“No, that’s true. I don’t suppose I ever in my life read a whole chapter in the book. I can’t swallow such stuff, Lafelle––utterly unreasonable, wholly inconsistent with facts and natural laws, as we know and are able to observe them. Even as a child I never had any use for fairy-tales, or wonder-stories. I always wanted facts, tangible, concrete, irrefutable facts, not hypotheses. The Protestant churches hand out a mess of incoherent guesswork, based on as many interpretations of the Bible as there are human minds sufficiently interested to interpret it, and then wax hot and angry when hard-headed business men like myself refuse to subscribe to it. It’s preposterous, Lafelle! If they had anything tangible to offer, it would be different. But I go to church for the looks of the thing, and for business reasons; and then stick pins into myself to keep awake while I listen to pedagogical Borwell tell what he doesn’t know about God and man. Then at the close of the service I drop a five-dollar bill into the plate for the entertainment, and go away with the feeling that I didn’t get my money’s worth. From a business point of view, a Protestant church service is worth about twenty-five cents for the music, and five cents for the privilege of sleeping on a soft cushion. So you see I lose four dollars and seventy cents every time I attend. You Catholic fellows, with your ceremonial and legerdemain, give a much better entertainment. Besides, I like to hear your priests soak it to their cowering flocks.”
Lafelle sighed. “I shall have to class you with the incorrigibles,” he said with a rueful air. “I am sorry you take such a harsh attitude toward us. We are really more spiritual––”
Ames interrupted with a roar of laughter. “Don’t! don’t!” he pleaded, holding up a hand. “Why, Lafelle, you old fraud, I look upon your Church as a huge business institution, a gigantic trust, as mercenary and merciless as Steel, Oil, or Tobacco! Why, you and I are in the same business, that of making money! And I’d like to borrow some of your methods. You catch ’em through religion. I have to use other methods. But the end is the same. Only, you’ve got it over me, for you hurl the weight of centuries of authority upon the poor, trembling public; and I have to beat them down with clubs of my own making. Moreover, the law protects you in all your pious methods; while I have to hire expensive legal talent to get around it.”
“You seem to be fairly successful, even at that,” retorted Lafelle. Then, too politic to draw his host into an acrimonious argument that might end in straining their now cordial and mutually helpful friendship, he observed, looking at his cigar: “May I ask what you pay for these?––for only an inexhaustible bank reserve can warrant their like.”
He had struck the right chord, and Ames softened at once. “These,” he said, tenderly regarding the thick, black weed in his fingers, “are grown exclusively for me on my own plantation in Colombia. They cost me about one dollar and sixty-eight cents each, laid down at my door in New York. I searched the world over before I found the only spot where such tobacco could be grown.”
“And this wine?” continued Lafelle, lifting his glass of sparkling champagne.
“On a little hillside, scarcely an acre in extent, in Granada, Spain,” replied Ames. “I have my own wine press and bottling plant there.”
Lafelle could not conceal his admiration for this man of luxury. “And does your exclusiveness extend also to your tea and coffee?” he ventured, smiling.