common people with the uncommon, you would keep one-half of
Christendom sick at their stomach. If you are going to kill the
church thus with bad smells I will have nothing to do with this work
of evangelization.

Commenting on this Mark Twain said--well, he said a good deal more than
we have room for here, but a portion of his closing paragraphs is worth
preserving. He compares the Reverend Mr. Talmage with the early
disciples of Christ--Paul and Peter and the others; or, rather, he
contrasts him with them.

They healed the very beggars, and held intercourse with people of a
villainous odor every day. If the subject of these remarks had been
chosen among the original Twelve Apostles he would not have
associated with the rest, because he could not have stood the fishy
smell of some of his comrades who came from around the Sea of
Galilee. He would have resigned his commission with some such
remark as he makes in the extract quoted above: "Master, if thou art
going to kill the church thus with bad smells I will have nothing to
do with this work of evangelization." He is a disciple, and makes
that remark to the Master; the only difference is that he makes it
in the nineteenth instead of the first century.

Talmage was immensely popular at this time, and Mark Twain's open attack
on him must have shocked a good many Galaxy readers, as perhaps his
article on the Chinese cruelties offended the citizens of San Francisco.
It did not matter. He was not likely to worry over the friends he would
lose because of any stand taken for human justice. Lamed said of him:
"He was very far from being one who tried in any way to make himself
popular." Certainly he never made any such attempt at the expense of his
convictions.

The first Galaxy instalment was a sort of platform of principles for the
campaign that was to follow. Not that each month's contribution
contained personal criticism, or a defense of the Chinese (of whom he was
always the champion as long as he lived), but a good many of them did. In
the October number he began a series of letters under the general title
of "Goldsmith's Friend Abroad Again," supposed to have been written by a
Chinese immigrant in San Francisco, detailing his experience there. In a
note the author says: "No experience is set down in the following letters
which had to be invented. Fancy is not needed to give variety to the
history of the Chin