I was barely under way when a police sergeant reached up and seized my arm. “Here now, you’ll have to come down. You can’t talk here.”
“Speech! Speech!” yelled the crowd. “Go on.”
But the owner of the car, to my great relief, started his engine. I sat back in the seat with a thump and off we went.
The incident had repercussions. The Men’s City Club, regarding the event as a blot on the fair name of the town, asked me to speak at their luncheon the next day, and I promised to wait over. Although forty Catholics then resigned in a body, St. Louis would not be coerced, and more than a hundred new members joined immediately.
William Marion Reedy, owner and publisher of the famous _Reedy’s Mirror_, had been at the closed theater. He printed a cartoon showing the Capitol of the United States with a papal crown on it, stated editorially that the Pope was now dictating to America what it should hear and think, and emphasized the consequent dangers to the country if any religious group were allowed such domination. “No idea let loose in the world has ever been suppressed. Ideas cannot be jailed in _oubliettes_,” was his peroration.
After I had left the Middle West and reached the Rocky Mountains the atmosphere changed. I was struck even by the attitude of the bellboys and waiters at the Brown Palace Hotel in Denver. In New York you were served by trained foreign men and boys—Italian and French. Here they were American-born, blue-eyed, fair-complexioned, strong-jawed. Without bowing or obsequiousness they brought your food and carried your bags as if doing you a favor. You hesitated to give them a tip, though, as a matter of fact, they never refused it.
I loved Denver itself. It seemed to me the women there were the most beautiful I had seen—fresh, charming, alive. They had long had the vote and used it effectively. Because they believed in Judge Ben Lindsey’s juvenile court, they had kept him in office in spite of the concerted antagonism of picturesque but corrupt politicians.
Although Judge Lindsey had bitter enemies in exalted places, he had loyal friends also. When Theodore Roosevelt had stopped there in 1912 on his Western Swing, the Judge was facing opposition. The city fathers did not want to include him as a substantial citizen on their platform committee of welcome. Roosevelt peered vainly about among all these bankers and business men. “Where’s Ben Lindsey?” he asked.