"Well," returned Uncle Theodore, "Smith is only a highly sensitive product of our so-called civilisation; the civilisation we are rushing and straining to carry to the quiet, unassuming people whom we call heathen. They have no millionaires, made so at the expense of their brothers. When we teach them all the graft, lynching, homicide, enormities of trusts, railroads, new religions, and quack remedies, we shall have them civilised."
"Christianity has to blush for Christendom," sighed grandmother.
I have been asking grandmother since how bulls and bears could struggle over wheat; and she tells me that the strugglers are not four-footed beasts at all, but men. I see how it is, bulls and bears are both cantankerous animals, which, if they come in conflict about anything, are sure to have a fight; and men who have given evidence of like natures have been called after those fierce animals. It must be that way. I have asked grandmother whether that is not the way they came by their names, and she said she supposed it must be.
May 21st, 1——
My poor despised people have fallen upon hard lines. Lee Yet met with an accident on the street and had to be taken to the hospital where he must remain for weeks, and the day following Mrs. Yet was stricken down with diphtheria.
I was out in the automobile with grandmother and Aunt Gwendolin and chancing to pass the house of Lee Yet, I saw the awful word "Diphtheria." in black letters on a scarlet ground, tacked to the door.
That night when all his day's work was done I gave Yick a coin and asked him to go down and learn who was stricken with the disease.