. The Indians' secrets of health : or, What the white race may learn from the Indian . howy, meretricious,deceptive. If I were making this bookan arraignment of our civilization therewould ])e no lack of counts in the in-dictment, and a plethora of evidencecould be found to justify each a nation, we do not knoAV how toeat rationally; few people sleep asthey should; our drinking habits couldnot be much worse; our clothing isstiff, formal, conventional, hideous, andunhealthful; our headgear the deliriumtremens of silliness. Much of ourarchitecture is weakly imitative, flimsy,without di
. The Indians' secrets of health : or, What the white race may learn from the Indian . howy, meretricious,deceptive. If I were making this bookan arraignment of our civilization therewould ])e no lack of counts in the in-dictment, and a plethora of evidencecould be found to justify each a nation, we do not knoAV how toeat rationally; few people sleep asthey should; our drinking habits couldnot be much worse; our clothing isstiff, formal, conventional, hideous, andunhealthful; our headgear the deliriumtremens of silliness. Much of ourarchitecture is weakly imitative, flimsy,without dignity, character, or stability;much of our religion a professionrather than a life; our scholastic system turns outanaemic and half-trained pupils who are forceful dem-onstrators of the truth that a little knowledge is a dan-gerous thing. And as for our legal system, if a bodyof lunatics from the nearest asylum could not concoctfor us a better hash of jurisprudence than now cursesour citizenship I should be surprised. No honestperson, whether of the law or out of it, denies that 28. INDIAN BEADWORK OF RATTLESNAKE DESIGN. WHITE RACE AND ITS CIVILIZATION law—which Browning so forcefully satirizes asthe patent truth-extracting process,—has become asystem of formalism, of precedent, of convention, oftechnicality. A case may be tried, and cost the city,county, or state thousands of dollars; a decision ren-dered, and yet, upon a mere technicality that does notaffect the real merits of the case one iota, the decision willbe reversed, and either the culprit — whose guilt noone denies — is discharged, or a new trial, with itsattendant expense, is ordered. The folly of such asystem! The sheer idiocy of men wasting time andstrength and energy upon such puerile foolishness. Iverily believe the world would be bettered if the wholelegal system, from supreme court of the United Statesdown to pettiest justice court, could be abolished atone blow, and a reversion made to the decisions o
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