Mark Twain’s comment on Talmage was prompted by an article in which Talmage had assumed the premise that if workingmen attended the churches it would drive the better class of worshipers away.  Among other things he said: 

I have a good Christian friend who, if he sat in the front pew in church, and a workingman should enter the door at the other end, would smell him instantly.  My friend is not to blame for the sensitiveness of his nose, any more than you would flog a pointer for being keener on the scent than a stupid watch-dog.  The fact is, if you had all the churches free, by reason of the mixing of the common people with the uncommon, you would keep one-half of Christendom sick at their stomach.  If you are going to kill the church thus with bad smells I will have nothing to do with this work of evangelization.

Commenting on this Mark Twain said—­well, he said a good deal more than we have room for here, but a portion of his closing paragraphs is worth preserving.  He compares the Reverend Mr. Talmage with the early disciples of Christ—­Paul and Peter and the others; or, rather, he contrasts him with them.

They healed the very beggars, and held intercourse with people of a villainous odor every day.  If the subject of these remarks had been chosen among the original Twelve Apostles he would not have associated with the rest, because he could not have stood the fishy smell of some of his comrades who came from around the Sea of Galilee.  He would have resigned his commission with some such remark as he makes in the extract quoted above:  “Master, if thou art going to kill the church thus with bad smells I will have nothing to do with this work of evangelization.”  He is a disciple, and makes that remark to the Master; the only difference is that he makes it in the nineteenth instead of the first century.

Talmage was immensely popular at this time, and Mark Twain’s open attack on him must have shocked a good many Galaxy readers, as perhaps his article on the Chinese cruelties offended the citizens of San Francisco.  It did not matter.  He was not likely to worry over the friends he would lose because of any stand taken for human justice.  Lamed said of him:  “He was very far from being one who tried in any way to make himself popular.”  Certainly he never made any such attempt at the expense of his convictions.

The first Galaxy instalment was a sort of platform of principles for the campaign that was to follow.  Not that each month’s contribution contained personal criticism, or a defense of the Chinese (of whom he was always the champion as long as he lived), but a good many of them did.  In the October number he began a series of letters under the general title of “Goldsmith’s Friend Abroad Again,” supposed to have been written by a Chinese immigrant in San Francisco, detailing his experience there.  In a note the author says:  “No experience is set down in the following letters which had to