“Not at all.  You are an old man.  You have done your work in the world, and a great work.  Leave the present battle to youth and strength.  We young fellows have our work yet to do.  Avis will stand by my side in what is to come.  She will be your representative in the battle-front.”

“But they can’t hurt me,” father objected.  “Thank God I am independent.  Oh, I assure you, I know the frightful persecution they can wage on a professor who is economically dependent on his university.  But I am independent.  I have not been a professor for the sake of my salary.  I can get along very comfortably on my own income, and the salary is all they can take away from me.”

“But you do not realize,” Ernest answered.  “If all that I fear be so, your private income, your principal itself, can be taken from you just as easily as your salary.”

Father was silent for a few minutes.  He was thinking deeply, and I could see the lines of decision forming in his face.  At last he spoke.

“I shall not take the vacation.”  He paused again.  “I shall go on with my book.* You may be wrong, but whether you are wrong or right, I shall stand by my guns.”

* This book, “Economics and Education,” was published in that year.  Three copies of it are extant; two at Ardis, and one at Asgard.  It dealt, in elaborate detail, with one factor in the persistence of the established, namely, the capitalistic bias of the universities and common schools.  It was a logical and crushing indictment of the whole system of education that developed in the minds of the students only such ideas as were favorable to the capitalistic regime, to the exclusion of all ideas that were inimical and subversive.  The book created a furor, and was promptly suppressed by the Oligarchy.

“All right,” Ernest said.  “You are travelling the same path that Bishop Morehouse is, and toward a similar smash-up.  You’ll both be proletarians before you’re done with it.”

The conversation turned upon the Bishop, and we got Ernest to explain what he had been doing with him.

“He is soul-sick from the journey through hell I have given him.  I took him through the homes of a few of our factory workers.  I showed him the human wrecks cast aside by the industrial machine, and he listened to their life stories.  I took him through the slums of San Francisco, and in drunkenness, prostitution, and criminality he learned a deeper cause than innate depravity.  He is very sick, and, worse than that, he has got out of hand.  He is too ethical.  He has been too severely touched.  And, as usual, he is unpractical.  He is up in the air with all kinds of ethical delusions and plans for mission work among the cultured.  He feels it is his bounden duty to resurrect the ancient spirit of the Church and to deliver its message to the masters.  He is overwrought.  Sooner or later he is going to break out, and then there’s going to be a smash-up.  What form it will take I can’t even guess.  He is a pure, exalted soul, but he is so unpractical.  He’s beyond me.  I can’t keep his feet on the earth.  And through the air he is rushing on to his Gethsemane.  And after this his crucifixion.  Such high souls are made for crucifixion.”