gh humbug than any of these enterprises or
systems. The greatest humbug of all is the man who believes--or pretends
to believe--that everything and everybody are humbugs. We sometimes meet
a person who professes that there is no virtue; that every man has his
price, and every woman hers; that any statement from anybody is just as
likely to be false as true, and that the only way to decide which, is to
consider whether truth or a lie was likely to have paid best in that
particular case. Religion he thinks one of the smartest business dodges
extant, a firstrate investment, and by all odds the most respectable
disguise that a lying or swindling business man can wear. Honor he
thinks is a sham. Honesty he considers a plausible word to flourish in
the eyes of the greener portion of our race, as you would hold out a
cabbage leaf to coax a donkey. What people want, he thinks, or says he
thinks, is something good to eat, something good to drink, fine clothes,
luxury, laziness, wealth. If you can imagine a hog's mind in a man's
body--sensual, greedy, selfish, cruel, cunning, sly, coarse, yet
stupid, short-sighted, unreasoning, unable to comprehend anything except
what concerns the flesh, you have your man. He thinks himself
philosophic and practical, a man of the world; he thinks to show
knowledge and wisdom, penetration, deep acquaintance with men and
things. Poor fellow! he has exposed his own nakedness. Instead of
showing that others are rotten inside, he has proved that he is. He
claims that it is not safe to believe others--it is perfectly safe to
disbelieve him. He claims that every man will get the better of you if
possible--let him alone! Selfishness, he says, is the universal
rule--leave nothing to depend on his generosity or honor; trust him just
as far as you can sling an elephant by the tail. A bad world, he sneers,
full of deceit and nastiness--it is his own foul breath that he smells;
only a thoroughly corrupt heart could suggest such vile thoughts. He
sees only what suits him, as a turkey-buzzard spies only carrion, though
amid the loveliest landscape. I pronounce him who thus virtually
slanders his father and dishonors his mother and defiles the sanctities
of home and the glory of patriotism and the merchant's honor and the
martyr's grave and the saint's crown--who does not even know that every
sham shows that there is a reality, and that hypocrisy is the homage
that vice pays to virtue--I pronounce him--no, I do n