Comrade John

by Merwin-Webster

The first Herman Stein was, at forty-five, a success as the prophet of a new and growing religion. Of his book, "Toil and Triumph," he had sold three hundred and sixty thousand copies; and as he had published it himself, and had disposed of two-thirds of this number through the mails at the list price, the profits were large. His mind was filled with a not unpicturesque mixture of Ruskin, William Morris, Froebel, Whistler, The New Testament, Rossetti, and St. Thomas Aquinas. He had outgrown and put behind him both the dissipations of his youth and his early career as a charlatan and a wanderer on the outer coast of the social order. Just how much of a charlatan he remained, it would be difficult to say. With the tremendous pressure of his success and of the loyal belief of several hundred thousand followers urging him on to cross the line that separates prophetic leadership from mere grotesquery, it grew steadily more difficult to hold himself in check. But he recognized his difficulty, and he determined to keep himself resolutely in the background during the expansion of the "Toil and Triumph" movement which he believed must be undertaken at once if the ground he had already gained was not to begin slipping away from him.

370 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1907