The War Prayer: The Spanish American War and Mark Twain

An 1896 Spanish cartoon criticizing the U.S.

(Wikipedia)

 

In his 1902 short story, "The War Prayer," Mark Twain does not hold back. Criticizing the recent Spanish American War, a war many saw as a act of naked aggression, Twain set the scene in a large patriotic/religious rally in which a pastor is about to deliver a prayer. I quote the second part of the story here in full, beginning when the stranger appears and approaches the podium.

I offer this to counter the current administration's blood lust in the war with Iran. It is naked aggression and will probably result in what will qualify as war crimes, if it hasn't already. The administration's delight in the killing of innocent civilians and the rampant destruction borders on insanity.

So, I offer Mark Twain's perspective on such warfare. He did not allow this essay to be published during his lifetime because, as he said, "only dead men can tell the truth."

An aged stranger entered and moved with slow and noiseless step up the main aisle, his eyes fixed upon the minister, his long body clothed in a robe that reached to his feet, his head bare, his white hair descending in a frothy cataract to his shoulders, his seamy face unnaturally pale, pale even to ghastliness. With all eyes following him and wondering, he made his silent way; without pausing, he ascended to the preacher's side and stood there, waiting. With shut lids the preacher, unconscious of his presence, continued his moving prayer, and at last finished it with the words, uttered in fervent appeal,"Bless our arms, grant us the victory, O Lord our God, Father and Protector of our land and flag!" 

The stranger touched his arm, motioned him to step aside -- which the startled minister did -- and took his place. During some moments he surveyed the spellbound audience with solemn eyes in which burned an uncanny light; then in a deep voice he said "I come from the Throne-bearing a message from Almighty God!" The words smote the house with a shock; if the stranger perceived it he gave no attention. "He has heard the prayer of His servant your shepherd and grant it if such shall be your desire after I, His messenger, shall have explained to you its import-that is to say, its full import. For it is like unto many of the prayers of men, in that it asks for more than he who utters it is aware of-except he pause and think. "God's servant and yours has prayed his prayer. Has he paused and taken thought? Is it one prayer? No, it is two- one uttered, the other not. Both have reached the ear of His Who hearth all supplications, the spoken and the unspoken. Ponder this-keep it in mind. If you beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware! lest without intent you invoke a curse upon a neighbor at the same time. If you pray for the blessing of rain upon your crop which needs it, by that act you are possibly praying for a curse upon some neighbor's crop which may not need rain and can be injured by it. "You have heard your servant's prayer-the uttered part of it. I am commissioned by God to put into words the other part of it-that part which the pastor, and also you in your hearts, fervently prayed silently. And ignorantly and unthinkingly? God grant that it was so! You heard these words: 'Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!' That is sufficient. The whole of the uttered prayer is compact into those pregnant words. Elaborations were not necessary. When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory-must follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God the Father fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen! 

"O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle-be Thou near them! With them, in spirit, we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it-for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen. 

 (After a pause) 

 "Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits." 

It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said. 

 The full story can be found here: 

https://americanliterature.com/author/mark-twain/short-story/the-war-prayer

Copying the New Testament by Hand in Greek!

Got them at B&N!

 A number of years ago I embarked on a project that went the way of many of my projects, going strong for awhile then allowing it to lapse. Now that I'm retired and have more time I have decided to pick it up again. Hey, it’s Lent!! The project is writing out the entire New Testament in Greek in the style of early papyrus manuscripts. Last time I got as far as Mark 13:10. I did a couple of verses today and will do more tomorrow.

Part of my motivation was to see how long it would take me to write a page. I am using journal type books that are a perfect copy of early manuscript in their original form. I have found that it takes fifteen to twenty minutes a page. I still have a long way to go. I'm still in the first volume, which has four thick signatures. Matthew took up one half of the book so Mark will definitely fit. I haven't decided what to do with the leftover pages yet. It isn't a huge problem.

I have learned a lot about what the scribes experienced. And, I cheat a bit. I started off using a fountain pen but found that both tedious and expensive. Of course, the scribes would have too, but it wasn't that important. I am currently using a fine point Sharpie. The ink doesn't bleed through so that's good. I have also found first hand how errors were easily introduced into manuscripts. It's in looking back and forth from the page that is being copied and the new copy. If the same word appears in two lines in a row on the page that is being copied it is easy for the eye to slip down to the second one, thereby leaving out a phrase. The same thing can happen within a single line. It is also easy to misspell a word if I memorize the whole word and don't look back while I'm writing it. So what it comes down to is that I'm just as human as the scribes who did this for a living 1700 years ago. I have correction tape just in case. It doesn't happen a lot but it does happen some.

Fortunately this isn't a project with a timeline. It will be meditative to return to this project, and will be a good way to refresh my Koine Greek.

Genealogy Hunt

Eleanor Cole Cowing, ca. 1880

Job Cowing, ca. 1880

 My original Cowing ancestor was taken prisoner at the Battle of Worcester on September 3, 1651. Many were shipped to Massachusetts and sold as indentured servants, including John Cowin. Generations later his descendants still lived in eastern Massachusetts, as they do now. Some got the itch to move. Gathelus Cowing moved with his brother to Chesterfield, Massachusetts after serving in the Revolutionary War. His grandson Job (my gr gr grandfather), born in 1820, moved around quite a bit. While working as a lumberman in the area of Orange County in southern New York he met and married his wife, Eleanor Cole.

Eleanor has been a mystery to me for decades. Years ago I discovered that given the area she was from, it was likely that she was of Dutch descent.  Members of the Kool family began to spell their name in an English manner. Orange County as well as Ulster County had many settlers that moved out of New York City. I remember having repeated disagreements with my father about this. He didn't believe that she was Dutch. You have to understand that in New England tradition the Dutch were seen as money grubbers. As if the early colonists in New England weren't. To admit that you were descended from Dutch ancestors, for some, could be the same as admitting that you were descended from pirates.

So, on I went. Periodically I would do another search and see if anything came up. I decided a couple of years ago to look at the census returns for Minisink and Deer Park--not a digital search but an actual scan of every page of the returns. In the 1825 return I found a Sarah Cole in Minisink with a girl in the household under the age of five. Hm. At that time it was quite rare for a single woman to be the head of household. Maybe she was a widow? I looked through the rest of the return and nearby found a Benjamin Cole and his wife. Hm. Could they be related? I searched birth records and sure enough Benjamin and his wife had a daughter Sarah born in 1789. Just the right age to have a child. Now, I potentially had Eleanor's mother. I started searching for Sarah Cole. No marriage records which meant Cole was not her married name but her family of origin. Single woman with a young child living in the same town with her parents? I did the math. The most likely explanation was that Sarah was a single unmarried mother who had her child outside of marriage. That explained a lot--no marriage record, no birth or baptismal record for Eleanor, no trace of Eleanor's origin.

What of Eleanor's father? There is absolutely no clue. No name, no record, no nothing. Several possibilities occur to me:

1) Rape (not a pleasant prospect to consider)

2) A consensual relationship, in which the father may have either been married already or would be socially embarrassed by having fathered a child out of wedlock.

3) Incest ( also not a pleasant possibility)

That's about it. I have not been able to find court records yet that might document a paternity lawsuit. My gut feeling is that I'll never know. Her father's identity will most likely be shrouded forever.

The genetic confirmation between Benjamin and Eleanor now confirmed, I could look for any trace of Sarah. Nothing. She doesn't appear anywhere in the 1830 Federal or 1835 New York census. The first possibility is that she had died. Or, somehow she had slipped past a census taker's attention. Or, she may have gone by another name. Regardless, she vanished.

With Benjamin's identity confirmed I was able to trace his ancestry back to 17th century Manhattan before it was taken over by the English. Also there are some French Huegenots from the Kingston, New Paltz area. Pretty interesting.

But it remains that I don't know who this particular gr gr gr grandfather is, and that disappoints me. That's the pitfal of many a genealogical search. Sometimes people disappear, intentionally or not. So he's a ghost, hiding from his descendants.

But there is still a happy ending.

When she was about 25 Eleanor met Job Cowing and they were married in 1845. Together they moved around a bit, spending time in Vermont before settling in Suffield, Connecticut, where they died. They raised a number of children, one of whom, Walter, was my gr. grandfather.

At the time a child born out of wedlock would have faced an uphill climb in the world. It's not surprising that there is no birth or baptismal record. Somehow she managed to grow up, whether in the care of her mother or another relative, and find stability as an adult.

I'm proud of the struggles that she overcame. And, I'm proud of my gr gr grandfather, who didn't care about Eleanor's background but married her for who she was. For the 19th century, that's as good as it could get.

The only oral history I have concerning them was from my gr. aunt Bertha, my grandfather's sister, who remembered them. She said that Job was a rather short man, and a happy person. If that's the only thing anyone can remember about him he's pretty lucky.

Along with my promise to my father to find his Gr gr grandfather Partrick Lewis (see The Empty Chair series) finding out Eleanor’s background was the other genealogical thing I promised him I would do.  It only took about forty years but it was worth it. The only remaining thing with that is finding her father but that will most likely remain a mystery until we know as we are known, as the old hymn says.

 

Postscript: Job is the reason I have a long white beard!