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Robert Ingersoll
by
In a few months Robert Ingersoll and Eva Parker were married.
Never were man and woman more perfectly mated than this couple. And how much the world owes to her sustaining love and unfaltering faith, we can not compute; but my opinion is that if it had not been for Eva Parker–twice a daughter of the Revolution, whose ancestors fought side by side with the Livingstons–we should never have heard of Robert Ingersoll as the maker of an epoch. It is love that makes the world go ’round–and it is love that makes the orator and fearless thinker, no less than poet, painter and musician.
No man liveth unto himself alone: we demand the approval and approbation of another: we write and speak for some One; and our thought coming back from this One approved, gives courage and that bold determination which carries conviction home. Before the world believes in us we must believe in ourselves, and before we fully believe in ourselves this some One must believe in us. Eva Parker believed in Robert Ingersoll, and it was her love and faith that made him believe in himself and caused him to fling reasons into the face of hypocrisy and shower with sarcasm and ridicule the savage and senseless superstitions that paraded themselves as divine.
Wendell Phillips believed in himself because Ann never doubted him. Without Ann he would not have had the courage to face that twenty years’ course of mobs. If it had ever occurred to him that the mob was right he would have gone down in darkness and defeat; but with Ann such a suspicion was not possible. He pitted Ann’s faith against the prejudice of centuries–two with God are a majority.
It was Eva’s faith that sustained Robert. In those first years of lecturing she always accompanied him, and at his lectures sat on the stage in the wings and gloried in his success. He did not need her to protect him from the mob, but he needed her to protect him from himself. It is only perfect love that casteth out fear.
* * * * *
There is a little book called, “Ingersoll as He Is,” which is being circulated by some earnest advocates of truth.
The volume is a vindication, a refutation and an apology. It takes up a goodly list of zealous calumniators and cheerful prevaricators and tacks their pelts on the barn-door of obliquity.
That Ingersoll won the distinction of being more grossly misrepresented than any other man of his time, there is no doubt. This was to his advantage–he was advertised by his rabid enemies no less than by his loving friends. But his good friends who are putting out this vindication should cultivate faith, and know that there is a God, or Something, who looks after the lies and the liars–we needn’t.
A big man should never be cheapened by a defense. Life is its own excuse for being, and every life is its own apology. Silence is better than wordy refutation. People who want to believe the falsehoods told of this man, or any other, will continue to believe them until the crack o’ doom.
Most accusations contain a certain basis of truth, but they may be no less libels on that account. One zealous advocate, intent on loving his supposed enemy, printed a thrilling story about Ingersoll being taken prisoner during the war, while taking refuge in a pig-pen. To this some of Bob’s friends interposed a fierce rejoinder declaring that Bob stood like Falstaff at Gadshill and fought the rogues in buckram to a standstill.
Heaven forfend me from my friends–I can withstand mine enemies alone!
I am quite ready to believe that Bob, being attacked by an overwhelming force, suddenly bethought him of an engagement, and made a swift run for safety. The impeccable man who has never done a cowardly thing, nor a mean thing, is no kinsman of mine! The saintly hero who has not had his heels run away with his head, and sought safety in a friendly pig-pen–aye! and filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat–has dropped something out of his life that he will have to go back for and pick up in another incarnation. We love men for their limitations and weaknesses, no less than for their virtues. A fault may bring a man very close to us. Have we, too, not sought safety in pig-pens! The people who taunt other people with having taken temporary refuge in a pig-pen are usually those who live in pig-pens the whole year ’round.