ter I went with the Massachusetts Club, of which I was a
member, to an outing at Newport. There, briefly but still
more emphatically, I called upon the people not to revive
the bitter memories of ancient, social and religious strife.

These two speeches excited the indignation of the leaders
of this organization. A gentleman named Evans, I believe
born in England, took up the cudgels. He was supported by
many worthy clergymen and a good many newspapers which had
been established to support the doctrine of the A. P. A.
organization. Mr. Evans, if I am right in my memory, claimed
that he was not a member of the organization. But he stood
up for it stanchly in two letters to me, in which he very
severely denounced what I had said, and pointed out the wicked
behavior of some Catholic priests to whom he referred. He
said he had looked up to me as he formerly did to Charles
Sumner and William H. Seward; that my course would tend as
absolutely to the breaking up of the Republican Party as Daniel
Webster's speech did to the breaking up of the old Whig Party,
and that I had rung my own death knell; that the one mistake
Wesley made when he called slavery "the sum of all villainies"
was that he did not except the Roman Catholic Church. He
added that there were at least three million members of these
patriotic orders, constituting at least three fifths of the
Republican Party, and that their membership was being added to
daily. Mr. Evans also said, what was absolutely without
foundation, that I had said, "We need a Father Confessor."

That gave me my opportunity. I answered with the following
letter in which I stated my own doctrine as vigorously and
clearly as I knew how.

WORCESTER, Aug. 5, 1895.
T. C. EVANS, ESQ.:

_My Dear Sir_--One of the great evils, though by no means
the greatest evil of secret political societies, is that foolish
and extravagant statements about men who don't agree with
them get circulated without opportunity for contradiction
or explanation. You seem to be a well-meaning and intelligent
man; yet I am amazed that any well-meaning and intelligent
man should believe such stuff as you repeat in your letter
of August 3. I never said, thought or dreamed what you impute
to me. I don't believe there ever was any report in the Worcester
_Telegram_ to that effect. Certainly there is none in the
report of what I said in the summer school at Clark University
the morning after, and there is no