“You think it required courage; but I assure you the difficulty was to restrain my words, not to bring them out. I had much ado sometimes to keep from calling them a generation of vipers, and warning them to flee from the wrath to come. But the millionnaire of to-day is in much the same position as the Southern slaveholder of the last generation. The houses, lands, stocks, bonds, and what not of the one appear to him as much his rightful possession as the negroes of the other did to him. And the analogy can be traced still farther; for, convince the millionnaire that his dollars are not rightfully his, and how is he going to get rid of them?” “Ye’re right enough there,” said the priest; “he can’t bury money, drown it, or give it away without doing infinite harm to other people. It’s the old story, Clare; the fathers ate the sour grapes, and the childer has the toothache. But what brought your matters to a crisis at last?” “A course of lectures on the Sermon on the Mount,” said Mr. Clare, smiling, “after which they could bear with me no longer. I am bound to say, however, that they acted in as delicate and gentlemanly a manner as possible. They did not even call a formal vestry meeting to ask me to resign; it was merely intimated to me by my senior warden that if I had any other opening in view, he thought—personally—that it would be better to consider it, as the doctrine I had lately preached might be _true_, but it wasn’t exactly practical, and _not_ very acceptable to the people. He was very kind—good old man!—but it was evident that he looked upon me as a crank, pure and simple.” “Sure, I can imagine the whole interview,” said the Father, shaking with laughter at Mr. Clare’s evident effort not to imitate the senior warden’s voice and gestures. “But what are ye going to do about it?” “Well,” he replied, “I have, as I told you, a few hundred dollars in hand; and I don’t know a parish in the United States where I could stay for a year, preaching as I must preach. The only thing I see is to fall back on my trade, working with my hands, like St. Paul, and chargeable to no man. Then I should be God’s freeman, and able to lift up my voice against the crying evils of the day, not being in bondage to any man.” Father McClosky sprang from his seat and paced the room excitedly; but the very excess of his sympathy made him try to act as brake or cog-wheel upon his friend’s enthusiasm. “Ye blatherskite!” he said, “I suppose ye’ll be after starting a new church, with yourself for pope!”