From My Point of View

     “The king is dead, long live the king!” Such has been the cry times without number, and on innumerable occasions will it be re-echoed. Men die; but the king, the president, never dies. Only a man crazed by sectionalism, as Booth; by religious mania, as Guiteau; by a mis-called “Anarchism,” as Czolgosz,—would dream for a moment that in striking down the official head he could materially change the conditions of the government. If one-half the presidents and kings were assassinated, still would there be found men eager to take their places, unterrified by the fear of death. Every day thousands of men are placing themselves in positions hazardous to their lives—often for a mere pittance. What folly, then, to expect the fear of death to deter men from becoming rulers of great nations! And it is equal folly to expect to frighten would-be assassins with the certainty of death in any form—even by torture. All such assassins have suffered death or worse than death, and doubtless at the time of committing the act were in a suicidal as well as murderous frenzy.

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     It is probable that very few, if any, of the people who are hysterically shrieking against “Anarchy” have even the faintest conception of what Anarchy really is. The confused conception in their maddened minds is that an Anarchist is one who wishes a sudden overthrow of all present institutions; that he goes abroad, raving, with dynamite bomb and revolver, to kill all who do not agree with him. Much that I read in the newspapers now-a-days, brings back a recollection of my childhood.
     I was born a few years after the close of the war, and in my early childhood naturally heard a great deal about it, and particularly about the question of slavery, both my father’s and mother’s families having been strong abolitionists. More plainly than the cartoons of yesterday, in memory I can still see one which I studied closely when a child.
     The picture showed the bare interior of a negro’s cabin before the war. A fat black “mammy” is seated, holding by the arm a terrified, half-naked little “pickaninny,” whose rolling eyes seem ready to start from his head in fear, as she says: “Now, den, Julius, ef yer aint a good little nigger, mudder’ll call de big old Bobolitionist and let him run away wid yer!”