The proceedings which followed were but brief. The Reverend Smith Boyd requested the intruder to stop. The intruder had rights, and he stood on them! The Reverend Smith Boyd ordered him to stop; but the intruder had a free and independent spirit, which forbade him to accept orders from any man! The Reverend Smith Boyd, in the interests of the discipline without which the dignity and effectiveness of the cause could not be upheld, and pleased that this was so, ordered him out of the room. Mr. Rogers, with a flood of abuse which displayed some versatility, invited the Reverend Smith Boyd to put him out; and the Reverend Smith Boyd did so. It was not much of a struggle, though Mr. Rogers tore two benches loose on his way, and, at the narrow door through which it is difficult to thrust even a weak man, because there are so many arms and legs attached to the human torso, he offered so much resistance that the reverend doctor was compelled to practically pitch him, headlong, across the sidewalk, and over the curb, and into the gutter! The victim of injustice arose slowly, and turned to come back, but he paused to take a good look at the stalwart young perpetrator, and remembered that he was thirsty.
The Reverend Smith Boyd found himself standing in the middle of the sidewalk, with his fists clenched and his blood surging. The atmosphere before his eyes seemed to be warm, as if it were reddened slightly. He was tingling from head to foot with a passion which he had repressed, and throttled, and smothered since the days of his boyhood! He had striven, with a strength which was the secret of his compelling voice, to drive out of him all earthly dross, to found himself on the great example which was without the cravings of the body; he had sought to make himself spiritual; but, all at once, this conflict had roused in him a raging something, which swept up from the very soles of his feet to his twirling brain, and called him man!
For a quivering moment he stood there, alive with all the virility which was the richer because of his long repression. He knew many things now, many things which ripened him in an instant, and gave him the heart to touch, and the mind to understand, and the soul to flame. He knew himself, he knew life, he knew, yes, and that was the wonderful miracle of the flood which poured in on him, he knew love!