waiter who happened to be leaning over the back of Mr. Sinclair's chair with this particular butter-plate happened to be.
As Mr. Sinclair talked he threw a handful of California raisins into his dish of Waldorf salad and watched with evident pleasure the contrast of the dull purple of the raisins with the pale silver of the celery and the gold of the aspic mayonnaise.
"Why am I so prejudiced against marriage? Why shouldn't I be prejudiced against it? You might as well ask me why I am so prejudiced against slavery—or against thievery—or if it comes to that against murder either. Marriage in this day is nothing but legalized—slavery; that's the most polite word to call it, I fancy. The average married woman is bought and sold just exactly as much as any horse or any dog is bought. Marriage—ough! It really isn't a subject to be discussed at the table!"
Needless to say, here was another occasion where the
concrete wall became a news-channel. This story was telegraphed
to all the Hearst newspapers, and published with the
same photographs in New York, Boston, Chicago, Atlanta,
and Los Angeles. The substance of it was telegraphed abroad
and laid before the readers of my books, not merely in England
and France and Germany and Norway and Sweden, but in
South Africa and Australia, in Yokohama and Hong Kong
and Bombay. Please do not think that I am just giving you
a geography lesson; I made a memorandum at the time concerning
this particular story, which hurt me more than anything
that had ever happened to me.
It chanced that my three one-act plays were to have their opening performance in San Francisco that evening. So when I was called on the stage to make a speech, I spread out a copy of the "Examiner" and told what had happened. Next morning the "Examiner" took up the cudgels, and published an article by "Annie Laurie," the interviewing lady, upbraiding me for "playing the cry-baby" and refusing to stand by the words that I had spoken. Thinking the matter over, I realized that quite possibly "Annie Laurie" was partly sincere; she may have thought that the interview she wrote represented me! She was so vulgar that she saw no difference between the phrases I had used and the twist she had given to them.
This misquotation by ignorant and vulgar reporters happens not merely to muck-rakers and Socialist agitators; it happens to the most respectable persons. For example, here is Professor J. Laurence Laughlin, of Chicago University; he hides himself in the shade of his classic elms, and does his best to preserve his dignity, but in vain. In an address to a
