The Freethought Ideal from Washington, Kansas • 1

VOL. VI. OTTAWA, OCTOBER E. M. 299 1899.

NO. 9. "Canst Thou by Searching Find Out God?" A word, a name, a vagrant thought Elusive, changeful, ever fraught With doubts and fears a being formed Of crude1 imaginings, and warmed To life by fires of vain desire. Not one but many gods inspire. Thy God unto thy mind is all His power, as thine, is great or small.

Be this thy guide 'twill serve thee thro': OJod's what we make him false or true. Ward D. Webber, Kansas City, Mo. And a most outlandish din From these mouldy cells of 'cism. From these Christian dens erected To hypocrisy and sin All that's sneaking and dejected Every Sunday calling in With a clanging, clanging, clanging.

Like the swinging gates of hell With a clapper banging, banging. On a bell, bell, bell And the gates forever swinging Of the Christians' hell On the sinners God is bringing To the ringing of a bell. ,0, the swinging gates of hell To the wrangling Sunday bell From its batty belfry clanging, And a hell-fire clapper banging. To the banging gates of hell On the sinners God is bringing To his hell, hell, hell To the tuneless Sunday ringing Of a bell, bell, bell God to hell is sinners bringing, To his hell, hell, hell, hell, hell, hell, hell God to hell is sinners bringing, To his tuneless Sunday bell. Francis E.

Wood, Denver, Colo. inasmuch as he conceded the fault to be hers as well as man's, or words to that effect. Anyhow his book was considered not very elevating. Why not when it dwells on facts? And the august Comstock, aided by Wanamaker, censorized it and for awhile theexpress companies did a big business handling it. Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" was condemned by the same authoirty, but, with the exception of several large city libraries refusing to have it, I think the stigma reached no further.

"Papa's Own Girl," by Marie Howland, wascon-demned and several eastern city libraries excluded it from their because she makes a heroine of a girl who was fooled by a doctor's son. The profligate abandoned both the mother and the child, but the mother raised her baby with all the love a true heart can yield and became a noble worker in the cause of human reform. This book was condemned because well because the girl reformed I guess better, far better, had she killed herself or the child and remained "ruined" for life rather than ''live it down' in this christian commonwealth. "Robert Els-mere," by Mrs. II.

Ward, ran the gauntlets and was criticized by righteous, indignant dames and long faced male prudes as a book scarcely fit for people to read. One well versed in liberal literature, however, would almost pass the horrid points without seeing them so very conservative are they. Hundreds of other rare and very valuable books have been subjected to the same senseless criticisms; and many have been compelled to forever hido their light under a bushel because of this idea of a high standard for American literature, How strange! The scales in which we weigh all other books will not weigh The Mystery of Death. Every cradle asks us whence? and every coffin whither? Ingersoll. The multitudes come and the multitudes go Like the rush of the wind or the river's swift flow.

The ones that are living and ruling kday Are but as a vapor that passeth away. The iaul and the homes they love and adoin Are scon to be ruled by the many unborn. From the earliest records of nature's first birth The multitudes came aid vanished from earth. FiOm wl.er.ce did they ccmeV and where have Uuy sped Wben the life spaik-was quenched and the embers weie dead? The messenger cometh and taketh their breath, And their eyelids aie.closed iu the slumber oftieatb. The sad mourners stand by their Mower laden bier, And their eyelids are moist with the fast falling tear; Jiut we know not whither their spirits have fled.

There cometh no voice from the lips of the dead. They heed not our wails and hear not our moan. Their hearts are untouched, unresponsive as stone. They left us behind and the moaning winds rave O'er the spot where the mystery lies sealed in the grave, J. -II, Swenson.

Women of the Bible. BY ETTA SEMPLE PRESIDENT OF THE K. F. A. Our highest ideas of books are brought about by the knowledge and interest they possess as well as the moral and refining tendencies they impart.

No book can be considered good, interesting or elevating unless the moral contained therein is intended for the good of all. If we read a novel or a book of fables and find that it tends to sink its characters rather than to elevate them, the book is considered coarse, vulgar or depraved. Byron's poems' have been considered vulgar by some of our learned critics because they degrade womanhood somewhat. Tolstoi's "Kreutzer Sonata" was prohibited from going thru the mails on the pretext that he placed too low an estimate upon woman, that while he handled our marriage bugbear rather logically, he scarcely did woman, justice Racket Without Rythm. Hear the clanging of the bells, Sanctimonios Sunday bells What a hell of wrangling their did pealing tells! Like their mumbled catechism It is racket without rythm,.