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Damn!, by Henry Louis Mencken

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Title: Damn! A Book of Calumny
Author: Henry Louis Mencken
Release Date: July 31, 2006 [EBook #18948]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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DAMN!
A BOOK OF CALUMNY
BY H. L. MENCKEN

Third Printing
PHILIP GOODMAN COMPANY NEW YORK NINETEEN EIGHTEEN
COPYRIGHT 1918 BY PHILIP GOODMAN COMPANY

CONTENTS
I Pater Patri? 7
II The Reward of the Artist 9
III The Heroic Considered 10
IV The Burden of Humor 11
V The Saving Grace 13
VI Moral Indignation 14
VII Stable-Names 17
VIII The Jews 19
IX The Comstockian Premiss 22
X The Labial Infamy 23
XI A True Ascetic 28
XII On Lying 30
XIII History 32
XIV The Curse of Civilization 34
XV Eugenics 35
XVI The Jocose Gods 37
XVII War 38
XVIII Moralist and Artist 39
XIX Actors 40
XX The Crowd 45
XXI An American Philosopher 48
XXII Clubs 49
XXIII Fidelis ad Urnum 50
XXIV A Theological Mystery 52
XXV The Test of Truth 53
XXVI Literary Indecencies 54
XXVII Virtuous Vandalism 55
XXVIII A Footnote on the Duel of Sex 60
XXIX Alcohol 64
XXX Thoughts on the Voluptuous 67
XXXI The Holy Estate 69
XXXII Dichtung und Wahrheit 70
XXXIII Wild Shots 71
XXXIV Beethoven 73
XXXV The Tone Art 75
XXXVI Zoos 80
XXXVII On Hearing Mozart 86
XXXVIII The Road to Doubt 87
XXXIX A New Use for Churches 88
XL The Root of Religion 90
XLI Free Will 91
XLII Quid est Veritas? 95
XLIII The Doubter's Reward 96
XLIV Before the Altar 97
XLV The Mask 98
XLVI Pia Veneziani, poi Cristiani 99
XLVII Off Again, On Again 101
XLVIII Theology 102
XLIX Exemplia Gratia 103

DAMN! A BOOK OF CALUMNY

I.
PATER PATRI?
If George Washington were alive today, what a shining mark he would be for the whole camorra of uplifters, forward-lookers and professional patriots! He was the Rockefeller of his time, the richest man in the United States, a promoter of stock companies, a land-grabber, an exploiter of mines and timber. He was a bitter opponent of foreign alliances, and denounced their evils in harsh, specific terms. He had a liking for all forthright and pugnacious men, and a contempt for lawyers, schoolmasters and all other such obscurantists. He was not pious. He drank whisky whenever he felt chilly, and kept a jug of it handy. He knew far more profanity than Scripture, and used and enjoyed it more. He had no belief in the infallible wisdom of the common people, but regarded them as inflammatory dolts, and tried to save the republic from them. He advocated no sure cure for all the sorrows of the world, and doubted that such a panacea existed. He took no interest in the private morals of his neighbors.
Inhabiting These States today, George would be ineligible for any office of honor or profit. The Senate would never dare confirm him; the President would not think of nominating him. He would be on trial in all the yellow journals for belonging to the Invisible Government, the Hell Hounds of Plutocracy, the Money Power, the Interests. The Sherman Act would have him in its toils; he would be under indictment by every grand jury south of the Potomac; the triumphant prohibitionists of his native state would be denouncing him (he had a still at Mount Vernon) as a debaucher of youth, a recruiting officer for insane asylums, a poisoner of the home. The suffragettes would be on his trail, with sentinels posted all along the Accotink road. The initiators and referendors would be bawling for his blood. The young college men of the Nation and the New Republic would be lecturing him weekly. He would be used to scare children in Kansas and Arkansas. The chautauquas would shiver whenever his name was mentioned....
And what a chance there would be for that ambitious young district attorney who thought to shadow him on his peregrinations--and grab him under the Mann Act!

II
THE REWARD OF THE ARTIST
A man labors and fumes for a whole year to write a symphony in G minor. He puts enormous diligence into it, and much talent, and maybe no little downright genius. It draws his blood and wrings his soul. He dies in it that he may live again.... Nevertheless, its final value, in the open market of the world, is a great deal less than that of a fur overcoat, half a Rolls-Royce automobile, or a handful of authentic hair from the whiskers of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

III
THE HEROIC CONSIDERED
For humility and poverty, in themselves, the world has little liking and less respect. In the folk-lore of all races, despite the sentimentalization of abasement for dramatic effect, it is always power and grandeur that count in the end.