abreast of the times, and stall off competition.

This religion was too elastic for ordinary use. It stretched itself and
embraced pieces of everything that medicine men of all ages have
manufactured. It approved and stole from Freemasonry; looted the
Latter-day Rosicrucians of half their pet words; took any fragments of
Egyptian philosophy that it found in the Encyclopædia Britannica; annexed
as many of the Vedas as had been translated into French or English, and
talked of all the rest; built in the German versions of what is left of
the Zend Avesta; encouraged white, gray, and black magic, including
Spiritualism, palmistry, fortune-telling by cards, hot chestnuts,
double-kerneled nuts and tallow droppings; would have adopted Voodoo and
Oboe had it known anything about them, and showed itself, in every way,
one of the most accommodating arrangements that had ever been invented
since the birth of the sea.

When it was in thorough working order, with all the machinery down to the
subscriptions complete, Dana Da came from nowhere, with nothing in his
hands, and wrote a chapter in its history which has hitherto been
unpublished. He said that his first name was Dana, and his second was Da.
Now, setting aside Dana of the New York _Sun_, Dana is a Bhil name, and Da
fits no native of India unless you accept the Bengali Dé as the original
spelling. Da is Lap or Finnish; and Dana Da was neither Finn, Chin, Bhil,
Bengali, Lap, Nair, Gond, Romaney, Magh, Bokhariot, Kurd, Armenian,
Levantine, Jew, Persian, Punjabi, Madrasi, Parsee, nor anything else known
to ethnologists. He was simply Dana Da, and declined to give further
information. For the sake of brevity, and as roughly indicating his
origin, he was called "The Native." He might have been the original Old
Man of the Mountains, who is said to be the only authorized head of the
Teacup Creed. Some people said that he was; but Dana Da used to smile and