ather was
beaten. He met Wickson accidentally on the street in San Francisco,
and he told Wickson that he was a damned scoundrel. And then father was
arrested for attempted assault, fined in the police court, and bound
over to keep the peace. It was all so ridiculous that when he got
home he had to laugh himself. But what a furor was raised in the
local papers! There was grave talk about the bacillus of violence that
infected all men who embraced socialism; and father, with his long and
peaceful life, was instanced as a shining example of how the bacillus
of violence worked. Also, it was asserted by more than one paper that
father's mind had weakened under the strain of scientific study, and
confinement in a state asylum for the insane was suggested. Nor was this
merely talk. It was an imminent peril. But father was wise enough to see
it. He had the Bishop's experience to lesson from, and he lessoned
well. He kept quiet no matter what injustice was perpetrated on him, and
really, I think, surprised his enemies.

There was the matter of the house--our home. A mortgage was foreclosed
on it, and we had to give up possession. Of course there wasn't any
mortgage, and never had been any mortgage. The ground had been bought
outright, and the house had been paid for when it was built. And house
and lot had always been free and unencumbered. Nevertheless there was
the mortgage, properly and legally drawn up and signed, with a record
of the payments of interest through a number of years. Father made no
outcry. As he had been robbed of his money, so was he now robbed of his
home. And he had no recourse. The machinery of society was in the hands
of those who were bent on breaking him. He was a philosopher at heart,
and he was no longer even angry.

"I am doomed to be broken," he said to me; "but that is no reason that I
should not try to be shattered as little as possible. These old bones of
mine are fragile, and I've learned my lesson. God knows I don't want to
spend my last days in an insane asylum."

Which reminds me of Bishop Morehouse, whom I have neglected for many
pages. But first let me tell of my marriage. In the play of events, my
marriage sinks into insignificance, I know, so I shall barely mention
it.

"Now we shall become real proletarians," father said, when we were
driven from our home. "I have often envied that young man of yours for
his actual knowledge of the proletariat. Now I shall see and learn for
myself.