ot a brief for the prize-fighter. It is
a blow of the fist between the eyes of the somnambulists, teetering up
and down, muttering magic phrases, and thanking God that they are not as
other animals.

GLEN ELLEN, CALIFORNIA.
_June_ 1900.

THE DIGNITY OF DOLLARS

Man is a blind, helpless creature. He looks back with pride upon his
goodly heritage of the ages, and yet obeys unwittingly every mandate of
that heritage; for it is incarnate with him, and in it are embedded the
deepest roots of his soul. Strive as he will, he cannot escape
it--unless he be a genius, one of those rare creations to whom alone is
granted the privilege of doing entirely new and original things in
entirely new and original ways. But the common clay-born man, possessing
only talents, may do only what has been done before him. At the best, if
he work hard, and cherish himself exceedingly, he may duplicate any or
all previous performances of his kind; he may even do some of them
better; but there he stops, the composite hand of his whole ancestry
bearing heavily upon him.

And again, in the matter of his ideas, which have been thrust upon him,
and which he has been busily garnering from the great world ever since
the day when his eyes first focussed and he drew, startled, against the
warm breast of his mother--the tyranny of these he cannot shake off.
Servants of his will, they at the same time master him. They may not
coerce genius, but they dictate and sway every action of the clay-born.
If he hesitate on the verge of a new departure, they whip him back into
the well-greased groove; if he pause, bewildered, at sight of some
unexplored domain, they rise like ubiquitous finger-posts and direct him
by the village path to the communal meadow. And he permits these things,
and continues to permit them, for he cannot help them, and he is a slave.
Out of his ideas he may weave cunning theories, beautiful ideals; but he
is working with ropes of sand. At the slightest stress, the last least
bit of cohesion flits away, and each idea flies apart from its fellows,
while all clamour that he do this thing, or think this thing, in the
ancient and time-honoured way. He is only a clay-born; so he bends his
neck. He knows further that the clay-born are a pitiful, pitiless
majority, and that he may do nothing which they do not do.

It is only in some way such as this that we may understand and explain
the dignity which attaches itself to dollars.