“Seers and prophets!” cried Ward, angrily, “that is what I can stand least of all. This posing as a kind of nineteenth century John the Baptist strikes me as exquisitely ridiculous.”
Everett’s eyes flashed dangerously, but he made no rejoinder.
“I saw your John the Baptist this morning in the Central Station buying his railway ticket and morning paper like any other average man. The locusts and wild honey were not in evidence.”
“No, he doesn’t take nourishment habitually in railway stations,” put in Everett, coolly.
“I didn’t see any leathern girdle about his loins, either, although of course he may wear it next the skin for penitential purposes. His clothing appeared to be a species of camel’s hair—”
“Falsely so called,” put in Everett; “it is really English tweed. Very good quality.”
“Yes, I’ll venture to say that is true. Your prophet of the wilderness strikes me as knowing a good thing when he sees it. Plague take the fellow! He has just that sort of brute force and sheer overbearing personal dominance, which you idealists and credulous take for spiritual authority.”
“Come now, Ward, we may as well keep our tempers and treat this matter decently. Nothing is gained by calling names. You are naturally prejudiced against a man who attacks the existing social order, and suggests that even the rulers of the synagogue and the great teachers of the schools have something yet to learn. Gregory is radical, revolutionary perhaps, but not a whit more so than the New Testament makes him. He is an absolutely conscientious man; he has given up every personal ambition, wealth, position, all that most men cling to—”
“In order to become a Dictator, in a field where there is very little competition.”
Everett suppressed the irritation which this interposition aroused, and continued in a lighter tone,—