Page:Bierce - Collected Works - Volume 09.djvu/37

Rh instances, by the shotgun, the bloodhound and the fagot-and-stake — have given a faulty result, and many of these obdurate persons remain, as the late Parson Brownlow would have said, "steeped to the nose and chin in political profligacy," voting the Republican ticket whenever permitted. For four centuries we have hunted the Red Indian from cover to cover, and he is not a very nice Red Indian yet, some of his vices and superstitions differing widely from our own. The motorcarman, shutting his eyes to the glory and advantage of enlightenment, still urges his indocile apparatus along the line of least insistence ; and the organist from the overseas practices his black art at the street corner, inaccessible to reclamation. A hundred urban tribes might be named among civilization's irreclaimables, without mentioning any of the religious sects. At every turn the gentleman who is desirous of making-over his faulty fellow-men encounters a baffling apathy or a spirited hostility to change.

Possibly the higher quadrumana may prove more pregnable to light and reason — more willing to become as we. Perhaps when we can all talk Monkey we shall be able to set forth the advantages of our happy state more