The man was a missionary, and it stuck out all over him.

I could not abide a missionary.

That was the Jew in me, the European Jew, trained by the cruel centuries of his outcast existence to distrust any one who spoke of God by any other name than _Adonai_.

But I should have resented the suggestion that inherited distrust was the cause of my dislike for good Brother Hotchkins; for I considered myself freed from racial prejudices, by the same triumph of my infallible judgment which had lifted from me the yoke of credulity.

An uncompromising atheist, such as I was at the age of fourteen, was bound to scorn all those who sought to implant religion in their fellow men, and thereby prolong the reign of superstition.