• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“I should believe that. Rosenblatt here should tell me that I should think that. I should believe that Rosenblatt knows more than Einstein. I should think he can explain the theory of relativity in one sentence. Yah!” a sloppy fellow bellowed at the well-fed Hebrew.

“Friend, I shall explain the basic principle of relativity in one sentence that even you can understand.”

“And I tell you I’m the traveling salesman that made Mary heavy with Christ. Yah.”

“Relativity is a theory which assumes that, on a high basis of probability, there is no hitching-post in the universe.”

Red lip-farted, and Slug said they were over his head. Red added that they were over the head of the human race. “Friend, look at Orion up there in the sky...”

“I should think maybe they got a hitching-post for mules like Rosenblatt up there.”

“Finklestein, you’re impossible!”

“Rosenblatt, get some monkey glands.”

Jim Doyle brought them to hear Bishop Boyle in another noisy group. Bishop was a witty little Irishman, always kidding, and all right; he had a son a priest, and he was smart.

“Sure, Bishop, Jesus Christ was a bum. A hobo, with no place to lay his head. Why shouldn’t he have been one when he wouldn’t work and produce?”

“Arkwright, you’re wrong there. Jesus Christ was the first communist.”

“That guy talks like an atheist,” Studs said, as Red emitted more lip-noises.

“He doesn’t know whether Christ was crucified or killed witha second-hand book,” Barney said.

“Sure, he’s one of those liberal-minded fellows with no faith, who wants God to prove his existence by hiding behind every tree,” Bishop Boyle said with a brogue.

“If I could see God behind a tree, I’d believe him.”

“God made the tree; isn’t that, my friend, sufficient proof? Or is the incomprehensibility in your anthropoid skull too dense to perceive that one fact of experience?” Bishop Boyle said.

“I’d like to see God. I’d like to tell him a few things. I’d like to say, `God, why do you create men and make them suffer and fight in vain, and live brief unhappy lives like pigs, and make them die disgustingly, and rot? God, why do the beautiful girls you create become whores, grow old and toothless, die and have their corpses rot so that they are a stench to human nostrils? God, why do you permit thousands and millions of your creatures, made in your own image and likeness, to live like crowded dogs in slums and tenements, while an exploiting few profit from the sweat of their toil, produce nothing, and live in kingly mansions? God, why do you permit men to starve, hunger, die from syphilis, cancer, consumption? God, why do you not raise one little finger to save man from all the turmoil, want, sorrow, suffering on this human planet?’ That’s what I’d say to God if I could find him hiding behind a tree. But God is a wise guy. He keeps in hiding.”

“You could make a better world, couldn’t you, fellow?” Red Kelly yelled.

“Red, hell with him. He’s a crazy radical,” Studs said.

“Friend, if I had the powers attributed to Bishop Boyle’s God, I certainly would not have created as botched a world.”

Bishop Boyle tried to explain that the ways and purposes of God were mysterious, and that man suffered because of the fall of Adam. The atheist, a starved-looking little man, said it was disgusting, and walked out of the crowd. Red grabbed his arm.

“Fellow, are you healthy?” Red asked.

“I do not understand you, friend.”

“If you want to preserve that health, lay off the Catholic Church.”

“Yeah, keep your trap padlocked while you’re all together,” Studs said.

“You hoodlums cannot abrogate my rights of free speech.”

“See this!” Red said, showing a closed fist.

“I’ll have you arrested if you dare touch me!”

“It would be worth going to jail to punch in your filthy blaspheming mouth!”

“Yeah, blow!” Doyle said.

The atheist slunk off. Red said it was the only way to talk with fellows like that. They had no brains, were ignorant and filthy-minded, and you couldn’t argue with them. The whole human race should treat them the same