George W. Bell

Relating to the moral side of Zelania’s progress, the notes were very full, but the story will be briefly and chiefly told in the less chaste style of Marmaduke:—

As a rule, the people of Zelania, if the great discoverer is correct, enjoy excellent health—or should enjoy it—though we rarely “enjoy” anything that is very common. Of course, Zelania has not yet evolved a type, though she has begun her task, for while the Zelanians are of excellent stock, the “born Zelanian” is said to be superior, both in physical fibre and mental perception, to the average person of the Motherland. Nature, Mr. Oseba thinks, will preserve the “sorrel hair,” the white skin, the florid complexion, the fine shoulders and the firm “understanding.”

The Zelanians are loyal to the Motherland. They speak of Britain as “Home,” and, as a compliment to her, the color with which she paints her dependencies is conspicuously present in the cheeks of Zelanian ladies.

Unless Zelania dilutes her blood by hurried accessions to her population, she will, in a few generations, furnish the finest type of mental and physical man and womanhood that ever kicked a football, or “did the block,” on the surface of Oliffa.

Maori Wharepuni

Maori Wharepuni.

In the care of the unfortunate, the deaf, the dumb, the blind, and the lunatics, Zelania is already on the “fortunate” side, as Mr. Oseba abundantly testifies.

Oseba says:—

“As an evidence of the satisfaction of the people of Zelania with their present condition, it is only necessary to remark the low death rate among the people. This for the last eleven years has averaged less than ten persons per thousand. For the same period, the rates in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, were about sixteen per thousand; in the United Kingdom, over eighteen per thousand; in Germany and France, about twenty-two per thousand; in Italy, about twenty-five; and in Austria, over twenty-seven per thousand. Then it appears that of all people the Zelanians are best satisfied with their present situation.—Mayhap, some tarry even a little too long.

“While these people are all earnest, and want to go to heaven—afterwhile—they seem to be in no hurry about starting, and have little desire for risking climatic changes.

“With other matchless wonders, had Nature been attending properly to business, she would have placed the ‘Fountain of Youth’ in some of these charming spots, for the ‘untimely taking off’ of a person in Zelania seems quite unjustifiable. A person willingly leaving any other country might be justified in making the change, but when anyone permanently retires from Zelania it means there has been coercion, an exercise of some extraneous power.

“Strange, but the books show seventy-nine suicides to have been committed in one year in Zelania, though it seems incredible that any person in Zelania should voluntarily retire. Of course, they may have desired to get to heaven ahead of some of their neighbors, for in Zelania they like to be considered a little advanced.

“To insure or secure the public health, there are wise sanitary laws, charitable institutions and hospitals; the practice of medicine is wisely guarded, and carried on by able physicians. In all these public affairs, the Government—which means the people in their organised capacity—is most generous in its assistance.

“In local hospitals, or charitable enterprise, the Government usually gives pound for pound for all private contributions, and the many institutions of the kind in all Australasia furnish a pleasing surprise to observing travellers.”

“ON THE MAKE.”

Mr. Oseba was greatly interested in the “enterprise” of the Outeroos. I quote:—

“I have visited all the countries of the upper crust of Oliffa, and I have observed that the Outeroos are taking a lot of physical exercise. They are engaged in a mad scramble for dollars. Just why any man should want so many ‘dollars’ is not very clear, but it is very clear that they do want them. Men with very many dollars are, in most things, much like the men with very few dollars; they are alarmed at smallpox, the cold and the heat make them thirsty, and the shapely actress turns alike their shallow heads. Then, too, the grim chariot that carries waste from the ‘City of Confusion’ and deposits it in the ‘City of the Silent,’ calls about as promptly at the mansion of Lady Bountiful as at the hovel of the laundress.

“When the man of dollars dies, he is about as dead as his footman—under like circumstances. He’ll be dead about as long, and whatever his facilities for the transfer of wealth while in active business, he can take none of it with him. But, maybe, ’tis well, for if the old story be true, it would probably melt.

“The world has been aroused by the magic force of modern genius, and is being unified by Anglo-Saxon commercial enterprise. The nations are growing wealthy; gold is the sole object of ambition, of toil, of production, of trade. For gold the industrious strive, the duke marries, the boss robs, the politician ‘negotiates,’ the lawyer deceives, the judge decrees, the noble cheats, and the ‘parson’—takes up a collection. In this enormous confusion, a great many people get a lot of exercise—a few, ‘clip the coupons,’ and are happy.

“But the superior Outeroos are only veneered pagans, my children, and gold is the universal god. When Moses smashed the ‘golden calf’ the fragments must have been many, and each tiny piece must have multiplied into many full-grown bullocks.

“This deity, however, should never grow ‘jealous.’ His worshippers have at least one sturdy virtue, for among all the millions of them, there kneels not one hypocrite. While the other deities are occasionally scoffed and often neglected, the ‘golden calf’ is always in evidence. But he attends to business, and in all places he hath wonderful potency.

“Genius has quickened the hand of toil,” said Oseba, “but it has not removed the callous, and almost everywhere on the surface of Oliffa the opulence of the mansion tells the wretchedness of the hovel. The owner of the one schemes, the tenant of the other toils. The man who toils, toils for another; the man who ‘schemes’—well, the other fellow goes to him for a cheque at the end of the week. Until the great democracies of the Antipodes were established, every government of the world, regardless of title, style or form, conspired with cunning to rob credulity, with the schemer to rob the toiler.

“I have thus reasoned, my children, that you might realise by ‘looking upon this picture and then upon this,’ that Zelania has introduced to the world a social policy under which the people, in their organised capacity, have secured to the people, in their individual capacity, a fuller measure of the fruits of their mental and physical efforts than was ever enjoyed in any other country under the sun.

“It is not even a policy of the ‘greatest good to the greatest number,’ for, as the purest happiness consists in a participation of the general joy, it is a policy of the greatest good to all.

“Zelania’s motto is: ‘He who earns shall have, and he who strives shall enjoy.’ In this, the people builded better than they knew, and soon Zelania will be the most conspicuously conspicuous spot on Oliffa, and thousands of people will visit her marvellous shores, not more to enjoy the museums of the gods than to study the customs and the character of the first nation of emancipated men.

“Zelania, though she is now the foremost among the world’s social pioneers, was practically wrested from Nature by the present generation of men. The Zelanian Isles were Nature’s last best gift to the noblest race of her noblest creatures—the gods seeming to have waited for a proper tenantry for these more than Elysian fields.

“Zelania, my children, is the John in the Wilderness—the prophesied of old, the prophet of the new. She is the beacon of the present, the divine torch of the future.”

Oh, that is inspiring! Let’s take an amateur “soar.”

To the Goddess of Justice their prayers are read.
To that Goddess Zelanians bow low the head;
For she gave the Zelanians, nor seer nor priest,
She gave them the custom of Galilee’s feast.
For rich though her gifts to the present and past,
She saved for these Britons the “best for the last.”

Here built they a temple—’twas built on the plan
That he is most noble that’s most of a man;
They laid as foundations the “love of their kind”;
For strength of the structure, firm held they in mind
That no fortune or creed, but justice alone,
Should ever remain as the chief corner stone.

They builded the temple—’twas builded by men
Who were called from the shop, from the mountain and glen.
’Twas builded for men—not for some, as of yore—
’Twas builded of men, from the spires to the floor.
’Twas builded too strong for the strong to transgress,
But ’twas builded too weak, the most weak to oppress.

Pardon; let’s back to Leo’s notes, for Mr. Oseba’s modest candour better suits this prosy age.

SHE CAME—FINALLY.

Without irreverence, I would regard this as an excellent idea.

Mr. Oseba, say the notes, gave a most pleasing review of the domestic relations of the Outeroos, with special reference to the position of women.

The notes on this pleasing phase of the oration were full and spirited, but in boiling down some dozen pages I will array the orator’s impressions in my own garb, as though I myself had learned something on this interesting theme.

The stronger and more haughty among the Outeroos are called men, while the more frail, gentle and loquacious are called wo-man, which means that in some way these latter are to be “wooed and won” before reaching the final end of existence.

In old times, man won these fair creatures in a race for life. They “wooed them” with a bludgeon, captured, and dragged them to a hut, and chained them to the door-post until they were “persuaded” to stew the oysters. But this woman, with a shrewdness she is said to have retained even to this day, cunningly devised a trap into which she knew her “lord and master”—an epithet that has survived the wreck of empires—would place his brogan.

From the waste of the “kitchen” she fertilised the soil at the roots of a heavy grass, and it grew into a grain. She moistened a plant, and it opened into a fruit. She tamed the young animal—brought for the stew—and it became the faithful dog. By a cushion of moss she softened the log used by her lord as a pillow, and, on his return with terrapin and salmon berries, she looked into his swarthy face and smiled.

He was impressed. He took her gently by the hand, pressed her to his palpitating bosom, and, looking into her deep liquid eyes, he said, “I love you.” He broke the chains that bound her, and, the wrist fetters being stubborn, he polished them into bracelets—and these are still worn as a rudiment of the earlier times. What “Papa” might say came later. The twain became one flesh—which one, has always been debatable.

Then it was arranged, with very considerable limitation, that they should be partners. She, the wooed-man, or woman, was to love, to serve, to obey, while he—furnished the superintendence.

The old system dropped out of use many centuries ago, and the new was a change, largely in form, hardly in fact.

The old fetters have rusted in the museums of the past. The club, that potent persuader of old, has been presented to the champion of the base-ball team, and the woman is at large. But as the priest now signs and sanctifies the bond, the change, in most countries, is still chiefly in the character of the fetters.

All people have traditions that help to justify the stronger in acts of oppression, and to conciliate the weaker in their vassalage.

But civilisation has grown—only with the emancipation of women. Just as the fetters have been removed from the brain, and soul, and conscience of woman, has the social ideal risen, has arbitrary force weakened, and have feeling and reason prevailed. The woman is the mother; from hereditary and prenatal influences come form and character.

How can a mother, with the feeling of inferiority, a feeling of subdued dependence, with no courage nor conscious individuality, bring forth brave, independent, high-minded offspring? Only by emancipated mothers can full-statured men be reared, and thus has the race crawled slowly forward.

For the snail-like pace of human progress, the world is more indebted to the past and political inequalities of the sexes than to all other retarding influences combined.

With the progress of science, with the physical forces of Nature harnessed by mental exploits, the relative positions of human muscle and human sentiment are changing, and, with a cultured reason, deeper affections and higher ideals invariably appear.

Here I quote:—

“In Zelania, women are ‘people,’” said Mr. Oseba, “and liberty and social rights are not limited to any particular cut of the garments. In Zelania, the mother, the wife, and the daughter stand proudly erect with the father, the husband, and the brother—and still the seasons come and go, the showers are as usual damp, the fruits ripen in due course of time, the fair ‘fellow-elector’ is as greatly surprised at the suddenness of the long-hoped-for question, papa is invoked as of yore, and the gay old world swings merrily on her uneventful voyage.

“In Zelania, my children, the women vote, and claim equal political rights with those who buy the opera tickets and set up the ice cream. Of course, they don’t go to Parliament, save at the sittings, to which they bring their loving smiles and their sewing but they are on their way, and they will get there all the same.

“But with the coming of women few changes have been noted—so few of the hopes or fears of the ages have been realised. Woman does not wear spurs—she has not got out of her place—and she does not do the sights, as does her hubby, and swear she was detained at the ‘ledger.’ She has not become masculine, for she is still the gentle mother of the children, and she is still the same dear old mother, or wife, sister, or lover as of yore, when Zeus said, ‘Behold! when the fair smile, victory is nigh.’

“But neither have all the hopes, so confidently cherished, been fully realised. It has not been discovered—so ’tis said—that the ‘political atmosphere’ has materially changed; that legislators are greatly altered in personal character; that social ethics have been revolutionised; or, to the surprise of many, that the distance between drinks has been materially lengthened. But, whatever the means, great changes come slowly.

“As a fact, the experience of Zelania, at three parliamentary elections, rather indicates that on social, political, economic, and moral questions, the men and women of the country are ‘tarred’ with about the same brush.

“But in this reform there is a sense of justice and a conscious largeness of soul that is mentally exhilarating, and must result favorably to society everywhere. In the air of Zelania all fetters rust away, and the flag of a new victory, won over traditional custom and selfishness, having been unfurled in this noble land, people afar will first dream, then hesitate, then inquire, and then conclude to have a reshuffling of the cards in this doubtful game of life.”

INTELLECTUAL TASTES.

“If Zelania is proud of her system of education, she may be forgiven,” was Oseba’s first reference to the intellectual ambition of her people. He was eloquent on this subject. As any thinker could “guess,” the Zelanians were certainly not slow in efforts to elevate the mental tastes or in making provisions for the education of the future citizens.

The foundation of the present excellent school system was laid by the old provincial authorities, and the best hopes of the pioneers, those who believed in “teaching the young ideas how to shoot,” are being beautifully realised.

The orator says:—

“At present 82 per cent. of the people of Zelania have the rudiments of education, which, considering the pioneer character of the country, ‘speaks volumes’ for the community.

“There are over 2,000 schools in the colony, with an attendance of about 150,000 pupils. Of these schools some 1,600 are free, and all children from seven to fourteen years of age are required to attend them. The natives, also, are supplied with 96 of these free primary schools, at which 4,500 pupils attend. Rather new; but the railways carry the children free to and from the nearest school.

“In the primary schools, besides the usual branches, such as reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, grammar, and history, the elementary sciences, and drawing, the girls are taught sewing and domestic economy, and the boys are drilled as ‘military heroes.’

“Besides these free primary schools there are many higher secondary schools, supported partly by the Government and partly by ‘fees,’ and many more private and denominational schools of a very good order. As a rule, one religious denomination—the Roman Catholics—decline to very generally patronise the public schools, and this church supports independently a large number of excellent educational institutions. There are eight technical or art schools, at which some 3,000 young persons attend, a majority of them finishing their school life at this stage. The branches taught at these schools, and the subjects of examination, cover a broad field, and the young person who becomes proficient in them may be regarded as fairly well equipped for most of the battles of this active age. At these schools a young person is armed with the ‘practical,’ with little danger of being over ‘stuffed.’

“As a fact, my children,” said Mr. Oseba, “many countries on the upper crust are filled with educated dunces, who are mentally deformed by over-cramming, and who are inspired by the hopes of living on ‘sheepskin’; but as Zelania has practically no rich or leisured class, the basic idea of school-day training is to fit the rising generation, not for ornamental, but for practical service.

“Zelania, as a capstone of her educational edifice, has a university, which was instituted by Act of Parliament in 1874, not for the purpose of teaching, but for encouraging a liberal education. This university is an examining, scholarship-awarding, and degree-granting institution, and the responsibility for the success of university work rest mainly with the four affiliated teaching colleges, which have a curricula in science, arts, medicine, law, mining, engineering and agriculture.

“Then there are industrial schools, schools for the blind, deaf, and dumb, which, taken all in all, constitute a splendid system, all being carried on at heavy expense to the State. But the general high character of the people, their usual bearing and manners, the average moral tone, and absence, in the main, of coarseness and vulgarity, tell strongly for the merits of the educational system of the country, as well as for the natural and social influences that mould society.”

OTHER “TASTES.”

With the next phase of Zelanian life, according to the notes of Leo Bergin, Oseba was deeply impressed and pleased, for he said:—

“As might be expected, my children, in a land so blessed by Nature, occupied by so noble a race, and ruled by such incomparably wise and generous laws, the word ‘pauper’ is not found in Zelanian statistics, and the ‘criminals,’ considering the newness of the country, are few indeed.”

Speaking of the character of crime, Oseba said:—

“Vice and virtue, my children, are largely questions of sensation. The actions of men that produce disagreeable sensations—immediate or remote—we call vices, while the opposite we call virtues. We are the product of experience. Vice is the guide board to virtue—the danger signal. Without vice there would be no definition for virtue.

“But taste has much to do in guiding a people. The Zelanians have a taste for knowledge, but they have other tastes. The Christian Outeroos are thirsty, and the Zelanians are Outeroos. Strange, but in a single year there were over 7,000 of these noble Zelanians arrested for their earnest efforts to satisfy this peculiar infatuation. This seems incredible, for while there are several persons in Zelania who are never known to be thirsty, there are about 7,000,000 gallons of beer used annually in filling the ‘alimentary canal’ of the Zelanians. Just why, with so goodly a supply, with so short a distance, both in time and space, between drinks, this peculiar sensation should turn the heads of men, is not very clear.

“Many very well-meaning people believe there would be less ‘arrests’ for these peculiar freaks should the distance between drinks be extended, but others, having considerable interest in the matter, hold that most of these confused persons are ‘taken in’ during their long search for somebody to do the ‘shouting.’

“However,” Oseba said, “there is a pleasing side, for while 51 per cent. of the population over fifteen years of age were born in Zelania, this portion is said to have furnished but 17 per cent. of the Court’s takings for this confusing recreation.

“For other crimes, the 51 per cent. of native-born furnish but 28 per cent. of the law breakers.

“It may be, my children, that the 49 per cent. of the foreign born, who are said to furnish the other per cent. of the ‘takings,’ are only celebrating their arrival in so glorious a country—a country in which a day’s earnings, it is said, will pay for many beers. At any rate, the native-born Zelanian seems the better man, for he either ‘calls’ less frequently or ‘carries his load’ better than the ‘new chum.’”

But all are thirsty, Mr. Oseba, and the “practice at the bar,” if not profitable, is exhilarating.

“But the fact,” said Mr. Oseba, “that in one year there were twelve homicides is most surprising to the inquiring stranger. Surely no man well ‘quartered’ in Zelania should care to be killed, and the reckless head that would plan, or the ruthless hand that would execute a design to close a life in Zelania, should in some manner be restrained from so fell a purpose. Deducting the homicides of foreign birth, however, it leaves for the Zelanians the cleanest record in the ‘Christian’ world—as one would expect.

“The Zelanians, my children, are usually glad they are alive, and, too, they are usually willing to allow others to remain and enjoy the entertainment.”

INTELLECTUAL GYMNASTICS.

The notes relating to Zelanian art and literature were very full, and they were complimentary. ’Tis said that art develops only with age, and that while the aspect of Nature may appeal to the poetic or artistic imagination, art arises from dominant ideas, from deeply-seated sentiments, and as in new, active, progressive, and commercial countries the dominant ideas do not lend themselves to reverie, and could not be feelingly expressed on canvas, art in Zelania must be “imported” for a season. But literature has come, and literature is civilisation.

The notes continue:—

“Literature, or, to broaden the theme and say the taste for knowledge and for general reading in Zelania, deserves many compliments. While there is not, as yet, a literature bearing a distinctive stamp of Zelanian genius, many volumes with real merit, both in prose and verse, have been written, and the topics show a versatile taste, knowledge, and imagination.

“While from the very nature of things Zelania must be a land of romance, poesy, and song, of the stage, of the race, and the hall, yet from the sturdiness of the stock there must first come a sufficiency of works of a graver character as the present exuberance of society tones down toward restful meditation. To-day Zelania is ‘waltzing,’ to-morrow she will walk, and next week she will think.

“Zelania has many well-managed libraries, and, considering the population, the Zelanians buy, pay for, and read, more books than any other people on earth. The kind of books? Well, just the kind that any student would expect—trash, the most of it, as trashy trash is the taste of the times, everywhere.

“But it shows the desire for reading, and, as these children grow older, a more sober class of books will find its way from the shelves to the desk of the reader. Even now in Zelania the taste for blood and thunder literature is waning, while gay and chaste humour, with glimpses of the philosophy of life, is in growing favor. The heart of a nation may be seen through its laws, but the heart, and the soul, and the laws are the product of national literature. Literature is civilisation.

“The Zelanians are a new community—the people have but recently come together—society is in a ‘stew,’ as the members have but little mutual ‘acquaintance,’ and as the new environment, the air, and the aspect of Nature suggest hilarity, all the sermonising in the world would not convert this Zelanian ‘holiday’ into a prayer-meeting. In the Zelanian character there appears the sparkling diamond, and in the Zelanian fibre there are also the oak and the steel that will tell in the morrows.

“As an evidence of the mental appetite, or the reading habit, the 800,000 Zelanians have and support 200 newspapers, several of which rank with the great journals of the globe, and the average tone of no press in the world is higher than that of Zelania.

“True to the racial defects,” Oseba said, “the Zelanians, like the Australians and the Americans, are not linguists. These wonderful people seem neither desirous nor capable of speaking ‘strange tongues.’ With brief experience, I thought this unfortunate, but I gradually changed my mind, for not only is the world coming to the use of the English speech,[C] but as ‘silence is golden,’ and it is manifestly easier to keep quiet in one than in several languages, this weakness has a virtuous side.

“I have often noticed while abroad how prone are the masters of many tongues, when striving to keep silent in one, to break out in some less euphoneous speech, and thus give themselves away, or at least arouse a contagious smile of good-natured disapproval.

“But mental gymnastics in Zelania have produced a high order of visible results.

“Though the country is very new in all phases of modern being, political, social, judicial, educational and religious, it possesses a wonderfully symmetrical form. For its present splendid condition the country is indebted to the efforts of men who were themselves the products of hard but happy and interesting colonial life.

“New and distant as this country is, narrow as has been the political, industrial and social horizon, by the vigor of inherited pluck and the resistless persuasiveness of the romantic environment, in physical courage, in moral stamina and in intellectual force, Zelania’s leading men will compare well with those trained in the great world’s historic centres.

“The present Premier, who has guided the ship of State during more than ten years of its most wonderful progress, graduated in the rugged school of industrial activity, and, casting off the implements of custom and delusion, he not only made Zelania a more conspicuously red patch on the world’s map, but himself became a recognised force in the Councils of Empire.

“But with others than her progressive statesmen, Zelania is rich in sturdy manhood and ability—grey matter. Her schools and colleges rank well with the educational institutions of older and richer countries; her instructors are profoundly learned; her judiciary, with its present head, would adorn the bench of the Motherland itself; and her professionals in law and medicine, if cast in a body in any other country, would not lower the average.

“Of course, my children, as yet not all the milestones are statues; not all who loaf in the parks are poets, nor are all who stroll in the streets philosophers, but according to the prevailing notion in Zelania, this noble aspiration will soon be realised.

“These, my children, though I drank not with the statesmen, I came not before the courts, I ‘feed’ no solicitor, and my health was perfect during my sojourn in Zelania, were my impressions on these themes.”

FOR OPINION’S SAKE.

Under this head the notes were full and clear, but as life grows shorter and space less, I will condense greatly.

Amoora Oseba informs his audience that the Zelanians have considerable religion—in fact, there seems to be nearly enough to go round, for all save a very few are reported to have it in some of its various forms.

“Of the 800,000 people, nearly all,” he says, “belong to some religious society, and about all who claim God as a father, seem to think it necessary to regard the church as a mother—so few do business direct.

“Of the various creeds, the Church of England claims about 40 per cent. of the whole; the Presbyterian 22; and the Roman Catholic, 14 per cent. There are nearly 1,000 clergymen in Zelania, said to be gentlemen of excellent attainments.

“As would be expected from so free and civilised a people, there is among all classes and creeds in Zelania a commendable spirit of common brotherhood and toleration. As a fact, members of the various creeds drink at the same bar and attend the same football match, though, being so reared, they desire to go to heaven by different trains. All seem to strive together for the general good, dividing, by common consent, as to methods for the accomplishment of the one desired aim. The Roman Catholics, however, that their followers may be so instructed that they will be sure to ‘select the proper train,’ usually provide their own schools, while contributing, through general taxation, to the support of most of the others. Probably in no country so universally religious is there so little creed prejudice or intolerance.

“But political and social emancipation everywhere gives a man a conscious dignity and worth that places him in closer harmony with the infinite, and tells for sympathy, love, and charity. The people are religious, but not bigoted. The are religious, but they do not superstitiously cringe, and, as they have been specially guided, they express no disfavor with the methods of the Deity.

“As a fact, like all well regulated people, the Zelanians pray, but, instead of prostrating themselves, they stand bravely erect, and, considering themselves the crowning act of the creative power, they congratulate the Almighty on the excellence of His handiwork.”

Here the poetess Vauline inquired if all the people among the superior Outeroos worshipped the same deity.

“Yes, my children,” said the sage Oseba, with candor, “on Sundays. On Sundays the Christian Outeroos meet in comfortable places and worship the one true God. On the other days, many people give a lot of attention to another deity. This every-day deity—by persons who praise lavish generosity in other people—is spoken of very slightingly.

“This deity is worshipped by many people under many names, but the Americans, among whom it is said—abroad—he hath great influence, spell it this way—$. It may be doubtful, however, if the Americans really care more for the smiles of this deity than others, but they get up earlier. From tradition the Christian Outeroos call him Mammon, and though he is denounced very much by pious lips, he is considerably in evidence in very holy places.

“Of course, my children, these observations do not apply to the Zelanians. But the Outeroos are growing wiser, stronger, nobler, and better, and the people are inclining to the notion that he who serves man most, pleases God best.”

Right, Mr. Oseba! The world grows better, and more truly religious as it grows wiser.