Beautiful; these were
his texts, but the real god of his worship was Success. This, under the
guise of Duty ("man's God-inspired ambition to be true to his best
possibilities"), he preached day in and day out through his "Daily Help"
in The Patriot: Be guided by me and you will be good: Be good and you
will be prosperous: Be prosperous and you will be happy. On an adjoining
page there were other and far more specific instructions as to how to be
prosperous and happy, by backing Speedfoot at 10 to 1 in the first race,
or Flashaway at 5 to 2 in the third. Sometimes the Reverend Bland
inveighed convincingly against the evils of betting. Yet a cynic might
guess that the tipsters' recipes for being prosperous and happy (and
therefore, by a logical inversion, good) were perhaps as well based and
practical as the reverend moralist's. His correspondence, surest
indication of editorial following, grew to be almost as large as
Banneker's. Severance nicknamed him "the Oracle of Boobs," and for short
he became known as the "Booblewarbler," for there were times when he
burst into verse, strongly reminiscent of the older hymnals. This he
resented hotly and genuinely, for he was quite sincere; as sincere as
Sheffer, in his belief in himself. But he despised Sheffer and feared
Severance, not for what the latter represented, but for the cynical
honesty of his attitude. In retort for Severance's stab, he dubbed the
pair Mephistopheles and Falstaff, which was above his usual
felicitousness of characterization. Sheffer (who read Shakespeare to
improve his mind, and for ideas!) was rather flattered.

Even the platitudinous Bland had his practical inspirations; if they had
not been practical, they would not have been Bland's. One of these was
an analysis of the national business character.

"We Americans," he wrote, "are natural merchandisers. We care less for
the making of a thing than for the selling of it. Salesmanship is the
great American game. It calls forth all our native genius; it is the
expression of our originality, our inventiveness, our ingenuity, our
idealism," and so on, for a full column slathered with deadly and
self-betraying encomiums. For the Reverend Bland believed heartily that
the market was the highest test of humankind. _He_ would rather sell a
thing than make it! In fact, anything made with any other purpose than
to sell would probably not be successful, and would fail to make its
author prosperous; therefore it mu