fficult; it is next to
impossible, and so we hardly ever try. If the man doesn't believe as we
do, we say he is a crank, and that settles it. I mean it does nowadays,
because now we can't burn him.

We are always canting about people's "irreverence," always charging this
offense upon somebody or other, and thereby intimating that we are better
than that person and do not commit that offense ourselves. Whenever we
do this we are in a lying attitude, and our speech is cant; for none of
us are reverent--in a meritorious way; deep down in our hearts we are all
irreverent. There is probably not a single exception to this rule in the
earth. There is probably not one person whose reverence rises higher
than respect for his own sacred things; and therefore, it is not a thing
to boast about and be proud of, since the most degraded savage has that
--and, like the best of us, has nothing higher. To speak plainly, we
despise all reverences and all objects of reverence which are outside the
pale of our own list of sacred things. And yet, with strange
inconsistency, we are shocked when other people despise and defile the
things which are holy to us. Suppose we should meet with a paragraph
like the following, in the newspapers:

"Yesterday a visiting party of the British nobility had a picnic at Mount
Vernon, and in the tomb of Washington they ate their luncheon, sang
popular songs, played games, and danced waltzes and polkas."

Should we be shocked? Should we feel outraged? Should we be amazed?
Should we call the performance a desecration? Yes, that would all
happen. We should denounce those people in round terms, and call them
hard names.

And suppose we found this paragraph in the newspapers:

"Yesterday a visiting party of American pork-millionaires had a picnic in
Westminster Abbey, and in that sacred place they ate their luncheon, sang
popular songs, played games, and danced waltzes and polkas."

Would the English be shocked? Would they feel outraged? Would they be
amazed? Would they call the performance a desecration? That would all
happen. The pork-millionaires would be denounced in round terms; they
would be called hard names.

In the tomb at Mount Vernon lie the ashes of America's most honored son;
in the Abbey, the ashes of England's greatest dead; the tomb of tombs,
the costliest in the earth, the wonder of the world, the Taj, was built
by a great Emperor to honor the memory of a perfect wife and pe