When the mother returned I explained to her that tying disinfectants around a baby’s neck really did not do any good. And I told her that I had taken it off the baby. The woman was wild with terror. She snatched the baby from me; said I was a devil and her baby would surely die unless she could remove my “spell.” Grabbling in the coal-bucket she fished out the scapular, and in spite of all I could say or do out she went—taking the baby to a church. That broke me all up. Respect for the faith of others had been hammered into me from my infancy up. We were never allowed to go to a negro camp-meeting, because my father feared that we might laugh or do something, even innocently, that would hurt the feelings of the worshippers. Besides, I was brought up to respect Roman Catholics just as I was all other denominations. My father was graduated from Georgetown University before he entered William and Mary. And my brother nearest my own age went to a Catholic school before entering college. No one can truthfully accuse me of animus against the Catholic Church or against the Irish. Besides my Carroll cousins, some of the best friends I ever had were Catholics and natives of Ireland. It was a United States senator, the owner and publisher of a notable newspaper, who gave me my “start” as a writer. He was a native of Ireland and a Catholic. He was one of the most intelligent persons I have ever known, and the kindliest of gentlemen. It was because I had known these splendid persons, natives of Ireland, and had been brought up with such a profound respect for the Catholic Church that my awakening in the slums was so tardy and so violent. To-day the best explanation that I have been able to reason out is that the great organization that did so much to Christianize and civilize the human race has become like Lot’s wife—pillar of salt looking eternally backward, salt that has lost its savor. As I saw the Irish Catholic in the slums of New York there was no truth in them. They would tell me they had no dog with the animal in plain sight, usually lying under the stove. When I called their attention to it they would swear by some few of their multitude of saints that it had strayed in from the streets, and in the goodness of their hearts they had fed it and allowed it to stay and rest. When I proved by the janitor, other tenants in the house, and by the dog itself that they were lying, they were not embarrassed, not at all.