Didactic fiction; Political fiction; Social problems -- Fiction
In a way he was especially fitted for it. Every one liked him and found
it easy to talk freely with him. And he was quick to detect any cant or
lack of sincerity. If he wrote "yes" after the question, "Do you believe
it pays to be honest?" it was the subject's basic belief, not a pretence
nor a pose. And he had a knack of putting his questions in simple,
comprehensible language. The printed questionnaire bristled with
appalling technical words. But he did not use such phrases as "ultimate
reality," "the categorical imperative." He did not ask his subject if
his idea of God was anthropomorphic. Very few of the people whose faith
he analyzed would have understood such terms.
It was the essence of his proposition that he should tabulate the
convictions of all sorts and conditions of men. And in his quest for
varied points of view he had come into very close contact with a strange
mixture of people. Into his "operating room," as Mabel Train derisively
called his study, he had enticed college professors and policemen,
well-bred young matrons and street-walkers. One of his sheets recorded
the intimate convictions of the man downstairs who painted carriages;
another, those of a famous opera singer. The Catholic Bishop of New York
had undergone the ordeal and a Salvation Army lassie, who had knocked at
his door to sell a _War-cry_, had come in to try to convert him. She had
been very much distressed by his perplexing questions, but like all the
rest had quickly fallen captive to his gentle manners and understanding
eyes. She had dropped her missionary pose and had talked freely to him,
not only of her beliefs, but also of her doubts.
Almost every one who had gone through the ordeal remembered it with a
strange, awed sort of pleasure. It is so very rarely that we find any
one to whom we can tell the truth.
There was a wreck of a man, an habitué of cheap lodging-houses and
gin-mills, who would tell you the story on the slightest provocation.
One cold October night when he had no money for a bed and was trying to
live through the night on a park bench with a morning paper for a
blanket, a man had asked him if he wanted a drink. Not suspecting the
good fortune which had befallen him, he had followed Longman to the
"operating room." First there had been a stiff bracer of whiskey--"good
Scotch whiskey, sir,"--and then a plentiful cold supper of bread and
cheese and sardines and a steaming cup of coffee--"as much as I could
eat, sir"--and a cigar--"as long as yer foot, sir. He was a real
gentleman, sir, and he talked to me like I was a gentleman."
There was a young wife of an elderly professor. Some of the ladies of
the faculty raised their eyebrows when her name was mentioned and did
not go to her teas. She had been smitten by Longman's broad shoulders
and gentle bearishness and had quite eagerly consented to come to his
study. She did not tell anybody about it, but she cried when she thought
about it--cried that he had not asked her again.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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