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"And an agnostic," smiled the older man. "Oh, I'm an agnostic all right, now and for ever. But this winter has cured my faith in Communism." Early February brought not only lengthening daylight, but a radical change in the weather. The woodsmen worked in their shirt-sleeves, perspired freely, and said in the innocence of their hearts, "If winter comes early up here, spring does the same."
Treherne introduced me to his daughter, and Clovelly amiably drew the father into a discussion of communism as found in the South Sea Islands. I do not think my conversation with Miss Treherne was brilliant. She has since told me that I appeared self-conscious and preoccupied. This being no compliment to her, I was treated accordingly.
Yet I hardly think any mob but a French or Irish mob could have done what these men did. 'And what will be the result? Will it check the tendency to Republicanism? Will Governments unite to put down the many-headed monster? Will they take a lesson from the fate of Paris and France? Of course Republicanism is not the same thing as Communism.
Discontent was charmed into enthusiasm Belleville and Montmartre forgot the visions of Communism and Socialism and other "isms" not to be realised except in some undiscovered Atlantis! The Emperor was the idol of the day the names of Jules Favre and Gambetta were by-words of scorn.
Communism of some sort is one solution urged, communism in property, communism in effort, communism in results, everything in common. In 1840 Emerson wrote to Carlyle, "We are all a little wild here with numberless projects of social reform. Not a reading man but has a draft of a new community in his waistcoat pocket. I am gently mad myself, and am resolved to live cleanly.
The revolution of 1848 had not been accomplished without an outburst from socialism or communism, which raised its red flag in the streets of Paris and was put down only after days of bloody battle with the more moderate elements. So the French middle classes wanted peace, and they elected as president of the republic Louis Napoleon, nephew of their once famous Emperor.
Her political creed shadows forth the government of the future as a pleasant combination of communism and knight-baronry, wherein all oppressed persons shall have republics, and all nice people shall wear armor, and live in castles, and strew the floors of their rooms with rushes and their garments with the anatomic monstrosities of heraldic blazon.
The "social questions" which have been "discussed in our time" increase in importance in the degree that we emerge from the realm of absolute monarchy. Socialism and communism did not originate in Germany, but in England, France and North America.
Communism, as they conceived it, amounted pretty nearly to living at other people's expense, and they believed in revenging the wrongs of their classes by exploiting and expropriating the bourgeois whenever such action was possible without incurring personal risk.
On examination of the whole case, it appeared manifest that we were throwing money into the like to hear you talk of poor France; how I hope that you are able to hope for her. Oh, this absurdity of communism and mythological fête-ism! where can it end? They had better have kept Louis Philippe after all, if they are no more practical.
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