ight?"

"Then, if you must know: I was at the workingmen's educational union
yesterday--" (Mohr coughed, glanced at Edwin, and then comfortably
sipped his wine)--"There was to have been a lecture on the nature and
value of education, but the speaker was taken sick and begged to be
excused. We were just considering what was to be done, when a new-comer
rose, a guest whom no one knew. He had a strange, half humble, half
scornful Jesuit face. 'Would the company permit him to make a short
address?' The request could not be refused, and he instantly began to
speak with a boldness that surpassed everything that could have been
expected from his priestly appearance. 'Education? A dangerous thing,
at least as the children of the world were accustomed to understand it.
The devil, who goes about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may
devour, is a highly cultivated man, not easily caught by modern
enlightenment. His proverb is: Education gives liberty, and knowledge
rules the world. Yes indeed, the world! So the tempter said to the
Lord: "All these things will I give unto thee, if thou wilt fall down
and worship me!"--But "_my_ kingdom is not of this world"--and so on,
the well known litany--_True_. education desires to know nothing of the
so-called treasures of science, which morth and rust may corrupt. He
who is fitting himself for heaven, provides for the one thing that is
necessary, the'--well, you're doubtless willing to be spared the
sermon. When it was over, the honest fellows sat bewildered and
thunderstruck. The old habit, acquired in childhood, still lingered: no
debate in church!--and even the president seemed to think we ought not
to take issue with a guest. But the man had assailed our society in the
most offensive way, and were we to be silent? So I began to speak. I
was just in the mood, and besides it's a subject to which I've devoted
a great deal of thought, I was glad to give the whole society a full
discourse from the text: Disparage only reason and science! Well I need
not waste any words on the subject among ourselves. But never has it
been so clear to me, as in that hour, what a crime those persons
commit, who seek to disgust men with the earth, in order to prepare
them for what they call heaven. You know I am the last to favor the
current talk about utility. These people make the means the end,
and if they achieved their object and arranged the world according to
their plan--who that did not consider it th