"Philip," she said to her son, who was sitting by the window reading a folio volume of Sir Thomas Browne, "I asked Phillida to come early this afternoon, and I can't imagine what keeps her."
"Oh, some leper, or some one who has fallen among thieves. It's a dreadful thing to be a Christian. I have only known three or four, and Phillida is one of them."
"You don't mean to say we are not all Christians?" demanded Philip's father, a taciturn man with a rather handsome face of the broad Dutch type. What history it carried was mainly one of good dinners and fine wines. The senior Gouverneur had been sitting looking into the fire for half an hour without saying a word. His son's way of treating the sacred white elephants of conventionality was the main grief of this dignified, well-bred, entirely commonplace man.
"Yes, you're all—we're all, Christians in the sense that we're neither Jews, Mohammedans, nor Buddhists. But most of us don't belong to the same totem with Jesus."
"What do you mean by the same totem with Jesus?" said the mother, who could not help shuddering a little at the temerity of her son's paradoxes, though fondly indulgent of his irreverent cleverness.
"A totem among the Indians is the subdivision of a tribe. The Mohawks or Cayugas, for example, were subdivided into totems called the 'Wolf,' the 'Turtle,' the 'Bear.' Every man belonged to the totem of his mother and was akin to everybody in it. If a Mohawk of the Wolf totem stopped in the village of the Cayugas or the Senecas, he was entertained by some Seneca of the same totem who claimed him for a kinsman."
"That's very curious," said his mother.
"I don't see what it's got to do with your cousin Phillida or with religion," said Mr. Gouverneur, who as an elder in the Dutch Reformed Church, and as the descendant of a long line of men and women who had traveled in the same well-worn path since the good old days of the Synod of Dort, felt much annoyed at Philip's waywardness.
"Well," said Philip, leaning back in his chair and letting the folio rest on his knees, "you see there are religious totems that run through all denominations of Christians and even through different religions, and the lines of cleavage between them are deeper than those between Moslems and Christians, or between Jews and idolaters. There is what I call the totem of the Wahahbees—the people who translate religion into dispute or persecution. In central Asia they get rid of an opponent by assassination in the name of Almighty God and his prophet. In the United States doctrine defenders are inconveniently placed, and they have to be content with newspaper and pulpit scolding and with excommunicating those who differ from them. Then there is the most respectable sect of all—the Pharisees, which counts eminent divines and rabbis of every religion among its people. Great church-goers and Sabbath-keepers, great distributors of shalls and shall-nots, great observers of scruples and ordinances. They hold a tight rein over recreations and keep their mint-and-cumin tithes by double-entry. Now, Phillida is no Wahahbee and she is no Pharisee. She is not above enjoying herself at your table on Sunday evening, you see, or going to Mrs. Hilbrough's reception. She takes her religion in the noblest way. Her enthusiasms all have a philanthropic coloring. She's what I call a Jesus-ite."
"Ah, now, Philip," said his mother, half-amused and half-startled by the irreverent sound of this expression, but full of admiration for Philip's originality.