fine aspiring institution, full of broad-gauged, earnest fellows, because one of them was a wash-out?"
"One? Just one? I'll admit there aren't many, not very many, hogs like Gantry in your church, or any other, but let me give my loving fraternal opinions of a few others of your splendid Methodist fellows! Bishop Toomis is a gas-bag. Chester Brown, with his candles and chanting, he's merely an Episcopalian who'd go over to the Episcopal church if he weren't afraid he'd lose too much salary in starting again—just as a good share of the Anglo-Catholic Episcopalians are merely Catholics who'd go over to Rome if they weren't afraid of losing social caste. Otto Hickenlooper, with his institutions—the rich are so moved by his charities that they hand him money and Otto gets praised for spending that money. Fine vicious circle. And think of some poor young idiot studying art, wasting his time and twisting his ideas, at Otto's strictly moral art class, where the teacher is chosen more for his opinions on the sacraments than for his knowledge of composition."
"But, Frank, I've said all—"
"And the sound, the scholarly, the well-balanced Dr. Mahlon Potts! Oh, he's a perfectly good man, and not a fanatic. Doesn't believe that evolution is a fiendish doctrine. The only trouble with him—as with most famous preachers—is that he hasn't the slightest notion what human beings are like. He's insulated; has been ever since he became a preacher. He goes to the death-beds of prostitutes (but not very often, I'll bet!) but he can't understand that perfectly decent husbands and wives often can't get along because of sexual incompatibility.
"Potts lives in a library; he gets his idea of human motives out of George Eliot and Margaret Deland, and his ideas of economics out of editorials in the Advocate, and his idea as to what he really is accomplishing out of the flattery of his Ladies' Aid! He's a much worse criminal than Gantry! I imagine Elmer has some desire to be a good fellow and share his swag, but Dr. Potts wants to make over an entire world of living, bleeding, sweating, loving, fighting human beings into the likeness of Dr. Potts—of Dr. Potts taking his afternoon nap and snoring under a shelf of books about the doctrines of the Ante-Nicene Fathers!"
"Golly, you simply love us! And I suppose you think I
