Annie Laurie

San Francisco Examiner/February 2, 1909

Mr. Upton Sinclair says he didn’t say all the things he did say about the farce of modern marriage in the interview with him which was published in “The Examiner” on Saturday.

I wrote that interview and I wish to take this occasion to say here and now that Mr. Sinclair did say every word that I said he said, and he knows that he did.

Mr. Sinclair has said these same things to at least a dozen people at least a dozen times before, and will doubtless say the same things to at least a dozen people at least a dozen times again, as long as he thinks no one will hold him to account for saying them.

There is no question of veracity in the matter.

There is merely a question of fact.

Mr. Sinclair poses as a professor of socialism and practices as a professor of mendacity.

I do not know why Mr. Sinclair said what he did say about marriage, and I do not know that any one cares very much that he did say it; but there is no great mystery about his silly denial of the plain truth.

Mr. Sinclair is a mild-eyed young man, with a burning desire to do something remarkable—slap someone on the wrist or hold up a harmless pussy cat and rob her of her bow of ribbon—and he has the lack of courage which has characterized the sissy since the first Babylonian bethought himself to wear anklets like a dancing girl.

You have denied the truth, little Mr. Sinclair, simply because you were too cowardly to stand the public consequences of your public utterances.

You don’t quite belong in the Ananias Club—suppose we start a Ladies Auxiliary, and let you be the first Sapphira.

Won’t that be cute?