dealt in innuendoes that tipped both ways. We were old friends of many
vicissitudes. Together we wept and laughed and planned. He had such
subtle ways of encouragement--as when he told me that he had read a
lecture of mine to his dying daughter, and described how it had
comforted her. His was a life of profound self-sacrifice, but "weeping
may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning."

The new year of 1887 began with a controversy that filled the air with
unpleasant confusion. A small river of ink was poured upon it, a vast
amount of talk was made about it. A priest in the Roman Catholic Church,
Father McGlynn, was arraigned by Archbishop Corrigan for putting his
hand in the hot water of politics. In various ways I was asked my
opinion of it all. My most decided opinion was that outsiders had better
keep their hands out of the trouble. The interference of people outside
of a church with its internal affairs only makes things worse. The
policy of any church is best known by its own members. The controversy
was not a matter into which I could consistently enter.

The earth began its new year in hard luck. The earthquake in
Constantinople, in February, was only one of a series of similar shakes
elsewhere. The scientists were always giving us a lot of trouble.
Electric showers in the sun disturbed our climate. Comets had been
shooting about the sky with enough fire in their tails to obliterate us.
Caracas was shaken, Lisbon buried, Java very badly cracked. It is a
shaky, rheumatic, epileptic old world, and in one of its stupendous
convulsions it will die. It's a poor place in which to make permanent
investments. It was quite as insecure in its human standards as in its
scientific incompetence.

Our laws were moral earthquakes that destroyed our standards. We were