Moloch: Or, This Gentile World Read Online Free Page A

fruits of his first two months in America: a new slant on sex, a strong sympathy for the Negro, contempt for Nordic supremacy, increasing fears of acquiring a venereal infection (to say nothing of pyorrhea and hemorrhoids), pride in his growing familiarity with the native idiom, with slang and profanity. He thought of his intended studies at Columbia. They seemed far away, and about as useful as a totem pole. What could he do, in America, with a degree of “Doctor of Philosophy”? Get married with it and become a streetcar conductor? Vague, unfinished thoughts of the life he had abandoned occupied him. He wondered listlessly if he would ever go back to India and settle down to the business of driving out the British fleas.
    “Hey, you,” he chirped pleasantly, “what time is it?”
    This query was drowned in an ocean of sneers and guffaws.
    Hari grinned, not knowing how else to meet this Gentile world, and stretched leisurely in full view of the public.
    Cried a voice: “Say, mutt, what are you? Where do you come from?”
    The term “mutt,” connoting in its restricted sense “telegraph messenger,” was unknown to him. But he accepted with fiery exclusiveness the challenge of his origin. Proudly, taut as a bronze statue of Demosthenes, he drew himself up. His black eyes glittered with the keenest amusement as he prepared to “repeat” his maiden speech to the American public. He felt like that great French sot who, in his eloquence, exclaimed: “Take elegance and wring its neck.”
    “Young roughnecks,” he commenced, “you see before you this noon, in this glorious land of equality and fraternity, a representative of the greatest culture the world has ever known. I consider it a privilege, a rare privilege”—his “rare” is impossible to reproduce—”to be permitted to answer the question which the young lout before me has just propounded. I am a son of India, you joyous vagabonds … a son of that vast empire which stretches from the Himalayas to the coral tip of Ceylon. A nation of three hundred million souls, speaking a hundred different tongues, worshiping a thousand unknown gods.... The most precious jewel in the wallet of that predatory monster, the British government.”
    A few young Chinamen in American dress swelled the ranks of his audience. Toward these Hari flung his ropes of pearls.
    “Men of the Orient, I greet you! Followers of Confucius, disciples of the Great Gautama, I have a message for you … a message for all mankind, black or white, red or yellow.” His teeth gleamed white and strong in the bright sunlight. “Men of Cathay, behold in me the Promised Redeemer … the new Savior of the World! O men, nothing surprises me more than the vague, diverse, often contradictory popular conceptions of the coming of Christ. Do you expect the man from the moon to descend on earth and be your ruler? Men of the twentieth century, I think you will have sense enough to recognize this fact: scattered far and wide are the genuine credentials in the Bible, entitling me to the role I aspire to play—’the scroll and the book written within and without, speaking a foreign language, lisping and smattering, publishing peace, and so on and so on....’ Even a cursory review of the Bible, with a view to establishing my identity with the Promised One, will convince the skeptic of the force of my claims.... The very stupendousness of my task, that is , evolving order out of the present chaos, is its simplicity. If I appear to be paradoxical, I am none the less truthful. I do not know how far I shall be able to satisfy the cravings of the world.” (Sic!) “ The world has thoroughly disappointed me .... However, the modern Christ does not claim to be infallible. You smile.” (A mere oratorical gesture … no one understood what he was talking about.) “I am human, all too human. These petty human weaknesses are, however, overshadowed and eclipsed by human greatness, human loftiness inherent in this