it whether his utterances be choked by the knuckles of a king, or the polite menaces of an employer? ”

“ Under the gray shirts may be found sometimes graduates from Yale, and sometimes fugitives from Texas, but always hearts that pulse to the appeals of friendship or the cries of distress, even “as deeps answer to the moon.”
Among these pioneers no one man assumes to be better than another, and no man concedes his inferiority to anybody. In the last forty years they have carried the civilization, the progress, and the power of the nineteenth century to countries which were beforetime unexplored. In their efforts some have found fortune and some have found unmarked graves upon the hillside. ”

“ If he live in the suburbs, he must arise at daylight and stumble along unlighted lanes to the railroad station, and pass two or three hours of his time each day standing in a crowded ferryboat, or hanging to the straps of a jammed car, alternately frozen and roasted, and always stifled with the reeking perfume of unventilated vehicles and unsavory fellow-travelers, for while it may be true that all men are politically equal, they are not always equally well washed. ”

“ American husbands, uxorious though they are, and they have earned the name, bring you no title, have no legitimate entrée to foreign courts, and even the most stupendous fortunes only inoculate and leave a scar. Really, the only clean business is an out and out marriage, love or no love, though, for the matter of that, one must feel toward the dear baron as the hero-worshiping woman said concerning the wife of Henry Ward Beecher, that she ought to be proud to bow her head and allow the great divine to pluck every individual hair out by the roots. ”

“ I know of no other man who is brave enough to defy the power of money, great enough to ignore it, or strong enough to resist its influence, and I dare say you would change your views if you were to lose your millions. We all defer to the plutocrats. The Spanish nobleman who, for his ancestor’s services, was permitted to remain with his head covered in the presence of his sovereign, would have been sure to take off his hat if he had entered the office of the president of a country bank, with a view of negotiating a small loan on doubtful security. ”

“ The discoveries in California and Australia by which in ten years fourteen hundred millions of gold dollars were added to the world’s stock of the precious metals was a beneficent discovery. It lifted half the weight from the shoulders of every debtor; it made possible the payment of every farm mortgage; it delivered manhood from the evil embrace of Apathy, and wedded him to fair young Hope; it invigorated commerce, it inspired enterprise, it led the armies of peace to the conquest of forest and prairie; it caused furnaces to flame and spindles to hum ”

“ The poor of this country should accept no employment as a boon, nor consent to engage in any wage-saving and profit-sharing corporation that will force them to accumulate, and they should take no such favors from the rich as cheap rents or free homes. Let the unnatural accumulations of rich scoundrels be distributed among the people. No man is honestly entitled to have or hold anything except the fruits of his own labor. ”

“ For thousands of years the men of every civilization have been hewing forests, and smelting iron, yet the forests which are untouched and the mines which are unopened are practically limitless.”
“Doctor, a man cannot stir the earth without a spade, or cut down a tree without an ax, or mine iron ore without a pick, and the owners of the spades, and picks, and axes, exact from the laborer an undue share of his labor for their use.” ”

“ The addition of $2,400,000,000 to the currency of the country will unquestionably largely increase all values. It will at the same time encourage—nay, almost compel—capital to seek investment in active industries rather than in dormant funds. For the present it will supply those who can use money to advantage with a sure and convenient method of obtaining it at a cheap rate of interest, while its ultimate tendency must be to eliminate interest on money from the world’s transactions, and bring money to what I conceive to be its true function—a measurer of values only. ”

“ The band at the hotel was kept playing every day at luncheon and dinner, and it discoursed sweet music in the ballroom regularly upon hop nights to auditors, who found—as all people can find—more of the physical comforts and delights of life at Coronado Beach than anywhere else in the world, for nowhere else is there such music in the sea, such balm in the air, such sunshine, and fragrance, and healing, and rest. ”

“ The former will flush no snipe save those he may fairly run over as he trots along. But the fine nose of the dog with the silky auburn coat will catch the scent of the wary bird, and follow it here and there around tufts of marsh grass and across strips of meadow, until the sagacious canine shall be seen outlined against earth and sky. It is difficult to be certain of anything in this world of human deceptions, but one may be absolutely sure under such circumstances that the dog will not lie, and that he cannot be mistaken. ”

“ A great fortune is a great power, doctor, and not every man is fit to be intrusted with great power. To-day no second-class power in Europe can negotiate a treaty or make even a defensive war without the consent of the Rothschilds, while in America the owner of fifty millions is more powerful than the president of the United States, and the owner of ten millions more influential than the governor of a State. ”

“ What can be hoped from political parties when legislators who are not free from suspicion of venality are voted for and elected year after year, because Grant captured Vicksburg, or Lincoln issued a proclamation of emancipation, or Stonewall Jackson was killed more than twenty-five years ago? Must the people forever submit to the rule of brawlers, and vote sellers, and trust betrayers, because such men hurrah for some flag which other men once carried into battle? ”

“ I hear of many gentlemen in different parts of the country who are proposing to use millions for the erection of homes, and the secure establishment of co-operative industries for the benefit of the workers of the land. My idea is that no man should be accorded an unearned dinner who has refused a chance to earn it, but that it is the duty of society to provide every man with an opportunity of earning. Of what value at last is wealth unless one can use it for the benefit of his fellow-men? Charon will not transport gold across the Styx at any rate of ferriage. ”

“ The woman who has evoked the one passion of a man’s life may become as dead to him as the occupant of an Etruscan tomb, but the love itself will abide with him to enrich his life, and journey with him into the other country.
David Morning found in books the most pleasant and absorbing companionship, and those who gained admittance to his library were surprised to learn that there was a dreamy, speculative, poetical side to the busy, practical mining engineer. ”

“ Allow every man to have that which he earns, and compel every man to earn that which he has. Accord every man the opportunity to work or starve, with the assurance that for his work he will receive full value, and for his idleness a hunger that no public or private charity will alleviate. Hard labor and hard fare for the criminal, generous diet and tender care for the sick, an ax or a pump handle for the tramp, and allow no healthy man to eat his supper until he has earned it. ”

“ Art has been outvied in pictorial effects, for she filters her shadows from daintiest clouds, and borrows her bath of oscurial glints from the unfathomed deeps of heaven. Even austere science hides his forged shackles shamedly away, and turns with unsatisfied scorn from the flitting gleam of her mocking brow.
“It is only mirage, one of nature’s cleverest tricks; and what more is life?” comes once and again from parched lips and longing eyes. ”

“ So long as it remained locked up, prices must remain at whatever figures the conspirators might choose to place them. Only the power that withdrew the money from circulation, could restore it to the channels of commerce. There was absolutely nothing for those not already ruined to do except to hide in the jungle until the three tigers should have fully gorged themselves. When Claybank, Gray, and Wolf should graciously permit the money to be unlocked, then stocks would advance to their real value, business would resume its proper channels, and the panic would be over—and not until then. ”

“ People indulge in a good deal of loose talk about inflated currency, debased currency, and fiat money. In truth, all money is fiat money, for a bar of gold is not a legal tender, and inflation of values is the law of commercial growth. In the middle ages a penny was the price of a day’s wages or of a bushel of wheat. Money which has for its basis either precious metals or substantial property in lands or merchandise is good money, while money lacking such basis is bad money. ”