Andress Floyd - My Monks of Vagabondia

My Monks of Vagabondia comprises Fact-stories selected from the old files of the Self Master Magazine. I wish to present the defeated man, as he really is, to the reader who cannot fail to appreciate the humor and tragedy that makes up his wayward life. The bond of sympathy should be awakened between us and the so-called prodigal.

A wider publicity should be given to the unique but practical uplift work that I have founded and carried on for the past five years among these weaker brothers.

The stories explain in part the methods and plans of the Family of Self Masters.

It is – we believe – the only book in which a writer has received his facts for his stories direct from a life-experience with outcast men.

Not alone that, but the volume is printed, bound and illustrated by the unexpected guests – the Itinerant Monks of whom the tales are told, and who make their home in our so-called Monastery.

The day approaches when broken men shall have beautiful, though simple, homes of their own making, modeled after the group idea of The Self Master Colony. They will be established outside of the different cities of the world, and opened hospitably to all men who come in their hour of need or weakness, seeking Self Mastery and the peace that accompanies it.

The proceeds from the sale of these stories go toward the purchase and installation of much needed equipment for the Printshop and Bindery. With this equipment the men can work out their own independence, industrially and socially.

When a man has lived months and years enslaved by some vicious habit – self-destructive and careless of consequences – his sub-conscious mind is a sensitive matrix on which the sordid history is deeply engraved. The certain change can come only as the man learns values and respects them by a right life.

The sub-conscious self takes on a complete reformation slowly. An evil habit does not gain mastery over the man upon the instant nor once in control is its grip broken by any feeble affirmation or miraculous phenomenon.

The hope comes when one turns one’s thought from the destructive to the constructive, and lives in the sight of the new born faith until wisdom lifts the darkened veil and freedom follows as its rightful legacy.

The Self Master Colony offers an open door to the disheartened man during the period of his awakening to his real strength and helps him with its constant care and sympathy back to his true self.

The man had walked the entire distance from New York to the Self Master Family. In truth, he had walked more than the entire distance, for once or twice he had lost his way – as many a man has done in other walks of Life. Painfully he had retraced his steps to the right road. The mistakes had told heavily upon his failing strength. They had made him just that much more weary with it all. No doubt mistakes are wonderfully educational; they make men wiser, and therefore better, for in the final analysis wisdom and goodness are synonymous.

He complained bitterly at the hardness of his lot and found little comfort in the thought that he might reach the Colony too late for the evening meal.

His friend who had met him walking aimlessly up and down Broadway assured him that there was always a coffee pot boiling on the old-fashioned cook stove in the boys’ kitchen – that the Colony House never locked its doors.

To a man who feels that every door in the world is locked against him there is comfort in the thought that there is really one place where he may find a welcome. His friend had said that there would be no questions asked him on his arrival – no investigation.

“No investigation,” he muttered aloud, “thank God! It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a ‘down-and-out’ man to convince Professional Charity that he is really hungry. I think they would have given me a ‘hand-out’ when they investigated me the last time if I could have told them what town my mother was born in.”

He smiled with weak cynicism at the folly of his thoughts, and then became suddenly serious, for on the side hill in front of a large colonial house, worked out in white stone, were the words “The Self Masters.” He stopped and studied the quiet, home-like scene from the road. All these weary miles he had come to ask food and shelter, and now his courage seemed to fail him. He sat down by the road side and leisurely took his pipe from his pocket. Then he prepared tobacco with the utmost care, filled the pipe and lighted it.

“THE SELF MASTERS”

he spelled out the letters on the sign; “What the h – ll is that? – Self Master – Self Mastery – Self Control. Old Man, if you had ever had any of that Self Control in your make-up you would not be a Knight of the Dusty Road!.. You had better go back to the East Side where you know the land; where no man cares whether you live decently or not – if you can buy.”

Then the sound of a piano and male voices came to him and awakened him to a new train of thought. “It is a Monastery – a Monastery of Vagabondia,” he said, "and why not? why shouldn’t a man, even a homeless man, have his Monastery, if you please, where he can forget his past and live cleanly? If he only lives cleanly for a day and falls… It’s something to remember – a day he doesn’t have to be ashamed of. Who knows but that in the one day of unselfish living a man is more truly his real self than he is in all the other days of his vicious years.

“Throughout his long life Moses was the leader of his people, but it was in that day that he talked with God – face to face – that his countenance did shine like the sun. It was not when he slew the Egyptian, and, frightened, buried him in the sand; it was when he stood in the presence of Divinity – that Moses was Moses. When the drunkard is in his sober mind, when the liar is speaking the truth, when the thief is giving honest measure, when the murderer is kind to his fellow, then, and only then, is the true Self finding expression.”

He drew heavily at his pipe and then smilingly said, “My pipe has gone out!” He knocked out the ashes into his hand and scattered them to the wind, gravely, as if it were some religious ceremony. Then he dusted his shoes and clothes, and straightening himself up to his full height, he marched bravely up to the front door of the house…

… A black crow, belated in his home-going, left his corn-thieving, and, rising, flew across the sky to his eyrie in the pines.

Resolved, that old fashioned cow’s milk is better for Our Baby, than any prepared food."

The debate on the above subject will start at seven o’clock next Thursday evening. The Conservatives of our Colony will speak in favor of cow’s milk as a baby’s food. The Progressives will speak in favor of prepared food.

The parliamentary rules governing the debate will be the same as govern a “catch-as-catch-can” wrestling match.

No slugging will be permitted until forensic effort has proven ineffective. When further argument has become useless, the three-ounce boxing gloves, recently donated to us, may be used to force a decision. In fact, several of the boys who talk but little, are practising with the gloves, so that they may become factors in the final settlement of the problem.