"Then, if you must know: I was at the workingmen's educational union yesterday--" (Mohr coughed, glanced at Edwin, and then comfortably sipped his wine)--"There was to have been a lecture on the nature and value of education, but the speaker was taken sick and begged to be excused. We were just considering what was to be done, when a new-comer rose, a guest whom no one knew. He had a strange, half humble, half scornful Jesuit face. 'Would the company permit him to make a short address?' The request could not be refused, and he instantly began to speak with a boldness that surpassed everything that could have been expected from his priestly appearance. 'Education? A dangerous thing, at least as the children of the world were accustomed to understand it. The devil, who goes about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour, is a highly cultivated man, not easily caught by modern enlightenment. His proverb is: Education gives liberty, and knowledge rules the world. Yes indeed, the world! So the tempter said to the Lord: "All these things will I give unto thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me!"--But "_my_ kingdom is not of this world"--and so on, the well known litany--_True_. education desires to know nothing of the so-called treasures of science, which morth and rust may corrupt. He who is fitting himself for heaven, provides for the one thing that is necessary, the'--well, you're doubtless willing to be spared the sermon. When it was over, the honest fellows sat bewildered and thunderstruck. The old habit, acquired in childhood, still lingered: no debate in church!--and even the president seemed to think we ought not to take issue with a guest. But the man had assailed our society in the most offensive way, and were we to be silent? So I began to speak. I was just in the mood, and besides it's a subject to which I've devoted a great deal of thought, I was glad to give the whole society a full discourse from the text: Disparage only reason and science! Well I need not waste any words on the subject among ourselves. But never has it been so clear to me, as in that hour, what a crime those persons commit, who seek to disgust men with the earth, in order to prepare them for what they call heaven. You know I am the last to favor the current talk about utility. These people make the means the end, and if they achieved their object and arranged the world according to their plan--who that did not consider it the highest aim of life to get his stomach satisfied and know the multiplication table by heart, would wish to live in it? But just because there are higher things--transcendent earthly joys, intellectual pleasures, art, poetry, and all other lofty delights--well, you know what I think, and can imagine how indignation against the foes of all earthly happiness loosened my tongue. The assailer of education and heir of heaven grew red and pale by turns. When I at last paused, and all clapped their