“It would be a shame to reform this town; it would be so much less interesting if it turned virtuous. Really, I think I should leave the place if it got good. By the way, how about our friend, Paddock, the fighting parson? Did you know that mother has taken him up? Paddock’s self-sacrifice and devotion to humanity are on the table daily at home—served hot with all meals.”
“Paddock’s all right. He’s a good fellow, but he’s overloaded with sentimentalism. I don’t believe I told you I had been out to look at his joint at Ironstead.”
“You did not, Mr. Craighill. Were you ashamed of me, or were you just afraid I’d contaminate the place?”
“I was afraid you would be bored. I took some risks myself, but it didn’t seem decent to refuse when I’m the oldest friend he has here. It was like the chap to come to town and bury himself in the grime and filth for six months before I heard of him. But I went to his religious vaudeville, which was rather below par as shows go; but the crowd was better than the bill, and you might say, in classic phrase, that a pleasant time was had.”
“Recitations, songs and that kind of things?”
“And a boxing-match that almost ended in a riot.”
“Dear me! I must get in on this Paddock wave. He sounds very promising. The first thing we know they’ll be snatching him up for heresy and I’ve always wanted to know a heretic. It would be quite an experience to attend and comfort a convicted heretic in his last merry moments before they chuck him into a coke oven to sizzle for ever and ever.”
Wayne grinned at this cheerful forecast of Paddock’s immolation.
“They’d better let Paddock alone. He doesn’t pretend to know anything about theology. He has a curious fancy that the man beast can be tamed by kindness and made to feed from the hand. It’s this old brotherhood-of-man business you read about in the magazines.”
“It’s not unpicturesque—a fellow with a private barrel spending his money that way. I must get him to send in a few bunches of his parishioners to hear the orchestra at our expense. Our fat and waddling rich don’t know a symphony from a canvassed ham anyhow. Our chief hope for the fine arts lies in people who draw their dividends in yellow envelopes at the end of a long, hungry line of the horny-handed. I’m disposed to think Paddock may be deeper than appears. I’ve about concluded, myself, that the people we know—the prospering Philistines we see in the clubs and in each other’s houses—are a dreary rotten bore. The human race has really been decadent ever since it dropped by its tail from the ancestral breadfruit tree and wiggled into its first trousers.”