Free Ceremony of the Innocent by Taylor Caldwell

elocutions for your professors at Harvard. I am sure Mrs. Jardin isn’t interested in your opinions. Concerning child labor, at least.”
    Mrs. Jardin smirked at him knowingly. But Francis, his fair face animated at the mention of his favorite subject, could not be repressed. “When I am graduated from law school, Father, I am going into politics, much as they disgust me.”
    “Yes, so you have said before,” replied his father, highly diverted. “But I think the stench will drive you out, in spite of your convictions. You see, I know politicians as you do not, my boy. Ah, well, have your dreams. You are still young and untouched, though you’ve gone through a war.”
    “Which was asinine,” said Francis, and his eyes sparkled with anger.
    “You didn’t think so when you enlisted in Teddy’s Rough Riders.”
    “Well, I think so now. And you know my reasons for thinking that.”
    “All imaginary,” said his father with a wave of his plump hand. “It was an outright, and justified war. That’s what Teddy said, anyway.”
    “To seize the Philippines and Cuba,” said Francis.
    “‘And the beginning of American imperialism,’ to quote you, Francis, my boy.”
    “Certainly. We are now entering the Age of Tyrants.”
    Mr. Porter leaned back in his chair, smiling broadly and closing his eyes. “Where you get these notions!” he said.
    “From reading, which you do not do, Father, and from history.”
    “Well, I was never a scholar, even in the university,” said Walter, still good-humored. He lifted his hand in defense. “Please, dear boy. Don’t bore me again. It’s a fine day. Let’s go for a ride. You still aren’t well, you know. When you entirely recover your health you will also recover—”
    “My mind, too.”
    “Now, now, my boy. Ah, here is fresh coffee and strawberry pie. An excellent breakfast, Mrs. Jardin. You are spoiling us.”
    “I just wish Mr. Francis would eat more,” said Mrs. Jardin, her hands comfortably locked under her apron; she gave Francis a hypocritically false look of fondness. “All he had was a dish of prunes and figs, a few sausages and only two eggs, a slice or two of bacon, one small piece of fish and a little dish of potatoes, and four griddle cakes, and a couple cups of coffee and a teensy bite of pie. That’s not a breakfast for a man, sir.”
    “It’s enough for four breakfasts—for four men,” said Francis, who did not like Mrs. Jardin and was not deceived by her jocular air and jaunty winking. He wanted to believe—it was a necessity for him to believe—that the “working class” was endowed with native nobility, virtue, and wisdom, and was exploited. However, his perceptiveness often refuted that theory, and Mrs. Jardin was one of those who refuted it by her very being. Therefore, he incontinently disliked her; she was an affront to his vehement idealism, an idealism which must be total and never conditioned by facts. He was beginning, lately, to accuse himself of lack of charity, or understanding, and a failure to “see deeply enough and grasp hidden factors.”
    Once his father had said to him, “Of course, there are a multitude of uncountable injustices in this world. But who said this world must be ‘perfect’? Only an idiot would believe in the perfectibility of man and a Utopia where it would always be summer and no one would work very much but would wander around in an incorruptible garden singing. Who would carry out the slops, sweep the streets, and lay the crops? So long as we have bowels, and the air has dust in it, and we need to eat, we will have to work. Didn’t St. Paul say, ‘He who does not work, neither shall he eat’? Yes.”
    “Science is already prophesying that soon it will not be necessary for any man to labor,” said Francis, flushing scarlet as usual when his theories were attacked. “In the meantime, labor must not be exploited; it must be given a living wage.”
    “I agree with that,” said Walter Porter. “I