Whether he likes it or not, Teddy must promenade down the corridors of time and fame arm in arm with the “filthy little atheist.”
Here is a case where that one of the Grecian philosophers who laughed at everything would weep: and where that one who wept at everything would laugh.
Tom Paine being dead cannot resent the honors paid Roosevelt by any act of renunciation aimed at the University of Pennsylvania; but Teddy lives and can defend his virtue from contaminating contact.
Will he tamely submit to wear the Academic honor tainted by the touch of Tom Paine, or will he spurn it with that disdain which condensed the career of a much-enduring, much-achieving patriot and democrat in the cruelly scornful words, “a dirty little atheist”?
Whenever, in the hour of gloom and doubt, we call upon the presidents of our world-famous colleges for guidance we get it. Which is one of the reasons why we are still in the dark.
A couple of years since, the chief sage of one of these world-famous institutions told us that Social Ostracism was the medicine for the Trust evil which would prove a cure-all.
The chief sage neglected to inform us how and when we should or could dose the wicked corporations with this medicine: hence we have not as yet socially ostracized J. P. Morgan, Ogden Armour or John D. Rockefeller.