"Oh, be merciful!" she cried. "Can this really be so?"
"It is so," he maintained. "Why last week I stopped a few days in Effingham on the way from Attalia, and read on the front page of one of the leading papers, and which was accompanied by a cut, that an old policeman, who had seen twenty-five years on the force, and who had recently been made a captain, had never killed a man. It was this fact, obviously, that was the most extraordinary."
"Cannot the city government do more toward the suppression of so much crime?" she asked, forgetting to eat her breakfast.
"They cannot to any great extent, because it is the task of society. The very foundation upon which this crime rests, is due to ignorance on the part of the masses. You cannot reason with a mind that has no training. Have you ever seen it that way?" he asked, more serious now than she had ever seen him before, notwithstanding he was a serious person.
She nodded.
"No one can, the law of the land cannot. It all falls right back on society." He was too serious now for a time to say anything, and he ate his meal with his face contracted in serious thought. Presently he said: "I am a minister of the gospel, and have the highest regard for the Presbyterian faith; but, honestly, when I see the Baptists with their loose system, keeping the black population that make up their body, and with little, almost no effort whatever toward the education of the children, and when I see still further, the Methodists with their better system, in that they are not held back so much by 'splitters,' I sometimes regret that the world took Martin Luther seriously. For, say what they will, the conduct of the Catholics in regard to the children, marriage and divorce, has an encouraging result in our civic life."
"I believe that if there were a Christian movement here as there is in the northern cities, Y.M.C.A. and libraries, and if those who are leaders of the race would encourage the patronage of these places, eventually, it would result to the public's good," she said, after some thought.
"Only one place in the south, as yet, seems to be making any effort along such Christian lines. And you would not believe it, but the greatest barrier to this has been the preachers. In their church effort, they have the people fairly well under control, but to their own end. In Attalia, they have almost come to appreciate the fact, that a more intelligent and cleaner populace reacts to the welfare of the church. Everything seems favorable toward getting one."
"I am sure that would make a great difference in time," said she, heartily. "In Cincinnati, they expect to begin one soon. They have almost all the subscriptions in now." She was silent for a time, and then pursued: "Do you not think such a movement could be stimulated here?"
"Not at the present, I think, regardless of the great need of one, and of the great good it could do. It will be some time before the preachers would come to lend their support—in fact, I do not think it could be expected until they have been shown, in a majority, that such would react for the good of all."