Letters continued to stream in from all points of the compass—538 of them in a single day, with the temperature steadily mounting. In all this febrile rush of things, however, the scientist was not too busy to write a reassuring letter to his newspaper friend, who in the midst of the furore had sent him a solicitous note expressing hope that his story and its reaction would not forever deprive Burbank of a zest for living.
"To be sure," the scientist wrote, "I have had my hands full the last few days, as I am receiving some five hundred or more letters a day, but the publication of our interview made my life happy, not miserable."
And then, doubtless with a mischievous sparkle in his eyes, he returned with sardonic glee to the word around which the whole controversy has ranged, subjoining, "Faithfully yours, Luther Burbank."
IV
In the meantime, the orthodox clergy of California joined with that of other sections in soundly berating Burbank for being so courageous as to voice his views.
Said the Rev. Fred A. Keast of the First Methodist Episcopal Church in Santa Rosa, where Burbank had attended services sporadically: "Mr. Burbank, in a time when the youth of the land are jazz crazed and breaking away in large numbers from religious teachings, has voiced foolish utterances." And he went on, according to press dispatches, to score Burbank as an uneducated man.
