“I learned from those books many things that our own wise men never taught me, and from them I got a great craving to see this land. I learned from these books and my aunt’s teachings taught me when I was so young that truth permeated my being and filled my heart, that this land was the country favored by God—this land so holy, that it sent missionaries to teach my people. Then I went to a school taught by English teachers, but always I searched for truth—I search for God in mosque and in temple. These books said God is here in this land. So I come. Many of my people come to this great Fair, I come also with them.
“But always I seek the great spirit of God I came here to find. I thought truth and justice would fill your temples, and your homes, and all your great cities.
“I come, I watch for this Great Light—I listened for the Great Voice, I see strange things, but I say nothing, I only think, but I get more and more perplexed. I ask many people to show me the temple where God is, to show me the great mosque where Truth and Right dwell, and the people are blessed by their white shining light, for I thought He would be in all the customs and ways of this wise people, so good that they instruct all the rest of the world. I come to learn, to worship, but I see such strange things, such strange customs. I see cruelties practised, such as my own people would not think of doing. I keep silent, I only think—think much. But more and more I wonder, and grow sad.
“I don’t love to hear that; that sounds bad.”
“I ask many men, preachers, teachers, to show me the place where God is, the great palace where truth dwells. They take me to many places, but I do not find the great spirit of Love I seek for. I find in your big temples altars built up to strange gods.”
Sez I mildly, “I don’t love to hear that; that sounds bad. I can take you to one meetin’-house,” sez I, “where we don’t have no Dagon nor snub-nosed idols to worship,” sez I.
But even as I spoke my conscience reproved me; for wuz there not settin’ in the highest place in that meetin’-house a rich man who got all his money by sellin’ stuff that made brutes of his neighbors?
What wuz we all a-lookin’ up to, minister and people, but a gold beast! What wuz that man’s idol but Mammon!
And then didn’t I remember how the hull meetin’-house had turned aginst Irene Filkins, who went astray when she wuz nothin’ but a little girl, a motherless little girl, too?