I informed him that on the present journey we had two priests on board, and two professional atheists—"so what kind of passage were we to expect?"
After a moment's serious thought the mariner replied, "I think, sir, we may reckon we shall have an average." And curious to relate we did.
The two Freethinkers who thus balanced the ecclesiastics were Messrs. Foote and Watts, who were on a mission to America to induce Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll to visit England.
The stranger in America, if he be a public man in his own country, is treated like a suspected criminal. Every movement is watched, every action reported, and as he passes from city to city a description and report precedes him, and there is an eye, or rather a couple of dozen eyes, to mark his coming and grow keener when he comes.
But he is watched by friends, not by detectives, and his actions are reported in public prints, not in private ledgers. It is not the arm of the law, but the hand of friendship, that shadows him, and those stereotyped passports to friendship, letters of introduction from friends at home, are as needless to introduce him as a life-preserver or a Colt's revolver to protect him. He had better amuse himself while in mid-ocean by presenting them to the porpoises that dive and splutter round the ship, for the only object they will accomplish will be the filling of his waste-paper basket on his return home.
AMERICAN INTERVIEWING—IMAGINARY.
AMERICAN INTERVIEWING—REAL.