The Catholics are so strong that the “school committee” has had a difficult time adjusting promotions to suit all parties. It used to be arranged that executive positions were given alternately to the Knights of Columbus and the Masons; but there developed a deadlock at the secret sessions of the school committee—known to the populace as the “gum-shoe meetings.” The Knights of Columbus were demanding a position out of turn, and the Masons wouldn’t stand for it—so finally they compromised by giving the position to a Jew! The Catholics had to be satisfied with getting an uneducated blacksmith made assistant principal of a high school; first he had been taken on to teach forge work in the manual training department, and then, through his political pull, he became a regular member of the faculty, and now assistant principal, on the way to the top! Equally powerful in Worcester education are the Rotarians and the Kiwanis. Superintendent Young was chosen by the Rotarians to travel all the way to California as their representative in a national convention; his predecessor, Gruver, was president of the Kiwanis. This book will be translated into a number of European languages, and my translators will write to ask me about these strange words, which are not in any dictionary. So pardon me while I explain that Rotarians and Kiwanis are business men who have made money rapidly, and who meet together to express their satisfaction with the city and the civilization which have made possible their success. Being human, these men would like to make the world better, if it could be done without interfering with business; since it cannot be done, they proceed to make the world bigger, and more like what it is. How completely these men are divorced from the intellectual life, it will be difficult for a European to imagine. They are bursting with energy; but lacking contact with ideas, they are like engines whirling in a vacuum, unconnected with driving shaft or gears. They assemble and partake of luncheons and dinners in sumptuous hotels, and summon to them preachers and teachers of all degrees, to tell them that they are the ultimate product of evolution. Left to himself, a Rotarian or Kiwani might now and then experience a gleam of humility; but intellectual men accept their hospitality, and for the sake of promotion and pelf flatter their mass-vanities and whip up their herd-emotions—and this surely is what is meant by the sin against the Holy Ghost. CHAPTER XLII CORRUPT AND CONTENTED