th the hundred typewriters and
the millions was unequal to the task, Lilienfeld had to take the reins in
his own hands. From the mouth of the dumpy, bull-necked impresario, the
words came pouring with irresistible momentum, with elemental force, as
from the crater of a volcano.

Now it was Mr. Garry's turn to suffer in silence the thrusts and blows
that rained down on him from his opponent. The old gentleman was not
spared. He had to swallow many disagreeable statements about the
exploitation of children in certain factories in Brooklyn, about Puritan
hypocrisy, about drinking water in public and wine in secret. He was told
he was a member of that narrow-minded caste hating art, culture, and life
itself, and seeing devils with cloven hoofs and long tails in authors
like Shakespeare, Byron, and Goethe.

"Such people," Lilienfeld said, "are always trying to turn back the hands
on the clock, a most revolting sight in this so-called land of freedom.
There is very little hope of success in trying to turn back the hands
on the clock. The days of Puritan prudery, the bothersome Puritan
conscience, Puritan orthodoxy, and Puritan intolerance have passed,
never to return. There is no stemming the tide of time, or the tide of
progress, or the tide of culture. But the forces of reaction, threatened
in their mediaeval management of things, have begun a cowardly guerilla
warfare, a series of petty, cowardly, miserable, meddlesome tricks."

And now Lilienfeld handed back to Mr. Garry what Mr. Garry had given Mr.
Lilienfeld.

"If there really is a pest in America, its seat is in the Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Children. The society is the very breeding-place
of the epidemic, in so far as there is an epidemic in the land. It is
ridiculous in Mr. Garry to maintain that Europe is a plague-boil. Europe
is the mother of America. Without the genius of a Columbus--we are at
this very moment celebrating Columbus's discovery of America--without the
genius of a Columbus and the constant influx of powerful intellects from
Germany, England and Ireland," here he winked an eye at the Mayor, "the
United States would be a dead and dreary land."

After thus moving heaven and earth and sea for the little dancer's sake,
Lilienfeld exposed the base intent of his competitors, Webster and
Forster, in denouncing him to the Society, and indignantly repudiated
Garry's assertion that he, Lilienfeld, was an exploiter. His competitors,
perhaps,