"Well.... Well.... I've always aimed to be liberal." Babbitt was
enormously shy and proud and self-conscious; he tried to look like the
boy he had been a quarter-century ago, and he shone upon his old friend
Seneca Doane as he rumbled, "Trouble with a lot of these fellows, even
the live wires and some of 'em that think they're forward-looking, is
they aren't broad-minded and liberal. Now, I always believe in giving
the other fellow a chance, and listening to his ideas."

"That's fine."

"Tell you how I figure it: A little opposition is good for all of us,
so a fellow, especially if he's a business man and engaged in doing the
work of the world, ought to be liberal."

"Yes--"

"I always say a fellow ought to have Vision and Ideals. I guess some of
the fellows in my business think I'm pretty visionary, but I just let
'em think what they want to and go right on--same as you do.... By
golly, this is nice to have a chance to sit and visit and kind of, you
might say, brush up on our ideals."

"But of course we visionaries do rather get beaten. Doesn't it bother
you?"

"Not a bit! Nobody can dictate to me what I think!"

"You're the man I want to help me. I want you to talk to some of
the business men and try to make them a little more liberal in their
attitude toward poor Beecher Ingram."

"Ingram? But, why, he's this nut preacher that got kicked out of
the Congregationalist Church, isn't he, and preaches free love and
sedition?"

This, Doane explained, was indeed the general conception of Beecher
Ingram, but he himself saw Beecher Ingram as a priest of the brotherhood
of man, of which Babbitt was notoriously an upholder. So would Babbitt
keep his acquaintances from hounding Ingram and his forlorn little
church?

"You bet! I'll call down any of the boys I hear getting funny about
Ingram," Babbitt said affectionately to his dear friend Doane.

Doane warmed up and became reminiscent. He spoke of student days in
Germany, of lobbying for single tax in Washington, of international
labor conferences. He mentioned his friends, Lord Wycombe, Colonel
Wedgwood, Professor Piccoli. Babbitt had always supposed that Doane
associated only with the I. W. W., but now he nodded gravely, as one
who knew Lord Wycombes by the score, and he got in two references to Sir
Gerald Doak. He felt daring and idealistic and cosmopolitan.

Suddenly, in his new spiritual grandeur, he was sorry for Zilla
Riesling, and understood her as these