Page:The One Woman (1903).pdf/71

 the fire with a pair of tongs, and I would. I'd be afraid to touch a seam lest I felt the throb of a woman's bruised fingers in it."

The Deacon softly stroked his whiskers.

"It was an unfortunate remark. He contributed $500 a year to the church. He has gone where the simple gospel of Christ is preached."

"Yes, so simple that he can sleep through it and know that it will never touch his life," Gordon said with a sneer. "What's the use to talk about mustard plaster? I say apply it to the place that hurts."

"You preach Evolution. I don't like the idea that man is descended from a monkey."

"The weight of scholarship sustains the theory."

"Well, my idea is, if it's true, the less said about it the better. And then you lack dignity out of the pulpit."

"Even so, Deacon, the most dignified man I ever saw was a dead man—a dead New Yorker. What we need in the church is life."

"But you have departed from the faith of our fathers."

"Perhaps," Gordon said, with a twinkle in his eye, "if you mean our famous fathers who 'landed first on their knees and then on the aborigines.

Van Meter ignored the remark.

"You said one day that in America we had but two classes, the masses and the asses. That