No written word can adequately describe the hilarious effect of Crooks's speech. Without the man behind them, the words alone convey little, as I many times have been made to feel keenly while writing this narrative. Indeed, one of Mr. Crooks's colleagues in Parliament, a staid, dull man of much wealth, accosted him in the House one afternoon with the remark: "How is it, Mr. Crooks, that when I repeat your stories to my constituents, they never laugh?"
At the City Temple Crooks told his great audience how delighted he had been to observe the growth of the religious and civic spirit among the working classes since this movement for Sunday afternoon meetings began.
"At the meetings in the early days," he said, "you know how you used to be troubled with the irrelevant questioner. I was present once when the speaker, after narrating his experiences abroad, was asked whether he was in favour of compulsory vaccination! Another time a man got up, and after reading out a list of parsons who had been sentenced asked me what I had to say to that?
"'A bad lot,' I answered, 'but it doesn't shake my faith in Christianity any more than to-day's fog shakes my faith in the sun."
"On another occasion a man asked me what I meant by condemning betting, seeing that the aristocracy backed horses.
"'But the aristocracy know no better. You do. So set them an example.'
"Then there was the heckler who wanted to know whether I objected to a man leaving money for the propagation of atheism.
"'If he likes to do it, let him,' I answered. 'He's sure to regret it as soon as he is dead.'
"And that reminds me," continued Crooks, "of what happened at the last County Council election. A local undertaker, who had always supported me before, stopped me in the street to say he was going to vote on the other side this time.