So out I went, to continue my mission in California, with the hearty "good-speed" of this wonderful man. Santa Rosa, nay California, is proud of him, and there must be some temptation to avoid friction. What, no danger in California? Why, here in a suburb of San Francisco I hear of an audience of five thousand Fundamentalists rocking with laughter at some of the elementary truths of science. Even the educated run after iridescent verbiage and shun facts. Hindu word-spinners dig gold here.
As I sped away my eye caught a board in a field by the road: "Jesus is the way, the truth and the life," it said. This after 1900 years experimental verification of his efficacy! And in the heart of California, where Luther Burbank showed that the only way and truth and life is science. All honor to him that he did not leave it to such obtuse minds to "draw their own conclusions," as so many do. "Science is the only savior," he said to people. He said it in church one memorable day.
"I very rarely speak in public, and, curiously, my two addresses are in churches," he said, eyeing me, I thought, apprehensively.
"I know no better place to say such things," I retorted, and I thought sadly of the very different things which American men of science had recently been saying in the churches of Kansas City during the convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
