IN the fall of 1882, Comstock entered a simple home in
the town of Princeton, Massachusetts. A baby girl toddled
into the room. Always kindly to children, the vice-hunter
tried to coax her to him. But the father, motioning her
away, said sternly to Comstock, "Don't pollute her by your
caresses."

This father was Ezra Hervey Heywood, socialist and
freethinker, whom Comstock was about to arrest for the
second time, on a charge of sending obscene matter through
the mail. Five years before, on the same charge, brought
by the same hand, there had been another arrest, which in
June of 1878 had resulted in Heywood's conviction. He
had been sentenced to two years' hard labor at Dedham
Jail. The following December he had been released by
President Hayes; but meantime great hardship had come
to the socialist's family. He was a poor man. His home
had been broken up, and his wife and small children forced
to depend on the charity of friends.

Naturally enough, Heywood regarded with bitterness
the instigator of his misfortunes. But something more than
bitterness animated the father when he motioned back little
Psyche Ceres. By 1882, Anthony Comstock inspired in
thousands of people an emotion little short of horror.

Let us examine the case of this man, Ezra Heywood.
At the time of his first arrest, he was already nearly fifty
years of age. In his youth he had been a member of the

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