Montreal, Nov. 29/81.
Well, sweetheart, I have walked a few miles this morning with the same gentleman who took me to the mountain-top (Mr. Iles,) & inspected a lot of Catholic churches, French markets, shop windows, &c. But for the shame of it, the indignity to my pride, I would like to be a Catholic ‸priest’s‸ slave, & glide in with my basket or my bundle, & duck my head & crook my knee at a painted image, & glide out again with my immortal part refreshed & strengthened for my day’s burdens. But—I am not a priest’s slave, & so it hurts me, hurts me all through, to recognize, by these exhibitions, what poor animals we are, what children, how easily fooled, beguiled, & by what cheap & trivial devices., by what thin & paltry lies. Which reminds me—you must read about the early Jesuit missionaries in Canada. Talk about self-abnegation! heroism! fidelity to a cause! It was sublime, it was stupendous. Why what these men did & suffered, in trying to rescue the insulting & atrocious savages from the doom of hell, makes one adore & glorify human nature as exemplified in those priests—yes, & despise ait at the very same time. In endurance & performance they were gods; in credulity, ‸& in obedience to their ecclesiastical chiefs,‸ they were swine.
One is so carried out of his mind with enthusiasm over these marvelous labors & sufferings & sacrifices, that for a moment he is deceived into imagining that nothing but a religion can make men do these things., (& he is helped in that direction ‸toward that delusion‸ by his life-long pulpit-& tract-teaching.) But no—all that these men did & suffered, in ‸the‸ love of money, hatred of an enemy, affection for a child, a wife, a betrothed, [has ‸can‸] madke men do & suffer—yes, infatuation for a filthy prostitute can make a man rival the Juesuit missoionaries at their grandest & finest.
But a friend waits to take me to luncheon—so I break off my sermon. But I kiss you & Susie & Bay—& even Jean.
Lovingly
Saml
Mrs. S. L. Clemens | Hartford | Conn [return address:] windsor hotel montreal. [postmarked:] montreal canada no 29 1 pm [and] rec’d. hartford conn nov 30 8am
Textual Commentary
Source text(s):Previous publication:
Provenance:
See Samossoud Collection in Description of Provenance.
Emendations and textual notes:
has ‸can‸ • has ‸can‸ ‸can‸ [rewritten for clarity]
