Had Slattery been truly a Christian, instead of black- guarding me when protected by the presence of ladies, he would have put up a fervent prayer for my immediate conversion to the Baptist faith. But his milk of human kindness had soured--he was short on Christian charity and long on gall. "Faith, hope and charity," says St. Paul; "and the greatest of these is charity." And he might have added that it's also the scarcest. Perhaps that's what makes it so valuable--the supply is ever equal to the demand. Speaking of charity reminds me of my experience with the Protestant preachers of San Antonio, some of whom, I understand, are aiding and abetting this A.P.A. movement, "designed to preserve the priceless liberty of free speech." While editor of the morning paper of that city I was in the habit of writing a short sermon for the Sunday edition, for the benefit of those who could not go to church, I supposed that the ministers would sanction my clerical efforts, but they didn't. They wanted no assistance in saving souls, considered that they should be accorded a monopoly in that line and were entitled to all the emoluments. They proceeded to thunder at me from the pulpit, and sometimes three or four perspiring pulpiteers were pounding away at me at the same time--and incidentally making me very popular. I dropped into a swell church one Sunday morning to get a little grace-- a building that cost up in the six figures while people were living in $4 jackals and subsisting on 50 cents a week within sound of its bells--and the minister was holding a copy of the Express aloft in one hand and a Bible in the other and demanding of his congregation: "Which will you take--Brann or God?" Well, they seemed to think that if they couldn't have both they'd best take God, though some of the sinners on the back seats were a trifle subsequent in making up their minds. I kept hammering away--preaching to my little congregation of fifteen or twenty thousand readers every Sunday, as I now do to ten times that many a month--until finally the Ministerial Association met, perorated, whereased, resoluted and wound up by practically demanding of the proprietor of the Express that I be either muzzled or fired. And all this time the Catholic priests said never a word--and San Antonio is a Catholic city. But the Baptist ministers were running a sneaking boycott! Yet the Church of Rome is the boa-constrictor that's trying to throttle the American right of free speech!