a
wonderful man, completely in the confidence of their God, whom he
treated colloquially and exploited very much as a newspaper reporter
would exploit a foreign potentate. But, unlike the newspaper reporter,
he never allowed his listeners to forget that he, and not He, was the
centre of attraction. With a voice of silver and with imagery borrowed
from the auction-room, he built up for his hearers a heaven on the lines
of the Palmer House (but with all the gilding real gold, and all
the plate-glass diamond), and set in the centre of it a loud-voiced,
argumentative, very shrewd creation that he called God. One sentence at
this point caught my delighted ear. It was apropos of some question of
the Judgment, and ran:--"No! I tell you God doesn't do business that
way."

He was giving them a deity whom they could comprehend, and a gold
and jewelled heaven in which they could take a natural interest. He
interlarded his performance with the slang of the streets, the counter,
and the exchange, and he said that religion ought to enter into daily
life. Consequently, I presume he introduced it as daily life--his own
and the life of his friends.

Then I escaped before the blessing, desiring no benediction at such
hands. But the persons who listened seemed to enjoy themselves, and I
understood that I had met with a popular preacher.

Later on, when I had perused the sermons of a gentleman called Talmage
and some others, I perceived that I had been listening to a very mild
specimen. Yet that man, with his brutal gold and silver idols, his
hands-in-pocket, cigar-in-mouth, and hat-on-the-back-of-the-head style
of dealing with the sacred vessels, would count himself, spiritually,
quite competent to send a mission to convert the Indians.

All that Sunday I listened to people who said that the mere fact of
spiking down strips of iron to wood, and getting a steam and iron thing
to run along them was progress, that the telephone was progress, and the
net-work of wires overhead was progress. They repeated their statements
again and again.

One of them took me to their City Hall and Board of Trade works, and
pointed it out with pride. It was very ugly, but very big, and the
streets in front of it were narrow and unclean. When I saw the faces of
the men who did business in that building, I felt that there had been a
mistake in their billeting.

By the way, 'tis a consolation to feel that I am not writing to an
English audience. Then I s