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 about education. And if it were not education, it would be something else just as bad, and perhaps worse. Man must fill his time some way, you know.”

“But to go back to religion”—“the spirit protestant eternal,” murmured the blond young man hoarsely—“do you mean any particular religion, or just the general teaching of Christ?”

“What has Christ to do with it?”

“Well, it’s generally accepted that he instigated a certain branch of it, whatever his motives really were.”

“Its generally accepted that first you must have an effect to discern a cause. And it is a human trait to foist the blunders of the age and the race upon some one or something too remote or heedless or weak to resist. But when you say religion, you have a particular sect in mind, haven’t you?”

“Yes,” Fairchild admitted. “I always think of the Protestant religion.”

“The worst of all,” the Semitic man said. “To raise children into, I mean. For some reason one can be a Catholic or a Jew and be religious at home. But a Protestant at home is only a Protestant. It seems to me that the Protestant faith was invented for the sole purpose of filling our jails and morgues and houses of detention. I speak now of its more rabid manifestations, particularly of its activities in smaller settlements. How do young Protestant boys in small towns spend Sunday afternoons, with baseball and all such natural muscular vents denied them? They kill, they slay and steal and burn. Have you ever noticed how many juvenile firearm accidents occur on Sunday, how many fires in barns and outhouses happen on Sunday afternoon?” He ceased and shook the ash from his cigar carefully into his coffee cup. Mr. Talliaferro seeing an opening, coughed and spoke.

“By the way, I saw Gordon to-day. Tried to persuade him for our yachting party to-morrow. He doesn’t enthuse, so to