"The Chinese were generally puzzled as to how it was possible for people who are able to build locomotives and steamships to have a religion based on a belief in devils, ghosts, impossible miracles, and all the other absurdities and impossibilities peculiar to the religion taught by the missionaries"


"Your name is Hiram. You're Jewish," said the officer.

"I am not. My people were puritans," said Maxim.

"Then what is your religion?"

"I never had need of one," Maxim snorted.

"Well, no one can stay in Russia without a religion!"

"Very well," Maxim replied, "Put me down as a Protestant."

"And that," he tells us, "is how I became a Protestant."