They Call Me Carpenter: A Tale of the Second ComingSinclair, Upton
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They Call Me Carpenter: A Tale of the Second Coming
Sinclair, Upton
Hollywood (Los Angeles, Calif.) -- Fiction; Jesus Christ -- Fiction
Even so you appear
righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.
(Applause.) Woe unto you doctors of divinity and Unitarians,
hypocrites! because you erect statues to dead reformers, and put
wreaths upon the tombs of old-time martyrs. You say, if we had been
alive in those days, we would not have helped to kill those good
men. That ought to show you how to treat us at present. (Laughter.)
But you are the children of those who killed the good men; so go
ahead and kill us too! You serpents, you generation of vipers, how
can you escape the damnation of hell?”
XL
When Carpenter stopped speaking, his face was dripping with sweat,
and he was pale. But the eager crowd would not let him go. They
began to ask him questions. There were some who wanted to know what
he meant by saying that he came from God, and some who wanted to
know whether he believed in the Christian religion. There were
others who wanted to know what he thought about political action,
and if he really believed that the capitalists would give up without
using force. There was a man who had been at the relief kitchen, and
noted that he ate soup with meat in it, and asked if this was not
using force against one's fellow creatures. The old gentleman who
represented spiritualism was on hand, asking if the dead are still
alive, and if so, where are they?
Then, before the meeting was over, there came a sick man to be
healed; and others, pushing their way through the crowd, clamoring
about the wagon, seeking even to touch the hem of Carpenter's
garments. After a couple of hours of this he announced that he was
worn out. But it was a problem to get the wagon started; they could
only move slowly, the driver calling to the people in front to make
room. So they went down the street, and I got into my car and
followed at a distance. I did not know where they were going, and
there was nothing I could do but creep along--a poor little rich boy
with a big automobile and nobody to ride in it, or to pay any
attention to him.
The wagon drove to the city jail; which rather gave me a start,
because I had been thinking that the party might be arrested at any
minute, on complaint to the police from the church. But apparently
this did not trouble Carpenter. He wished to visit the strikers who
had been arrested in front of Prince's restaurant. He and several
others stood before the heavy barred doors asking for admission,
while a big crowd gathered and stared. I sat watching the scene,
with phrases learned in earliest childhood floating through my mind:
“I was sick, and ye visited me; I was in prison, and ye came unto
me.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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