I think the part which pulpits play in the death of kings is the most ghastly of all the ceremonial:  the lying eulogies, the blinking of disagreeable truths, the sickening flatteries, the simulated grief, the falsehood and sycophancies—­all uttered in the name of Heaven in our State churches:  these monstrous Threnodies which have been sung from time immemorial over kings and queens, good, bad, wicked, licentious.  The State parson must bring out his commonplaces; his apparatus of rhetorical black-hanging....

And this, of course, applies not merely to kings of England, but to kings of Steel, kings of Coal, kings of Oil, kings of Wall Street.  Leland Stanford, son of a great king of Western railroads, died; and standing over his coffin, a Methodist clergyman, afterwards Bishop, preached a sermon of fulsome flattery, wherein he likened young Leland to the boy Christ.  In the year 1904 there passed from his earthly reward in Pennsylvania a United States senator who had been throughout his lifetime a notorious and unblushing corruptionist.  Matthew Stanley Quay was his name, and the New York “Nation”, having no clerical connections, was free to state the facts about him: 

He bought the organization, bribed or intimidated the press, got his grip on the public service, including even the courts; imposed his will on Congress and Cabinet, and upon the last three Presidents—­making the latter provide for the offal of his political machine, which even Pennsylvania could no longer stomach—­and all without identifying his name with a single measure of public good, without making a speech or uttering a party watchword, without even pretending to be honest, but solely because, like Judas, he carried the bag and could buy whom he would.

Such was the lay opinion; and now for the clerical.  It was expressed by a Presbyterian divine, the Reverend Dr. J.S.  Ramsey, who stood over the coffin of “Matt”, and without cracking a smile declared that he had been “a statesman who was always on the right side of every moral question!”

In that same year of 1904 died the high priest of our political corruption, Mark Hanna.  He had belonged to no church, but had backed them all, understanding the main thesis of this book as clearly as the writer of it.  In his home city of Cleveland the eulogy upon him was pronounced by Bishop Leonard, in St. Paul’s Episcopal Church; while in the United States Senate the service was performed by the Chaplain, the Rev. Edward Everett Hale.  This is a name well-known in American letters, as in American religious life; it was borne by a benevolent old gentleman, a Unitarian and a liberal, who organized “Lend-a-Hand Clubs” and such like amiabilities.  “Do You Love This Old Man?” the signs in the street-cars used to ask when I was a boy; and I promptly answered “Yes”—­for my mother took the “Ladies’ Home Journal”, and I swallowed the sentimental dish-water set out for me.  But