tration: WALT WHITMAN]

Max Nordau wrote a book--wrote it with his tongue in his
cheek, a dash of vitriol in the ink, and with a pen that scratched.

And the first critic who seemed to place a just estimate on the work was
Mr. Zangwill (he who has no Christian name). Mr. Zangwill made an attempt
to swear out a "writ de lunatico inquirendo" against his Jewish brother,
on the ground that the first symptom of insanity is often the delusion
that others are insane; and this being so, Doctor Nordau was not a safe
subject to be at large. But the Assize of Public Opinion denied the
petition, and the dear people bought the book at from three to five
dollars a copy. Printed in several languages, its sales have mounted to a
hundred thousand volumes, and the author's net profit is full forty
thousand dollars. No wonder is it that, with pockets full to bursting,
Doctor Nordau goes out behind the house and laughs uproariously whenever
he thinks of how he has worked the world!

If Doctor Talmage is the Barnum of Theology, surely we may call Doctor
Nordau the Barnum of Science. His agility in manipulating facts is equal
to Hermann's now-you-see-it and now-you-don't, with pocket-handkerchiefs.
Yet Hermann's exhibition is worth the admittance fee, and Nordau's book
(seemingly written in collaboration with Jules Verne and Mark Twain)
would be cheap for a dollar. But what I object to is Professor Hermann's
disciples posing as Sure-Enough Materializing Mediums, and Professor
Lombroso's followers calling themselves Scientists, when each goes forth
without scrip or purse with no other purpose than to supply themselves
with both.

Yet it was Barnum himself who said that the public delights in being
humbugged, and strange it is that we will not allow ourselves to be
thimblerigged without paying for the privilege.

Nordau's success hinged on his audacious assumption that the public knew
nothing of the Law of Antithesis. Yet Plato explained that the opposites
of things look alike, and sometimes are alike--and that was quite a while
ago.

The multitude answered, "Thou hast a devil." Many of them said, "He hath
a devil and is mad." Festus said with a loud voice, "Paul, thou art
beside thyself." And Nordau shouts in a voice more heady than that of
Pilate, more throaty than that of Festus, "Mad--Whitman was--mad beyond
the cavil of a doubt!"

In Eighteen Hundred Sixty-two, Lincoln, looking out of a window (before
lilacs last in the dooryard