led it, and Ernest was certainly out
of place in the midst of the churchmen.

* John Cunningham, Avis Everhard's father, was a professor
at the State University at Berkeley, California. His chosen
field was physics, and in addition he did much original
research and was greatly distinguished as a scientist. His
chief contribution to science was his studies of the
electron and his monumental work on the "Identification of
Matter and Energy," wherein he established, beyond cavil and
for all time, that the ultimate unit of matter and the
ultimate unit of force were identical. This idea had been
earlier advanced, but not demonstrated, by Sir Oliver Lodge
and other students in the new field of radio-activity.

In the first place, his clothes did not fit him. He wore a ready-made
suit of dark cloth that was ill adjusted to his body. In fact, no
ready-made suit of clothes ever could fit his body. And on this night,
as always, the cloth bulged with his muscles, while the coat between
the shoulders, what of the heavy shoulder-development, was a maze of
wrinkles. His neck was the neck of a prize-fighter,* thick and strong.
So this was the social philosopher and ex-horseshoer my father had
discovered, was my thought. And he certainly looked it with those
bulging muscles and that bull-throat. Immediately I classified him--a
sort of prodigy, I thought, a Blind Tom** of the working class.

* In that day it was the custom of men to compete for purses
of money. They fought with their hands. When one was
beaten into insensibility or killed, the survivor took the
money.

** This obscure reference applies to a blind negro musician
who took the world by storm in the latter half of the
nineteenth century of the Christian Era.

And then, when he shook hands with me! His handshake was firm and
strong, but he looked at me boldly with his black eyes--too boldly, I
thought. You see, I was a creature of environment, and at that time had
strong class instincts. Such boldness on the part of a man of my own
class would have been almost unforgivable. I know that I could not avoid
dropping my eyes, and I was quite relieved when I passed him on and
turned to greet Bishop Morehouse--a favorite of mine, a sweet and
serious man of middle age, Christ-like in appearance and goodness, and a
scholar as well.

But this boldness that I took to be presumption wa