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Page 5
"I am no poet,--though I am painfully conscious
that I ought to be one,--but I have written
what I call, 'The Song of Obligations.' I
think it may arouse the public. In such matters
we ought to unite as good citizens. You might
perhaps drop a postal card, just to show where
you stand."
THE SONG OF OBLIGATIONS
"O the citizen's obligations.
The obligation of every American citizen to see that
every other American citizen does his duty, and
to be quick about it.
The janitor's duties, the Board of Health's duties, the
milkman's duties, resting upon each one of us individually
with the accumulated weight of every
cubic foot of vitiated air, and multiplied by the
number of bacteria in every cubic centimeter of
milk.
The motorman's duties, and the duty of every spry citizen
not to allow himself to be run over by the motorman.
The obligation of teachers in the public schools to supply
their pupils with all the aptitudes and graces
formerly supposed to be the result of heredity and
environment.
The duty of each teacher to consult daily a card catalogue
of duties, beginning with Apperception and
Adenoids and going on to Vaccination, Ventilation,
and the various vivacious variations on the
three R's.
The obligation resting upon the well-to-do citizen not
to leave for his country place, but to remain in the
city in order to give the force of his example, in
his own ward, to a safe and sane Fourth of July.
The obligation resting upon every citizen to write to
his Congressman.
The obligation to speak to one's neighbor who may
think he is living a moral life, and who yet
has never written to his Congressman.
The obligation to attend hearings at the State House.
The obligation to protest against the habit of employees
at the State House of professing ignorance
of the location of the committee-room where
the hearings are to be held; also to protest against
the habit of postponing the hearings after one has
at great personal inconvenience come to the State
House in order to protest.
The duty of doing your Christmas shopping early
enough in July to allow the shop-girls to enjoy
their summer vacation.
The duty of knowing what you are talking about, and
of talking about all the things you ought to know
about.
The obligation of feeling that it is a joy and a privilege
to live in a country where eternal vigilance is
the price of liberty, and where even if you have
the price you don't get all the liberty you pay for."
I was a little troubled over this effusion, as it seemed to indicate
that Bagster had reached the limit of elasticity. A few days later I
received a letter asking me to call upon him. I found him in a state of
uncertainty over his own condition.
"I want you," he said, "to listen to the report my stenographer has
handed me, of an address which I gave day before yesterday. I have been
doing some of my most faithful work recently, going from one meeting to
another and helping in every good cause. But at this meeting I had a
rare sensation of freedom of utterance. I had the sense of liberation
from the trammels of time and space. It was a realization of moral
ubiquity. All the audiences I had been addressing seemed to flow
together into one audience, and all the good causes into one good cause.
Incidentally I seemed to have solved the Social Question. But now that I
have the stenographic report I am not so certain."
"Read it," I said.
He began to read, but the confidence of his pulpit tone, which was one
of the secrets of his power, would now and then desert him, and he would
look up to me as if waiting for an encouraging "Amen."
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