Here we have at least one key to Comstock’s attitude. It is evident from the passages already quoted and from his record as a prosecutor of many persons of fine standing, good taste and high ideals, that the things which he thought could arouse lewd or libidinous thought were legion, and he detected that quality in all manner of instances when it was not at all evident to others. For example, he describes on page 163 of the “Traps,” how he made an arrest at what he called a “free love convention.” He said he slipped into the hall unnoticed, and “looked over the audience of about 250 men and boys. I could see lust in every face.” If ever anyone had a sturdy belief in the fall of man, it would seem to be Anthony Comstock. Human nature to him was innately corrupt, or at least so large a part of it was corrupt that, in his view, it warranted suppressive laws applying to everyone whether clean minded or depraved. This attitude was plainly indicated in a later part of the above mentioned interview with Miss Hopkins. She says, “I was somewhat confused that Mr. Comstock should class contraceptives with pornographic objects which debauch children’s fancies, for I knew that the European scientists who advocate their use have no desire at all to debauch children. When I asked Mr. Comstock about this he replied,—with scant patience for “theorizers who do not know human nature.” “If you open the door to _anything_, the filth will all pour in and the degradation of youth will follow.” (The italics are ours.) That he dramatized himself as a hero and a martyr seems quite evident all through his career. When the Hearing was held on the petition to repeal his laws shortly after they were passed by Congress, he describes the scene thus: “As I entered the Committee room, I found it crowded with long-haired men and short-haired women, there to defend obscene publications, abortion implements and other incentives to crime, by repealing the laws. I heard their hiss and curse as I passed through them. I saw their sneers and looks of derision and contempt.... It was not the blackening of my reputation that weighed me down, so much as the possibility that one of the most righteous laws ever enacted should be repealed or changed.”