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So ended my attempt to raise up and train a new socialist writer. It is an ugly story to tell on a man—the only mean story in this amiable book, you may note. Nothing could hire me to tell it—except for a later development, which you have still to hear.
Ten years passed, and Mike was all but forgotten. I started a magazine and in it published The Profits of Religion, dealing with the churches by the method of economic interpretation. Mike, being now a champion of Roman Catholicism—his publishers were introducing him as “one of the most influential lay Catholics of America”—sallied forth to destroy my book. That was all right; I grant every man a right to disagree with me—the more the merrier, it is all advertising. But Mike found his task difficult, for the reason that my statements in The Profits of Religion are derived from Catholic sources—devotional works, papal decrees, pastoral letters, editorials in church papers—everything with the holy imprimatur, nihil obstat.
So, instead of attacking the book, Mike chose to attack its author. He accused me of being a writer for gain, and headed his review with the title “A Prophet for Profit”! I have heard that charge many times, but it did seem to me there was one person in America who was barred from making it—and that was my old friend and pensioner, Michael Williams. Since he made it, and published it, it seems to me that the consequences are upon his own head. And that is why I tell the story here. I never saw him again, and never will—for he is dead.