Sinclair Lewis: Main Street

32. CHAPTER XXXII (continued)

"I certainly have! Every one of 'em! And their wives I says to them, ` 'Tain't my affair to decide what you should or should not do with your teachers,' I says, `and I ain't presuming to dictate in any way, shape, manner, or form. I just want to know,' I says, `whether you're going to go on record as keeping here in our schools, among a lot of innocent boys and girls, a woman that drinks, smokes, curses, uses bad language, and does such dreadful things as I wouldn't lay tongue to but you know what I mean,' I says, `and if so, I'll just see to it that the town learns about it.' And that's what I told Professor Mott, too, being superintendent--and he's a righteous man, not going autoing on the Sabbath like the school-board members. And the professor as much as admitted he was suspicious of the Mullins woman himself."