ittle boy" story,--["The Story of the Good
Little Boy Who Did Not Prosper" and the "Beef Contract" are included
in Sketches New and Old; also the Chinese sketch, under the title,
"Disgraceful Persecution of a Boy."]--and several shorter skits--and
anecdotes, ten pages in all; a rather generous contract.

Mark Twain's comment on Talmage was prompted by an article in which
Talmage had assumed the premise that if workingmen attended the churches
it would drive the better class of worshipers away. Among other things
he said:

I have a good Christian friend who, if he sat in the front pew in
church, and a workingman should enter the door at the other end,
would smell him instantly. My friend is not to blame for the
sensitiveness of his nose, any more than you would flog a pointer
for being keener on the scent than a stupid watch-dog. The fact is,
if you had all the churches free, by reason of the mixing of the
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.