as the real dope was coming along. But there's been such a flood of it
ever since that some leaked in in spite of 'em."

Joe would search and search until he found "it" on back shelves or stuck
away in corners. Angrily he would blow off the dust and then settle
himself with a sigh to read. There was always something wistful to me in
the way Joe opened each new book. But what a joy when he found
"it"--Darwin, Nietzsche, Henry George, Walt Whitman, Zola, Samuel
Butler. What a sudden sort of glee the night he discovered Bernard Shaw!

When the library closed we adjourned for beer and a smoke, and often we
would argue long about what we had been reading. Joe had little use for
the stuff I liked. Beauty and form were nothing to him, it was "the
meat" he was after. My mother's idols he laid low.

"The first part was big," he said one night of a recent English novel.
"But the last part was the kind of thing that poor old Thackeray might
have done."

In an instant I was up in arms, for to my mother and me the author of
"Pendennis" had been like a great lovable patron saint, a refuge from
all we abhorred in the harbor. To slight him was a sacrilege. But
reverence to Joe Kramer was a thing unknown. "Show me," he said, in
reply to my outburst, "a single thing he ever wrote that wasn't
sentimental bosh!" And we went at it hammer and tongs.

It was so in all our talks. Nothing was too sacred. Joe always insisted
on "being shown."

He had a keen liking but little respect for the nation built by our
fathers. From his own father's tragedy, caused by graft, his own hard
struggles in the West and the Populist doctrines he had imbibed, he had
come East with a deep conviction that "things in this country are one
big mess with the Constitution sitting on top." And when the term
"muckraker" came into use, I remember his deep satisfaction. "Now I know
my name," he said.

He was equally hard on the church. How he kicked against our compulsory
chapel. "Broad, isn't it, scientific," he growled, "to yank a man out of
bed every morning, throw him into his seat in chapel and tell him,
'Here. This is what you believe. Be good now, take your little dose and
then you can go to breakfast.'"

"I'm no atheist," he remarked. "I'm only a poor young fellah who asks,
'Say, Mister, if you _are_ up there why is it that no big scientist has
brains enough to see you?'"

"Look here, J. K., that isn't so!"

"Isn't it? Show me!" And we would start in.