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For a long time now I have wanted to dare to come out and stand up before this Modesty Bug-a-boo and have it out with it and say what I think of it, as one of the great, still, sinister threats against our having or getting a real national life in America.
The moment the hero becomes the artist and begins expressing himself and expressing the crowd together, the crowd will no longer be touched with fear and driven back upon itself by the Thomas Jefferson bug-a-boo. France is threatened by her childless women, Germany by her machines, Russia is beginning the Nineteenth Century.
There are three other bug-a-boos, besides the Modesty Bug-a-boo that America will have to face and drive out of the way before it can be truly said to have a national character or to have grown up and found itself. There is the Goody-good Bug-a-boo, the Consistency Bug-a-boo, and the Bug-a-boo that Thomas Jefferson if he were living now, would never never ride in a carriage.
You will perceive the distinction when you reflect that the land is nearly all out in the country, while the land values are nearly all in the cities and towns. To tax land according to area is the bug-a-boo you are putting up your guards to; to tax it according to community value is what we invite you to smash if you can.
It is because in democracies saviours are being kept by crowds and by millionaires and by machines very largely in the position of hired men, or of ordered about men, that ninety-nine one-hundredths of the saving or of the man-inventing and man-freeing in crowds, is not being attended to. The only thing that stands in the way is the Thomas Jefferson bug-a-boo.
Some of the worst and most injurious of superstitions those which involve the supposed presence of the dead, of haunting spectres and evil spirits, destroying the nerves and paralyzing the whole system unquestionably have much of their origin in the "bug-a-boo" falsehoods told to children by foolish mothers and careless nurses, to frighten them into "being good."
"You see, I've comed to feel very kindly to the lovely creature, and I'd work my fingers to the bone to find the man worthy of her; but if I'm too pushing " "Pushing!" she said. "God's light! You be a lot too retreating, Jack, and always was. Because you've got a face full of character, unlike other men's, why for should you suppose 'twas a bug-a-boo to frighten the woman?
I had heard in the North much said about the great danger incurred by a night-stroll in New Orleans, and so will the stranger who next follows after me: but do not let these bug-a-boo tales deter him from a walk upon the Levee after ten P.M. It is not amongst these sons of industry, however rude, that he will encounter either insult or danger: I have traversed it often on foot and on horseback, and never met with the first, or had the slightest cause to apprehend the latter.
'No, indeed, George; you shall do no such thing. Then George suggested the priest; but nothing had been settled when they reached the inn-door. There he was, swinging a cane at the foot of the billiard-room stairs the little bug-a-boo, who was now so much in the way of all of them! The innkeeper muttered some salutation, and George just touched his hat.
In short, he was another Princess Caraboo, or young Chatterton, or Cagliostro, or Count Eliorich, all of whom were made great impostors by the help of others, the over-credulous and the over-confident in themselves. "He who would do great actions," writes our enormous bug-a-boo, "must learn to empoly his powers to the least possible loss.
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