"This is the Missus. The news you received is a little late, for she has recovered. Since you are a mound-tripper and doin' the country, probably we ought not to keep you. The road across is about five hundred miles, and if you're goin' to see any more'n St. John's, you'll have to hurry afore your ship sails. There was a man down here last year who staid two days in St. John's and then wrote a book about Newfoundland, but he skipped a few things."
The man was keenly disappointed. He changed his weight from one foot to the other, for he had not yet taken the seat that Jim had offered him. He took off his glasses and wiped them and then seating himself and clearing his throat, resumed.
"The cure is but temporary. Your wife will not be well until she has learned that there is but one thing to know and that is the truth and the truth about the truth. And though you cannot expect to understand it, I will start you on the way toward the one, only, real, true religion."
"Am I supposed just to listen?" asked Jim, "or do you think I might know enough to ask a question now and then?"
"Certainly, certainly," the queer man replied. "I have an answer for every question that is absolutely logical. Take the question of the existence of evil; that is the most puzzling question in all the world. I have an answer to it that is entirely satisfactory. Nobody can contradict it. Evil is matter. Matter does not exist. Therefore evil does not exist and since it does not exist, it never could have been created. Evil and matter are just wrong statements of mind. Do you see? Is it perfectly clear to you?"
Jim gulped, as though he was in swimming and had accidentally swallowed some salt water. I had come to have a profound admiration for Jim and was coming more and more to appreciate his wholesome philosophy, and now I was waiting to see what Jim would do with this man's statements.
"You have doused me beyond my depth, I guess," was the somewhat puzzled reply of Jim. "It isn't plain to me. But heave ahead a little and mebbe I'll get some idea of what port you're sailin' to. The only thing you have said so far that has any familiar sound to me is what you said about the one, only, real, true religion. I've heard that several times before. Seems though most every kind o' religion and every different church feels that it's got the one, only, real, true religion. Strikes me, every blessed one on'em has got some of the real religion and also some foolishness and smallness and no one on'em has got the pure, undiluted article that Jesus Christ brought to the world. I think He come the nearest to livin' the real religion. But how'd you discover that your's was the only religion?"
The queer man evidently thought the question irrelevant, for he was off again.