"Put it on," he said, "but be careful. Dat's how vatches iss busted
alvays. By bumping und paying no attention to dem."
SCHOPENHAUER'S SON
Life, alas, is an intricate illusion. God is a pack of lies under which
man staggers to his grave. And man--ah, here we have Nature's only
mountebank; here we have Nature's humorous and ingenuous experiment in
tragedy. And thought--ah, the tissue-paper chimera that seeks forever to
devour life.
It is the cult of the pessimist, the gentle malice of disillusion. And,
like all other cults, it sustains its advocates. Thus, the city has no
more debonairly-mannered, smiling-souled citizen to offer than Clarence
Darrow. For years and years Mr. Darrow has been gently disproving the
intelligence of man, the importance of life, and the necessity of thought.
For years and years Mr. Darrow has been whimsically deflating the
illusions in which man hides from the purposelessness of the cosmos. God,
heaven, politics, philosophies, ambition, love--Mr. Darrow has deflated
them time and again--charging from $1 to $2 a seat for the spectacle.
This is nothing against Mr. Darrow--that he charges money sometimes. For
years and years Mr. Darrow has been enlivening the intellectual purlieus
of the city with his debates.
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