camp-meetings, and I claim the privilege to cry off on Greeks. Look at
those fellows down there, trampling over one another to get more beer.
What have they to do with Athens, or Athens with them? I take it, Mr.
Ware," he went on, with a grave face but a twinkling eye, "that what we
are observing here in front of us is symbolical of a great ethical
and theological revolution, which in time will modify and control the
destiny of the entire American people. You see those young Irishmen
there, struggling like pigs at a trough to get their fill of German
beer. That signifies a conquest of Teuton over Kelt more important and
far-reaching in its results than the landing of Hengist and Horsa.
The Kelt has come to grief heretofore--or at least been forced to play
second fiddle to other races--because he lacked the right sort of a
drink. He has in his blood an excess of impulsive, imaginative, even
fantastic qualities. It is much easier for him to make a fool of
himself, to begin with, than it is for people of slower wits and more
sluggish temperaments. When you add whiskey to that, or that essence of
melancholia which in Ireland they call 'porther,' you get the Kelt at
his very weakest and worst. These young men down there are changing all
that. They have discovered lager. Already many of them can outdrink
the Germans at their own beverage. The lager-drinking Irishman in a few
generations will be a new type of humanity--the Kelt at his best. He
will dominate America. He will be THE American. And his church--with
the Italian element thrown clean out of it, and its Pope living, say, in
Baltimore or Georgetown--will be the Church of America."

"Let us have some more lager at once," put in Celia. "This revolution
can't be hurried forward too rapidly."

Theron could not feel sure how much of the priest's discourse was in
jest, how much in earnest. "It seems to me," he said, "that as things