“And ye’ll say next that ye never did.”
“I wish I could,” said Ernest Clare, laughing, yet with a half-sigh. “But, unfortunately, I began the world with my lance in rest, ready to argue with all and sundry. Only experience has taught me how worse than useless it is. No one was ever converted by argument; thousands have been hardened in error by it.”
“And who is it at ‘Prices’ you want to convert?” asked Karl Metzerott.
“I have come to ‘Prices’ to find work if I can,” replied Ernest Clare. “I was a poor boy, Mr. Metzerott, and learned the trade of a carpenter, not from choice but necessity, and supported myself by it until I went to the Theological Seminary.”
“Where ye was educated free like myself, though not in the true faith,” said Father McClosky. “Ye see, Emperor, there’s more charity among Christians than ye give ‘em credit for.”
“They’ll educate priests to keep up their own system of lies. Of course they will,” replied Metzerott; “and much good it does, when one of ‘em can’t live by the trade they taught him. Though I beg your pardon, sir, if I am rude,” he added apologetically.
“Only mistaken,” said Ernest Clare, smiling. “Don’t you remember how St. Paul worked with his hands at his trade of tent-making rather than be chargeable to any man?”
“It’s the best thing I ever heard of him,” replied the other. “He was too much of a man, I suppose, to live on charity.”
Ernest Clare laughed softly. “You call yourself a Socialist, Mr. Metzerott?”
“I do, indeed; an out-and-out one.”