r 
 
 WILLIAM DUDLEY PELLEY
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 A 

 
 THE GREATER GLORY
 
 They came back to town, his arm about her shoulders, hers 
 about his waist. FRONTISPIECE. Page 122.
 
 By WILLIAM DUDLEY PELLEY 
 
 WITH FRONTISPIECE BY 
 NORMAN PRICE 
 
 A. L. BURT COMPANY 
 Publishers New York 
 
 Published by arrangement with Little, Brown & Company
 
 Copyright, 1919, 
 BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
 Published, September, 1919 
 Reprinted, September, 10] 9 
 Reprinted, December, 1919
 
 10 
 
 ^ -ps 
 
 , > \ -> 
 
 flBotber 
 GRACE GOODALE PELLEY 
 
 WHOSE LIFE HAS INCLUDED MANY OF THE 
 SITUATIONS WHICH FOLLOW 
 
 THIS BOOK 
 IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED 
 
 ST. .TOHKSBFET, VEBMONT 
 APKIL lOrn, 1919 
 
 S137624 *
 
 PART I
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 IN WHICH WE CONSIDER PARIS, VERMONT AND 
 OUR HOME FOLKS FROM THE STANDPOINT OF OUR 
 NEWSPAPER OFFICE. 
 
 UP here in the center of Vermont in a valley 
 enclosed by the virile summits of the Green Moun 
 tains, is the little New England town of Paris. 
 
 It is a neighborly state a neighborly little town. 
 It is lovingly known as "back east" to large numbers 
 of Yankee folk who in their young manhood or 
 womanhood have mistakenly left it to pursue fickle 
 fortune in states afar. It is called "up north" by 
 those southerners who know us only from our prom 
 inence in the weather reports or think of Vermont as 
 open for travel a couple of months only in the sum 
 mer time. As for the country at large, it thinks of 
 us as a quiet little state, smelling mostly of new- 
 mown hay and cow-barn, chiefly valuable to the 
 union as a producer of turkeys for its Thanksgiv 
 ing dinners, maple syrup for its breakfast pancakes 
 or pretty school ma ams for its western romances. 
 
 Once upon a time our town consisted merely of a 
 few houses, two general stores, a printing office, a 
 post-office, and a blacksmith shop, barnacled about 
 a country crossroads. 
 
 Today Main Street is a thoroughfare two miles 
 long with a mile of modern business blocks at one
 
 4 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 end and an equal distance filled with pretentious 
 residences at the other. Side streets have been laid 
 out by enterprising real estate men ; Main, Maple 
 and Walnut streets have been paved with material 
 on which our appropriate quota of Ford automobiles 
 skid badly in wet weather. New structures have 
 arisen where twenty years ago fat, sociable New 
 England homesteads stood behind white rail fences, 
 banked with hollyhocks and cinnamon roses. 
 ^ On the main street of Paris, between the Odd Fel 
 lows Hall and Edward Brothers Cigar Store, dating 
 back to the early days of the community, is a dingy 
 brown building that has always housed a printing 
 office. In this building during the past thirty-seven 
 years, two men have been publishing a small-town 
 evening newspaper. One of them is a kindly, 
 grizzled philosopher by the name of Samuel P. Hod. 
 The other is his partner, the humble scribe who 
 sits before a battered old exchange table recording 
 this narrative. 
 
 It is a town landmark, this newspaper office of ours. 
 Our sign 
 
 The Paris Daily Telegraph 
 
 is weather-beaten and the letters are well-nigh 
 indistinguishable. 
 
 Inside these humble premises the furniture is 
 barked and battered. Beneath the old pine counter 
 lies the dust of years. An antiquated green box safe 
 by the side window is piled high with wasted govern 
 ment money in the shape of Congressional Records 
 and files of old correspondence which we do not know 
 why we save yet which we cannot bring ourselves to 
 throw away. The pigeon holes of the walnut desks 
 are stuffed with memoranda and impedimenta, col-
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 5 
 
 lected there through many years, that we are always 
 going to clean out some day when we can find the 
 time. 
 
 Yet on those rainy days or those holidays when we 
 do have the time and make noble start at the epochal 
 renovation, we do not get far into the mass. For 
 very soon we are sitting with faded yellow clippings 
 dropped before us letters of bygone days per 
 haps here and there a once-used photograph of some 
 familiar face, disappeared these many years. And 
 cur gaze is far away; there is a dull ache in our 
 hearts ; we cannot bring ourselves to the sacrilege of 
 disturbing these mute testimonials of the cruel 
 flight of time. We cannot consign to rubbish 
 basket or furnace fire this litter which comes to us 
 in these hours like voices and faces from the dead. 
 Better indeed, to let the youngsters do it in those 
 future years when we likewise shall be but a memory 
 to this community and this office. 
 
 From this apparently systemless and cluttered 
 place there is a door opening into a long, low-stud 
 ded apartment in the rear. In a more pretentious 
 plant it would be designated as the mechanical 
 department. To us it is only the " back room." Here 
 are laid out the chipped and battered imposing stones 
 and racks of type-cases, even more abused than the 
 business furniture out in front. The floor is worn 
 and uneven and the knots in the old boards are in 
 evidence. Floor cracks are pressed full of dirt and 
 tiny types, swept there by careless boys through all 
 the years that have slipped away. 
 
 Over in the southwest corner is our old linotype 
 machine. It is wheezy and rheumatic, sure to lie 
 down on us at the wrong time and some day to go to 
 pieces like the wonderful one-horse shay. Finally,
 
 6 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 in the opposite corner, surrounded by vicious ink- 
 barrels with gobby sides and rolls of newsprint, 
 is the Cox-Duplex press that has stood by us 
 through the years like some faithful old animal. It 
 has often been starved for oil, it is encrusted with 
 dirt for want of care, but it has done its duty some 
 how, and we could no more bring ourselves to dispose 
 of it and put in stereotyping machinery than we could 
 bring ourselves to dispose of one of our children. 
 
 This is the home of our little country paper. It 
 is far from being a pretty place. Yet we love it 
 we who have labored in it for over a quarter century. 
 For in it we see in a thousand little ways reminders 
 of the changes time has wrought to ourselves, our 
 profession, our town, our nation. We love it most, 
 however, for the human associations it has meant 
 to us in the daily routine of getting out our paper. 
 
 The career of the Telegraph began in the eighties. 
 It is an eight-page, seven-column little paper, often 
 poorly printed in the cold Vermont winters when the 
 ink will not flow freely in the fountains of the press, 
 or in the warm New England summers when the same 
 material spreads far too copiously to suit the con 
 noisseur of good printing or a pressman with a 
 vocabulary surpassing any crass imitation in type. 
 Its front page is given over to world news, telegraphed 
 each noontime from Boston. Its inside pages 
 chronicle, from day to day, month to month and 
 year to year, the poorly- written stereotyped advertise 
 ments of our local merchants, bordering the daily 
 summary of the activities of our home folk : births 
 and marriages and deaths, little stories of social 
 glory which from time to time descend on homes 
 about our community; the meeting and parting of 
 friends ; business success or failure ; illness and ac-
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 7 
 
 cident, petty felony and unspeakable tragedy, all 
 the sad gamut of human affairs from the bathetic to 
 the sacred, with which the country newspaperman 
 does business. 
 
 If you are one of those rare souls who find delight 
 in the study of your fellow men, come and live and 
 work awhile in the office of a little country paper. 
 For in the office of such a paper in an American small 
 town you will get down to the bedrock of human 
 nature closer than you have ever reached before. All 
 day long through the front office will filter the pathos 
 and bathos of the lives of your kind in the form of 
 news for your columns : births and marriages and 
 deaths; inspiring stories of success, heartrending 
 stories of failure ; cheap snobbery masquerading as 
 quality ; noble aspirations, unrequited sacrifices, 
 kindly return of good for evil. And in the back 
 room you will find the printer folk, perhaps not so 
 picturesque as they were yesteryear, but still very 
 humanly interesting and each man and each woman 
 with a story worth the telling. 
 
 In this intensely interesting and very human task 
 of publishing this little country newspaper, there 
 comes a time in each week when we view our w^ork in 
 perspective. It is the hour on Saturday afternoons 
 when the distribution of the pay envelopes has been 
 made and the labors of another seven days are ended. 
 The boys and girls of the back room have gone. The 
 whirring of the shafting that runs the big press is 
 silent ; the motors on the linotype have been shut off 
 and the front office is no longer conscious of the faint 
 clicking of matrices falling into endless lines of news. 
 With the back room smelling of printing-ink, lubri 
 cating grease and linotype fumes like a lair of beasts, 
 the plant rests for twenty-four hours. Then we who
 
 8 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 are responsible for this newspaper, sit in the front 
 office where we can see the crowds milling up and 
 down Main Street with an occasional individual 
 dropping in to pay his subscription or an advertising 
 bill, and the thoughts that come to us are solemn. 
 
 We have completed another week. We have 
 added six more numbers to the files which our children 
 and our children s children will look back upon some 
 day, perhaps in amusement, perhaps in soft sorrow. 
 For another six times we have repeated to our little 
 world the fleeting joys, the momentary successes, 
 the simple and awful little tragedies that make up 
 the daily life of our community and its people. 
 
 When we come to this reflectory time, being or 
 dinary two-legged men and women ourselves in the 
 office of our little local paper, we find, ."ourselves 
 unconsciously asking questions. We wonder why in 
 some of the homes, the new babies have arrived ; why 
 it is that in our town there are young folks whose 
 love affairs have not had a happy ending ; why many 
 of the young and the strong, whose futures seemed so 
 promising, have been removed from their activities 
 among us ; while the aged, the crippled, the morally 
 deficient, live wearily onward ? Thinking of our own 
 small role, we wonder if we have done right in print 
 ing certain items in our paper. We recall incidents 
 which have occurred within the week. Some of them 
 make us wish we had given more publicity to one good 
 work and less to some other thing of minor value. 
 We regret that we have hurt one person s feelings, 
 although all unintentionally, and we are sorry we 
 were so lenient with another who deserved far more 
 censure than we meted to him. 
 
 Then when we are deepest in our spell of the blues, 
 and when we have smoked a pipe or two by way of
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 9 
 
 adjusting our philosophy, it comes to us that there is 
 a townful, a stateful, a nationful of men and women 
 around us who perpetually ask these questions. All 
 over this continent and this hemisphere are millions 
 upon millions of ordinary folk who have these periods 
 of mental depression and introspection. 
 
 But this is a strange thing about these ordinary 
 folks. The fact that yet awhile there appears no 
 answer does not shake their faith in the belief that 
 they should do their best while the opportunity is 
 theirs. 
 
 It may be raising a family of freckled-faced young 
 sters to become ordinarily good men and women. 
 It may be paying for a home. It may be building a 
 business which adds to the town s industries. It 
 may be only in the hundred-and-one little tasks of 
 a ten-hour, three-dollar day. But underneath the 
 conscious endeavor is the effort to do the best possible. 
 
 So we of our newspaper office, looking at ourselves 
 and the people of our community, have grown to take 
 these Saturday afternoons more and more philo 
 sophically as we have gone onward week by week and 
 year by year with our labors. When we finally lock 
 the office and go home for the brief respite of the 
 Sabbath day, we are forced to recognize that there is 
 more of good in life than bad, more of success than 
 failure, more of reward than unrequited struggle. I 
 might say that our position and occupation in the 
 community have made us optimists in spite of our 
 selves. 
 
 But now and then we of this country newspaper 
 office take note of some exceptional person some 
 exceptional struggle some exceptional success 
 experienced by some one in our village, it being the 
 nature of our business to note such things. Oc-
 
 10 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 casionally there comes a case where some one has 
 done the almost impossible thing, made the almost 
 inhuman sacrifice, achieved the almost improbable 
 attainment. And these rare folk stand out in the 
 high light. 
 
 Strange to relate, if we were to catalogue some of 
 these, we would be forced to recognize that the 
 majority of them have been women. What is more, 
 judged by conventional standards, they have been 
 quite average women. Some of them have come to 
 our attention in the daily news grist filtering through 
 our office for publication. Many of them have 
 worked for us. And we give credit where it is 
 due some of them have married these ordinary 
 aggravating bewhiskered males who are responsible 
 for this paper. 
 
 So it has come to us that it would not be out of 
 place or character with the function we are supposed 
 to fill in this community to speak of the achieve 
 ments of these in a larger way than our paper war 
 rants, that they may become as much of an incentive 
 to those in the great world outside of our valley as 
 they have been to those within. 
 
 For after all, ordinary, struggling, curious, hopeful, 
 discontented, American folks are not half so much 
 helped on their earthly way by preachment or pre 
 cept as by the exposition of others of their kind who 
 have been strong where they have been weak, who 
 have succeeded where they have failed. 
 
 It is with these thoughts in mind, in this setting 
 and this atmosphere, for these reasons, that I sit here 
 before this old exchange table and begin the story 
 of a woman s life. 
 
 The story of Mary Wood, to us in this newspaper 
 office, is the frail, delicate, beautiful little history of
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 11 
 
 the love of a girl for a man and for the sons of that 
 man which that girl bore him. Yet somehow, as we 
 grow older and go down the hill of life and see the 
 new children coming up and the marriages taking 
 place and watch the friends and loved ones and ac 
 quaintances dropping by the wayside, the story of 
 little Mary Wood resolves itself into a eulogy 
 of the lives of all good women everywhere. And the 
 hoped-for reward in the telling is that all good 
 women everywhere may know while yet on this side 
 the Valley of Shadows that we men folk while 
 often thoughtless and preoccupied with other things 
 do not always forget or fail to appreciate.
 
 CHAPTER H 
 
 WE CONSIDER MRS. WHEELER, A VICTIM OF SELF- 
 MADE CIRCUMSTANCES, AND GAIN OUR FIRST 
 PICTURE OF MARY WOOD. 
 
 IF you should come to Paris, go eastward to the end 
 of Main Street, and take the road over the Green 
 River bridge and past Haystack Mountain, you 
 would ultimately find yourself in rolling New Eng 
 land country meadow, pasture and wood lot 
 with solitary farm homes barnacled against the rocky 
 hillsides and dusty roads winding over the hills and 
 far away. You would pass the Marshall Mill Pond 
 Bottoms, colloquially known as the "fiats." You 
 would traverse the Green Mountain Valley district 
 and pass through Simonds Woods. After an hour s 
 drive through sumach thicket, deer bottom, spruce 
 timber and roadside briar-bloom, you would leave 
 the dilapidated McDermott lumber job behind you 
 and ascend Cobb Hill. 
 
 Near the top of Cobb Hill on the right-hand side 
 of the road, you would come to a weather-beaten old 
 house now faded to a sun-blistered mustard brown. 
 A crazy stone wall beneath a row of hoary, gnarled, 
 unpruned maples divides the south dooryard from the 
 highway. 
 
 No one lives in that old house at present. For a 
 long time its rooms have been empty, its doors 
 locked, its blinds drawn. The lilacs grow ragged 
 and frowsy at the corners and are full of caterpillars.
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 13 
 
 The back yard is choked with caraway, yarrow and 
 bastard raspberry with an added mixture of wild 
 roses, syringas, blossomless hollyhocks, and coarse 
 grained rhubarb banked against the west wall of the 
 house and ell. A well-sweep by the opposite fence 
 has defied the years but beyond it lie the founda 
 tions and gray-timber ruins of some out-buildings 
 that collapsed in the Shirkshire storm of two years 
 ago. Photographers journey long distances to snap 
 the place from different angles. It is the typical 
 New England abandoned farm. 
 
 An abandoned farm indeed ! There are many of 
 them scattered through this section of Vermont. 
 True, this particular place is not so dilapidated and 
 abandoned as some others with their sashless windows 
 and sunken roofs and fallen doors. But it is pathetic 
 enough, especially to those who know the story of 
 the place as we of the Telegraph office have come to 
 know it. 
 
 The yard of the old place is picked up very clean. 
 The haylofts in the old barn are empty. The place 
 was stripped of nearly everything of value at the 
 time of the auction when Mary Purse came to live 
 in the village. Even the three-forked lightning rods 
 on both gables of the house and on the front of the 
 high barn were bought for old metal by a Jewish 
 gentleman of our community who is somewhat of a 
 connoisseur in old metal with a clandestine remelt- 
 able value. No, the place is abandoned indeed and 
 stands on the little hilltop all alone, waiting the spark 
 from the pipe of some tramp or a northern gale to 
 carry it down to oblivion. Yet what has taken place 
 in those naked lonely rooms the unspeakable joys 
 they have seen, the wordless griefs, the nameless 
 sorrows brings a warm glow about our hearts
 
 14 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 and wells our eyes with tears, and there is nothing 
 maudlin in this frank confession either. 
 
 Probably we in our little country office know more 
 about the kinship and inside history of every man, 
 woman and child in our town than any one else, for 
 that is our business. But we especially know more 
 about this particular family, this abandoned farm, 
 than any other native because it is literally tied up 
 with the Telegraph office with ties of blood. We 
 know there are times when thoughtless folk in our 
 town drive the visitor and the stranger past the place 
 of a summer afternoon, point their whips at it and 
 remark: "That s the old Purse place, the home of 
 an unfortunate family that finally summoned up 
 gumption to amount to somethin ." But they say 
 that because they cannot know the history of the 
 family as we have seen it from the inside, from the 
 night that Mary sat with her mother in the little 
 room under the eaves, down to the present. For 
 when we drive past, an affection for it arises with 
 in us as though we were one of the family ourselves, 
 and the place meant father and mother and home. 
 
 Away back many years ago, before New England 
 had discarded her well-sweeps for windmills and 
 filtered water systems ; before electric cars had come 
 in ; before the Sherman Act and the ten-cent maga 
 zine and the machine-gun, when Central Park was 
 one of the attractions of New York, and all our news 
 papers were set in nonpareil by tramp printers who 
 knew their Shakespeare as well as the high school 
 girl of the present knows who is married in the 
 movies, the house was in its prime and very much 
 occupied, and the windows were open, especially one 
 window in the gable of the upper story.
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 15 
 
 It was a stuffy little bedroom up under the eaves. 
 It smelled of weather-dried shingles and cedar chests 
 and musty closets and old rag carpets. A cheap 
 low-hung yellow bedstead with a ridiculously high 
 headboard and a ridiculously low footboard and a 
 bouquet of hideous brown flowers painted on both 
 occupied the corner between the one south window 
 and the west wall, squaring out into the room and 
 leaving space only for a rocker and a bureau with 
 a badly-flawed glass. 
 
 Time-discolored wall paper peeling in places, Sun 
 day-school mottoes, small tintypes and photographs 
 stuck in the sides of the cheap mirror, chairs and 
 dresser and mantelshelf indicating feminine oc 
 cupancy, these things the light of the day might 
 have disclosed. Now they showed dimly or in 
 fantastic shadow, for it was late of a soft spring night, 
 and the room was illumined by moonlight outlining 
 a long white blotch upon the floor. 
 
 There were two people in this little room tucked 
 away beneath the twisted old eaves. One was a girl 
 of twenty years in a nightgown, sitting upon the bed 
 with her back against the billowing pillows, her fair 
 arms clasped about her knees, troubled eyes fixed 
 upon the shadows. Near the head of the bed in the 
 rocker sat the mother, a woman with terribly red 
 dened hands. An elbow on the narrow sill supported 
 the gnarled fingers as they pressed against her lips, 
 and she stared wistfully out into the singing spring 
 night. The other hand fumbled aimlessly, folding 
 and refolding a pleat in the threadbare wrapper 
 across her lap. 
 
 Mother and daughter had been for hours so, while 
 the moon went higher and higher up the sky, and 
 the world sank deeper and deeper into slumber.
 
 16 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 A warm night breeze wafted the muslin curtains 
 with which the one box window was hung. The town 
 clock far over in North Foxboro tolled eleven lone 
 some strokes. Each time, in the rooms below, a 
 similar clock added its fussy, absurd confirmation 
 of the passing hours. 
 
 Her eyes fixed on the moonlit country spread out 
 down the hill and away before her, the mother 
 listened until the last stroke of both clocks had died 
 away. Then she spoke in a husky whisper. 
 
 "In the story books, women folks in my fix would 
 pack up their belongin s and leave. No self- 
 respectin woman d stand for it, not in story books. 
 But it s different in real life when their children are 
 to be thought of, and when the place you re leavin* 
 is the only home you got ! " 
 
 Then silence again. Somewhere off in the hills 
 a whippoorwill was singing. 
 
 " Taint as if I had folks to go to," she went on. 
 "And besides besides there s Artie. What 
 could I do with Artie if I went? It s certain I 
 couldn t go to work nowhere s and take him with 
 me." 
 
 The girl turned her face about and gazed up at 
 the clear, high-riding moon. 
 
 "We could go together, mother," she said. "I 
 could work, and you could help out." 
 
 "That s just what I don t want you should do, 
 dearie, not yet. I want you should finish at the 
 Academy and graduate, and know you got what s as 
 good as a high-school education ; I ll feel it was worth 
 all the sacrifice. It s why I m puttin up with so 
 much from him, him your stepfather. I been 
 hopin almost against hope that he wouldn t find 
 more n his usual amount o fault with you stayin
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 17 
 
 around home and just helpin me, until I could see 
 you graduate. But after the way he s been talkin 
 the last few weeks, and especially after what he says 
 to-night - 
 
 "Don t take on so over that, mother. After all, 
 maybe leaving home won t kill me. Maybe it would 
 be the best thing, seeing that staying around here 
 keeps causing you so much trouble and abuse." 
 
 "But where d you go, dearie? Out among 
 strangers ! I ain t got no folks and Amos s folks 
 couldn t afford it even if they was so minded. You d 
 have to go into the world with only half a schoolin 
 and knowin no business to support you." 
 
 "But if you should die suddenly, mother, I d 
 have to face it. And I got to face it sometime, 
 anyway." 
 
 "Which ain t no reason why you should leave and 
 miss your schooling so long as I m alive and all it 
 means is me standin up for you !" 
 
 "It isn t fair for you to put it that way. It 
 sounds as though my education was taking some 
 thing out of you that I have no right to take." The 
 girl s voice was tender. 
 
 "But you have, Mary girl. When you get to be 
 a mother you ll realize how you don t begrudge havin 
 your children take things out o you that way." 
 
 "When I get married, mother, and have my own 
 home " began the girl. 
 
 " Don t talk about it ! " the mother broke in. " It 
 hurts ! Not because it ll mean losin you who s 
 nearer and dearer to me than any one else on earth, 
 but because you don t understand what it means to 
 be married. You just don t understand what the 
 chances are you re takin . You don t under 
 stand!"
 
 18 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 "You mean, mother," corrected the girl, "I 
 don t understand what the chances are I d be taking 
 if I married a man like Pa Wheeler. But if I married 
 a man like my own father ; if I were to be as happy 
 as you claim you were in the one short year before 
 my own father died, you wouldn t feel that way, 
 would you, mother?" 
 
 The woman bit a quivering lip. 
 
 "There ain t often anybody as happy as I was 
 that one year with your pa, Mary. And yet from 
 my experiences with men folks since, I wonder if 
 that happiness wasn t due more to his dyin before 
 the novelty o livin together wore off than because 
 the match was so awfully perfect." 
 
 "You ought not to let yourself be as bitter as 
 that, mother. It ll spoil your faith in everything." 
 
 "It has almost, Mary. Yes, I m bitter ! And 
 why shouldn t I be bitter? What chance has a 
 woman got back here in this forsaken country? 
 Tell me that just tell me that ! No matter how 
 fine her ambitions or how badly she longs to better 
 herself, tell me what chance she s got when the men 
 folks ain t no better than you ve seen round these 
 parts since you was old enough to know about 
 things?" 
 
 The daughter remained silent. 
 
 "What chance has a farmer s wife got, anyhow?" 
 the mother cried, all the sorrow of her heart in the 
 tone of her voice. "We re born of poor folks off on 
 some lonely weed-grown country road. We grow 
 up with no society but goin down to the general 
 store or Sunday meeting or an occasional dance. 
 We get what education we can at some white coun 
 try schoolhouse taught by a girl who d be in a place 
 in some city school if she knew enough herself.
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 19 
 
 Then soon s we reach the place where we re a finan 
 cial drag on our folks, the boys come courtin . " 
 
 "I know, mother, I know," sympathized the girl. 
 
 "They re boys same as their fathers was before 
 em," went on the mother, "and same as their 
 fathers was before them. They got no ambition. 
 They don t know nothin but farmin . Their ideas 
 o bein men and growed-up is chewin tobacco, 
 smokin pipes, sayin swear words and considerin* 
 women folks as a possession to run a farm with like 
 a plow or a horse. We marry em because we don t 
 know what s in the world and feel flattered by their 
 attentions. Or we become wives because it s dis 
 graceful to be an old maid, or because we just have 
 to get out into a home of our own, or because we 
 ain t never met real men ! " 
 
 "You re getting yourself all worked up, mother," 
 declared the girl. 
 
 "We marry such as ask us, usually the first askin , 
 and go off to lonely farms in the hills. Then quick 
 enough the mask o holy matrimony is stripped away ! 
 Life? It turns out just plain hard work, and suffer 
 ing and goin without things, bein abused, stayin 
 alone, kept from havin money to spend for ourselves, 
 bearin children, fightin the silence till death or in 
 sanity comes as a blessin ." She choked a bit 
 hysterically, and the girl put out her hand, but it 
 had no effect. 
 
 "We have to have children when we don t want 
 em," she cried, "and when our men folks want 
 em less n we do. We get up before daylight and 
 through the long hours o forenoon, afternoon, and 
 into the night we slave with our work all cut out 
 for years, years ! weary years, with no thanks, 
 no praise, no money, no cooperation, just existence.
 
 20 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 that s all, just plain existence ! Don t make no 
 difference how much work we do, Mary, it don t 
 get us nowhere ; we just have to take what the men 
 folks hand out and endure in silence, and if we 
 buck up and run away from it all, we re bad women 
 and lackin character!" 
 
 "I know, mother, I know !" 
 
 "It s a hard, rough lot we got, Mary, with precious 
 little at the end of it but a funeral in some village 
 church, the lowerin into a grave in some quiet 
 hillside cemetery runnin mostly to wild asters and 
 rank grass and weeds. And the grass soon enough 
 grows over our grave, and hides even our name, and 
 the date on our headstone." 
 
 "Don t, mother!" the girl pleaded piteously, 
 - "don t talk that way." 
 
 "I can t help talking that way. I been puttin 
 up with it, just for your sake, Mary so s 
 maybe I could keep you from doin what I have done. 
 I married Pa Wheeler so s maybe I d have a home 
 and you d have a home and maybe a father to help 
 you. He was nice enough to me so long as I was 
 only his housekeeper you know that. I thought, 
 o course, it d keep up after we was man and wife. 
 I d been so happy that one brief year with your father 
 that I d clean forgot my own mother s hard time. 
 But just as soon as the new wore off, I see it was my 
 mother s fix all over again. And for fourteen years 
 I been standin it. Artie come along crippled 
 like he is on account o the way Pa Wheeler abused 
 me fore he was born, and he s been a helpless 
 whimpering burden that s kept me tied here endur 
 ing it all. The weeks has grown into months and 
 months into years, and all my ambitions to moke 
 something out o myself for my children all my
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 21 
 
 likin for pretty things, all my yearnin for education 
 myself has all gone for nothin but doin the work 
 peaceable to keep JPa s temper down, livin for only 
 you and Artie for after all, I m his mother 
 and hopin to get you started right. And it s from 
 goin through with it and knowin what it s like 
 that I want to save you from it, Mary. It s why 
 I feel hurt and afraid when you talk about the time 
 when you ll be married. You don t know what it 
 means, Mary. You just don t know what it means." 
 
 The girl answered sorrowfully : 
 
 ** The world s awful unfair to some folks who don t 
 deserve it, isn t it, mother?" 
 
 "Lots of older heads than yours and wiser heads 
 than mine have made the same observation long 
 ago and arrived at about the same conclusion !" 
 
 The girl watched the stars millions and millions 
 of stars peaceful stars twinkling stars in the 
 midnight sky but stars that often mean only 
 insanity to lonely farmers wives exiled off in the 
 country s great silent places. After a time, tears 
 like chips of diamonds glinted in her eyes. 
 
 "It spoils all the dreams of the future to think 
 that marrying means that, mother. There must be 
 some good boys somewhere who grow up without 
 looking on their wives that way." 
 
 "For your sake, Mary, I hope there is I hope 
 there is ! But that brings us around to the subject 
 we were talking about a few minutes ago you 
 can t marry them kind that are worth while, and 
 gentlemen, while you re only a little country bump 
 kin that don t know nothin . It s one of the reasons 
 why I want you should finish at the Academy 
 get an education that ll bring you the proper boy, 
 the right sort, with brains and education and am-
 
 22 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 bitjon all o which means courtesy and kindness. 
 You got the natural good looks and the ability, 
 Mary. You ain t been spoiled by no foolish no 
 tions. You can do it if you get the education." 
 
 Then for a long time it was quiet in the little bed 
 room. Somewhere down in the lilacs at the corner of 
 the house a tramp cricket cheeped philosophically. 
 In the lower pasture below the orchard, among 
 the rushes bordering the swamp, the frogs were 
 piping with a chorus that was hourly growing 
 lighter as the night deepened. Their music had a 
 melancholy that all the experiences that came to the 
 girl in after life, and all the joy and all the success, 
 could never entirely efface. Each springtime when 
 the frogs began peeping, the memory returned of that 
 little eaves bedroom and that moonlight night in 
 June, back when she was nineteen-goin -on-twenty 
 and she waited with her mother the homecoming of 
 "Silent" Wheeler from the McDermott job down 
 the valley. 
 
 "Mother," she asked, "if it came to a choice 
 between a poor man who d treat you decently and 
 love you or a rich man who d see you got plenty of 
 money but not much else which would you 
 take?" 
 
 "I pray God I might never have to decide !" 
 
 "It isn t fair to answer so." 
 
 "There ain t no such thing as a poor man treating 
 his women folks decent and loving them ! " exclaimed 
 the embittered woman. "I m afraid, after all I 
 been through, that I d take my chances with the 
 rich man." Her voice wavered. She leaned over 
 and buried her face on her arms across the bed. 
 "Oh, God ! God ! God ! " she wept hysterically, 
 "forgive me for sayin it! God forgive me! But I
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 23 
 
 have stood so much, God so much for such a long, 
 long time ! I guess at last I m goin crazy !" 
 
 "Mother, mother! You re not going crazy. 
 Don t let yourself get all worked up like that. 
 You re just feelin badly because Pa told me to 
 pack up my things and get out, to-night. You re 
 sorrowful because he took your last month s egg 
 money and went down to McDermott s to get drunk 
 on instead of using his own." 
 
 "It ain t the loss of no egg money, dearie, al 
 though that s hard enough, seein I was savin up 
 for to get you the muslin dress for the dance down 
 to Christie s. It s the hopelessness of it for me. 
 You ain t made no fatal mistake yet. You ain t 
 made no mistake and saddled yourself with debt 
 and work and unhappiness and hopelessness for the 
 future. There s the chance for you to meet the right 
 kind o boy with money and ambition and ability to 
 get ahead and be happy with him. But there s no 
 such relief for me. I m just tied here tied for life 
 to a man that the neighbors say is half crazy who 
 takes my money and goes off to buy cheap rum that 
 makes him come home and wreck things tied 
 here to a crippled boy that d die if I didn t look after 
 him every moment. It s having to give myself all 
 the time as a peace offering trying to keep a home for 
 my girl so s she can finish her education like other 
 mother s girls and stand the poor chance o bein a 
 lady. And I ask what have I done to deserve it ? 
 It ain t fair, God just ain t fair ! I don t wonder 
 why most farmers marry two or three times, wearin 
 out one woman after another like cattle and buryin 
 -ra " 
 
 "Please, mother! Oh I wish I knew what to 
 do ! What would remedy things ! I wonder if
 
 24 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 finishing at the Academy means so awfully much 
 after all. I wonder if it s worth the price of staying 
 here and enduring Pa Wheeler s abuses." She was 
 silent for a few moments. Then she tried to laugh. 
 "When I get married it won t be anything at all the 
 way we both imagine. Maybe I ll meet some 
 
 "It s natural for you to look on the bright side, 
 dearie. You re young and your nerve ain t broken ; 
 besides, that s your way. Me I m old and faded 
 and washed out and discouraged. Look at my 
 hands, Mary ! See how hard and out o shape and 
 red-colored they are. I can remember when they 
 was even whiter n your n. There was a time 
 
 The woman straightened up. She held up her 
 hands before her. They looked like claws the 
 great knobs of gnarled knuckles were hideous in 
 the moonlight. 
 
 "Don t, mother, don t!" cried the girl. 
 
 The moon went higher and higher up the sky. 
 The piping of the frogs quieted to an occasional 
 solitary note off down in the dark. The clock in 
 the lonely tower over in North Foxboro sent twelve 
 lonesome strokes over the sleeping countryside ; a 
 few moments later the cheap little clock belowstairs 
 fussily corroborated the hour of midnight. 
 
 "Why doesn t he come?" sighed the woman. 
 "If he s got to come home and make us all miserable, 
 why don t he have it done with? What s keepin* 
 him ? He ll be sick for a week if he drinks enough to 
 keep him away all night !" 
 
 "I thought a moment ago that I heard him!" 
 answered the girl. 
 
 Silence again ! 
 
 Far down the Cobb Hill road the figure of a man 
 climbed unsteadily. He covered much unnecessary
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 25 
 
 ground. He stumbled much and cursed continually. 
 Withal he made progress. 
 
 When he reached the house at the top of the hill 
 on the right, he turned under the maples and into 
 the yard. 
 
 Mother and daughter, waiting in the moonlit 
 upper room, heard a curse come up from the yard. 
 They heard a man s step on the rear porch floor. 
 His heavy boot came down upon a loose board that 
 settled back into its place with a bump. Then 
 followed a fumbling at the string-mended screen 
 door and the slap of the flimsy thing behind him. 
 Next he fell over a chair in the kitchen. The girl 
 had heard a repetition of all on countless nights. 
 Yet this night she shivered with a nameless 
 dread. 
 
 "If he ll only drop asleep in one o the chairs!" 
 prayed the wife. 
 
 Long ominous silence in the lower kitchen ! 
 
 "I hope he isn t up to anything," whispered the 
 daughter. 
 
 The mother drew a long breath for poise and 
 strength. She arose and stood before the window, 
 looking up at the clear-cut high riding moon and 
 the myriad stars up to the heavens where God 
 is supposed to dwell. 
 
 "Holy matrimony!" she whispered. "Holy 
 matrimony!" Then ashamed of her sarcasm: 
 "Dear God," she prayed with sudden nobility, 
 
 - help me ; give rne the strength ! for the sake 
 of my girl give me the strength to go onward 
 and do what I can and save her from makin her 
 mother s mistake." 
 
 The silence grew into minutes. The two in the 
 upper chamber decided the man had fallen into a
 
 26 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 drunken slumber. Then suddenly up from the 
 bottom of the flight came the roar of his voice. 
 
 "Sarah!" he bellowed. 
 
 "Don t go down, mother !" cried the girl. 
 
 "I got to go down, dearie. If I don t, it ll only 
 make him worse. And it ain t myself, it s you 
 and Artie I got to think of." She gathered the red- 
 yarn shawl about her narrow shoulders as though 
 for protection, and disappeared in the shadows of 
 the narrow hallway. Straightening out on the bed, 
 the girl buried her face in the soft pillows. 
 
 Once she heard her mother s shrill voice in protest, 
 followed by a retort in burly bass. Only once ! The 
 speaking solitudes of the summer night were resolv 
 ing into whispers. The moon was moving so far 
 westward that the phosphorescent patch upon the 
 bedroom floor was a contorted fantasy in one corner. 
 Even the tramp cricket in the lilacs down below 
 had grown tired like the frogs. 
 
 A quarter-hour the girl lay thinking, straining 
 her ears to hear evidences of trouble below. Sud 
 denly came a step upon the stairs. 
 
 She sat up in the bed, pulling the clothes to her 
 white throat. The rays from a lighted lantern 
 weak, weird rays showed down the hallway stairs. 
 A second later a man entered her room. 
 
 He was a heavy-set, big-boned man in a black 
 striped shirt and overalls that stunk of the cow barns. 
 He wore long ragged moustaches and had flat 
 jowls with a week s growth of characterless black 
 beard. His features were coarse, with the eyes 
 deeply sunken. They were large, round, ominous 
 eyes. When the man was under the influence of 
 liquor they smouldered with a fire of deadly green. 
 
 "Silent" Wheeler was the nickname by which
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 27 
 
 the town knew him. It was an appropriate nick 
 name. During the day, as he met and mingled 
 with his neighbors, he was laconic, taciturn, friend 
 less. On summer nights he went down to McDer- 
 mott s where he spent the hours getting morosely 
 drunk. In the other three seasons he sat at home 
 before the fire, nursing the poker, raising one of 
 the covers and spitting from time to time with 
 sharp hiss into the stove. In this manner passed 
 hours and hours. When addressed by wife or step 
 daughter he nodded or ignored them. Always he 
 was thinking, thinking, thinking, brooding over a 
 wrong. The neighbors declared he was holding it 
 against his wife for giving him a crippled idiot as his 
 only son. But that was conjecture. At ten o clock 
 he would descend to the cellar for his porter. He 
 drank it alone by lantern light in the musty regions 
 belowstairs. Then he went to bed without speak 
 ing and snored through the hours. Weeks passed 
 thus always the brooding, brooding, brooding 
 always the watching of the movements of wife or 
 stepdaughter with the baleful green eyes, always 
 biding his time to set a great wrong right. 
 
 This man came into the girl s room carrying the 
 lantern which the woman with the terrible reddened 
 hands left burning each night in the kitchen to 
 light him for his slug of porter. He set the lantern 
 down upon a corner of the dresser where its greasy 
 base marked a ring which ruined the delicate em 
 broidery. Kicking the rocker out of the way, he 
 moved toward the bed, the green eyes fixed omi 
 nously on the girl s white face. 
 
 "Pa!" she cried. 
 
 She shrank away from him, huddled down against 
 the opposite wall, the bedclothing drawn to her throat.
 
 28 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 " Pa ! What is it you want ? " 
 
 The stepfather stood unsteadily before her. Sens 
 ing the feel of an ugly knife in his coarse palm, force 
 of habit prompted him to bring a plug of tobacco 
 from his overalls pocket and cut himself a huge 
 twisted chew. 
 
 "I want to know somethin . I want to know how 
 old you be?" 
 
 " Father ! You know how old I am. I m nine- 
 teen-going-on-twenty . " 
 
 "Yas! You re nineteen-going-on-twenty. You re 
 nineteen-goin -on-twenty ! So I been thinkin !" 
 
 His tone was ominous. He returned the plug 
 and knife to his stinking clothes. 
 
 The girl was terrified by her mother s absence 
 and that the man was not intoxicated with the same 
 effect as on other nights. 
 
 "Yas, you re nineteen-goin -on-twenty," continued 
 Silent Wheeler. "And I been thinkin , I tell you, 
 I been thinkin. Tell me this : What ye ever done 
 to help earn your livin or bring in money to support 
 yourself or help the family?" 
 
 "But this is home our home together. Does a 
 girl have to earn money and pay board at home?" 
 
 "Don t it cost money to support a female o your 
 size, at home?" 
 
 "But I can t work outside and go to the Academy 
 at the same time. And I do so want to go to the 
 Academy. I ll be finished in another year." 
 
 " Yas ! And who pays your keep in the meantime ?" 
 
 The girl knew that to answer would add fuel to the 
 fires of wrath smoldering behind the strange green 
 eyes. 
 
 "Tell me ! " he roared suddenly. 
 
 "I I thought my own stepfather might -
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 29 
 
 "That s it! That s it! Me! I thought so. 
 And why should I? Tell me that? Are you my 
 daughter? Are you?" 
 
 "I m your stepdaughter." 
 
 " Are you my daughter ? Tell me that ! " 
 
 "You married mother. Isn t it the same?" 
 
 "I married your mother. But it ain t the same. 
 You heard what I said; it ain t the same. I been 
 thinkin ." 
 
 "You never raised any question before about me 
 staying here. I haven t any other place to go." 
 
 "How about lookin after yourself? How about 
 you makin some place ?" 
 
 "I wanted to finish school first. I ll be better 
 equipped to 
 
 "To what? You want education to prance 
 round before your betters, that s what you want. 
 Did I have any education ? Did your mother have 
 any education? What right you got to expect us 
 to support you while you re learnin education 
 so s to prance round before your betters ? Oh, I 
 got this all thought out. For a long time I been 
 turnin it over in my mind. For a long time I been 
 thinkin ." 
 
 "You married mother; and when you married her 
 you knew she had me. It isn t fair now to go back 
 on : 
 
 "Who s goin back on anything? Don t give me 
 no argument. Don t try to down me with your 
 education. I won t be downed. I got this thing 
 all thought out, I tell you. You was little when I 
 married your mother, little and helpless. You 
 ain t little no more. You re able to take care o 
 yourself. Yet you don t make no effort to take care 
 o yourself; you just laze around and wipe a few
 
 30 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 dishes and do a little cookin and mend a little clothes 
 and do a few high-flown chores like you was some 
 grand breed o duchess ; and think I ought to sup 
 port you while you get an education to prance 
 around and shame your betters. I m sick of it. 
 I stood it as long as I m agoin to stand it. So I 
 been thinkin !" 
 
 He had been thinking, for hundreds of terrible 
 evenings ! 
 
 "Father !" she cried hysterically. 
 
 "I don t mean I should do it no more ! " 
 
 "Father!" 
 
 "I don t intend to do it no more. You heard 
 what I said to-night. Why ain t you gone ?" 
 
 "I didn t think you meant it. At least not so 
 soon. Not at once, to-night ! " 
 
 "Didn t think I meant it! She says after all 
 the thinkin I ve done she didn t suppose I meant 
 it ! I told you to get out ! I told you to get out ! I 
 meant it when I said get out. And I come home and 
 find you here. You know what happens to willful 
 young uns who disobey ! " 
 
 For a third time she uttered the word " Father ! " 
 but this time in a whisper. Then she tried to 
 scream, but no scream would come. 
 
 The man was drunk. He was more than drunk, - 
 he was mad. The lantern glint fell aslant on his 
 face, and the girl caught the look in his eyes. They 
 were the eyes of a person without reason. 
 
 She saw the green light blaze up. She saw the 
 pupils dilate. She sensed that the worst had hap 
 pened. The silence eternal of the lonely New 
 England hillsides, the maddening quiet of the 
 evenings, the lack of intercourse with people of 
 education and breeding, the months and months of
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 31 
 
 brooding before the kitchen stove, all had tended 
 toward the inevitable. Something had snapped in 
 Silent Wheeler s brain. Silent Wheeler had become 
 obsessed. 
 
 The stepfather reached into his clothes. From 
 around the top of his trousers he unbuckled a heavy 
 belt. 
 
 "Don t, father, don t!" It was the voice of a 
 little girl beseeching an irate parent to withhold 
 punishment for some childish disobedience. Yet 
 she was not a little girl. She was a woman grown 
 and a ghastly pretty woman. 
 
 Silent Wheeler laughed. He had not laughed for 
 so long and the levity was so uncanny that it para 
 lyzed the daughter as much as the deadly thing he 
 held in his hand. With the laugh he reached over. 
 He closed his other hand around a soft white wrist. 
 
 The slumbering spring night was suddenly cut 
 by screams!
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 SLUG TRUMAN, MONDAY- WASHING AND CARDINAL 
 WOLSEY ENTER THE NARRATIVE AND START THEIR 
 ROLES AS MINOR HEROES. 
 
 DOWN Cobb Hill came the rattle of buggy tires 
 in the sandy road. A trap drawn by a little black 
 mare and driven by a stocky, well-dressed young 
 man reached the maples alongside the Wheeler 
 house. The stocky young man stopped the mare 
 and arose in the vehicle. A hideous bulldog in the 
 seat with him rose likewise. 
 
 Two times more those cries sounded on the sum 
 mer night. The young man put a foot on the 
 carriage wheel and leaped over. The dog tried the 
 same thing and had to be extricated. The young 
 man, followed by the dog, approached the house. 
 
 "Hey, you!" he called, "is anything especially 
 the matter?" 
 
 For answer he heard a thump, a crash, a curse. 
 The dim light that had been burning in that eaves 
 room was suddenly extinguished. There was an 
 other thump, another crash as of furniture falling. 
 He heard a long cry. Some one came swiftly through 
 the lower rooms. Then the light screen door on the 
 side porch flew open ; there came a flash of white in 
 the moonlight and across the lawn toward him ran a 
 girl. 
 
 "What s it all about?" the young man de 
 manded.
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 33 
 
 For he had suddenly discovered himself with a 
 protecting arm about this girl a girl whose 
 shoulders and body were enveloped in a heavy quilt 
 and whose hair fell wildly about her face. 
 
 "Where can I go ? What can I do ?" she sobbed. 
 
 At the moment the heavy footfalls of Silent 
 Wheeler sounded through the lower rooms, and a 
 bruised and disheveled man appeared on the rear 
 porch. He started across. 
 
 "Wait a moment! Stop!" ordered the young 
 stranger. "What s the meaning of all this, any 
 how? Can t I ask a civil question and get a civil 
 answer? " 
 
 "He struck me with his belt he struck me ! " 
 sobbed the girl. 
 
 "What for?" 
 
 "He told me to leave and go away. I didn t 
 think he meant to-night. I was here when he came 
 from McDermott s. And he struck me with his 
 belt ! " 
 
 The heavy quilt slipped from her grasp. The 
 moonlight disclosed the white flesh of her arms and 
 shoulders. For a moment the young man gaped 
 blankly. 
 
 "Cripes!" he ejaculated. "Gripes!" Then he 
 turned on the stepfather. "I m Slug Truman, I am ! 
 They call me that in Paris because I got a hundred- 
 and-seventy-pound punch I have. And if I hit 
 you with the whole hundred and seventy, I might 
 bust you right open. What s coming off here, any 
 how ? What s the row ? " 
 
 "Strangers ain t wanted in this!" growled Silent 
 Wheeler angrily. 
 
 "Maybe they ain t. Then I ll be the little old 
 unwelcome guest. What s the matter with you,
 
 34 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 Si Wheeler? You talk as if you d gone plumb 
 looney ! " 
 
 " Strangers ain t wanted in this ! " declared Wheeler 
 again. 
 
 "But they ain t goin to stand aside and see no 
 women folks beat up ! " 
 
 "You keep out ! " warned the stepfather. 
 
 The girl uttered a little cry. She fancied she could 
 see his strange eyes green eyes glowing and 
 smouldering in the moonlight. 
 
 "Keep out nothin ! You keep off ! Keep off 
 or seem that just this minute I got this lady to sort 
 o keep standin up, I might call in this dog to help 
 me, don t you know ! " 
 
 "To hell with your dog ! " 
 
 "Don t say that. He ain t used to bein spoke 
 unkindly of. " 
 
 But the man started forward. He made a lurch 
 at the girl. The dog growled. The young stranger 
 tried to get himself between man and girl. Wheeler s 
 onslaught made him stumble. 
 
 "Sic em, Card !" the boy cried. " Help a feller 
 out that s got a armful ! " 
 
 The scruff of the dog s back arose. He ran around 
 and around the group a couple of times, growling low 
 and ominously. The man hit at the boy. The blow 
 infuriated the animal. His jowls slobbered with 
 sudden rage. He sprang. His teeth snapped. 
 
 In the next three minutes that yard witnessed a 
 tragedy. 
 
 "Gripes!" Slug defended himself, "I had to ask 
 Card to help me out, didn t I ? I couldn t bust him 
 with my arms full o girl and bed quilt. What good 
 is a dog, anyhow unless he rises to a emergency ?" 
 
 He led the fainting girl to an old berry crate that
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 35 
 
 helped clutter the yard and started in to disengage 
 the powerful brute who was doing such terrible 
 execution. 
 
 Silent Wheeler dragged himself back to the 
 porch on hands and knees, where he collapsed and 
 rolled down the steps. The dog who had tasted 
 blood had to be kicked, cuffed and beaten into sub 
 mission. Then Slug lifted him bodily, carried him 
 to the buggy and tied him to the fancy iron un 
 der the seat in the rear. There the dog licked his 
 wounds where the man had clawed him and growled 
 continually while the scruff of his coat settled. 
 
 "Are you hurt, Miss ?" Slug asked the girl. 
 
 "No! That is not much. It isn t me I m 
 thinking of it s mother. Oh, what s become of 
 her?" 
 
 "As I was drivin over the top of the hill about 
 five minutes ago I see a woman runnin in the moon 
 light across the south mowin . I thought it was 
 queer. You don t suppose it was her, do you ?" 
 
 "Then she started for help to the Osgood s. It s 
 the nearest way across the south mowing." 
 
 "Whatter you want to do? You can t stay here 
 like this i" 
 
 "I don t know. I could wait till the Osgood 
 boys come." 
 
 "You better let me take you to the Osgood s if 
 you mean the Henry Osgoods. You can t go back 
 in the house to-night. Besides, I don t know how 
 bad Card s chewed the old man up. Sheriff Crum- 
 pett ought to be called right away quick." 
 
 She let him lead her to the buggy. He helped her 
 in. She tucked the heavy quilt about her and he 
 added a blanket. He got in over the opposite wheel, 
 picked up the reins and pulled the beribboned whip
 
 36 
 
 from its socket. The little mare was lashed into a 
 wild gallop, and the rig careened off through the night. 
 
 It was four miles by the road to the Osgood s. 
 Young Truman guided the foaming little mare into 
 the Osgood s front yard and halted close to the steps, 
 where she quivered and champed at the bit. The 
 old Osgood house was dark and silent. Evidently 
 the mother had not arrived, or lights would have 
 been burning. Slug vaulted over the wheel, alighted 
 on the piazza and hammered at the door with the 
 butt of his whip. 
 
 The minutes ticked past. They waited. Slug 
 hammered again. But though the noise he made 
 sounded through the house like the summons of an 
 enemy of invasion, no sign of life appeared within. 
 A big black cat came around the corner. It leaped 
 up the front steps, purring and mewing. It rubbed 
 against Truman s ankles. 
 
 "Looks as if they ain t home," he announced. 
 
 Again and again he pounded. He went around to 
 the side doors and made a similar racket. He called 
 to the upper windows from the front yard. 
 
 "There ain t a window open anywhere," he 
 announced. "They wouldn t sleep on a warm 
 night like this with all their windows shut. Do you 
 want me to take you back or anywhere ?" 
 
 He drove her back. A half hour later they turned 
 into the 8 Wheeler yard. 
 
 Silent Wheeler was gone from the porch steps. 
 
 Leaving the girl in the rig and prepared for trouble, 
 the boy alighted and called through the darkened 
 kitchen door. But he received no reply. 
 
 He found matches in one of his pockets. He broke 
 one from the card, waited until it had burned up 
 and then went boldly inside. The girl saw the
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 37 
 
 reflection of the flame travel through the lower rooms. 
 In a minute he was back. 
 
 "There ain t any one here at all, Miss Wheeler. 
 Your Ma is probably still off looking for help. Your 
 dad has probably - 
 
 " gone down to McDermott s once more. And 
 my name isn t Wheeler it s Wood Mary Wood." 
 
 "What do you want to do ?" 
 
 As he waited for her to decide, he suddenly raised 
 his head and listened. 
 
 "What s that?" he demanded sharply. 
 
 The girl listened likewise. Then her delicate lips 
 grew hard. 
 
 "That s only Artie. He s my stepbrother. He s 
 probably in his upstairs room." 
 
 Slug had heard of Silent Wheeler s crazy son. He 
 did not refer to him again. 
 
 "You can t stay here," the Truman boy declared. 
 "Your stepfather might come back and try to pull off 
 more fireworks. You ought to go somewhere s and 
 wait for morning. And I ought to go get Sheriff 
 Crumpett. Old Wheeler belongs in jail after a night 
 of this. You women folks can t trust yourselves to 
 him again." 
 
 "I haven t any place I could go ! " the girl broke 
 down. "Not unless it was to one of the neighbors. 
 And there aren t any besides the Osgoods that we 
 know real well." 
 
 Slug came across to the rig. He stood by the rail 
 looking up into the pretty features. 
 
 "Did he hurt you ?" he asked gently. 
 
 "Not much!" 
 
 "I ought to have left Card have him." 
 
 "The dog would have killed him." 
 
 "It would have served him right. It was lucky
 
 38 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 I come along. I was just coming back from the dance 
 to Gilbert Mills." 
 
 It was an inappropriate time for him to thrust him 
 self into the situation with personal explanation. 
 Beyond this brief declaration he said nothing. Only : 
 "If you could get your things, I d be glad to take you 
 down to Paris or somewheres. And you could 
 leave a note for your mother, tellin her you was all 
 right and lettin her know the place you d gone. 
 That is if you want to go right now." 
 
 The girl sat thinking for a time. 
 
 "It s a good time for me to go," she said patheti 
 cally at last. "Mother will come back all right 
 and if she finds my note, it will be better than a sad 
 parting bidding me good-by. I ll go quickly now 
 - if you ll just take me to Paris." 
 
 The girl swayed as he helped her to the ground. 
 She went inside. He sat down on the porch steps to 
 guard her from further harm and he waited. 
 
 At the end of half an hour she reappeared. She 
 was dressed in a plain brown dress, a hat with a long 
 black feather. She carried an old-fashioned tele 
 scope bag. 
 
 "I couldn t stay here another hour after this has 
 happened," she said. " I ve made trouble enough 
 here. If you ll take me to Paris and I can fix it so to 
 get work to-morrow, I ll pay you back for your 
 trouble and transportation. You re Herbert Tru 
 man, aren t you ? I ve heard the girls at the Foxboro 
 Center Academy speak of you." 
 
 "Yes," he replied. 
 
 He assisted her into the buggy again. He thumped 
 the big dog to make him lie over and give room for 
 the telescope bag. Then he climbed in beside the 
 girl and unwound the reins from the whip.
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 39 
 
 "How about the note for your mother ? " he asked. 
 
 "I wrote one. I left it pinned to the tablecloth in 
 the dining room. I said I d gone to Paris to get work 
 and as soon as I d got a place, I d send and get her. " 
 
 Slug said little more until they were nearly down to 
 the Marshall-pond bottoms. 
 
 "I think you could get a job in the Telegraph 
 office," said he. "I was looking over last night s 
 paper to see who d advertised to get work in the 
 shop Dad s shop and I remember that Sam 
 Hod and his partner wanted a couple of girls to learn 
 typesetting. Think you would like typesetting ? " 
 
 "I d like anything," the girl said desperately, 
 "that would save me from going back. You re very 
 kind." 
 
 "Helping the ladies is my specialty," Slug de 
 clared. Then, sensing that his rejoinder had fallen 
 exceedingly flat, he struck the little mare sharply 
 with the reins and they rumbled through the covered 
 bridge by Patterson s sawmill. 
 
 "Her name s Monday-Washin ," said Slug off 
 handedly. He meant the mare. But little Mary 
 Wood was thinking about something else than the 
 name applied to the horse.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 MARY WOOD "ACCEPTS A POSITION" IN OUR GRIMY 
 NEWSPAPER OFFICE AT WHICH THE TOWN is 
 APPROPRIATELY HORRIFIED AND OSTRACIZES THE 
 WOOD GIRL SOCIALLY. 
 
 "THERE S a girl in the office wants a job!" an 
 nounced Mr. Nimrod Briggs, compositor, returning 
 to the back room with his fingers full of proofs. 
 
 I went into the front office. A girl in pitifully 
 plain clothing and a pale, pretty face stood on the 
 other side of the battered counter. 
 
 It was my first view of Mary Wood. Many years 
 have passed since that far-off spring forenoon. I 
 have seen Mary in many different places, under many 
 cruel circumstances, resolutely facing many hard 
 situations in life, mostly with a smile on her face. 
 But as I saw her in that office that morning, she 
 was the Mary Wood I have liked best to remem 
 ber before care and anxiety and struggle came 
 to her before love had levied its price, taken its 
 pound of flesh from her heart and the soft bloom 
 from her features before disappointment and cruel 
 suffering and noble effort had changed her from that 
 gentle-faced blushing girl, surprised in the presence 
 of strangers, into the typical American wife and 
 mother. 
 
 And I remember Mary Wood that day, not so 
 much for the soft brown hair parted on the fair high 
 forehead, nor the lines of her graceful figure nor the
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 41 
 
 sweet, patient, frightened look deep in her dark 
 eyes, but for the graceful way in which she came over 
 and begged for work and the chance to earn a living 
 for herself. 
 
 She got it ! 
 
 Mary went to work for us immediately, "learn 
 ing the case." 
 
 Sam got her a boarding place with one Mrs. 
 Mathers, a widowed lady, who ran a boarding 
 house on School Street. 
 
 The first few days slipped away; by Saturday 
 she could get up a fairly sizable string of locals. 
 
 And she tried to "find herself" in our community. 
 
 It was something of a novelty in those days for 
 women to be employed in printing offices. Our 
 newspapers of those years were produced by journey 
 men printers, popularly known as "tramps." 
 They were strange, lovable souls, more or less out of 
 plumb with the world around them, who drifted from 
 place to place, staying only long enough to earn the 
 wherewithal to finance them further in their wander 
 lust. Most of them drank to excess. They could 
 thoroughly be relied upon to demand employment 
 when there was no more work than the regular staff 
 could handle and with equal faithfulness they lay 
 down on the job or moved onward just when work 
 was burying the office and they were needed most. 
 
 It occasioned some talk in the village therefore 
 when Sam Hod departed from the traditions of the 
 profession and sought local girls to do his typesetting 
 as being dependable, all-the-year-round work folk. 
 This talk was revived when it became known that 
 the Wood girl, after a humiliating experience with
 
 42 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 a drunken stepfather at their lonely farmhouse on 
 the Cobb Hill road, had secured a place and intended 
 to pay her own way and care for herself by taking 
 employment in the local newspaper office. 
 
 It was regarded as a rather radical procedure for 
 her to take her place at the case alongside the 
 flotsam and jetsam of human life who commonly 
 lived off printing offices and rub shoulders with 
 them in the day s work. Conservative parents 
 commented dubiously on the idea of a "nice" 
 young lady overhearing the lumberous and ofttimes 
 highly-hued talk circulating among employees of a 
 printing establishment and taking up with the grimy, 
 monotonous, back-room life which in those days was 
 typical of newspaper offices the nation over. And 
 as conservative fathers and mothers of "nice" 
 daughters frequently discussed it when Mary Wood 
 passed by, it followed that those "nice" daughters 
 gradually came to acquire the same ideas and rated 
 Mary accordingly. 
 
 It was a hard place in which to put the girl, 
 the more so because she could not understand what 
 lay at the bottom of the snubs and jellybean social 
 ostracisms which occurred during that following 
 autumn and winter. 
 
 She supposed poor girl that the lack of 
 interest taken in her, the lack of companionship 
 on the part of other girls about the village, the failure 
 to receive invitations to parties and dances and 
 village functions given by the younger set was due to 
 the unsavory reputation which Silent Wheeler had 
 in the community, that she was his stepdaughter and 
 a girl who had come from "nobodies." 
 
 She laid it to her family; the fact that she had 
 come from the inconsequential hamlet of North
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 43 
 
 Foxboro ; that she could not afford to dress as some 
 of the other village girls dressed and therefore 
 offended those in a place to offer her social favors, 
 anything and everything but the truth. 
 
 It was a thoughtless and cruel little small-town 
 snobbery. Happily the days of such provincialism 
 are over. But the fact remains that Mary was not 
 fortunate enough to "get in" with the "right 
 people." She did her work in the daytime faith 
 fully and satisfactorily. But when six o clock 
 came and the labor was done until another morning, 
 she went alone to the cheap room at the top of Mrs. 
 Mathers boarding house and spent her evenings by 
 herself. 
 
 Once or twice the men in the office made advances 
 to her ; tried to take her out and show her attention. 
 But they were coarse, rough printer-folk, here to 
 day and gone to-morrow. She judged them in 
 tuitively at their true value and gave them no en 
 couragement. 
 
 Yet the talk which her employment in the office 
 occasioned among the "best" people was not match- 
 flare alongside the commotion caused in the "back 
 room" of our establishment to have a girl of Mary 
 Woods dainty personality working side by side 
 with our men, appealing to them with her questions 
 and trade perplexities, tickling their rough-shaven 
 cheeks unintentionally with the truant strands of 
 her fine-spun hair as she bent with them over the 
 forms, getting little daubs of ink or type-case grime 
 on her features and only making them the prettier. 
 
 If the town people could only have known, her 
 presence in the office made a different place of the 
 cluttered old room. It produced also startling 
 changes in the moral tone of the establishment.
 
 4-i THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 Old "Daddy Joe", the ad-man, stopped spitting 
 tobacco juice on the floor and grinding it in with his 
 boot. "Skinny Napoleon" Higgins, a lugubrious 
 soul of exceeding thinness who had once been jilted 
 by a widow, ceased his morbid recreation of setting 
 up his own obituary in different styles and leaving 
 it around on galleys which we always wanted in a 
 hurry, he stopped sending out every afternoon for a 
 pail of beer, he shaved three times a week and de 
 clared that swearing had to stop in that office, by 
 Gawd, or he d see to it that somebody had hell 
 knocked out of em. The one-eyed boy whose 
 given name was Lawrence BriggsHanchett, but whom 
 we called "Slob" because of his propensity to cover 
 everything in the place but the payroll with ink 
 whenever he filled the press fountains, ceased re 
 moving his glass eye and rolling it around the 
 stove because it horrified the girls, and Mr. Nimrod 
 Briggs who helped with the ads and tended press, 
 buttoned his vest for the first time in years; he 
 changed his shirt as often as twice a month and 
 showed up for work so regularly on Monday morn 
 ings that the proprietors of the Daily Telegraph 
 noting that these changes had begun with the 
 advent of the pretty little compositor rose up 
 and called her blessed. 
 
 There were three other girls in the office : Annie 
 Seavers was the senior of these in point of employ 
 ment a big horse of a female with sloppy heels, 
 receding chin and three rolls of fat on her neck under 
 washed-out brown hair which would never stay 
 combed. Annie "ran" with the River Street 
 crowd, which was decidedly not a crowd for Mary at 
 all, keeping up the traditions and popular concep 
 tion of females who would work in printing offices.
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 45 
 
 Susie Whitcomb was the second; a conscientious 
 little soul in gold spectacles which she wore half-way 
 down a very freckled nose. But she was a slow- 
 witted girl who lacked imagination, always 
 scented with cheap perfumery and clothed in home 
 made dresses with coarse stitches which were always 
 parting somewhere about her anatomy. 
 
 The third girl Mabel Henderson, more famil 
 iarly known as "Mibb" -was a black-eyed, in 
 dependent young spitfire whose mother ran the mill 
 boarding house at the east end of town. Mibb spent 
 most of her wages on caramels and clothes and was 
 always talking over the type cases about her "gentle 
 men friends." Her father was a poor, overgrown, 
 inconsequential soul who toiled not, neither did he 
 spin, and who spent his days sitting around in 
 grocery stores or blacksmith shops keeping folks 
 informed about the progress of his old army trouble. 
 
 Between a mother with a caustic temper who was 
 forever "telling the world" how she had thrown 
 herself away marrying old Harvey Henderson, and 
 a father who dined in the kitchen from scraps the 
 boarders left Mibb had grown up with rather 
 unique ideas about the matrimonial relation. 
 
 "Harvey s wife is a sort o female battleship," 
 quoth Uncle Joe Fodder, the town philosopher who 
 ran the livery stable behind the Whitney House on 
 Main Street, "and Harvey always reminds me of 
 two or three hours o July afternoon. And when 
 you get a battleship married to two or three hours 
 o July afternoon, it ain t reasonable to expect that 
 the offspring s goin to recite any phenomenal 
 number o scripture verses at a Sunday-school enter 
 tainment. Some young folks know a lot about 
 marriage by missin it to home. Show me a home
 
 46 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 where the mother runs the bank account, and I ll 
 show ye a bunch o kids who usually don t rise up 
 and give the old man a chair when he hoofs it in ! " 
 
 This was the general attitude of the village toward 
 the Hendersons. And yet there was one redeeming 
 feature about the Henderson girl, because of which 
 the village made due allowance for her "freshness." 
 By one of those strange pranks which Nature often 
 plays in a small town, the girl could sing. 
 
 Sing ? 
 
 She had a contralto voice that Uncle Joe further 
 remarked was "liquid glory" given her "to soothe 
 the savage beast" probably referring to "her 
 old woman", a beautiful voice that needed only 
 training to make Mibb a prodigy. But it had not 
 been trained for two reasons. Ma Henderson had 
 no goods of this world to waste on such foolishness ; 
 and Mibb wouldn t have put the time into training 
 if she had. 
 
 The girl sang at singing schools, parties, small 
 town entertainments. She abused her gift with all 
 the abandon of the irreverent child of such parents, 
 and used it only to create merriment for her asso 
 ciates with the popular songs and ballads of the 
 period. 
 
 Neither with the Henderson girl, therefore, did 
 Mary find much temperamental compatibility. 
 
 Many is the night that we elder folk in the front 
 office, sensing the trouble but not knowing exactly 
 how to go about applying a remedy, encountered 
 Mary walking about the streets of Paris, with a 
 little feeling of sorrow and sympathy. 
 
 Somehow she just didn t fit in with the various 
 phases of the town s social life. She was too good 
 for the workaday crowd in the shops and factories
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 47 
 
 of Paris as well as her fellow-employes in the me 
 chanical department; and the balance of our 
 people considered her beneath them and gave her 
 small opportunity to convince them how thoughtless 
 and wrong they were. 
 
 At first we had supposed that her mother was 
 coming in off the farm to live with her ; that indeed, 
 would have been a happy solution to her lone 
 liness. But the helpless idiot to whom she had given 
 birth and who spent his days in a bare room on the 
 second floor of the Wheeler house would have perished 
 without her. While such an event might have been 
 a mercy, mother-love held her to the unspeakable 
 sacrifice. With Mary out of the way, temporarily 
 the husband s personal abuse ceased. 
 
 Mrs. Wheeler said she guessed that after what 
 she d stood she could stand it a little longer, so long 
 as it didn t get any worse. Besides, she didn t 
 propose to go to no Paris and live on the slender 
 wages of no daughter, not while she had the breath 
 o life in her body to look out for herself and she 
 calculated she had. If Mary couldn t finish her 
 schoolin if she had to go to work and take care 
 of herself she needed all the money she earned 
 to buy herself clothes and pretty things and fit 
 herself to attract "the right sort" in the matter of a 
 husband. 
 
 It is not correct in this chapter of introduction of 
 Mary to Paris to say that in the first lonely summer 
 and autumn she was wholly ignored by the thought 
 less boys and girls that made up our community s 
 younger set. The night of the lawn party at 
 Calvary Methodist church there was one young 
 man who remembered her and asked her to go with 
 him.
 
 48 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 Poor "Slug" Truman! With all his faults and 
 indiscretions he was a good-hearted boy and meant 
 well. He too had been unfortunate in the choice 
 of parents. 
 
 His father was old "Short -Cramp" Truman, so 
 called because in an overgrown blacksmith shop 
 down on River Street he "manufactured" a farm 
 wagon of his own design with exceptionally small 
 front wheels which gave his product a sale and 
 tuppence worth of fame for its unique short turning 
 qualities : also because, being a first-class mortgage 
 forecloser and plate-passer, he was not above cramp 
 ing unfortunates whenever he had the opportunity 
 to execute such a maneuver to his financial ad 
 vantage. 
 
 Herb s mother was a weak-eyed, whimpering- 
 voiced, flat-faced woman with a hand like a damp 
 dishcloth who never expressed an opinion in her 
 life and spent her days following around and setting 
 off a rather flashy and forward daughter, who made 
 all decisions and saw that they were carried out. 
 
 Herb was a decent sort of chap and rather easy 
 going, and a natural sense of humor prevented him 
 from reaching the extremes which finally landed 
 Esmeralda Truman in the divorce court and a sana 
 torium. Old Short-Cramp might have been a 
 leech and a sharper in business but he had lost 
 a baby son the year before Herb came along and 
 that made him partial and strangely indulgent to the 
 offspring particularly the male offspring that 
 had survived. Herb had all the money he wanted, 
 but he spent it harmlessly though ofttimes foolishly, 
 on horses and dogs and the village belles, 
 whereas Esmeralda squandered hers viciously and 
 lived to rue the day she was born.
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 49 
 
 Long before he had graduated from high school 
 Herb had been a familiar sight on the streets of 
 Paris with his little black mare, Monday- Washing, 
 and his hideous big English bull with the equally 
 incongruous title of Cardinal Wolsey. Herb stood 
 six feet in his stockings and weighed two hundred 
 pounds. He had the most tremendous cowlick in 
 Paris, which Uncle Joe Fodder declared "had used 
 up all the rest of the hair the Lord had left after he d 
 finished thatchin the rest of mankind," which was 
 a marvelous creation and immediately he removed his 
 hat arose like a congregation of Sioux war feathers 
 with a strong wind perpetually blowing from be 
 hind. When Amos Tempi eton, one of the barbers 
 at Jim Stiles s barber shop went crazy one night and 
 nearly scalped Doctor Johnson in the chair, the 
 village declared his mental aberration was due to 
 the struggle a few minutes before with Herb s c^" 
 lick in which he had been ignominiously defeated and 
 brought down to the dust. 
 
 Old Short-Cramp s wealth was popularly assumed 
 to be written in six figures ; he was a sufferer from 
 acute Bright s disease; when he passed on Herb 
 would get most of his money. r -iierefore was Herb 
 popular among the unmarried girls of the village 
 and parents who winked an eye at the boy s pro 
 clivities for cigarettes, neat ankles and trim horses. 
 
 It was Herb who did not forget the little girl with 
 the wistful brown eyes whom he had felt for one 
 brief instant seeking protection within the hollow 
 of his arm, and he intercepted her at the door of the 
 boarding house one September night with some 
 mummery about having "two tickets give him" 
 for the "ice-cream splurge" that he was unsuccessful 
 in disposing of although he had proffered them
 
 50 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 gratis far and wide. Would she help him make use 
 of em as it was a pity they should go to waste and 
 the Calvary Methodist ladies be profiters by an 
 unearned thirty cents? 
 
 And Mary, with the color coming and going in her 
 face because it was her first invitation "out" as 
 she wrote to her mother had "thanked him ever 
 so much" and said she would be pleased to assist 
 him in making the Methodist ladies give full value 
 for cash received. So she washed and ironed and 
 strung with baby ribbon a poor cheap little muslin 
 dress made by the woman with terribly reddened 
 hands and on that memorable Thursday night 
 "accompanied" Herb to the sociable. 
 
 Adam McQuarry, janitor of the Calvary Metho 
 dist church, was a simple creature with big ears and 
 bigger feet who couldn t see why folks couldn t 
 hold their lawn parties indoors and minimize the 
 destruction to church property attending the re 
 moval of church furniture to the open air for social 
 purposes, to say nothing of sr.ving his velvet lawn. 
 
 During the afternoon Adam had stretched a wire 
 from tree to tree in front of the church while little 
 Mrs. Pratt followed him anxiously about and steadied 
 his stepladder under the conviction that Adam turned 
 loose unattended on a church lawn with a wild and 
 rambunctious stepladder would surely break his 
 neck and cast a shadow over the function. 
 
 At six o clock the church lawn was bobbing with 
 bulbous decorations of weird shape and gala hue ; 
 tables, chairs and vestry crockery had been spilled 
 out onto the green, amid which a dozen ladies in 
 "white things" starched as stiff as their religion, 
 were effecting some kind of order and utility. The 
 Sunday-school piano had been brought out by the
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 51 
 
 combined effort of Adam, a passing grocer s boy, and 
 "Doctor" Dodd the minister, all of them morally 
 assisted by the ladies, without knocking the varnish 
 off more than four corners of that melodious piece 
 of machinery or lowering it unexpectedly on more 
 than two of Adam McQuarry s feet. 
 
 The ice-cream freezers were lined along the eastern 
 wall of the church behind an improvised plank table 
 and looked like huge moist shells waiting to be ex 
 ploded on the social battlefield. 
 
 The entire neighborhood, Protestant, Catholic, 
 Jew or pagan, had loaned something to the execu 
 tive committee which it was positive it was never 
 to see again, for the way things get lost or mixed up 
 or carried off at these lawn-party and church affairs 
 was a caution. 
 
 At seven o clock the artists who were to furnish 
 the evening s literary and musical entertainment 
 had arrived and were tinkling at the piano or running 
 over scales or thumping stringed instruments or 
 wildly dispatching reluctant messengers for music 
 which had been forgotten. 
 
 At seven-thirty the church people began to arrive 
 in knots of twos and threes and fives, the men dressed 
 with the painful laboriousness of horny-handed sons 
 of toil and the women indicating the five-dollars 
 worth of fuss through which they had gone to be 
 present and consume ten cents worth of ice cream. 
 
 At eight o clock Adam got loose with his stepladder 
 and lighted all the bobbing, bulbous Japanese 
 lanterns, and so long as Mrs. Pratt was busy else 
 where and didn t see him, whether he fell off and 
 broke his neck or set himself afire with the taper 
 was nobody s concern but his own. 
 
 The lawn of Calvary Methodist church became a
 
 52 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 fantastic, romantic place where harsh faces softened 
 and thin ladies became less scrawny and fat ladies 
 became merely plump and homely girls became 
 pretty and pretty girls prettier. Figures in white 
 moved about among the tables from which arose the 
 sociable hum of animated small-town "conversation" 
 and the tinkle of tableware and spoons. And the ice 
 cream was not the flat, starchy, patented quick- 
 process stuff bought in these latter days from a public 
 caterer and sold at a profit which is the obtaining of 
 money under false pretences. It was great yellow 
 rich scoops of frozen deliciousness made with real 
 cream, and eggs that weighed eight to the pound. 
 A plateful was a meal and two plates full a hurry call 
 on the castor-oil commissary. 
 
 Mary accompanied Slug to the ice-cream social and 
 entertainment and found a corner with him not far 
 from the piano where was a "table for two", and she 
 sat and dissipated in a dish which she had grown up 
 to recognize as sacred to occasions of great ceremony. 
 
 The boy tried introducing her to girls who passed 
 them or waited on the tables. But it was an awk 
 ward, painful proceeding and after two attempts 
 he gave it up. None of them lingered. They 
 acknowledged the introduction with a quick "pleez- 
 tomeecher" and were gone on errands of an ex 
 tremely urgent nature. 
 
 "Ain t much society around here to-night," apolo 
 gized Herbert. "As old man Fodder says, it s 
 principally giggle, garble, gobble and git ! Any 
 how, there s the entertainment and if it ain t worth 
 fifteen cents we ll take it out on Adam McQuarry." 
 Thinking this a good joke, Herb laughed and pulled 
 off his hat, and his cowlick arose as though in aston-
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 53 
 
 ishment to find itself at a church lawn party, and 
 Mary was obliged to laugh also, though not at Herb s 
 pleasantry. 
 
 The entertainment began at eight-thirty with a 
 prayer by the minister, although whether to in 
 voke a blessing on the artists or compassion on the 
 audience was not made clear by the text. Then 
 Doctor Dodd announced that the first number on the 
 program would be a duet by the Rathburn Twins 
 from Chopin (he pronounced it "choppin") and the 
 two terrifically starched and stiffly braided little 
 Rathburn girls were headed toward the piano and 
 pushed forward. They climbed on two stools facing 
 a piece of music as large as themselves and after 
 several audible "one-two- three" "one-two-three" 
 became launched on the rendition of so-called music 
 in a manner which quickly demonstrated that 
 Doctor Dodd had not been so very far wrong in his 
 pronunciation of the name after all. Uncle Joe 
 Fodder in the office next day declared that whenever 
 he saw those musical but diminutive Rathburn Twins 
 high on stools before some philosophical long-suffering 
 piano they reminded him of a couple of painters 
 slung on a staging half-way down the sides of a 
 three-story building hurrying to finish the job before 
 their paint gave out. 
 
 It was Uncle Joe s favorite joke. 
 
 One of the Twins having finished the duet not more 
 than four bars ahead of the other and having to play 
 " The Storm" as an encore because the Twin s mother 
 constantly embraced such opportunities to call 
 public attention to their capacity for "expression" 
 (in which she was tremendously successful although 
 not in just the way she intended), Doctor Dodd 
 declared that they would next be favored with
 
 54 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 an instrumental selection from Master Robert 
 Bo wen. 
 
 "Master" Robert Bowen, consisting mostly of 
 Windsor tie, knees like gourds and manifest stage 
 fright who in other times and seasons was more 
 popularly referred to as "that lanky Bowen young 
 one" pulled up his stockings with a subconscious 
 jerk, wiped his nose with the back of his hand and 
 followed Grace Rawlins to the piano. Thereupon he 
 proceeded, as Uncle Joe also commented, to "murder 
 Old Black Joe with a fiddle got with soap- wrappers." 
 
 Esmeralda Truman, whose latest brainstorm was a 
 career on the stage next recited as Doctor Dodd 
 announced it " Curfew Shall Not Ring To-night 
 With Piano Accompaniment." And when she 
 showed her hands " all torn and bleeding" and struck 
 a rather hysterical pitch when Cromwell arrived and 
 announced that her lover lived and could resume his 
 job in the morning, Uncle Joe Fodder couldn t stand 
 the entertainment a moment longer but stamped off 
 down to the Whitney House bar and had a strong 
 drink. 
 
 Jerry Peterson who worked in the wagon shop did 
 some sleight-of-hand tricks that fooled everybody but 
 the small boys, and Clarence Potherton appeared in 
 blackface and had a good deal to say about the train 
 that went to Morrow to-morrow but got all tangled 
 up in his time of departure and destination and did 
 three-quarters of the song in a manner which sug 
 gested that his mouth was filled with hot potatoes. 
 
 Julian Blackburn told a few jokes about the baby 
 brother that couldn t be sent back to heaven because 
 he d been used four days and about Irish widow 
 ladies who had the news of their bereavements broken 
 to them in strange and wonderful ways. And
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 55 
 
 Douglas MacMillan appeared on the scene in Scot 
 tish kilts with a couple of cavalry swords and did the 
 Sword Dance, his younger brother improvising a 
 Scottish bagpipe out of his nose, while several elderly 
 ladies turned their faces away and said the very idea 
 to let Douglas come into a church entertainment in 
 his bare legs like that and why didn t some one send 
 him home to put on his pants ? 
 
 The entertainment was concluded with the sing 
 ing of "America," Mibb Henderson with her rich 
 but abused contralto taking the verses as solos and 
 the audience joining in on the chorus. The young 
 ladies took the soprano, the elderly ladies took the 
 alto, the young men took the tenor, and the old men 
 took anything they could get. 
 
 The parents then called noisy children from their 
 fellowship on the church steps, or lifted phenomenal 
 infants who had slept through it all, from their laps 
 and started toward home. 
 
 Several good souls rolled up their sleeves and 
 pinned on borrowed aprons and tackled the pile of 
 dishes, looking for their reward in heaven. Lovers 
 paired off and dissolved quietly into moonlit streets 
 and under sleeping maples. Adam McQuarry blew 
 out all the lanterns that hadn t caught fire and pro 
 ceeded to "cart all the junk indoors, because it looked 
 like rain before morning and the table tops might 
 warp." 
 
 And through the entertainment, with half a plate 
 of ice cream unconsumed before her, little Mary 
 Wood sat apart with Herb Truman and thought 
 how this indeed was life, and of her mother at a 
 moonlit window far away on Cobb Hill too weary 
 and heart-heavy to seek her bed. 
 
 Herb got to his feet, found his hat under the table,
 
 56 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 effectively squelched the riotous cowlick and mur 
 mured something about how he hoped he could see 
 her safe home. And they casually moved off the 
 lawn with the others and found themselves in de 
 serted summer streets where the young man regaled 
 her with items of interest wherein his own ec 
 centricities were prominent. 
 
 He asked her if she supposed the little black mare, 
 Monday-Washing, could possibly contract shoe boil, 
 and when she said she couldn t imagine such a thing, 
 he declared that Monday-Washing had done that 
 thing and explained in great detail how Doc Sawyer 
 the veterinary had lanced it and taken away a 
 "quart" and could she suppose you could take away 
 a "quart" from the leg of a mare as small and neat 
 as Monday- Washing. 
 
 Mary replied rather faintly that she could not 
 conceive of such a happening which prompted Slug 
 to move on to the subject of glanders. 
 
 Had she ever had a horse with glanders ? No ? 
 Well, did she know what to do if she should have a 
 horse with glanders ? No ? Well, he would tell her 
 so that she might be prepared for such an emergency 
 and save the animal from the death-violent at the 
 hands of the authorities. Which he did, with much 
 elaboration of the price the secret had cost him and 
 the intimation that he was disclosing it only because 
 he took it she was a friend and could be trusted. 
 
 He confided to her that Jim Stile s collie dog had 
 mange and that nothing would tickle him more than 
 to know that Jim s dog had given it to fussy little 
 Miss Sparrow s curly-tailed pug. He said that if 
 Frank Morrow persisted in running his bay so fast 
 between here and Barre that he was going to break 
 her wind and wanted to know which she would pre-
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 57 
 
 f er : a mare with broken wind or a horse with spavin ? 
 Finding at length however, that Mary was not 
 prolific on the ailments of horses and dogs, he 
 changed to athletics. 
 
 The longest way round being the shortest way 
 home, they did not turn in at Mrs. Mather s gate 
 when they reached School Street. Slug said some 
 thing about a fine night and would she walk down as 
 far as the water- works and back to enjoy it? And 
 Mary because he was the first young man who had 
 taken interest in her since she arrived in Paris 
 consented and with hat in hand wandered with him 
 down Main Street and through Pine and off to the 
 south of town. 
 
 Slug grew intimate on the return. At Glark Street 
 he put his hand under her arm to help her over the 
 broken crosswalk and on the other side he did not 
 take it away. She was rather glad they were headed 
 homeward. He got around in a conversational way 
 to family affairs, among which he confided to her that 
 most of the time his sister Esmeralda gave him a pain 
 in the neck anyhow and that all she needed was 
 someone to marry her that would whale the tar out of 
 her. 
 
 He said that his mother had long ago impressed it 
 upon him that he ought to marry and settle down, but 
 that he said to her he d be damned if he would until 
 the right girl came along, all the girls in the village 
 being more or less lightheaded sisters who couldn t 
 boil water without burning it and a hundred to one 
 would try to cook a chicken without removing the 
 feathers. 
 
 He asked her if she ever had moments when the 
 feeling came over her that all folks cared about her 
 was for her money or what they could get out of her
 
 58 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 and sustained a rather suggestive pressure on her arm 
 when he asked her if love wasn t the real true thing 
 in life after all and what could you find to equal it ? 
 
 It was a badly disquieted girl who saw the white 
 fence of Mrs. Mathers house come in sight a second 
 time, feeling herself in a situation beyond her control. 
 
 They stood for a while at the gate post, the girl 
 leaning back against it with her bonnet behind her, 
 gazing from time to time a bit fearfully up into the 
 young man s face. 
 
 "Well," said he, "I hope you had a pleasant 
 evenin ." 
 
 "Yes," she faltered. 
 
 "Hope we ll see more of each other." 
 
 "I hope so." 
 
 "Well, I suppose I got to say good-by." 
 
 "Good-by. I ve had an awful good time. I 
 can t tell you how grateful I am to you." 
 
 Before she realized what he intended there was an 
 elephantine arm upon her neck, the faint reek of stale 
 cigar smoke in her senses and a dab of a kiss had been 
 imprinted upon the side of her half -parted lips. 
 
 Her face burned. There came a choke in her 
 throat. She raised the back of one hand to her 
 mouth and held it there. Her eyes fused tears of 
 mortification. 
 
 "How how could you?" she lisped faintly. 
 
 "I didn t mean nothin by it," he laughed un 
 easily. "Aw, come back! All the girls in our set 
 lemme kiss em when I see em safe home " 
 
 "How could you?" she said again. "And 
 I thought you were a gentleman." 
 
 "I am a gentleman ! " 
 
 But she went swiftly up the steps and into the 
 house.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 IN WHICH A RATHER BORED BUT INDUSTRIOUS 
 SMALL-TOWN DEVIL TAKES OUR LITTLE JELLY 
 BEAN HEROINE UP ONTO A MOUNTAIN TOP AND 
 SHOWS HER THE KINGDOMS OF THE WORLD. 
 
 SUMMER faded. Dreamy days of russet and gold 
 followed. Over the eastern wooded hills loitered a 
 harvest moon. There were husking bees and corn 
 roasts out among the farmer folk. In the tangled 
 woodlands songs of winter fires were aripple in the 
 sear brown leaves. In the west appeared low-lying 
 cloudbanks and the leaden grays of November were 
 upon us. 
 
 One Saturday morning toward the close of Indian 
 summer the office mail contained a letter for Mary. 
 Running her eye down the single sheet and noting 
 the signature, the pallor fled and a dull red took its 
 place. 
 
 It was a letter from Herbert and contained the 
 following chatter : 
 
 I was fresh, too darned fresh. All summer 
 
 you been keeping away from me and avoiding me 
 and you taught me a lesson. I m sorry and I apolo 
 gize. It won t ever happen again. It s come to me 
 that you re just the kind of girl I been waiting for ; 
 a girl who wouldn t let me get fresh. 
 
 "I mean this. I want you to forgive me. Show me
 
 60 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 you accept my apology by going to ride with me to 
 morrow behind Monday- Washing out Gilbert s Mills 
 way. If you d done something you were sorry for 
 and asked forgiveness, you d want to be taken in the 
 same spirit you apologize in, wouldn t you? Then 
 be ready and come with me around one o clock " 
 
 She saw him across the street when she came out 
 of the office later that night. She went deliberately 
 over and intercepted him. 
 
 "I got your letter," she said, "I m sorry." 
 
 "You ll go buggy -ridin with me to-morrow?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 He called for her at Mrs. Mathers after Sunday 
 dinner next day. All the inmates of the boarding 
 house watched them drive away. Mrs. Mathers 
 went around all the rest of the afternoon looking 
 troubled. 
 
 It was a lazy autumn day. The sun was warm, 
 the fields were fragrant with stubble over which blew 
 a fitful wind. Barrels stood beneath apple trees ; 
 ladders leaned against yellow-leafed boughs. The 
 horizons were hazy. Autumn s mysterious voices 
 were calling as they have called since the world was 
 young. 
 
 They drove out of town by the south road. 
 The hills hid Paris behind them. The little mare 
 shied at boulders and old newspapers fluttering 
 against roadside bushes. The New England country 
 rolled away until it was blurred in a violet skyline. 
 
 For several miles there was a silence between them. 
 Then Herb said : 
 
 "Thank you for fdrgivin me; girls in this town 
 as a rule are too fresh anyhow ! " 
 
 "Let s not talk about that. I see by a local I
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 61 
 
 * set up on Friday that your sister has gone to New 
 York." 
 
 "Thinks she s goin on the stage. She s just like 
 all the rest. Makes me sick." 
 
 Mary tried again. 
 
 "I see the Odd Fellows are going to give a play 
 in the Opera House. You re an Odd Fellow, aren t 
 you?" 
 
 "Yes," he replied curtly. "But I don t want to 
 talk about that. I want to talk about about 
 something else." 
 
 "You promised in your letter that nothing 
 would ever happen - 
 
 "But I m honest in what I ve got to say to you. 
 I ve thought lots about the lawn party and our walk 
 home. Do you know, you re the first girl in this 
 town who s ever let me talk with her about horses 
 and dogs and sports and such ? " 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 "And a girl that s interested in the things a man is 
 interested in, is bound to prove interesting to the 
 man them things interest." 
 
 "You ll get twisted up in your tongue if you 
 attempt many sentences like that." Yet despite 
 her laugh, Mary was uneasy. 
 
 "I m serious." 
 
 She sobered. The man s declaration was an 
 appeal. Regardless of his size and awkwardness he 
 suddenly showed himself to her as nothing but a 
 lonely, heartsick, unmothered boy. That was why 
 he had apologized to her perhaps. A queer feeling 
 of wanting to do something maternal came over her. 
 
 "Let me keep company with you this winter," 
 he asked. 
 
 She sensed again that the situation was engulfing
 
 62 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 her. To keep company with her ? What lay at the 
 end of such an experience, what but marriage or 
 a broken love affair? For there were no "friend 
 ships" among the younger set in those days that 
 have since come to be. To keep company with a 
 girl, to be seen constantly in public with her, to visit 
 her regularly on Wednesday evenings was tanta 
 mount to an engagement. If honorable the end was 
 matrimony. And as she rode along in the light buggy 
 with the delightfully easy springs behind the neat 
 little mare, over the autumn hills and far away be 
 side the stocky young man with the idiotic pompa 
 dour and lumberous manners, she tried to conceive 
 of herself as married to young Truman. And at the 
 conception there stirred in her heart a little protest. 
 And yet what would her mother say if she knew 
 that a young man with a fortune was at the moment 
 taking her out riding and asking her to enter a rela 
 tion which unfailingly led to matrimony that this 
 was happening and that in the daughter s heart was 
 disappointment and resentment? 
 
 "What what would your folks say to any such 
 arrangement?" the girl demanded after another mile. 
 
 "Oh we d keep it quiet. They d kick like 
 
 steers probably, but we d keep it quiet. We d just 
 slip away somewhere on the sly and be 
 
 "What!" 
 
 He took out the whip and slashed the little mare 
 cruelly, effecting to "train" her when there was not 
 the least reason for training her at all. 
 
 "I always put my foot in it!" he complained. 
 " I m a great big lummox, I am, and I wish I wish 
 I was dead ! " 
 
 "You mustn t wish that. It s wicked !" 
 
 "But haven t you ever felt blue and lonesome and
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 63 
 
 as if nothin you did was worth while, and nobody 
 gave a darn for you, and if you didn t have money 
 you d be the least among all the people in the 
 world ?" 
 
 "I ve been blue and lonesome, yes. I ve often 
 felt as if nothing I had accomplished was worth 
 while. But I don t know about folks caring for 
 me only for money. You see, I never had money 
 to bother me that way that is much ! " 
 
 "That s so! But you can imagine 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "I knew you could. You re that kind. Did you 
 know there s lots of girls in Paris that d like to be 
 out here with me havin me talk to em like this." 
 
 "Maybe so. But you see " 
 
 "Well, what?" 
 
 "You re asking me so much so suddenly 
 
 "I know all about that. It don t make me feel 
 no better to realize it." 
 
 "Please, please! Let s talk about something 
 else. Let me think !" 
 
 It was eight o clock when they drove into the 
 village from the east. Most of the towns folk were 
 in church; from behind stained glass windows 
 organ music carried out on the spicy autumn night 
 the tunes of beautiful old hymns. 
 
 "I wish you d come in and meet my folks," 
 said Herb. They were opposite the big white house 
 with the only plate-glass windows in Paris, sur 
 rounded by the aristocratic iron fence and with the 
 terra-cotta statue in the center of the leaf-choked 
 front yard. Monday- Washing was making urgent 
 appeals to turn in at the driveway. She offered no 
 protest as the boy gave the little mare the reins 
 and she stopped before the side door.
 
 64 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 She waited a moment on the brown-stone steps 
 while Herbert hurriedly unharnessed the mare, 
 blanketed her, fed her and pushed the buggy out 
 of the way in the carriage house. Then he took 
 her arm and they passed into his home together. 
 
 The girl had never before been in such a house. 
 In books and magazines she had read of them and 
 tried to picture what they were like. Now that she 
 found herself in the big hall with her poorly shod 
 little feet sinking into rich carpets and the atmos 
 phere of rich embroideries and hangings assailing her, 
 she was awed and frightened. 
 
 The lad helped her off with her coat and hung it 
 on the big black walnut hall-tree. He led her into 
 the southeastern front room and left her while he 
 went in search of his mother. 
 
 Whatever his parsimony might be in business, old 
 Short-Cramp was a home man and his house was his 
 castle furnished according to his means. A marble 
 mantel was built on the north side of the room with 
 an open fireplace beneath. The fall night being 
 chilly, a fire had been burning in the grate and the 
 charred embers were warm and hospitable. The 
 carpet was similiar to floor coverings in the hall 
 and the high windows were hung with heavy cur 
 tains of creamy lace. The chairs were upholstered 
 in gray. Over the carved center table was a chan 
 delier of a hundred spangles and the big oil lamp in 
 the center sent out an illumination which blended 
 the whole into an air of unutterable luxury. 
 
 The girl sank into one of the chairs drawn before 
 the dying fire. Something deep within her stirred 
 in appreciation and compatibility with the atmos 
 phere about her. 
 
 To live in a house like this was what it meant to be
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 65 
 
 wealthy. This is what her mother had wanted. To 
 gain an entrance to such a life was the reason that 
 she had tried to finish her schooling that had been so 
 unhappily interrupted. She thought of the lonely 
 farmhouse on the Cobb Hill road in contrast, and 
 she choked back an impulse to shed tears. The 
 avenue was open to her to spend all the rest of her 
 days in such a mansion. And after all, Slug wasn t 
 such an impossible boy. He was only big and 
 clumsy and lonesome and heart-hungry. He would 
 never treat her as Pa Wheeler had treated her 
 mother. He wasn t that kind. What should she 
 do ? She had no one to help her or take counsel 
 with her, She knew well enough what her mother 
 would say. And with thoughts of her mother 
 came the realization of what she could do for the 
 woman with the terribly reddened hands if as 
 Herb s wife she had access to the Truman money. 
 She wept a little bit before Herbert returned. 
 
 "Neither mother nor father are in the house," 
 he announced. "I suppose they ve stepped out to 
 Sunday meetin ." 
 
 "I m sorry," she said. "Some other time, per 
 haps - 
 
 "Don t go," he pleaded. 
 
 "I must," she said simply. 
 
 Rather sorrowfully he assented. He followed 
 her back into the hall and helped her with her coat. 
 
 "Mary," he said -I don t mean nothin* 
 wrong by what I been tellin you this afternoon." 
 
 "I know you don t, Herbert." 
 
 She stood by the door, her fingers fumbling the 
 rim of her bonnet, her face downcast. 
 
 "I d like to keep company with you regular 
 
 "Let me please let me think it over."
 
 66 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 "All right," he agreed. His agreement was 
 pathetic. 
 
 The luxury and refinement of the place she was 
 leaving was speaking to her. Outside was the dull 
 gray night with the strange mystetious heart-cries 
 of autumn. The thought of her own hard life up 
 to the moment, her mother s sacrifice and present 
 predicament, the uncertainty of the future, the 
 work and struggle and worry, all arose before her 
 and confused and unbalanced her. 
 
 Courteously Herbert opened the big front door 
 and stood aside for her to precede him. His desire 
 to please her, to do the correct and gentlemanly 
 thing, overwhelmed her. 
 
 "Herbert," she said hi a voice she scarcely recog 
 nized as her own. 
 
 "Yes, Mary." 
 
 "You can kiss me if you want to !" she offered 
 softly. 
 
 The humble scribe who sits here in the corner of 
 this grimy little newspaper office recording this 
 narrative, entered the back room unnoticed the 
 next noontime, entered to find little Mary Wood 
 with her head down on her type case by the window 
 weeping with no one to see. Daddy Joe, fatherly 
 old tramp printer, was in the next ad-alley. 
 
 The girl suddenly raised her head. She turned 
 and looked out of the window, down Cross Street 
 and beyond the town to the brown hills awaiting 
 the winter. 
 
 "Daddy Joe," said the girl, "tell me; is it real 
 wrong for a girl to want to marry money ?" 
 
 Joe did not know she had been weeping. In a 
 voice soft and sympathetic he replied across the cases :
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 67 
 
 "Suppose you tell an old man the circumstances, 
 honey." 
 
 "Oh there aren t hardly any circumstances, Joe. 
 Only I m just tired, that s all. I m tired of living 
 in a boarding-house bedroom all alone. I m tired 
 of getting up at the unfeeling bang of a cheap alarm- 
 clock every morning. I m tired of having no one 
 to talk to at night, no one who cares about me for 
 myself alone. I m weary of making endless motions, 
 setting endless galleys, correcting endless proofs, 
 drawing my pay envelope every Saturday that s 
 spent before I get it for board, for clothes for 
 the help of mother out on the farm. Sometimes I 
 feel just as if I d like some man any man to 
 come along with about a billion dollars and pick 
 me up and carry me off and do anything he wants 
 with me, so long as he ll only take away the endless 
 grind ; so long as he ll just provide me with pretty 
 clothes and proper food and a few good times and 
 just let me rest. Yes, I m wondering if it s 
 sinful to want to marry any man for his money." 
 
 Now those are dangerous sentiments from an honest 
 pretty girl. Daddy Joe saw in a moment that it 
 wasn t money the girl craved. It was love. For 
 as I heard him tell her that day, "when folks is in 
 love they don t give a hoot bout making no endless 
 motions or payin board or gettin up every morning 
 to the bang o a cheap alarm clock." Fatherly 
 old Joe, whom we found out afterward had buried 
 a wife and two children, saw that the girl was tired, 
 friendless and alone ; that it depended upon him to 
 keep her feet in pathways that were straight. 
 
 "Yes, Mary," he went on, "it s downright wicked 
 to want to splice up for cash when you just ain t 
 swept off your feet with hell-bent-for-election adora-
 
 68 
 
 tion for somebody. What you need is for some nice 
 young chap to come along and get you interested in 
 him. Ain t you got no steady, Mary?" 
 
 "No, "said the girl. 
 
 "Then just you hang on, Mary," said the kind 
 old fellow. "The right boy s on his way along. 
 You ll meet him sooner or later and when he comes 
 you won t have to be told. And you don t want to 
 go spoilin things by havin him find you the wife of 
 some other fellow just because there was money-bags 
 figgered in it. You want to be free to marry that 
 young chap in a world all pink and gold with happi 
 ness. And you ll have a nice home and all your 
 troubles will be forgotten." 
 
 The old man cheered the girl and she dried her 
 tears and went on with her string of locals. But 
 as he bent over his stick I saw him sadly shaking his 
 world-wise old head like Mrs. Mathers.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 ENTER THE ONLY HERO THIS HEROLESS STORY 
 WILL EVER KNOW 
 
 THE week following Christmas, two things hap 
 pened : First, the North Sidney Bulletin, a little 
 weekly newspaper up in the northern part of the 
 State, failed for several thousand more dollars than 
 it was worth and was duly eulogized by the Ver 
 mont newspaper fraternity. Old Joshua Purse, 
 who was ill of pneumonia at the time the creditors 
 petitioned the court for a referee, passed away two 
 days later and the newspaper folk of the State 
 wondered what was going to become of his boy John 
 who had been associated with him in the business. 
 
 The second thing which occurred that Christmas 
 week was the unusual disability and indisposition 
 on the part of several of our workmen to remember 
 Christmas season to keep it sober. Two of them 
 stayed away at great length and the Telegraph 
 almost missed two issues. Sam Hod came across 
 with a letter which he laid on my desk. 
 
 "Bill," said he, "I m sick of these journeymen. 
 I m going to get some workmen of a little higher 
 class. Joshua Purse s boy has written asking if 
 there s an opening on our staff. He says he can do 
 anything on a newspaper from sweeping the floor 
 to writing editorials. I m going to send for him to 
 come down and talk it over." 
 
 Two days later the Purse boy came.
 
 70 
 
 Hiring a new man from that time onward grew 
 into a ceremony for Young Sam. There was a long 
 visit and catechism in the private office and negotia 
 tions extending over another day in the matter of 
 duties and wages. Jack had been closeted with 
 Sam about twenty minutes when the editor was 
 called across the street. He left Jack in the private 
 office with the door open. Jack moved across into 
 Sam s swivel chair before this battered table and 
 began to read over some of the exchanges. 
 
 He was so occupied when Mary came through with 
 a proof of an editorial in her soiled hands. She heard 
 the well-known creak of the desk chair in the inner 
 office. She supposed that it was Sam. She entered 
 the private sanctum with her eyes riveted on the 
 proof. She laid it down on the table, and then she 
 missed the familiar baldspot on top of the head of the 
 man to whose attention she had called an error. 
 She took her eyes from the type and started back 
 when she recognized a stranger. A stranger ? 
 
 She saw a lad of about her own age, slenderly 
 built, with a fine serious face, high forehead and 
 wavy brown hair who was half a head taller than 
 herself and looked shyly into her eyes with honest 
 confusion. For a moment boy and girl stared at 
 one another without speaking. Then : 
 
 "I beg your pardon," faltered Mary, "I thought 
 you were Mr. Hod." 
 
 "I m John Purse," he said half -apologetically, as 
 though it explained everything. "I m hoping to 
 get a place here." 
 
 The girl was staring at his fine face. The sensa 
 tion which comes to all of us at times of having been 
 in exactly the same circumstances and done the 
 same thing beiore when we know we have not, came
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 71 
 
 over her then. A stranger? This young chap was 
 not a stranger. Wherever had she seen him before ? 
 
 "I I thought for a moment that I knew you," 
 she went on. "Your face is familiar." 
 
 He laughed, showing a set of fine even teeth. 
 
 "And I was thinking the same of you." 
 
 "Have you ever been in Paris before?" 
 
 "No." " 
 
 "Or North Foxboro?" 
 
 "No." He fingered his watch charm. "And you 
 haven t ever been up to North Sidney ? I come from 
 there, you know. My father and I have been run 
 ning the newspaper there. He died last week." 
 
 "I know," said Mary. "I m so sorry for you. 
 I set up Mr. Hod s editorial about it. I hope you 
 get the place here. Mr. Hod is one of the finest 
 men I know." 
 
 "I hope I get the place also," the boy returned. 
 
 So Jack came among us. 
 
 " Who s that girl ? " he asked of "Slob" Hanchette, 
 indicating Mary Wood. 
 
 "Her? Oh, that s Slug Truman s girl -least 
 wise he s been flirtin round her a lot lately, though 
 folks say they can t see why she lets him make an 
 easy mark out o her just because he s got money. 
 But that s always the way, Ma says. And Pa, 
 he says that many a chap who wouldn t knock a 
 feller man when he was down or kick a cripple nor 
 overturn a baby carriage, thinks he s did somethin 
 smart when he s got the best o some poor trustin 
 girl. She ll fall fer him afore he s through with 
 her see if she don t." 
 
 "Who s Slug Truman?" 
 
 "He s a sort of a sport round here. Ma says all 
 he s good for is sausage meat and to make muddy
 
 72 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 tracks on the church carpet and Pa, he says all he s 
 good for is to put some o old Short-Cramp s widder s- 
 mites back into the channels o trade. Say, Mr. 
 Purse, what s * widder s-mites ? " 
 
 "Money," answered Jack. "He s rich, you say? 
 And courtin that girl ? And is she poor?" 
 
 "Yep poorer than old Mis Marks down by 
 the Gas Works, and that s goin some ! Her folks 
 live out to Cobb Hill. Ma says her mother s a 
 softie and Pa says if there was more like her, there d 
 be less old men go to the devil and less young ones 
 go to N York. He beat her up, one night her 
 stepfather did. So she come over here and got a 
 job. Slug rescued her then. He come along and 
 found her bein beaten up and he sicked his bull 
 dog, Cardinal Wolsey, onto him. Anybody 11 tell 
 you the story." 
 
 Jack Purse worked over his forms in silence for a 
 time, casting clandestine glances at Mary. 
 
 "Is she engaged to marry him ?" asked Jack. 
 
 " Dunno. Most folks doubt it. But she lets him 
 kiss her. I seen her. I was goin past his house 
 last Sunday night and I seen her let him kiss her 
 behind the glass o the Truman front door. I tole 
 Ma about it and Ma, she says something about the 
 social precipice and Pa, he says : * Gawd, that s 
 too bad. Say, Mr. Purse, what s the Social 
 Precipice?" 
 
 "When you get older you ll understand," said 
 Jack. 
 
 His eyes were upon the dainty features bent over 
 the composing stick and the pretty, slender back 
 bowed over the typecase. "And who s the black- 
 eyed girl always talking about her fellers ?" 
 
 "That s Mibb Henderson. Her mother runs the
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 73 
 
 mill boarding house and makes old Harvey eat the 
 chicken gizzards and pie-crusts. Old Harvey got 
 some kind of a crick in his back stabbin the enemy 
 at Bull Run and ain t been able to do a stroke o* 
 work since. Mibb sings." 
 
 "She does what?" 
 
 "She sings solos and songs. They been tryin 
 to get her into the quartet at the Methodist 
 church for two years to take the place of old Mis 
 Busbee who always flats on High C, but Mibb says 
 the only time they ll ever get her into a church will 
 be so the proper number o folks can file past and 
 remark * Don t she look natural. Means when 
 she s dead, I guess, and folks come to her funeral. 
 Ma says all she needs is her ears boxed regular an 
 a few chores to make her realize she lives in a New 
 England small town. Pa, he says she s an after- 
 nine-o clock girl and if she was his daughter he d 
 stop it if he had to go lookin for her in his carpet 
 slippers. And that always makes Ma sore because 
 she thinks it s a slam at the slippers she give him 
 Christmas and she says he won t get another pair 
 next Christmas if his feet after hours has to go 
 naked." 
 
 Jack spotted an ad in the forms and undid the 
 string from around it. Then he wetted it with a 
 sponge to keep the rules from falling over until 
 he had his column rules in place. 
 
 "You don t wanner go chasin either one of em 
 unless you got money, though," went on the irre 
 pressible Hanchette young one. "Because that s 
 principally all they think about both of em. 
 Ma says the younger generation is perkin up and 
 Pa, he says thank Gawd he s shot his bolt and 
 ain t called on to strain his liver no longer on the
 
 74 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 gentler sex s demand for doo-dabs. Have you got 
 any money, Mr. Purse?" 
 
 "Not much," confessed our new employee. 
 
 "Then take my advice and choose Annie," went 
 on Slob. "She s fat but she s inexpensive and 
 chocolates that come twenty cents a pound tickles 
 her just as much as the kind that comes by the box 
 with a ribbon around em." 
 
 "Thanks," said Jack dryly. 
 
 Jack had occasion to speak to the girl that after 
 noon when she came over to the imposing stones to 
 get an empty galley. 
 
 "Is it a good town here to live in ?" he asked. 
 
 She avoided his eyes as she replied : 
 
 "There isn t much going on at times. It gets 
 lonesome." 
 
 She dropped the galley with a loud clatter; it 
 had slipped from her grasp. They both reached 
 for it at the same moment. Their heads came 
 together. 
 
 "I think," said the boy grimly, "that I m seeing 
 more stars than you are !" 
 
 "That," she replied, "is an awful exaggeration !" 
 
 They laughed. 
 
 A few days later Sam came into the front office. 
 He was only a young man in those days we were 
 all young then and only a few years older than 
 Mary Wood. 
 
 "That new man of ours is falling in love with 
 that Wood girl as sure as the Lord made cider 
 apples ! You mark me ! The son of a gun ! And 
 I was just on the point of falling in love with her 
 myself." 
 
 "He s poorer than Job s turkey," replied Harriet 
 Babcock at the proofreader s desk.
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 75 
 
 "What ice does that cut when a chap gets the 
 girl fever?" demanded Sam. 
 
 "I guess Slug Truman will have something to say 
 about that," commented Harriet. "Wait and see. 
 Heavens and earth ! Here comes Mrs. Blake 
 Whipple with her list of actors for the Odd Fellows 
 play. Let me duck !"
 
 CHAPTER VSL 
 
 IN WHICH WE ATTEND THE REHEARSAL OF THE 
 ODD FELLOW S PLAY AND FROM THE WINGS 
 WATCH A HERO AND HEROINE INDUSTRIOUSLY 
 FALLING IN LOVE 
 
 THE time seemed to pass quickly after Jack came 
 to work for us and Daddy Joe began nodding approv 
 ingly when he saw the beautiful head of little Mary 
 Wood bent over the forms alongside Jack Purse s 
 wavy pompadour. 
 
 We do not recollect where that winter went, 
 but we do remember very well that play the Odd 
 Fellows gave in the Opera House. It is embodied 
 in this narrative because it is typical of amateur 
 plays everywhere and because it marked another 
 gala night in the Wood girl s life and led afterward 
 to the picnic in Gold-Piece Cabin up the Glen. 
 
 It came about that the first wonderful spring 
 that Jack Purse was in Paris, a handful of good 
 women, whose altruism and untiring endeavor was 
 the backbone of the social life in our community, 
 stayed after the regular meeting of Rebekah Lodge, 
 No. 1533, and listened to the proposal advanced by 
 Mrs. Blake Whipple under the enthusiastic per 
 suasion of none other than Mibb Henderson of 
 our office. Mrs. Whipple occupied the chair. 
 Harriet Babcock, our proofreader and office girl, 
 was also there and Mrs. Ben Williams, wife of our
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 77 
 
 local clothier; also the Blair sisters, spinsters, who 
 had money and who looked and dressed as near 
 alike as two peas. Alice Whiting was there, the 
 school teacher out in the Green Valley who afterward 
 married Sam Hod and Grace Rawlins whose 
 specialty was music and whose disposition was not 
 all that it might have been. Aunt Julia Farrington 
 and Mrs. Ebenezer Mathers completed the com 
 mittee, women who usually said the least and did 
 the most work at any given public function, particu 
 larly the ever-necessary cleaning up afterward. 
 
 "What kind of a play could we give, now?" 
 ruminated Mrs. Whipple. "You know it s hard to 
 interest the men folks; usually they haven t much 
 time to memorize parts or come to rehearsals." 
 
 Old Sol Hopper, the janitor, who some folks said 
 wasn t quite right in his head, sat among a mass of 
 empty seats in the rear. A silence following Mrs. 
 Whipple s question, old man Hopper contributed 
 the opinion that, " The King of the Cannibal Islands " 
 wasn t a bad show ; he d seen it put on by the Odd 
 Fellows up to Wickford and a pleasant time was had 
 by all. Grace Rawlins wanted to know if Hopper 
 was crazy and said "The King of the Cannibal 
 Islands" called for a cast in brown tights. Where 
 upon old man Hopper retorted "what of that?" 
 and the assembled matrons turned upon him to a 
 woman and Mrs. Williams reminded him that his 
 job was to keep the furnace coaled and the hall 
 clean and that bar-room pleasantries were entirely 
 uncalled for in a business session of perfect ladies. 
 W 7 hich rather dampened Old Man Hopper s en 
 thusiasm for the project and he sloughed down onto 
 the small of his back and meditated darkly on the 
 ingratitude of all flesh.
 
 78 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 Alice Whiting mentioned "East Lynne" but Mrs. 
 Whipple declared that "East Lynne" was played 
 out. Mrs. Mathers suggested " Uncle Tom s Cabin " 
 that being the only play she had ever witnessed and 
 her acme of dramatic attainment ; but Mrs. Williams 
 maintained it was too much work to get up a street 
 parade. Whereat the prospect sagged. Mrs. Whip- 
 pie then turned suddenly to Harriet and demanded to 
 know what kept them from putting on a play written 
 as well as acted by local talent. Who had more 
 talent and training for that chore than Harriet 
 who wrote many of the items each week for the 
 paper and once received five dollars for an anecdote 
 sent to the Youth s Companion. Yes, the very idea ! 
 Harriet should write a play. 
 
 Harriet blossomed out in crimson and said she 
 could never do it in the wide, wide world. But 
 Harriet s heart was going pitapat and all the king s 
 horses and all the king s men couldn t have dragged 
 her into a permanent refusal. So they had to spend 
 fifteen minutes coaxing her and at the end of that 
 time Harriet agreed to write a play and Mrs. 
 Whipple agreed to continue the canvass of the town 
 and see who would be willing to act in the play which 
 Harriet wrote. 
 
 "We ought to have specialties between the acts," 
 said Mrs. Whipple. "Some one ought to come out 
 and sing or recite something." 
 
 Mrs. Williams suggested getting Doctor John 
 son s wife to sing ; she carried the air in the Metho 
 dist church. But Ophelia Blair said the doctor s 
 wife was a Methodist and didn t believe in the stage. 
 And then they suggested Mrs. Parker Turner 
 whose husband manages the gas works. But the 
 argument was advanced that Mrs. Parker Turner
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 79 
 
 had studied music for a year in New York and would 
 consider it beneath her dignity to appear in such a 
 vulgar low-brow capacity as a between-the-acts 
 feature in a small-town show. It ranked her with 
 little cigars or ventriloquists or ice water. 
 
 "We needn t lose any sleep over it," snapped 
 Grace Rawlins, "because if worse comes to worst 
 we ll get Mibb Henderson. Leave it to me as part 
 of the music." 
 
 Then Mrs. Whipple said : "I wonder if we can get 
 Georgie Griffin to help us with rehearsals? The 
 Masons had him last year in their minstrel show!" 
 
 "Sure we ll get Georgie," declared Clementine 
 Blair. "He s property man at the Opera House, 
 and if we rent the place, we rent Georgie s services." 
 
 On the following afternoon, Mrs. Blake Whipple 
 took stock of herself and girded up her loins and 
 applied to her person sundry dashes of perfumery 
 and looked at the back of her head with a hand 
 mirror and was sure she had her notebook and pencil. 
 Then she ordered the smallest boy to wipe his nose 
 and stop hollering and she sallied forth into the 
 byways as a fisher of men. 
 
 It is verbose to record her visits of that afternoon 
 or the amazing amount of duties demanding un 
 divided attention during the coming month on the 
 part of our townspeople, chiefly male, which pre 
 vented them from demonstrating their dramatic 
 ability. But Mrs. Whipple was not to be cast 
 down. She was one of those who set their faces to 
 the stars and whose voices reply from far up the 
 heights. At half -past five she came in to Harriet, 
 and to the playwright she handed over a list of names 
 of the anointed. And that night Harriet took the 
 list home with enough copy paper to write a three-
 
 80 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 decker novel and enough of our office advertising 
 pencils to rewrite it after it was written. 
 
 She withdrew to her room and took all the things 
 off her center table and spread thereon last week s 
 copy of our little local paper and fixed the light 
 and seated herself and wooed the muse. And the 
 pencils were indelible pencils and Harriet went to 
 bed that night with a mouth resembling the eating 
 of much huckleberry pie. Which is mentioned to 
 emphasize her concentration. She wrote an outline 
 of her play the first night and tried to make the local 
 characters fit in. It was hopeless and she tore it 
 up. She tried it again on the second night and was 
 as far from satisfaction as ever. She tried again 
 and again and three or four times was panic-stricken. 
 Finally she jogged up her pages and looked her work 
 over and pronounced it good, although the evening 
 and the morning were the sixth day. Sighing in 
 relief she affixed to the top of her manuscript the 
 highly-dramatic title: "Lady Audrey s Mistake." 
 
 We never could exactly figure out just what 
 Lady Audrey s mistake was, unless it was being 
 dragged into the play at all. Because Lady Audrey 
 was more sinned against than sinning, having at 
 divers times and in sundry seasons before the play 
 opened been treated roughly by a party in a waxed 
 moustache and a plug hat who was the father of 
 her daughter. In the fullness of time she discovered 
 herself up in New England without a place to lay 
 her head and being at the end of her resources, 
 moral, financial and physical, she appealed to 
 strangers for assistance and repaid their goodly 
 offices by dying a few minutes later in their back 
 kitchen. Just for that the orphan daughter even 
 tually grew up into an appleblossoin of a young
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 81 
 
 thing who ran away to the city and almost missed 
 marrying into the aristocracy if it hadn t been dis 
 covered by means of a locket that she was of the 
 aristocracy herself. It was a brilliant and original 
 plot and Harriet was to be congratulated. Which 
 Harriet was, profusely. 
 
 The point is that the play was finished and duly 
 read by Georgie Griffin and the rest, although it 
 cannot be said that Georgie approved of it as en 
 thusiastically as the cast who must act it. Notices 
 therefore with the date and admission prices were 
 duly printed in our paper with the announcement 
 prominent at the bottom that homemade candy 
 would be on sale between the acts; also for 
 our opera house is built with a flat floor and re 
 movable seats for just this purpose that the 
 affair would be followed by a dance at which ice 
 cream and cake would be procurable for a considera 
 tion. Harriet was inclined to feel peevish about 
 that footnote. Somehow it detracted from the 
 quality of her effort and grossly commercialized 
 the drama. We suspect that Harriet had artistic 
 temperament. Such things have happened. 
 
 There were rehearsals one night a week at first to 
 which everybody came late, bringing the information 
 that they hadn t had time to learn their parts very 
 well but would do better next week. The second 
 week so many folks were absent that Grace Rawlins 
 got huffy and declared that if no more interest was 
 going to be taken in it than this they might as well 
 chuck it all up right here and now. Georgie agreed 
 with her, using the spittoon copiously, and said he 
 was glad to see somebody in the bunch showed traces 
 of brains. But some one retorted that Grace was sore 
 because they wouldn t let her play at the Woodman s
 
 82 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 dance next week and for everybody not to mind 
 her and as for Georgie, a few opinions out of him one 
 way or another would never have any effect on the 
 world, anyhow. And Mrs.Whipple suggested that 
 rehearsals be held twice a week and a third week 
 there was some semblance of a company who 
 knew at least one quarter of their parts. The 
 fourth week everybody sent in word that they knew 
 their parts letter perfect and could say them in their 
 sleep. But a great sickness began to seize the soul of 
 Mrs. Whipple because the advertisements had been 
 running for days, and two hundred and seven 
 teen tickets had been sold and there hadn t 
 been one complete rehearsal. Then, as happens 
 in such affairs the nation over, the play being 
 scheduled eight weeks ahead, about ten days 
 beforehand everybody put in an appearance at once 
 and came into belated action with such a whirlwind 
 of rehearsing and feverishness of preparation that 
 they lost their manuscripts and their cues and their 
 tempers and blamed every one else for everything; 
 and two people walked out cold and their places had 
 to be filled by others, and one girl worked so hard 
 over her lines she was taken sick abed, which made 
 her mother declare that the pace the young folks 
 lived these days was a caution and would open the 
 eyes of the dead. 
 
 All of which having been duly set down, as it has 
 been written in the book of the prophets since the 
 days when small towns and Odd Fellows lodges 
 and depleted treasuries were young, brings us in the 
 course of things to Georgie Griffin, rehearsals and 
 eventually romance, for Jack Purse and Mary 
 had been cast to play the leads in that little local 
 talent play.
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 83 
 
 Georgie was a bony, undersized little fellow as hard 
 as nails with a fluffy down on his jaw, a quid of to 
 bacco in his cheek the size of a small hen s egg and 
 a disposition somewhat soured on life by reason of the 
 many trials and sufferings that were the heritage of 
 his profession. He installed meters for the gas 
 company daytimes and on show nights acted as 
 property man at our only playhouse. Property 
 man ! Georgie Griffin was more. Georgie was the 
 whole opera house. Ask any one who ever tried to 
 put on a show there. They ll tell you. And when 
 they get through telling you, you ll understand. 
 
 For Georgie had artistic temperament, whether 
 the Babcock girl did or not, an awful dose of it, 
 which is an extremely unfortunate thing for a prop 
 erty man in an opera house in a little town, particu 
 larly if the actors be local. For in a case like the 
 present one Georgie had ideas how a show should be 
 put on. Furthermore Georgie had full control over 
 the vocabulary adequate to express them. Up to 
 Georgie it was to make of Harriet s milksop manu 
 script a theatrical knock-out. 
 
 Now Georgie clothed himself by day and also by 
 evening in a pair of smudgy white overalls the size 
 whereof was enormous and the pockets of which were 
 popularly supposed to con tain any little thing wanted, 
 from a pair of andirons to a four-poster bed. He 
 wore a blue shirt, the collar of which was always 
 turned up about his neck, and on Georgie s head was 
 an over-sized cap which came down to his ears. 
 In fact, one might say that no one would ever look 
 upon him and then confuse him with any one else. 
 
 Having been bribed and bought and complimented 
 and labored with he had eventually assented to act as 
 stage director and general supervising dramatist.
 
 84 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 Therefore he procured a kitchen table from regions 
 back stage or it may have been his overalls - 
 and came grunting out with it. He planked it in the 
 center of the platform as close to the footlights as it 
 would go without sliding over into the pit of the 
 orchestra and spilling Georgie off onto the pianist s 
 head. Then he went behind the scenes again and 
 returned with a cuspidor nearly as large as himself, 
 which he set down on the floor conveniently at hand, 
 sampled it a couple of times to see that it was working 
 properly, and finding it was, called the courageous 
 to the chalk mark. 
 
 Georgie sweat and he swore and emptied his soul 
 of sarcasm and his mouth of tobacco juice. He 
 waved the manuscript and he waved the ham 
 mer ; he jumped off the table a dozen times a minute 
 and he jumped back again. His initiative was phe 
 nomenal. As an illustration : when no live baby 
 could be procured for Lady Audrey to carry in re 
 hearsals he substituted a sofa pillow. And the 
 spectacle of an emaciated woman falling into the 
 door of a farmhouse in the last stages of collapse, 
 going through four minutes of " heaven-will-care-f or- 
 the-child" doggerel and then blandly handing over a 
 sofa pillow with a six-inch rip in the stuffing shrieked 
 to high heaven for applause. The funny part of it 
 was that Georgie never saw that it was funny. 
 
 Jack Purse had been cast for the hero s part, and 
 because she had the time and the conscientiousness 
 to devote to it, and because by such situations are 
 the whole courses of our lives affected, Mary 
 Wood was cast for the heroine. That little 
 local talent play ! How strange that it should have 
 been proposed just then. 
 
 The first act of "Lady Audrey s Mistake" was
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 85 
 
 divided into two parts. The first was given over to 
 that much abused lady s demise and the bequest of 
 her offspring to the good-hearted strangers. 
 
 Then the curtain came down for three minutes, 
 supposed to represent the passing of two decades 
 while the orphaned child grew to maturity. 
 
 When the first half of the act had been concluded 
 somewhere near to Georgie s satisfaction, the cur 
 tain arose on the real beginning of the story, twenty 
 years after. Mary, in the role of the girl who was to 
 be enticed away to the city by the villain, was dis 
 covered sitting in the kitchen. On should come 
 the hero and make love to her, love which was 
 true love indeed because it was not destined to run 
 smooth. And Jack came on. 
 
 " Come on now ! Come on now ! " ordered Georgie 
 from his table-top. "Get busy with the love stuff. 
 Come up behind her and give her a kiss, when she 
 don t expect it. Make it a humdinger so the whole 
 house won t mistake it like an old she-cow 
 pulling her hoof out of a bog. You re in love with 
 each other, ain t yer ? Well, well, mix together as 
 though you had sunstroke." 
 
 Jack looked into the girl s eyes and the girl 
 blushed crimson. 
 
 "In the play I mean !" added Georgie. 
 
 "Yes," whispered the girl. 
 
 "Well then, act like lovers and not like a couple 
 of elephants tryin to cuddle down together in a coal 
 hod. Start in, Jack Purse ! Git your hands blind 
 ing her eyes and then get in your lovin properly. 
 Cripes ! You act as if you was scared of her. Does 
 she bite?" 
 
 Jack went out as he was bidden. He came softly 
 in on tip toe. He stole his fingers around the girl s
 
 86 THE GREATER. GLORY 
 
 eyes. As she dropped the pan in her lap, he kissed 
 her. 
 
 It was only a stage kiss, a kiss in a play. But it 
 was the first kiss he had ever given her. The blood 
 pounded strong in his temples when he had given it. 
 For the scent of her hair and her soft flesh was in his 
 senses. He was muddled and clumsy and confused 
 when Mary turned to confront him, as she was 
 supposed to confront him in the play. His eyes 
 dropped. He could not meet her gaze. 
 
 "Do it over again!" interrupted Georgie. "Do 
 it without actin as if it was a public misdemeanor !" 
 
 The little girl flushed furiously and tried it again. 
 Grace Rawlins got huffy and wanted to know whether 
 this was a play or a game of postoffice, and Dick 
 Robinson said it was no wonder some chaps would 
 consent to play hero parts for nothing, and young 
 Sam Hod declared that some guys were born lucky 
 anyhow. And all the time something in the touch 
 of the girl was calling to something deep in the boy, 
 something he had never felt before, something he 
 could hardly understand. And through the rest of 
 that play and that rehearsal there seemed a strange 
 intimacy between himself and Mary Wood. When, 
 in the last act and just before the final curtain, he 
 took the girl in his arms, he hated the brazen publicity 
 of it all. She was soft and delicate and fragile and 
 sweet to his embrace, and again and again when he 
 had gone home to his room at night he lived over and 
 over those moments. 
 
 On the last night before the play he arrived late at 
 his own boarding place after seeing Mary to her gate. 
 He parted the curtains and stood looking out over 
 the soft sleeping village swathed in romantic moon 
 light. A strange pain, an uneasiness, a weird, wild
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 87 
 
 dissatisfaction filled him. It seemed as though, he 
 wanted to walk on and on all night. Action, mot ion, 
 were the only things which could ever end his awful 
 nervousness. Over and over he saw the girl s face 
 before him as he drew her to him in the play ! the 
 brown eyes with the lovelight in them and the dare 
 and the deviltry, although a good little deviltry and 
 he was made frantic with sudden heart-hunger and 
 longing for her in some other way than theatrical 
 make-believe. 
 
 "Mary! Mary!" he cried. "I ve only known 
 you just a little while. But it s the truth, Mary 
 Wood ! I love you ! And to-morrow night to 
 morrow night the play will be over and a memory of 
 the past. After that ! Oh Mary ! I m going 
 to have you ! I m going to have you ! somehow ! 
 for my own forever ! poor little play ! Will I 
 ever forget Lady Audrey s Mistake ?" 
 
 It was plain however that Georgie Griffin held no 
 such temperamental sentiments about "Lady Audrey s 
 Mistake." On that same night that Jack was walk 
 ing home through the New England moonlight with 
 Mary he sat on a trunk back in the opera house and 
 pounded aimlessly and morosely on its front with his 
 property hammer dangling between his knees. 
 
 "Act? If this bunch was to goto N York, there 
 ain t one in the whole flock could get an engagement 
 as * shouts outside or a dead body ! And when 
 it comes to applause, we ll be lucky if some yellow 
 dog will only wander in and wag his tail ! " 
 
 There were indications it was going to be a great 
 return of value for the admission money.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 IN WHICH HERO AND HEROINE IN THE ROLE OF 
 PLAY-ACTORS WIN THE VILLAGE APPLAUSE AND 
 THERE COMES A DANCE AFTERWARD. 
 
 THE great night of the play arrived. At eight 
 o clock high school boys in their old-fashioned Sunday 
 go-to-meetin clothes were ushering fathers, mothers, 
 brothers and sisters, and aunts and uncles and 
 spinisters and bachelors and the strangers within 
 the gates, to their places. In the big auditorium 
 there was much clumping down of seats and ladies 
 unwinding scarfs from the heads and men standing 
 up here and there to pull off overcoats and noisy 
 rustling of programs printed that afternoon at 
 our little printing office, and the town crank damning 
 the house and performance and solar system generally 
 because he d been given a seat with a broken ^ire 
 hat-rack beneath his cosmos, to hold a hat that at 
 home was hung upon the floor. 
 
 But if there was hustle and bustle and thrilling 
 expectancy out in front, what was it behind on the 
 stage? Mrs. Christopher Stacy had been given 
 Lady Audrey s part because she had the proper 
 tragedy in her temperament by special endowment 
 from nature, and not much else, and a willingness to 
 stay where she was put and not offer advice. She 
 was weak in the knees and ill in the stomach because 
 she was the first person to go on and every line of her 
 part had fled from her head and would not return
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 89 
 
 regardless of how much she applied herself to her 
 manuscript. 
 
 Mrs. Whipple was moving around among the 
 players and stage hands in her make-up, and people 
 who had known her since infancy were staring at her 
 and asking who the strange woman was anyhow ; for 
 the sallow yellow of Mrs. Whipple s countenance had 
 fled before the application of grease-paint and pencil 
 ing, and Mrs. Blake Whipple was not Mrs. Blake 
 Whipple at all, but a girl of sweet sixteen whose 
 youth had been renewed like the eagle s ; and some of 
 the women were asking nastily where she had ever 
 learned to make up like that and she must have had 
 a past. 
 
 Chubb Barber the shoeman, who agreed with 
 everybody and never ran an ad in our paper that cost 
 more than forty cents, and who was to play the irate 
 foster parent, was monopolizing the peekhole in the 
 curtain and beholding the size of the audience grow 
 ing ever greater, and agreeing with everybody and 
 wetting his lips and wishing to Gawd he was home. 
 Mrs. Hoadley, the barber s wife, was there, sitting 
 around on things always needed next to dress the 
 stage and jouncing on her nervous knee the 
 momentous little Rollin Hoadley who was the cause 
 of it all, and who was to be carried right on and right 
 off very carefully, and who had been loaned after 
 much coaxing. Most of the boys were out on the 
 fire-escapes, smoking in the reviving coolness of the 
 evening and fortifying themselves for the ordeal 
 ahead. Everywhere was confusion and the giving 
 of orders which no one executed, and proffering of 
 help where it was least needed, and advice and sar 
 casm and turmoil and a time of trouble such as there 
 never has been since there was a nation.
 
 90 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 But Georgia was there ! And Georgie was boss ! 
 But alas ! how empty is public honor. For never 
 in all the lengths and breadths and depths of time or 
 infinity had there been such an occasion as this where 
 the answer to every snarl was that since-coined 
 phrase ! "Let George do it ! " 
 
 George was doing it or it didn t get done. 
 
 He d hired old Peter Ferguson to come in and help 
 with the "props." But before showing up for work 
 Peter had stopped en route and looked upon the wine 
 when it was red and allowed it to sting him like a 
 serpent and bite him like an adder. And so Peter 
 wasn t good for much but to say "yes, sir" and then 
 forget what Georgie had told him. 
 
 Georgie was an overworked man. Somehow when 
 he grabbed hold of a piece of scenery and juggled it 
 across the floor he had the appearance of a man 
 grabbing hold of the Woolworth building to keep it 
 upright in a high wind. He sent sundry persons out 
 after things which they brought back late or did not 
 bring back at all, so that Georgie was fated to forget 
 that ladies were present and indulge in strong phrases. 
 At twenty-five minutes to nine the house was packed 
 and the boys in the gallery were giving catcalls and 
 Grace Rawlins had been back-stage twice to inform 
 him that the bunch out front was getting out of con 
 trol and why in Sam Hill didn t Georgie get a move 
 on himself and what did he think this was anyway, 
 a Jew picnic ? Georgie had retorted that if she didn t 
 like his speed she could do it herself and if that 
 didn t suit her, she knew where she could go. And 
 Grace had retorted that if it wasn t for hurting 
 people s feelings she might open her mouth and say 
 something, and Georgie had replied it wouldn t be 
 anything new, and Grace slammed out into the
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 91 
 
 auditorium again to smile at every one and act busy 
 at the piano as if she d gotten instructions to go 
 ahead, which she hadn t. 
 
 At ten minutes to nine the fathers out front were 
 publicly asking if they d forgotten back of the cur 
 tain that there were heads of families in the place 
 who had to get some sleep before morning, and on the 
 stage Mrs. Hoadley was overheard by struggling, 
 swearing Georgie to say that if he didn t hurry up 
 she d have to take baby home, because baby wasn t 
 used to being out so late nights. And then, just 
 when the town cut-up out front had let out an 
 agonizing yawn that was heard all over the place and 
 received a laugh, the orchestra lamps blinked and 
 saved Grace Rawlins life, and she said thank Gawd 
 and broke out into the overture and played it, and the 
 curtain worked by old Peter Ferguson in the scenery 
 loft lifted on a stage wherein Mibb, in the capacity 
 of the foster mother, was cooking industriously and 
 waiting for the door to be opened violently on 
 tragedy. 
 
 In all of the rehearsals, Mrs. Stacy in the capacity 
 of Lady Audrey had died and bequeathed to her kind- 
 hearted friends the half-disemboweled sofa pillow. 
 This now was the real thing and requiring a real baby ; 
 the curtain was up and waiting ; Mibb was singing 
 about her work and waiting for the fatal knock ; Lady 
 Audrey was bolstered up with smelling salts and a glass 
 of cold water and approached the Hoadley woman to 
 get the illegitimate progeny. But out in front the 
 tittering and expectant audience suddenly heard a 
 peal of infantile despair as though somebody s off 
 spring was being strangled. That baby wasn t going 
 to leave the Hoadley woman, not if it knew it. And 
 it calculated that it did.
 
 92 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 " What am I going to do, I can t take it on kicking 
 and shrieking like this !" declared Mrs. Stacy. 
 
 "Choke it!" suggested Georgie. And if looks 
 would have killed, the young one would have ceased 
 to exist on the spot. 
 
 Again Mrs. Stacy assayed to borrow the baby. It 
 planted a number one foot in the hollow of her left 
 cheek and howled like an Apache. 
 
 "What are we going to do?" cried Mary in 
 alarm. "The curtain s up and the audience is 
 waiting !" 
 
 "We ought to have thought of this before !" cried 
 Mrs. Whipple. Then to Georgie: "Is there a big 
 doll in the house we can use in its place ?" Thereat 
 the assembled players turned to Georgie as though he 
 might have such a thing in his white overalls. 
 
 "There is not!" declared Georgie. "If that brat 
 won t consent to let itself be borrowed, why we simply 
 got to leave it keep its mother. Mis Hoadley ll have 
 to go on and play Lady Audrey herself ! " 
 
 Then it was the mother s turn to have a con 
 vulsion. 
 
 Georgie was equal to the occasion. He told her all 
 she had to do was stagger across the stage and die on 
 the sofa and leave it to Mibb s initiative to make 
 up the impromptu lines for the lack of Lady Audrey s 
 speech. But Mrs. Hoadley was obdurate. 
 
 And all the time the baby was yelling its head off 
 and some boys up in the gallery were stamping on the 
 floor. 
 
 Georgie realized with a great realization it was up 
 
 to him to do something and he did it. He grabbed 
 
 hold of the Hoadley woman bawling child and all 
 
 - opened the canvas door and shoved her through. 
 
 Then he planked his foot against it so she couldn t
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 93 
 
 get back. The astounded and flabbergasted Mrs. 
 Hoadley found herself for once in the public eye in a 
 manner that from the standpoint of her feelings ought 
 to have put that eye out. And the audience was 
 treated to the spectacle of a woman with a bawling 
 infant assisted violently into the stage kitchen by a 
 party prominent in white overalls and the door 
 slapped shut in a manner that rocked the scenery. 
 Then the baby quit as promptly as it had begun, and 
 to the uttermost parts of that house penetrated ap 
 parently the opening line of the play : 
 
 "My Gawd! If Jim Hoadley knew I was here, 
 he d rip this place into tatters ! " 
 
 Which considering that Jimmy Hoadley never did 
 anything more spectacular than post bills for a living, 
 struck Paris as rather overdrawn. 
 
 Hoarse whispers advised Mibb what the trouble 
 was, and she rose to the dilemma. 
 
 "Have you no friends, my good woman?" she 
 asked earnestly. 
 
 "No! If I had," retorted the Hoadley woman, 
 "they d take Georgie Griffin out and lynch him ! " 
 
 It was several moments before order was restored. 
 
 "Come, rest awhile, my dear," struggled Mibb 
 bravely onward. Then in an undertone : 
 Please don t spoil the play at the start, Amy ! Do 
 your best for the sake of the rest of us." 
 
 The appeal in Mibb s voice softened the Hoadley 
 woman somewhat and for a wonder her baby kept 
 quiet. She looked back and saw her retreat cut off 
 and for the sake of the ugly predicament of the rest 
 she decided to pull things through somehow. 
 
 "All right," she agreed. Then aloud and to the 
 stark astonishment of the rest on the other side the 
 set: "He s deserted me! He s deserted me !" she
 
 94 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 suddenly cried. And she staggered magnificently 
 across to the sofa. 
 
 It was the audience s turn to gasp. The Hoadley 
 woman s last audible reference had been to Georgie 
 Griffin, and Paris batted the public eye. Was she 
 referring perhaps to Jim Hoadley. The Hoadley 
 woman s name was not on the program. Was a 
 juicy bit of dramatic scandal being promulgated? 
 It was an awful half-moment ! 
 
 "Gripes!" said Georgie weakly, "I see where I 
 need a drink ! " 
 
 But the Hoadley woman went on : 
 
 "He deserted me and left me penniless. I m sick 
 and dying. Have pity on a poor unfortunate sister 
 and care for my child. Heaven will reward you ! 
 
 and about its neck you will find a locket that that 
 
 
 
 "Yes, yes!" cried Mibb. "That what, my 
 dear?" 
 
 "That identifies it so that we can kill it to 
 morrow ! " bawled Georgie from the wings. 
 
 But the Hoadley woman had fallen back ap 
 parently dead ! 
 
 "The poor, poor motherless little thing ! " went on 
 Mibb, picking up the threads of her mangled lines. 
 And she went to take the infant from the apparently 
 deceased mother s arms. 
 
 But would that brat consent to be taken by Mibb 
 any more than by Mrs. Stacy ? Not on your grand 
 mother s tintype ! Mibb acquired it by the laying 
 on of hands but it was like picking up a twelve- 
 pound chunk of howling wildcat. That child knew 
 it was on the stage and hogged the scene with 
 every last trick of a cheap actor. Mibb tried to com 
 fort it and get a word in between breaths. The other
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 95 
 
 players came on as they were supposed to come on, 
 but not a word could get across the footlights. That 
 infant kicked and fought and squealed. The scene 
 was finished somehow in a pandemonium of terrific 
 bawls ; and Mibb got white-faced fearing it would 
 go into convulsions . Slug Truman suggested she lay 
 it on its stomach, and Georgie Griffin from behind 
 made some frightfully suggestive pantomime with his 
 property hammer, and all the mothers in the audience 
 said it was a shame to abuse a child so but what could 
 you expect from that Hoadley woman, she never 
 had a brain in her head anyhow. Again it was up to 
 Georgie to do something and again Georgie did it. 
 
 "Run dow T n the curtain ! " he ordered. 
 
 The curtain was lowered, but did that child notice 
 it ? No. It was a very peevish child and set in its 
 ways. Its mother leaped up, once the curtain had 
 fallen, and took it and patted it on the back and laid 
 it over her shoulder and said let her get out and take 
 it home, and Georgie said yes for Gawd s sake let her. 
 And the Hoadley woman postponed settling with 
 Georgie until a more auspicious time and the audience 
 followed that child in all its journeyings for the next 
 three minutes, twice around the stage and downstairs 
 to where the mother got her wraps, and down the 
 stairs outside and along the wall of the opera house 
 under the east windows, and down the street until a 
 merciful distance made the episode only a nightmare. 
 
 And Uncle Joe Fodder in the front row remarked 
 that "Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings the 
 Lord may have ordained truth ; but not that Hoadley 
 suckling ! It was a delusion and a snare and un 
 doubtedly would end its days on the gallows ! " 
 
 There were many other incidents in that play, 
 amusing enough if told at length, but they have no
 
 96 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 vital bearing on our story. Jack came in and sur 
 prised Mary he caressed her as per schedule, in 
 which some boys in the gallery assisted with shrill 
 whistles. He went through the usual pabulum of an 
 amateur play, stiffly and awkwardly and frightened 
 half out of his senses. Frank Whitcomb, who was 
 messenger and boy of all work in Amos Farmers* 
 bank, entered in the capacity of villain and enticed 
 Mary away to the city. The Henderson girl sang 
 her songs between the acts. In the second act 
 young Sam Hod nearly upset the scenery by catching 
 his toe under a corner while coining on at a run, 
 and between the second and third acts tragedy was 
 narrowly averted when some one needed a barrel and 
 didn t know what to do with the property tinware it 
 contained, and Georgie told them to lift up the trap 
 door in the stage and dump it into regions below; 
 and some one did and Colonel Jethro Wilson was 
 down there underneath the trap door "seeing what 
 he could see" and got the whole five-and-ten-cent 
 store poured merrily on his head. 
 
 The Henderson girl sang her songs between the 
 acts ! Yes, Mibb sang that night and we have never 
 forgotten her singing because of the song which she 
 sang. It was "Silver Threads Among the Gold." 
 
 "Silver Threads Among the Gold " ! How she sang 
 it ! The audience had hooted and laughed at the 
 rest of the little local talent play. But they did not 
 hoot and laugh at Mibb s part in that entertainment. 
 The girl s full rich contralto put a sweetness and a 
 haunting melancholy into the lines and the melody 
 which filled the eyes of old Uncle Joe Fodder with 
 tears. For Uncle Joe had heard it in a younger and 
 a happier day, like many a gray -head in that 
 audience. But the Henderson girl never knew of her
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 97 
 
 power and her gift, or if she knew, she did not care. 
 It was very quiet in that hall when Mibb finished the 
 ballad. 
 
 In the last act, too, after Jack had rescued his hero 
 ine for the last time from the toils of the villain, the 
 curtain did not respond (for verily old Peter Ferguson 
 had fallen asleep in the scenery loft under the sooth 
 ing influence of the strong liquor by which he was 
 ensnared) . The perplexed audience was still further 
 perplexed by sight of Georgie Griffin appearing 
 suddenly in the middle of the stage where the final 
 love scene was in process and shouting "Damn 
 your immortal soul, send down that curtain ! " and 
 firing his property hammer insanely up into the wings. 
 This brought down the curtain in one titanic flop, 
 as though all the strings had been cut and it had fallen 
 from the skies. But every one declared that Georgie 
 Griffin always thought himself smart anyhow and 
 what could you expect if he took it into his head to 
 show off, and Uncle Joe Fodder remarked that all the 
 cast appeared to lack was memory, concentration 
 and self-confidence; outside of that it was all 
 right and the play was a riot. 
 
 Then as per the advertising, the boys cleared the 
 auditorium of seats and Grace Rawlins and Uncle 
 Joe Fodder took their places ; she before the piano, 
 he beside her with his famous old violin, and we held 
 the dance. 
 
 Mary Wood danced with Jack Purse that night. 
 She danced more than once with him. And by the 
 strange subtle telepathy which exists between 
 youth, it was accepted that the new Jack Purse was 
 Mary Wood s "fellow" and the new Mary Wood was 
 Jack Purse s "girl." And the elders smiled, for they 
 were a pretty pair Jack and the Wood girl. And
 
 98 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 the boys shrugged their shoulders; and the girls 
 pretended not to mind. Round and round in a 
 dreamy waltz Jack swung her, her body bending 
 against his own, her eyes half-closed, her heart 
 beating rhythmically to the young printer s, who held 
 her close. 
 
 She laughed a bit sadly as they sat down along the 
 side of the hall between dances and she fanned her 
 self with her handkerchief. 
 
 "I m sorry it s over," she said. "It s been a lot 
 of fun; I ll always have it to think of this little 
 local-talent play. Somehow my good times in Paris 
 seem to have begun since you came here, Jack." 
 
 Jack sat silently. A strange pain disturbed him, 
 for the feel of her kisses was still hot upon his lips and 
 the press of her soft yielding body in the waltzes was 
 still in his senses. 
 
 "Look at Jack!" laughed Sam Hod. "Clean off 
 his ballast in love ! If ever there was a case of love 
 at first sight it was that pair. And the girl s as 
 addled over the boy as the boy is over the girl. 
 Just look ! look at his hands, his necktie, his 
 knees, his feet! Gad, what a wreck love makes of 
 a man ! " 
 
 Jack left the girl by the wall while he went to 
 bring her a glass of water. And Mary Wood sud 
 denly felt a pluck at her sleeve. She turned to find 
 Herb Truman. 
 
 "I wanner see you, Mary!" he said thickly, "I 
 jus got to see you alone!" 
 
 "What s the matter, Herbert?" 
 
 "I jus got to see you alone. I mean it." 
 
 "Herbert, you re ill!" 
 
 "Can t I see you alone most anywheres?" 
 
 She arose and followed him outside.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 So HEKE THEN WE HAVE THE PROBLEM OLD AS 
 EDEN ITSELF, AS TO WHICH IT Is BETTER To Do, 
 CHOOSE POVERTY WITH LOVE OR RICHES WITH 
 DISSATISFACTION-- WHICH THE WOOD GIRL 
 SOLVES AFTER THE MANNER OF HER HEART, WITH 
 RESULTS FAR-REACHING IN AFTER YEARS BE 
 CAUSE OF WHICH WE HAVE A STORY. 
 
 THEY went out of the Opera House and across the 
 street and into the "Common" where the moths 
 were winging around the sputtering, old-fashioned 
 arc-lights, which threw pleasant shadows amid the 
 shrubbery. They found a settee a hideous fancy- 
 iron settee and they sat down and Mary waited 
 anxiously. Across the street, high in the hall, the 
 music struck up in another waltz. 
 
 "I ve got to be going back, Herbert," she said. 
 "Jack will be surprised not to find me when he 
 returns. What was it you wanted?" 
 
 He took off his cap and the cowlick rose terrifically.- 
 He twisted the cap in his hands. He was pitiful in 
 his misery. " You /" he blurted out. 
 
 " Me ? What do you mean, Herbert ? " 
 
 "You!" he cried doggedly. "You kissed him 
 on the stage in front o everybody. You been 
 lettin him dance most every dance with you ! I 
 know I got awful feet but " 
 
 She wanted to laugh but could not.
 
 100 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 "You ve forgotten me since he came to work over 
 to the Telegraph office," Herb said, his eyes averted. 
 
 "Oh, Herbert," cried the girl softly, "what can 
 I say? What can I do?" 
 
 "I kind o thought, when you lemme kiss you that 
 night in my house 
 
 "Dear Herbert, it was wicked of me to have done 
 that, to have encouraged you. I ve thought 
 about it and thought about it and wondered what 
 I could do to make amends. But I ve always de 
 cided that to try to make amends would only fix 
 a bad matter worse. I just hoped you d forgive me 
 and overlook it." 
 
 "Then I take it there ain t no chance." 
 
 "If you want to know it, yes, I love Jack; it 
 would be wicked to deny it. But what can I do 
 when my heart is that way, Herbert ? " 
 
 "Yes, I know. He ain t a clumsy lummox like 
 me always puttin his hoof in it ! He s good-lookin 
 and has got nice ways with the ladies. Look at the 
 way he played the hero part in that show." 
 
 "It isn t that at all, Herbert. It was that Jack 
 and I seemed like old friends from the start, although 
 we both knew we never had seen one another before 
 in our lives. I couldn t help falling in love with him. 
 I didn t mean to treat you shabbily ; I just couldn t 
 help it." 
 
 "You ll be marryin him, I suppose? * 
 
 "He hasn t asked me yet but but " 
 
 "But you expect he will. That s it, isn t it?" 
 
 She averted her face and poked at a little pile of 
 sand between the bricks of the walk. 
 
 "Perhaps !" she said. "But it can t be for a long 
 time, you know. Jack s father failed in business 
 and his creditors lost a lot of money. Jack s got
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 101 
 
 to pay that money back; he thinks he s morally 
 bound to do it. They trusted him and his father 
 and there s no reason why they should lose. Per 
 haps after the money s paid we can begin to save for 
 our home and when we get enough 
 
 " If Purse owes as much as I hear he does, you ll be 
 an awful long time gettin married." 
 
 "We re young yet. There s ample time. Mean 
 while we re together " 
 
 "Yes," said Herb sadly, " you re together. 
 
 That s a lot. I m sorry it s him, Mary. I was 
 
 hopin it might be me. I was hopin I could use the 
 
 money I m comin into to make a nice girl like you 
 
 - happy. Wouldn t you, Mary ? Wouldn t you ? * 
 
 Momentarily a vision of that luxurious front room 
 in the Truman home arose before the girl ! She gave 
 thought, too, of her mother s experience with a poor 
 man. But she was not alone now; the future was 
 not uncertain. It made a difference. 
 
 "Well," concluded Herb philosophically as he 
 moved away, " there s many a slip between the 
 cup and the lip, Mary Wood. Lots of things may 
 happen while you re waitin for Purse to pay up four 
 thousand out of sixteen a week. I ain t goin to lose 
 hope entirely. But if you should marry him, I want 
 you to know that I that I loved you, Mary Wood. 
 I ain t seen such an awful lot o you. But you got 
 hold o me in a way no other woman or girl ever has. 
 If you do marry him, I want you should know I don t 
 harbor no bad feelings and hope you ll both be 
 happy." 
 
 "Thank you, Herb," she said. "Next to Jack, 
 I think more of you than any other man in the 
 world." 
 
 "Well," decided Herbert, " that s somethin !"
 
 102 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 "Is that all? "she asked. 
 
 He realized then how great and terrific was his 
 failure. He was losing Mary Wood, the girl that he 
 loved, to the Purse boy who was not lumberous and 
 clumsy and did not have a cowlick and hands like 
 hams, regardless of Sam Hod s declaration. The 
 misery of his heart was appalling, unconsolable. He 
 arose blindly. 
 
 "Aren t you coming back to the hall and stay until 
 the end of the dance?" 
 
 "It don t matter," mumbled Herb. "No! 
 It don t much matter with me!" He moved 
 away. "Good night, Mary," he said without look 
 ing at her. 
 
 And he left her standing there, wanting to run 
 after him and console him and mother him and tell 
 him how his disappointment hurt her, also. But 
 he was gone amid the shrubbery and she went slowly 
 back to the hall, the small-town gaiety and the 
 music. 
 
 So fled her chance to marry a wealthy man. 
 
 She went back to the hall and to Jack, who was 
 wildly looking for her and who demanded the cause 
 of the tears in her eyes, back to the boy whom she 
 loved. 
 
 After the dance they walked homeward together. 
 
 "Good night," she said softly at the gate, as she 
 held out her hand. 
 
 "Good night, Mary!" he replied thickly in turn. 
 But he did not go. 
 
 The moon made mystic shadows of the street 
 under the sleeping maples, of the long white fence 
 flanked with the flower beds, of the lawn and the 
 ghostly white Mather house. The xylophones of the 
 crickets sounded from beneath the fences and the
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 103 
 
 hollow board walks. The songs of insect lovers 
 piping out of tune, came to them. Down the street 
 now and then showed a flash of a muslin dress 
 white in the moonlight and the little shriek of a 
 woman s laughter floated to them . . . carefree 
 boys and girls going home from a dance ! And under 
 the moonlight the girl was twice as dainty and 
 pretty as the boy had ever seen her before, for that 
 is the way of moonlight and of spring nights and of 
 women in days when we love. 
 
 Occasionally a couple strolled past them, Sam 
 Hod with Alice Whiting, Grace Rawlins with 
 the Whitcomb boy. Even Georgie Griffin and the 
 Whalen girl were out enjoying the beautiful ex 
 quisite summer night. 
 
 As Jack came away finally from the Mather s 
 gate, the beauty and the sadness of the night and the 
 heart cry of his new-found age-old love came to him 
 as neither had ever impressed him before. And 
 taking off his hat beneath the stars he murmured : 
 "Oh, if it could always go on always!" But he 
 knew it could not. And he was miserable and 
 afraid.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 IN WHICH THE HEARTS OF OUR FRIENDS ARE YOUNG 
 AND THE WORLD is FAIR AND THE CHIEF CHAR 
 ACTERS OF OUR STORY GIVE INDICATIONS OP 
 THEIR DESTINY. 
 
 LET us go back for a time and consider the Hender 
 sons. 
 
 It would be difficult to state accurately whether 
 or not Paris approved of the Hendersons. 
 
 The Hendersons came into town along with the 
 railroad, that is to say Mrs. Henderson came at 
 the same time as the railroad and so Harvey had 
 come too, there being no alternative for Mrs. Hender 
 son s husband. 
 
 Ma Henderson weighed two hundred and forty 
 pounds, two hundred of which was located in her 
 chest. She had a firm mouth with knotted muscles 
 at the corners thereof, and a faint moustache show 
 ing over all. She had a square jaw and a sour 
 expression to her eye. And her husband, who 
 had no business being one, went around with a 
 dazed look in his lamblike eye as though perpetually 
 pondering on how it had all happened, anyhow. 
 He was a head shorter than Ma Henderson and 
 about a hundred pounds lighter, and his cue was to 
 say "I believe so, Ma", and spend his time smoking 
 in the cellar, spitting in silence into the furnace 
 or sitting in the cigar stores down-town. One
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 105 
 
 might say that Harvey Henderson lived under a 
 perpetual matrimonial handicap. 
 
 They had not been in town long before Paris 
 folks knew all the inner workings of the Henderson 
 household and that Mrs. Harvey Henderson assumed 
 full charge of Harvey s pension money as she 
 assumed full charge of everything else belonging 
 to Harvey. And because society has not yet 
 reached that stage where it may take literally the 
 biblical interpretation to take no thought what ye 
 shall eat and drink or what ye shall put on, Ma 
 Henderson was renting the big Squire place at the 
 east end of Main Street and opening it as a boarding 
 house. 
 
 And Ma Henderson for many years was miserable 
 and lonesome, and the other wives of the town 
 sought not her counsel nor her companionship. 
 
 It was with Mibb, the only daughter, that the 
 chief deviltry was to pay. For as has been stated, 
 early in life Mibb had witnessed many domestic 
 altercations and set up a marital philosophy of her 
 own. In that philosophy, man as a male held a 
 very small and inconsequential position. But man 
 as a provider of money was different. The neigh 
 bors whispered with significant eyebrows that Mibb 
 Henderson often addressed her dad publicly and 
 in the Henderson home by his first name, which after 
 a time she shortened to "Harv." And her mother 
 laughed and thought it smart and implanted in that 
 poor handicapped young woman s head the sole 
 idea that she must never commit her mother s 
 mistake ; Mibb also like the Wood girl must 
 set her cap for money, the male of the species being 
 a nobody and an easy mark anyhow. 
 
 So Mibb had gone to school in Paris and after
 
 106 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 school spent much spare time down at the station 
 watching the drummers come in. Finally she took 
 a position in the Telegraph office. 
 
 She was not a bad girl ; had she departed at any 
 time from the straight and narrow pathway followed 
 by our New England daughters, the town even 
 the girl friends to whom she condescendingly told 
 deep things which no girls should know wouldn t 
 have tolerated Mibb for a moment. She was merely 
 handicapped by a brainless, unnatural mother and 
 a weak-willed father, and why she never stumbled 
 over the edge of the social precipice will always 
 remain one of the mysteries of small-town morality. 
 
 Mibb in our printing office was a bright girl and 
 a good compositor when she would work which 
 was chiefly when she especially wanted a new dress 
 or a hat or something to wear to a party. But Ma 
 Henderson came periodically to the conclusion that 
 work before a type case was not dignified enough 
 for an embryo "lady" and hinted often at Mabel s 
 social standing and her chances to marry money; 
 and Mibb as periodically laid down her stick and left 
 us and stayed away from us and then came back 
 again. Poor Mibb ! Perhaps after all, like our old 
 duplex press, she was more sinned against than 
 sinning. 
 
 We had singing schools in those days. A crowd 
 of six Mibb Henderson and Dick Robinson, Sam 
 Hod and Alice, Jack Purse and Mary were return 
 ing home from the last one for that spring season 
 held in Green Valley, when they sat down on the 
 wall about Seaver s pasture on another moonlit 
 evening. 
 
 "Folks," announced Mibb, "I ve had a proposal 
 a real proposal a proposal of marriage !"
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 107 
 
 Mary glanced quickly at Mibb with disapproval 
 strong on her fine features. Such things were not 
 to be discussed lightly in public. But Mibb dug 
 her foot deeply in the grass and the brierbloom and 
 went on mischievously: "Now aren t some folks 
 the jokers ! " 
 
 Dick Robinson s lips closed grimly. We had 
 known for a long time that Dick loved Mibb Hender 
 son. But Dick was only a bookkeeper in the process 
 works, and good looking though he was, his good 
 looks would never make up for the tragedy of a pay 
 envelope containing a mere ten dollars a week, 
 not to Mabel reared by her mother. 
 
 "I d just as soon you d keep such things in the 
 same confidence in which they were spoken, Mibb," 
 he said with hard insinuation. 
 
 "Now isn t he sensitive !" Mibb returned. 
 
 Mary and Jack were sitting side by side on the 
 wall between Mibb and the girl s lover. Mary 
 turned and looked at Dick, a picture of confusion, 
 anger, misery and chagrin. 
 
 "Mjbb," declared the sympathetic Mary, "such 
 things are sacred ! " 
 
 "Sacred!" Again the merry peal of laughter 
 from Mibb. Finding that no one joined her and 
 that only embarrassment resulted, she sobered. 
 
 "I thought we were all good friends together or 
 I shouldn t have mentioned it," she said. 
 
 "We are good friends together, Mibb," declared 
 Alice. "That s why Mary spoke so frankly." 
 And the boys looked sheepishly at one another. 
 
 "I don t want to be married!" declared Mibb. 
 "Not for a long, long time. I want to get the full 
 fun out of life. When a girl gets married it means 
 care and worry and work and squalling kids.
 
 108 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 And besides," she added brutally, "I wouldn t 
 marry anybody that was poor anyhow !" 
 
 Dick Robinson arose. 
 
 "I ll move along," he said. He started down 
 the road alone, off into the night and back to town. 
 And on another evening in a far distant year Mibb 
 recalled his going, with a far different emotion in 
 her heart. "Dick!" she cried. "Come back!" 
 
 But Dick paid her no attention. He disappeared 
 around the bend in the road. 
 
 "Mabel you re heartless !" Mary rebuked her. 
 
 But Mibb passed it off with a laugh. 
 
 "Dick should have known he was impossible," 
 she said. "I don t see why he keeps thrusting him 
 self upon me!" 
 
 "Dick s a good boy!" defended Alice " as 
 good as there is in Paris. He only makes ten 
 dollars a week. But that isn t anything against 
 him." 
 
 " Then let him come around when he makes more," 
 replied Mibb. She was angry that the company had 
 turned against her. 
 
 "You re putting it that nothing matters but 
 dollars and cents," declared Alice. "That s heart 
 less and silly, Mibb, and it leads only to unhap- 
 piness." 
 
 "Money won t buy happiness, Mibb," added 
 Mary. 
 
 "Fiddlesticks," declared the Henderson girl. 
 
 Jack Purse s heart fluttered suddenly and wildly. 
 For the hand that was laid on his arm to keep the 
 Wood girl steady on the wall imparted some little 
 pressure to that arm not at all necessary in the busi 
 ness of maintaining her equilibrium. 
 
 "I don t want to get married," repeated Mabel.
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 109 
 
 "I ve always been sorry I was born a girl anyway. 
 Girls and women get the hard end of marriage the 
 same as everything else in life. It means work, 
 work, work, marriage does, work from morning 
 till night and precious little thanks in return for 
 the effort. It means waiting helplessly inside a 
 home while a man makes good or doesn t make 
 good, according to his ability. It means pain and 
 suffering and sometimes death and what do you 
 get in return? Yes, what do you get in return? 
 Answer me that ! Men can get out in the world and 
 do things. They re free to go and come as they 
 like. They earn money that gives them the right 
 to say how it shall be spent. It s a man s world 
 and made for men, and all that s left for a woman is 
 to play the second part ; and if a girl s high-spirited 
 and wants to rise above her lot, she s heartless and 
 unnatural and shameless. She s a slave, that s 
 what she is, a slave. Deny it if you can. Cover 
 it with fine phrases. Smooth it over with love and 
 romance. But deep down underneath is the ugly 
 truth just the same, the ugly truth of the slavery. 
 And I won t be a slave ! Even if you do call me 
 heartless and unnatural I tell you I won t be a slave. 
 I m free now to live my life as I please and I ll 
 keep so. If I do marry, it ll be because there s the 
 money available to make me escape the slavery. 
 It ll be because it ll help me to enjoy life and get 
 out of it all there is in it. If that s shameful and 
 bold and unwomanly, make the most of it. But 
 it s my way of looking at things. So far in life I ve 
 seen no reason to change." 
 
 There was silence for a time. The words had a 
 strange familiar ring in Mary s ears. 
 
 "Being married doesn t seem that to me at all,
 
 110 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 Mibb," she replied softly. "I suppose it s all a dif 
 ference in temperament. If you want to call it 
 slavery, then then well, speaking for myself " 
 and her voice was very low and soft and almost a 
 whisper "I m cheerfully willing to be that kind 
 of slave, Mibb." 
 
 "You re a little fool !" retorted Mabel. 
 
 "You say it means work throughout life. But 
 what of that, Mibb ? All of us must work at some 
 thing or other, mustn t we? Isn t work a law of 
 life? Why not in a home that s your own among 
 people that you love, as anywhere? You say it 
 means waiting for the man you marry to succeed. 
 But that isn t a hardship, Mibb? It s a privilege. 
 If you pick out the right man, and he s honest, and 
 ambitious and capable, why isn t it the most interest 
 ing game in the world to play, Mibb ? to watch 
 him step by step as he climbs upward; and help 
 him to do it ; and climb upward with him ; and some 
 day stand on the summit with him and have the 
 same feeling together we did it ! You say it 
 means pain and suffering and sometimes death 
 but what of that, Mibb? Only the cowardly 
 shrink from pain and suffering and death. I am 
 not afraid of work and pain and suffering be 
 cause it s far from being all shadows; there s com 
 pensation, Mibb. Beautiful compensation !" 
 
 Mary s voice was unsteady. Sam and Jack 
 looked at her. In the moonlight they fancied her 
 eyes were wet with tears. 
 
 "Mary," returned Mabel, "you re sickishly senti 
 mental. It s women like you that are holding other 
 women down in society. The time s coming, Mary, 
 like Grace Rawlins says, when women with those 
 old-fashioned ideas are going to give way. This is
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 111 
 
 going to stop being a man s world. It s going to be 
 a woman s world as well, Mary. Women are go 
 ing to be equal with men " 
 
 "Aren t they equal now, Mibb?" 
 
 "Aren t they now? No, they aren t! I ve told 
 you this is a man s world, and I ve told you why." 
 
 "It seems to me they re equal to men if they care 
 to do the right thing. It seems to me it s wholly a 
 matter for the individual girl to settle, Mibb. She 
 can pick up the right sort of husband and be a 
 partner to him and enjoy all he enjoys and be his 
 wife and sharer in his success, now as much as she 
 ever can there s nothing to stop her, Mibb." 
 
 But Mibb did not answer because put that way 
 there was no answer. And because the truism 
 always holds : When you cannot answer your op 
 ponent s argument do not despair, you can still 
 call him names, she began making fun of Mary 
 Wood. 
 
 Mary was pulling a bit bewilderedly at her hand 
 kerchief, her eyes downcast. 
 
 "I m perfectly willing to be considered old- 
 fashioned," she said brokenly. "If you want to 
 call it that. I m perfectly willing to take any 
 chances on being happy in my own way that 
 way that I ve said. I haven t any desire to be a 
 man not in the slightest. I can t see why a 
 woman s place in the world doing a woman s 
 work keeping a home raising little children 
 to be good men and women in turn isn t just as 
 important and noble as anything a man could do 
 outside that home. No, I can t see why a woman 
 shouldn t be satisfied and look upon her work as 
 a privilege. I m willing to take my chances in 
 life with my belief. It can lead me where it will ! "
 
 112 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 When at last they came to continue on their way 
 back to town, the five of them were very thoughtful. 
 Mibb walked behind alone. 
 
 "Don t feel badly over it," Jack said soothingly 
 to the girl on his arm. " It isn t worth crying over 
 what she says, Mary. She ll see she s mistaken 
 some day, Mary. You re you re noble, Mary!" 
 he paid the compliment with difficulty "and I 
 hope the man who marries you stays big 
 enough to know it." 
 
 That night the boy lay on his bed sleeplessly 
 through many hours, thinking over what had 
 occurred and the things which had been discussed 
 between them that evening. Boys and girls do not 
 discuss things in that way in these barren days on 
 which we have fallen. "She s one girl in a thou 
 sand," he muttered miserably. "If I lose her if 
 I don t marry her I ll never, never know another 
 like her again." 
 
 Gray dawn stole up over the eastern mountains 
 and found him still awake, tossing fretfully on his 
 bed.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 AND so, HAVING PLACED THE HEROES AND HEROINES 
 AND THE VlLLAINESSES OF OUR STORY WHO ARE 
 TO WORK OUT THEIR DESTINY AS TIME GOES 
 ON, WE COME TO THE MEMORABLE PICNIC UP IN 
 BLAISDELL S GLEN AND EVENING IN GOLD-PIECE 
 CABIN. 
 
 AT the office the talk was of the picnic up the 
 Glen that afternoon, a celebration for the success 
 of the local talent play. 
 
 The ex-players met on the Opera House steps. 
 The girls had generous baskets of which the boys 
 relieved them as they arrived with awkward greet 
 ings meant to be funny and at which the girls laughed 
 as they were supposed to laugh. Quickly they 
 paired off: Jack and Mary; Mibb and Slug Truman ; 
 Sam Hod and Alice; Harriet Babcock and Frank 
 Whitcomb ; even Georgie Griffin and the Whalen 
 girl were there the latter brought her pathetic 
 addition to the refreshments done in a paper parcel. 
 Then as they were about to start, Dick Robinson 
 and Grace Rawlins arrived from different directions. 
 
 "I m the odd one!" greeted Mrs. Whipple. 
 " You ll just make partners ! " 
 
 The crowd laughed and Dick colored, glowering 
 darkly at Truman in possession of Mibb s basket. 
 The thirteen moved up Main Street and eastward 
 out of the village toward the East Wickford road,
 
 114 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 Mrs. Whipple walking with Grace and Dick, and 
 Dick carrying two baskets. 
 
 "Why is it called Gold-Piece Glen and Gold- 
 Piece Cabin ? " Jack asked Truman as they walked 
 on ahead. 
 
 "Years ago when they mined for iron around these 
 parts there was an old chap lived up in the Glen," 
 replied Herbert, "who turned all his wages into 
 gold pieces. He hid them somewhere in his cabin. 
 They called him Gold-Piece Blaisdell. He died a 
 dozen years ago, from injuries when two tramps 
 broke into the place. They found his hoard in an 
 earthen vessel buried under the fireplace. The 
 governor bought the Glen to lumber the chestnut 
 a year afterward and I fixed up the old Cabin. I 
 stay up there in the deer season or whenever I have 
 a hankering to take to the woods." 
 
 "And is the old earthen pot still buried?" 
 
 "Yep," answered Slug Truman. 
 
 "Do you know where?" 
 
 " Yep ; I ll show you when we get up there. We ll 
 build a fire in the fireplace Frank s got his violin 
 we ll have a great time and the moon s going 
 to be full to-night full for the last time this 
 month. It ll be a great walk home!" He glanced 
 sadly at Mary Wood. He was trying hard to bear 
 his disappointment like a dead game sport. 
 
 They wended their laughing, joking, coquetting 
 way out School Street and past the gas works. 
 They passed the County Farm and turned toward 
 East Wickford. As the whistles back in the village 
 were blowing six, they came to the "turning-off 
 place", as Slug termed it, and passed over the 
 Truman land and climbed up into the Glen. 
 
 A thousand country scents, of sweet fern and briar
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 115 
 
 bloom and blossoming laurel, of blackberry vine 
 and checkerberry and wild apple made the 
 beautiful evening air sensuous with rustic fragrance. 
 Through the raspberry that scratched at their 
 clothes and the milkweed that left lint upon them, 
 through grasses that were already beginning to 
 grow damp and little swarms of insects which winged 
 and fell on the quiet atmosphere, they moved 
 along the weU-worn path and up under the tall 
 silent trees to where the cabin stood in the shadows. 
 Th& picnic was not unlike a thousand other picnics 
 between boys and girls in love that have taken place 
 since the world began. Grace Rawlins wanted to 
 know how Slug ever had the nerve to invite them up 
 to such a dirty hole and it just went to show what 
 brutes men were at heart when they got away from 
 women ; and a few minutes later she wanted to 
 know why they d brought so much food ; what 
 did they think they had to feed, an army? But 
 Slug built a fire in the low fireplace and they boiled 
 their coffee and the food was laid out over the big 
 plank table, The boys held back and had to be 
 handed their sandwiches and coffee and then, 
 having been thus given a start, they forgot when it 
 was time to stop and massacred the refreshments. 
 Slug as clumsy as a plow horse upset a cup 
 of coffee on Alice Whiting s dress and in helping her 
 remove the mess got in a back-fire motion and sent 
 a jar of pickle the other way over Mibb. Grace 
 Rawlins said some one ought to have brought along 
 a martingale for him or umbrellas for the crowd. 
 The Whalen girl did the most work getting things 
 ready and then began to weep inwardly because 
 she hadn t brought near enough food for herself 
 and Georgie Griffin, too, because, poor girl, she
 
 116 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 didn t have it to bring. But Georgie had no scruples 
 about whose food it was and "pitched in." 
 
 It was a joyous happy meal in the woods where 
 nature gives zest to youthful appetite and much 
 harmless courting was to come, which was even 
 better than the food. 
 
 Then as the Glen darkened outside and an oc 
 casional mosquito winged in the open doorway and 
 dined off a plump wrist or ankle, and the stars came 
 out, and the Glen was made weird by mysterious 
 night noises, the table with the wreckage of edibles 
 was moved back and the boys lighted their pipes 
 and found places for themselves and their girls 
 around the fire that Slug had coaxed and poked 
 until it was a thing of joy and romance and comfort. 
 
 Mibb sat on the floor with her head against 
 Slug s knees and in a corner beside the Rawlins 
 girl, whom he detested for her uncomfortable tongue, 
 Dick looked as miserable and kept as quiet and in 
 conspicuous as a puppy that is ailing grievously. 
 
 Harriet was seated beside the Truman boy, 
 Frank Whitcomb was sprawled out in front of her, 
 his big feet silhouetted against the flames, his head 
 in the girl s lap. Sam and Alice were over on the 
 left and behind the crowd, seemingly not of it, 
 were Jack Purse and Mary Wood. Jack had stolen 
 his arm about Mary s waist and Mary did not resent 
 the intimacy. 
 
 Why repeat the talk the jests, the repartee, 
 the foolery and the clumsy sallies at one another 
 that followed on that evening? Every man and 
 every woman on God s footstool who has ever been 
 young and loved has been present at such an outing 
 and knows the talk thereof. 
 
 Finally Frank Whitcomb produced his violin
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 117 
 
 from its battered old black case and tuned it and 
 laid aside his pipe and began to play "Oft In the 
 Stilly Night", "The Light of Other Days", and 
 "Auld Robin Gray", and many more of the old- 
 time favorites. They were silent a long time after 
 Fred had finished playing. The boys pipes had 
 gone out. It seemed as though all of them, under 
 the spell of the hour and the place and the music, 
 had caught a glimpse of the future and had been 
 made solemn and thoughtful and a bit afraid. 
 
 "Wonder," said Slug suddenly in a tone that was 
 strange for that easygoing, loose-habited young 
 fellow, "where this crowd will be all of us twenty 
 or thirty years from to-night?" 
 
 Indeed Truman had voiced the feeling in the 
 hearts of them all. And they could not reply. 
 Just at the moment their hearts were too full to reply. 
 
 "I suppose," answered Sam lightly, "some of us 
 
 will be married and have families some of us will 
 
 have made successes of our lives and made money 
 
 or won fame and some of us maybe will 
 
 - be dead ! perhaps many years dead !" 
 
 There was a strange quiet in the cabin. Even 
 Mibb was sobered and looked into the flames with 
 staring eyes. It came to them that moment, as a 
 reaction from the foolery of that hour that had gone, 
 how aptly Sam had spoken. Yes, the spell of the 
 hour, the place and the music was indeed upon them. 
 But there was more. There was the mystery of 
 life and living and the thoughtless heart of youth 
 made suddenly thoughtful. 
 
 Herb Truman spoke again. His tone was strange 
 to those who knew him well. He seemed musing 
 aloud on what Sam had said : 
 
 "Yes, some ll have families and some ll be rich
 
 118 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 and some ll be famous. But I wonder which of us 
 will be the most successful just plain downright 
 successful never mind what our work in life 
 happens to be?" 
 
 " Successful ? " asked Mibb. " What do you mean 
 by successful?" 
 
 "Just successful," replied Slug doggedly. "I call 
 success wherein we ve done the things we set our 
 selves to do, to the best that s in us." 
 
 "You talk like a preacher," declared Mibb. "I 
 didn t know it was in you !" 
 
 Indeed, neither did the rest of them. And in 
 that time perhaps the first and last and only time 
 - the Truman boy showed what really lay within 
 him, the manner of man he might have been if he 
 had not been handicapped, cruelly handicapped, first 
 by lack of a mother, second by the woman whom he 
 married. There are folk in our town who have only 
 harsh words for Herbert Truman for the things which 
 subsequently happened. Verily they judged cruelly 
 from circumstantial evidence. They never took 
 the trouble nor were given the opportunity to gaze 
 down into the boy s soul and learn of the stuff of 
 which it was made. 
 
 They discussed success with the thoughtfulness 
 of youth ; for half an hour they talked of solemn 
 things, for they were on the threshold, some of them 
 of solemn things, for there is some truth to the prov 
 erb that coming events cast their shadows before. 
 Then, for what reason not one in that party ever 
 found out, though they debated over it through all 
 maturity Slug felt in the pocket of his waistcoat 
 and pulled out a coin. 
 
 "A twenty -dollar gold piece," said he. "Just 
 had an idea. Going to propose something funny."
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 119 
 
 "Funny? Don t break the charm of the hour 
 and the atmosphere," said Mary Wood. 
 
 "It s funny and it isn t," answered Slug. "Here s 
 a twenty-dollar gold-piece I say.; Carried it as a 
 pocket piece for a couple of years. I ll donate 
 it for the purpose. Let s do something unusual 
 with it to remember this picnic by. Let s 
 bury it!" 
 
 "Bury it!" 
 
 "In old Gold-Piece Blaisdell s pot here under the 
 fireplace. Let s put it away for twenty or thirty 
 years. Then twenty or thirty years whatever 
 number of years we agree on from to-night, let 
 us that are living and physically able to do so, 
 come back here to Gold-Piece Cabin if it s standing, 
 and dig up this coin !" 
 
 "Why dig it up then ? " asked Jack Purse. 
 
 "Dig it up and present it to the one of us who 
 has made the biggest success of his life." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " Sort of a medal of honor from the rest of us - 
 the crowd we used to go around with a tribute, 
 a sort of an admission that while some of us have 
 become successful, there s some one person here who 
 will be more successful than all the others. This 
 medal they can keep for the rest of their lives a 
 medal, as I say of honor !" 
 
 "A crazy idea !" scoffed Grace Rawlins. 
 
 "It s not a crazy idea!" contradicted Frank 
 Whitcomb. "It s bully!" 
 
 Several times as Herb was digging up the brick 
 from the hearth, to get to the miser s earthen pot 
 below, Mibb looked at him queerly. Verily it was 
 a different Herb disclosed for the moment than she 
 had ever known before.
 
 120 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 "In thirty years there won t be any gold-piece 
 that s recognizable," suggested Grace Rawlins. 
 
 "Gold stands the test of time," replied Sam. 
 "But it might be better if we had something to 
 protect it. Who s got a pocket match-safe they don t 
 mind donating to posterity ? " 
 
 It developed that the only match-safe in the crowd 
 belonged to Dick Robinson. 
 
 Slug found the brick, dug it loose, lifted it and 
 discovered the musty cavity. 
 
 "Here goes!" he declared. "Which shall it 
 be twenty or thirty years ? " he asked as he dropped 
 the medal into the thin German silver match-box 
 with a sharp brief jingle. 
 
 "This old shack won t be standing in thirty 
 years!" croaked Grace. "It s a waste of good 
 money ! " 
 
 "Which shall it be twenty or thirty years?" 
 repeated Slug again. 
 
 "Make it thirty," suggested Sam. 
 
 "Thirty it is!" declared Truman, enjoying the 
 unique prank and his part in it. 
 
 With all leaning forward and looking on, into the 
 earthen cavity Slug laid it almost reverently. Then 
 he carefully set the brick. 
 
 "Thirty years from to-night the seventeenth 
 of May, eighteen hundred and eighty six," he said. 
 "I wonder which of us it will go to then. 
 Thirty years from to-night ! that will be the 
 seventeenth of May, nineteen hundred and sixteen."
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 A SOMEWHAT GRUESOME CHAPTER AT THE END OF 
 WHICH OUR SOLICITUDE FOR THE WOOD GIRL 
 MOUNTS TO GRAVE CONCERN. 
 
 THEY did not go home together on that night. 
 Eight-thirty found Jack and Mary alone on the 
 hilltop that overlooks Paris on the east. Amid 
 the country quiet, in the depth of evening, the boy 
 took the girl in his arms and together they watched 
 the stars come out, and heard the frogs begin their 
 piping along the banks of the river. 
 
 "Oh, Jack, it s such a long time to wait until 
 you pay the debts four thousand dollars worth 
 of them. I try to keep up a brave front, Jack. 
 But when I get out a paper and pencil and figure for 
 myself, it makes me it makes me a coward." 
 
 "There ll be a way out somehow," he said hope 
 fully. "I don t expect to pay up four thousand 
 dollars out of my wages on the paper. I m only 
 trying to show the creditors I m on the level by 
 paying them what I can while I m waiting for my 
 opportunity. The opportunity will come sooner or 
 later and that doesn t mean I m content, Micawber 
 fashion, to idly wait for something to turn up. I m 
 doing a pile of thinking these days, Mary." 
 
 "Oh, Jack, if there was only some way that I 
 could help!" 
 
 "You are helping, right now! You don t half 
 know how much !"
 
 122 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 The stars grew brighter. The piping of the frogs 
 grew louder. Night indeed was upon them. 
 
 "I wonder," he said after the manner of the 
 poet which he was, as they saw the lights begin to 
 appear in the homes dotting the valley floor below 
 them and thought of what Herbert had done that 
 night, "I wonder what life holds for you and me, 
 Mary? If we could look into the future I wonder 
 what we would see there ; I wonder how different 
 we might be planning to-night ? " 
 
 He pressed the girl s hand, the hand with the 
 slender fingers which looked so frail and were destined 
 to do so much in the years that came afterward. 
 When we of the Telegraph office think of Jack that 
 night out on Bancroft s hill, pressing the girl s 
 delicate hand and thinking of what the years might 
 bring, we seem to feel a sadness which all the glories 
 of those intervening years and all the pleasures and 
 successes cannot assuage. 
 
 They came back to town late that night, his arm 
 about her shoulders, hers about his waist. 
 They walked slowly, each occupied with his own 
 thoughts, bareheaded, the sweet wild scents of 
 night country enveloping them. 
 
 "It s such a long time to wait, Jack, such a long 
 time to wait. And I want you so !" 
 
 "Yes," he said. "I ll do my best. God being 
 my witness, I will !" 
 
 Where the inlet runs up into Morse s pasture the 
 frogs were chorusing particularly loud. 
 
 "Oh Jack, I can t help thinking of how I heard 
 them the night I left home. A year ago ! Oh, 
 how short the time has been." A little later she 
 said: "Poor mother! We must drive out to the 
 place Sunday and see if she is all right and wants
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 123 
 
 for anything. She must have it brought to her how 
 happy and miserable I am !" 
 
 "Yes," said Jack absently, his thoughts on another 
 problem, "we will drive out there Sunday." A 
 quarter-mile further on he said between his teeth : 
 "I ve either got to get hold of a paper of my own 
 or I ve got to look around for some other business ! 
 I ve just got to make some money!" He said it 
 as though he had discovered something new under 
 the sun. 
 
 "Jack ! You wouldn t leave the Telegraph office ! 
 I somehow couldn t work there if you left." 
 
 "You can help me by being patient, dear," he said. 
 
 "Don t know which is harder, Jack, to be the one 
 who has the responsibility of making good or the 
 one who must remain quiet and patient while the 
 other strives to realize his ambition !" 
 
 He bade her good-night at her gate and left for 
 Ma Henderson s boarding place with her kiss burn 
 ing upon his lips. 
 
 At nine o clock that following morning Sam Hod 
 came into the back room. There was tragedy in 
 his expressive eyes ; his face was pale. 
 
 "Jack," he directed, "come into the front office." 
 
 Purse followed Sam. 
 
 The editor closed the doors and turned to the 
 young man. 
 
 "Son, you love Mary Wood, don t you?" 
 
 "Yes." The boy flushed but he was not ashamed. 
 
 "I knew it. I want to see the girl happy. Jack, 
 forget this absurdity about paying up all your father s 
 bills. The court has absolved you from any such 
 nonsense. Go get that girl, make her put on her 
 things and take a holiday with you. Get one of 
 Uncle Joe Fodder s rigs, drive off to some of the little
 
 124 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 towns roundabout and get married. Do it quickly, 
 right now, without losing another moment !" 
 
 "Mr. Hod, what s the matter? What s hap 
 pened ? " 
 
 "I advise you to do it for the sake of the girl 
 herself. I pity her; I want to know she s got a 
 good boy like you to look out for her and comfort 
 her." 
 
 "Comfort her? Why?" 
 
 "Boy, Henry Osgood has just driven in here from 
 the Cobb Hill district. He says he has only seen 
 Sheriff Crumpett, Doctor Johnson the coroner and 
 myself. The town don t know it yet. You can get 
 Mary out and away and give her something to 
 mitigate the blow " 
 
 "Mr. Hod!" The boy s voice was a hoarse 
 whisper. "Tell me what has happened. If it s 
 about her folks, I can comfort and help her just as 
 though we were already married - 
 
 "Silent Wheeler s gone and done it at last !" 
 
 "Done what?" 
 
 " Will you go get the girl and move her out of this 
 for the day? Marry her? I ll raise your wages to 
 eighteen a week." 
 
 "Mr. Hod, I can t, I can t ! Don t you see how it 
 is? I had something to do with some of the men 
 putting money into our newspaper. I ve got to 
 square with them or be a cad in my own heart. I 
 can t marry Mary right now although my heart s 
 about broke over it. Tell me straight; what has 
 Silent Wheeler done?" 
 
 Sam told him. 
 
 The boy went out into the back room. 
 
 "Mary," he said, ill himself from the thing which 
 he must do, "come out with me for an hour."
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 125 
 
 She raised her face to his with such a look of 
 wonder and innocence that his heart smote him so 
 he almost cried aloud. 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "I want to talk to you ! Please come," he begged. 
 
 She laid down her composing stick, slipped off her 
 apron, washed her hands at the little iron sink in the 
 corner and took down the big black straw hat be 
 hind the door. She followed him into the morning 
 sunshine. 
 
 On the morning of the thirty-first of May, 1883, 
 our little Vermont town was shocked by news of a 
 revolting crime. 
 
 On top the big green safe which stands in a 
 corner of our office are piled the bound files of our 
 newspaper covering four decades. They are more 
 or less accurate and certainly a most detailed history 
 of our community history in all those years. 
 
 Referring to those files for the refreshment of 
 memory, accuracy of date and the proper chronology, 
 those volumes of battered calf on which every cub 
 reporter has left uncountable thumb marks profit 
 us as follows : 
 
 About half -past six of May 30, of that year, Mrs. 
 Henry Osgood, who lived on a farm adjacent, was 
 returning from the exercises of the G. A. R. in Fox- 
 boro Center. She drove her old white horse in at 
 the Wheeler place and was about to alight when she 
 heard cries of terror coming from within. 
 
 She hesitated to alight from her muddy old 
 buggy and in that moment of hesitation caught sight 
 of a face a woman s face in one of the side 
 windows, distorted with agony or terror. Being 
 alone, badly startled herself, she belabored her old
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 white horse and started down the road to McDer- 
 mott s before she realized that because of the holi 
 day McDermott s would be deserted. Thus she 
 lost a valuable ten minutes. 
 
 There were no men at her own home that after 
 noon ; the nearest farm was the Adams place, six 
 miles to the north. She was about to start off across 
 a weed-grown cross-road for help from Gilberts 
 Mills when Joel Sibley and Ed Dickinson came along 
 in Joel s buckboard. The two men returned with 
 her. 
 
 The Wheeler place was ominously quiet. The 
 men explored cautiously. 
 
 Ed came back. 
 
 "Gawd!" he ejaculated. "There s enough blood 
 on the floor o the side bedroom to float a boat. And 
 it s fresh blood ! On your life, Mis Osgood, don t 
 you go in ! " 
 
 "It s a job for Sheriff Crumpett !" declared Joel. 
 "Either old Graveyard Wheeler s killed his woman, 
 or she s killed him." 
 
 "But where s the bodies ?" 
 
 "I don t know and I ain t got the stomach to 
 look. But one or t other is somewheres in this 
 house, and from the looks o* things, when they re 
 found they won t be nice to look at. Who goes 
 for Crumpett, you or us?" 
 
 "I ll go !" announced Mrs. Osgood. 
 
 Sheriff Crumpett from Foxboro Center was a 
 Grand Army man and was found just as he was 
 leaving G. A. R. hall. It was dark, the house was 
 eery, when three buggies came along the road and 
 turned sharply into the Wheeler yard with the 
 sheriff in the lead. They had lanterns. They 
 entered by the kitchen door, viewed the evidences
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 127 
 
 of tragedy in the side bedroom and began their 
 gruesome search of the premises. It was a task for 
 strong nerves. 
 
 They searched for two hours and found nothing 
 but the huge blood stain drying into the matting. 
 
 "I saw Mis Wheeler s face at the sittin -room 
 window, clear as day !" swore Mrs. Henry Osgood. 
 "And she looked murdered already." 
 
 "We ll have to wait for daylight and search the 
 farm," said Sheriff Crumpett. 
 
 Dawn came between half-past three and four 
 o clock. They sauntered out in the gray of the 
 misty morning and resumed the hunt. 
 
 Between five and six o clock Ed Dickinson tried 
 to draw some water from the well in the yard. The 
 bucket hung to the sweep failed to work properly. 
 Investigating, as the sun came up and daylight 
 filtered down into the deep regions of the well, he 
 caught sight of something which brought a hoarse, 
 excited cry and his companions on a run and ex 
 plained why their night s search of the premises 
 had been fruitless. 
 
 Scarcely had this awful thing been found and the 
 first shock of it passed, than one of the Osgood boys, 
 on going into the lower cow barn to water the neg 
 lected and noisy stock, made a second discovery 
 that completed the tragedy. 
 
 Three minutes later the stiffened hulk of Silent 
 Wlieeler was cut down by the steady hand of Sheriff 
 Crumpett from a beam over an empty stall where it 
 had hung through the hours of the night at the end 
 of an old tierope. Neck and head were twisted 
 and stiffened rakishly. Hen Osgood said afterward 
 that Wheeler s corpse reminded him of an old rat 
 removed from a trap the morning after.
 
 128 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 It was a typical country tragedy of those days, 
 the logical sequel of conditions which the daily 
 newspaper, the telephone and the low-priced auto 
 mobile are happily ameliorating. But for a month 
 and a day it was the chief topic of conversation in 
 the grocery stores, sewing circles and blacksmith 
 shops of the county or wherever two or three were 
 gathered together in small-town, back-country inter 
 course. 
 
 The woman with the terribly reddened hands had 
 paid the price of being a farmer s wife, of marrying 
 a man whose idea of a "woman" was a chattel, an 
 appliance to help him run his farm successfully. 
 
 At the request of the prostrated stepdaughter 
 the "authorities" (meaning the Foxboro selectmen) 
 assumed charge of the idiot whom Sheriff Crumpett 
 and his aids had not overlooked in that bare upper 
 room the night they hunted the place, and the boy 
 Artie was lodged temporarily in a private asylum 
 at the expense of the town, for our State at the 
 time had none of those model institutions for the 
 treatment of such cases which it has since acquired. 
 
 Silent Wheeler s brothers appeared from the four 
 corners of the county, and after making arrangements 
 for the most inexpensive burial possible, like selfish, 
 provincial, hill-town buzzards, started dividing the 
 Wheeler effects. Thereat the probate court stepped 
 in meaning Judge Farmer in Paris and ap 
 pointed old Short-Cramp Truman as Silent Wheeler s 
 executor. Between the "authorities", the sullen 
 bickering brothers, the bereaved stepdaughter, Jack 
 Purse, Sam Hod and Doctor Dodd of the Calvary 
 Methodist church the funeral was held, the two 
 pitifully plain caskets lowered into a double grave 
 and the crime became a thing of small-town history.
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 120 
 
 Observations and comment of representative local 
 people mostly female on the affair may be 
 introduced here as appropriate and fitting into the 
 warp and woof of our narrative. 
 
 At the Ladies Home Missionary Sewing Circle at 
 Mrs. Dexter Merritt s the following Thursday after 
 noon the following is of record : 
 
 Mrs. Blake Whipple, wife of our local undertaker, 
 who frequently assisted her husband in times of 
 professional rush and who enjoyed something of a 
 reputation as a business woman prone to place more 
 value on the shekels than on sentiment fitting 
 attributes perhaps for an undertaker s spouse 
 took a temperamentally commercial view of the 
 occurrence. She said she regretted Blake had 
 really went and put so much effort on making em 
 ready for the fun ral because Short-Cramp Truman, 
 the vinegar-blooded old scoundrel, had beat him 
 down on his bill as usual and Blake was too honest 
 to make out the bill for double the price and thus 
 compromise on what he originally expected. 
 
 Which lugubrious line of intercourse prompted 
 Mrs. Felix Taylor to inquire if any present supposed 
 that whoever bought the property would relish 
 drinkin the well water after Sarah had been fished 
 out from it, and Mrs. Fred Bellows to declare that 
 she wouldn t live in that Cobb Hill house after the 
 crime which had been committed there for a million 
 dollars and twenty-three cents per night. Thus 
 by due process of small-town elimination the con 
 versation came around to Mary Wood. 
 
 "I understand," advanced Mrs. Gaylord Miller, 
 "that she s engaged to the Purse boy at the news 
 paper office but they can t get married because the 
 Purse boy is deep in debt."
 
 130 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 "It s too bad the house is haunted," assumed 
 Mrs. Merritt, "or at least has got such gruesome 
 associations, because it really ain t so far away from 
 Paris but what them two could marry and live there 
 without havin no rent to pay and make up the sum 
 for the boy s debts." 
 
 "But she couldn t do that," declared Judge 
 Farmer s wife. "John said in my hearin that the 
 place and furniture and tools and stock would have 
 to be put up to auction. That s the law ! " 
 
 "Yet if Mary s goin to get the money from it 
 after the estate s settled, why does the law go to all 
 that bother?" Mrs. Howard wanted to know. 
 "Why not just turn it over to her and let her marry 
 who she pleases and live there without all that fuss 
 and expense?" 
 
 "She ain t goin to get the money from it," went 
 on Mrs. Farmer, looking very important as she 
 imparted her legal knowledge as became the wife 
 of our leading barrister and judge of probate. "The 
 law don t take no account o stepchildren and Mary s 
 a stepchild. The crazy boy Artie is the only heir. 
 The money 11 be spent for his keep. The Lord 
 knows taxes is high enough in the Foxboros without 
 folks over there havin to pay for his confinement in 
 no madhouse when there s money available if only 
 took. I hear Short-Cramp Truman s goin to send 
 him away to some place down in Massachusetts." 
 
 "Then Mary doesn t get anything?" demanded 
 Mrs. David Dodd, the minister s wife. 
 
 "Why should she? Let her marry the Purse boy 
 and have him support her." 
 
 "Yes," added Mrs. Elisha Porter, twice married 
 and reasonably willing to try it again. "At her age 
 I was married and had two offspring ! "
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 131 
 
 Everybody always hastened to head Mrs. Elisha 
 Porter off when she started in on her "offspring" 
 because in all the State of Vermont there were no 
 other "offspring" as remarkable as Mrs. Elisha 
 Porter s. So Mrs. Dodd said quickly : 
 
 "But it s kind of rough on the poor little thing. 
 And she s already had such a hard girlhood ! It s a 
 wonder to me she s the sweet, gentle little body that 
 she is and not more like some other unfortunates 
 in this town that could be helped more than they 
 are." 
 
 "Mibb Henderson?" inquired Mrs. Taylor. 
 
 "Yes," declared the minister s wife in righteous 
 indignation. "Mibb Henderson!" 
 
 "But I dare say that Mibb will take care of her 
 self and make a better marriage than the Wood 
 girl," commented Mrs. Miller. 
 
 General silence followed, broken only by the click 
 of knitting needles or the snip of shears. It was to 
 be expected that Mrs. Dodd would stand up for the 
 stepdaughter. It was entirely consistent with her 
 husband s profession. As for the others, the fact 
 that Silent Wheeler had done the thing which he had, 
 reduced him to that status of general misapprobation 
 where it was perfectly permissible for these good 
 women to air themselves after the tenor of their 
 souls. The strange feature was that not one of the 
 dozen or more had a single good word to say for the 
 woman with the terribly reddened hands. But 
 those who know New England can recognize that 
 this was not because they felt no compassion for her 
 whose life was done. It was because each and every 
 one of them realized the mockery which marriage 
 far too often was for country women, and their 
 reticence and indifference was that of trying to sup-
 
 132 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 pose that no such conditions existed because they 
 were never brought into conversation. 
 
 "I suppose Mary Wood knows she ain t got 
 nothin comin to her?" This from Mrs. Miller, 
 directed to the Judge s wife, who was the legal 
 authority of the dozen. 
 
 Mrs. Farmer was a long time replying. 
 
 "That s the pitiful part of it," she said finally. 
 "It s the job which my husband and Mr. Truman 
 hate most to bring themselves to do. She don t 
 dream of such a thing ; she was over to Mrs. Seaver s 
 yesterday to see about havin a black dress made to 
 wear in the newspaper office and she said that the 
 least she could do was to keep the home as near as 
 possible like it was when her mother left it."
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 SLUG TRUMAN CONTINUES TO BE A SPORT BUT 
 COMES ON A SAD ERRAND. 
 
 MARY sat on the side porch of the Cobb Hill place, 
 looking over the tops of the gnarled trees in the lower 
 orchard at the far-flung valley below. The country 
 side was leafing out more luxuriously with each 
 passing week, into the deep calm greens of mid 
 summer. 
 
 She had bought herself some cheap black stuff at 
 the Bon Ton store and Mrs. Amos Seaver, who did 
 "dressmaking reasonable", had fashioned it into a 
 mourning dress. Her dark hair was gathered low 
 at the back of her head. Her face held an un 
 healthy pallor, and her dark wistful eyes were red 
 dened with traces of many tears. 
 
 It was hard for her to realize as she sat on the 
 steps that the stepfather was dead, that he would 
 never sit more by the kitchen fire during the long 
 evenings, eternally brooding, nursing the poker, 
 lifting the warped red covers and spitting with 
 sharp hisses into the stove. It was hard to believe 
 that the long, anxious evening hours, when her 
 mother awaited his homecoming with the greenish 
 fire smouldering in his inhuman eyes, were over for 
 all time. But it was hardest to realize that she 
 would never see her mother again. The bitterest 
 part of her sorrow was that she had been able to go 
 home but four times in the brief year which had
 
 134 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 passed, that her mother had seen Jack but once, 
 that the inability to get home because of finances or 
 transportation was tantamount to neglect and that 
 the woman had gone with no one at hand to help 
 her. And yet she had gone and was out of her 
 earthly Golgotha. That was something. 
 
 About the place were a hundred evidences of the 
 man who had died so terribly, and of her mother s 
 personality. At the edge of a narrow, newly- 
 planted garden by the fence she saw a trowel which 
 had been laid down by her mother s hand but a few 
 days, not over a week bygone. A couple of her 
 mother s big white hens came leisurely around the 
 corner of the house, searching philosophically for 
 grubs, crooning to themselves and darting forward at 
 a fly together. Tom Tinker, the big tiger cat who 
 had purred in her mother s lap and kept her com 
 pany on many lonesome evenings, came out of the 
 shed door, started across the yard and stopped mid 
 way, catlike, to scratch a particularly inaccessible 
 spot on his anatomy. Two of the Holsteins were 
 browsing along down in the lower lane and toward 
 the barnyard bars as the sun sank lower. It seemed 
 strange the homely little world she had known from 
 girlhood could be so much the same and yet so 
 different. 
 
 She tried to think out her plans for the future. 
 If Jack would have accepted the money, she would 
 have brought herself to sell the place and use the 
 proceeds in his financial predicament. But he had 
 scolded her for thinking of such a thing. She 
 thought that she could get one of the Osgood boys 
 to work the farm for her and get enough out of it to 
 keep up the taxes and help out their finances after 
 she and Jack were married. She was thankful that
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 135 
 
 old Peter Whipple at the bank had refused her step 
 father a mortgage on the place last year when he 
 wanted cash to take over the Perkins woodlot. At 
 least she did not have that mortgage to worry over 
 and pay. 
 
 She was trying to think of some man and wife 
 who might be glad of the opportunity to live at the 
 place and run it for her when she heard the rumble 
 of buggy wheels and the click of steel tires in the 
 sand on the other side of the wall and the maples. 
 The next instant a spirited horse spanked into the 
 yard, his hoofs becoming immediately noiseless as 
 he stepped on the short-cropped lawn. 
 
 She was expecting Jack to come out after work 
 and return to the village with her, for her finances 
 demanded that she be back at her typecase in the 
 morning. But it was unusual that Jack should have 
 hired a livery rig. 
 
 Then she recognized the horse before she recog 
 nized the driver, for the driver s body was momen 
 tarily obscured by the little animal s head. It was 
 Monday- Washing. 
 
 "Herbert !" she said, arising. 
 
 He fastened the mare to the hammock ring in 
 the corner of the house. He came across and took 
 her trembling, outstretched hand, pulling off his 
 cap as he did so and freeing the mammoth cowlick 
 which seemed surprised to find itself uncovered and 
 rose up as much as to say : "Well, and whereabouts 
 in the world is this place, anyhow ? " 
 
 "I went to Mis Mather s place and asked for 
 you, and she said you were out here to your folks s 
 place gatherin up some things. So I just come on 
 out " 
 
 "I m glad you did, Herbert. I don t know any
 
 136 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 one whom I would rather see just now than yourself, 
 excepting " 
 
 "I understand," he said. It was one time when 
 he did not "put his foot in it." 
 
 She placed a big armchair for him on the porch and 
 sat down opposite. 
 
 "It come kind o sudden an tough, didn t it?" 
 
 "Yes," she said. 
 
 The conversation lagged. He tortured his hat. 
 
 "I come on business for my father. It s 
 about your estate." ~ . . . 
 
 A little fear stabbed in the girl s heart. Like all 
 country people she had a nameless dread of that 
 great, all-powerful, ofttimes cruel thing known as 
 the Law. And "business" and "estate" were terms 
 of law. The pallor on her face deepened as she 
 waited for Slug to make his errand known. 
 
 "Yes?" she prompted faintly. 
 
 But Slug was in no hurry. 
 
 "You you think a lot of Purse, don t you, 
 Mary ? " He did not wait for her to make a painful 
 reply. "I see you do and that for me it ain t no 
 use. I guess I warn t cut out to have the kind o 
 wife such as you. A sportin man don t cry over 
 spilt milk nor when the cards goes against him. And 
 life s more or less of a sportin proposition, anyhow, 
 but love is a stacked deck ! Oh, hell ! " 
 
 He did not mean to be coarse. The exclamation 
 came from his heart. 
 
 " Herbert - 
 
 "Why don t you marry him, Mary? Is it true 
 that he s payin up debts the law don t require him 
 to pay ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "He wouldn t do that unless he was more than on
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 137 
 
 the level I don t think. I m glad if I can t have 
 you, that a chap s going to be your man who s like 
 that. I ll feel safer." 
 
 "You ll feel safer!" 
 
 "I d hate to think o you married to a man that 
 grew to be like your stepfather was at least what 
 the town believed." 
 
 The girl turned her face away. 
 
 "Mary, there s a lot o jokin about a girl bein 
 a sister to a man after she s give him the mitten. 
 But I sort o wish seein I m cut out by 
 Jack Purse that you d look on me same as a brother." 
 
 "Herbert," she said after a painful interval, 
 "I hope it will make you happy to know that I ve 
 thought of you that way from the night when you 
 first invited me into your house. Maybe that s 
 why I let you kiss me and yet didn t come 
 to think of you quite like I ve come to think of 
 Jack." 
 
 "Then you don t mind talkin about yourself to 
 me?" he asked after the ruination of the cap was 
 nearly completed. "Not so long as I mean it all 
 right?" 
 
 "What can I possibly say, Herbert?" 
 
 "Mary, ain t you got no folks nowhere that could 
 give you a hand in this scrape?" 
 
 "No," she replied. "Both my mother s brothers 
 were killed at Malvern Hill. My stepfather s folks 
 have no interest in me nor have I any claim on them ; 
 I wouldn t press it even if I had. My own father 
 had a couple of brothers ; one of them went out to 
 Kansas and was killed by the Indians. There s one 
 left still, I think, Uncle Josiah who was last 
 heard from in Chicago. I m pretty much 
 alone; that is, excepting for you and Jack."
 
 138 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 "Mary, ain t, there no way I could help you?" 
 
 "No, Herbert," she said with sudden grimness in 
 her voice. "This happens to be one of those times 
 in life when we just have to shut our teeth and stiffen 
 our will power and face our problems and solve them 
 for ourselves. I don t ask pity. I don t ask 
 charity. All I want is friendship and a fair 
 chance to work and live and be happy with those 
 I love. The shock of losing mother was awful ; 
 naturally I feel badly and will continue to feel badly 
 for a long time. But perhaps I ve been sent all the 
 hard experiences of my girlhood to make me strong 
 for the battle royal I ve got alongside Jack now; 
 perhaps there ll come a day when I ll understand 
 why my way wasn t made easy up to now and 
 be thankful because the experiences I ve had made 
 me strong and self-reliant and poised and equipped 
 to fight that battle alongside the man I marry to 
 make me the proper wife for him. I m not feeling 
 sorry a bit for myself ; it s Jack and mother and 
 you that I m feeling sorry for. As for myself 
 I ll manage somehow ! " 
 
 "Mary, if ever the time comes when you need 
 me same as you might need a brother - 
 
 "Thank you deeply, sincerely, from the bottom 
 of my heart, Herbert." 
 
 "I just come out here to give you a letter that dad 
 wanted I should see you got. That s the business 
 I meant about your estate." 
 
 "A letter?" 
 
 She took the long envelope in a hand that trembled 
 nervously. She carefully undid the flap and read 
 the enclosure. One hand held the letter before her. 
 The other fumbled in her waist. It found her small 
 lace handkerchief. The handkerchief was suddenly
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 139 
 
 pressed tightly against her lips. Then the letter 
 was lowered, the face with the handkerchief held 
 tightly against it, averted. As she got to her feet, 
 Short-Cramp s message fluttered out onto the lawn. 
 
 "What s the trouble, Mary?" 
 
 In a voice which was an effort to keep from break 
 ing and betraying her brave words of a moment 
 before, she said : 
 
 "Your father has just sent word that I mustn t 
 touch nor carry away anything from here but my 
 mother s and my own personal property. He says 
 the law doesn t recognize anybody but Artie as the 
 heir step-children don t count." 
 
 "It s hard, Mary. I ve known it from the first. 
 But don t blame the Governor. He didn t make the 
 law." 
 
 "I thought I thought maybe I was going 
 to have the place and " 
 
 "It s got to be auctioned," the boy stated miser 
 ably. 
 
 Independence Day arrived. Five weeks slipped 
 away and came August sixteenth, the annual observ 
 ance of the Battle of Bennington and a Vermont 
 holiday. The leaves and bowered country had lost 
 the virility of summer freshness. They were dusty 
 and faded and gradually streaked with yellow and 
 brown. Time was going relentlessly along into 
 another autumn. The village housewives began 
 covering their rose bushes and flower beds with 
 sheeting and papers at night to preserve their 
 beauty for a few weeks longer. 
 
 Canny old Truman and the other two dummy 
 executors decided to wait until after the crops were 
 in before holding the Wheeler auction. The farm-
 
 140 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 ers would then have time and money to make the 
 sale a financial success. 
 
 It came one day early in Indian summer. Jack 
 found the girl on that night of the Wheeler sale down 
 in the lower orchard. She had no other place to 
 go. She had climbed up on the hoary, gnarled old 
 arm of the russet apple-tree, the only one in the 
 orchard, the place where as a little girl she had 
 played through violet vistaed hours with her dolls. 
 There was no one to comfort her, no one left from 
 those Other Years but the old russet apple-tree. 
 And soon all too soon that would be but a 
 memory. 
 
 A few feet away was the hole in the stone wall 
 where she had first seen the little Haskins boy who 
 had played with her for a little time and then moved 
 away and grown up and become a minister and gone 
 as a missionary to India. Where was he now, and 
 did he ever think of the girl on the adjoining farm 
 in Foxboro who had dared to follow him through the 
 hole in the stone wall under boulders that might 
 easily slide off and crush them ? She wondered. 
 
 Over between the two scrawny astrachan trees 
 was the big boulder where she had always sought 
 safety from the wicked knives of the mowing machine 
 when they cut the grass in the orchard. She had 
 played mud pies there with Nellie Harrington, who 
 came down from the Harrington place which had 
 burned years and years ago and was now only a 
 blackberry-grown cellar hole and a stump of brick 
 chimney. Nellie had married one of the Blodgett 
 boys and died with the coming of a little child. 
 
 A score of old familiar things she saw : The one 
 pure white stone in the wall where on a winter s day 
 she had come face to face with a fox ; the outline of
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 141 
 
 the frog-pond in the swamp where some men had 
 once shot an ailing horse; the bars into the wood 
 lot where the youngest Osgood boy had started a 
 fire with stolen matches and nearly ruined a town 
 ship ; raspberry and blackberry bushes where she 
 had watched for the first autumn fruit to ripen. 
 Every feature of the landscape had its associations. 
 
 "Old apple-tree! dear old russet apple-tree!" 
 she choked. "I m going away now and I can t 
 come back any more. You have always seemed 
 human to me. Will you remember the little girl 
 who played dolls here, and brought cookies and 
 sugared bread-and-butter here, and came here for 
 solace when she had been punished for some dis 
 obedience of childhood? Will you remember her, 
 old apple-tree, and think of her as having gone 
 out into the world from this day a woman ? " 
 
 A breeze blowing over the valley stirred the 
 branches. It seemed as though the tree had replied. 
 She stole her arms about its battered scaly trunk and 
 placed her fair face close against its surface. 
 
 Her face was streaming tears when Jack came upon 
 her. 
 
 "Mary," he said with a wonderful tenderness in 
 his rebuke, "you promised you weren t going to the 
 auction to-day ; you said you were going to stay with 
 the Osgoods until after the agony was over. That s 
 why I worked at the office. Otherwise I should have 
 tried to be with you." 
 
 She slipped off the apple-tree s low bough as a little 
 child climbs down from the knee of an aged grand 
 parent, slipped down and stood before her lover 
 with her back against the tree. 
 
 He looked into her face and he knew what she had 
 that day suffered and was suffering now.
 
 142 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 "Mary ! " he said huskily. 
 
 "I never felt more lonely in my life than I do now, 
 Jack," she said. "Up to now I have been only a 
 girl. After this I m a woman, a woman and 
 alone. A man can be alone and lonely and not 
 mind, but a lonely woman is the most miserable 
 creature in God s world." 
 
 "Mary," he said, "I ve been talking to Mr. Hod. 
 He was at the auction you know, and he saw you. 
 He made me come out early and and take care 
 of you. Mary, dear, I m alone, too. I m alone 
 and in debt. I have my own way to make, my living 
 to earn under a handicap. You know what that 
 handicap is and what it means. But Mary, since this 
 has happened, since you too have been left alone, 
 since my talk with Mr. Hod and his kindness to me, 
 I ve come to realize what it means for you and I to 
 try to solve this problem alone and apart. I I want 
 you, Mary. I want you to help and encourage me ; 
 to work with me ; to be at home when I come there 
 at night after trying to fight my way ahead in 
 the day. I want to feel that nothing is going to 
 part us but death. I want you to marry me, 
 Mary, marry me and fight with me, and share 
 with me the glory of winning the victory. Perhaps 
 I have no right to ask it. I m a poor man. But 
 we are both alone and poor now. "Why should it 
 be any harder to fight our way together than sepa 
 rately and alone ?" 
 
 "It would be easier Jack ! " 
 
 "Will you marry me, Mary ?" 
 
 "When?" she asked fearfully. 
 
 "Now!" he said. "To-night! Mr. Hod said 
 and I see how truly he knew that you would need 
 me to-night, especially. Oh, Mary ! I love
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 143 
 
 you ! I want you ! Come with me and let s live 
 together ! " 
 
 Under the old apple-tree where she had played with 
 her dolls and brought spiced cookies and dried her 
 childhood tears and fell on many golden afternoons 
 a-dreaming with books of lords and fine ladies and 
 knight-errants and charming princes spread before 
 her but forgotten, she told him that she would marry 
 him that night.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 AND so THEY WERE MARRIED BUT DID THEY 
 LIVE HAPPILY EVER AFTER AS THE STORY BOOKS 
 HAVE HAD IT SlNCE THE DAYS WHEN THE OLD 
 EARTH WAS YOUNG? 
 
 LIFE holds many mysteries, but among them 
 is none greater than this : That the lives of some folk 
 should lead into pleasant places and beside still waters, 
 that most of their troubles should be small ones, that 
 their days should be filled with pleasure and their 
 nights with untroubled slumber. And that there 
 should be other folk, in no way responsible, for whom 
 existence is a pathway through many shadows, for 
 whom many of the most en joy able of life s experiences 
 are denied, whose days are filled with endless labor 
 and evenings with heartache. 
 
 These are the things understood only by those who 
 with clean hands and a pure heart aspire to the secret 
 places of the Most High : That there is a Glory which 
 comes to these other folk a Greater Glory than 
 anything which men of little hearts and little minds 
 conceive. 
 
 This, our tale, is a love story. But for the tired 
 scribe whose pen scratches line after line across the 
 paper, it is more than that. It is the Greater Glory 
 as he has seen it descend upon a woman. It is the 
 narrative of a girl s love for a man and the still 
 greater love for the sons of that man which she bore 
 him as has been set down before. But it does not end
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 145 
 
 with a wedding. Few of us, indeed, live "happily 
 ever after." It ends with the coming of the Greater 
 Glory as will be subsequently set forth. It goes 
 beyond the commencement of courtship. It follows 
 onward into some of the deep and sacred tragedies 
 and dramas of plain, ordinary, day-to-day living. 
 And the best part of it is this : This is the story of 
 Everywoman, your wife and my wife, your 
 mother and my mother a dedication, a eulogy, 
 a testament. 
 
 Mary Wood married Jack Purse on the evening 
 of the day of the auction. She married him in the 
 little front parlor of the Methodist parsonage on 
 School Street before the Reverend David Dodd, who 
 is now sainted old "Doctor" Dodd of the Calvary 
 Methodist Church. The only witnesses were Mrs. 
 Dodd, who blew her nose, shed tears and smiled 
 simultaneously all through the ceremony, which 
 after all was so short and simple as to seem as though 
 something were horribly illegal somewhere at starting 
 immediately to live together afterward. 
 
 If, on the evening of her wedding day, Mary gave 
 a thought to the dreams she had dreamed, of the gor 
 geous wedding which she had imagined w r as coming 
 on some wonder night in the future, of wealth and as 
 piration and golden opportunity which married life 
 was to open to her, no one knew it but herself. If 
 there was the least twinge of bittersweet disappoint 
 ment that this simple little exchange of promises 
 before the kindly minister was her "great wonder 
 night", it never disturbed the outer surface of the 
 love for the young chap whom she raised her sweet 
 face up toward when the thing was done and called 
 him husband. Despite her mother s experience, her
 
 146 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 mother s bitterness, the girlhood of warning, she had 
 married finally for love, on eighteen dollars a week, 
 and before her lay the same variety of matrimony 
 which year in and year out has dotted the continent 
 with millions and millions of homes and makes up, 
 forsooth, the Great America. But very worthwhile 
 homes they are, though built on a very great amount 
 of affection, the courage of ignorance, and a pitifully 
 meager amount of money. 
 
 The boy and girl came out and stood on the side 
 walk. 
 
 "Mr. Hod says we are to come up to his house and 
 spend our first night together," Jack said huskily. 
 
 At the top of Maple Street Hill, before Sam s house, 
 she paused. For a moment she clasped his arm, her 
 face against his shoulder. 
 
 "Oh, Jack," she said softly, "I guess I guess - 
 I m yours now ; yours to love, work with, play with, 
 suffer with, sorrow with yours to abuse, neglect, 
 forsake. My life is yours now, Jack. Like the verse 
 . in the Bible : Where you live I will live. What you 
 suffer, I will suffer. Your joys shall be my joys ; 
 your successes my successes. I don t mind what the 
 future brings only this : Be good to me Jack, - 
 take me and do what you will with me. But be as 
 kind as you can, Jack, that some day I may be able 
 to show mother she was wrong ! " 
 
 And man and wife, they passed in to Sam Hod s 
 house for their first supper together. 
 
 At the moment that Jack Purse and Mary Wood 
 entered Sam Hod s house together, another girl 
 came out of the Henderson house and strolled lei 
 surely down Main Street. 
 
 Near the corner of Union Street she heard the rattle
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 147 
 
 of buggy wheels behind her and the hoarse bark of an 
 excited dog. She turned. Slug Truman, driving 
 Monday- Washing with Cardinal Wolsey on the seat 
 beside him, stopped at the curb beside her. 
 
 "Mibb come here," he called thickly. 
 
 She switched her jacket to her other arm and 
 strolled across the strip of sod to the buggy side. 
 
 "Well!" she demanded. "What ails you, Slug? 
 You look like a case of seven- weeks sickness." 
 
 "Anything on this evenin , Mibb ?" 
 
 "Nothin special." 
 
 "Get in and take a ride with me, Mibb." 
 
 "Where you goin ?" 
 
 "Get in and take a ride with me, and I ll tell you. 
 It s awful important, Mibb." 
 
 She cast an uneasy look at his heavy features, but 
 she calculated she could take care of herself with any 
 man that she ever see wearin pants and so she got in 
 beside the boy and they rumbled away in the sum 
 mer s evening. 
 
 "Mibb Mary Wood has just married Jack 
 Purse ! " 
 
 "She s what?" 
 
 "Married Jack Purse to-night ! to-night ! in 
 the Methodist parsonage. They re up to supper 
 together at Hod s right now. They re man and 
 wife!" 
 
 "The little fool!" Mibb ejaculated. "But 
 why the ding-ding are vou takin on about it, 
 Slug?" 
 
 "I guess I m I m jealous, Mibb." 
 
 "Jealous of who Purse ?" 
 
 "Of just bein married and have somebody to care 
 about me." 
 
 " Gosh, but you re an awful fathead ! "
 
 148 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 "Don t talk to me like that, Mibb. It hurts!" 
 He sloughed down into the seat. "Hell," he told her 
 miserably, "you don t know what a happy home we 
 got up there on Main Street, dad sick, Esmeralda 
 stage-struck and always bossin Ma, and Ma with no 
 more spine than a than a than a fish ! I m sick 
 of it, Mibb plumb sick. I wish it was different, 
 Mibb so different." 
 
 She looked at him out of the corner of her world- 
 wise young eye. 
 
 "Just how sick is your dad, anyhow?" 
 
 "Pretty bad, Mibb. He may go off any day now. 
 He s hit pretty hard." 
 
 "Slug," she said quietly, "let s run away and get 
 married too ! " 
 
 "Let s what!" he cried. 
 
 "Let s run away and get married. Mary Wood 
 and Jack Purse aren t the only ones who can play the 
 game." 
 
 "You d marry me a great big lummox 
 that s always puttin his hoof in everything?" 
 
 "Yes," she declared determinedly, as though she 
 had arrived at her decision long beforehand, "I ll 
 marry you, Herb Truman." 
 
 "W-h-e-n?" he demanded blankly. 
 
 "Any old time you want me !" 
 
 The big, fat, rosy young man turned pale. Then 
 the blood surged into his face again and made it 
 beefy red. 
 
 "You mean it, Mibb?" 
 
 "You don t imagine I m talkin in my sleep do 
 you, on a question of so much importance ? " 
 
 "Oh Mibb!" 
 
 "There s no need for you to get maudlin about it, 
 as I see," she reminded him.
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 149 
 
 "But you called Mary a a little fool." 
 
 "Sure she s a little fool. Because Jack Purse isn t 
 situated like you re situated." 
 
 Herb should have taken warning from that signif 
 icant declaration, but he did not. The lad was 
 heartsick, lonesome and miserable. It wasn t the 
 girl he was in love with, it was love and comradeship 
 and consolation in his life. He recovered from his 
 lugubrious surprise and like the boy eternal that he 
 was in his heart, he suddenly began to enthuse with 
 the proposition the Henderson girl had suggested. 
 
 "The evening train is comin down the valley," 
 he cried. "Hear the whistle? Mibb ! let s 
 let s elope!" 
 
 "The sky s the limit!" she retorted brazenly. 
 "Yes, let s!" 
 
 " The station ! I wonder can we make it ?" 
 
 "We could if I had those lines." 
 
 "Giddap, Monday-Washin ! " he cried suddenly. 
 And he struck the little mare with the whip. 
 
 Down through the village they were carried swiftly 
 and around the corner of Depot Street toward the 
 station. Just once Herb wondered if he might not 
 regret this thing she had proposed. But Mary Wood 
 was lost to him now, lost for always. He might as 
 well take second choice while he had the chance. 
 Besides, he didn t want to endure the coming week of 
 readjustment alone. A wife of his own might help. 
 And so he refused to harken to consequences. 
 
 And they made their train. 
 
 " We ll just see who gets the most out of marriage ! " 
 declared Mibb Henderson grimly and with abandon. 
 
 "What?" demanded Herb above the rumble of 
 the vehicle. 
 
 "I m not talkin to you; I m talkin to myself.
 
 150 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 I was making a remark about something Mary 
 Wood said once. It s nothing you need lose any 
 sleep over, now ! " 
 
 So, with a far different kind of feeling in her heart, 
 another girl in the office of our little local paper went 
 that night to her marriage. 
 
 And Slug Truman married Mabel Henderson, 
 "the nine-o clock-girl", instead of Mary Wood, and 
 up in heaven an angel sighed a couple of times and 
 then with a philosophical remark which no one in 
 heaven above overheard, flew about its celestial 
 business.
 
 PART II
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 WE HAVE FOLLOWED OUR YOUNG FOLK THROUGH 
 THE MORNING OF THEIR LIVES AND THE THROES 
 OF YOUNG LOVE. WE COME NOW TO THE AFTER 
 NOONS AT PRESENT THE EARLY AFTERNOONS 
 AND THE HENDERSON GIRL COMES BACK FROM HER 
 WEDDING TRIP. 
 
 FOR the proper and orderly denouement of the 
 events which have gone before, it has been necessary 
 to refer now and then to the old files of our news 
 paper from the time we founded the Telegraph up to 
 83. But approaching now the events in the years 
 1883 to 1897, it is necessary to take the battered old 
 volumes down from the safe, spread them freely over 
 tables, chairs and reporters desks, and watch the 
 front pages and follow the local columns day by day. 
 For from the ready-reference of those files we have 
 refreshed in our memories many incidents that 
 throw sidelights on the people of our story, help to 
 straighten our chronology and bind in neatly to form 
 a symmetrical, clean-cut whole, many of the tiny 
 frayed ends and ravelings of our narrative. 
 
 For instance, here comes first a half-column account 
 of the Purse- Wood nuptials. It says that they were 
 "quietly married" at the Methodist parsonage on 
 the preceding evening on account of "the recent 
 death of the bride s mother." There is a brief sketch 
 of each person s life in which the phrases "accepted a
 
 154 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 position" when the meaning is that they "got a 
 job", and "in order to advance their prospects" 
 when the inference is that it was the only thing left 
 for them to do under the circumstances, occur fre 
 quently in the text. Thus do these calloused, heart 
 less, obstreperous country newspapermen prostitute 
 their talents ignominously to soften the tragedies of 
 day-to-day living for plain people and help them to 
 put the best face upon shame and necessity and 
 misfortune in the eyes of the multitude. 
 
 Witness how the account reads on : That owwg 
 to recent untoward events bride and groom will "post 
 pone their honeymoon until a later date" but that 
 in honor of the nuptials a pretty wedding supper was 
 served at the home of the young couple s employer 
 attended by a "few intimate friends." And the 
 menu is given in all of which may be detected the 
 hand of Mrs. Hod and the heart of her husband. 
 
 Turn over two issues and here on the fifth page, 
 third column, fourth item down is something else : 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. John Purse, who were recently 
 married at the Methodist parsonage, have furnished 
 a home in the house owned by William Stevens 
 on Pleasant Street and will entertain their many 
 friends after November 1st. 
 
 What did it matter that the "furnishing of a home" 
 was merely the fitting up of three rooms in one of 
 Bill Stevens upper tenements next to the wood yard 
 on Pleasant Street, that the "furnishings" were 
 mostly indescribably sacred little odds and ends 
 which the girl had saved from the auction or bid 
 in with her slender purse or that Jack had bought on 
 instalments from Blake Whipple s "Household 
 Emporium & Furniture Bazaar " ? The hands of a
 
 155 
 
 woman with a song in her heart have been accom 
 plishing miracles in making a human habitation 
 out of nothing since the days when the cave man 
 returned at nightfall and found a curtain of skins 
 hung before his door in the first faint privacies of the 
 race. 
 
 Mary s hands were busy and her heart was singing. 
 When November first brought the curious friends, not 
 one of them conceived in his most irrational moment 
 that the hideously ugly box house with its flat tin 
 roof and awful jig-saw trimmings could have sheltered 
 the homely comfort which they found. It was a sad 
 day when Bill sold his three tenements as a site for a 
 business block and one by one Mary had to take 
 down the pictures and knickknacks and fold up the 
 carpets. On all the long life journey from a fur 
 nished room to a mansion, there is never again a home 
 just like the first. 
 
 Lest we be accused of morbidness, let us turn a few 
 more pages of the files. What is this under a "two 
 head" down in the lower left-hand corner of this 
 front page? 
 
 The village was pleasantly surprised last evening 
 when the six o clock train up the valley brought back 
 to Paris two young people very well known in the 
 community, who during a week s absence have joined 
 their lives and fortunes : Herbert R. Truman, son of 
 our well-known manufacturer Silas Truman, and 
 Miss Mabel Henderson, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. 
 Harvey Henderson of East Main Street, who is being 
 introduced about town to-day as Mrs. Herbert 
 Truman. 
 
 The couple had been entirely successful in keeping 
 their courtship secret and last Friday night they
 
 156 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 slipped away quietly down to Brattleboro and were 
 married. They have since been spending a week s 
 honeymoon in Boston and Providence. 
 
 Mr. Truman is in business with his father in the 
 manufacture of the celebrated Short-Cramp Farm 
 Wagon and Mrs. Truman for the past four years has 
 been employed as compositor in the Telegraph office. 
 It is a queer coincidence that all unwittingly the 
 couple were married at about the same hour as two 
 other employes of the local newspaper plant, Mr. and 
 Mrs. John Purse. Cupid appears to have acquired 
 an extraordinary fancy for the office where the 
 Telegraph is published. 
 
 For the present Mr. and Mrs. Truman have taken 
 a suite at the Whitney House. It is rumored that 
 the bridegroom is negotiating for the purchase of the 
 Holland property on Maple Street which he will 
 have rebuilt and furnished for a home. The best 
 wishes of their many friends go with them for a long 
 and happily married life. 
 
 "Huh!" exclaimed that lovable old philosopher, 
 Uncle Joe Fodder, as he sat in our office whence he 
 came to read the down-state exchanges, " happily 
 married life ! It s got to go that way in print, I 
 suppose. But when one party marries on heartache 
 and t other marries on a flyin grab for purple and 
 fine linen, there s goin to be just about as much hap 
 piness as between Cain and the girl from Nod when 
 she found out his record and called on the four winds 
 o heaven to witness that she was a buncoed woman. 
 When Mibb finds out Herb s always loved some one 
 else and when Herb finds out that most of his wad is 
 findin its way into the hands o his wife s mother, be 
 lieve me there s goin to be doin s. It ll be a case of
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 157 
 
 a snippy, fussy little female poodle mated up to a 
 brokenhearted mastiff." 
 
 "Maybe there s something to it," Sam admitted. 
 
 "You re gol-durned right there s somethin to it," 
 vouched Uncle Joe. "Give em two months and 
 watch the ruckus. Solomon, father of all Masons 
 because he had so many wives, had an easier time 
 with his domestic circle than Herb s goin to have 
 with just two." 
 
 "Two?" 
 
 "Mibb and Mrs. Harvey Henderson." 
 
 "But will Herb s folks stand for anything from 
 Mrs. Harvey Henderson ?" 
 
 "No. That s why there s goin to be fireworks 
 for Herb. He ain t married Mibb alone, which 
 would be bad enough. He s went and spliced up 
 with her family." 
 
 Mary had not given up her job following her 
 marriage. She and Jack needed her wages worse 
 than ever. So she was in the back room alone, 
 starting in early that noon because we were short- 
 handed, when Mibb came in. 
 
 Neither the Queen of Sheba nor Dolly Varden had 
 anything on Mibb on her return from her wedding 
 journey. She wore an elaborate creation of broad 
 cloth and satin, mauve and mustard. The skirt 
 was flounced and draped and multiple-pleated after 
 the fashion of the period, the bustle and the basque 
 waist set off a figure which Skinny Napoleon declared 
 was a cross between the Venus de Milo and a two- 
 day drunk, and on her head she wore one of those 
 ridiculously small hats seen now only in the wood 
 cuts of old ante-bellum magazines. 
 
 "Hello, little Eight-Point!" she called out. 
 "How s the local column?"
 
 158 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 Mary rested her stick on the edge of her case and 
 stared at the butterfly that had emerged from its 
 black cambric chrysalis. 
 
 "Well," demanded Mibb, "and how do you like 
 the landscape gardening?" 
 
 " You re beautiful ! " exclaimed Mary, her hun 
 gry eyes taking in every detail of the citified attire. 
 
 "I m graduated thank Gawd !" returned Mibb, 
 with a suggestive sniff at the lay-out of cases. "I 
 thought I d drop in because I heard you and Jack 
 had also married. I didn t know," insinuated Mibb 
 with a poke of the parasol that matched the suit 
 at an old patent-medicine cut lying on the floor, 
 - that Jack could afford it. But you re going to 
 keep on working, of course. That explains it." 
 
 Mary picked up her stick hurriedly. She read 
 it over with eyes which saw no type. 
 
 "Yes," she said after a time, "I m going to keep 
 on working." 
 
 Mibb paced grandly up and down the short type 
 alley, swinging the parasol, affecting to be interested 
 in the type cases as though she had never seen them 
 before and wondered how such little slivers of metal 
 were managed. 
 
 "Of course I wouldn t say anything for the world 
 about another woman s husband ; but weren t you a 
 bit hasty, Mary ? You ought to have waited until 
 you could afford it, you know." 
 
 "I wasn t any more hasty than you were, 
 Mibb." Mary examined very minutely the badly- 
 penned copy before her on the cap-case. 
 
 " What do you mean ? Why, Herbert and I have 
 been going together for years long before you ever 
 arrived in Paris ! And we d been planning our 
 elopement for weeks and weeks. It was grand ! "
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 159 
 
 Mary remained silent. The type began to click in 
 her stick. 
 
 "We ve decided to buy the Holland house. 
 I think I shall have it made over, retaining its 
 colonial style." She continued to stroll restlessly 
 about, examining things very superficially and con 
 descendingly. 
 
 "I hope you will be very happy," said Mary. She 
 did not know what else to say. 
 
 "Happy? Huh! Leave it to me, Mary Wood. 
 I always told you, didn t I, there was nothing like 
 money to make a marriage happy. Herb says to 
 me this morning, he says : I want you should have 
 everything your heart desires, Mabel ; you only got 
 one life to live and while it s short it ought to be 
 merry. Don t let money stand in your way of mak 
 ing life worth living. Anything you see that you 
 want, say the word and I ll try to see that you get it.* 
 That s the kind of husband to have, Mary Wood." 
 
 "Yes," said Mary, "that s the kind of husband to 
 have." 
 
 Mibb was nettled. Somehow, beyond her first 
 show of surprise, Mary didn t seem at all impressed 
 by her "creation" or the costly little dewdrop bon 
 net. Mary s last statement she fancied contained a 
 subtle inference of doubt at her veracity. It piqued 
 Mibb to declare : 
 
 " Only a fool would marry a man who didn t have 
 nothing to fall back on but his wages." 
 
 It had the desired effect. Mary paused for a 
 moment, stared ahead of her absently, turning a 
 capital M over and over in her grimy fingers. 
 
 "I think," she said softly, "that is rather an un 
 kind statement to make." 
 
 "Oh, I wasn t thinking of Jack particularly, al-
 
 160 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 though that doesn t exempt him. I was looking at 
 it in the light of my own case," returned Mibb 
 grandly. One of her paniers caught on an unsunken 
 lag-screw head which held a type rack together. 
 She unfastened herself and got a smutch on her 
 puffs. "My! what a dirty hole!" she cried 
 fastidiously. 
 
 "I see you and Herbert are staying at the Whitney 
 House," suggested Mary, trying to turn the conversa 
 tion off dangerous ground. " I m surprised you didn t 
 return to Herbert s folks until your new home is 
 ready." 
 
 "Herb s mother gets on my nerves," snapped the 
 other. "To shake hands with her is like wringing 
 the claw of a corpse." 
 
 "And how does your mother like Herbert ?" 
 
 "She knows a good thing when she sees it," an 
 nounced Mibb. Mary glanced up in surprise at the 
 tone and manner. But the Henderson girl was 
 reading some inconsequential thing tacked up on 
 the wall. Mibb went on : "You folks are boarding, 
 I suppose. Naturally it s the only thing you could 
 do in your straitened circumstances." 
 
 "We are furnishing a little place on Pleasant 
 Street," returned Mary as evenly as she could, 
 adding : "You must come over and see me when we 
 pronounce it finished." 
 
 "I might drop in for a moment." She did not 
 return the invitation. 
 
 The boys and girls came to work presently and 
 crowded around Mabel and congratulated her, and 
 the other two women admired her finery and gazed 
 at her lost in envy and admiration. Mibb was 
 satisfied now. She came over to Mary s stool be 
 fore she left and used Mary s little three-corner piece
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 161 
 
 of mirror on the window casing to tie the bow of her 
 bonnet very precisely. 
 
 "Well," she said, "good-by. I m sorry for you, 
 having to stay indoors this beautiful autumn day. 
 I ve got to go try on a dress at Mrs. Seaver s and 
 then I think I shall take a drive with the little black 
 mare over to the dance at Warfields this evening." 
 
 "Good-by," said Mary. 
 
 The Henderson girl swept out like the grand lady 
 she was, from the standpoint of clothes. It was 
 the undignified parade of the snobbery of a cheap, 
 ill-bred woman. But to Mary it hurt. When 
 Mibb had gone, she sat looking out the side window 
 for several minutes. The fragrant autumn air, in 
 sharp contrast to the pungent odor of printing ink 
 inside the shop, wafted in on the pleasant afternoon 
 sunshine and called to her. She would like to be 
 out in the beauty this golden afternoon. She 
 would like to be going over to Mrs. Seaver s to have a 
 fine dress fitted. She would enjoy taking Monday- 
 Washing all alone by herself and driving over the 
 yellow and scarlet hills to Warfields. 
 
 But she put the tempter righteously out of her 
 thoughts. 
 
 "Some day I will!" she told herself. "My 
 time hasn t come yet ! " 
 
 She came face to face with Herbert that evening 
 as she emerged from the Red Front grocery with her 
 arms laden with bundles. There was a confused, 
 averted-faced greeting. Then to her dismay and 
 bit of panic Herb fell into step beside her and 
 walked to the corner of Pleasant and Pine streets. 
 
 After three or four blocks of silence, she said : 
 
 "Well, Herbert how did it happen?" 
 
 He read her thoughts perfectly, and her meaning.
 
 162 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 "I met Sam Hod in Fred Barrett s jewelry store, 
 that afternoon," confessed the boy. "He was 
 telling Fred about Jack buying you some kind 
 of wedding present. He said you and Jack were to 
 be married that night and his wife was already 
 fixing up the wedding supper." 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 "I didn t know what else to do I was so lonely 
 and disappointed and miserable. I went and got 
 Monday- Washing and hitched her up and went 
 driving all by myself. Suddenly out beyond the 
 Greene River bridge it all come to me like a vision 
 out o the dyin afternoon s twilight. You was 
 bein married for life! After to-night there was 
 no gettin you; it wouldn t even be proper to see 
 you alone after this, not even for a talk. And just 
 in that minute I wanted a woman to talk to and give 
 me some some some sympathy worse than 
 I d ever wanted one in my life. Sounds soft and 
 sickenin , don t it? But I just did. And the 
 hopelessness of it all, and what a mess I d made 
 o things and the panic that maybe I was too big and 
 fat and homely too much of a slob for any 
 woman ever to want me exceptin the wrong kind, 
 got to my head, and drivin down the next street I 
 see Mibb." 
 
 "Yes, Herbert." 
 
 "I m tellin you as a brother. I see her and went 
 sort o crazy, I guess. All I knew, we was rattling 
 down the street to the station and the down train 
 was waitin with steam up. Oh, what a lark, 
 says she after a time. I give Jim Barnes, the station 
 agent, two dollars to take Monday- Washing back 
 home and stable her and tie up Card, and Mibb and 
 I got on the last car without even buyin a ticket."
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 163 
 
 The boy moved his head. The gaslamp from the 
 corner shone on his features. He was weeping 
 silently, without sobs, as men weep. Never had 
 Mary wanted to comfort him as a sister might com 
 fort a brother, as she did in that moment. She 
 knew the influence she exercised over him to make 
 him confess his troubles. She knew that to confess 
 his troubles might make him feel better. Very 
 sympathetically she said : 
 
 "Yes, Herbert. I understand. And then what? * 
 
 "All the way down Mibb was keyed up and kept 
 sayin over and over again what a lark it was and 
 what a sensation they d be at home when the news 
 come back. She let me caress her a bit, that was 
 some satisfaction. Only I wanted more n that. I 
 felt as if I wanted to have the kind o mother you 
 read about in story books come along and pick me 
 up and rock me to sleep. I wanted a lullaby to 
 make me forget I d lost you, Mary." 
 
 "And you were married?" 
 
 "Yes, we was married. And we went on down to 
 Boston and Mibb splurged." 
 
 This last seemed sufficient in itself as an explana 
 tion of what Mibb alone had the courage to put into 
 words : 
 
 "And you re not happy with her, are you, Her 
 bert?" 
 
 "I could be happy if she d let me. I could take a 
 grip on myself and call it a sportin proposition and 
 that I was married and would make the best of it 
 and the most. In time I could love her a lot. But 
 she ain t domestic. That s a good word, ain t 
 it?" 
 
 "Yes, Herbert," said Mary sadly. "That s a 
 very good word."
 
 164 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 "Oh what a mess I ve made o things !" 
 
 "Perhaps not, Herbert. You do your part nobly. 
 Keep right on doing your part. Be a a good 
 sport, as you say. Time works many changes. 
 We never know what a day will bring forth." 
 
 " It s the money ! " declared the boy. " If I hadn t 
 it I d be working like Jack for wages and 
 married to some girl who cared about me for myself 
 and not because it give her a lark or allowed her to 
 splurge. Gawd, how I wish I was poor ! It s 
 just simply hell !" 
 
 "Let s see how it will work out, Herbert. Please 
 do!" 
 
 Ten minutes afterward, she watched him disappear 
 through the falling leaves, with a heart full of sad 
 ness, and happiness. There was sadness there 
 for Herbert; there was happiness there that she 
 had deliberately put out of her mind that afternoon 
 the thoughts which had tried to force their way in 
 after Mibb had left her.
 
 CHAPTER H 
 
 So NOW WE GET DOWN TO THE BUSINESS OF 
 LIVING AND ENTER A ROOM WHERE FOOTFALLS 
 ARE HUSHED TO WITNESS THE ALMIGHTY SEND 
 ING A MIRACLE. 
 
 BACK to the Files again. Under date of December 
 the 10th. What is this that we find ? 
 
 A pleasant social time was held last evening on 
 Pleasant Street when about fifteen friends and neigh 
 bors gathered to give a house-warming to Mr. and 
 Mrs. John Purse. The evening was spent with 
 games and music, and refreshments were served. 
 The guests presented the young couple with a valu 
 able parlor clock and the members of the office 
 force as a body contributed toward a bronze horse 
 man to surmount its top. 
 
 Still further on, under date of February the twenty- 
 fifth and prominently displayed on the front page 
 where it occupied two columns, an obituary which 
 opened thus : 
 
 The community suffered a great shock last even 
 ing when Silas M. Truman, one of the town s most 
 prominent business men and leading citizens, passed 
 away in his magnificent Main Street home of a 
 complication of diseases. He took to his bed over 
 a fortnight ago, leaving his affairs in the hands of 
 his son. He grew rapidly worse and the end came 
 at twenty minutes to seven last night. He was 
 67 years old.
 
 166 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 Follows an elaborate obituary. The grim com 
 ment about the town next day revealed the universal 
 sentiment that Sam Hod had overdone it a bit. 
 There are few real tears at the death of a highly 
 successful plate-passer and mortgage foreclose!-. 
 
 But greater even than the death of Herbert s 
 father and his son s inheritance of the house, the 
 wagon works and the family money at least to 
 the importance of the denouement of this narra 
 tive is one little four-line item found in an August 
 issue after several months of newspaper silence 
 regarding the Telegraph folk. 
 
 The Purse tenement had been a cozy little place 
 that first winter. Jack and Mary had both joined 
 the Calvary Methodist Church and being a willing, 
 accommodating little body, the girl was in demand at 
 all sorts of social functions where there were rooms 
 to be trimmed or children to be drilled or dishes to 
 be washed, which was not without its compensa 
 tion in the matter of a permanent place in the village 
 social circles and among the younger married people. 
 There were many little "affairs" in the upper Purse 
 tenement, many surprise parties, many attendances 
 on singing schools where the girl s clear soprano and 
 Jack s fine tenor increased their popularity. 
 
 But toward the end of the spring, Mary left us. 
 One April morning she failed to report for work. 
 Jack carried home her black kimono apron, the extra 
 pair of emergency rubbers and umbrella that had 
 stood for so long at her case and the corner of the 
 wall. 
 
 She gradually dropped out of church society; 
 she attended but one lawn party. Jack went around 
 with a worried look and sought every opportunity
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 167 
 
 of running up over-time for a reason other than 
 the creditor s moral claims upon his slender pay 
 envelope. 
 
 July fourth came with its unholy racket in the 
 gray of the morning and its parade at ten o clock, 
 ending with fireworks in the evening which Mary 
 watched from the little front porch over the front 
 steps. Lazy August was upon us. And one day the 
 small Ashley boy, who lived downstairs under the 
 Purses, padded into the back room in his bare feet, 
 the pucker-strings of his blouse hanging down and 
 his nose very damp. He found Jack making up the 
 last galleys into the front page. 
 
 "Hey, Mister Purse," he announced excitedly 
 so that all the office heard, " you better getcher 
 hat and go home quick. Somebody s brought you 
 a baby!" 
 
 Jack went home with a strange feeling in his 
 heart. He hardly had the strength to climb the 
 outside back stairs. He went in through the 
 kitchen. Mrs. Ashley was there, and Mrs. Pother- 
 ton from the next house and Doctor Johnson. 
 
 "Your wife, son," announced Johnson, rolling 
 down his sleeves as he stepped into the homely 
 little sitting room from the bedchamber on the east. 
 " has just given birth to a whale of a baby son !" 
 He stepped before the bewildered young husband. 
 "You can t go in there," the doctor declared, 
 "not until you come across with cigars ! Good 
 ones ! Two bits apiece !" 
 
 Nevertheless, Jack went in. 
 
 A great American author has since declared that 
 there are three earthly experiences without which no
 
 168 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 life is complete : Love, War, Poverty. There is a 
 fourth. It is the birth of a child. 
 
 Of all events in the annals of humankind this is 
 the greatest life s essence and foundation. 
 
 Noble sacrifice, fearless courage, indescribable 
 agony, the triumph of the love beside which all 
 other loves are weak and whimsical fantasies 
 one little knows what deep and sacred depths can 
 be plumbed in the fathoms of human character 
 until he has beheld this greatest of all miracles, until 
 he has witnessed the going-down of a woman into 
 and beyond the Valley of the Shadow of Happiness 
 to find the Singing Souls of the unborn children, 
 entice a little soul away by the tenderness of her 
 eyes and the compassion of her arms and bear 
 it up the steeps and out into the world of earthly 
 sunlight through the pink and golden portals of 
 birth. 
 
 A man marries a woman. The ceremony lies in 
 the past. There comes the return from the honey 
 moon. The event is but a few paragraphs on an 
 out-of-date newspaper page and to all but their 
 relatives and a few intimate friends the new home 
 stirs not a ripple in the social sea of great humanity. 
 And then a baby comes ! 
 
 A baby comes ! 
 
 In some side room where curtains are drawn, 
 footfalls softened and sounds are hushed, a diminu 
 tive gasping human creature convulses spasmodically 
 on a nurse s arm. The first breaths of earthly air 
 are burning like fire in its tiny lungs. Its black face 
 is slowly turning pink. Its features are becoming 
 understandable. Its fists are opening and closing, 
 its vocal chords are strengthening, its breathing 
 regular. Its head is misshapen, its eyes twisted, its
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 169 
 
 legs crooked ; its general anatomical design sends a 
 panic through the household, through all but a 
 relieved physician, a smiling nurse, a mother who 
 dimly knows that all is well. 
 
 This is a new human life begun. This is the com 
 mencement of a soul. 
 
 Gases may swirl out in the seething immensities 
 of space, cool, form a planet, and to-morrow that 
 planet be rolling cold and dead in the infinite zeros 
 of ether. Continents may be discovered and civili 
 zations established, but the cycles of eternal 
 time speed onward and seas blot out the one and 
 evolution ride down the other. Empires may rise 
 and states may flourish, but peoples rise against 
 peoples, they go down in the dust, to-morrow the 
 sands of the eternal deserts lie heavily upon them. 
 Cities may become great, ships may plow the oceans, 
 markets may teem with trade and statesmen rise to 
 glory; fortunes may be made or lost and men may 
 lose their souls for ambition or the love of woman. 
 But what indeed of all these things unless ever down 
 the ages comes the inexhaustible Niagara of new 
 babies ? How pale and insignificant do all these 
 things which men term great sink down beside the 
 onward march of hoards of children, watching as 
 they come for mothers faces. 
 
 A baby comes, indeed ! 
 
 There will be days of play and nights of fever 
 ahead, months of helplessness, a few brief years 
 of banging on the table with a spoon and ruling 
 a household s heart. There will be the time of 
 awkwardness, saucer eyes, big knees, bursting 
 buttons and rending seams. There will be times of 
 calf-love and seasons of heartburn. There will be 
 years of conceit unbearable ; periods, too, of cruel
 
 170 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 chastisement. Then it will know real love and the 
 beginning of the Golgotha of seeing visions and 
 dreaming dreams. Sorrow and tragedy and dis 
 appointment will be its portion. And then, far, far 
 ahead somewhere down the dim corridors of saner, 
 cooler, finer years may come to a brief decade of 
 real usefulness, to itself and to the race. 
 
 And as poet has sung and author has written from 
 the days when Pandora s box was opened and all 
 the troubles of the world were loosened so long 
 that only the fool would claim the thought for his 
 own some one must be tender, faithful, hopeful, 
 ever-patient, never discouraged, always confident 
 through all those years and times, the Some 
 One who lies upon the bed as John Purse looked 
 that day on the wife of his love lying upon the bed - 
 her body wet with agony, her eyes hollow, her cheeks 
 haggard, her smile a mask to hide the pain, the 
 Some One who reaches for the little reddened crea 
 ture, lays it upon her heart and soothes its hunger 
 with her breast. 
 
 This is the grandeur and infinity of God focused 
 in the instincts of a woman. This is our genesis 
 and our decalog. This is our Vision of the Most 
 High, life s fourth experience which should come 
 first! 
 
 It was evening. Jack was alone in the room with 
 his wife and the newly arrived baby. The two 
 women had gone home. Doctor Johnson had 
 departed, promising to get a nurse over before mid 
 night. The little son lay sleeping on his mother s 
 arm, lost in flannel. 
 
 "Jack!" 
 
 "Yes, dear."
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 171 
 
 "I hope he ll be a great good man, a minister !" 
 
 "A man ! You re figuring pretty far ahead, 
 Mary. Let s raise him to be a boy first. I ll be 
 thankful when he can talk ! " 
 
 The man walked to the window. Thrusting his 
 hands in his pockets he said : 
 
 "I wonder why it is that every woman wants her 
 boy to be a preacher ? " 
 
 He stood looking out into the summer night and 
 the street lamps beginning to sprinkle the dusk. 
 And after a time she replied : 
 
 "I guess it must be because preachers are supposed 
 to represent all that s finest and best in manhood." 
 But in her heart she knew it was more than that. 
 Perhaps one other Mary could have framed the idea 
 in words twenty centuries ago. 
 
 "I ll be thankful if he grows up to be anything, 
 so long as it isn t a newspaperman ! " 
 
 Sam came over around eight o clock, bringing the 
 paper. When he had seen the new baby, spoken 
 gently to the inert woman, and gone, Jack came into 
 the bedroom with the newspaper in one hand and a 
 dimmed light in the other. He gave Mary the 
 night s Telegraph properly folded to the designated 
 place. Then he held the lamp, turning it up momen 
 tarily to give her the illumination to read : 
 
 LAST MINUTE NEWS ! 
 
 Born To Mr. and Mrs. John Purse of Pleasant 
 Street, this afternoon, a son, weight eight and three- 
 quarter pounds. Congratulations !
 
 CHAPTER in 
 
 MIBB TRUMAN PAYS MARY A VISIT IN HER TENE 
 MENT HOME THE FIRST OF THREE VISITS 
 THAT SHE EVER PAYS IN HER "CAREER", AT 
 WHICH "A PLEASANT TIME is NOT HAD BY ALL." 
 
 EVEN the most realistic story of married life 
 drags after a time if the attempt is made to chronicle 
 the thousand and one situations and struggles and 
 sacrifices and anticipations and heart-hopes of the 
 days and the months and the years. And as the 
 greatest part of Mary Purse s story is the last part, 
 we can turn the pages of the files here in great 
 handf uls down through the Eighties > after a passing 
 reference to one or two situations that stand out in 
 high light after the new baby came. 
 
 We didn t see much of Mary after the first 
 youngster arrived. Now and then one of us in the 
 office would meet her pushing a rather noisy baby 
 carriage with wooden wheels and steel tires along 
 the village streets of a pleasant afternoon, perhaps 
 idling along the Main Street windows and pausing 
 to gaze wistfully into them, working the carriage 
 forward and backward to keep Thomas Joshua 
 Purse from riling up the entire business section. 
 We took note of the very plain clothes and how the 
 sleeves of her jacket were always just out of fashion. 
 Her hat would be pinned too far back on her head. 
 Her rubbers would be sewed neatly enough with a 
 black thread where the shoes had broken through.
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 173 
 
 But her face, despite the fine lines of care and 
 labor that were beginning to come and which were 
 indeed changing her from a girl into a woman, was 
 still pretty. And when any one, even strangers, 
 stopped, as fussy old ladies sometimes will, or tooth 
 less gentlemen carrying canes, to comment on the 
 size and health of the lusty youngster in the carriage, 
 there was a pathetic pride which seemed to defy 
 the town and the world. 
 
 Then one day Mibb stood on the front porch 
 when Mary went down to answer the bell. She 
 was overfed, over-dressed, over-masseured. 
 
 "Well," said she, the condescension in her voice 
 not to be mistaken, "I ve come to see your baby !" 
 
 Mary was dressed in a cheap wrapper, her breast 
 was decorated with safety pins, the apron gathered 
 in a quick roll at her waist. It was blotched where 
 Thomas Joshua Purse had five minutes before upset 
 a dish of syrup upon her and she had no other to 
 wear until morning. She remembered that the 
 parlor curtains were in the wash and the front 
 room looked barren as a small barn without them; 
 that the sitting room was strewn with toys, carelessly 
 wrecked trains of cast-iron cars and picture blocks 
 which were ideal when one had an ankle he wished 
 to turn and make useless for a week. Half her 
 week s dry-wash was strewn about the same room 
 where she had been sprinkling when the bell rang. 
 Yet she could not refuse Mibb entrance. Biting her 
 lip, Mary tried to smile and invited the other upstairs. 
 
 "I suppose I ought to have called on you before," 
 declared Mibb, "but I ve been so busy getting the 
 Holland house properly furnished, with Mama having 
 so many contrary ideas which she simply must 
 have carried out, and there s been so much to see to
 
 174 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 since Herbert s father passed away " (and Mibb 
 sighed wonderfully well) "that I haven t had the 
 chance to think about anybody. My ! what a 
 little house ! And do you live in these three rooms ? " 
 
 "Yes," replied Mary quietly, "we live here, the 
 three of us a room apiece !" she laughed "and 
 find ourselves quite comfortable." 
 
 "Well, I declare. I couldn t stand it. I must 
 have space. Only yesterday I was telling Herbert 
 that we must tear out the wall on the north room of 
 the library before the contractors called the re 
 building finished and make that room larger. I 
 can t bear to be cramped. Large rooms and plenty 
 of them is my motto. And what s this ? " 
 
 "This," replied Mary, wheeling the carriage with 
 the coarse wooden wheels over, "is Tommy Joshua 
 Purse, age eight months and fifteen days." 
 
 "My stars ! What s the matter with him ? " 
 
 With a startled turn Mary bent over the carriage. 
 She inventoried the contents with puzzled anxiety. 
 
 "Why, nothing," she declared. 
 
 " But he s so small and so red. Goodness gracious ! 
 He looks like a worm ! " 
 
 "He will recover, I dare say, by the time he dons 
 long trousers." 
 
 "Mercy ! I hope so. It would be awful to have 
 a son in long trousers looking like a worm. To what 
 college are you planning to send him ? " 
 
 Mibb detected irony and subtle sarcasm in Mary s 
 reply. Her question was a sally in kind. But there 
 was nothing but deadly seriousness in the mother s 
 reply as she said: "We were thinking of Dart 
 mouth; my own father graduated from there, you 
 know." 
 
 "No; I didn t know your father was a college
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 175 
 
 man," said Mibb blankly. "I always thought of 
 Silent Wheeler as your father. It s queer your 
 mother chose to marry him after first marrying a 
 Dartmouth man." 
 
 "She was left with a little child, without insurance, 
 and knowing no business with which to support 
 herself. All she could do was keep house. There 
 was no alternative. She accepted Mr. Wheeler, 
 thinking to give me a home. Poor mother. I 
 wish she could see my baby ! " 
 
 This last was somehow the sudden wistful heart- 
 cry of a little girl. 
 
 Mibb was uncomfortable. She leaned over the 
 carriage and poked Thomas Joshua a couple of times 
 with a stiff forefinger, as old ladies sometimes 
 poke at prospective pot-roasts at the butcher s. 
 
 "Please don t!" cried Mary hurriedly. 
 "You ll awake him and I ve just rocked him to 
 sleep." But Thomas Joshua stirred and stretched 
 and opened his eyes and his mouth, and great and 
 terrible was his sudden lamentation. Mary lifted 
 him in her arms. 
 
 "He must be an awful aggravation at times 
 bawling like that." 
 
 Mary smiled sadly. She laid her lips for a moment 
 on the downy little head where an artery was throb 
 bing. 
 
 "Aggravation? Poor Mabel, what a lonesome 
 unhappy time you must be having !" 
 
 "Lonesome ! Unhappy ! Just because I haven t 
 got a a a worm ? " Mibb laughed. " I 
 should say not. Every woman has got a right to 
 happiness in her own way." 
 
 "Yes," agreed Mary, "every woman has a right to 
 happiness in her own way." She looked at the other
 
 176 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 in her exquisite black silk with the cut-steel buttons 
 and the paniers and the puffs and the overskirts 
 and the rare ruching at the throat and the gaudy 
 jewelry on her characterless fingers. "Some day, 
 Mibb," she said, "you will be sorry." 
 
 "Sorry for what?" 
 
 "Sorry for what you told Herbert on this same 
 subject last Sunday afternoon. " 
 
 "What do you know about that?" 
 
 "Herbert came over here Sunday evening to 
 see Jack and I and Thomas Joshua. He and Thomas 
 Joshua romped on the carpet for a half hour. After 
 we d got Joshua away to bed and we sat talking 
 about the future, Herb broke down and cried like a 
 motherless little boy and told me us ! all 
 about it." 
 
 "This," said Mibb, arising coldly, "is as enlight 
 ening as it is disgusting. Herb going around 
 peddling tales of our privacies to the neighbors 
 j" 
 
 "The fault is yours, Mabel. You shouldn t give 
 him cause." 
 
 "He had probably been drinking." 
 
 "Yes, a little bit. It made me feel very badly. 
 I ve been thinking about it all the week." 
 
 "Indeed! How many men do you require to 
 feel badly for? I should think the mess you ve 
 made marrying a wage-slave like Jack Purse who 
 can t provide you with a home bigger than a doll 
 house and the whole proposition saddled with debt 
 would be quite sufficient." 
 
 "Herbert and I were quite good friends for a 
 long time before he married you, Mabel." 
 
 "But not good friends enough so that he asked 
 you to be his wife."
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 177 
 
 "I never wanted to be his wife." She said it 
 slowly, wondering if she were telling a falsehood. 
 
 "Because you never stood a chance. You know 
 the story about the fox and the grapes." 
 
 In the voice of a lady, Mary replied : 
 
 "Herbert has been like a brother. In fact, I 
 remember very distinctly the time and situation 
 when he asked if he might consider me as a sister." 
 
 "All of which is as amusing as it is illuminating." 
 The Henderson girl affected a fine superiority. Then 
 her mood changed. With a deadly expression of 
 cheap-charactered bad temper, she snapped: "But 
 if he thinks he s got license to peddle our domestic 
 differences all over Paris just because I m too wise 
 to tie myself down to a brace of night-squalling 
 sour-smelling brats, he s going to find he s started 
 something he ll have a warm time to finish." She 
 gathered up her finery and made ready to depart. 
 " I wouldn t have a young one for a million dollars I " 
 
 "And I wish I could have a dozen and I d pay a 
 million dollars for each one." 
 
 "You always were a mopey, sentimental little 
 fool. I m sure you re welcome to your worms !" 
 
 "You don t know, Mibb " 
 
 "Yes, I do know. That s where I m wise." 
 She made a significant gesture at Mary Purse. 
 "Look what they do to you. They keep you poor. 
 They twist you out of shape with pain and work. 
 They take the girlhood out of your face and your 
 eyes, they tie you at home, they break your heart " 
 
 Mary s eyes fused tears. 
 
 "Perhaps, Mibb, it s just as well after all that you 
 have none. They keep you poor financially 
 maybe. They twist you out of shape with pain and 
 work, perhaps. They take away your girlhood and
 
 178 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 keep you at home I admit it. But as for breaking 
 your heart you don t know what it is to have a 
 heart until until - 
 
 "This is banal and disgusting." 
 
 "Some day, Mibb, I think you will be very, very 
 sorry." 
 
 "I m willing to take my chances. I d like a 
 photograph of you and me stood up side by side 
 thirty years from to-day. It might tell an inter 
 esting story." 
 
 "Yes," agreed Mary, "it might." 
 
 "I came up here in all good friendship to see your 
 baby. I have to listen to a sermon about that 
 moth-eaten theory that woman s place is in the 
 home sacrificing herself for race propagation. I 
 won t bother you again. We think differently. 
 You re old-fashioned. Your fireside-and-family 
 notions are going out of date. There s a new day 
 dawning for women and I m not staying in my 
 house and pulling down my curtains and refusing 
 to see the sunrise. A woman has the right to 
 happiness ; she has the privilege of living her own 
 life in her own way as much as a man. I intend to 
 have my day of happiness after what I ve come 
 up from and what I ve endured. I intend to dic 
 tate what my life shall be in my own way. Tell 
 Herbert that, the next time he comes around here 
 to see his sister " 
 
 "After what you ve come up from, and what 
 you ve endured ! O Mabel!" Mary sighed. "Some 
 day you may realize that there s such a thing as 
 happiness that comes from not dictating what our 
 lives shall be, but in putting the best side out and 
 making the most of things in any and all situations 
 in which we find ourselves. I m not at all con-
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 179 
 
 vinced that people who dictate their own lives in 
 their own way are happiest. That way lies selfish 
 ness. It seems to me that in the case of a woman, 
 struggling out of poverty, being twisted out of 
 shape with pain and work, losing her girlhood, being 
 tied at home because of babies in short, the 
 sacrifice of herself for others and especially little 
 children, all comes under the head of the highest 
 sort of service one can render the world and the 
 fellow-folk in it. How about it, Mabel? And if 
 there s a new day dawning as you seem to think, 
 it s the day when service is going to be glorified, and 
 generosity and gentleness and self-sacrifice for others 
 considered the things in life really worth while. I m 
 not at all impressed, Mibb, that you ve read or are 
 reading correctly the signs of the times." 
 
 "More sermonizing!" snapped Mibb. "Good- 
 by, Mary Purse ! Both of us may have had a 
 common girlhood and worked side by side at a type 
 case. But beyond that, we have nothing in common 
 and as for me I am perfectly willing right here that 
 our friendship should end." 
 
 With a sad face Mary laid Thomas Joshua in his 
 carriage and started to show Mibb the way down 
 stairs. 
 
 "You really needn t trouble yourself." Mabel 
 Truman turned at the door. "I ll meet you thirty 
 years from to-day, Mary Wood, and compare 
 results !" 
 
 Mary did not return at once to the sprinkling of 
 her clothes. After the rich woman had gone and 
 the little sitting room was quiet, she lifted Thomas 
 Joshua in her arms and sat for a long time by the 
 window in the cracking rocker, looking down through 
 the breeze- wafted muslin curtains on to Mrs.
 
 180 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 Ashley s side flower beds. Thomas Joshua went to 
 sleep. Half an hour afterward, when it was entirely 
 unnecessary, she started humming a lullaby. 
 
 When Jack came home, Mary said : 
 
 "Mibb Truman was here this afternoon. She 
 came to see Thomas Joshua." 
 
 "What did she think of him?" asked Jack. 
 
 "She called him a worm !" 
 
 "So long as Thomas Joshua doesn t turn out a 
 bookworm or a newspaper-office grub, I m satis 
 fied," the husband declared. He was glum because 
 things had not gone right in the back room that 
 afterrioon and he was worrying about the bills. 
 
 "I ve told you," commented Mary quietly, after 
 transferring a sizzling griddle of fried something 
 from the stove to the table, " that our Thomas 
 Joshua is going to be a preacher." 
 
 "Don t set your heart on it too strongly. 
 Preachers get paid even worse than newspapermen." 
 
 They were eating supper across a corner of the 
 homemade kitchen table, Thomas Joshua a future 
 pastor dining off the paint on a huge Noah s 
 Ark, the gift of "Uncle Herbert", when the doorbell 
 rang. Jack went down to the front door. In a 
 moment he had returned and his face was serious. 
 
 "It was Judge Farmer s little boy. He says his 
 father wants to see you and me at his office to-night 
 at eight o clock." 
 
 "Me !" Mary s face paled. 
 
 "On some kind of business." 
 
 Again the fright of "law" and "business" stabbed 
 into the young mother s heart. 
 
 "What can Judge Farmer possibly want of you 
 and me ? "
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 181 
 
 "I don t know. Judge Farmer s little boy didn t 
 know." 
 
 "I can t go. There s no one to look after Thomas 
 Joshua ! " 
 
 "Maybe Mrs. Ashley will come up for an hour."
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 IN WHICH A LONG LANE TURNS JUST A LITTLE BIT 
 AND THEN RESUMES ITS COURSE AGAIN AWAY TO 
 THE HORIZON. 
 
 OVER thirty years have passed since that evening. 
 To-day Judge Farmer is a tall, grim, big-boned 
 Vermonter with a Mark-Twain head of hair, a hawk 
 like nose containing a mole famous in three States, 
 and a pair of enormous gray moustaches which fall 
 below his chin like the tusks on a walrus. He is a 
 dean of the Paris County Bar, president of the 
 People s National Bank and director in half a dozen 
 big corporations. But this night back in the 
 Eiglaties he was a rising young attorney who was 
 somewhat ceremonious with the consciousness of a 
 recent judgeship and an increasing law practice 
 among the "best people." His wavy black hair 
 was scrupulously barbered and shining with bay 
 rum, he wore a choice set of the black "side light" 
 whiskers of the period and a tight-fitting suit of 
 black broadcloth reputed to cost more money than 
 any other combination of male attire in Paris county. 
 
 Jack and Mary climbed the stairs to his office in 
 the southwest corner of the old Hawkins block with 
 misgivings amounting almost to panic. It meant 
 something in those days to be "summoned" to a 
 lawyer s office in the evening ! 
 
 The young Judge was busy with his law books 
 as the couple entered. He arose very dignifiedly
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 183 
 
 and motioned them into the side room dominated 
 by a life-sized print of Daniel Webster. They went 
 in and took seats on the extreme edge of chairs. 
 
 At length Amos Farmer came in, carrying an 
 envelope of ominous length which he laid down on 
 the green baize table. He adjusted a swivel chair 
 for his long richly-clad legs and seated himself 
 gravely, lighting a cigar with the nicety of a priest 
 kindling a sacred altar fire. 
 
 "I hope," faltered Mary, "you haven t called us 
 down on account of bad news." 
 
 "Yes and no," replied the Judge, clearing his 
 throat. Which only made the young man and 
 woman the more uneasy. 
 
 Jack wet his lips. Mary gripped the chair-arms. 
 Farmer picked up the long envelope and emptied it 
 of papers. He unfolded and smoothed them on his 
 knee. They looked to Jack like business letters and 
 letter-press replies. 
 
 The Judge loved effect in those days. No one 
 cares less for it at present. 
 
 "Mrs. Purse," he demanded, "where were you 
 bom?" 
 
 "In Foxboro Center in Sixty-one." 
 
 "And your parents ? " 
 
 "My father was Frederick Wood. My mother s 
 name before her marriage was Sarah Talmadge." 
 
 "Ah, yes. Precisely. Good. Very good." 
 
 The Judge stroked his silky black whiskers. He 
 continued : 
 
 "I wish to corroborate certain, ah, details in your 
 genealogy. Can you tell me anything of your 
 father s forebears ? " 
 
 "He was the son of Hebion Wood who settled in
 
 184 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 Bryant township in Eighteen-thirty. His grand 
 father was Micah Wood who fought in the Battle 
 of Bennington " 
 
 "That is going back far enough. Now about your 
 own grandfather s family; about Hebion Wood. 
 Whom did he marry ? " 
 
 "Grandma Wood s name before she met Grandpa 
 was Talmadge. I think her first name was Matilda." 
 
 " Yes. And Matilda Talmadge and Hebion Wood 
 had how many children?" 
 
 "Four, Judge Farmer. One died while a baby 
 and is buried beside Grandpa and Grandma in the 
 family lot at the Center. There were two boys, 
 my uncles, Adam and Josiah. Adam went to 
 Kansas just after the war and was killed by the 
 Indians ; Josiah went out to Indiana and later we 
 heard he was in some kind of business in Chicago. 
 He s living there now, I think. I never saw him. 
 Mother was the youngest, born while Grandpa and 
 Grandma lived for a time on the Holbrook place 
 over to Merrittsville 
 
 "There were no children by your Uncle Adam? 
 Are you positive ? " 
 
 "We never heard of Uncle Adam being married." 
 
 "And Josiah?" 
 
 "Mother said none of the family heard from him 
 much after he went West. There was some trouble 
 between him and his father, I think." 
 
 "Ah, yes. Good. Very good. Excellent. Just 
 as I wrote them." 
 
 "Wrote who?" 
 
 The Judge ignored the question. It was all part 
 of his legal "ceremony." As judge of probate, he 
 knew all of this but also as part of his love for 
 effect, he had called upon the woman to go
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 185 
 
 through it to add to the mystery and import of the 
 proceeding. 
 
 "I understand you had a half-brother who was 
 amply taken care of by your stepfather s demise." 
 
 "Why, Judge, you know all about that. You 
 handled it yourself. But I wouldn t call it he was 
 amply taken care of. You know the house didn t 
 bring a buyer on account of its reputation what 
 Pa Wheeler did and the bank took it for the 
 mortgage. It hasn t been sold yet, has it?" 
 
 "No," Farmer answered. "But to get back to 
 your half-brother and your immediate family : There 
 were no other children but you and Arthur?" 
 
 "Why certainly not!" 
 
 "Then I take it that outside of any offspring which 
 your Uncle Josiah might have left in the West, you 
 are the only living representative of the Hebion 
 Woods?" 
 
 "I guess I am, Mr. Farmer." 
 
 "Good. Very good. Ah, excellent." 
 
 "What has happened, Judge? What is all this 
 about ? " 
 
 "Two months ago," declared the Judge, "I 
 received a letter from Pitts, Huling, Donovan and 
 Wiley, a firm of attorneys in Chicago. You 
 asked me a moment ago if the news I had for you 
 was bad. In one respect it is, although I presume 
 the relationship is so far removed that it will not 
 seriously grieve you. The fact is, Mrs. Purse, your 
 Uncle Josiah of Chicago has passed away." 
 
 Mary sat searching the young lawyer s face with 
 frightened eyes. 
 
 "He died some time since, at what date I am not 
 informed. Two months ago, I say, I received a 
 letter from the mentioned firm of attorneys request-
 
 186 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 ing certain facts regarding the existence of any mem 
 bers of the Hebion Wood family or other near 
 relatives. I replied consistently with the facts you 
 have just confirmed." 
 
 "Yes," Mary whispered. 
 
 Jack sat with wide-opened eyes and lips apart. 
 
 "I might say that considerable correspondence 
 followed. I did not inform you what was in progress 
 for I did not wish to raise false hopes and bitter 
 disappointment. Things have come to the point 
 where your signature is required to certain affidavits 
 and other documents and therefore 
 
 "My signature is necessary to documents ? What 
 do you mean?" 
 
 "In some aspects of the case I am as much in the 
 dark as yourself. From present indications, how 
 ever, I judge it safe to assert that you are about to 
 inherit either money or property." 
 
 "I am about to inherit 
 
 "The amount of this money or the value of this 
 property has not been disclosed to me. I have been 
 retained by Pitts, Ruling, Donovan and Wiley to 
 look up the possible heirs of Josiah Wood here in 
 Vermont. From certain things in the correspond 
 ence I do not think your mother s brother died 
 worth a very great amount. But so far as I can 
 judge, regardless of what it includes, you are the only 
 beneficiary " 
 
 "You mean somebody s died and left Jack and 
 me money? " 
 
 "In popular parlance, I believe such to have been 
 the case. Of course, it will take some little time 
 yet to settle the man s estate completely and before 
 anything tangible is forthcoming. Also there will 
 probably be the settlement fees to come out of the
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 187 
 
 sum. I would advise against any too much opti 
 mism at present. But from now on I will keep you 
 informed of the progress of the case and do all I can 
 to facilitate the settlement." 
 
 The judge laid his cigar on the edge of the table, 
 found the proper papers from among the sheaf, 
 separated them and spread them out before him. 
 He lifted the top of a big bronze ink-well and dipped 
 in a pen. 
 
 "If you will sign these affidavits, Mrs. Purse, 
 here on the lines I have indicated, we will not pro 
 long your visit here any more than is necessary." 
 
 It was a quarter to nine when the girl and her 
 husband reached the sidewalk. They turned the 
 corner by the bank, went up Maple Street and 
 toward Pleasant. 
 
 "Jack," whispered the girl fearfully, "it s it s 
 a dream ! Jack, who would have thought that help 
 would come to us from such a quarter. Jack ! 
 What s the matter? Aren t you glad?" 
 
 "For your sake, yes. For my sake no !" 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 "If it s a lot of money, I couldn t think of being 
 a male Mabel-Henderson. If it s only a little " 
 
 "Isn t all that s yours mine too, Jack?" 
 
 "Certainly, dear." 
 
 "Then why isn t all that s mine yours?" 
 
 "It s different !" he choked.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE INEVITABLE HAPPENS AS WE MAY HAVE SUR 
 MISED FROM THE START AND OUR LITTLE TOWN 
 OF PARIS KNOWS THE HENDERSON GIRL NO 
 LONGER. 
 
 MIBB went to Herbert s office on River Street 
 directly from the Purse house. Bud Matherson 
 told her that Herb had gone home to harness Mon 
 day-Washing and drive over to Center Foxboro on 
 business. Mibb went back to the Holland place 
 and found her husband in the big ivy-covered barn, 
 currying off the little black mare himself. He never 
 allowed any other person but his wife to care for 
 or drive the animal. 
 
 Somehow Herb had grown old. Only yesterday 
 he had been but a fat, sportive, good-natured boy, 
 easy-going, affable, but with a certain pathos 
 about his well-meant clumsiness. Since the un 
 happy ending to his love affair his marriage with 
 spitfire, irresponsible Mabel, the constant friction 
 between his mother and his mother-in-law, the death 
 of his father, the unsuccessful accession to the place 
 his father had filled so profitably in the town s busi 
 ness life and the untimely demise of one mammoth 
 bulldog, by name Cardinal Wolsey, from eating food 
 covered with rat poison since his life had been 
 shadowed by all these things, Herb had become a 
 middle-aged man almost in a twelvemonth. The 
 cowlick which for years had been a county joke was
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 189 
 
 not so obstreperous as formerly, at his temples a 
 few gray hairs were showing. There were lines in 
 his face and his eyes were always tired. Of late 
 it was whispered around that "Herb ain t able to 
 stand prosperity : he s takin a quiet drink by him 
 self occasionally." 
 
 But Mabel cared nothing for these things even 
 if she noted them. 
 
 "I want to know," she demanded hotly, coming 
 into the big airy varnished interior of the barn where 
 Monday-Washing was hitched with tie ropes from 
 either side her halter, " what on earth you mean by 
 going over to the Purses and making me ridiculous ? " 
 
 Herb straightened up and looked at her with a 
 puzzled frown. Mibb s eyes were blazing. He did 
 not comprehend, but he sensed domestic breakers 
 ahead. And the sea of matrimony had been in a 
 more or less turbulent condition ever since he had 
 pushed his bark from the shore. He turned back 
 to his horse, scratched over a space of the glossy 
 black coat and tapped out the currycomb on a 
 doorpost. 
 
 "Answer me!" And Mibb stamped her foot. 
 
 "I don t know what you re talkin about," he 
 replied dully. 
 
 "What do you mean by going over there un 
 beknown to me the Purses of all places ! 
 especially to that little sentimental chit of a Mary 
 Purse and mewling around about us not having 
 a lot of brats !" 
 
 Herb curried for a moment in silence. 
 
 "Call em children," he suggested. "It sounds 
 better!" 
 
 "I ll call em what I please." 
 
 "I ain t called upon for no explanations. Reckon
 
 190 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 I can go where I want and say what I please. There 
 warn t any prohibition o that in the marriage 
 license." 
 
 "Haven t you any sense of propriety? Haven t 
 you any family pride?" 
 
 "Family pride? Sure! That s why I d like a 
 few little shavers round this stiff and stuck-up place 
 - like Thomas Joshua of the Purses ." 
 
 "But if you and I don t think alike on that 
 subject doesn t common decency and manhood 
 demand that you keep quiet about it and not adver 
 tise our differences to the town?" 
 
 "Ain t advertised em to the town. Ain t said 
 a word about you to the Purses - - Mary or any 
 body. Just been over there a few times and played 
 with their kid. Where s the harm in that ? " 
 
 "You must have said something about it or Mary 
 Purse wouldn t have known." 
 
 "Mary Purse ain t nobody s female fool, I guess. 
 That s more n I can say o some people." 
 
 "So you d insult me !" 
 
 "I wish I had the cussedness in me to insult you. 
 Wish I had it in me to be a damned wife-beater. 
 Maybe we d both be happier." 
 
 "If you ever laid a finger on me, you know what 
 would happen. I d I d leave you, Herb Truman 
 I d leave you as sure as God made little apples!" 
 
 "I believe it," Herb rejoined. "That s why I 
 say I wish I had it in me and then both of us d 
 be happier." 
 
 Mibb bit her lip. The blood ran. She grew a bit 
 hysterical. 
 
 "Yes," she cried shrilly, "you talked like that to 
 me the night we rode down to Brattleboro, didn t 
 you ? A pretty way to cheat a girl marry her
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 191 
 
 and take away her liberty so she can t marry any 
 body else without a divorce or a scandal and then - 
 
 "I can t see as you re the one that s cheated. 
 What about me?" 
 
 " You ! You ! What about you ? - 
 
 Herb tossed the currycomb nonchalantly into 
 the rack and picking up the big black brush he 
 began using it on Monday-Washing s fine-spun tail. 
 
 "Yes, what about me !" 
 
 "You think more of that mare than you think of 
 
 me 
 
 "She s worth more! At least she s honest and 
 square and don t try to be what God never made 
 her to be in the first place. She gives me square 
 service; she s always glad to see me; she loves 
 me a little bit ! - 
 
 Beside herself, the girl raised the parasol and 
 sprang at the mare s head. 
 
 "So she loves you ! Fiddlesticks !" 
 
 She struck the sociable little animal one, 
 two, three sharp blows across the head. 
 
 "Stop!" roared Herbert as the mare reared 
 wildly. 
 
 He came around to the horse s head. 
 
 "Do that again and there ll be trouble!" he 
 said hoarsely. 
 
 "There ll be trouble! What kind of trouble? 
 What will you do ? What ? " 
 
 He quieted his horse, stroking the silky nose and 
 the quivering nostrils. 
 
 "Mibb," he said hoarsely, "you and me just don t 
 hitch and the sooner we realize it the better. I ve 
 give you whatever you ve wanted in the way o 
 money ; I ve bought this place and fixed it up for 
 you just as you and that hellion of a mother o yours
 
 192 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 wanted. I said I d be a sport and play square and 
 perhaps try to get you to love me - 
 
 "You talk as though you d done me a favor by 
 marrying me." 
 
 "Which I did. You never give a hoot for me. 
 It was what cash I had access to that made you do 
 it. If I d been poor as Jack Purse you wouldn t 
 have done it in a thousand years. But I was pretty 
 well fixed and heart-hungry for a woman like - 
 
 "Like Mary Purse!" 
 
 "Yes, like Mary Purse, God damn it ! I d asked 
 Mary Purse to marry me and she d turned me down 
 because she couldn t love me somehow, only as a 
 sister and I was heart-broke. I was half crazy the 
 night I heard she was marryin Jack, and anything 
 in petticoats that d show some aspects o woman 
 hood, I d a-married at the drop of a hat just to feel 
 I was hitched to somebody and had some interest 
 in life - 
 
 "And I came along and was picked up and mar 
 ried like a hand-me-down !" 
 
 "Call it what you like. I married you thinkin 
 you d give at least value received for what I d try 
 to do for you. But it s been a miserable farce from 
 first to last and every day always makes it worse. 
 The place ain t far off where it ll all come to an end. 
 There just ain t nothin to you, Mibb. Not even 
 sympathy. A man can forgive a woman for every 
 sin in the decalogue and put up with every vice and 
 selfishness a small-bored woman can contract so 
 long as she gives him sympathy in what he is and 
 what he s tryin to do. A man s a brute, too, to 
 make a woman have youngsters that she don t want 
 em and even that won t break his love and regard 
 for her if if she s sympathetic. But "
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 193 
 
 "So it s sympathy you want?" 
 
 She stepped up to him and asked him the question 
 viciously. 
 
 " It s somethin " 
 
 " It s sympathy you want ? " 
 
 With drawn face, tired eyes, he raised his head 
 and looked at her. 
 
 And as he did so, she struck him ! struck him 
 a swift, sharp blow across his face. 
 
 "You - - you Jezebel!" whispered Herb 
 hoarsely. 
 
 "I won t have to be asked to get out twice," she 
 said. 
 
 She turned abruptly and walked out. 
 
 He put his grimy hand up to his face and drew 
 it away as though half expecting to see blood on the 
 place where she had struck him. Finding none, he 
 stood there for a moment, stroking the mare s 
 forgiving head, his eyes looking wistfully far away. 
 
 Then he walked over and sat down on the lowest 
 of the hayloft stairs. 
 
 For half an hour he simply sat there, his face in 
 his hands. 
 
 Two nights later we ran this item in our paper. 
 
 Mrs. Harvey Henderson, with her daughter, Mrs. 
 Herbert Truman, with whom she has been making 
 her home since the daughter s marriage, left town last 
 evening for a week s stay in New York, following 
 which they will sail for a three-months trip to 
 Europe. Mrs. Silas Truman, Mr. Truman s mother, 
 will keep house for her son during the wife s absence. 
 
 Mibb Truman, nee Henderson, had "left" her 
 husband.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 IN WHICH THE PURSES "Snip COMES IN" -ET 
 A RATHER DlMINUTJVE LlTTLE VESSEL WITH 
 ONLY A MODEST CARGO IN HER HOLDS BUT HER 
 DECKS PILED HIGH WITH HUMAN HAPPINESS. 
 
 THINGS droned along in our little town for a month 
 or so after Mabel and her mother left. Some one 
 asked Herb in Jimmy Stiles barber shop one night 
 why he hadn t gone with them. 
 
 "I wanted em to enjoy the trip if they can," 
 he replied and walked out, leaving the boys wonder 
 ing exactly what he meant. 
 
 "Some one ought to take a harness tug to them 
 Hendersons mother and daughter ! " declared 
 Uncle Joe Fodder from a corner. "Every dog may 
 have his day but the Bible never said nothin about 
 the cats ! And Herb he s a good man goin all 
 to pieces just because things ain t natural some- 
 wheres. You know what I mean. Bud Matherson 
 was in my place yesterday to get a rig to take that 
 red-headed Peters girl up spoon river. He says 
 the day after Mibb and her mother got out in such 
 a nice pretty dignified way, Herb was all clogged up 
 with liquor and had to go home in the afternoon and 
 sleep it off. The boy s goin to hell and I don t 
 know s I blame him !" 
 
 Herb on the night in question emerged from the 
 barber shop and started up Maple Street. At the 
 foot of the hill he met Mary and Jack, coining down
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 195 
 
 arm-in-arm. With a cry of delight, Mary saw him 
 and ran up to him. 
 
 "Herbert ! Herbert !" she cried, her face shining, 
 her voice atremble. "What do you suppose has 
 happened to us, Herbert ? " 
 
 "I dunno." 
 
 "Jack and I are going to inherit money ! It s 
 from an uncle in Chicago I ve never seen. He died 
 and left us his estate. The executor turned it into 
 cash and has sent the money on to Judge Farmer 
 for us. Mr. Farmer s little boy just brought us word 
 that it s come. We re going down after it now." 
 
 "Money?" said Herb. He spoke the word as 
 though it were tar and acid in his mouth. "How 
 much?" 
 
 "We don t know yet." She was a little sobered 
 by Herbert s indifference. 
 
 "Aren t you glad for us, Herbert?" 
 
 "That," the other replied, "depends on how much 
 it is !" He moved away. "I ain t feelin* just 
 right to-night," he explained. "Excuse me." 
 
 Mary looked after him sadly. 
 
 Then she turned and continued her energetic walk 
 downtown with Jack. After a few blocks she said : 
 
 "Did you smell his breath? It s too bad, Jack. 
 Somehow I feel personally responsible. And yet 
 I couldn t do any different, could I ? " 
 
 "What do you mean?" Jack demanded sharply. 
 
 "Some day, Jack," she said, "I ll tell you !" 
 
 And nothing more could the husband get from the 
 wife of his heart. 
 
 They found Judge Farmer as before busy over his 
 law books or pretending to be and pompous 
 and dignified and inclined to ceremony.
 
 196 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 "You sent for us?" asked Mary. 
 
 "I did, Mrs. Purse. I have heard from Chicago 
 that the Wood estate has been entirely settled and 
 all the law been complied with." 
 
 "And Uncle Josiah actually did leave us his 
 money ? " 
 
 "At least to you, Mrs. Purse," smiled the Judge. 
 
 "And when will it arrive, do you think?" she 
 asked. "You see, if it s of any size I ve made so 
 many plans for it " 
 
 "I have the check here on my desk and the 
 papers. They arrived this afternoon." 
 
 " You have the money here ? " 
 
 " Yes. But I warned you not to expect too much." 
 
 "If it s only enough to pay up our debts and leave 
 us free just to work and save for ourselves and the 
 youngsters, I ll thank the dear God humbly ! " the 
 girl declared. 
 
 "Youngsters!" cried the Judge. "There isn t 
 but one, is there ? " 
 
 "Suppose we get to the business!" exclaimed 
 Jack suddenly. 
 
 The color gradually became normal in the young 
 woman s face. Judge Farmer spread out more 
 official-looking documents. He finished with the 
 arrangement of the papers and lastly on the top he 
 laid a long narrow slip of pink paper face downward. 
 
 "How much are your debts?" he asked. "I 
 suppose you are referring to the bankruptcy of 
 Jack s father." 
 
 "Those debts of mine will never be paid with 
 Mary s legacy if it s a million dollars ! " declared 
 Jack grimly. 
 
 Mary placed a hand over his mouth. Playfully 
 holding it there she replied :
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 197 
 
 "Three thousand, seven hundred and eighty 
 dollars right this minute, Judge." Then she 
 gathered herself together as though to meet a 
 shock and asked : " Will the legacy cover it, 
 Judge?" 
 
 It was very quiet in the little corner room. A 
 clock ticked on the wall opposite Webster s picture. 
 A blue bottle fly buzzed against a dusty window. 
 
 "It will," said the Judge. "The amount left you 
 comes to five thousand and five hundred and fifty 
 dollars and twenty-five cents !" 
 
 Mary was the first to speak. 
 
 "It pays the debts," she declared hoarsely, "and 
 Jack, it leaves us it leaves us with a whole 
 thousand dollars over, for you to get into some 
 business ! " 
 
 Jack leaped up and walked to the window. He 
 stood looking down into the square. 
 
 "Don t be a fool, young man," declared the 
 Judge. "You ve got a wife that loves you. Thank 
 God for her ! " 
 
 "It cheats me ! Cheats me out of the satisfaction 
 of making a real effort to come up to the scratch." 
 
 "Tommyrot, young man!" retorted Farmer. 
 "I guess you find the job of raising those youngsters 
 that youngster ! hard enough without looking 
 for a slow smouldering financial fire to make you a 
 martyr to your principles." 
 
 "It s Mary s money I ll never touch it !" 
 
 Mary had the check in her hands. She winked 
 at the Judge and made a gesture not to mind any 
 thing Jack might say. Then her eyes sought the 
 figures on the paper figures which in those days 
 meant a competency, figures which to her poor 
 financially starved scheme of things meant a for-
 
 198 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 tune. If it had been fifty or a hundred thousand 
 dollars, the amount could have meant no more. 
 
 Fifty-five hundreds of dollars ! 
 
 The figures swam before her gaze. Frantically 
 she fingered in her bosom for her handkerchief. 
 She sank down into the chair, her pretty brown head 
 bowed in her arms on the edge of the Judge s table. 
 
 "What are you weeping for?" demanded Farmer. 
 
 "That s the way a woman signifies she s having 
 a good time," declared Jack grimly, without looking 
 around. 
 
 The papers and receipts were duly signed, sealed 
 and delivered. The check formally became her 
 property. The Judge said they didn t owe him 
 anything ; he d been paid from Chicago. He shook 
 hands with them elaborately and they went out. 
 
 Mary carried the check all the way home in her 
 hand. Jack spoke not a word. 
 
 "Jack," she pleaded, "can t you act as happy 
 over it as I would have been if you had been the 
 one left the money?" 
 
 "It s different," choked Jack. "It puts me 
 in a worse position than ever. I m frantic at times 
 about getting ahead." 
 
 "We ve got a start now," she declared. 
 
 "Mary," he begged, "keep that money in your 
 own bank account for yourself. I want to make 
 good for the sake of my own pride for the sake of 
 doing it." 
 
 She put the check in the clock for safe keeping 
 until morning. After Jack had dropped asleep she 
 stole out of bed and took it out of the clock. What 
 of robbers? Fire? It was an awful responsibility 
 - this having such vast wealth loose around the 
 house. She got an envelope and tucked it under
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 199 
 
 her pillow and fell asleep at last to see visions and 
 dream dreams. And Thomas Joshua, awake early 
 in the morning an idiosyncrasy peculiar to infants 
 in some quarters saw a corner of the envelope 
 protruding from beneath his mother s pillow just 
 above his head and drew it forth. Kind angels 
 awakened Mary, and a wild shriek awakened Jack. 
 For Thomas Joshua was just preparing to eat fifty- 
 five hundreds of dollars at one vast extravagant 
 gulp. 
 
 One week later we took a batch of mail out and 
 passed it to Jack across the imposing stone. 
 
 Purse ran over many of the corner-cards on the 
 envelopes and his face wore a frightened look. 
 
 "Duns ! * he cried. "But why have they arrived 
 all at once ? " 
 
 He ripped one open and read ! 
 
 Dear Sir : 
 
 We enclose herewith receipt in full for the money 
 owed us on North Sidney Bulletin invoices after- 
 settlement of twenty cents on the dollar by Judge 
 Atherton. Please accept our sincere thanks for the 
 same. You have acted very fairly in this matter. 
 
 Envelope after envelope he tore open until there 
 was a waste basket of papered clutter on the forms he 
 was making up. And when he realized what had 
 happened he went over and sat down by the big 
 press and ran his fingers through his hair until it 
 was a worse mess than Herb s cowlick had been in 
 its wildest days. 
 
 Sam came over and wanted to know what had 
 happened. 
 
 "Poor Mary s gone to work and paid up
 
 200 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 everything I owe or ever have owed, out of that 
 legacy she got from her uncle." 
 
 He rubbed his hands nervously together. 
 
 " Well, what did you want her to do buy a 
 horse-car line?" 
 
 "No, but " 
 
 "But what?" 
 
 " Can t you understand how I feel about it 
 having a woman pay my bills ? " 
 
 "Yes, I can. But I can feel too what pleasure 
 it gave to Mary when she did it." 
 
 "Pleasure! Spending money by mailing it out 
 to a list of names and never getting a thing but so 
 many thank you s ? " 
 
 "Of feeling that she has been able to really help 
 you out of a bad situation. Young man, you ve 
 got a family and a future to work for and the god of 
 luck has freed you from debt. Show what s in you ; 
 go at your task of winning success with the idea that 
 when the time comes, you ll pay Mary back a 
 thousandfold." 
 
 Jack went back to his stones, gathered up his mail 
 sadly and put it in his pocket. 
 
 He drew Mary to him that noontime with great 
 terrible man tears rolling down his cheeks. Gripped 
 in his embrace, her own features shining, she knew 
 then that he knew what she had done. 
 
 "The rest oh, Mary keep the rest for 
 Tommy s education. Promise me ! " 
 
 "The rest goes to help you get into some good 
 business. Then the business can pay for Thomas 
 Joshua s education through theological school ! " 
 
 Mrs. Hod came over to the Purses that evening 
 after some thread to match her mauve silk. As she 
 declared afterward, if she d seen the ghost of Julius
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 201 
 
 Caesar walk into the room dressed in a Japanese 
 umbrella and a pair of rubber boots, she couldn t 
 have been more startled than when she heard Jack 
 Purse striding up and down the kitchen and 
 swearing. 
 
 "What s happened?" gasped that good lady, 
 properly horrified. 
 
 "Oh, I took the legacy money, you know, and paid 
 all the bills so that we re free free free ! And 
 Jack s out there cussing over it. Let him alone! 
 That s the way a man signifies he s having a good 
 time ! " answered Mary sweetly.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE MILLS OF THE GODS GRIND SLOWLY ONWARD 
 AND THE PURSES HAVE A SlJDDEN ADDITION TO 
 THEIR FAMILY WITH WHICH THE STORK HAS 
 NOTHING TO Do. 
 
 LET us turn back to the files. Having elaborated 
 on the "lead stories" found in those blurred pages 
 and having a special significance to our narrative, 
 let us skim through half a dozen items of minor 
 importance. 
 
 For instance, here is a brief account of the marriage 
 of Esmeralda Truman to some chap in New York 
 with a name like a villain in the Seaside Library. 
 And a few months further on we note that Mrs. 
 Silas Truman has left for New York to make her 
 home with her daughter and that her son Herbert 
 will reside temporarily at the Whitney House. We 
 were gullible enough for a time to believe that Mrs. 
 Truman Senior s explanation "daughter needs me" 
 was tantamount to announcing that Esmeralda 
 wanted her mother near her through the advent of 
 a youngster. We subsequently demonstrated that 
 she was one of those women who must have a back 
 ground against which the lights and shadows of her 
 character can be shown to advantage. The Seaside- 
 Library husband having a will of his own, however, 
 and a jaw too square to allow his wife to get away 
 with her role of Mrs. Hawksbee, the mother was sent
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 203 
 
 for and we understand she fulfilled her function 
 faithfully until death. 
 
 Four months further along in the files, we come 
 to the ending of the pitiful, miserable career of 
 Mary s half-brother, the idiot Artie, in an asylum 
 down in Massachusetts. The body was sent back 
 to Foxboro for interment and laid beside his father 
 and mother in the family lot. There was a prayer 
 at the grave. The casket was not opened. 
 
 When we lie back in an old office chair with a 
 friendly pipe in the quiet hours and think of the 
 changes which the last thirty years have wrought, 
 more and more do we come to think of life only as 
 a constant readjustment, a constant replacing of 
 new faces for old, a constant swapping of friendships 
 and exchanging of the old and antiquated for the 
 better. After all, the only thing permanent in life 
 is change. The sane and happy person is he who 
 can accept life as such and adapt himself most 
 quickly and thoroughly to the circumstances. 
 
 As for Jack and Mary Purse, the files place all 
 their family vicissitudes in very orderly and quite 
 rational fashion. But if we had no great diary of 
 the town s life to thus guide us and if we were 
 dependent upon memory alone, we would have set 
 it down that the babies seemed to come along in the 
 Purse household in record-breaking fashion after 
 the advent of Thomas Joshua. It was one of the 
 unexplainable things in life that they should all have 
 run to boys, but that is what happened. Fred and 
 Theodore were born the fall after Mibb and her 
 mother left Herbert and went to Europe, and Mary 
 was busier in her little home than ever. 
 
 It is unexplainable also that the birth of twins 
 should be looked upon by average American folks
 
 204 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 as a joke on the parents. It was anything but a 
 joke to Jack Purse. Not that he didn t love the 
 youngsters as his life, but that he was beginning to 
 grow gray at the temples prematurely, wondering 
 when that business chance was coming along which 
 should provide the money necessary for their bring 
 ing up and education. 
 
 We have always given Jack full credit; he tried 
 to do his best by his family and his job. That was 
 the pathos of it. There were times when panic 
 seized him and he wondered if there was indeed any 
 "future" before him, if all his energies and his life 
 must be spent sticking to his job in the newspaper 
 office which was steady and permanent, and 
 raising those boys without any great wealth of 
 money but just rich in character and manhood, 
 a little bit better men than their father had been 
 before them, taught to avoid, if possible, their 
 father s mistakes. 
 
 America is filled with that kind of men, men who 
 feel as the days slip away and the bills keep coming 
 in and money must be secured to meet them, that 
 they may have already shot their bolt and missed ; 
 that the best part of their lives is passing ; that the 
 best they can do is to equip those young lives for 
 whom they are responsible to take up the battle of 
 life where their father left it off and carry it forward 
 to a better conclusion. They are heroes, these 
 fathers. They are the real blue-bloods and 
 thoroughbreds by which this nation is great. 
 
 Thomas Joshua and Frederick and Theodore 
 Herbert came along in those years while the Purses 
 were living on Pleasant Street and Jack was drawing 
 eighteen dollars a week in our office and looking for 
 some kind of opening. And the year of the Truman
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 205 
 
 bankruptcy Richard Samuel put in his tiny appear 
 ance and demanded his rights as an infant and got 
 them. 
 
 The year of the Truman bankruptcy ! Let us 
 refresh our memory by the files. Yes, it was in 
 1890 that the Truman Wagon Works went into the 
 hands of the sheriff. It was in 1890 that changes 
 took place in the lives of some of our story folk 
 indeed. 
 
 It did not come wholly unexpected, the Truman 
 bankruptcy. The town knew that Herb was drink 
 ing heavily, and that for some mysterious reason the 
 Purses were trying desperately to save him. But 
 for an equally mysterious reason, every time there 
 was a new young one in the Purse home, Herb went 
 on a spree a terrible spree and the last one 
 ended in his being arrested and detained in Sheriff 
 Crumpett s emporium under the town hall over 
 night because behind the reins of Monday-Washing 
 he was a menace to the safety of our public streets. 
 
 Judge Farmer, who had gone on the board of 
 directors of the People s National Bank, gave it out 
 that Mibb had drawn drafts on the husband which 
 time and again cleaned Herb out of ready cash and 
 once caused the wagon works to skip a pay roll. 
 The Judge had a long talk with Herbert on that 
 occasion and advised the husband to let the drafts 
 be reported back as unpaid. But Herb said he 
 couldn t do that. Mibb might have received money 
 on them and if one came back unpaid it might lead 
 to her arrest and all manner of scandal. Thereat 
 the Judge secured Mabel s address and wrote her 
 a harsh letter about which Herb never knew. For 
 a time the sums she asked for were reasonable. 
 WTien she drew a check on a big New York jewelry
 
 206 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 house for a sum that would have supported the 
 Purse family for a year and at the same time Herb 
 had to sell the Holland place to meet some of his 
 notes, the Judge knew the end was only a matter 
 of time. The directors of the People s National 
 called in Herb s paper. That finished him. He 
 made an assignment. 
 
 Bud Matherson was placed in charge to run the 
 business for a time for the benefit of the creditors. 
 
 Herb appeared one night at the Purses . His 
 clothes were wrinkled and his face unshaven. His 
 eyes were a trifle bleared and his voice cracked. 
 But he was far from being intoxicated. 
 
 Most bankrupts make frantic and hopeless effort 
 to recoup. They try to convince their friends that 
 the embarrassment is only temporary. They go 
 around snapping rubber bands on papers and looking 
 hopeful and important and then as the tide goes 
 against them explaining to every one who will 
 listen, exactly how it happened and that everybody 
 else in the business was to blame but themselves. 
 But Herb did none of these things. He was listless 
 and silent and seemingly relieved that the respon 
 sibility had slipped from his shoulders. He got 
 down on the floor and played with the little Purse 
 boys until Jack came home from the shop and then 
 with a sigh he got up and sat in a chair and became 
 apologetic. 
 
 "Jack," he said unevenly, "I ain t ever asked 
 many real favors o you folks exceptin to come over 
 now and then and take your kids to a circus, have 
 I?" 
 
 "No," Jack replied. 
 
 "I got one big favor to ask of you now." 
 
 Jack thought Herb wanted to borrow money.
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 207 
 
 He would have loaned it gladly had there been any 
 prospect of getting it back, despite the fact that 
 because of the youngsters and doctors and clothing 
 and grocery bills Mary s fifteen hundred odd dollars 
 remaining from the legacy had gradually dissolved 
 until but eight hundred and fifty dollars were left. 
 
 "What is it, Herb?" 
 
 "How much money you got, Jack? That s 
 personal, but I d just like to know before I speak 
 what I come for." 
 
 "We ve got several hundred dollars." 
 
 Herb fingered a baby s toy he picked from the 
 floor. He dropped it a couple of times and picked 
 it up again. 
 
 "Jack, I got an idea I ll do a little traveling" he 
 said. "I don t mean just down to New York, and 
 back. I mean some real travelin somewheres. 
 Things has got pretty well snarled up here. I ain t 
 got the stomach to try to straighten em out. I m 
 tired, Jack. I want a change o scene and a rest." 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "I ve done the best I could by Mibb. My 
 conscience don t hurt me none on that score. And 
 this goin away now will be the best thing I ever 
 did. After three years she ll be able to get a divorce 
 for desertion ; there ain t no other reason she could 
 get one for. But, Jack, I can t go away until 
 until " 
 
 "How much money do you want?" 
 
 "Two hundred aint far out o the way, Jack." 
 
 Jack s heart sank. Two hundred dollars with 
 practically no prospect of getting it back meant 
 diminishing the legacy to six hundred and fifty 
 dollars. 
 
 "That s rather steep, Herb."
 
 208 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 "We won t argue about price between friends. 
 I said two hundred warn t far out o the way because 
 she s worth that. But if you was only able to pay 
 twenty-five dollars, Jack, I d take it because I don t 
 know anybody on earth I d want to have her besides 
 you and Mary." 
 
 "What on earth are you talking about? Who s 
 she ? Don t you want to borrow money ?" 
 
 "No! I want you should have Monday- Washin 
 because you ll treat her as I d o treated her if I d 
 stayed around. I can t take no horse and rig where 
 I m goin !" 
 
 "Herbert!" cried Mary, anxiously entering from 
 the kitchen. "You re not going to do anything 
 foolish?" 
 
 "No, Mary. I m goin to do the wisest thing I ve 
 ever done in my life. Just goin away, that s all." 
 
 "Herbert you re not going to to " 
 
 "Yes, I m goin to part with Monday- Washin . 
 And I want to know you folks have got her. It ain t 
 the cash ; it s you takin care o her until she dies that 
 I want to remember. I ve had some nice rides be 
 hind Monday- Washin , Mary." 
 
 Like a flash Mary s thoughts fled back to the night 
 when her stepfather had assaulted her and how she 
 had first come to Paris behind the little animal ; the 
 ride with Herbert one Sunday afternoon in the 
 autumn ; the day in the office when Mibb had paraded 
 her finery and Mary had wished that Monday- 
 Washing might have been hers to drive over the 
 azure hills and far away. 
 
 "Yes, Herbert. Only we don t really need a 
 horse, unless unless " 
 
 The husband and wife exchanged glances. 
 
 "Yes?"
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 209 
 
 "Unless we should move from here out to the edge 
 of town where there s room for the boys to grow. 
 Our place here is getting somewhat cramped. Jack 
 would probably need a horse to drive back and 
 forth." 
 
 "If I didn t need a little money I d give him to 
 you. But I do need a little money " 
 
 "Herb," declared the husband, "would you listen 
 to a hundred and fifty dollars for the mare, harness 
 and buggy?" 
 
 "She s yourn," Herb answered without hesitation.
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 MABEL TRUMAN, NEE HENDERSON, COMES BACK TO 
 PARIS IN A HIGH HUFF, AND GOES BACK TO NEW 
 YORK WITH A BIG IDEA. 
 
 IT was a different Mabel Truman, nbe Henderson, 
 who came back to Paris two years later. Mibb had 
 matured in those years of absence. Maybe it had 
 been the people she had met, the places she had 
 frequented, the wider horizons or the removal of all 
 horizons, that was responsible. She had gone away 
 a cheap country-town spitfire covered with the 
 veneer of easy money. She came back polished but 
 not subdued, cultured but not refined, sophisticated 
 but sadly lacking a sense of humor. 
 
 Naturally she had heard about the bankruptcy, 
 for the money had stopped coming from Herbert. 
 But she was not persuaded that the whole catastrophe 
 was not a sharp lawyer s trick which some scheming 
 parties somewhere had succeeded in putting over on 
 provincial, easy-going Herb, and back she had come 
 to "see about it." 
 
 She was stouter than when she had gone away. 
 Her dress was less conspicuous and showed better 
 taste. But there were tiny crowsfeet in the corners 
 of her eyes and the faintest of faint wrinkles com 
 mencing to show in her neck, and she gravitated 
 toward men and told them her troubles as naturally 
 as a brook seeks the river and the river the sea. 
 No one in Paris recalls a single instance where Mibb
 
 211 
 
 took a woman into her confidence or sought her 
 sympathy. But she hadn t been in town two hours 
 before two strange drummers in the Whitney House 
 were patting her hand and old man Ezekial s boy, 
 who lived summers in the big house on Preston Hill, 
 was thanking the Lord that the town had turned up 
 a live one at last. 
 
 Mabel visited Judge Farmer first and met with 
 such an icy reception that she came to Sam Hod with 
 tears of mortification and rage in her eyes and de 
 manded the price of space in the Telegraph so she 
 could say publicly in print just what she thought of 
 our leading attorney and banker. 
 
 Sam got her quieted down after a fashion, during 
 which procedure he had difficulty to avoid Mibb 
 weeping on his shoulder, and explained to her the law 
 of libel and how a paper and not an individual con 
 tributor was held responsible for any such deliberate 
 indiscretion. Then with eyes snapping and a very 
 great deal of pompous and self-important fidgeting, 
 she listened while Sam narrated as diplomatically 
 as possible the vicissitudes of the carriage works 
 under Herb s incompetent management. 
 
 "I made the mistake of my life," Mibb declared, 
 "when I went away. I should have had the brains 
 to stay here and personally take charge of the 
 carriage work myself. What I cannot understand 
 is this : What has become of all Herbert s money ?" 
 
 "I guess what he didn t send you to New York or 
 Florida or abroad, was lost by inefficiency and dis 
 honesty at the factory," Sam replied. "Anyhow, the 
 supply has stopped, Mabel. You ve got to make 
 up your mind to that." 
 
 "Of course I ll get what s left. That should be 
 something."
 
 212 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 "What s left!" 
 
 "After the bills are paid, I mean." 
 
 "My dear girl, Judge Farmer tells me that the 
 effects won t enable the referee to pay more than 
 twenty cents on the dollar." 
 
 "But I, as his wife, also have a claim !" 
 
 " Certainly not at least not on the business. 
 It was a corporation, you know, although Herbert 
 owned nearly all the stock. All there is in the 
 business goes to satisfy the creditors, and I under 
 stand that what Herbert personally owned he turned 
 into cash before the assignment." 
 
 "He was rich !" retorted Mabel. 
 
 "Not so rich as most of the town imagined, You 
 made a poor bet, Mibb, when you got it into your 
 head you d married a gold mine." 
 
 "But where is the man? Has he deserted me?" 
 
 "He went away one night about two months ago ; 
 no one saw him go ; no one knows where he is. Poor 
 Herb ! He had been drinking heavily." 
 
 "Poor Herb fiddlesticks! A weak character 
 always takes to drink. What I want to know is, 
 what s to become of me? I haven t had a remit 
 tance for two months. The last one was only a 
 hundred and fifty dollars 
 
 "That must have been the cash he got for the 
 mare," mused Sam. 
 
 "The mare? And that isn t mine ? Who has it?" 
 
 "The Purses bought it." 
 
 " The Purses ? Oh, yes, I believe I remember ; the 
 young couple with such a disgusting proclivity for 
 babies. Aiid they bought it ! You re sure ? Be 
 cause if Herb simply gave it to them, they re going to 
 find that Herb s wife is still in existence and not to be 
 cast aside financially like an old glove."
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 213 
 
 "They bought it all right, and riding around in it 
 with the space in front of them stuffed with small 
 boys is the first recreation they ve had come into 
 their lives since they were married." 
 
 "I m not interested in the recreation of the Purses ! 
 My husband had altogether too much to do with 
 Mary Purse. If I thought there was a chance of 
 bringing suit against Mary Purse and getting any 
 thing for the alienation of my husband s affections 
 they re doing that now in the best circles I d 
 have the papers filed so quickly that " 
 
 "And not a lawyer in town would take the case ! 
 Mabel, you are simply ridiculous." 
 
 "But I ve got to have money. If Herbert has 
 deserted me I ve still got to live somehow " 
 
 "Get a job and go to work." 
 
 "A job! Work! Me! After the people I ve 
 associated with ; the set I move in " 
 
 "I wouldn t let that worry me ; no one here in town 
 is the wiser." 
 
 "Now you are ridiculous!" the woman cried. 
 Suddenly the truth dawned on her and she cried : 
 "I m a widow without a widow s privileges! 
 What shall I do oh, what shall I do ? If I could 
 only get my hands on that Herbert Truman ; if I only 
 could ! " 
 
 "You ve had your hands on him for quite a spell 
 and squeezed him dry. Better let it go at that, 
 Mabel," and Sam hitched his chair up under him, 
 lighted his pipe and prepared to go on with his 
 interrupted editorial. 
 
 "I plainly see," she declared icily, "that I haven t 
 a friend in this town." 
 
 "There s no especial reason why you should have, 
 Mibb. You haven t exerted yourself greatly to
 
 214 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 cultivate friendship. There is a very arbitrary law 
 about such things, you know." 
 
 "Oh well," she snapped haughtily, "I dare say I 
 know a few gentlemen friends who will not be 
 above helping me temporarily." 
 
 "I dare say you do, Mibb ! " grunted Sam grimly. 
 
 The door closed after the woman and Sam said a 
 bad word. 
 
 It rained that afternoon, a sudden thunder 
 shower that pelted huge drops like marbles on to 
 the dust-covered foliage, made Main Street mer 
 chants hustle their sidewalk displays indoors with 
 frantic energy and sent the luckless townspeople 
 caught on the streets into whatever shelters were at 
 hand. 
 
 Mabel Truman in a lacy creation, embroidered 
 parasol, bare head, and fingers ablaze with rings, 
 chanced to be strolling down Union Street meditating 
 hotly on her predicament when the shower came up. 
 Casting frantically about for a place of shelter, she 
 noted the deep portico of the Baptist church entrance. 
 She made the protection just as the rain descended in 
 a sudden cloud. At the top of the steps, the parasol 
 obstructing the way, she bumped into a person who 
 had taken refuge there a moment before, a woman 
 with an infant. 
 
 "I beg your pardon!" cried Mibb in her most 
 adroit voice. And then she stiffened. 
 
 "Mabel ! " cried Mary Purse. "You ! " 
 
 "I was not aware you were here or I should have 
 found a place from the rain elsewhere," the grass 
 widow declared. 
 
 Mary looked at her finery wistfully. Then the 
 dark eyes of Jack Purse s wife sought the other 
 much-massaged face and lingered there.
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 215 
 
 "Why do you say that, Mabel?" she asked. 
 "What have you against me ?" 
 
 "You ask me that ! " 
 
 "I m sure it s nothing I ve done intentionally." 
 
 Mibb tapped her toe impatiently on the flagstone 
 floor. 
 
 "No; I dare say you didn t know any better. 
 You ve been tied down to this town all your life ; how 
 could you ! " 
 
 Mary did not reply. The shower increased. 
 Great sweeps of rain clouded the atmosphere ; gutters 
 were choked, limbs of trees broke in the violence of 
 the wind that swept a fine spray into the portico 
 where the women waited. And while the thunder 
 rattled and clacked and played about the upper air, 
 Mibb held her head high and tapped her toe impa 
 tiently. 
 
 "I m sure, Mabel, if there s anything I m respon 
 sible for, I m willing to apologize. You know - 
 
 "You d better !" snapped Mibb. 
 
 The apologetic, threadbare look, the gentle wist- 
 f ulness of the other woman, somewhat touched 
 Mabel and after a time she condescended to look 
 around, stare her over and allow her very superior 
 eyes to rest on the infant. 
 
 "I declare!" she said. "Hasn t that young one 
 grown a bit in the last four years?" 
 
 "This isn t the baby you saw at my house. This 
 is Richard my fourth." 
 
 "Your what?" 
 
 "My fourth. Fred and Theodore, the twins, born 
 while you were in Europe. This one was born 
 four months ago. We call him The Dickie-Bird." 
 
 "My Gawd!" cried Mibb. "And your husband 
 is in business by this time, I suppose."
 
 216 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 "No; he s he s still foreman in the news 
 paper office. There hasn t been exactly the business 
 chance come along " 
 
 "I know! Some men just simply haven t it in 
 them to get ahead. Where are you living?" 
 
 In the same place. But I don t think we ll be 
 there much longer because the man who owns the 
 property is going to sell for a building site. Jack 
 and I are thinking awful seriously of buying the old 
 place on Cobb Hill for a home. It s country out 
 there and plenty of room for the boys to play and 
 grow. Jack could drive back and forth mornings 
 and evenings, you know. We we bought your 
 horse." 
 
 "So I have heard," commented Mibb coldly. 
 "But I thought you were poor ! You talk of buying 
 places as if " 
 
 "O, but I had a legacy ; not much but still a legacy. 
 My Uncle Josiah in Chicago died and left us over 
 five thousand dollars." 
 
 "How long ago?" 
 
 "About three years." 
 
 "I dare say it s spent by this time. I never saw 
 folks who were baby-crazy who had the knack of 
 hanging on to money." 
 
 "It isn t all spent. Anyhow, that s why 
 Jack and I are talking about getting what s left into 
 some sort of real estate before the whole legacy 
 becomes exhausted. The bank s never been able to 
 dispose of the Wheeler house and property because 
 of what happened there. We can buy it for the 
 mortgage and interest. We ve got money enough to 
 do that and I m beginning to think it s a wise move. 
 I m looking for my happiness in other ways 
 than money."
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 217 
 
 "What do you know about what happiness money 
 will buy," demanded Mibb " you that s hardly 
 been beyond the skyline in your life? Nonsense! " 
 
 "I don t," returned Mary, "and what I don t 
 know won t hurt me." 
 
 "Poor little country bumpkin ! Poor little fool ! " 
 declared Mibb. She wished the storm would end so 
 she could leave. It was a most disconcerting pre 
 dicament. 
 
 But Mary pretended not to be disparaged. 
 
 "How are things going with you, Mibb?" she 
 asked politely. 
 
 "Beautifully, thank you." 
 
 "You re still singing, I suppose. You had a 
 beautiful voice, I remember, when we worked in the 
 office together. I remember very often the night 
 you sang between the acts of the little local talent 
 play. How very long ago that seems, doesn t it? 
 And your voice should have improved much with 
 time." 
 
 "I studied under the best masters while abroad," 
 Mibb replied. It was a falsehood. She had not 
 raised her voice while abroad above an ordinary tone 
 except to hold up her end of an altercation with her 
 mother. But it sounded well, this "best-masters" 
 business. 
 
 "You are fortunate; it will stand you in good 
 stead now." 
 
 "What do you mean?" 
 
 "Since Herbert well, you know." 
 
 Yes, Mibb knew. She knew all too well. But 
 she was furious to have it "thrown" at her by 
 homely little Mary Purse in her last year s hat and 
 coat with the baggy sleeves. 
 
 "I ll thank you to mind your own business.
 
 218 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 You have financial troubles of your own, I under 
 stand, which should be quite sufficient for an ordinary 
 person without interesting yourself in mine. I see 
 the rain is letting up. I ll say good-afternoon." 
 
 Despite the w^d wet, she raised her creamy para 
 sol and was gon. 
 
 Mary, who watched her picking her dainty way 
 among the broken boughs and sticks and miniature 
 washouts, declared : 
 
 "Well, one thing s certain, Dicky -Bird, we don t 
 look quite so old and burned out as she s com 
 mencing to look for all of our craze after babies ! " 
 
 As for Mibb, she went down that devastated street 
 with a Big Thought whirling in her head. 
 
 Mary Purse had given her an idea a great idea !
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 BACK IN THE OLD HOUSE ON THE COBB HILL ROAD, 
 THE PURSES SETTLE DOWN TO THE DAY TO DAY 
 EXPERIENCES OF PLAIN PEOPLE WHICH MAKES 
 JACK PURSE A FRANTIC MAN. 
 
 IT was about the time we put in our linotype that 
 Jack and Mary bought the old Wheeler place out on 
 Cobb Hill. The man was plainly worried that he 
 was never going to draw more than three dollars a 
 day in our office and three dollars a day with 
 rents going up in the village was not sufficient to 
 raise the live-wire youngsters who were beginning 
 to demonstrate that they were real boys. The day 
 came when his landlord gave formal notice that the 
 place was to be sold for a business block site, and on 
 that day he and Mary took the remaining money out 
 of the savings bank and the place passed back into 
 the hands of the girl who had left it so sadly a decade 
 before. 
 
 The first home on Pleasant Street which had stood 
 for so much to them, was broken up. Ed Dickinson 
 drove over from Foxboro with his big two-horse van 
 one spring day and moved them. The musty old 
 house was scrubbed and renovated and aired and 
 painted. The bitter-sweet sorrow at leaving the 
 little tenement on Pleasant Street was only offset 
 for the woman by the satisfaction of the home-coming, 
 - back to the old farm behind the maple trees near 
 the top of Cobb Hill.
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 "I thought when we moved from Pleasant 
 Street at all that it was to be so very different," 
 Jack complained bitterly. "I thought it was rather 
 going to be like the Holland place. After all, it s 
 only a lonely old farm 
 
 "But the boys they will have their childhood 
 in the country, and after all, there s no blessing equal 
 to that, Jack." 
 
 Jack knew it, but he refused to be consoled. 
 
 "I ve got to do something!" he cried bitterly. 
 "I ve got to prove I m not a failure! Damn the 
 newspaper business. It takes and takes and never 
 gives ! It ties you down and squeezes the best that s 
 in you out for some other person s profit. Why did 
 I ever learn the trade of a printer ?" 
 
 But if Jack realized he was headed toward failure, 
 Mary too must have looked into the future after two 
 more children six in all had come to her, and 
 had it brought home to her that she had made the 
 same mistake that her mother had made before her : 
 that life would be but one dreary day of years so 
 much cooking, so much dishwashing, so much mend 
 ing and cleaning and hanging out of clothes. Some 
 day death would overtake her. There would be a 
 plain average American small-town funeral with the 
 relatives attending and the church choir rendering 
 an anthem and a young local pastor not old enough 
 yet, nor wise enough, to understand the hearts of 
 human beings, who would mouth conventional fu 
 neral phrases and look gloomy and be more or less 
 thankful when the ordeal was over. There would be 
 a six-inch obituary down in a corner of our paper, 
 perhaps sandwiched between a report of the county 
 treasurer and a patent medicine advertisement. 
 There would be a plain white stone out in the ceme-
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 221 
 
 tery on the hill, soon forgotten by all but a lonely man 
 and God. It would be marked with the words : 
 "Mary, Beloved Wife of John Purse. Born Sept. 
 15th, 1861. Died, April 8th, 19." Life, like her 
 wedding day, like the dreams which she had dreamed, 
 would have passed. The grass and the briar bloom 
 would grow up around the headstone. She would 
 be forgotten. Oh, the heart-rendering hopelessness 
 of it. 
 
 But, in so far as any of us can recall, in so far as 
 any of the folk in our town knew, those who came in 
 contact with her after her sixth and final baby was 
 born, never heard a word of complaint or bitterness 
 from her lips. The features which had made her 
 once the prettiest girl in Paris took on deep dull lines 
 of work and worry and motherly anxiety. She was 
 growing rapidly into a plain, middle-aged woman 
 with nothing ahead but the successful manhood of 
 her boys, like a million other wives of average men 
 all over America tonight. 
 
 Mrs. Hod drove out to see her one afternoon and 
 stayed to supper. After supper they went up to the 
 front bedroom Mary s old room under the eaves 
 to hunt up some dress patterns. The moon came up 
 while they were there and the frogs down in the 
 marsh began their piping. It was a dreamy, beauti 
 ful hour. 
 
 Mary grew suddenly silent. From her place in 
 the rocker by the window Mrs. Hod glanced across 
 in the deep deep shadow to where Mary sat on the 
 bed. The girl suddenly began sobbing. Then to 
 Mrs. Hod s surprise, Mary Purse leaned across and 
 kneeled suddenly down with her head in Mrs. Hod s 
 lap. There she wept convulsively. 
 
 "Mother, mother!" Mary cried. "At least he s
 
 222 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 kind to me ; he loves me. But I understand, mother. 
 I understand ! " 
 
 "I spose you ve heard about Mibb Truman," 
 said Mrs. Hod, attempting to get the girl s mind on to 
 another subject. 
 
 "What about her?" 
 
 "I understand she s gone on the stage the con 
 cert stage singin . The Mathers went to New 
 York last week and looked her up. She wasn t at 
 all nice to em. But they learned that some of her 
 gentlemen friends down there have backed her 
 financially and that wonderful voice o hers seems to 
 be doin the rest. She always did have a wonderful 
 voice. You remember it?" 
 
 "Yes," said Mary dully. She was plainly not in 
 terested in the Henderson girl s fortunes, having 
 forsooth her own pitiful fortunes to occupy her 
 mind. 
 
 Mrs. Hod comforted her and after a while Mary 
 arose and wiped her eyes. 
 
 "I m sorry, Mrs. Hod. Once in a while I feel 
 weak and helpless. What I need, I suppose, is some 
 real sorrow to make me strong." 
 
 "There s trouble enough comes to us in life without 
 wishing for it, dear. You re all right. You re only 
 worrying over Jack because he doesn t get into 
 business." 
 
 "No; I m worrying over Jack because Jack is 
 worrying that he doesn t get into business. He s 
 afraid to make the break, Mrs. Hod. He s afraid to 
 leave his sure job for a brilliant uncertainty. And 
 our capital is gone now, you know I paid the bills 
 with the largest part of it and the rest I put into buy 
 ing this house so we could at least be sure of a roof 
 over our heads. That makes Jack timid about
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 223 
 
 taking chances; he s got the responsibilities of so 
 many on him." 
 
 "Has he had many chances?" 
 
 "Yes ; there s been the Red Front grocery which he 
 felt he couldn t swing because he didn t have the 
 capital ; there s been the newspaper at Saugus and 
 the job-printing business that Daddy Joe finally 
 bought and that I understand he s doing well in. 
 There s been Jim Galloway s rustless fire-screen 
 business and the sash-and-blind mill. All of them 
 were good businesses and would have made us fairly 
 well-fixed in time. But most of them needed money 
 quite a lot of it and somehow the boys have 
 taken most of our money." 
 
 "I know how it is, dear. It s too bad Jack couldn t 
 have found something before so many babies came. 
 Not," she added, "that I m saying a word against 
 them ; they re beautiful boys there aren t six boys 
 in the whole world any beautif uller excepting three 
 that I happen to have down at the Hod place on 
 Walnut Street in Paris. But still it s unfortunate." 
 
 "Jack s especially wild just now because you 
 won t tell a soul will you, Mrs. Hod ?" 
 
 " Certainly not, dear." She stroked the black hair 
 just beginning to fleck with gray. "Haven t I and 
 Mr. Hod proved that we re your friends ?" 
 
 "Well, then, Jack s especially wild just now because 
 he thinks he s discovered something on the Osgood 
 farm that may prove valuable a sort of ore and 
 he can buy the land for a thousand dollars. Only he 
 hasn t got the thousand dollars and even if he had it, 
 he lacks the money to develop it." 
 
 "What kind of ore, dear?" 
 
 "Some kind of yellow dirt that s in great demand 
 just now for paint. Ochre isn t that it ? Yes !
 
 224 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 There s a huge bed of it on the Osgood place along the 
 South Fork of Sheppard s brook. Jack had it sent 
 away and analyzed and then got a figure on the Os 
 good place because the Osgoods want to sell and move 
 to Montpelier. But it s all money money - 
 money again. And, well, there s our money, 
 Mrs. Hod, out there in the moonlight kicking their 
 heels on the corncrib. Hear them?" 
 
 "Yes," said Mrs. Hod, "Sam and J have got quite 
 a bit of change tied up in the same way. I know 
 how you feel, Mary. I ve been there ! " 
 
 It was true that Jack Purse at last had tumbled 
 on to something of business value. A huge ochre 
 bed by some freak of nature had been deposited along 
 the south fork of Sheppard s brook where it flowed 
 across the Osgood place. Old man Osgood cared 
 nothing about ochre and had no money to develop it 
 or small ambition to place value on what his farm 
 contained. He wanted to sell and move down to 
 Montpelier with his eldest son and go into the harness 
 business. If Jack really wanted it, he could have a 
 six-month option on the property for a hundred 
 dollars, because old man Osgood had as soon stay on 
 his farm for that last summer as anywhere. 
 
 Jack had a hundred dollars. He bought that op 
 tion. He disclosed to Sam Hod what he had done. 
 We think he had an idea for a time, that Sam Hod 
 might go on his note and help him raise the money, 
 and so indeed Sam might have done had not Jim 
 Thome started a rival newspaper in Paris that year 
 and given us a lot of trouble across the street. It 
 took every cent we could buy, beg, borrow or steal, to 
 keep the Telegraph above water that summer and 
 fall, and the chill days of autumn came with Jack as 
 handicapped and discouraged as ever.
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 225 
 
 One night in early November he came home 
 through the first fall of snow with a grim white look 
 on his face. Mary stood by the stove frying pota 
 toes for the evening meal. She looked up with a 
 faithful smile on her plain features as he entered, 
 but he hardly noticed her. He went to the sink 
 and washed and stood for an unusual time drying 
 his hands on the roller towel. 
 
 The smile died from Mary s face as Jack ignored 
 her. There was a sudden pain in her heart. She 
 had not minded much when he had left off 
 meeting her after the day s work with a caress. But 
 to be ignored after a lonely day with the thought 
 less youngsters it brought the fear of her mother s 
 words into her soul and her mother s prophecy. 
 She burned her hand on the hot griddle but she 
 did not cry out. She put the stinging patch of flesh 
 to her lips for a moment and then shoved the griddle 
 to the rear of the stove. The last baby, Dexter 
 Farrington Purse, cried suddenly from the inner 
 room, a wail of anguish that sent the mother flying 
 to his side. Tn a moment she was back. But Jack 
 had been watching her as he dried his hands at the 
 towel and he suddenly came over. 
 
 "Mary," he said thickly, "you have it pretty 
 hard, don t you ? First one thing and then another 
 all day long. It wasn t a life like this we were 
 thinking of living together at thirty-five, was it, 
 Mary?" 
 
 He made her relinquish the griddle and the dish 
 into which the contents were being emptied. He 
 turned her about and took her in his arms. 
 
 "Mary," he said, lifting her face up toward his, 
 "you never say anything ; you never complain ; day 
 after day you stay out here in the country quiet,
 
 226 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 and keep plugging away the wife of a poor printer 
 who can t seem to get ahead. Oh, Mary girl, I love 
 you ! " 
 
 "I m looking for my pleasure in life in other ways, 
 Jack," she replied softly. "I guess, Jack, I ve 
 changed my standards, else I d given out long 
 ago." 
 
 "I may not say a lot, Mary dear, but but I 
 haven t forgotten and I I appreciate " 
 
 He drew her closer to him and crushed her suddenly. 
 In the dining room Richard, age eight, was busy on 
 the red tablecloth with Frederick, age eleven, dis 
 emboweling a clock which would never run again. 
 Jack in his stocking feet would later find many of 
 the cogwheels on the carpet. Richard chanced to 
 glance up and was hypnotized. 
 
 "Lookit ! " he exclaimed to his brothers watching 
 the process of clock surgery, "paw s kissin maw! " 
 
 The small Templeton boys came in after supper to 
 play until eight o clock with the Purse young ones. 
 Mary sent them, ruined clock, muddy boots, hand- 
 fuls of cogwheels and all into the back kitchen. 
 
 "What s the matter, Jack," she asked her husband 
 when the boys were out of earshot. "Is it the 
 ochre option that s worrying you ?" 
 
 "Yes. Old man Osgood was in Paris this after 
 noon shopping. He said Joel Sibley has made him a 
 cash offer for the farm and wanted to know if I cared 
 to exercise my option." 
 
 "Jack," said the wife, "you mustn t make yourself 
 ill over this business. You re half -dead now with 
 worry and overwork and keeping such hours as 
 you ve been doing lately." 
 
 He rubbed his hands over tired eyes eyes that 
 felt like two burnt holes in a woolen blanket.
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 227 
 
 "I know it," he admitted. "But this ochre 
 bed looks like such a good chance, and I ve read up so 
 much on it and know just how to go about doing it 
 working it up into a big business that I m about 
 crazy to see it slip away as other business proposi 
 tions have had to go by the board because I didn t 
 have the money. " 
 
 "Jack, this time why do you let it go by the board ? 
 Why don t you raise the money ? " 
 
 "But how can I raise the money when I ve got 
 nothing to raise it on? A mortgage on this place 
 wouldn t net two hundred dollars. The bank had 
 one stiff lesson with it " 
 
 "I mean if you can t raise the money out of your 
 own resources, use some one else s." 
 
 "Who for instance? I did think of asking Sam 
 Hod " 
 
 "Jack, I ve been thinking ; why don t you go see 
 Mr. Ezekial ? You know who I mean, the old man 
 who comes up to the place on Preston Hill summers. 
 He s got loads of cash ; you know that." 
 
 "And knows how to hang on to it !" declared Jack 
 grimly. "What chance would I stand going up to 
 him and trying to interest him in a little jelly-bean 
 ochre bed like this when he could buy all of Foxboro 
 and Paris put together and never miss it from his 
 account ? And even if he did put in the cash, - 
 even if I did interest him, how could I, with 
 nothing, keep control?" 
 
 "I don t know. But I don t believe old man 
 Ezekial is anything like what gossip paints him. 
 I can t understand how a man who really was all 
 that people claim him to be could have such an awful 
 nice daughter. I ve met Martha Ezekial several 
 times at Ladies Aid meetings, you know ; she s just
 
 228 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 common and ordinary like other folks, only she s 
 politer and kinder and softer spoken sort of finer 
 grained." 
 
 "She s real aristocracy," declared Jack, "to 
 distinguish from Mibb Truman s brand." 
 
 "Why not go to old Mr. Ezekial and tell him 
 honestly just what you ve found and what you think 
 you could do, and ask him to assist you " 
 
 "Because," said Jack, "I m too wise. Because 
 I know how business is done and how men like Old 
 Zeke as they call him are pestered to death 
 every day of their lives with industrial propositions 
 of this kind." 
 
 "Jack, dear, you don t know you can t be 
 certain until you ve tried. And isn t it worth 
 the trial ?" 
 
 "The cowardice of wisdom, Mary," the man cried, 
 leaning forward in his battered Morris chair, "makes 
 it appear ridiculous." He arose angrily and paced 
 the floor. 
 
 For Jack knew that deep in his heart he lacked the 
 courage to go up to Old Zeke s fine home on Preston 
 Hill and beard the old money bear in his den and try 
 to put across any such proposition. Part of his 
 hesitation might have been the cowardice of wisdom 
 - yes. But it was more physical courage that 
 detained him. 
 
 Mary got out her weekly washing, gathered from 
 the clothes lines just before the twilight began to 
 spit snow, and started her sprinkling, her ironing- 
 board across two chairs. Jack sat in the Morris 
 chair beside the reading table under the dining- 
 room clock and tried to make sense out of the news 
 paper he had that day printed and produced. But 
 he could not.
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 229 
 
 The Templeton boys and three of his own young 
 sters had secured permission to carry out some experi 
 ment in the side bedroom and he heard the dull 
 drone of their voices and the shrill declarations and 
 contentions as they employed themselves after the 
 fashion of boys in that final hour before they were 
 called to go to bed. 
 
 "Our father made that !" declared Dexter proudly 
 referring to some toy or implement whose identity 
 Jack could not determine. 
 
 "Huh!" retorted one of the small Templeton 
 boys, "our father made a bigger one than that and 
 it had six sides to it, too." 
 
 "Your father ain t half so wonderful or smart as 
 our father is. Your father s only a farmer, and our 
 father makes a whole newspaper and bosses every 
 body all over the place. He s the most wonderful 
 man in the world, our father is ! " Freddie grew 
 emotional. "He ain t afraid o nothin and he can 
 do anything. He can lick your father with one hand 
 tied behind him and if you say he can t I ll do you 
 right here and now " 
 
 Jack heard no more. He sprang from his chair 
 and paced the floor. His boys thought him the 
 most wonderful man in the world ; the man who could 
 do everything; the man afraid of nothing. And he 
 couldn t raise a thousand dollars to buy an ochre 
 bed estimated to be worth a competency ! 
 
 "Jack!" cried his wife. "What is the matter? 
 Where are you going ?" 
 
 "Crazy!" he retorted. Pulling down his hat he 
 passed out into the cold raw night. 
 
 He walked in the darkness of early evening down to 
 the ochre beds. They were covered with the light 
 blanket of snow but it was the exertion the man
 
 230 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 wanted, the feeling of doing something beside 
 sitting helplessly in a chair. 
 
 Over and over in his mind he turned all the men 
 who were likely to aid him in developing such a 
 business. One by one they were eliminated. There 
 was Old Zeke, of course, but the proposition of Old 
 Zeke helping out was nothing but the wild imagery 
 of a wife s business ignorance. What should he do ? 
 What should he do? He hated himself for this 
 weakness. He felt tired out, worn out, played out ! 
 Yet he must do something. He must not let his 
 proposition go through his grasp. There might 
 never be another like it ! 
 
 He must have walked around the south part 
 of the Osgood property for an hour in the falling 
 snow which quickly turned to slush. Then he dragged 
 his tired limbs back to the house. He opened the 
 door. 
 
 He was startled to see a strange woman in the 
 kitchen. It was Edith Crosswell from the Gilbert 
 Mills road. She sat before the kitchen stove reading 
 the evening s Telegraph. 
 
 "Why, where s Mary?" Jack demanded. 
 
 "Where are you?" demanded Edith. She was 
 a red-headed girl with big feet, square shoulders and 
 a hard mouth. She put down the paper and sur 
 veyed him critically. "I come over to borrow some 
 yeast because Ma s just got to make bread to-mor 
 row if we re not buried under fifty feet o snowdrift. 
 Edith, says your wife, you re a godsend. Would 
 you look after the young-uns for the evenin while I 
 hitch up the orse and make a quick trip down to 
 Paris, says she, It s urgent, she says." 
 
 "To Paris!" gasped Jack. "Mary s gone to 
 Paris ? At this time of night ? "
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 231 
 
 "T aint eight o clock yet and it only takes an 
 half hour to drive to Paris. She s been gone half 
 that time already." 
 
 "Did she say who she was going to see in 
 Paris?" 
 
 "No; but she put on her Sunday-go-to-meetin 
 bib-and-tucker." 
 
 Jack found his way into the other room and sank 
 down, wet though he was, into the Morris chair. 
 Mary gone to Paris ! What other errand could she 
 possibly have but to attempt with the courage of 
 ignorance what he with his cowardice of wisdom had 
 declared impossible. He knew that old man Ezekial 
 was spending the Thanksgiving holidays at his 
 Preston Hill home. Our paper a few nights before 
 had said so. Mary had taken their dilemma by the 
 horns. She had gone into town at eight o clock 
 of a miserable night to meet the rich man and plead 
 for capital for her husband. 
 
 Hot, burning shame came over Jack as he sat 
 there. What a small, miserable piece of masculine 
 humanity he was, anyhow ! What a failure as a 
 husband and a father he had been. Before marriage 
 he had courted the girl with fair promises and golden 
 predictions. She had loved him because of his am 
 bition, the goals which he had set for himself. And 
 how had that marriage turned out ? What were the 
 fair promises, the golden predictions, the ambitions, 
 the goals, what but words, words, words ? The 
 ugly fact remained that despite the time which had 
 passed, despite the good health with which he and 
 Mary had been blessed, eleven years after marriage 
 found him in the same job he had held a decade 
 before, drawing the same money, content perforce 
 with the same kind of home, as far as ever from the
 
 232 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 dreams he had dreamed of the future. Why? Be 
 cause he lacked the courage to do exactly what his 
 wife was probably doing at the moment. 
 
 And had his wife not done enough ? Had she not 
 been kind, sympathetic with all his weaknesses, 
 patient with the privations, uncomplaining with the 
 pain and labors of motherhood, generous almost to 
 censure with the small fortune her uncle had left 
 her? Had she not done all he could expect of her 
 and more, without stepping into the situation now 
 and trying with her frail strength and homely courage 
 to succeed where he had failed ? 
 
 He started from his chair with a cry. Edith 
 heard him and brought her big feet down from the 
 edge of the oven door with a startled clump. 
 
 "Where be you going, Jack Purse?" she de 
 manded. 
 
 "I m going to show I won t be a spineless weakling 
 any longer ! " Jack cried. He took down his over 
 coat and went out. 
 
 "Something," declared Edith to the stove, "is 
 the matter with this here family !"
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 IN WHICH A LIFE- WEARY MAN PUTS His TROUBLES 
 UP TO A WORLD-WlSE FATHERLY OLD FELLOW 
 AND THINGS BEGIN TO LOOK UP FOR THE PURSES 
 
 JACK slopped along the six miles into Paris hoping 
 against hope that he could reach Preston Hill before 
 Mary left. If he could only do that, he could ex 
 plain to old man Ezekial that he had not put her " up 
 to it", that she had interviewed him of her own 
 accord and in her ignorance of the ways in which 
 men did business and looked upon such things. He 
 would try to convince the old financier that he was 
 not the kind that had to send women to plead for 
 him : that was the shame of it. 
 
 Down below McDermott s he heard a horse and 
 rig coming along through the muck and slush of the 
 road. He recognized Timothy Bailey s old white 
 horse and high-bodied buggy. He stepped out in 
 front. 
 
 "Tim, Tim," he cried, "have you just come from 
 Paris?" 
 
 The long, lank young farmer declared that he had. 
 
 "Did you pass my little black mare on the road, 
 with my wife driving her?" 
 
 "Reckon I did," returned Tim, "down near 
 Marshall Mills pond bottoms." 
 
 "Tim, would you turn your horse around and 
 drive like the devil to overtake her? I ll pay you 
 well!"
 
 234 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 " You ll pay me ! Drive like the devil ! Say, 
 what th hell, Jack? Your woman ain t runnin 
 away from you, be she?" 
 
 "No, she s started on an errand to Paris that s an 
 awful mistake and misunderstanding. I ve got to 
 reach her before she gets to a certain party. Please, 
 Timothy!" 
 
 Timothy clumsily backed his old white horse 
 about and the two men splattered back toward the 
 town. 
 
 Twenty-five minutes later they reached the top 
 of Preston Hill on the west side of Paris village and 
 turned south on Vermont Avenue. Here stretched 
 our residential section containing the homes of our 
 summer people. One fine old-fashioned place with 
 broad verandas stood back from the walk amid a 
 lawn dotted with silver birches. At the hitching 
 post a rig was tied. Jack Purse recognized the horse 
 from afar. 
 
 "Old Zeke s place !" echoed Timothy. "Gripes ! 
 What s your woman doin at old Zeke s?" 
 
 "I can t tell you - now," returned Jack. "How 
 much for bringing me here, Tim? You don t need 
 to wait. I ll drive home with Mary." 
 
 "I guess you don t owe me nothin . I had 
 trouble with my women folks myself. We all do ! " 
 
 He would take no pay. Jack alighted and went 
 up the walk. 
 
 Panic seized him as he approached the enormous 
 pile which he had always viewed from the street and 
 which increased in size and ominous dignity like a 
 nightmare as he came close. He could never ring 
 the bell and go into this house and face the man of 
 whom a leading financial writer had once penned : 
 " when E. E. Ezekial takes snuff we all sneeze !"
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 235 
 
 And yet Mary was in there now, putting him to 
 shame. And Timothy Bailey was down at the end 
 of the walk, standing up in his buggy and watching 
 to behold the miracle of Jack Purse gaining an en 
 trance to the "swellest" place in Paris, and ready 
 with embarrassing questions if he went soft now and 
 turned back. He had to go on. He pulled the 
 china-white knob of the bell as in a dream. 
 
 A horse-faced manservant came in response to the 
 summons. He snapped on a light over Jack s 
 head and the whole broad veranda was illumined. 
 
 "I want to see Mr. Ezekial. I ve got to see him 
 on something real important. Purse is the name. 
 I m from the local newspaper." 
 
 "Wait here," directed the servant. "I believe 
 Mr. Ezekial is busy at present." 
 
 "Yes, I know! Tell him that s just what I 
 want to see him about. I ll not take No for an 
 answer. I I can t ! " 
 
 The servant left the big glass door ajar. In a 
 moment he was back. 
 
 "Mr. Ezekial says he ll give you fifteen minutes 
 because you re on the local paper. Follow me ! " 
 
 He led Jack into a richly appointed hall and up 
 a wide staircase. They turned the balustrade post 
 in front of a stained-glass window with a luxurious 
 window seat and went down the upper hall. At a 
 door on the right the servant tapped. 
 
 "All right !" declared a heavy voice. 
 
 Jack was being consumed with ague and nerves. 
 His thoughts were confused, his vision blurred. He 
 only knew he was going to make some sort of an 
 apology to old man Ezekial, explain that it didn t 
 matter what his wife had asked, he knew how busi 
 ness men locked on such things and would seek the
 
 236 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 capital in the proper channels or not at all. The 
 servant with the elongated features stepped aside 
 for him to pass. And Jack entered Old Zeke s study. 
 
 He saw red walls hung with paintings in gold 
 frames. He saw a fire crackling comfortably in the 
 grate. Across an immense flat-topped secretary 
 desk at the north side he saw a very clean and white 
 elderly man facing him, a William H. Taft of a 
 man with a substantial jaw, not unkindly eyes, and 
 heavy white moustache. 
 
 But there was no woman ! 
 
 For a moment Jack stood gaping like an idiot. 
 
 "Where s my wife? * he demanded. 
 
 The elderly man laid his pen across a mammoth 
 bronze inkwell. 
 
 "Your what?" he demanded sharply. 
 
 "My wife! Where is she? I thought she was 
 here!" 
 
 Old Zeke, during his long career in Boston, New 
 York and Chicago, had met up with many fanatics. 
 But here was a specimen that puzzled him. Over- 
 brilliant eyes, snowsplashed clothes, muddy shoes, 
 nervous and not over-clean hands : Jack Purse was 
 not one to inspire confidence in any scheme involving 
 the investment of money. Jack realized this per 
 fectly. He had not come for money. He had come 
 for his wife. And his wife wasn t here. He felt 
 like a condemned man on the scaffold who has steeled 
 himself for the shock of the sprung trap and the 
 hanging, been suddenly interrupted. As for the 
 very clean and very white old man, immediately he 
 sensed some sort of conspiracy. Yet he was mystified. 
 In his own home, surrounded by his family and 
 servants, the modus operandi of the intrigue was 
 certainly novel.
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 237 
 
 "Your wife!" repeated the financier. "I 
 haven t got your wife here. What made you think 
 that I had?" 
 
 "She came here. I know it. Her buggy is 
 hitched out in front." 
 
 E. E. Ezekial raised a bushy eyebrow. 
 
 "Indeed ! And what would your wife be coming 
 here for ? " 
 
 "Womanlike, she was coming to you for money 
 for my business." 
 
 "Womanlike!" 
 
 "Yes; she didn t know any better. She didn t 
 understand how men look at these things and that 
 sentiment doesn t count. She only understood 
 that I stood a big chance of making some money 
 by securing the ochre beds and I ve failed so many 
 times that this time she was going to see what she 
 could do." 
 
 "Young man, what on earth are you talking 
 about? Who are you, anyway?" 
 
 "My name s Purse. I m foreman at the local 
 newspaper office." 
 
 "And what is it you re all wrought up about?" 
 
 "My wife coming here to ask you for money." 
 
 "But your wife hasn t been here to ask me for 
 money." 
 
 "Then I m glad and relieved and all I can do 
 is to apologize." 
 
 "But what should prompt her to do such a thing? 
 What kind of a wife have you got, anyhow ? " 
 
 "A better than I deserve," Jack answered. He 
 moved toward the door. 
 
 "Wait a minute, young man ! This is a fine way 
 to come in here and interrupt and mystify an old 
 fellow. What s back of all this, anyhow?"
 
 238 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 "It s too long a story to bother you with. I d 
 be only taking your valuable time." 
 
 "I m the best judge of that. What s the matter 
 with you ? Are you ill ? " 
 
 "I m sort of wrought up with overwork and worry. 
 When a man faces the proposition of bringing up six 
 boys and educating them on the wages of a printing 
 office, he realizes that unless he gets into business 
 sometime, sooner or later, he s going to give out. 
 Maybe I m reaching that time." 
 
 " Six boys ! Have you got six boys ? " 
 
 "Yes, sir!" 
 
 "And a wife that goes around looking for capital 
 for her husband s business?" 
 
 "Yes," miserably. 
 
 "Wait a minute, young man; don t be in such a 
 damned hurry !" 
 
 The canny old financier and dealer in human nature 
 saw suddenly a distraught, over-taxed, grimly 
 honest young workingman who had reached a place 
 in life s struggle where he knew not where to turn 
 or what to do. He took note of the high forehead, 
 the fine face, the direct eyes, the threadbare clothes, 
 the bonafide embarrassment. And something in 
 the picture touched him. Maybe the melancholy 
 November night had something to do with it, and 
 the rain tapping against the glass. Maybe it was the 
 sorrow which had come to the old man that week of 
 which our townspeople at the time had learned 
 nothing. Maybe it was something deep within the 
 reference to six growing boys and a wife who went 
 after capital for her husband. Anyhow, old man 
 Ezekial was suddenly kind, just a very human and 
 sympathetic old man who came around the corner 
 of his desk and shoved an enormous leather chair
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 239 
 
 before the blazing logs for Jack and brought for 
 ward another for himself. 
 
 "Sit down, young man," he invited. "Sit down 
 and let s visit for a little while. You look sort of 
 played out." 
 
 "But your time is " 
 
 "I m tired of business to-night. It would be 
 well for me if I laid it aside. I was only busying 
 myself, trying to forget something. Won t you 
 sit down and have a smoke?" 
 
 Have a smoke ! With old man Ezekial, whose 
 name was a financial flurry in six States ! Jack 
 moved forward in a daze, as though the request was 
 a command. 
 
 He sank down into the luxurious chair, putting 
 his wet cap behind him. His trousers legs imme 
 diately began to steam. The old financier opened 
 the top drawer of his desk and brought out a long 
 thin cigar box. Jack took one of the Havanas with 
 raw red fingers. 
 
 "Now then, just for the sake of some memories of 
 my own, tell me about the wife and six boys and the 
 struggle to get into business." 
 
 "Mr. Ezekial, how can you possibly be interested 
 in that?" 
 
 "We ve all been there, son ; we ve all been there." 
 
 "Have you been there, Mr. Ezekial?" 
 
 "Certainly, young man. It s the life-story of 
 American business from Maine to the Golden Gate 
 all down the years." 
 
 Many dark days in the past eleven years had 
 Jack longed for a father to whom he could go with 
 his struggle and his perplexities and ask for advice. 
 But there had been no father. He had never known 
 that kind of parent. Men are only boys grown up.
 
 240 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 Every man at some time or other has longed for 
 the father of his boyhood to help him in the dark and 
 bitter years of struggle and disappointment and 
 heartache. There was nothing maudlin about the 
 longing. 
 
 Here before the fire for the moment Jack Purse 
 found himself with a kindly, successful old man, 
 verily, the father of his dreams. With the 
 eternal boy-heart he told the story of his life and 
 career thus far. He told of the death of his mother 
 at twelve years, the newspaper business at North 
 Sidney, the bankruptcy, the loss of his own father, 
 the job in Paris. He told as best he could of his 
 love affair, the girl s plight, the marriage, the home 
 on Pleasant Street, the six sons for whose lives he 
 had made himself responsible. There was no at 
 tempt at effect, no subtle plea for sympathy, for 
 he was not that kind of man. He was simply tired, 
 perplexed, baffled. He wanted to know what the 
 world-wise old financier in his difficulty would do. 
 And so he stated his case. 
 
 "You mean to tell me," demanded old Ezekial 
 incredulously, "that you had fifty-five hundred 
 dollars in your fingers to do what you wanted with 
 and you went and paid it out for bills the court had 
 declared it was legally unnecessary for you to settle ? " 
 
 "Yes, sir. At least my wife did !" 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "Those men put money into our business and 
 gave us credit expecting to receive their money 
 back. They d turned over full value and done 
 their part. Bankruptcy may be necessary in some 
 cases but in this one it looked to me like a skin- 
 game for those creditors. Legally, I didn t have to 
 pay them; morally I did. So long as I was alive
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 241 
 
 and could earn the money that debt was just as 
 pressing as if the court had not made my financial 
 escape legal." 
 
 "And they got their money every one in full." 
 
 "Yes, sir. One day while I was at work Mary 
 found my list of creditors, with the sums I owed 
 them, together with interest. Instead of putting 
 the money into the savings bank, she put it into 
 a checking account and she sat down and wrote 
 checks for all of them and mailed them unbeknown 
 to me until the receipts came in." 
 
 "My God!" cried the old financier. He forgot 
 to smoke. He simply stared at the bedraggled 
 printer with wide opened eyes. After a time he 
 said : 
 
 "And what about this ochre bed you referred to? 
 What s the story of that?" 
 
 Jack hesitated. Should he tell this old financial 
 buccaneer about the deposit he had found on the 
 Osgood farm; of old man Osgood s indifference to 
 its value; of his willingness to sell for a puny 
 thousand dollars ? 
 
 The elderly man must have grasped what was 
 passing in the other s mind. 
 
 "Go on, young man. Don t be afraid to tell 
 me all about it. I may cut the throats of a gang 
 of money buzzards now and then with lemonjuice 
 in their guts but I haven t yet reached the place 
 where I ve found it necessary to rob the widows, or 
 phans, school-teachers and struggling fathers with 
 six babies. Tell me all about it!" 
 
 And Jack told him. And after he had brought 
 the whole narrative down to the present moment 
 there came a long silence in the rich apartment 
 broken only by the crackling of the logs.
 
 242 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 "We ve all been there, son," repeated old Eze- 
 kial. "I know! I had a good woman once like 
 that." 
 
 "Once?" 
 
 " She s dead. Dead these twenty-seven years ! " 
 
 "Oh! "said Jack. 
 
 "I used to think I was the only one who had such 
 an experience. I guess it s the life of American 
 married folks the nation over. I m rich now, I 
 suppose. But I d give it all, all, just to go back 
 to a home I once knew with a blue-eyed girl that s 
 found a heaven if there is one." 
 
 Old Zeke arose and went to his desk. He sat 
 down there, smoking violently. Then he got up 
 and paced the floor, his footfalls making no sound. 
 
 "Young man," he said huskily at the end of five 
 minutes, "you ve recalled things to me that I m 
 not sorry to have recalled to-night. Only, I m 
 left in a sort of soft condition to talk business. 
 Suppose, young man, that you come back and see 
 me to-morrow afternoon?" 
 
 "Talk business, see you, to-morrow afternoon?" 
 
 "Yes, to-morrow afternoon. I m a little bit 
 up-set after all that s happened to-day to 
 attempt to fix anything up with you just now. 
 But- 
 
 Jack s face went white. The breath left his lungs. 
 
 "Fix anything up with me!" he whispered. 
 "You don t mean that you ll - 
 
 "I don t give a damn about your measly little 
 pasture mud-patch, but a man ballasted with six 
 growing boys and a faithful woman who ll take five 
 thousand dollars and put it into paying up debts 
 that a bankruptcy court says haven t got to be 
 paid, is wasting his life in a country printing office.
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 243 
 
 I only wish to God I had a dozen such chaps in some 
 of my companies. I can use em right this minute 
 and pay em five thousand a year for their their 
 unimpeachable honesty. I ve only heard of 
 one other case like this : it was an Illinois country 
 storekeeper who walked several miles through the 
 rain to return some change on which he d made a 
 mistake. I believe some folks made him President 
 of the country through quite a trying spell. The 
 world is starving for that kind of man. You come 
 back to-morrow, young man. I m going to make 
 you a proposition." 
 
 "But Mr. Ezekial," Jack began after his first 
 emotions had passed, "the money in the ochre bed 
 
 "To hell with the small change in that ochre 
 bed ! I ll pay you three thousand dollars a year, 
 commencing next Monday morning, to go to New 
 York, take a place in a certain office, and leaven a 
 bunch of crooks who think they re smart enough to 
 take away my eyeteeth without Old Zeke knowing. 
 That is, providing what you have told me to-night 
 stands investigation!" 
 
 "Mr. Ezekial, I" 
 
 "You take my advice and go home and sleep 
 from now until to-morrow afternoon. Have your 
 wife soak your feet in mustard water and put you 
 to bed with a dose of castor oil, goose grease on your 
 chest and an old stocking round your neck. Come 
 and see me around toward four o clock. I ve got 
 a place for a chap like yourself, and in due time you ll 
 understand why. Now " 
 
 A soft tapping at the closed door interrupted 
 him. The plain-faced, sweet-tempered, democratic 
 daughter Martha looked in. 
 
 "Is Mrs. Purse s husband here?" she asked.
 
 244 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 "We were passing through the hall and we thought 
 we heard his voice." 
 
 "Yes," roared old Zeke impatiently, "and if Mrs. 
 Purse is out there, tell her to come in. I want to 
 see the wife of a man in debt five thousand dollars 
 worth who d spend her legacy to get him out !" 
 
 Mary came in wonderingly and caught sight of 
 Jack s bedraggled appearance and haggard face. 
 
 " What has happened ? " she demanded, 
 frightened. 
 
 "I ve just made your man an offer to go to work 
 for me in a place where I can count on his adamantine 
 honesty. Would you go with him and live in New 
 York?" 
 
 "I d live anywhere that means Jack s success " 
 
 Old Zeke was suddenly softened. 
 
 "You are a good girl," he said. "Take your 
 husband home, Mrs. Purse. He s ill. Get him on 
 his feet again and then send him around to see me. 
 We ll fix this thing up so he doesn t need to worry 
 over his future. I know what six growing boys 
 can do to a man to keep him hustling, loyal, on the 
 straight track ! " 
 
 "Mr. Ezekial," began Jack, "I don t know how 
 to- 
 
 " You re a sick man, young fellow. Go home!" 
 
 Jack suffered himself to be aided down the stairs. 
 The servant helped tuck him into the buggy behind 
 Monday-Washing. Old Zeke and his daughter 
 waved them good-by from the steps and Timothy 
 Bailey, who had been waiting for just such a cata 
 clysmic proceeding from a distant corner, suddenly 
 thrashed his old white horse into fury and tore for 
 the distant village to spread the epochal news. 
 
 Then the Purses drove home.
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 245 
 
 "Mary," choked the husband, "light s breaking 
 at last ! He made me an offer of three thousand 
 dollars a year to go to New York and work for him." 
 
 "How much?" demanded Mary in a whisper. 
 
 "Three thousand dollars !" 
 
 "Jack ! That s seventy -five dollars every week." 
 "What ll we ever do with so much money?" 
 
 "Raise Tom to be a minister," declared Jack a 
 little hysterically. "If he ever shows a leaning for 
 newspaper work I ll flay him alive." 
 
 They splashed along through the slough of mud 
 and snow with the drizzle beating in their faces. 
 
 "I guess you re responsible for it, as usual," 
 Jack declared. "It was you that started out to 
 see him " 
 
 "I m a miserable cheat," she choked. "I 
 started out to see him. But when I got there, I 
 guess my courage failed me. Oh, Jack, I m only a 
 woman, and I didn t I didn t really know how 
 men looked on such things. I made an excuse to 
 see Martha on Ladies Aid business instead." And 
 she began sobbing. 
 
 A wonderful tenderness surged up in his heart 
 toward her. 
 
 "I think just as much of you as if you had," 
 he declared thickly. "After all, it s worked out all 
 right. Think what lies ahead of us, Mary, New 
 York, a princely salary, working for E. E. Ezekial, 
 Mary!" 
 
 "Do you know why he laid so much stress on 
 honesty, Why he was so interested in you to 
 night especially, Jack?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "I guess it s just one of those coincidences in life 
 that are bound to happen to the most unfortunate
 
 246 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 of us by the law of averages. Intuition tells me 
 he s going to look you up to see if what you ve told 
 him is true, and then lie s going to put you in 
 the place where he thought his own son was safe 
 enough to occupy." 
 
 "His son ? What about his son ?" 
 
 "Did he say anything about any sorrow that d 
 come to him to-day?" 
 
 "No!" 
 
 "Jack, young Teddy Ezekial has just taken a lot 
 of his father s money entrusted to him and spent 
 it on Mibb Henderson something to do with her 
 singing !" 
 
 Up the road ahead came a gleam of mellow light. 
 
 They were approaching home.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 LIFE is A MIXTURE OF SMILES AND TEARS INDEED 
 AND HAVING SMILED WITH OlJR STORY FOLK AT 
 SUNDRY SEASONS IN THIS STORY, WE ARE CALLED 
 UPON Now TO ENTER ON A QUIET SOLEMN 
 TIME AND SHED A TEAR FOR A CHASTISEMENT OF 
 THE ALMIGHTY 
 
 THE next morning before seven o clock, Tommy 
 Purse brought a note into town and up to Sam s 
 house. It was from Mary. 
 
 "Boys," said Sam at the office a half hour later, 
 
 "Jack Purse has the grip. And that isn t all, 
 
 when he recovers he s going to leave us ! Mary 
 sent word this morning that as soon as he gets better 
 he s going to work for old man Ezekial in New 
 York!* 
 
 Great was the consternation in our back room for 
 the rest of that day. 
 
 Along toward three o clock that afternoon our 
 front door opened to admit royalty. None other 
 than old E. E. Ezekial stood there the first time 
 he had ever been in the Telegraph office since he had 
 bought his summer place in Paris a decade before. 
 
 "I want a half -hour s talk with Mr. Hod," he 
 announced. His features were careworn and his 
 eyes tired. The sorrow of disappointment in his 
 son was eating far more deeply into his tough old 
 heart than many of us knew. "It s about young 
 Purse. I understand he s been working here."
 
 248 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 Sam led the way into his private office and closed 
 the door. They were closeted for an hour and when 
 the door was opened the little room was foul with 
 stale cigar smoke. Old Man Ezekial went out. 
 
 "Old Zeke just gave me an earful of news, Bill, * 
 said Sam. "But I don t know whether it s a square 
 deal to him to publish it or not. You know his boy 
 Ferdinand got mixed up with Mibb Truman just 
 after Herb disappeared, and she came back to try to 
 raise some cash?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "He followed her to New York and she s been 
 carrying on with him more or less ever since. Any 
 how, he s fallen for her. He took a lot of his dad s 
 money and backed her on the stage. And now she s 
 left him with success coming to her and gone 
 on her own." 
 
 "But what s become of Mibb s mother?" 
 
 "I don t know. Nobody does. After Mibb got 
 her divorce for Herb s desertion, she dropped out of 
 sight. You d probably find her in some obscure 
 little place where she isn t known, running a board 
 ing house." 
 
 "And telling her troubles to anyone who ll listen." 
 
 "Yes," Sam confirmed. 
 
 And he lighted his pipe philosophically. 
 
 The days went by. Mike Garrity ascended into 
 the seat of the mighty, meaning the foremanship 
 of our back office. He was a big-bodied, white-eye- 
 browed Irishman who never wore a printer s apron 
 and always gave the impression that he was only 
 holding the job down for a few minutes during some 
 body s absence. But he did get the work out of 
 the help. Getting to press on time was his specialty.
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 249 
 
 There were many cuss-words ; some tears. But he 
 put system in our office and brought praise from our 
 advertisers. 
 
 The days went by, indeed seven of them. 
 
 Then the horse-faced servant from Preston Hill 
 came in one afternoon and wanted to know if we 
 had heard anything about John Purse s condition. 
 Mr. Ezekial was returning to New York on the follow 
 ing day and he couldn t hold the place he had for 
 Jack open indefinitely. 
 
 "We haven t heard anything beyond what there s 
 been in the paper," Sam replied. "But for the sake 
 of Jack s future I ll take a run out this evening and 
 try and get something definite for Mr. Ezekial. 
 It would be hard luck if Jack lost this opportunity 
 through prolonged illness." 
 
 Sam drove out to the Purse place in one of Uncle 
 Joe Fodder s livery rigs. At half -past eleven at 
 night I was awakened by the ominous ringing of 
 my own doorbell. Sam stood out in the frosty 
 moonlight. 
 
 "Bill," he said, "oh, God, Bill! Jack s grip 
 has gone into pneumonia, and he s taken a turn for 
 the worse ! Bill, you better get in and come back 
 with me. Because Jack isn t expected to live 
 until morning ! " 
 
 We spoke not a word as we drove those six 
 miles through the crystalwhite winter country. I 
 sat for the entire distance badly cramped by an 
 oxygen tank which Sam had procured from the 
 Metropolitan Drug Store. Far across the crusted 
 winter fields where swept gusts of nipping air, I 
 saw ruddy lights at last. Every room in the Purse 
 house appeared lighted. 
 
 We met Doctor Johnson at the threshold of the
 
 250 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 room off the kitchen, the little side bedroom that 
 for years had been Mary s mother s. 
 
 "You ve brought the tank?" he demanded. 
 
 "Yes," said Sam huskily. 
 
 "I m afraid it s useless. Mary waited too long. 
 She depended too much on home remedies, thinking 
 it was only a bad cold that he had." 
 
 "Where is Mary?" 
 
 "In there with him." 
 
 "Can we go in?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 Mary was sitting on the edge of the bed holding 
 Jack s hand. She raised her face blankly as we 
 entered. The situation was too sinister, too intense, 
 for such trifles as recognition. She looked at us 
 and then turned her gaze back down on Jack s 
 sleeping face. But in that instant we saw that 
 Mary Purse was old. Her face was sunken. Her 
 eyes were hollow. Her hair was sprinkled with 
 gray. 
 
 Sam walked the floor ceaselessly, up and down the 
 farmhouse dining room, carrying and comforting a 
 little boy who was persistent in whimpering and 
 breaking the silence of that house because he could 
 not have his mother. I sat in the armchair and tried 
 to comfort young Tom, age eleven, who was old 
 enough to realize much that was taking place. But 
 it was all a bungled job at best. The other boys 
 were asleep, never knowing, alas, the meaning of the 
 long watches of that night. 
 
 Along toward four o clock, under the influence of 
 the oxygen, though still struggling with his breath 
 ing, Jack rallied, came to consciousness and opened 
 his eyes. 
 
 His gaze met the face of his wife.
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 251 
 
 Her features and the faces of those about his bed 
 seemed to tell him the worst. 
 
 "Perhaps I wouldn t have made good at 
 Mr. Ezekial s office, after all," he whispered weakly 
 so that Mary had to bend down to catch the 
 words. "Nevermind! Some other time! Oh, 
 Mary ! You were a better wife than I was a hus 
 band. You will be a better mother than 
 I was father. I ll try again some other time ! " 
 
 There was a gentle pressure of his hand. 
 
 Some other time ! 
 
 Mary put her free hand suddenly to her eyes. 
 Otherwise there was no sound, no motion, in that 
 room. 
 
 And Jack Purse went home. 
 
 During the thirty-seven years in which we have 
 been publishing a newspaper, it follows that we have 
 written many, many obituaries. But no obituary 
 has ever meant to us exactly what Jack Purse s did, 
 for without wishing to pose as heartless or unduly 
 calloused we may set it down that the hundreds of 
 others have been the material with which we did 
 business. But Jack Purse s obituary was the sum 
 mary and the heart-story of a man s life bringing 
 death home to us, stark and sinister and grim and 
 deadly. Sam would suffer no one else to attempt 
 that column story. He also wrote an article for 
 the editorial column. And both were masterpieces 
 because he forgot he was writing for print, forgot 
 the thing called literary effect, forgot technique and 
 paragraphing and punctuation and style and com 
 posed from his soul the simple little record of the 
 passing of a friend. 
 
 The obituary and the editorial caused much
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 comment in the community. Every one knew the 
 Purses and how Jack s fortunes were about to change 
 just as he was "taken." Every one knew also the 
 predicament in which Mary had been left. It 
 happened that the sewing circle of Calvary Church 
 met the day between the death and the funeral and 
 the comment of its membership is again of note : 
 
 Mrs. Artemus Howard voiced the universal 
 sentiment. She said : 
 
 "I don t mind the passing of Mr. Purse himself. 
 He s out of his troubles. But think of Mary nice 
 little woman that she is left with all those little 
 children ! What will she ever do ?" 
 
 "And after all the trouble she had about ten 
 years ago with her own folks!" declared Mrs. 
 Taylor, " not to mention the struggles she has 
 been through since in a financial way and havin 
 so many babies and all. I wish the Lord would give 
 me the running of this universe for just five minutes. 
 I d change some things ! It d do your soul good to 
 watch me !" 
 
 "I heard he was just going to work for old man 
 Ezekial at some fishy-soundin sum of money," 
 declared Mrs. Dexter Merritt. "He d went up with 
 a nerve o brass that T w r ish my Dexter could muster, 
 and he d got Mr. Ezekial to do soinethin handsome 
 for him. And right away he s taken ! Right when 
 the light was shinin through on all the darkness of 
 his struggles and troubles, he was taken ! What a 
 mystery, what a mystery ! And a mess ! There 
 simply ain t no consistency to the world nohow." 
 
 Mrs. Fred Babcock called attention to the fact 
 that Jack carried no life insurance although Fred 
 had been up to see the Purses scores of times and 
 Jack was always just going to do it but never felt
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 253 
 
 he could quite afford it, and now look at the fix his 
 wife is in. And she went on to say that was always 
 the way it was : men without chick or children and 
 only some frumpy old woman to look after, always 
 carried thousands, and them as had helpless wives 
 and little mouths depending on em thought they 
 could get by somehow and take chances with death 
 that always bested em ! 
 
 Mrs. Walter Gaylord said the village ought to 
 take up a collection to help Mary out and Miss 
 Malinda Sparrow said she doubted if Mary would 
 accept it if the village should. She was very proud, 
 was Mary. To which Judge Farmer s wife said 
 "beggars shouldn t be choosers", which she was 
 immediately sorry for, meaning no unkindness but 
 being simply unfortunate in her choice of an axiom 
 appropriate for the circumstances. 
 
 Mrs. Blake Whipple, a lady of parts and known 
 of old to have an eye for business, for once had no 
 comment to make in a commercial capacity. She 
 merely remarked that Blake was pretty well screwed 
 up to such situations and usually they didn t upset 
 him. But when he came back from the Purse 
 place with all those little children playing around 
 almost as usual and never knowing their loss that 
 was laid out in the chilly front room, he said damn his 
 business anyhow, and if it wasn t for the dead folks 
 havin to be took care of and some one simply havin 
 to do it, he d get out of it so quick you d never see 
 him and his hearse go ; you d just simply miss em. 
 
 But Jack Purse was gone gone ! Gone just 
 when his fortunes showed promise of change. 
 
 WE do not understand, being ordinary thick- 
 skulled males, how Mary Purse survived that blow.
 
 254 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 She must have gone through hell the first week 
 following the placing of Jack s body in the vault for 
 burial in the spring. Our wives went out there to 
 console her and brought back stories of her cheer 
 fulness, her poise, the wonderful tenderness she 
 exhibited toward her fatherless boys. And then, 
 then came an episode with which it is fitting to close 
 this portion of our narrative and move on out of 
 scenes of struggle and grief and heartache into those 
 of success and glory and great peace. About seven 
 days after the funeral, Mary Purse came into our 
 office. 
 
 It was Saturday afternoon. The paper had been 
 run off but the boys and girls had not been paid off 
 or the shafting stopped whirring in the basement. 
 Crowds of farmers were milling up and down Main 
 Street, patronizing our barber shops, occasional 
 individuals dropping in now and then to insert 
 classified ads or pay their subscriptions. Sam Hod 
 looked up from the exchange he was reading and 
 there, in the private-office doorway between our 
 two desks, stood Mary. 
 
 She was in mourning but not morbidly so. Her 
 face was drawn, her hair was grayer than ever. 
 She was not thirty -five, yet somehow Mary Purse had 
 mellowed. Grief and terrible trouble affects some 
 folk that way. Others it makes mean and cynical 
 and hateful toward their fellows and their God. But 
 Mary was one of those whom the vicissitudes of 
 life were mellowing and deepening, one of those whom 
 it is good to have around because of what they have 
 suffered. 
 
 "Mary!" cried Sam, springing up and placing a 
 chair for her. "You! I m so glad to see you again, 
 Mary ! We didn t know whether coming out to try
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 255 
 
 to console you would make things better or worse. 
 We haven t quite gotten over Jack s passing yet 
 ourselves." 
 
 She took the chair. She smiled a wonderful smile. 
 
 "You shouldn t have hesitated to come, Mr. 
 Hod. But that is in the past. I have come to you 
 because I want something." 
 
 Yes, Mary. What can we do for you?" 
 
 "Mr. Hod, I m wondering if you d do something 
 for me so very hard and that sounds so impertinent 
 for me to ask that I m almost ill with worry that you 
 might refuse." 
 
 "Anything on earth I can do for you, I promise 
 that I will, Mary." 
 
 She waited a moment before the request came out. 
 
 "Mr. Hod," she said fearfully, faintly, but 
 steadily, "I want can I have my old place 
 back in your office ? " 
 
 Sam looked at her blankly. 
 
 "You want what?" 
 
 "I want my old job back, in your office. Setting 
 type in a printing office is all that I know how to do. 
 And I must do something. All during this week 
 I have been turning it over and over in my heart. 
 That first night after the funeral I got into bed alone. 
 I could not stand it alone. I called to my boys and 
 they got into bed with me. The little ones thought 
 it was sport. The older boys snuggled up close 
 beside me. Yes, we did ! six of us in one bed. 
 And they quieted down after a time and fell asleep. 
 I only was left awake in the awful, awful dark. 
 
 "And there in the bed, with the bodies of my boys 
 around me, and their little hearts beating close to 
 mine, I laid in the silence and fought it out with 
 myself. I must not complain. I must not lose
 
 256 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 heart nor faith. I must take up the battle of life 
 where Jack laid it down and carry it on. I am not 
 the first woman who has lost a husband. I must not 
 think of my sorrow. I must bury that in my heart 
 and my life. Ahead of me lies the work of raising 
 those boys of mine to be good men. And when I 
 have done that, I am ready and willing to lay down 
 my heartache and follow Jack. That is for the far, 
 far future. Life for me now must be too practical 
 to think of that." 
 
 " You want to go to work here ? " 
 
 "Yes. I am going to work here if you ll let 
 me. I am going on ! God helping me, I will not 
 fail my little boys ! " 
 
 "And you think you can do it by working here, 
 Mary!" 
 
 "I thought some of taking Tom out of school. 
 The next moment it seemed ridiculous. Just be 
 cause my life has ended in failure is no reason why 
 I should do anything to make his little life a failure, 
 also. So I m going to keep him in school and all 
 the other boys as fast as they become old enough. 
 I ve got the cow, the little black mare and the place ; 
 I guess I can manage somehow if you only give 
 me back my work. Old Mrs. Morrow will live with 
 us and look after the youngsters while I m here in 
 the village typesetting each day. If you can give me 
 the chance to earn nine or ten dollars a week, it 
 will keep us in clothes and pay the taxes and doctor s 
 bills that are bound to come. Then as each boy 
 gets through college, I count on him turning around 
 and helping the next younger brother under him." 
 
 "What!" we both cried. "You re going to try 
 to put those six boys through college alone ?" 
 
 "Yes, I m going to try. Once I wanted to go to
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 257 
 
 college. Once I wanted to amount to something 
 in the world. But things occurred that prevented 
 me. Somehow the chance never seemed to work 
 around. I had to leave home suddenly and go to 
 work here. Then I got married and the babies 
 came. After that there was no hope. And I 
 faced it. But my boys every one of them ! 
 are going through college if it kills me ! I want 
 Tom to go through theological school and turn out 
 a preacher. I guess that every mother wishes 
 that one of her boys would turn out a preacher. 
 But whatever happens, I shall do my best and leave 
 the rest to God. Mr. Hod, I want that old place of 
 mine very, very much. I ll work my fingers to the 
 bone if you ll only give me the chance. Can I 
 have it?" 
 
 "Yes, Mary," replied Sam quietly, the pref 
 ace to an emotional explosion, "You can have it. 
 Come in Monday morning and take your old job. 
 The wages will be sixteen dollars a week and you 
 can keep it till you re a hundred !" 
 
 When she had gone I said to Sam : 
 
 "But she can t set anything but straight matter, 
 Sam ! And we don t set any more straight matter 
 by hand. We dumped all our eight point when we 
 installed the machines." 
 
 "Then, by gad, we ll buy some !" roared Sam Hod. 
 "For so long as I own a controlling interest in this 
 Biannual Bedquilt which the town calls a newspaper, 
 that woman shall have a job here as long as there s 
 one exclamation point left outside the hell-box ! 
 And if any bat-eared slob with a kink in his neck 
 ever breathes that we bought type especially for her 
 to stick, there ll be a bunch of journalistic fatheads 
 taken suddenly dead around here that we won t show
 
 258 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 enough post-mortem respect to haul out by the 
 legs!" 
 
 "But sixteen dollars a week, Sam !" 
 
 " Yes, sixteen dollars a week ! And what about six 
 teen dollars a week ? Suppose Jesus Christ walked 
 into my office this afternoon and sat down opposite 
 the exchange table. Suppose He said to me, Sam 
 Hod, will you manage somehow to rake together 
 sixteen measly dollars every Saturday to loan to 
 Me so that I can help a poor, perplexed, bewildered 
 mother raise six freckled-faced, hell-raising, button- 
 busting kids ? I d just naturally scrape that money 
 together somehow, wouldn t I ? for His sake ? 
 Well, I don t mind sayin that seven minutes ago, 
 as I sat in that chair and Mary Purse declared her 
 intention o slavin her life out to put them half- 
 dozen young wild-cats through school / Saiv 
 Jesus Christ in that woman s face! And I d a damned 
 sight rather lay a few mouldy treasures for myself 
 in heaven by givin Mary Purse sixteen dollars of 
 unnecessary money every Saturday afternoon than 
 give double that amount to some of the churches 
 of this town. I d rather do it than help pay minis 
 ter s grocery bills or send missionaries to teach the 
 slant-eyed Japs how to bungle the Beatitudes or 
 that Moses was a Hebrew law-maker and not a 
 Canal Street manufacturer of boys pants !" 
 
 Sam was exploding with a vengeance and when 
 in that condition, had a certain facility with language. 
 
 He went into the back room and addressed the 
 force. 
 
 "Boys," he announced, "Mary Purse Jack s 
 wife is coming back to work for us. She com 
 mences Monday morning." 
 
 Mike Garrity straightened up from his stone.
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 259 
 
 "What?" he demanded. 
 
 "I said Jack Purse s widow, who once graced this 
 hole with her sweet presence, is coming back to pick 
 up her stick and show us how to set a few locals so 
 I don t dread the sickenin ring of a telephone bell 
 every night after supper ! " 
 
 Mike said an unholy sentence and threw down his 
 quoin-key. 
 
 "Then, by gad, I m about ready to quit! After 
 all the pie-eyed freaks I ve had wished on to me since 
 I come into this place to make over into printers, to 
 have an old woman given a place as an object of 
 charity ! " 
 
 He got no further. Only once in my life have I 
 known Sam Hod to see red. He was upon Mike 
 with an oath and had him by the throat. 
 
 "Take it back ! you foul-mouthed, bleary-eyed, 
 tobacco-spittin harp ! Act crazy with joy that she s 
 comin and treat her like a lady, or by the eternal 
 Jehoshaphat I ll bust you in the jaw, hammer you 
 against the wall, grind your ugly mug in the gravel 
 and stamp on your stomach ! Now then, what is 
 there about this newcomer s position here that you 
 don t understand? Speak it out now and speak it 
 out loud. Because if you open your elongated head 
 about it after she gets here, it s going to take more 
 money than Solomon spent on his immortal meeting 
 house to pay for the masses said over your smoul- 
 derin soul ! " 
 
 But Mike had nothing to say, absolutely nothing. 
 When Sam untangled his fingers, the Irishman s 
 face was pasty. Deprived of Sam s support, he 
 caught himself as he was sliding onto his knees. 
 
 The office individually and otherwise drew a 
 long breath. They continued their washing up with
 
 260 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 strange smiles playing upon their faces. From time 
 to time after Sam had returned to the front office 
 they cast furtive glances at the suddenly cowed 
 foreman. 
 
 Considering Mike s little idiosyncrasies of self- 
 aggrandizement since he had taken Jack s position 
 and his frequent loud-mouthed assertions of con 
 tempt and independence of the boss, Sam s emotional 
 explosion had rather smashed Mike s militarism. 
 
 On the whole a pleasant time had been had by all.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 IN WHICH WE ACKNOWLEDGE THE VISIT OF THE 
 TRUMAN WOMAN, NEE HENDERSON, ON THE SECOND 
 OF THREE VISITS WHICH SHE PAYS TO THE HERO 
 INE OF OUR NARRATIVE. 
 
 MANY are the elderly people all over the land 
 who recollect very well when the Great Zola captured 
 the music-lovers of the country, half a generation ago, 
 and carried the nation by storm. She filled theatres, 
 auditoriums and music halls from old Cape Cod to 
 the Golden Gate and then appeared to have dropped 
 out of sight as completely as though old mother 
 Earth had opened and engulfed her forever. 
 
 The Great Zola indeed ! 
 
 Where she got the name none of us ever heard or 
 knew. As Uncle Joe Fodder put it : "Fame usually 
 consists o long hair, longer nerve and a few idle 
 letters of the alphabet, anyhow, compressed into a 
 reasonable amount o newspaper advertisin ." And 
 in Mibb Truman s case it did look indeed as though 
 Uncle Joe were correct. For Mibb called herself 
 "The Great Zola" and had a backer and a press agent. 
 Her wonderful voice, given her from birth, trained for 
 a few years and then exhibited before "the best 
 people" did for her all that may have been expected. 
 Mibb "arrived" at last, although the angels may have 
 sighed at times over the methods by which Mabel 
 advanced her career and reached her hilltop. 
 
 When poor young Ferdie Ezekial blew out his
 
 262 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 brains in an Atlantic City hotel some time after, his 
 family gave it out that he had been a victim of 
 melancholia since boyhood. But some of the plain- 
 spoken folks of our town made no bones of saying 
 that he did it because after backing Mibb Truman 
 and buzzing about her as a moth buzzes about a 
 flame for a year and a day, until she had achieved a 
 tuppence worth of fame in some quarters on her talent 
 and his money, the woman turned him down for a 
 Quick Rich Johnnie from the West who subsequently 
 went financially insolvent, if not mentally and 
 morally so, endeavoring to keep up with Mibb s 
 ramifications. Then we next heard of her having 
 met Dick Robinson, the boy who had proposed to her 
 once in the long ago on the way home from singing 
 school and been laughed at, and gone away to the 
 city and and remained a bachelor and made several 
 millions of dollars as vice-president of some big oil 
 company. These things leak back to a little New 
 England town. Because of her fame, perhaps, Dick 
 had picked up with her again, and Judge Farmer 
 who spent much of his time now in New York, de 
 clared he had met them in Delmonico s together on 
 several occasions. 
 
 But the mills of the gods grind slowly. One cannot 
 sow the wind without reaping the whirlwind. 
 
 And while Mibb Henderson was journeying to 
 and fro in the land and going up and down in it sing 
 ing wonderful songs at hundreds of dollars a night 
 and spending on baubles what would have kept Mary 
 Purse and her growing family in the necessities of life 
 for a year, this same Mary Purse was back at her place 
 in our office day after day before a typecase, now set 
 ting locals when the machines were busy and we 
 needed extra matter, now helping with twelve point
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 263 
 
 in the Modern Bargain store ads, assisting with 
 the mailing or reading proof, earning her sixteen 
 dollars every week which was quickly spent as in 
 days of old, for the sustenance of others beside her 
 self. There were times when it did seem as though 
 Mibb s philosophy had beeen soundest after all. 
 
 So one grand bird wore grand plumage and flew 
 high, and another in softer, grayer feathers remained 
 close to earth and hunted food for hungry little 
 mouths, and the years began to go onward faster and 
 faster, and the Purse boys took to bursting buttons 
 and ripping seams more than ever and increasing 
 their stature overnight, after the manner of boys since 
 Adam became the father of young. 
 
 Mary Purse was sitting in a creaking rocker in the 
 twilight of a restful Sunday afternoon when the 
 muffled throbbing of an automobile sounded out 
 front, accompanied by the slam of a door. Auto 
 mobiles were curiosities in those days, rarely stopping 
 before the Purse place. Mary moved across to the 
 window and peered out through the ladders of 
 geraniums. 
 
 A high newfangled car stood in the road. On its 
 forward seat was a man in livery. The sinking sun 
 glinted on its polished surfaces but Mary paid but 
 brief attention to the vehicle. A woman was coming 
 into the yard and the woman was Mibb. 
 
 She came leisurely up the path, carrying a sailor 
 hat in her hand and looking interestedly about her. 
 Once she stopped, turned and gazed over the hills 
 and the valleys far away, beautiful in the peaceful 
 hush of the mellow sunset. 
 
 Mary moved across the room to the door. After 
 all she was Mibb Henderson of the old days, her girl 
 hood friend.
 
 264 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 "Hello, Mary!" greeted Mibb, standing on tha 
 doorstone fringed with the plantain leaves. 
 
 "How do you do, Mabel," responded Mary. 
 "Won t you come in?" 
 
 "For a few minutes perhaps," the other answered. 
 "I just ran out to see how things were going and to 
 talk over old times with you. I don t get a chance 
 to look Paris over very closely nowadays. All our set 
 seems to have grown up or died or moved away, and 
 all the faces you see on the streets nowadays are 
 strange. I m a busy woman nowadays, Mary." 
 
 "So I understand, Mabel. We hear of you once in 
 a while back here. You have made a wonderful 
 success of your voice ; Judge Farmer came back from 
 New York last month and said he went to hear you. 
 It must be a great source of satisfaction to you." 
 
 "Oh that s nothing," declared Mibb con 
 temptuously. "I always said I could look out for 
 myself, didn t I ? You could have done something 
 similar if you hadn t been so sickishly sentimental. 
 After all, in this life, we have to look out for our 
 selves. If we don t nobody else will, that s sure!" 
 She paused on the step. "My heaven s, who s that 
 boy?" 
 
 "That s my eldest boy, Tom. He s fifteen this 
 coming summer, although the neighbors say he looks 
 eighteen or twenty." 
 
 The boy had appeared with a vault over the stone 
 wall followed by a black spaniel dog. He went on 
 through the yard to the barn. Mabel looked after 
 him blankly. Then she flushed. For it must have 
 come to her in that moment how many years had 
 passed since she had poked her very patrician finger 
 in Thomas Joshua s infantile torso as old ladies poke 
 their fingers into prospective pot-roasts at the
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 265 
 
 butcher s. Yes indeed, it must have come to Mibb 
 that she was getting on. And it must have hurt. 
 For Mibb was one of those worthy females who hadn t 
 had a birthday in the last dozen years. She said 
 quickly : "And may I come in and see your old house ? 
 You know I haven t been out here to go inside since I 
 was a little girl and father s buggy wheel came off, a 
 little way down the road, spilling mother and me out 
 on the ground in the cold slush." 
 
 "Certainly you may come in, Mabel. Although 
 the house doesn t look at its best. The boys are 
 always leaving something around. Richard must 
 put his baseball things away ; I keep telling him that 
 I ll burn them up if he persists in dropping them 
 when he s done with them, but of course I wouldn t. 
 A boy s a boy." 
 
 Madame Zola entered the little west sitting room, 
 the room with the rag carpet on the floor that was 
 once Jack s mother s, with one or two high-backed 
 old horsehair rockers with tidies ; the marble-topped 
 center table ; the whatnot in the corner ; the high old 
 secretary and the enlarged picture of Jack in crayon 
 over the mantel. It was a homely, quiet, comfort 
 able old room a typical room for a woman with a 
 family of growing boys being raised in the country 
 the windows massed with geraniums, petunias, inch- 
 plant and heliotrope. Madame Zola took one of the 
 heavy horsehair rockers and ran her eye over the 
 things in the room depreciatingly. 
 
 "I m glad you came," volunteered Mary politely. 
 "I get so few visitors way out here these days with 
 my work in the office keeping me so busy during the 
 week. Mrs. Morrow is over to the Browns this 
 afternoon 
 
 "Lord sake ! Then why do you live way out here ?
 
 266 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 Why not move into the village where there s some 
 thing going on ?" 
 
 "It s home," replied Mary weakly. 
 
 Mibb glanced the room over again. She glanced 
 Mary over also, from the worn frayed shoes on 
 her weary feet to the dark hair streaked with gray, 
 done hard and flat upon her head. Truly it was 
 difficult to realize that these two women were almost 
 of an age. 
 
 "Mary," she said finally, "it s too bad!" 
 
 "What s too bad , Mabel?" 
 
 "The way you ve ruined your life. We started 
 out equally, Mary. You remember what I told you 
 soon after you and Jack were married. But you 
 wouldn t take my warning. You were dead set on 
 this love business. You said the hard work didn t 
 matter. And look what it s got you at last, Mary. 
 Nothing but this." And again her eyes glanced over 
 the room. 
 
 "It s home, Mabel," said Mary again. 
 
 "Which isn t saying much, Mary. I feel sorry for 
 you, Mary. Indeed I do ! Oh, I know that you 
 think I m a snob and all that. But I do feel sorry 
 for you, Mary. I m sincere in saying it. You ve 
 worked hard all your life. You never went any 
 where nor had any good tunes. You re spending 
 the best years of your life in that pokey old printing 
 office now, living out here in a lonesome old place 
 in the country, struggling to raise six boys ! It must 
 be awful. If there s anything I could do for you for 
 old time s sake, I d do it in a minute. That s really 
 the true reason why I came out here this afternoon. 
 I heard in the village how you were living and 
 I came out to see if I couldn t help you money 
 or something."
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 267 
 
 "You can t," replied Mary softly, a trifle hoarsely. 
 "I said this was home. I mean it, Mabel. You 
 can t appreciate what that means. You never had a 
 home, not a real home. Jack and I bought this place 
 when we were young and life was all sort of full of 
 hope and promise ; again you don t know what that 
 means, Mabel " 
 
 "I was too wise," cut in Mabel. "Catch me tying 
 myself up to a man and having kids that twist you 
 out of shape and take away your good looks and 
 make you dowdy and frumpish and tubby ; but we ve 
 been all over that before." 
 
 " so you cannot appreciate the associations," 
 went on Mary. " On the walls here, Mabel, are scars 
 of little household accidents the boys have made 
 growing up, the barks of their toys and the prints of 
 their grimy little fingers on the wall paper to indicate 
 the passing years. Jack died there in the east room. 
 His casket was carried out this door. Every piece 
 of furniture is dear to me, Mabel. Every room and 
 door and window and corner holds associations and 
 sometimes, Mabel sometimes in the dark 
 there s little ghosts play around through these rooms, 
 Mabel 
 
 "For Gawd s sake, quit, Mary. You talk spook- 
 ish ; it s enough to get on a party s nerves. I should 
 think you d go crazy living out here in this fashion 
 with no man around to protect you." 
 
 "They re dear to me, these things, these associa 
 tions are ; they ve been my life, Mabel. You can t 
 live in one house a long time without every stick and 
 stone and nail in it bein sort of like your flesh and 
 blood." 
 
 "I m thankful I haven t got any associations like 
 those, Mary. There s nothing like that to make me
 
 268 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 miserable on dark and rainy days. I ve always had 
 a good time and kept my eye on the future. And if 
 you d done the same I don t know as you d been 
 living through this hell of worry and work now." 
 
 "It isn t hell !" whispered Mary. "It s wicked to 
 call it that ! It s it s heaven, Mabel. It s the 
 nearest thing to earthly heaven I know. I love it 
 so!" 
 
 "You always were sort of sickishly sentimental; 
 I say it again. I told you so the day after I got back 
 from my own wedding trip. My way was best, 
 Mary. After all is said and done you can t deny I ve 
 made a success of my life. Never mind what people 
 say all the same I know that I have. I ve had a 
 good time all along ; I ve enjoyed life ; I ve been to 
 Europe seven times, Mary. I ve seen the world and 
 life. Right now I m free to come and go; I get a 
 salary in five figures a year for my concert work. 
 I have my automobile and my apartments in the 
 city- 
 
 "And what else, Mabel?" 
 
 "What else? What else is there to have ? What 
 do you mean ?" 
 
 "You ve got all that as you say. But what else. 
 You ve got no one to care about you ; no one to love 
 you" 
 
 "Haven t I, though? Don t be too sure about 
 that, Mary." 
 
 "You ve no children or nothing?" 
 
 "No, I haven t got any kids, but good Lord why 
 do you persist in placing such a lot of emphasis on 
 kids? Anybody d think that kids were the only 
 concern a woman could have in the world ?" 
 
 "According to the way I look at things, they are, 
 Mabel."
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 269 
 
 "Well, I place a different value on things. For 
 instance, there s Dick Robinson " 
 
 "Yes, but what s he to you, Mibb? Merely a 
 rich man. It isn t like sons or daughters of your own 
 who care for you because of what you ve done for 
 them." 
 
 "Then it might interest you to know that I expect 
 to marry him Dick Robinson in the not too 
 distant future." 
 
 "Marry him!" 
 
 "Yes, marry him ! And why shouldn t I ? Haven t 
 I been through enough so I deserve the haven of a 
 good husband s love at last? I ll never have any 
 brats, it s true. But again I say, that to me brats 
 never stood for nothing but pain and worry and care. 
 No, sir; folks don t know it yet and I don t intend 
 they should. But if things work around all right 
 and I rather calculate that if I have anything to say 
 about them they will I m going to marry Dick 
 Robinson next year and come into my share of his 
 money " 
 
 "Always money, money, money! You haven t 
 changed a great lot, have you, Mabel ?" 
 
 "I said I d take my chances with money and I 
 have. I haven t fared so badly. Can you say the 
 same, Mary Wood ?" 
 
 "I m satisfied," breathed Mary at last. 
 
 "But you can t make me believe it, Mary. No 
 sensible, high-strung, sensitive woman could possibly 
 be satisfied with this, not when they ve slaved like 
 you ve slaved." 
 
 "I m satisfied," breathed Mary again. "I 
 can t understand you, Mabel. I never could. 
 Somehow it seems at times as if you ain t really truly 
 woman. 3
 
 270 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 "Don t lose any sleep over me, Mary. I m ca 
 pable of taking care of myself. I think I ve proved 
 it. I m going to prove it some more 
 
 "I hate to say it, Mabel; you re an old girlhood 
 friend of mine, almost the only one that s left out of 
 the old crowd. But you re you re selfish, Ma 
 bel. You ve always been selfish " 
 
 " We won t indulge in personalities, Mary. I came 
 out here in the best spirit possible to see if there was 
 anything I could do for you." 
 
 "There isn t, Mabel. Not anything. I m not 
 ungrateful. I ve lived my life in my own way and 
 after my own standards. If I was to go back and live 
 it over there isn t hardly a day or an hour of it that 
 I d live differently." 
 
 "Some folks do have such queer ideas," observed 
 Mabel, fixing her hair in the back. 
 
 "Then you got a divorce, did you, from Herbert ?" 
 
 "Herbert? Oh, yes, you mean the elephantine 
 person of the male sex with whom I once com 
 mitted a rash girlish act. Certainly I got a divorce 
 from him, while I was out in California in ninety- 
 four." 
 
 "And you never heard what became of him ?" 
 
 "No, why should I ? What is he to me ?" 
 
 "He was your husband, Mabel." 
 
 Mabel laughed, a contemptuous laugh. 
 
 "Heavens, but you are old-fashioned ! In my set, 
 a woman who hasn t had two or three husbands 
 simply isn t in the swim, at all." 
 
 "I wouldn t care much for those in your set, Mabel, 
 I m afraid." 
 
 "Nor they for you, either. Oh, for heaven s sake, 
 can t you and I come together without fighting over 
 this disgusting subject of domesticity? You make
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 271 
 
 me mad ! What s your life, anyway ? Tell me 
 that!" 
 
 "My life," answered Mary quietly, "is working 
 to raise six live-wire boys to be good men. When 
 that is done, my life-work is completed. That s 
 been my career - at least up to the present and I 
 can t change it now. There s been frightfully cruel 
 moments in it. But there s been frightfully dear 
 and precious moments too. After all, keeping a 
 home and raising children is a woman s work in the 
 world, and if she isn t content to accept it, she hasn t 
 any business being a woman. I can t for the life of 
 me see why w r hen God made woman for that 
 there should be so much fault-finding and discontent 
 and dissatisfaction among them and wanting to be 
 something else. Somehow the women folks nowa 
 days think it s a curse on a woman that she is a wo 
 man and they re trying their best to be men. But 
 somehow I ve observed, Mabel, that there s nothing 
 but unhappiness and heart-hunger beneath it all, 
 and a fault-finding with the men folks, society and 
 God everybody and everything but themselves 
 with selfishness at the bottom of it and a cowardly 
 shrinking from some of the noble duties of life just 
 because they want a pleasant time and good looks 
 and nonsense. I ve been through the experience of 
 motherhood six times, Mabel. And I ve buried a 
 husband. But along with it all there s come a satis 
 faction and a peace, a resignation if you want to 
 call it that, Mabel, that s ample to repay it all. I ve 
 tried not to shirk ; I ve tried to do my duty and am as 
 happy as I know how to be, while doing it. And I m 
 not galivanting around, looking for happiness through 
 dollars or marrying rich men or fearful of losing my 
 good looks and all such nonsense. I m not looking
 
 272 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 for happiness, because I ve got it, Mabel. I ve got a 
 happiness now that nothing in life can take away. 
 Maybe I haven t seen Europe seven times ; probably 
 I ll never see Europe or any other place but Paris, 
 Vermont. But I ve seen other things that you ve 
 never seen and it isn t given you to see, Mabel, and it s 
 plenty. Don t waste any pity on me, Mabel. Pity 
 yourself. You re a lonely woman ; you re the lonely 
 one, not me. I can read it in your face, Mabel. And 
 may the kind Father have mercy on you. You need 
 it, Mabel, indeed. You need it but you don t 
 know it." 
 
 "This is all one gets for trying to be neighborly 
 and helpful for old time s sake," Mabel replied wrath- 
 fully. " Well, as we both seem to be satisfied with our 
 lots, Mary, I might as well call my visit at an end 
 and go." 
 
 She arose stiffly and she did go. But as she rolled 
 back to town she knew deep in her heart that Mary 
 Wood had spoken the truth. 
 
 "My Gawd!" she cried suddenly and miserably, 
 "I d give all the Robinson millions I m coming into 
 next year just to have the peace that s on Mary 
 Purse s face !" 
 
 She meant what she said though there was no 
 one to hear.
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 THE MILLS OF THE GODS KEEP GRINDING, GRIND 
 ING, GRINDING, AND FIVE COUNTRY FOLK JOURNEY 
 TO THE CITY TO LOOK UPON ITS TINSEL FOR A 
 MOMENT. 
 
 THERE were two times in those years when she was 
 raising her youngsters that Mary Purse went away 
 from home on a vacation. The first was the two weeks 
 that she spent with an aunt of Jack s up in North 
 Sidney, taking the boys on a never-to-be-forgotten 
 visit. The second was the time that she went with 
 Sam Hod and myself and our wives down to Boston 
 to the famous Fair in the old Mechanics Hall. 
 
 This tired scribe has forgotten now exactly how 
 it was that we happened to go and take Mary. I 
 think she had broken down temporarily after Fred 
 had the scarlet fever and for a week or so, just after 
 Tom left for college, and fearing for her health, 
 I think we utilized our railroad passes freely issued 
 to newspapermen in those halcyon days of country 
 journalism and made Mary the fifth of our party. 
 
 But if we of the office have forgotten the little 
 details of how Mary chanced to be with us, em 
 phatically we have not forgotten what happened on 
 that trip and the pathos of the girl who married Jack 
 Purse for love in one situation that came from that 
 journey. 
 
 For we saw the Great Zola the Truman woman, 
 nee Henderson in all her glory.
 
 274 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 It was Sam who found the notice in a newspaper 
 as we lounged late one winter s afternoon in the 
 lobby of the old Parker House. 
 
 "The famous contralto, the Great Zola !" he cried. 
 "Sufferin 5 Moses, Bill, do you suppose that could be 
 Mibb?" 
 
 "What about the famous contralto, the Great 
 Zola?" 
 
 "She s singing here ! She s giving a concert here 
 to-night!" 
 
 We read the advertisement. We passed it to our 
 women folk and to Mary. It was Mary who turned 
 the page in a trifle of bewilderment and uncertainty, 
 and we fancied a bit of wistfulness. It chanced 
 then that she turned open the pages of the theatrical 
 section. From the page a picture stared at us. 
 There was no mistaking that picture. It was indeed 
 Mibb Mabel of our office. Beneath was the 
 usual press-agent write-up of Mibb s wonderful 
 talent. 
 
 "It sort of slops over," declared Sam disgustedly. 
 "All the same, if she can sing now as she sang in the 
 old days, she s certainly some warbler. Folks ! 
 Let s go to that concert." 
 
 Mary whitened a trifle. She bit a soft lip. Then 
 a forced smile broke over her careworn countenance. 
 
 "Yes," she said, "let s go to that concert. Let s 
 go and hear Mibb sing in public." 
 
 We went. 
 
 We secured five tickets from sidewalk brokers. I 
 think we paid five dollars apiece for them. Sam made 
 a grimace as he gave up the money. 
 
 Mary was careworn and a trifle shabby as of old, 
 though not from preference, the good Lord knows in 
 His heart. She had matured into mellow matron-
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 275 
 
 hood ; the gray was beginning to be more and more 
 noticeable now in her hair ; her face was a trifle sal 
 low; her hands were growing gnarled, alas, like her 
 mother s. The five of us made somewhat of a 
 shoddy appearance in that patrician Bostonese 
 audience. 
 
 As we sat there, from the corner of an eye I saw 
 Mary watching those Boston folks. Then, poor soul, 
 I knew by the expression on her face that she was 
 comparing herself with them and finding poor conso 
 lation in the comparison. She pulled at her sleeves, 
 fixed her hair, arranged a frail little bit of ribbon at 
 her throat. But it was all poor excuse at best for 
 the lack of finery real finery which the starved 
 woman heart of her craved. A feeling of sadness 
 came over me and a sympathy for Mary in that 
 moment such as I had not felt before, verily not even 
 on that afternoon of Jack Purse s burial. As that 
 evening went on that sympathy for her increased 
 increased in just that proportion that Mibb was 
 beautiful where Mary was shabby and shoddy. 
 
 For Mibb was beautiful, at least from where our 
 usher had seated us. Distance may have lent en 
 chantment or it may have been Mibb s war-paint in 
 her battle with life. Perhaps it was her purple and 
 fine linen. Anyway when she finally came on to the 
 platform Sam at my side emitted a low whistle. 
 
 "Oh, for Uncle Joe Fodder !" the editor declared. 
 "I wonder what remark he would make to look upon 
 Mibb Henderson now ?" 
 
 Mibb had grown stouter. She also had mellowed, 
 at least in her figure. In her black, low cut gown, 
 high coiffure and diamond bespangled fingers, the 
 "nine-o clock girl" of our little town was not the 
 nine-o clock girl at all, but a gorgeous creature out-
 
 276 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 matching Solomon in all his glory, providing that 
 Solomon ever arrayed himself in black, low-cut 
 gowns, high coiffures and slipped clusters of fire gems 
 with reckless abandon on his fingers. 
 
 "She s took to painting and powdering," remarked 
 Alice Hod in a hoarse whisper, "and her hair is dyed 
 or I m a carrot!" 
 
 "Well, she s no amateur at it," remarked her 
 husband enthusiastically. "The days when she used 
 to keep a little square of mirror in her P-case and 
 primp herself between locals have certainly turned 
 to her advantage." He said it in an extra-loud 
 voice, for the great audience was applauding enthusi 
 astically and Mibb was nodding and acknowledging 
 their tribute just a wee bit indifferently. Something 
 of her old contempt for her talent remained in her 
 carriage in public. A tall, lean, lank young man, 
 whom Sam declared resembled a string bean in a 
 dress suit, hurried across stage, carrying an immense 
 white handkerchief, spun the piano stool as though in a 
 hurry to have it done and it was something to be 
 ashamed of doing in public, seated himself and tinkled 
 a few bars of piano music. And Mibb, poised rather 
 languidly at thd corner of the baby-grand piano with 
 the raised cover, began to sing. 
 
 She sang that old song, "Stars of the Summer 
 Night." 
 
 "Remember where we folks heard that song last?" 
 Sam demanded. 
 
 "At the party up in Gold-piece Cabin," returned 
 Alice. "Frank played it on his violin !" Then she 
 dented one of her husband s ribs with her elbow. 
 "But you keep quiet," she admonished. "We want 
 to hear this music ! " 
 
 I looked at Mary Purse. Her head was slightly on
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 277 
 
 one side. Her work-hardened hands were relaxed in 
 her lap. Her eyes were fixed on Mibb hungrily. 
 When Alice Hod leaned over and criticized some 
 thing in Mibb s toilet, she merely nodded sadly. 
 In that moment I was sorry that we had at 
 tended this entertainment and brought Mary. For 
 Mibb s materialistic philosophy may have been 
 faulty as an abstract problem in metaphysics, but it 
 had brought her success, while Mary s had brought 
 her seemingly but work and sorrow and red hands 
 and a care-lined face and raiment that was only 
 cheap serge and shoddy. 
 
 The audience applauded when Mibb finished, as 
 audiences have had a habit of doing out of the ages 
 eternal when the applause was for the social idol or 
 artist of the moment and their work on the whole 
 was passing fair. And Mibb sang the encore the 
 song is immaterial and was applauded again, and 
 the string bean came in for his portion of it ; and then 
 both had some more and Mibb swished off the plat 
 form and back on again and consulted with the 
 string bean and the string bean nodded and began 
 again and we had still more music. 
 
 The concert only lasted an hour. But toward 
 the close of that hour, Mibb sang two songs that 
 demonstrated only too plainly that it was not alone 
 her voice which had brought her fame, but the dis 
 cretion employed in her selections. For they had 
 been chosen to answer the age-old yearning in the 
 hearts of tired men and women, patrician or no, for 
 the scenes and faces and heart-hopes of days that 
 have gone with the long ago. She sang "Silver 
 Threads Among the Gold" and for an encore followed 
 it with that beautiful simple old ballad, "Home, 
 Sweet Home."
 
 278 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 A vast hush fell over the audience. Even a 
 dreamy daze came over the features of the string 
 bean at the piano, as Mibb sang it and his fingers 
 followed her on the keys. Sam s chin sank lower and 
 lower into his chest. There was no coughing, no 
 rustling of programs. Mibb cast a spell over that 
 throng and even the most sophisticated for the moment 
 could not break away. And the spell was no less 
 thrown over the hearts and minds of five ordinary 
 country folk down in the front seats of that 
 theater. 
 
 Mibb did not wait for applause to spoil the effect 
 she had created. She passed quickly though equally 
 quietly to "Home, Sweet Home." 
 
 Mary Purse put her handkerchief quickly to her 
 lips. Then it went up to her eyes and she held it 
 there. 
 
 Only two men in that audience fancied they knew 
 why Mibb put such feeling into her last song. 
 
 Somehow we wished we were all out of that place 
 and up in the familiar old streets of Paris, Vermont. 
 
 Was the applause deafening ? It was ! 
 
 They would not let Mibb go off that platform. 
 They called for her again and again. And again and 
 again she had to respond. A bouquet of flowers 
 came down the left aisle, somewhere under the mass 
 a human being carried along by legs. Another came 
 down the right aisle. Wave after wave of approval 
 swept down from the balconies and back again. 
 
 "And to think," said Sam hoarsely, "that that 
 Queen of Sheba once worked in our printing office !" 
 
 Sam wanted to go back-stage and see Mibb and 
 visit with her but Alice would not have it. 
 
 "Because, to me she ll always be the same old Mibb 
 Henderson, never mind how high she flies. I
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 279 
 
 couldn t bring myself to rave over her and congratu 
 late her as I suppose I ought/ 
 
 But Mary said nothing. With the same wistful 
 look ever on her face, she went with us out of that 
 theater. 
 
 When we got back to the hotel she complained of a 
 headache and went almost at once to her rooms. 
 Alice, who had cause to go down the hotel cor 
 ridor afterward, said the light was burning under 
 Mary s adjacent door until well into the morning. 
 
 She came back to Paris with us and took up the 
 burden of her life again before a grimy type case, 
 earning the wherewithal to raise those boys which 
 Jack had left her, in the dumb, hopeless, unsung 
 heroism of plain people doing plain tasks because 
 that is their destiny. 
 
 But as for Mibb, she went on, onward and upward, 
 from Glory unto Glory. 
 
 Going home on the train I said to Sam : 
 
 "I feel that we should have gone back and made 
 ourselves known to Mibb. There was something 
 about the way she sang that Home, Sweet Home 
 that tells me she would have been glad to see us." 
 
 "See her? Of course I saw her," Sam answered. 
 "I waited until Alice had gone to our room and then 
 made an excuse I wanted a lunch, to go back and see 
 her. And who do you suppose I found with her ?" 
 
 "Who?" I demanded. 
 
 "Dick Robinson. You remember Dick whom she 
 once turned down when he proposed to her back in 
 Paris before she married Herb for his money ?" 
 
 Certainly I remembered Dick. 
 
 "But you wouldn t know him," went on Sam. 
 "I hardly knew him myself. He s changed, Dick 
 has. He s grown hard and cynical and there are
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 creases in his face. He was waiting in her dressing 
 room for her." 
 
 "In her dressing room !" 
 
 "Yes, and Mibb was disrobing almost in front of 
 him as though it were the most commonplace thing 
 in the world. It sort of disgusted me ; that s why 
 I haven t said much about it. A pair of corsets was 
 hanging over the back of the chair in which Dick 
 was sitting dawdling his cane." 
 
 We were alone temporarily in the smoker. We 
 rode for a few minutes in silence. 
 
 "Well?" I said. 
 
 "They wanted me to go out with them and have a 
 feed and some drinks. I didn t go. Bill," said the 
 editor suddenly, "do you suppose Mary Purse was 
 envious of Mibb as the crowd was applauding last 
 night and the bouquets coming down the aisles ?" 
 
 "Mary s only human, like the rest of us," I 
 answered. Then I said: "Let s see, Dick never 
 married, did he ?" 
 
 But Sam did not hear. He answered his own 
 question : 
 
 "Strange," he remarked, "that it should be old 
 Harve Henderson s daughter who ll get that gold- 
 piece ! " 
 
 We told Uncle Joe Fodder about it in the office the 
 next day. 
 
 "Vengeance is mine ; I will repay, saith the Lord," 
 was the only comment the old man made. Which 
 was queer. 
 
 " Mibb told me she was starting on another grand 
 continental tour in the spring," said Sam, as the 
 train drew into Paris on that ride home.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 As THE MILLS OP THE GODS GRIND SLOWLY THERE 
 COMES A SUDDEN OMINOUS BUMP IN THE MACHIN 
 ERY AND THOSE WHO ARE LISTENING FEEL THAT 
 SOMETHING HAS GONE WRONG SOMEWHERE OR A 
 SUBSTANCE GONE BETWEEN THE STONES THAT 
 HAS BEEN ANNIHILATED MERCILESSLY. 
 
 IT is time to close the second portion of this story 
 now, but before we write "Part the Third" at the top 
 of a new sheet of foolscap, let us set down here one 
 grim anecdote that stands out in jagged red and per 
 haps in the general scheme of things adds some poor 
 measure of consolation. 
 
 We have never been able to get the exact details. 
 We have only the strange little morsels of gossip 
 which are bound to drift back to a little country town 
 to be tossed to and fro over family teacups. And 
 .combining these with the story which Dick Robinson 
 told Judge Farmer one night down at the Banker s 
 Club in New York, we can collect a pretty fair amount 
 of evidence upon which to build the tragedy. 
 
 On a certain rainy October night in a far western 
 city, "Madame Zola" ended her concert and started 
 from the rear of the theater through the alley to her 
 hansom. The light over the stage door fell aslant 
 a hallway opening into a cheap rooming house across 
 the alley. She was about to pass this hallway when a 
 burly figure turned in from the sidewalk and passed 
 her. Something in his walk arrested her. She
 
 282 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 stopped in the foggy drizzle and stepped back in 
 voluntarily. As she did so, the burly man raised 
 his head. 
 
 The woman s body went cold all over. She gasped 
 a fearful word. The man halted and peered at her. 
 
 "Herbert!" she whispered. 
 
 He was big and rough and unshaven and drunk 
 exceedingly drunk. He swayed unsteadily in the 
 mist and the light over the stage door she had just 
 quitted made an auriole of iridescent color above his 
 battered derby hat. 
 
 But he seemed to come to himself as she spoke his 
 name in that awful voice resulting from the terrific 
 shock of her surprise. 
 
 "Who s callin me Herbert? Me? Huh! Ain t 
 heard that name for years and years, I ain t ! " 
 
 They faced each other in the dripping semi-dark, 
 she rich, cultured, seemingly patrician to her finger 
 tips in the harness of her stage dress ; he slovenly, 
 broken down, just an odd fish cast up from the great 
 sea of derelict city life. 
 
 "You! "he cried. "You! You! You!" 
 
 She did not know what to say. Strength and 
 voice apparently had deserted her. 
 
 "What are you doin here?" he demanded 
 ominously. "Ain t you done me nough damage 
 already without followin me here? Tell me that? 
 Ain t you?" 
 
 "I I haven t followed you here, you fool!" 
 she managed to gasp at last. "Where have you 
 been? Where did you go to? It s you that needs 
 calling to account. You deserted me left me 
 penniless. If I hadn t been clever I might have 
 starved ! " 
 
 "You say that, after what you done to me and
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 283 
 
 my money ! If you hadn t been clever you might 
 have starved. Clever ! Clever ! Yes, you was 
 clever ! You was damned clever ! You cheat, you I 
 You cheat!" 
 
 " Stop it, you fool ! Don t you know you ll wake 
 the whole city and start a scandal? Lower your 
 voice, I tell you ! " 
 
 He supported himself with one hand against some 
 old iron pipes piled against the near-by brick wall of 
 the theater. He was weak, too, with the tremen 
 dous surprise of that meeting but with a far different 
 kind of surprise. He was trying to collect his 
 dazed senses. And something was getting away 
 from him. He was losing control of the great brute 
 animal within him which drink and abuse of the 
 years had nurtured. Before him he fancied he was 
 seeing the cause of all his life s misery. And the 
 devil was over his shoulder, pushing him on. 
 
 "Fine lady, ain t you? Fine, fine lady! Them 
 geegaws and everything fine, fine lady ! What 
 man paid for em, you ? " and he said a word that 
 struck the woman as a blow across her mouth. 
 
 She backed away and went white to the lips. 
 
 "You call me that, you vagrant! you gutter 
 snipe! you you bum!" she screamed, for 
 getting her own admonition of a moment before. 
 
 "Yes, me call you that !" he retorted. "Me call 
 you that ! Me call you that ! And why shouldn t 
 I ? " And his voice was like the roar of a bull. 
 
 "No man paid for them," she retorted in deadly 
 voice. "I m paying my own way with my voice, 
 and no thanks to a dirty street loafer fit only 
 for the gutter ! " 
 
 "And who sent me to the gutter ? " he cried wildly, 
 choking on his words. Again he repeated the
 
 284 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 unprintable word. "Who sent me to the gutter? 
 Who but a hell-cat with a heart o ice that bled me 
 dry and cheated me from bein a man? Tell me 
 that! Oh, you .she-devil! Oh, you she-devil!" 
 And he lurched forward. 
 
 "Lay one of your dirty fingers on me and you ll 
 go to jail for life !" she cried hysterically. 
 
 He did not reply this time. He simply swayed 
 there with a wild unhealthy light burning suddenly 
 behind his bloodshot eyes. 
 
 Then in the next instant he lurched at her. With 
 the agility of insanity, despite his size he lurched at 
 her, as though all the accumulated misery and 
 heartaches and vicissitudes of the years were his 
 to avenge on human flesh and blood at last. It was 
 as though he had been waiting years and years for 
 exactly that moment. 
 
 He sprang at her and she screamed. She screamed 
 terribly. Some men heard it in the next block and 
 came a-running. Some people in the lodging house 
 above heard it also and ran for the windows and 
 peered fearfully downward. A policeman heard 
 it over in front of the corner saloon out on the main 
 street and meditated whether he should go swiftly 
 to where it sounded or turn discreetly down the side 
 thoroughfare. 
 
 For when poor Herb Truman lurched his burly 
 weight upon the wife of his young manhood, he held 
 in his scabby fist one of the short ugly pieces of pipe 
 that had been piled beneath his hand against the 
 wall of the theater. 
 
 He beat her down, once, twice, three times he 
 belted at her terribly, horribly. 
 
 The pipe crunched on soft human flesh nauseat- 
 ingly. It had a ragged end and full in her unpro-
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 285 
 
 tected face the Henderson girl received it. A man 
 in the lodging house above stairs testified next day 
 that he saw the assailant stamp on the woman s 
 prostrate body after she had fallen inert on the 
 cement floor of the alleyway. But he was recover 
 ing from a three-day indiscretion himself and his 
 testimony may not be entirely trustworthy. 
 
 Anyhow, when help did arrive, headed by the 
 policeman who had decided to do his duty, seven 
 men found one woman battered into insensibility, 
 weltering in a great sickening pool of human blood, 
 and her features horribly mashed by a blunt in 
 strument thrown or dropped into the open doorway 
 of that lodging house hall. 
 
 And though the lodging house and the city were 
 searched, they did not find the assailant. 
 
 Three months later a woman was discharged from 
 the hospital in that city with a face a hideous thing 
 to behold, one side of her mouth drawn together and 
 closed permanently. 
 
 As Uncle Joe Fodder had often remarked : "Ven 
 geance is mine ; I will repay, saith the Lord/
 
 PART III
 
 EVENING 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 IN WHICH WE CONSIDER THE CHANGES TIME HAS 
 WROUGHT IN THE LAST TWENTY YEARS AND FOR 
 THE LAST TIME, PRAISE GOD, SEE MARY PURSE 
 BEARING NOBLY THE LAST GREAT DISAPPOINT 
 MENT OF HER LIFE. 
 
 ACCORDING to Joe Bardwell the Joseph Bard- 
 well a Paris man who has gained fame with two 
 novels and interminable short stories so that his 
 name is often on the magazine covers of Service s 
 News Room, according to Joseph Bardwell who 
 is in a place to know, the most difficult part of 
 writing a book is to convey skilfully and convinc 
 ingly the passing of time. 
 
 This is especially true if the narrative covers the 
 entire lives of a group of people. Due allowance 
 must be made "for them periods when nothin* 
 didn t happen", as Uncle Joe Fodder would put it. 
 For there are such times in the lives of all of us. 
 Comedy and tragedy leave such a terrific effect upon 
 us because they break in upon lives that are running 
 the even tenor of their way, careers that on the whole 
 are uniformly quiet and prosaic. They are the 
 paragraph marks and chapter-headings in the jour 
 nal of existence. 
 
 Coming down to concrete things and following the 
 lives of the particular people with whom our story
 
 290 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 has to do, we may say without fear of successful 
 contradiction that the years from 1896 to 1912 saw 
 more changes in American life than any other period 
 in the history of our people or our nation. We can 
 close the files here now and lay them back on top 
 the green box safe. All too vividly memory will 
 serve us and as for the rest, our story must come 
 down for its close into modern times. 
 
 The first thing of which we have taken note is the 
 change in the life of our town, which is a counterpart 
 of hundreds of American towns scattered all over 
 the continent. Business blocks went up several 
 stories and wooden structures descended under the 
 crowbar of the building wrecker. We paved Main 
 Street and built a jail. Fat, sociable, boxlike old 
 houses painted dirty white gave way to cupolas and 
 bay windows and softer hues and trimmings. We 
 razed our white picket fences and allowed our lawns 
 a breathing chance. We bought a fire truck and 
 a policeman s uniform and made Mike Hogan, our 
 chief of police, who hitherto had gone about in his 
 suspenders, climb into the latter, station himself at 
 the corner of Main and Maple streets Saturday 
 nights and Sunday afternoons and make motions 
 with his hands. Thus we arose to the grandeur of 
 a traffic cop and took great pride in him until he had 
 "bawled us out" publicly a few times for driving 
 our automobiles with a light blinked out and then 
 we declared him a nuisance and started a petition 
 to have him removed. 
 
 In our homes we took up our carpets and laid 
 down art rugs. The graphophone with the old wax 
 records and morning-glory horn was consigned to 
 the attic and in the corner of our "libraries" we 
 installed what resembled an old-fashioned music
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 291 
 
 box on top of a wine cabinet but which was really 
 Caruso and McCormick and Gluck ready at a 
 moment s notice to fill the neighborhood with art. 
 We consigned the old red tablecloths to limbo and 
 went in for Haviland china. The less furniture we 
 could get into a room the better it was furnished 
 and the prosperity of a family was not reckoned by 
 its acres but by the number of silver birches on its 
 lawn and the width of its front piazza,. 
 
 Our social life changed also. Young people be 
 came old and old people became young. The acme 
 of ambition for our rising generation was to grow up 
 and s^hake the dust of the place from their negro- 
 polished shoes and dwell amid purple and fine linen 
 in the cities. We became a nation of speed maniacs, 
 and life insurance statistics on the insanity rate were 
 used to prove that we were a great nation. 
 
 And while these changes were in progress, what 
 shall be said of our townsfolk themselves and espe 
 cially the folk whose history we have followed? 
 Where are the folk of yesteryear, indeed? Where 
 are the faces we once knew, the voices that were 
 so familiar? Scattered to the four corners of the 
 tired old earth, most of them, or sleeping quietly in 
 the cemetery on the hill. And in their places are 
 strange folk, faces and voices which we know and 
 yet do not know, upstarts and usurpers, ac 
 quaintances instead of friends, names to fill the 
 census and the telephone directory and not human 
 3ouls whose joys were our joys and failures our 
 failures, whose successes were our successes and 
 their griefs our griefs. 
 
 Even the people of our narrative are different folk, 
 alas, than we recognized them yesteryear. We are 
 on the third and last part of our story now, the
 
 292 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 final lap toward home and the Greater Glory. And 
 in this last act of life s play the make-up of our 
 actors must be changed. 
 
 We have seen Sam Hod a young newspaperman, 
 very deliberate and precise in all he did, gravely 
 deporting himself, striving to build a newspaper 
 which should be respected and sworn by among all 
 kinds and classes everywhere. We look upon him 
 now with his hair gray, his moustache ragged, his 
 eyes old and philosophical and tired. We have 
 seen the people of our office young and careless and 
 heart-free, thinking only of the good time coming 
 in the evening after work. We look upon them now 
 toil-worn and care-bent, with families and respon 
 sibilities, going down the hill of life and hugging 
 closer and closer in the evening hours to their easy 
 chairs and rockers. 
 
 And what of the heroine of this heroless narrative ? 
 What of Mary Purse ? What, indeed ? For the time 
 has come when we must also look on Mary when 
 she is old, for time spares not the heroes and heroines 
 more than it does the adventuresses and villains. 
 
 During the years of her wifehood and mother 
 hood that she had been absent from the office, she 
 had altered somewhat from the nimble girl we once 
 had known. Her hands, once so deft and delicate 
 and slender, had become red and stiff and contorted 
 with labor. She couldn t set the "string" of the 
 years before. But she didn t appear to notice that. 
 Or if she did, she never mentioned it for fear she 
 might discount herself in the eyes of the office 
 powers and lose her place. Day after day she 
 toiled at the case and then drove home at the 
 supper hour, and, doing the housework for those 
 growing boys, worked far into the night.
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 293 
 
 Oh, that we could stop and set down here in detail 
 some of the struggles that woman went through as 
 the seasons went slowly by and bills came in which 
 must be paid, and cruel setbacks and handicaps and 
 hardships interrupted the noble work she was 
 doing, work for which it seemed there never 
 could be an adequate reward. Sam Hod, who from 
 time to time has glanced over these pages while 
 they were in composition, is wrathy indeed that so 
 much prominence has been given to the days and 
 times and folk that came before Jack left us and 
 Mary s work since crowded into one petty chapter. 
 
 "The time since she was left a widow is the real 
 story of Mary Purse, you fat-head," he has again 
 and again declared. 
 
 But Sam Hod does not realize that there is no 
 drama in one aging widow woman coming into the 
 village day after day and working through the 
 hours at a type case and going home at night to 
 order the household for a family of growing boys 
 and the old Morrow woman. Those years might 
 be replete with childhood tragedies and bumps 
 and bruises and the vagaries of expanding boyhood 
 and youth, but they would only weary the reader. 
 Those years from Jack s passing to the time that 
 the youngest Purse boy left to take a job down in 
 Boston are one of those periods of Uncle Joe Fod 
 der s when "nothin didn t happen." All we can 
 set down is that she did her task somehow, the 
 task almost beyond her strength, and yet a task in 
 which will power and mother love and her husband s 
 memory triumphed and which she completed. 
 And her only remuneration as she went along was 
 the fervent hope that Thomas Joshua would not 
 fail her, that he would turn out a preacher.
 
 294 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 But we might as well have it first as last : Tom 
 Purse did not turn out a preacher. 
 
 The old Seminary on the north side of Putnam 
 Square was burned down in nineteen hundred and 
 Paris built a fairly up-to-date school. In due 
 course of time Tom entered this institution and on 
 his graduation went up to the University of Ver 
 mont. We learned that he was working in one of 
 the Burlington newspaper offices to pay his ex 
 penses and tuition, with what his mother sent 
 him, which she saved and had ready from God only 
 knows where. He was a quiet, studious boy, very 
 intense in everything he did and his high marks won 
 him a scholarship in his third year. That helped 
 some. He was valedictorian at Commencement. 
 
 The night he came back to Paris, he and his mother 
 drove out to the Purse place together. She had not 
 been able to afford the trip to the graduation because 
 the twins were coming along and wanted to get 
 through Middlebury in another two years. It was 
 a rainy day in the last of June and neither mother 
 nor son felt like talking, but that was not altogether 
 because of the rain. 
 
 They reached home and Tom put up the horse. 
 Mrs. Morrow was growing more and more feeble. 
 The other boys had not returned from school or from 
 work and with Mrs. Morrow in her chair in the 
 kitchen asleep, mother and son were alone. 
 
 "Well," Mary said softly, "at any rate, one of 
 you boys has had a college education." 
 
 "Yes, Ma." 
 
 Tom arose and took a couple of turns up and down 
 the room. He was a big, strapping fellow now six 
 feet in his stockings with sharp forceful features 
 and a steel-gray eye. He pulled out his college
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 295 
 
 Jimmy-pipe and filled it thoughtfully, standing by 
 the window and looking out into the fragrant rainy 
 night. 
 
 "Tommy," breathed the mother fearfully at last, 
 from her place before the devastated dishes, " is 
 it all completed, Tommy?" 
 
 The young man flushed deeply. 
 
 "You mean, Ma, the the theological school ? " 
 
 "Yes," she said half -hopefully. 
 
 He was a long time in replying and in that mo 
 ment the mother knew she had another disappoint 
 ment to bury in her life. 
 
 "Confound it, Ma, I hate to say it; I know it 
 hurts you like sin, but what s the use of trying to 
 follow up something I don t care anything about 
 and arn t fitted for?" 
 
 "It was the dream of my life, Tommy from the 
 first night I looked into your little face that you 
 should some day be a minister. And I m - I m 
 willing to keep right on workin , Tommy, to see you 
 get the money to help you out there also 
 
 "That s the trouble, Ma; you ve been working 
 too darned much ! I ve felt ashamed of it lots of 
 times. But I ve got the satisfaction of knowing 
 I didn t cheat. I plugged to get through as hard 
 as you plugged to have me." 
 
 "I know you did, son. It wouldn t be in Jack 
 Purse s son to cheat." She waited a long time. 
 Then she said: "And you aren t going to try to 
 be a minister ? " 
 
 "What s the use, Ma?" he cried without looking 
 into her face. "I m simply not cut out for it; my 
 bent doesn t lie in that direction. Honest, it 
 doesn t. What s the use of spoiling a good black 
 smith to make a rotten preacher?"
 
 296 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 "But you don t want to be a blacksmith !" 
 
 "You know what I want to be, Ma. We ve 
 talked it over times enough." 
 
 Mary placed her tired hands to her throbbing 
 temples. Yes, they had talked it over times enough, 
 indeed. 
 
 "It s in my blood, mother," Tom went on. "It s 
 something you and dad have bequeathed to me. 
 It s ground into my very bone and fiber. You can t 
 blame me. I was born to it." 
 
 "Yes," agreed Mary. "Perhaps you were, 
 Tommy. But if your father had lived, this would 
 about break his heart." 
 
 "Because dad was only a second-rater; he never 
 got to the top in his profession. And I m going to 
 climb to the top Springfield, Boston, New York ! 
 Watch me ! And dad married too young and en 
 cumbered himself with a family before he could 
 afford it. I shan t do that. I m a rolling stone 
 until I ve rolled myself up to the top of the grade. 
 Then I ll marry and stay there." 
 
 "My son only a newspaperman like his 
 daddy before him ! Oh, well ! It doesn t matter ; 
 it s honorable even if it s poorly paid. Maybe - 
 maybe some of the other boys will be ministers 
 - although I can t say it ll be the same as if it was 
 you, Tom. You were my first baby, you know. 
 It makes a difference." 
 
 "Mother, don t take on so. I ll be at the top of 
 my profession the same as I stood at the top of my 
 class. And I ll see that you re not sorry you re 
 leased me from the ministerial obligation." He 
 said this last with an attempt at pleasantry. But 
 it fell pathetically flat. 
 
 She arose and went over to him after a time. He
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 297 
 
 knew when he looked at her that the situation he 
 had dreaded for months was successfully in the past. 
 She took him by the lapels of his coat with her 
 scrawny hands and he took the Jimmy-pipe from 
 his teeth that she could look into his face. 
 
 "Tom," she said. "Then be a good newspaper 
 man. Remember you re dealing with the deep and 
 sacred things of life, the hearts and souls and des 
 tinies of men and women!" 
 
 "I will, mother," he said quietly. 
 
 It was silent in that room for a time. Then the 
 boy said huskily : 
 
 "Mother, you won t feel so awful, awful badly 
 if I don t become a preacher, if I become a really 
 good, a really big newspaperman?" 
 
 The answer was a long time in coming. But it 
 came. She smiled a wonderful smile, as she turned 
 her sweet face up to his as she had turned it up to 
 another man in the bygone years. 
 
 "No, Tom," she said brokenly. "I won t feel 
 awful bad, over it." 
 
 And the next night Thomas Joshua Purse left for 
 Boston to take a job on the old Chronicle. 
 
 He never knew what that decision cost his mother.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE WOMAN WITH THE SCARRED FACE DISCOVERS 
 THAT SELFISHNESS DOES NOT PAY AFTER ALL 
 AND KNOWS THE MEANING OF THE WARNING 
 "VENGEANCE Is MINE; I WILL REPAY, SAITH 
 THE LORD," IN ANOTHER WAY. 
 
 THEY sat facing one another across a small side 
 table in the dining room of a quiet little hotel off 
 Broadway. The time was eight in the evening; 
 dinner guests had gone ; after-theater supper parties 
 were yet to come. For the present they were almost 
 alone in the rich and silent place excepting for a 
 waiter who leaned against a grating far in the rear 
 and gossiped idly with the cashier in a foreign 
 tongue. 
 
 The man was a striking personality. Out of his 
 long massive features glinted hard eyes of cold gray. 
 His nose and mouth and chin were adamantine and 
 a trifle sinister. His age might have been fifty if 
 one averaged his youthful athletic carriage with the 
 head of iron-gray hair parted on one side and brushed 
 back in a hoary mane above his forehead. He 
 was clothed in expensive but sober black; there 
 was a heavy diamond glinting on his right hand. 
 About him was an air of success, of a man who 
 had forged to the front and made the world yield 
 him his measure of its wealth. 
 
 The woman who sat opposite him with elbows on 
 the table edge and hands clasped against her cheek 
 may have been of equal age but the years had dealt
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 299 
 
 more harshly with her than with him, or she may 
 have attempted to get more out of them than the 
 man had done. Her face was lined and counter- 
 lined with a million tiny wrinkles which she had 
 plainly tried to hide with cosmetics; her hair was 
 iron gray, although the fatal pathos of its color had 
 been somewhat offset by the clever and modish 
 manner in which it had been treated. The woman s 
 eyes were tired eyes now, but they were more than 
 that; they were hungry eyes, wistful eyes, be 
 wildered eyes, eyes in which it would require 
 much more emotion to make the tears well and the 
 cheeks become ridiculous. 
 
 And her face was scarred, a faint scar to be sure, 
 and cleverly treated by surgeons whose fees were 
 written in four figures. But the mouth remained 
 partially closed ; all the skill of facial surgery in the 
 world had failed to make the lips function normally 
 again. Which, if the musical world knew the whole 
 truth, had been the enforced reason for the dis 
 appearance of one Madame Zola from the concert 
 and operatic stage. 
 
 Neatly the man tapped the ash from his long 
 cigar into the base of the safety-match holder at his 
 right. He restored the cigar to his lips and replaced 
 his elbows on the table s edge. Then he stroked 
 his heavy powerful chin with a capable hand. His 
 level gray eyes were upon the woman. In them was 
 no pity, no emotion, no compassion for any one or 
 anything. 
 
 "It is one of those situations in life," he said in 
 his low matter-of-fact tone, "which must be looked 
 at sensibly. Both of us have lived beyond the 
 years of sophomoric sentiment although there are 
 times, I will admit, when I d give many dollars to
 
 300 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 return to them again and not know many things 
 which I ve since discovered in life. So let s change 
 the subject, Mibb, because it bores me by its very 
 absurdity." 
 
 "But it isn t absurd, Dick !" protested the woman, 
 and in her tone and the manner of its expression lay 
 a pitiful indication of her weakness to cope with the 
 situation, yet a desperation that it must be done 
 somehow, if by no other method than perseverance. 
 "It s big and vital to me, Dick. Oh, Dick ! Don t 
 you know what it means to me?" 
 
 "No," returned Dick Robinson coldly. "What 
 does it mean to you?" 
 
 " The the end, Dick !" 
 
 "End of what?" 
 
 "Life, love, hope everything." Her voice as 
 she said it was sunk to a whisper. 
 
 "I told you a long time ago that dramatics always 
 disgusted me, Mibb." 
 
 "Dick! I m in earnest, Dick ! It isn t dramatics. 
 I mean it, Dick ! I ve reached the end." 
 
 "And I believe you had reached the end also with 
 Herb Truman, and Young Ezekial and all the 
 various other male satellites who have had more 
 or less bearing on your mundane orbit, Mibb." 
 
 "Dick! My Gawd, Dick! Don t say that; 
 don t talk that way about things. It s burning, 
 blistering acid on my naked heart " 
 
 "Oh, rot, Mibb! If your heart s so nude, pull 
 something over it. I don t want to be brutal and 
 you re a good sport, Mibb but make a fight and 
 get your balance " 
 
 "It s what you have just said the most 
 cruel thing I ve ever heard, and I ve had lots of 
 cruel things said to me "
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 301 
 
 "Mibb, you ll have me saying lots worse things 
 in a moment. You re making a scene, you ve " 
 
 "No, I haven t taken too much, and I will make 
 a scene if it means " 
 
 "Now look here, Mibb; we ve got to have an 
 understanding and we ll have it right here and now ; 
 you re provoking it. I m sorry for you, although 
 not in just the way you think. I can see exactly 
 how you feel and if I could I would help you." 
 
 "You can help me !" 
 
 "But not by marrying you " 
 
 "Yes, by marrying me! Why not? What s the 
 past few years meant all the times we ve had 
 together and the trips and the talks and the 
 suppers and parties ; what have they meant if not 
 matrimony. What could a woman think ? Dick ! 
 Dick ! Don t go back on me now ! Gawd, Dick 
 - don t tell me it s all " 
 
 "Well, what?" 
 
 " entertainment and nothing more, Dick. 
 I ve had a hard row to hoe. I ve been unfor 
 tunate, it seems, in everything I ve taken up, every 
 thing I ve tried to do. And I m on the level in 
 this, on the level with you, I ve been on the level 
 all along, and I thought at last I was coming into 
 a little peace and rest after it all. What have I done 
 to get this what have I done." 
 
 The tears that came up in her tired and burned- 
 out eyes only caused the man to tap off more cigar- 
 ash calmly and look at her in vivisectional interest 
 cold interest as he would consider the im 
 properly-timing functions of a machine that was 
 suddenly doing strange and inexplicable things. 
 
 "I never thought it was in you, Mibb," he said 
 finally. "I thought you were more sensible."
 
 302 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 "Sensible? Ain t I sensible, Dick? Ain t it the 
 most sensible thing in the world for me to want 
 you? After what I ve gone through and suffered 
 and been cheated out of " 
 
 "Mibb, let s discuss this thing like a sane man 
 and a sane woman. Looking backward for a mo 
 ment I can remember a night twenty-eight years 
 ago when you and I with a lot of other young folks 
 up home sat around a fire in a little shack up in 
 the mountains." 
 
 "Don t I remember it? Haven t I thought of it 
 thousands of times, Dick ? Wished I could go back 
 to that night and live the years over again - 
 
 The man frowned at the interruption. But he 
 went on : 
 
 " and Herb Truman poor old Herb! got 
 sentimental and proposed an extraordinary thing 
 
 "Yes, poor old Herbert! Look what he did to 
 me ! Look at my face ! " 
 
 he proposed, Mibb, that thirty years from 
 that night we should all gather together again and 
 the one who had made the greatest success of his 
 or her life should get the gold-piece that was to be 
 left under the miser s hearthstone." 
 
 "And that s what I m trying to do, Dick! in 
 wanting to marry you, making a success of my life, 
 taking up the life of a real woman, settling down " 
 
 "Please don t interrupt me, Mibb. On that 
 night, at the threshold of our lives, so to speak, we 
 started to face the world and take our places in 
 society and work out our destiny, the manner of 
 men and women which we were." 
 
 "Don t open old wounds !" 
 
 "We were about equally divided, boys and girls 
 men and women. There was no stipulation
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 303 
 
 what shape our successes were to take. The boys 
 were supposed to be judged on their careers as men ; 
 the women were not to be compared to them, but 
 on their careers as women. The greatest success, 
 the fullest life that was the criterion of achieve 
 ment " 
 
 "I didn t know as much then as I know now, 
 Dick. I was only a silly girl that hadn t awak 
 ened " 
 
 " and we all agreed that if we were living thirty 
 years in the future and it was humanly possible to 
 do so, we would gather again and see who had made 
 their lives worth while, whether they had indeed 
 realized success in the vocation to which they turned 
 themselves. Business, the professions, the making 
 of money for the men ; careers for the women, per 
 haps ; perhaps motherhood, wifehdod ; it didn t 
 matter. We would all of us recognize quickly when 
 that gathering time came, to whom the gold-piece 
 belonged. The point was that we were conscious 
 of our situations on the threshold of life; we had 
 our lives and careers ahead to mould as we saw fit. 
 We were free moral agents. If we won, we would 
 have ourselves to applaud ; if we lost and made a 
 failure of life, we would have no one but ourselves 
 to thank." 
 
 "Dick ! I can t stand it to listen to this ; I just 
 can t ; not after what you ve told me just now " 
 
 "But you re going to listen to it, Mibb, because 
 I know what s good for you. It won t hurt you to 
 hear the truth. All your life you ve dodged the 
 truth; you ve avoided looking unpleasant subjects 
 or situations squarely in their faces ; you ve floated 
 with the current of existence and trusted and 
 expected it to waft you into pleasant places."
 
 304 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 "Dick! I never expected to have to stand this 
 from you." 
 
 "You are upset because when it came to a show 
 down I ve balked on making you my wife. You 
 want to know the reason. I m telling you now, 
 Mibb. It s unpleasant but it s high time you 
 cultivated a little fiber in your soul to stand un 
 pleasant things." 
 
 The woman clenched her thin and bloodless hands. 
 
 "I m not going into the careers of any one in that 
 crowd but your own, Mibb. You went back to 
 town from that Gold-Piece Party the same as all 
 the rest of us ; you had your chance " 
 
 "And I tried the same as all the rest of you ; 
 Herb Truman had money give me credit for try 
 ing to better myself in marrying him, Dick and 
 I thought that success meant bettering myself that 
 way. If I made a wrong calculation in that, in the 
 estimate of money being the estimate of success, 
 give me credit for trying." 
 
 "I m not discounting your endeavor, your attempt, 
 as you call it. There was nothing wrong with that. 
 The point was that your idea of success was the 
 height of selfishness you could attain for yourself. 
 You didn t want to measure your success by the 
 things which you could do in the world ; you wanted 
 to measure your success by the things you could 
 avoid and money helped you to avoid them. You 
 married Herb, not to make him a successful wife, 
 but to acquire the money to make your life easy and 
 filled with physical comfort." 
 
 "I was only a girl, Dick. Look at my mother 
 and father ! Could you blame me ? " 
 
 "Blame you? Of course I blame you! With 
 the exception of Jack Purse and Mary Wood there
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 305 
 
 wasn t one of us in the crowd but what had just as 
 poor apologies in the shape of parents as yourself. 
 You knew just as much as the rest of us did, that 
 there was work in the world to be done, a share cut 
 out for each of us to do. Deliberately you ignored 
 it. I happened to know that a few days after that 
 Gold-Piece Party you openly taunted Mary Wood 
 for marrying poor honest, earnest Jack Purse ; you 
 taunted her for marrying poor, for condemning her 
 self to a life of work and household drudgery and 
 child-bearing and all the rest that s a humble 
 woman s portion. You were selfish, Mibb, and that 
 selfishness has hounded you right down to the 
 present, in everything you ve done in every 
 decision you ve made in everything you ve taken 
 up." 
 
 "I ve seen my mistake, Dick. I want to 
 
 "No, you haven t seen your mistake. You want 
 to marry me for the same reason you wanted to 
 marry Herb Truman and young Ezekial and all the 
 rest of the boys who had money to save your 
 own skin, Mibb ; to better yourself physically. 
 Personal service doesn t enter into it at all, Mibb 
 
 "Oh, how cruel how heartless you are!" she 
 moaned. 
 
 "Not a bit of it ! Merely sensible." 
 
 " As your wife I could 
 
 "As my wife you could do absolutely nothing 
 more than you are doing now give me your society. 
 And for that society I pay you what it is worth." 
 
 "How about a home ?" 
 
 "I have a home. It cost me seventy thousand 
 dollars and it is all that I desire. I have efficient 
 servants who keep it well ordered 
 
 "Is that all a home means, Dick?"
 
 306 
 
 "Don t let s talk about children at our ages, 
 Mibb. It s disgusting, if that s what you mean. 
 As for your society in my home, it would be of no 
 more value to me there than it is in the places we 
 have been going together the past few years ; no, 
 there is absolutely nothing which you could give me 
 as my wife. On the other hand, there is much more 
 that I would be called upon to give you : my name 
 which I may say without egotism is of no small 
 value and not lightly to be bestowed my money, 
 my liberty, the concentration of my fancy solely 
 on one woman whom I am sure in time would bore 
 me" 
 
 "So I bore you, do I : the last two years I ve been 
 boring you ? Then why continue ? " 
 
 "No, you have not bored me yet, for the reason 
 that we have not seen enough of one another to 
 become bored with one another s eternal society - 
 
 "And you call yourself a successful man and a 
 gentleman." 
 
 "I do not, Mibb. There is a difference between 
 us. One side of my life the life of a normal man 
 which should be well rounded out before he can call 
 himself wholly successful one side of me has 
 been dwarfed and stunted, the family part, through 
 agencies with which women like yourself have had 
 much to do. That s irrelevant to what we re dis 
 cussing, Mibb. I m saying that there s nothing you 
 could give me that I m not getting now ; yet there s 
 much that I could give you for which I would get 
 no value in return. So it would not be a fair bargain. 
 And an unfair bargain is no bargain in my philos 
 ophy. To get back to your personal career : Within 
 a few years after your tempestuous marriage to Herb 
 you left him or he left you "
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 307 
 
 "He was a drunken sot! He was a brute! I 
 could tell you " 
 
 "I knew Herb Truman as well as you did. We 
 were chums together before you ever married him. 
 He was a big-souled, lovable boy. All he wanted 
 was to be mothered. He never had a mother of 
 his own any more than I ever had one. He didn t 
 know it was a mother he craved; I didn t know it 
 either until I became older. But that s what he 
 wanted and in a fashion he married you to get it." 
 
 "Get what?" 
 
 "Mothering." 
 
 The man looked straight as a lance at the woman. 
 Her eyes fell guiltily. 
 
 "He wanted mothering, I say," Robinson went on. 
 "Every man wants it from a woman. I don t 
 care how old men grow, they re only boys at heart. 
 And when they grow up and get lonely and out of 
 sorts they want some one to whom they can bring 
 their troubles and get sympathy and help. A suc 
 cessful wife understands that, though perhaps she 
 couldn t put it into fine phrases, it would sound 
 maudlin. In their boyhood days a mother fills 
 that place. It s the sterling-true function of woman 
 kind without which she s merely female and nothing 
 else ; men come to look for it in all women that 
 influence over them that sympathy, and wherever 
 you find an unhappily married man you find a fool 
 of a woman too small-bored to recognize it. You 
 were too selfish and thoughtless to do that to Herbert. 
 He became discouraged without knowing why he was 
 discouraged. He sought relief for his nameless 
 heartache in drink. One thing led to another and 
 he wandered away, God knows where. He became 
 a derelict because he was despondent over a great
 
 308 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 disappointment which stood out in his life irreme 
 diable, so he thought, or at least he lost interest in 
 things because he was out of accord with all the 
 world, and he not you ! paid the price !" 
 
 "Dick, haven t you any heart at all? Are you a 
 cad after all ; can t you see how this is 
 
 "Mibb, did anybody ever take the time or trouble 
 to tell you this before ? " 
 
 "No one ever did because they had too much 
 regard for my feelings." 
 
 "Then it s time some really good friend of yours 
 cast aside pretty conventionalities and gave you a 
 strong look at the naked truth. Sit quiet and hear 
 me out; there s lots more I have to tell you. I m 
 coming down to my own career in a moment, why 
 I hold these ideas that I do why I won t marry 
 you, or any woman. That should interest you, 
 what?" 
 
 "Yes," she whispered miserably. 
 
 "Very good. There was once a boy, Dick Robin 
 son ; remember him ? He was a good sort before 
 he went money-mad. But there was a time when 
 he wasn t money-mad. He loved you sincerely and 
 deeply. He would have made you a good husband. 
 But you refused him, so long as there was money to 
 be married elsewhere, and when you finally came 
 around to him in after years and displayed interest 
 in him, the damage had been done. You had sent 
 him into his money-madness ; his idea at first was 
 to acquire so much that it would make you sorry. 
 When he got going he generated so much momentum 
 that he couldn t stop. The stuff owned him got 
 him as booze gets some men. But at the same time 
 he d generated enough common sense if you want 
 to call it that to see that you weren t after him
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 309 
 
 for the sake of love for him ; it was his money and 
 what it meant. And by that time he loved his 
 money too much to let you dig your lily-white fingers, 
 your greedy fingers, deeply down into his pile. He 
 went away from you. You had sent one man to 
 disgrace directly as the result of your lack of ma 
 ternity, Mibb ; you sent Dick Robinson s soul to 
 hell, the hell of worship of seven per cent, by your 
 choice of wealth over honest love and willingness 
 to get down and work honestly for it beside a man 
 who loved you. But that isn t all, Mibb " 
 
 "I am a hell-cat, ain t I?" said the woman 
 bitterly. But it was sarcasm and her voice was 
 broken. 
 
 "No, just merely selfish, fearfully selfish ; selfish 
 ness has been at the bottom of every shadow which 
 has crossed your life, Mibb." 
 
 "You! Telling this to me, after all the ways 
 you ve made money and the things you ve done." 
 
 " Careful, Mibb. Maybe I ve made folks come up 
 to the scratch in business but I ve gone on the level." 
 
 "And you don t admit that your life has been 
 selfish ? That you are living selfishly now alone 
 and without a family and for your own enjoy 
 ment; not helping anybody or doing anything to 
 make the world better?" 
 
 "No; I haven t gone to extremes in this thing. 
 And as for selfishness, at least I haven t always 
 looked for the easiest way around things. I haven t 
 dodged hard work. I haven t asked others to carry 
 my burdens, or finance me, or permit me to live on 
 the fruits of their labors." 
 
 "You re a man. You re supposed to do hard 
 things and carry burdens and finance yourself. 
 I m I m a woman !"
 
 310 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 The man raised his eyebrows. 
 
 "That, Mibb," he said, "is the most absurd 
 thing you ve said to-night. Let s quit this," he 
 snapped. "I ll be saying things for which I ll be 
 sorry, things unbecoming a man who tries to pre 
 serve the appearance of a gentleman." 
 
 "No," she said with feminine perversity. 
 "You ve started; go ahead and finish! You ve 
 asked me if I wanted to know why you haven t 
 marrieji; why you won t marry me when when" 
 - her voice suddenly softened into a strange mellow 
 thing and rang with the pain of it, " when I love 
 you, Dick!" she concluded lamely. "Might as 
 well finish what you d begun. You ve hurt me 
 already more than I can feel." 
 
 But for a moment he simply sat quiet, his eyes 
 upon her, his heavy lips closed firmly. He sat 
 quiet until his queer fit of temper passed. His 
 face gradually softened. Over his features came a 
 look of hunger and homesickness and longing, 
 melancholy heartache. It was a rather startling 
 change. He picked up a fruit knife and drew lines 
 with its point in the cloth. 
 
 Twice he looked at her and dropped his eyes 
 again. There was a trace of cynicism in his voice as 
 he said : 
 
 "Mibb, I m not a woman-hater. But I ve simply 
 lost faith in you women. I never knew a mother, 
 though like poor Herb, I felt the need of one. When 
 I grew up, if I was attracted to women it was for 
 companionship and sympathy and help. But some 
 how I never connected right. The longer I looked 
 the more bitter I became, Mibb. Women for wives 
 indeed women for pleasure, women for business, 
 women for careers plenty of women for every-
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 311 
 
 thing but to go to with a weary head and a heart 
 ache and get a little help and inspiration and strength 
 for the soul. Oh, Mibb ! You don t know it 
 don t realize it and few women there are that do ; 
 but the crying need of the age and the heart of men 
 is for that kind of women, the maternal women, 
 Mibb." 
 
 For an instant the woman forgot her own misery 
 in her stark surprise. This ! from Dick Robinson. 
 
 "Years ago, Mibb, before women went outside 
 the home and into business and got all snarled up 
 with fads and isms, they didn t have much else to 
 occupy their attention but home and folks and kids. 
 All these folks who want to mend the status of 
 poor down-trodden and abused womankind say 
 it was narrowing and degrading and enslaving. But 
 Mibb, it did make mothers ! The business of women 
 was to marry and have homes and stay in those 
 homes and raise little kids. That was their func 
 tion in life and having no other it was inbred into 
 their bone generation after generation. Look at the 
 homes of fifty or a hundred years ago, Mibb. Look 
 at some of those on the Vermont hillsides back 
 around Paris. There s nothing like those old home 
 steads to-day, Mibb. They ve all gone with the 
 old-fashioned women that used to live in them." 
 
 The woman wanted to say something but she 
 didn t know just what it ought to be. 
 
 "I suppose industries that have come in to make 
 women s work easier, and yet that have taken her at 
 the same time out of the home and into business, 
 are responsible, Mibb. Perhaps I m wrong in 
 judging you so harshly. But oh, Mibb inside 
 deep inside, there s the awful heart-hunger in a lot 
 of men to know what their grand-daddies knew, yet
 
 312 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 who never placed a value on it because it hadn t been 
 denied them. We re not raising families any more, 
 Mibb. We re only having kids. We re not making 
 homes. We re renting a place to live in and furnish 
 ing it with stuff bought at a store. Everything s 
 shallow and transitory and unsatisfactory and 
 addled. Half the time we don t know what the 
 matter is with us, we men of to-day. But it s that 
 we re getting away from nature, away from the 
 family idea, away from solid substantial rugged 
 foundations of living." 
 
 The man drew a deep breath. For a moment his 
 jaw closed hard. Then he went on : 
 
 "Oh, I know we ve got women that are well enough 
 willing to marry the men, girls still fall in love with 
 the boys and the boys with the girls. But I couldn t 
 take a clerk out of my office and put him half the 
 time in my engineering department and expect him 
 to keep on improving as clerk, following up the 
 job, growing more and more efficient in his line 
 when all the time I m distracting his energies and 
 making him neither one nor the other. And it s 
 much the same with you women, Mibb. The girls 
 to-day marry the boys, true enough, and they rent 
 a place and furnish it and raise their babies. But 
 there s a hundred things to attract them and distract 
 them and take them outside the home while at the 
 same time they try to keep the home; and gradu 
 ally the home instinct of generations is being ironed 
 out of them, Mibb. They want to do a woman s 
 work and at the same time they want to do a man s 
 work, and the good Lord only knows what to call 
 the things they do. They re forgetting how to 
 really truly mother, Mibb. I heard a dam-fool 
 female the other day get up on a soapbox and yell
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 313 
 
 that the child was the jailer of the mother. As if 
 there was any reason why it shouldn t be, Mibb ? 
 And all mankind knows is that something has been 
 tipped over and upset somewhere and he s all at 
 sea and doesn t know where he gets off or what s 
 coming. And pretty soon, either en masse or as an 
 individual, he commences to feel that he doesn t 
 give a damn, Mibb. And when a man gets to the 
 point that he doesn t give a damn, he isn t over- 
 careful about his relations in other matters. It s 
 all a mixed-up and lamentable mess, and God only 
 knows who s responsible. But it s coming over all 
 society, Mibb, more and more every year and well 
 the kids that are growing up to-day are show 
 ing it." 
 
 Again the woman did not know what to say. She 
 felt as if Dick Robinson had waded off beyond her 
 depth and if she tried to follow him she would 
 flounder. If she had been where she had been thirty 
 years before, up in Gold-Piece cabin, she might have 
 tried to follow him. But she had dissipated the 
 heritage that had once been hers. She must pay 
 the penalty, the penalty of silence silence more 
 than the mere silence of speech. 
 
 "Mibb," he concluded in a hollow voice, "what 
 this old world needs to-day more than it ever needed 
 it before, isn t women to run business and make 
 governments and all that rot. I suppose it s all 
 right in its way to have women leavening up things 
 a trifle, but they ve gone and overdone it, Mibb ; 
 they re overdoing it already. They need to get back 
 to first principles, back to the good old-fashioned 
 family idea of home interest and unselfish devotion 
 to the heartaches of little kids and the solid sub 
 stantial fundamentals that the family is the basis
 
 314 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 of society, and there s not a place on God s earth 
 where a man can learn to be a square business man, 
 a decent citizen, a credit to this creator, that beats 
 his mother s knee, Mibb. Bring on your damned 
 old arguments about the uplift of society and puri 
 fication of government and the refining influence 
 of women in business. Talk your head off ! That 
 won t take from the heart of a man the ache after 
 something he can t express, the feeling that he s 
 all at sea somehow, or it won t put into his soul the 
 wholesome love and veneration and respect that 
 he had for his mother who was a woman and a wife 
 first, even if it cost her her life and her reason. 
 Mothers? The world s heartsick for them, Mibb. 
 God, I wish I had one right now !" 
 
 Finally the woman spoke. 
 
 "Well, I don t suppose I can say anything on that 
 score, Dick. Sometimes I ve felt something was 
 wrong in my own life. I ve had some fearfully 
 lonely moments, Dick, when I wondered if what the 
 matter with me was was - 
 
 "Go ahead and say it !" ordered the man. "It s 
 nothing to be ashamed of ! Kids ! that s it, 
 isn t it ? And why didn t you have them ; do you 
 suppose if poor Herb had had three or four kids he d 
 gone off the way he did? Why didn t you have 
 them, Mibb ? Because of the way you was brought 
 up. Your mother kept trying to save you from what 
 she called the drudgery of the home. I know; 
 I remember. She put pretty clothes on you and 
 did all she could to discourage you from becoming 
 a mother. Why did she do it? Because she 
 wasn t a mother herself. Oh, she may have gone 
 through hell and brought you into the world. But 
 that s only an incident in motherhood, Mibb. She
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 315 
 
 wasn t living naturally in her own home herself; 
 she was the pants and the check book and the 
 wage earner of your home I remember how your 
 dad sat around Will Seaver s store in the old days 
 rather than smoke his pipe with his feet on his own 
 sitting-room stove at home. And you had mother 
 hood and homehood ironed out of you the same as 
 millions of young girls are getting it ironed out of 
 them to-day." 
 
 "Then you admit I wasn t to blame wholly, 
 Dick." 
 
 "But I hold it was up to you when you reached 
 maturity and age of reason yourself, to correct the 
 trouble, just as it s up to the women of to-day to 
 do it. Lord, the men can t do it ; the women have 
 got to do it for themselves." 
 
 "But you ll admit that the drudgery of the home 
 is" 
 
 "Drudgery of the home hell! There s no 
 drudgery of the home only what women make for 
 themselves. There s drudgery everywhere. All of 
 us have got to sweat our clothes for the things we 
 make the world hand over to us. It s all in the way 
 you look at a thing; what your mental attitude is. 
 I suppose sawing wood is one of the hardest kinds 
 of labor. Yet don t you remember old Bill Fletcher 
 up home ? He said the Lord sent him into the world 
 a-purpose to saw wood and he was made to saw 
 wood, and he was going to saw wood and saw wood 
 he did. The man was supremely happy in sawing 
 wood. It s the same with anything and every 
 thing. It s all in your mental attitude. If you re 
 a woman and hate housework and motherhood and 
 don t use your brains in your work and don t know 
 how to mother your husband and your boys and
 
 316 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 get the best results by the shortest route, like 
 you d have to do to be successful in business, nat 
 urally what you have to do in your natural sphere 
 will be drudgery, won t it? And if you go on 
 creating this mangling myth about the drudgery 
 of the home and pass it on to your daughter and she 
 skims it over as quickly as she can and passes the 
 idea on to her daughter, pretty soon the drudgery 
 of the home is going to be a reality, isn t it? But 
 if you love your home and your babies and look at 
 your life work as the biggest job under God s heaven, 
 bringing human beings to life and caring for them 
 and rearing them into the stature of strong men and 
 noble women if your mental attitude is right 
 there won t be much drudgery in it, will there ? " 
 
 "Dick," said the woman after a long time. "I m 
 sorry ; oh, I m so sorry for lots of things. The pity 
 of it is that for me it s too late to mend. I 
 guess I guess you ve told the truth, Dick. I 
 do know what s the matter with me. Yes, I ll 
 confess it. It was the kids, the little kids of my own 
 that I never had. I ve lived a lonely, abnormal 
 life and I guess I guess it s up to me to pay 
 the penalty. Gawd, haven t I paid the penalty?" 
 she cried it out suddenly. "Dick, perhaps it was 
 the longing for some remnant of that satisfaction 
 that I was seeking though I wouldn t hardly 
 dare confess it to myself when I went around 
 with you, hoping that " 
 
 "Hoping that I d marry you? It s too late, 
 Mibb. I ve seen too much; I m all burned out 
 inside. I m burned out and blue and discouraged 
 and cynical. It s been my lot to run up against 
 only the modern women meaning the kind that 
 sort of break out in a riot when some one dares to
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 317 
 
 say that woman s place is in the home. Maybe it s 
 because I came away from a little town so early in 
 life. Whatever it is, it s done for me." 
 
 There was an awful pathos in Dick Robinson s 
 voice. And something stirred in the woman across 
 the table, the woman who had wasted the sub 
 stance of her womanhood in selfish living. Perhaps 
 it was the latent spark of maternity ; heart answer 
 ing heart in the loneliness of worldliness. A choke 
 came in her parched throat. She reached forth 
 her hands convulsively. 
 
 "Dick," she whispered, "if you d only let me 
 help you ; if you only would ! " 
 
 "You can t !" he declared harshly. "No woman 
 can. I ve seen so much now that I wouldn t trust 
 the best woman that ever drew breath. The 
 time for that is on the threshold of life, not in the 
 exit out into the late afternoon, when everything s 
 in the future and a man needs a woman s help and 
 a home behind him and a family to bind and inspire 
 him. Oh, Mibb ! There s so many women and 
 men too who like to argue how women live 
 beside men and fight beside men and ought to vote 
 beside men, and dish out a beautiful lot of claptrap 
 about how legislation is going to change this, that 
 and the other evil that s afflicting society. But 
 take it from an old rounder, Mibb ; that s all irrel 
 evant and shallow and on the surface. It doesn t 
 go deep enough, Mibb. It doesn t get down to the 
 bedrock and the hard-pan of human nature and 
 alter the causes that are spreading the disease of 
 social dissatisfaction. You can t legislate old mother 
 Nature, Mibb. You can t rip out in a generation 
 all that s been imbedded in the race since the dawn 
 of time. The trouble is that women are consciously
 
 318 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 or unconsciously forgetting how to mother, Mibb 
 mother their kids or their menfolk they re simply 
 killing the maternal instinct by distractions. Our 
 industrial generation means families moving around 
 from town to town where wages are highest ; camp 
 ing out in rented quarters, getting away from the 
 land, from substantial domestic foundations. We re 
 going through a sort of racial hysteria for shorter 
 methods, quicker results, labor-saving devices, a 
 million distractions and diversions and it s 
 making everything, even motherhood and do 
 mestic life, over into the same hit-or-miss, off- 
 again-on-again-gone-again pabulum. And where 
 we re all going to bring up, the good God in His 
 infinite wisdom only knows. Now you know what 
 I mean when I say I ve got no use for your claim a 
 moment ago that I m expected to carry my burdens 
 and win my battle and shield and protect you women 
 when at the same time you re scrambling away as 
 fast as you can from filling the function you re in 
 tended by nature to fill in the heart of a man and 
 the life of his family. Oh, hell, Mibb, I m sick of 
 it; sick unto death. I ll take your society in the 
 way I ve taken it the last two years, for mental 
 diversion. But soul diversion and satisfaction, and 
 inspiration and that heart-hunger for the thing I 
 call maternity, that s another thing, Mibb. I 
 don t ever expect to know it, and I m sour and caustic 
 about it inside and there s about as much chance 
 of ever recovering at my time in life as there is for 
 the cost of living to go down. And that s some 
 chance !" 
 
 "Dick! Dick! And this, this, after all, is the 
 result of my life !" 
 
 "It looks as if it were, Mibb. Kind of barren
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 319 
 
 and lonely and unpleasant to look forward to, isn t 
 it?" He recovered his old self with a sigh. "Just 
 think of me in those times ; we re a pair of domestic 
 cripples. Let it go at that." 
 
 "Stolen sweets bitter almonds," muttered the 
 woman. "A man can be lonely and forget; but a 
 lonely woman is the loneliest creature on God s 
 footstool." 
 
 "Hell! Let s forget it, Mibb. I m going to 
 order a drink ! " 
 
 Which he did. 
 
 Over in the corner an orchestra began jazzy music 
 for the theater crowd which was coming in.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 IN WHICH HERB TRUMAN COMES BACK, STAYS FOR 
 BUT A LITTLE WHILE AND THEN GOES His WAY 
 ALSO AROUND THE BEND IN THE ROAD BY THE 
 SUMACHS. 
 
 IF Tom s decision to pass up the ministry for a 
 newspaperman s career was another great dis 
 appointment in his mother s life, Mary never made 
 any fuss about it. If she had ever dreamed of a 
 time when she would look up into a pulpit and see 
 her son there, preaching the message of the good 
 God to a world of sin-sick and heart-hungry men and 
 women, and realized like many other dreams of 
 hers that it would never materialize, she buried that 
 also in her poor tired mother-heart and went on 
 working to educate the rest of the boys. 
 
 Tom Purse was a good boy. He was too good for 
 the Boston Chronicle office ! He had been on the 
 Hub paper a year and seven months, sending what 
 money he could back to his mother, when word 
 came that opportunity had opened for him to go 
 down to New York. He accepted the place and 
 then for a time we lost track of him. Next we 
 heard he was married ! 
 
 The other boys were coming along now. Fred 
 had taken an agricultural course at Amherst and 
 in the summer he used the poor little hillside farm 
 to try out his experiments. Then he returned to 
 college each fall and left the hired man to reap the
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 321 
 
 harvest. And many were the phenomenal turnips 
 or apples or melons that Mary brought us to the 
 office with a pathetic pride on her plain features, 
 features where now all traces of beauty and girlhood 
 had faded, leaving her a plain old woman with hair 
 rapidly growing white. Then, after graduation, the 
 next we heard he had taken a chair in an agricul 
 tural college out in Ohio. 
 
 For some time Teddy worked for us, carrying 
 papers and washing forms and doing odd jobs. But 
 Teddy s mind worked in mechanical grooves. He 
 nearly killed himself trying out a home-made flying 
 machine. And if we were to hesitate and in a 
 weak moment yield to the wishes of Sam Hod, 
 about the biggest incident of drama we could glean 
 from those years "when nothin didn t happen" 
 was the time that he constructed an automobile 
 that got away from him at the top of Maple Street 
 hill, careened wildly down into Main Street and 
 went bang into the window of Ben Williams cloth 
 ing store. The window was plate glass, and Mary 
 and Teddy had to pay for it. He left school in 
 the second year of a technical course to go with a 
 firm of engineers out in Chicago who wanted young 
 men badly in the prosperous back-fire that resulted 
 from the 1907 panic. Last we heard of Ted, he 
 was on a big bridge job somewhere in western 
 Pennsylvania. 
 
 Dick stayed around Paris until he was nineteen. 
 But he was the business man and Yankee trader of 
 the family. He tended store for Alec Potherton, 
 our local shoeman, and stuck to college afterward 
 simply because he thought it would equip him to 
 do a bigger business. He graduated with the help 
 of his brothers and mother and then took a
 
 322 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 place with a firm of wholesale shoe men in Lynn and 
 Brockton. He used practically his whole salary 
 the first two years in getting his younger brothers, 
 George and Dexter, through school. George plowed 
 through law school, stayed for a time with a firm of 
 Boston attorneys, and then went under his own sail. 
 The last we heard of him, he was married, so for a 
 lawyer he must have prospered. 
 
 Dexter was the last to leave, and the day he set 
 out for Pittsburg, there wasn t a more pitiful sight 
 in Paris County than "Aunt Mary." For that 
 was the name the town gave her, in all kindness. 
 
 She laid her frail old hand down quietly on the 
 case and said in a voice trembling with emotion : 
 
 " If only one of my boys had turned out a preacher ! 
 But not a one did! Not a one!" 
 
 That was the nearest to a complaint we ever 
 heard her make. 
 
 They must have been lonesome days for her, 
 after Dexter went. Old faces must have floated at 
 times in the space over her type cases; old voices 
 called across the years. On gray days it must 
 have come to her that all she had to do was walk 
 around the type rack and find Jack at his old place 
 over the imposing stones, or Daddy Joe over in 
 the ad. alley, or Lawrence Briggs rolling his glass 
 eye around the stove clandestinely to the terror of 
 Annie Seavers and the other girl. But they were 
 all gone. Jack and all of them excepting Mr. 
 Nimrod Briggs and Sam Hod and herself and the 
 scribe with the grimy fingers whose pen travels 
 slowly now across this page. 
 
 And then came the day when Mary dumped her 
 final stick and went out to the poor Purse Place and 
 never came back.
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 323 
 
 It was the day when Herb Truman showed up 
 in the village. 
 
 For Herbert Truman did one day turn up again 
 in Paris. The door opened one summer s morning, 
 and a big-bodied, loose-jointed, rather dilapidated 
 individual shuffled into the office, dressed in a faded 
 green cutaway coat with two buttons ridiculously 
 high in the back, and a pair of gray trousers badly 
 bagged at the knees. He wore a derby hat, a bosom 
 shirt without a collar and big shoes in which were 
 slits to ease his corns., A week s growth of very 
 white stubble was on an over-pink jowl and he was 
 given to wheezing. 
 
 "Is Jack Purse in ? Does he work here now ? " 
 asked this seedy individual of Myrtle Corey, our 
 little Marguerite-Clark proofreader. 
 
 Myrtle was puzzled. 
 
 "Jack Purse! There s only one Purse around 
 here and that s a woman, Aunt Mary Purse, who s 
 leaving us to-day. I don t know whether her 
 husband s name was Jack or not." 
 
 "I been away for quite a spell," apologized the 
 derelict. "But Mary Purse was Jack Purse s wife. 
 I remember that, well enough. Is Jack workin 
 somewheres else?" 
 
 "Golly," exclaimed Myrtle, "he s dead. Been 
 dead ever so many years ; long before my time !" 
 
 "Dead?" The man repeated it in a cracked 
 voice. It didn t appear that he quite comprehended. 
 There was an awkward pause. 
 
 "Do you want me to call Aunt Mary ?" 
 
 "Yes, I d like to see Mary again !" 
 
 Myrtle went out into the back room but came 
 back in a moment alone. 
 
 "The foreman says Aunt Mary came to work this
 
 324 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 morning but wasn t feeling well and went home, 
 about an hour ago." 
 
 "Went home?" 
 
 "Out to the poor Purse Place on Cobb Hill." 
 
 "The poor Purse place? Did they used to call 
 it the Wheeler place ? " 
 
 "I believe so." 
 
 "I think I been there. Maybe I ll go out. 1 
 come back here to see the Purses. I used to know 
 em years ago," he said whimsically, somehow child 
 like. 
 
 He was moving toward the door when Sam Hod 
 came in. He cast a curious glance at the visitor. 
 Then something stirred in Sam s memory. 
 
 "Good morning," he declared. "It seems to 
 me I remember your face but I can t recall your 
 name 
 
 "Truman s my name, Herbert Truman! My 
 folks used to own the Truman Carriage Works 
 years ago." 
 
 "Good Lord !" cried Sam as he inventoried again 
 the poor derelict on the sea of human life. 
 
 He visited with us the balance of the forenoon, 
 and we learned that he had spent much of the inter 
 vening time in Missouri and Kansas. He kept 
 making constant references to "my son", so we 
 inferred that he had been married. But what had 
 become of the wife or boy we couldn t quite make 
 out, nor could he tell a very connected story. 
 
 "Poor old Herb!" declared Sam, passing me in 
 the back room. "Life has done for him. As the 
 young folks say nowadays, he s a little bit off his 
 base." 
 
 "I think," said Herb finally in his childish voice,
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 325 
 
 "that J ll go out and call on a few folks" and he 
 mentioned several names. But we had to tell him 
 that the people he had come to see, with the excep 
 tion of Mary Purse, were all moved away, scattered, 
 or dead. 
 
 "There s been quite a lot o changes," he said 
 philosophically. " Mibb Henderson ? is she here ? " 
 
 We looked at him and wondered if he realized 
 he had once been married to Mabel and what he 
 had done to her one night in the far western city. 
 
 "No," we told him. "Harvey Henderson died, 
 you remember. Mrs. Henderson went off with her 
 daughter and we never knew what became of her." 
 
 "And you don t know where she is now?" 
 
 "No. Not the slightest idea." 
 
 "I think," he said, these items making no im 
 pression upon him, "I ll go out and visit Mary 
 Purse. I used to like Mary Purse. She ll be glad 
 to see me." 
 
 We brushed him off and knocked the dents out. 
 of his derby hat, and Sam sent out and bought 
 him a collar and tie so he could look his best to visit 
 Mary. He submitted calmly to the dolling up and 
 claimed he was grateful when Sam gave him two 
 dollars. Then he shuffled out of the office. 
 
 It must have taken Herb all day to walk that six 
 miles because it was almost sunset when he turned 
 finally into the Purse yard. 
 
 Aunt Mary was sitting on the side porch, just as 
 she had been sitting one day when Herb had entered 
 the yard to tell her the home was hers no longer. She 
 saw the big flabby hulk with the faded green coat 
 and the derby hat which had somehow managed 
 to get the dents back into its crown on the way 
 out, and she took him for a tramp come to beg food.
 
 326 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 He approached the steps and stood there for a 
 moment, looking around as though to fix something 
 in his memory. 
 
 "Why," he said in simple surprise, "I must o 
 walked out. And that was foolish. I oughter 
 hitched up Monday- WashinV 
 
 Mary started. Her eyesight was failing her 
 after the long years setting the little type faces. 
 She came down one step and peered closer into his 
 features. 
 
 "Herbert!" she said thickly. 
 
 Something in her face, her voice, her manner of 
 repeating his name, did the business. His wander 
 ing thoughts came back. He recognized her in that 
 moment and he recognized himself, and he looked 
 down at himself and out around the yard as though 
 astonished to find himself there. 
 ! "I come out to see you, Mary," he said. "It s 
 a long, long time since we had a talk." 
 
 He sat down opposite her precisely as he had 
 seated himself one summer s day in the years before. 
 And the past all rose up again before both of them. 
 
 "Where have you been all this time, Herbert?" 
 she asked in a voice mellow with sympathy. 
 
 "Somewhere, out there!" he said thickly, with 
 a wave of his frayed arm to the west. "There s 
 been so many places. I can t remember them all. 
 Just sort o wandered around, Mary, lookin for 
 happiness. Don t press me about it. It s you I 
 want to hear about." 
 
 And she told him. She told him about the home 
 on Pleasant Street and its ending; about Jack s 
 worries and struggles and heart hopes and disap 
 pointments. She told him too, about Jack s passing 
 and the years she had spent since in the Telegraph
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 327 
 
 office. She told him about each boy and where he 
 was and what he had become and how well he was 
 doing. And through it all, something of his own 
 old personality coming back through the hazes of an 
 abused mind and memory, he sat there and never 
 interrupted. When she was finished with the story 
 down in the present, it was a different Herbert 
 than the one who had left our office who said : 
 
 "And ain t it terrible lonesome for you, livin 
 out here alone in this Cobb Hill house now that 
 Dexter s gone and old Mrs. Morrow is dead?" 
 
 Old Aunt Mary shut her lips tightly to keep 
 back the emotion. But the tears would not stay 
 leashed. 
 
 "Yes," she said huskily, "but I love it. I lived 
 here as a girl and dreamed dreams of the future here 
 and left the old russet apple-tree that now is only a 
 lightning blasted stump down in the orchard here, 
 to go to Paris and take up my life work there. It 
 was here that I buried mother. It was here that 
 I came with Jack and our family of six little boys. 
 Life was full of many beautiful things then. And 
 the place still stands for them now. Jack s coffin 
 was carried out this door. One by one I watched 
 the boys go away to college and later out of my life 
 through this chip-cluttered yard and down the road 
 and around the bend where the sumachs hid them. 
 
 "No, Herbert, I couldn t leave it. The dear 
 Father knows it s lonely. But it would be lonelier 
 to live somewhere else now without the memories. 
 They are all I ve got now the memories but 
 they re sweet memories." 
 
 The old man rubbed his face and seemed startled 
 to find the stubble upon it. He made as though to 
 say something and then checked himself. For
 
 328 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 with her eyes fixed on the peaceful scene in the valley 
 below them Mary was going on : 
 
 "The place is filled with ghosts, Herbert, but I 
 am not afraid of the ghosts. There is the ghost of 
 the little girl who played around here and down 
 under the old russet apple-tree and the stone wall 
 and the fence by the woods that have all been cut 
 away. There is the ghost of my mother that comes 
 to me in the evenings and sits with me by the open 
 window when the moon is high and the frogs are 
 peeping. Then there are other little ghosts - 
 boys that once called me mother and that I worked 
 for and gave my life for and who are somewhere 
 out in the world now doing the world s work. And 
 yet I see these little ghosts again often, Herbert, 
 toddling through the rooms, playing about the old 
 toy-scarred furniture; it may sound eery to you, 
 but many is the door that I open to feel the presence 
 therein of those who have gone far off. And I 
 am not afraid." 
 
 Herbert was now quite himself again. But he was 
 a broken-down old man. 
 
 "Mary," he said in his queer cracked voice, "I 
 loved you once, didn t I ? You know that." 
 
 "Yes, Herbert dear, I believe you did." 
 > "I wish it was so that we could we could 
 spend our last few years together." 
 
 She covered her care-lined features with her 
 gnarled red hands for the moment. She lifted 
 them again with a wonderful gentleness upon her 
 face. 
 
 "It would be sacrilege, Herbert," she said. 
 "Sacrilege to the ghosts the memories the 
 ones who are gone. Not now, Herbert. It is too 
 late. If you had come ten years ago when I was
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 329 
 
 struggling to raise the boys, perhaps the drama of 
 our lives might have had a different ending. But I 
 am an old woman now, Herbert. I feel somehow 
 that my work is almost done. When Jack died, 
 the minister who is also old now preached a beau 
 tiful sermon about loaning our loved ones to eternity 
 to make our anticipation of death out-balance our 
 fear of its shadows. I know now what the minister 
 meant." 
 
 The day died as they sat there, just as it had 
 died one springtime years and years before. Robins 
 called far across the valley where the sun shone 
 in long slanting beams of gold. The hush of New 
 England peace was upon the world and on the old 
 Purse place and upon the woman s life. 
 
 "I guess I ll go now, Mary," Herbert said 
 clumsily as in days of yore. 
 
 "You ll come again and see me, Herbert. That 
 at least would be a pleasant thing for both of us." 
 
 "Perhaps, Mary," he said. He started to go. 
 Then he came back. "And there was a little black 
 mare Mon Mon Monday- Washin ," he said. 
 "What ever became of Monday- Washin ?" 
 
 "She died of colic one night about twelve years 
 ago, Herbert. But she had a good home to the last." 
 
 "I m glad of that," he said with much of his old 
 awkwardness. "Thank you, Mary." 
 
 "You ll come again and visit, Herbert?" 
 
 "Perhaps, Mary. Good-by." 
 
 "Good-by, Herbert." 
 
 She watched him shuffle across the yard and out 
 under the hoary old maples. He went down the 
 road and then he also vanished where so much in 
 Mary s life had vanished around the bend in the 
 road by the sumachs.
 
 330 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 Around the bend in the road by the sumachs, 
 indeed ! 
 
 Poor Herb ! He went around the bend by the 
 sumachs and down the simple country road. And 
 somewhere down near Simonds woods because 
 of the mental strain which the visit had made upon 
 him, because of the reawakening of his mind, be 
 cause, perhaps, of the old associations and all which 
 they suddenly meant to him again something 
 happened in poor old Herb s head, and he fell in the 
 road there and was found by old man Dickinson, 
 driving out from the village later that night with the 
 evening mail. 
 
 He was dead by the time that old man Dickinson 
 got him to Doctor Johnson s. 
 
 All that night and the next day he lay in Blake 
 Whipple s Undertaking Parlors with no one to 
 mourn for him excepting a few poor old friends who 
 shortly will be lying in Blake Whipple s parlors them 
 selves, and who scarcely recognized in him the 
 boy of the Long Ago no one to care only a 
 frayed handful to come to the funeral. 
 
 The men and women of the village who had known 
 him in the old days took up a purse to defray the 
 expenses of that simple service and he was laid away 
 beside his father and mother on the hill, with 
 Jack Purse sleeping through the years a few graves 
 away under the briarbloom.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 IN WHICH THE LONG LANE OF LIFE TURNS SUD 
 DENLY FOR MARY PURSE THROUGH GREEN PAS 
 TURES AND BESIDE STILL WATERS AND HER CUP 
 OF LIFE S HAPPINESS AND REWARD Is FILLED TO 
 ITS BRIM. 
 
 THE summer and autumn passed. Then came an 
 awful Vermont winter when Sam made his maiden 
 sister go and live with Aunt Mary Purse to see that 
 the old house on Cobb Hill saw no further tragedy. 
 Spring came in again with its weeks of alternate slush 
 and mud and pneumonia weather. Then one day 
 before the mud was entirely dried or the first green 
 shoots began poking through the fragrant sod, 
 Sam at the exchange table was trying to think up a 
 subject for an editorial, pawing idly amid the mass 
 of newspapers, free magazines, political claptrap 
 and press material which would later find its way 
 into our wastebasket. His hand struck a long heavy 
 periodical done in brown paper. When he drew 
 it forth he saw it was addressed in a man s hand 
 writing and that it bore a two-cent stamp. 
 
 Suddenly the editor s feet came down with a 
 startled clump. He sat bolt upright, holding the 
 open magazine in his hands. Then he crossed the 
 floor, uttered an exclamation as he did so and laid 
 the paper down on my desk. 
 
 "Bill!" he cried, laying it out flat, "look at the 
 front cover and tell me whose picture that is !"
 
 332 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 Know him? Of course I knew him. Small 
 need to read the name beneath the picture. 
 
 "Why, it s Mary s boy," I said, and the book 
 keeper overheard and came running. 
 
 It was the current issue of a New York trade 
 paper published for newspaper men that Sam had 
 opened. There occupying the whole of the front 
 page was a fine half-tone of Aunt Mary s oldest 
 boy, a strongfaced, clean-cut, fine-looking man. 
 He had just been promoted to a position as leading 
 editorial writer on one of the greatest newspapers 
 in America. 
 
 "Turn to page seven, Mr. Hod !" begged the book 
 keeper. "See what its got to say inside about him." 
 
 We turned to the indicated page. There, as we 
 expected, we found Tom Purse s biography, Tom 
 Purse who once washed the forms and swept out 
 our little country office. Sure enough too, our 
 little country paper was given full credit as being 
 his kindergarten of journalism. 
 
 But that was not all. 
 
 The United States, at the time, was apparently 
 becoming embroiled in diplomatic difficulty with 
 Mexico. Force might have to be employed; it 
 might mean war. The article went on to add that 
 there was to be a great union meeting of three of the 
 biggest New York churches in the immense Man 
 hattan Tabernacle that following Sabbath evening 
 and because of his tremendous editorial position, an 
 invitation had been extended to this big newspaper 
 man to preach the sermon. His acceptance had 
 been recorded. His text was to be: "Jesus Christ, 
 the King of the Nations." 
 
 "His mother old Aunt Mary ought to see 
 this paper," I declared.
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 333 
 
 "Bill," said Sam thickly, "she ought to see the 
 boy himself, risen to his power and his manhood. 
 Don t you know it was her wish all along a 
 piteously disappointed wish that one of her boys 
 should turn out a preacher ? Bill, Aunt Mary ought 
 to hear Tom Purse address that massive congregation." 
 
 "And I wouldn t mind hearing him myself," 
 I replied vehemently. 
 
 There was silence between us for a moment. It 
 was the little bookkeeper who said : 
 
 "Wouldn t it be grand if Uncle Bill could take 
 Aunt Mary down there somehow, telling her nothing 
 about it, and get her into that building without 
 ever knowing who the speaker was to be, and surprise 
 her by seeing her son walk out and address that 
 audience." 
 
 Sam Hod suddenly acted like a boy. 
 
 "Bill," he cried, "I ve got an idea !" 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 "Let s do a kindly act ; for just once in our lives, 
 let s do a kindly act !" 
 
 "Considering that for thirty-seven years we ve 
 been robbing widows and orphans, firing foundling 
 asylums and kicking the crutches out from under 
 cripples, let s have an explanation." 
 
 "I m for giving Mary Purse a whale of a blow 
 out at the Telegraph s expense." 
 
 "A banquet?" 
 
 "No, you fat-head! A trip to New York to 
 hear her son deliver that address ! You get her to 
 do it, Bill. Here s where Aunt Mary, for the first 
 time in her life, is going to be introduced to some 
 thing beside worry and trouble and heartache." 
 He took a quick turn up and down the office. "Bill," 
 he declared, "I can t go myself on account of
 
 334 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 Saunders coming down to-morrow on the annual 
 paper contract. But you can go, Bill you can go 
 - and take Aunt Mary and the paper will pay 
 her expenses. Take her down to the Big City 
 without saying one word to her of her boy s promo 
 tion or what they ve asked him to do. Take her 
 down and for once let the poor, starved, lonesome 
 old soul get one final ray of sunshine into her over 
 worked and spent and exhausted life." 
 
 Agreed? Of course we agreed. Acting on an 
 impulse that was strange in Sam Hod, the editor 
 flung himself into his chair, felt for his check book 
 and wrote a good-sized check. 
 
 "Take your wife into it, Bill. Make her get 
 Aunt Mary all the clothes she needs that her boys 
 may have forgotten to provide for her; tell her 
 you re going to New York on a business trip for the 
 paper and there s a chance for her to visit her boy 
 and his wife as an equal surprise to them. And 
 we ll charge it up to profit and loss but principally 
 profit." 
 
 It took two days effort on the part of my wife 
 and myself to persuade Aunt Mary to accompany 
 us on a trip to New York and incidentally "look 
 in" on her son. I remember the first time I went 
 out to talk with her about it, she was sitting in her 
 rocker in the side room. I had the trade magazine 
 with me, but we had carefully clipped out the note 
 on the end of Tom s biography, telling about the 
 address. 
 
 "Mary," I said, "they ve printed Tom s picture 
 in a New York paper." 
 
 Her wrinkled hand went to her lips. 
 
 "My stars!" she cried faintly. "Has he got in 
 jail?"
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 335 
 
 "No such bad luck, Mary. Get your glasses 
 and read this piece. And then Ann and I have got 
 a plan for a good time to propose to you." 
 
 So it was that three days later Aunt Mary and 
 my wife and I were being whirled through lower 
 Connecticut in the chair car of a Pullman the 
 first one Mary had ever experienced and that 
 in the dusk we began to see the ten million lights of 
 upper New York flash out in the twilight s dreariness. 
 Three or four times during the ride Mary had choked 
 up and wondered whether or not Tom s wife would 
 be glad to see her, coming in unannounced in this 
 way. But we reassured her and said that surprise 
 parties were always happiest and studiously kept 
 newspapers away from her so that no mention of 
 the coming meeting might reach her. 
 
 It was a difficult task inventing excuses for not 
 going immediately on our arrival to Tom Purse s 
 residence over in Brooklyn. Finally we had to tell 
 her that it was arranged for Tom to meet us that 
 evening at the close of a big meeting in the Man 
 hattan Tabernacle which he was covering for his 
 paper. Which was the truth and satisfied her. 
 
 When we reached the place by taxi after supper, 
 the place, despite its world-famous size, was crowded 
 to the doors with people. Old Aunt Mary bore up 
 well in the crowds ; her anticipation of what was 
 coming afterward was pathetic. We fought our 
 way up four flights of stairs and came out on a 
 great gallery with the whole vast sea of space below 
 us thronged with chaotic human faces. Three 
 unoccupied seats were obtained down by the rail 
 in the center, on the sheer edge of the dizzy depths 
 down into the body of the house. 
 
 Just before the great organ began to shake
 
 336 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 that tremendous edifice, old Aunt Mary leaned 
 over. 
 
 "Who s goin to be the preacher to-night?" she 
 whispered. 
 
 A flood of emotion went over us that nearly swept 
 us over the rail. Poor Aunt Mary ! If she only 
 knew ! But we had kept the secret well ; the sur 
 prise would be overwhelming. 
 
 "Wait and see," was all we said. 
 
 We stole two or three glances at her while waiting 
 for those services to begin. Her face was deep- 
 lined with the care and the struggle she had ex 
 perienced. Her red hands that had set so many 
 personals for our little local paper were distorted out 
 of shape with the years of labor; they were now 
 covered with new black gloves. But she was gazing 
 over the rail with the entranced delight of a child. 
 
 Time passed quickly. We had come in late. 
 The biggest pipe organ in America or in the world 
 began to rumble and fill that tremendous void with 
 music. 
 
 WTio the minister was who read the scripture or 
 who the dignitary who made the prayer, we do not 
 know. It doesn t matter. Neither did the leader 
 of the music. But mightily interested indeed were 
 we when three men mounted the chancel and took 
 seats in the high-backed chairs behind the pulpit. 
 For in the center of them, in a smooth, sleek, frock 
 coat which fitted his stocky and somewhat youthful 
 figure we had small difficulty in recognizing even 
 from that height Thomas Purse of the Paris Tele 
 graph office and the poor Purse Place. 
 
 It was after eight o clock when one of the last 
 three arose to announce the speaker for the evening. 
 
 Aunt Mary s eyesight had not been keen enough
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 337 
 
 to recognize Tom from the height and the distance 
 as we had done. So she suddenly leaned over. 
 
 "What?" she demanded /in a hoarse whisper. 
 * What did he say the speaker s name was ?" 
 
 "He said, Mary," I told her in a voice I did not 
 recognize as my own, "he said the speaker of the 
 evening was Mr. Thomas Purse !" 
 
 "Why! why that s the name of my boy!" 
 she gasped. 
 
 "Mary," we said, almost fearful of the result, 
 "that is your boy /" 
 
 Old Aunt Mary drew back and for one long 
 moment became rigid as though turned to stone. 
 
 "My boy my boy Tom!" she cried. It 
 was heard all over our part of the gallery. People 
 craned their heads in our direction. 
 
 "Yes," I replied. 
 
 "He s speaking here to-night? He s 
 preachin ? " 
 
 "Yes, Mary. It was all a little surprise for you. 
 That s why we brought you down. Hush ! Tom, 
 your boy Tom, is starting his address ! " 
 
 Her boy ! 
 
 Down there on the pinnacle, facing that gigantic 
 sea of human faces, with the vast lights overhead, 
 the vast balconies and galleries around, the great 
 organ at his back, that stocky, well-dressed, fine- 
 faced man down there on the pinnacle addressing 
 this vast assemblage of people in strong, sure, 
 steady statements was her boy ! 
 
 Her gnarled, misshapen old hands, made only to 
 do mother work and to hold a composing stick, 
 gripped the railing. Her care-furrowed face looked 
 down upon him transfixed. Her eyes were livid 
 things.
 
 338 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 Her boy ! 
 
 Down there on the vast pinnacle, the center of 
 that great throng, the focus of thousands of eyes 
 was Thomas Purse of the poor Purse Place, and all 
 this crowd was there to hear him preach, to hear 
 her boy preach ! Down there was Thomas Purse, 
 the boy and the man who had fought and con 
 quered and won. Down there was the lad that 
 by sheer merit and brains and the blood of his 
 mother that was in him had pounded his way up 
 until his voice and his pen were conceded to rank 
 among those mightiest in the land. And he was 
 her boy ! and he was preaching ! 
 
 It must have come to Aunt Mary, as she sat there 
 in those next few moments of pitiful delirium, in 
 another world, rigid and transfixed, what all those 
 long years meant in the office of the little Paris 
 Daily Telegraph. Long dreary days when she had 
 looked forward into a cheerless future and done her 
 task only one hour at a time for the sake of the 
 doing and because of her mother-love which 
 prompted the endeavor; quiet evening hours when 
 she had bent over a crib where a little boy cried, and 
 said: "You want your father, little lad; and oh, 
 dear God, I want him, too"; hours when she had 
 worked into the dark and soundless midnights mend 
 ing tiny little jackets, making tiny little clothes, sew 
 ing on little buttons, while her tears blended with 
 the stitches and she could not see her needle for 
 them; memories of the day when his father had 
 died and she had accepted her lot with the noble 
 philosophy that "troubles are sent us to be over 
 come" and "we ll get along somehow, I guess", 
 which meant she would shoulder uncomplainingly 
 the double burden ; monotonous, backbreaking
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 339 
 
 months and years when she had worked over a 
 grimy type case for the sake of the food and the 
 clothes and the taxes and the meager tuition which 
 the resultant money could provide; days of agony, 
 when she had watched the boys go out of sight 
 around the bend in the road by the sumachs ; lonely 
 days when she had wandered through the rooms of 
 the poor Purse place and fancied she saw little 
 ghosts toddling about the legs of toy-scarred tables, 
 - verily, indeed, all these must have come to Aunt 
 Mary in that greatest of all moments, that wonder 
 ful, heart-pausing moment when she looked over the 
 edge of the high balcony down on the black, stocky 
 figure who was of the world and the world s business, 
 yet was placing Jesus the Son of Mary, the Man of 
 Sorrows, the greatest of all Statesmen, Christ the 
 Master, forward as the great pattern on whose pre 
 cepts governments of men must be built to weather 
 the vicissitudes of ages and of peoples. 
 
 Her boy ! 
 
 She had lain with her body wet with agony and 
 heard his first wordless cries piercing the darkness 
 of his new-born nights. She it had been who felt 
 for him in that darkness and gathered him to her 
 warm mother-breast. She had watched over him 
 through hours of feverish childhood slumber. She 
 had mended his tattered clothes in his young school 
 days ; comforted him in his boyish sorrows ; advised 
 with him in his heartrending high-school love 
 affairs ; guided him as best she knew into ways that 
 led to honor and uprightness, as it was given her 
 with her limited advantages to know. 
 
 He had finally left her, as is the law of life and 
 of species the wide world over through all ages that 
 have ever been or will ever come. She had given
 
 340 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 the best that was in her, and he had left her and 
 gone out to take his place in the battle of life among 
 men. But this was the glory of it : that he had not 
 been untrue to her whom he had left in boyish 
 thoughtlessness up in New England s bleak hours 
 of twilight. He had fought a man s-sized fight and 
 won his recognition. He was her son ! And we 
 know that in those moments when she watched 
 him down before those thousands, Aunt Mary 
 came into the blessing of her heritage through an 
 emotion that is known by no other save the mother- 
 heart. It was her great and all-consuming, all- 
 alleviating, all-recompensing moment of power and 
 glory, the greater glory, the greatest glory, of 
 whose width and breadth and depth there is no 
 telling. 
 
 When it was over we got her out of that place 
 somehow and down those cursed flights of stairs. 
 Out in the street, after the press of the throng and 
 the excitement, the body that had given so much 
 and spent so much, broke beneath the strain. She 
 fainted. In a taxi we took her hurriedly to her 
 hotel and summoned a physician. 
 
 Hours afterward the man of medicine called me 
 aside. 
 
 "Has this woman any children or other relatives ? " 
 he asked. 
 
 We told him that she had. 
 
 "I advise you to call them," he said. "Some 
 how, all at once, her system has given out. It s 
 a general breakdown and collapse. She may pull 
 through it ; she may go quietly and without any 
 pain. Yes, get them here. Perhaps they will help 
 her. It s a peculiar case. I don t understand it."
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 341 
 
 But we who remembered Mary Purse as she had 
 come to work for us in the long ago, we who re 
 membered the love-match with poor Jack Purse, 
 we who remembered the young mother with the 
 wistful face who had trundled babies past the Main 
 Street shop windows, we who remembered the one 
 who had driven her husband home that last night 
 from Ezekial s and two weeks later buried him ; we 
 who remembered the mother in whose face as she 
 took up her cross smilingly Sam had seen Jesus 
 Christ, and who had watched one by one those she 
 loved best on earth go down the road and become 
 lost to view by the sumachs we understood. 
 
 Aunt Mary had lived to realize that all her labors 
 and sacrifices had not been in vain. 
 
 She had known the greater glory the greatest 
 glory. 
 
 And now she wanted to go and tell the man she 
 had lost back over the years.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 IN WHICH AT LAST WE COME TO KNOW WHAT Is 
 MEANT BY THE GREATER GLORY WHICH OFTEN 
 COMES TO WOMANKIND WHEN THE SUN OF LIFE 
 Is SETTING. 
 
 A DAY and a half later the Purse boys began 
 arriving. There came a moment that evening that 
 I can never, never forget. 
 
 On the rich bed lay the frail body of a broken- 
 down old woman. She was sallow and spent and 
 her life was ebbing. And about that bed stood six 
 stalwart, full-grown, manly men, strong men, 
 men who were doing the work of the world, clean- 
 cut, well-born, firm-jawed fellows. 
 
 First there was Tom, who stood at the head of the 
 bed and held his mother s hand. Daily through 
 his editorial page he spoke to a quarter million men 
 and women and impressed great truths upon them 
 with a prestige and power exerted by no pulpit. 
 
 Next came Fred, who occupied a chair in an 
 agricultural university. He taught men how to 
 grasp the great forces of nature provided by the 
 Creator, and with aid from them bring forth scien 
 tifically the food wherewith to feed the race. 
 
 Beside him was Theodore, the man who wrestled 
 with other forces of nature and subdued them and 
 compelled them to do his bidding. He spanned 
 streams for human commerce. He laid the rails 
 that brought civilization into the far places. He
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 343 
 
 carried to success great irrigation projects so that 
 water was brought to arid lands and the desert 
 through his hand and brain was made to blossom 
 like a rose. 
 
 On the other side of the bed were Richard and 
 George and Dexter. Each man was on his way 
 toward success. But most of all, they were first 
 of all men, resourceful, honest, forceful men, 
 expending their lives and their talents for the 
 betterment of the race. 
 
 And there on the bed, broken and frail and 
 worn-out and old, lay the one to whom they owed 
 their being. From her loins they had sprung; 
 from her travail they had felt that first sharp sting 
 of life in their nostrils, by her ministrations they 
 had been nurtured into mature life until they stood 
 - the completed product of woman and the Al 
 mighty. 
 
 She was only a poor old woman, spent and worn 
 and almost done with life. But she was not a failure. 
 No woman who raises one child or a dozen and 
 spends her life to bring other lives to maturity and 
 into the image of the Creator no such woman is a 
 failure, regardless how humble may have been her 
 lot or dark and cruel the pathway she has trodden. 
 
 At length the boys withdrew into Dexter s bed 
 room across the hall. In silence, with looks sheepish 
 and ashamed, they grouped themselves in different 
 attitudes about their eldest brother. At length that 
 eldest brother spoke. His voice was husky. 
 
 "A grateful bunch of fat-heads we six are, aren t 
 we?" 
 
 "What do you mean, grateful ?" 
 
 "How long since you wrote mother last or sent 
 her any money?"
 
 344 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 "A couple of months, I guess." 
 
 "A couple of months ! Sufferin Moses ! Call 
 yourself a son. Bah !" 
 
 "How long since you did?" 
 
 "Three months," replied Tom honestly. 
 
 " Call yourself a son ? " mimicked George. 
 
 "No ; a skunk ! " said the eldest son, equally honest. 
 
 In his slow, thoughtful, precise way, Frederick 
 spoke up. 
 
 "I guess it hasn t been that we think any less of 
 mother or were ungrateful. But mother s always 
 appeared so self-reliant and self-supporting and 
 efficient that it s never come home to us hard enough 
 that she was human and could grow old and get 
 played out. I don t know as I ever gave it much 
 thought." 
 
 "To say nothing," added George, "of being so 
 blooming concentrated in making good at our jobs 
 that we hadn t much time to give to associations 
 of the past." 
 
 Silence, scowls, much drumming on table tops 
 with finger tips. Richard bit the tip off a cigar 
 savagely. 
 
 "My God, fellows," cried Tom, "mother s fifty- 
 seven ; fifty-seven only ; and she s old ! She looks 
 seventy. We re a bunch of cads, the whole kiboodle 
 of us. Dammit!" 
 
 The brothers took the censure without protest. 
 
 "What s her life been?" demanded Tom. "She 
 came off the farm and married dad. And they were 
 poorer than scrub whites and had to furnish their 
 home on instalments. She had this holy-rolling 
 bunch of roughnecks one by one that tied her down 
 and took away her looks and her womanhood and 
 made her old even before dad died. And then she
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 345 
 
 lost him. We are old enough now to realize what 
 she faced, the morning she returned to her place in 
 the newspaper office to fight the battle of life for 
 thoughtless scum like ourselves. And think of the 
 stunt she s put over since ! Boys, does it strike 
 you that this is the first time to our knowledge that 
 mother s been to New York in her life?" 
 
 "Go on ! rub it in !" prompted Ted. 
 
 "Fellows," concluded Tom quickly because he 
 could not go on, "it s up to us to see that she spends 
 the rest of her days in joy-riding. It s up to us to 
 help her make up for lost time." 
 
 "How?" 
 
 "Here s my share : A week ago the paper wanted 
 to send me to Europe to get a line on international 
 politics. I turned it down because Lily couldn t 
 leave her crippled sister. I had no heart to go alone. 
 The paper s sending Higgins. But here s where 
 Higgins gets a disappointment. I m going to 
 Europe and by God, mother s going with me !" 
 
 "At her age?" 
 
 "What about her age? She s only fifty-seven. 
 All mother wants is a resting spell and a chance to 
 come back." 
 
 "Go in and tell her so," ordered George. "Maybe 
 it ll help her to recover." 
 
 Tom left the room to talk it over with his mother. 
 As he closed the door behind him, he came face to 
 face with a strange woman. She was dressed in a 
 long heavy coat and a hat of gorgeous red plush. 
 Her features were burned out and old, her eyes tired. 
 Something ailed her lips ; she could not speak 
 distinctly. 
 
 "I m looking for two-fifty-seven," she said. 
 
 "What do you want with two-fifty-seven?"
 
 346 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 "I just heard a story up in Manhattan Tabernacle 
 that Tom Purse s mother was in the crowd there 
 the other night and fainted. A policeman told me 
 she was brought here." 
 
 "She was. But you can t see her." 
 
 "But I must see her." 
 
 "Who are you?" 
 
 She told him, but the name made little or no 
 impression on him. "I knew your mother when 
 we were girls up in Vermont together. We were 
 chums, she and I," said the woman. 
 
 "What do you want with my mother just now?" 
 
 "I want to visit her. I want to tell her some- 
 thin ." 
 
 "You can t do it; she s ill!" said the son de 
 terminedly. 
 
 "Badly ill?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "She s liable to die ?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 The woman s eyes stared at him blankly for a 
 moment. Her crippled lips formed a small round 
 " O." "She oughtn t to die without knowing." 
 
 "Knowing what?" 
 
 "I couldn t explain so you d appreciate. Listen! 
 Will she live through the night?" 
 
 "We hope so!" 
 
 The woman backed away, turned, started swiftly 
 for the elevator. "I ll be back!" she called. "I 
 must go to my apartment." 
 
 Tom went in to his mother. 
 
 Half an hour later came a tap at the door. The 
 nurse answered the summons. 
 
 "There s a woman out here says she must see 
 you, Mr. Purse."
 
 347 
 
 Tom went out. The woman with the red plush 
 hat was there again. 
 
 "Is she any better, Mr. Purse?" 
 
 "A bit yes." 
 
 "But I can t see her?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "If she wakes up and recognizes things, will you 
 give her this note?" 
 
 "Perhaps. It depends on her condition. What s 
 in it?" 
 
 "I heard your speech. It s sort of a surrender." 
 
 "My speech?" 
 
 "No; this note." 
 
 The nurse called to him. "Your mother s 
 whispering your name, Mr. Purse. You d better 
 come." 
 
 Tom thrust the big square envelope into his 
 pocket where it crumpled and was immediately 
 forgotten. 
 
 The woman in the red plush hat avoided the ele 
 vator. She went slowly down the stairs, as one 
 who had been cast out. 
 
 The woman in the red plush hat, with the tired 
 eyes, walked the hard pavements in the cold spring 
 rain. The rain in the country is sweet and sad. 
 It awakens a hundred fragrant odors from shrubs 
 and sod. But the rain in the city is raw and heart 
 less and spatters down like a curse and a scourge, 
 a reproof from the Creator that the cities are foul 
 and an abomination unto Him. 
 
 The woman walked the streets of the city beneath 
 this rain that was slowly bedraggling the hat and the 
 iron-gray hair. At length she came to an eating 
 and drinking place that she knew and she turned
 
 S48 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 inside. And as she turned inside, a moth-eaten little 
 poodle of a man who had been standing in a near-by 
 doorway, recognized her and trotted after to over 
 take her. He went inside also and smirked at her. 
 Half-apologetically, he fidgeted himself about until 
 she noticed him. 
 
 "Hello, Georgie ! You following me round 
 again? Come on in and have something, George. 
 Come and keep me company because I wish I was 
 dead." 
 
 It was just what the little poodle of a man had 
 wildly hoped for. Maybe if Mibb imbibed the 
 appropriate number of drinks she would become 
 generous as she had at sundry times in the past, 
 and loan him five so he could go back and get 
 another week s bed and board. 
 
 "Lost yer job, Mibb?" asked the threadbare 
 little man. He sat opposite her, his little rounded 
 shoulders hunched up, his thumbs together on the 
 table s edge, in his buttonhole a wilted, ragged 
 nosegay. 
 
 "No; something worse than my job, George." 
 
 "What could be worse n your job to lose, Mibb?" 
 
 "My soul, George, my soul, my soul !" 
 
 He looked at Mibb, trying to get his cue. Was 
 she facetious or already intoxicated or was she in 
 earnest? He concluded she was indulging in grim 
 jest. 
 
 "And when did you lose this soul o your n, 
 Mibb?" 
 
 "Years and years ago, George. Years and years 
 ago when I was young and handsome." 
 
 George smirked. 
 
 "You re pretty and handsome now, Mibb." Thus 
 did he hope to wheedle the five.
 
 THE GREATER GLORY S4 
 
 "Pretty and handsome ? Don t be an ass, George. 
 I m not in the mood for it to-night." 
 
 "If you ain t pretty and handsome, what are you ?" 
 
 "I m a greasy, burned out, old woman with a heart 
 like a peanut and a face that shows plainly enough 
 she s gone the pace and is paying the price. That s 
 what I am ! " 
 
 "You re a woman - " began George. 
 
 "I m not a woman I m only female. Maybe 
 I showed some traces of being a woman once. May 
 be I could have become a woman if I d had a better 
 bringing up and not been so God-damned selfish. 
 But I bungled the job of life and I see it now and I 
 think I m going to get drunk. If you don t 
 want to miss it, sit where you are, George, and 
 watch me ossify ! v 
 
 "But Mabel, my dear !" 
 
 "Don t dear me! You want something out of 
 me. Nobody ever dears a selfish woman unless they 
 want favors. There s going to be a funeral here, 
 George. I know a woman who s goin to bury her 
 sorrows and heartache in booze. Hold a coffin handle, 
 George. It will be entertaining ! " 
 
 "But, Mabel; really, you mustn t, you know* 
 You ll lose your job 
 
 "Lose my job! And what o that? What s the 
 loss of a job beside the things I ve lost ? " 
 
 "What have you lost, especially, Mabel ?" 
 
 "What have I lost especially? Listen, I ll 
 tell you what I ve lost especially. I ve lost my girl 
 hood and my future ; I ve lost the regard of respect 
 able people and a birthright of honor. I ve lost the 
 love of one of the finest men God ever made, sort of a 
 silly grinning fellow but with a heart as good as gold 
 and out of whom I could have made a man, and a
 
 350 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 husband who d be with me now and make my last 
 days happy. I ve lost a fine home and friends and 
 the things that money can t buy, and I ve lost a 
 fortune also. I ve lost baby arms around my neck 
 and damp baby kisses on my lips. I ve lost the 
 blessings of little children growing up around me, 
 George ! and the joy of caressing their bumps and 
 softening their tragedies and healing their bruises. 
 I ve lost God ! what haven t I lost ! I ve 
 lost the glory of reaching times that I ve reached now, 
 to-night, and not a single man to tower over my 
 shoulder and call me mother and stand around 
 with his brothers beside my bed and pray to God, if 
 there is one, that my life may be spared for the sake 
 of what I mean to some one. That s what I ve 
 lost, ee-specially, George, and I only want to forget 
 my troubles and be carried back in fancy to my girl 
 hood in a little New England town again !" 
 
 The waiter came up. Mibb ordered wine. George 
 raised his stubby little hands to protest. But a bit 
 hysterically she laughed him down. 
 
 "And why have I lost it, George why have I 
 lost all those things ? I ll tell you, George. Because 
 I was too damned afraid that I d do somethin for 
 other folks that d interfere with my blessed happiness 
 or spoil my shape. Because I was brought up by a 
 hellion that should have been covered with black 
 blotches from a harness tug for teaching me that a 
 woman s place in life was to go around with a stuffed 
 club in her skirts loaded to the point of explosion 
 because some man might be treadin on her rights. 
 By God ! Rights ! All the rights most of the women 
 nowadays need is the right to have their hearts broken 
 and their souls all mangled and cut up so s they can 
 know the meaning of fellow feeling and home love and
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 351 
 
 sympathy. Because when a woman s a woman first 
 and other things afterward, George, she doesn t 
 need to worry none about her rights. She ll get her 
 rights, all right, without hiring any halls or buying 
 any brass bands or breaking up homes or going out 
 and grabbing a man s pay envelope !" 
 
 The waiter came with the drinks and Mibb took 
 three at once. Promptly she became still more 
 hysterical. 
 
 "Look at me, George! You d never think I d 
 ever have been a famous lady, would you, George? 
 You d never think I d come from a sweet, pure, little 
 town up in the hills of New England and been mar 
 ried to a good man with money enough once to buy 
 this street ? You d never think I d had a home with 
 fourteen rooms and three baths and a lawn where you 
 could hold a moving-picture carnival ? Never think 
 I d been to Europe four times and spent more money 
 on jewelry in a week than I ll earn now for the rest 
 of my life ? Never think all those things, would you, 
 George? I m a beauty now, ain t I George? I ve 
 a face like a pan of dough and a shape like a bundle 
 of iniquity ! I ve got a home that stinks of straw 
 matting and slops, and jewelry now that Woolworth 
 lays in by the ton. I ve got all the happiness out of 
 life that life has to give, excepting the happiness that 
 conies from sacrifice and repression and generosity. 
 I ve been thirty years carefully avoiding the un 
 pleasant things in life and met suddenly the brink 
 of the precipice that yawns down into the chasms of 
 abandon ! " 
 
 The frayed poodle watched her furtively ; he began 
 to dismiss thoughts of getting that five with Mibb 
 in such a state and momentarily growing worse. 
 
 "It s all right to have a good time while you re
 
 352 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 young, George ! It s smart to call the girls who 
 marry for love and settle down quietly into homes 
 slow , and laugh at them for being content to struggle 
 on with only fifteen a week in the man s envelope. 
 It s quite the proper thing to avoid having babies and 
 keeping your figure and follow the styles and live 
 generally on the upper crust while others are growing 
 careworn and anxious-eyed with the struggle and the 
 worry. It s all right for a time, George ! But 
 it s all a mess of tinsel and mummery and a bad taste 
 in your mouth, the morning after, George. There s 
 old age to be reckoned with; there s time to be 
 taken into consideration. And time asks its pound 
 of flesh and the years find your pals all gone. And 
 the nights are quiet and lonely, George, and the 
 days drag by in a mockery. Oh, God ! God ! God ! 
 I d give more for one racked, twisted, furrowed-faced, 
 gnarled-fingered, sock-darnin , food-cookin , hymn- 
 singin old woman reachin the Empty Years at last 
 but with her brats grown up around her into strong 
 men and gentle women, than all the silver-slippered, 
 low-necked, fizzle-headed sissies you can find from 
 Grant s Tomb to Bowlin Green ! " 
 
 "Don t, Mibb. You re crossin your drinks bad, 
 by orderin that." 
 
 "Let me alone, George ! I know what I m doin . 
 About thirty years ago to-night, it was, I made a 
 bet with Mary Purse that I d beat her hands down 
 at the game of matrimony when each of us were fifty- 
 seven. I made that bet, George. But I ve lost it. 
 I ve had my fling, George. I ve had my rights. 
 I ve been entitled to live my own life in my own way 
 and I ve done it. And it s gall in my heart, George, 
 it s wormwood in my soul ! " 
 
 Her voice had become high and wild. People
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 353 
 
 turned and stared. George saw his opportunity was 
 lost and slipped away. At the cashier s desk a man 
 summoned a burly waiter. 
 
 "That s enough of that, over there at the corner 
 table. This is a respectable place, Zelf !" 
 
 "It s a down-and-outer trying to tell the world the 
 sad story of her past life." 
 
 "Go over and tell her to take a walk." 
 
 The waiter came across to Mabel. He said harsh 
 things to her ; he made it all too plain how undesir 
 able was her patronage. 
 
 "I know, I know," she said brokenly, wearily. 
 And her hard, lined, worldly face was wet with tears. 
 "I ve got a little money left. I ll go back to Paris 
 to-night." 
 
 The waiter scratched his head when she had gone 
 out, rather unsteadily, a wandering, lone, ageing, 
 broken, pathetic figure. 
 
 "Now what did she mean by Paris, to-night?" 
 he demanded. " She ain t no Frencliie; I ll bet my 
 envelope upon it ! "
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 IN WHICH AN ANGEL HOVERS AWHILE OVER EARTH 
 AND BEHOLDS A STRANGE SIGHT AND SIGHS AND 
 THEN GOES ON AGAIN ABOUT ITS BUSINESS. 
 
 BUT there were many weeks before she came back 
 to Paris. 
 
 Mibb Henderson alighted on our station platform 
 from the four o clock train which had brought her 
 up the valley. She had made the trip in a day-coach : 
 her only baggage was a small black valise. 
 
 No one recognized her ; few indeed there are among 
 present-day Parisians who have lived long enough in 
 one place, in this one town, to know the prodigals 
 when they return. Uncle Joe Fodder, driving 
 his depot hack, knew. Perhaps for that reason she 
 avoided him. She did not take a carriage up to the 
 business section. She walked up slowly, as though at 
 last there were no need for hurry, no need for 
 hurry ever again. She had no place to reach. She 
 had just come home. 
 
 She was still stylishly dressed. The smart hat 
 concealed the iron-gray hair. The modish veil with 
 its field of black polka-dots hid the telltale wrinkles 
 and traces of cosmetics. She was yet a well-built 
 woman and indeed would pass as far younger than 
 the Paris of yesteryear knew her to be. But Mibb 
 was old ; somehow as she walked up Depot Street to 
 Main she was broken and burned out and bowed. 
 She made a pathetic figure as she came up Depot 
 Street in the soft afternoon of a late spring.
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 355 
 
 When she got up to Main Street she stopped fre 
 quently on the corners as though undecided where to 
 go or what to do. Reaching the taxi stand in front 
 of Joe Farrell s quick lunch and finding a driver whose 
 face was strange, she suffered him to put her bag in 
 his machine and she climbed in the back under the 
 auto top which partly hid her identity from those who 
 might recognize her. A few years before there would 
 have been no such attempt to keep her visit private. 
 She would have gone up Main Street as Uncle Joe 
 Fodder had once expressed it, "with all the pomp 
 and importance of a fat wash-lady in the back seat 
 of a new Ford." But Mibb s star had set now. 
 And Mibb knew that it had set. All she wanted was 
 to flee away to a quiet place somewhere like a tired 
 and perhaps wounded animal ; let nature heal those 
 wounds. Yes, Mibb was very tired. Pitiful was her 
 soul s yearning for Alsatia. 
 
 "Where to?" asked the chauffeur. 
 
 "Take me out to the Purse Place on Cobb Hill." 
 
 The driver started his engine and Mibb went 
 through town with no one to see ; no one to care. 
 
 The car was but a few moments covering the 
 ground that in a far-off happier year had seemed an 
 afternoon s journey to reach. How small and 
 scrubby the little town was, after all ! 
 
 It turned around the corner by the bridge; it 
 climbed the long, sandy grade ; the raspberry and 
 blackberry vines brushed its dusty sides as it skirted 
 the road along the stone wall banked with birches 
 and dwarf willows and sumach, and hiding the poor 
 Purse Place from sight. With dexterous twist it 
 headed up into the yard with its short-cropped grass, 
 behind the old stone wall where the sweep had once 
 stood but banked now by the fragrant lilacs and
 
 356 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 shrubbery of the wild roses, the yard where there 
 were no farm implements lying around and where a 
 fence rail was wedged firmly against the rusty red 
 doors of an empty barn. 
 
 She alighted from the car. It waited for her with 
 its engine running. She went up the two brown flag 
 steps and knocked on the panels. 
 
 The raps of her knuckles sounded like thumps 
 on a coffin. She tried the split and shriven door. 
 It was locked. 
 
 "I guess there s no one home," she faltered. 
 
 No one home indeed. Poor Mibb ! 
 
 "I could o told you that in the first place," replied 
 the driver. "I didn t know but what you d bought 
 the place, or somethin ; that s why I didn t say 
 nuthin ." 
 
 "Doesn t Mrs. Purse live here any longer? She 
 isn t dead?" 
 
 "Naw ; she held an auction last week and went to 
 live with Aunt Julia Farrington down in the village." 
 
 Mibb swayed wearily on the doorstep. 
 
 "Take my bag and leave it at the Whitney House. 
 How much do I owe you ? I ll walk back." 
 
 She paid her tariff. The car backed out and 
 headed for the village. When the soft chuf-chuf-chuf 
 of its engine had grown fainter and fainter until it 
 died away to nothing, she was alone out there in 
 front of the abandoned house in the long slanting 
 hours of closing day. Somehow she felt as if she had 
 been abandoned too, like the old place brooding now 
 in the sinking sun. 
 
 After a while she walked slowly from the yard. 
 Her loneliness seemed greater than it had ever seemed 
 before, not to find Mary Purse in the old Purse 
 Place.
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 357 
 
 She started slowly down the hill. Baker s meadow 
 over the way that used to be the finest mowing any 
 where around Paris, was not coming up virile and green. 
 The grass was red and thin and sickly and filled with 
 devil s paintbrush. The old Squire s place was gone ; 
 two hoary elm trees, green with scale, stood sentinel 
 now over a cellar hole and heaps of senile yellow 
 brick and stumps of a fireplace; the Squire s house 
 burned down in the winter of 97. The grove of 
 chestnut trees in Cogswell s pasture had been cut 
 down these many years and likewise had the big 
 beechnut tree gone from the eastern end of the 
 bridge. And the bridge itself was no longer the pic 
 turesque covered affair of thirty-odd years before. It 
 was a trim business-like affair of white iron thrown 
 across the stream in nineteen hundred after the freshet 
 of the previous winter had made the old one dan 
 gerous. 
 
 "Oh, it s changed so ; it s all changed so ! 
 If it wasn t for the old Purse Place and the hills, I d 
 hardly know it was the same," she said. 
 
 She crossed the bridge with a heavy heart. The 
 location at the eastern end of Main Street where once 
 her father s house had stood had been absorbed for 
 ten years by the increasing areas of the Process 
 works. 
 
 "Thank God that s gone!" she whispered. "I 
 could have stood most anything but to see the old 
 place again as it used to be when I was happy at 
 home with Ma and the boarders ! " 
 
 She finally reached the point where Pine Street 
 bisects Main. At the southern end of Pine Street 
 there is a little slope that comes out overlooking 
 the river. On this stretch between road and river on 
 the southeast corner of the village, there is a little
 
 358 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 plot of grass-choked land we ve come to call "the 
 cemetery on the hill." 
 
 Something turned Mibb s steps that way. She 
 had nowhere else to go. Why not up into the grave 
 yard where lay sleeping the loved ones of other 
 years ? 
 
 A beautiful afterglow was over the world as she 
 entered the cemetery and moved down among the 
 graves. Half -fearfully she searched the tomb 
 stones, yet morbidly hungry for what they might 
 disclose. 
 
 She came on her father s and mother s grave so 
 suddenly that the bold inscriptions of the familiar 
 name startled her. It was marked by a small white 
 shaft of granite with the one word "Henderson" 
 upon the base. On one side was a headstone with 
 her father s name. On the opposite side her 
 mother s. 
 
 "Poor pa and ma," she thought. "Even in death 
 something had to divide you, didn t it, even if it s 
 only the monument." But strange to say she did not 
 feel so badly over the sight of those graves as she did 
 over those friends of her carefree girlhood who had 
 been her boon companions. And when this realiza 
 tion came to her, came also the words of Dick 
 Robinson a few months before, about her mother s 
 lack of maternity which had been partly responsible 
 for the woman she had grown to be. And for a 
 moment a fierce wild hatred filled her. 
 
 But the resentment left her when gazing over be 
 hind her family plot, and off to the left, she saw a last 
 year s grave with a brand new headstone that stuck 
 out among the lazy sleepy old stones like a mansion 
 among the dwellings of paupers. She drew near 
 fearfully and read :
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 359 
 
 HERBERT PEASE TRUMAN 
 
 Beloved Son and Husband 
 
 Departed this Life 
 
 In the Fifty-eighth 
 
 Year of His Age 
 
 Beloved son and husband ! Beloved son and 
 husband ! 
 
 "Gone, gone, they re all gone, those that might 
 have cared for me," she cried softly and brokenly. 
 "And those that haven t gone, those that are living, 
 they do not cannot care ! Oh the bitterness of 
 it!" 
 
 Upon the grave of her husband chance had de 
 posited an old tin can, battered and rusty and pro 
 fane. With a choke in her throat Mibb leaned 
 tenderly over. She lifted it away. She was about 
 to cast the thing of desecration from her when she 
 paused. The receptacle was half filled with rain 
 water. 
 
 "Herbert ! Herbert ! Herbert ! I killed you ; I know 
 I killed you ! I killed you as sure as though I had run 
 a knife in your heart. But I am sorry, Herbert ! And 
 if I could go back, be with you just through one 
 evening again, I d take you into my starved and 
 lonely and foolish soul in a way that would make 
 you a man ! Beloved husband ? Yes, Herbert, 
 yes!" 
 
 She crossed over to the near-by stone wall. A 
 clump of wild roses was growing there. Carefully, 
 tearfully, she gathered a handful of the limp sweet 
 flowers, and carried them back. Then with a tender 
 ness she had never employed in doing any other 
 earthly thing, she settled the offering on the hus 
 band s grave.
 
 360 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 And an angel, wafting its way with wings as soft 
 as air, over that acre of the dead on that peaceful 
 Spring twilight, saw the thing that Mibb Truman did. 
 There came a soft glow in the angel s heart and a well 
 of tears to his eyes. For he knew that the thing 
 Mibb did was from a broken and repentant heart, 
 with no one around to see, no one to know, because 
 she had lived and lost and come at last to know the 
 fullness of love. 
 
 One lone robin came with shrill chirps out of the 
 sunset and fluttered for a moment in a tall elm tree 
 that grew just over the spilled stone wall. And as 
 she stood there at the foot of her cross, the robin 
 broke into song. 
 
 Far away down in the next mowing another bird 
 answered. 
 
 The angel winged away to carry a report to 
 heaven, leaving the two robins peacefully singing 
 their vespers.
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 A SORT OF GRADUATION CHAPTER IN WHICH THE 
 MEDAL OF HONOR Is AWARDED AND A LONELY 
 WOMAN S TEARS CARRY HER NEAR TO GOD. 
 
 DOUBTLESS it was our report of what had taken 
 place in New York that turned Sam s thoughts back 
 ward that sunset as he stood that balmy spring 
 evening by his open window. 
 
 "Thirty years ago it took place," he said. "To 
 think of it ! " 
 
 A hush of infinite peace hung over our valley. The 
 screaming color of the west that set a thousand 
 western windows aflame, was gradually softening. 
 It was Wanderlust time, that period of the year 
 when the grass has come green again and the faint 
 odor of damp lilacs births sensations in the heart of a 
 man that are sweet and wild and sad. 
 
 "I haven t been up there in ten years," he said. 
 "I m going to walk up to the old cabin to-night and 
 see what s left." 
 
 In the cool of the evening the editor whose temples 
 were now gray, wended his steps out School Street 
 and along by the gas works ; beyond the gas works to 
 the county farm; beyond the county farm to the 
 East Wickford road ; along the East Wickford road ; 
 to the turning-off place up into Gold-Piece Blaisdell s 
 Glen. 
 
 As he walked he could not avoid the memory of
 
 362 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 how he had taken that pathway in other years, nor 
 those who walked with him who had gone. 
 
 A thousand country scents of sweet-fern and briar 
 bloom and blossoming laurel, of blackberry vine and 
 checkerberry and wild apple, assailed his senses as 
 he walked along. And the odors which he had for 
 gotten to notice since he became a man, with the 
 cares and responsibilities and problems of a man, 
 brought back to him now old voices and old faces, 
 old trysts and old happinesses. For a moment he 
 almost turned back, so badly did the pain of memory 
 hurt him. But he was so near now that it was 
 foolish to turn back. Through the raspberry vine 
 that scratched his trousers and the milkweed that 
 left lint upon him, through the grasses that were 
 damp and wetted his shoes, through the little swarms 
 of evening insects that lifted and fell in the evening 
 air, he went forward. 
 
 "The brush has grown up high," he said. "The 
 path is almost gone." 
 
 The Glen was darkened when at last he left the tall 
 -.rank grass and undergrowth and saw before him the 
 ghostly outlines of the cabin. 
 
 "It s not fallen in yet," he observed. "But how 
 hoary and grizzled everything seems." 
 
 He surveyed the dilapidated old cabin for a long 
 ^time before venturing near. It had been a well- 
 built cabin. The hemlock logs had stood the frosts 
 of winter and the rains of summer. The roof was 
 fallen in at a corner ; the windows were gone. Half 
 the chimney had been carried down and the door 
 hung by a rusty hinge. Everywhere were the marks 
 of the sharp teeth of the hedgehogs. But still it was 
 the same old structure around whose fireplace those 
 companions had gathered after that tired day back
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 363 
 
 over the years. And a choke came in the editor s 
 throat and a nameless hunger grew deep and man 
 gling in his heart. 
 
 Then as he stood there looking at it, he saw a ghost ! 
 The ghost of Mibb Henderson stepped from that 
 doorway, not the Mibb of that far-away holiday 
 but a Mibb whose face was furrowed with sorrow, 
 whose hair was iron gray. 
 
 He wanted to run. He wanted to cry out. But 
 he stood rooted to the spot in terror. 
 
 And the ghost of Mibb Henderson spoke to him. 
 
 "Sam," it cried, "Sam Hod! Oh, Gawd! Is it 
 you, Sam ? Is it you ?" 
 
 "Yes, it s me, Mibb," he replied in a voice he 
 did not recognize as his. 
 
 "Oh, Sam, I m glad you ve come; I couldn t go 
 back alone. I d have given out along the way." 
 
 And Sam saw it was not Mibb s ghost. It was 
 Mibb Henderson herself and she was just a broken- 
 down, sorrow-laden, repentant and suffering old 
 woman, suffering with memories as he was suf 
 fering. 
 
 "Why did you come up here, Mibb?" he asked. 
 
 " I had to come, Sam. I had to come." 
 
 "So did I," he said. 
 
 After a time he found himself in the cabin with 
 her. 
 
 "Let s light a fire, Mibb," he said. "Let s light 
 a fire from the rubbish and see how the old place 
 looks." 
 
 Deer hunters who had probably occupied the place 
 the season before had left ample wood piled beside 
 the fireplace. There were old papers scattered about. 
 It was the work of a moment for Sam to make a place 
 in the cold dead ashes. He touched a match to the
 
 364 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 paper under the wood which he had piled. It burned 
 blue at first and then blazed up. 
 
 A few minutes after the cabin was warm and filled 
 with weird and rosy light. Silently he swung a box 
 over, and Mibb, gathering her noisy silken under 
 skirts about her ankles, sat down upon it. He found 
 a similar box for himself. He poked the fire once or 
 twice. It made queer shadows of the two on the wall 
 behind; queerer shadows of the cuts and jogs and 
 corners. 
 
 "How long has it been, Mibb; thirty years 
 ago?" 
 
 "Thirty years ago," she said in a whisper ; "thirty 
 years ago to-night." 
 
 "To-night!" 
 
 She looked at him in sad surprise. 
 
 "Surely to-night," she confirmed. "Why, that s 
 why I came ! Didn t you ? " 
 
 "I d forgotten just what month and day it was, 
 Mibb. I only remember it was in the late spring. 
 We were on a picnic in return for the play we gave 
 that year at the Opera House ! 
 
 "They sat over there on that wall settle, in the 
 shadow, afterward. It s there yet ! I can see them, 
 Mibb The editor s voice wavered. 
 
 "And Harriet is dead these eleven years ! " 
 
 "And Dick ? The last I heard of him he was richer 
 than Croesus and lonelier than Job in his affliction, 
 living down in Boston - Mabel shut her lips 
 suddenly hard, pitifully hard. 
 
 Silence for a time. The fire crackled and blaze u 
 and drove the damp from the musty old place. Sa.m 
 poked it with his crooked stick to give his hanoL 
 something to do. 
 
 "And I sat about where you re sitting," Mibb
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 365 
 
 went on. "I was on the floor with my head against 
 Herb s knees ! " 
 
 More silence ; longer silence this time. 
 
 "I saw Dick Robinson the other night," declared 
 the woman. "He cleaned up a million, looks like a 
 matinee idol, and and he s a woman-hater." 
 She laughed a trifle bitterly. 
 
 "Folks around here said you were going to marry 
 him a while ago, Mibb." 
 
 "I m not worthy of him; I m not worthy of any 
 man, Sam. That s why the wedding was called off." 
 
 Sam raised his heavy brows quickly in surprise. 
 This was surely a different Mibb from the old days, a 
 Mibb who would declare herself unworthy of a man, 
 any man. But he said nothing. 
 
 "And you, Sam, I can see you and Alice leaning 
 against the masonry there on the left corner. Have 
 you ever stopped to think, Sam, that you and Alice 
 were the only two out of all that crowd who married 
 and lived happily ever since." 
 
 "There was there was Jack and Mary Purse," 
 suggested the editor. 
 
 "Don t let s talk about them, Sam ; it hurts." 
 
 After a time Sam said : 
 
 "Thirteen young folks, typically American young 
 folks, on a soft spring night, off in the woods after 
 May flowers. They group around it, lovers and 
 sweethearts, and they sing old love songs and tell 
 yarns and watch the pictures in the flames. 
 
 "And the talk drifts around to the happiness of the 
 moment, of the threshold of life where they all stand, 
 healthy young mortals, rejoicing in their youth and 
 strength as a strong man to run a race. And 
 laughingly one takes a gold piece from his pocket 
 and makes a proposition : They are to bury the
 
 366 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 gold piece beneath the hearthstone, miser-fashion. 
 Through the years of their life-endeavor it is to lie 
 there. And when thirty years have flown, if they be 
 alive, they are to dig that coin up and it is to be 
 medal of honor for the one who has made his life the 
 most successful." 
 
 Again the woman shivered. But it was not cold. 
 The editor went on : 
 
 "We won t go through the careers of those thirteen 
 young folks ; we know them too well, Mibb. But 
 thirty years have flown, six of those boys and 
 girls have gone to their graves. Of the seven living, 
 two have amassed fortunes 
 
 "Which isn t the measure of success at all, Sam." 
 
 "You thought it was once, Mibb." 
 
 "I ve learned differently, Sam," she replied 
 quietly. 
 
 "Then you think they can be eliminated ?" 
 
 " They can be eliminated," she said sadly. 
 
 Sam poked the fire several times. 
 
 "Mibb," he said softly at length, "tell me, to whom 
 does the medal of honor belong ?" 
 
 She turned her worn countenance to him then. In 
 a soft, soft voice she said : 
 
 "I think we know to whom it belongs, Sam." 
 
 The editor felt in his pocket for a cigar. He 
 lighted it in an ocean of time. He got it going 
 comfortably. He took it from his mouth and studied 
 its ash. 
 
 "I think we do," he said. 
 
 "Shall we dig it up, Mibb ?" he asked. 
 
 "I don t suppose any one ever will, if we do not." 
 
 Sam Hod produced his penknife. He dug away 
 the dirt by the light of the dying flames. 
 
 "It is here, Mibb," he said reverently.
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 367 
 
 Under the hearth brick was found the cavity. In 
 the cavity lay Dick Robinson s match-safe. Thirty 
 years it had laid in that box that was eaten with 
 rust. For when Sam shook it, the tinkle came 
 inside it. 
 
 "Sam!" cried the woman with a sob, "oh, Sam, 
 we ve committed a sacrilege !" 
 
 The woman broke down and sobbed. 
 
 They went home under the soft spring moonlight. 
 It seemed strange to think, as they quitted that glen, 
 that the same moon had lighted the way of that 
 happy, carefree, light hearted party thirty years 
 before. They went home in silence, the man helping 
 the woman over the difficult places. They went out 
 of the Glen, out of the trysting place of other, 
 better and brighter and happier days, back along the 
 country road and the brook and the streets into town. 
 
 "To think, Mibb," said Sam when they were 
 almost up in the business section again, "that you 
 and I, out of all that party, should be the ones to dig 
 up that gold piece." 
 
 The woman did not reply. Her heart was too full. 
 
 "I ll give it to her, to-night, Sam," she promised. 
 "I m going up there, now. I ve got to go. I ve got 
 to see Mary. Sam Sam my heart is broken. 
 And I ve got to let Mary know that it s broken." 
 
 The editor understood. 
 
 "Good night, Mibb," he said. "And perhaps it 
 would help you a little bit to know that I don t think 
 half as much ill of you, after being up there in that 
 cabin with you, as I might have thought if I had not 
 seen what I have." 
 
 "Good night," she whispered. 
 
 The editor went into his office. 
 
 The woman went over to the hotel and got the bag
 
 368 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 that had been left there. Then she went to Aunt 
 Julia Farrington s house which she knew so well, tit 
 the corner of Pine and Walnut streets, the house 
 that looked like a picture out of yesterday with its 
 iron fences and old-fashioned posy beds and terra 
 cotta statue in the yard. 
 
 There was a light burning in the hall as Mibb went 
 up. She pulled the old-fashioned bell and waited. 
 
 Aunt Mary Purse herself answered that bell. She 
 came to the door with a red-yarn shawl over her frail 
 shoulders. She had been packing for the epochal 
 trip abroad on the coming Thursday with her son. 
 
 "Mary, Mary Purse, can I come in?" begged the 
 woman outside in the dark. "It s me, Mary; it s 
 Mabel Henderson." 
 
 A quarter-hour later they sat in the little front 
 parlor of the Farrington home, the parlor with its 
 antique melodeon and its whatnot filled with Aunt 
 Julia s daguerreotypes, and its life-sized picture of 
 Abraham Lincoln and with John Farrington s big 
 cavalry sword standing in a corner. 
 
 Mary Purse, only five years the older but looking 
 twenty, sat in a round-backed horsehair chair. On 
 the floor at her feet with her poor, addled, weary 
 head on the older woman s lap, sat Mibb Henderson, 
 the girl who would "take her chances" with riches. 
 And she was sobbing out her heart. As that great 
 emotion possessed her, the gnarled beautiful hands of 
 our lady compositor of years in the Telegraph office 
 smoothed her hair and soothed her feverish forehead. 
 
 "Oh, if you only hated me, Mary," she moaned, 
 "if you d only fought me, damned me, killed me, if 
 you d even rebuked me one little bit, it would have 
 been so much easier to bear now. But you took it
 
 369 
 
 sweetly and nobly and bore it somehow ; and you 
 never held it against me. You never let it show 
 when I came around so snippily, throwing your 
 poverty in your face; taunting you with the load 
 you were under ; showing how base and contemptible 
 I was and how low I had fallen. If you d only 
 done it, Mary, if you only had ! " 
 
 "I couldn t, Mibb," Aunt Mary said. "I knew 
 you couldn t help it. You didn t do it to be mean ; 
 you were thoughtless, that s all. There s lots of 
 thoughtless folks in the world, Mibb. We want to 
 be patient with em and help em; most of em see 
 their errors in time and so it all comes out right in the 
 end." 
 
 Dumbly, piteously the woman of the world who 
 had lost her moorings at last clung to the other as the 
 only Alsatia to which to bring her tired soul. And 
 true to the great noble woman soul and the mother- 
 heart that was in her and the saint her troubles and 
 struggles had made her, she found that sister ready 
 and willing to forgive and help and comfort and in 
 spire and smooth away all care . Freely the Henderson 
 woman s tears flowed, and by those tears got as near 
 to God as it was possible for her to get in earthly life. 
 
 Aunt Mary forgave her ; forgave her for the cruel 
 jests and stabbing taunts ; forgave her for flaunting 
 the prostituted finery before her when her heart was 
 breaking with her poverty and load ; forgave her for 
 all of these and took her in and fed her soul with 
 kindness and wrapped her in her great big mother- 
 heart of eternal sympathy, which is the blessed 
 ness of womankind above all other divinity, and which 
 is the high road to peace. 
 
 Verily Aunt Mary Purse deserved the gold piece. 
 
 We think so.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 A GREAT SHIP STEALS OUT OF A HARBOR AND OVER 
 THE SKYLINE, OUT OF THE HOMELAND AND INTO 
 THE SOUL. 
 
 FOR thirty-five years now, we have published this 
 little local paper. Perhaps we may be spared to keep 
 it going for another quarter-century; such things 
 have happened. Or perhaps just to-morrow, as we 
 sit writing our briefs and our editorials, our four and 
 five-line bits of pabulum about the out-of-town y --i- 
 tors with us, the sales of new automobiles, tne 
 recoveries from the sick list, who has a newly painted 
 fence and who drove into town yesterday with a load 
 of potatoes anything and everything which will 
 put people s names in print, and please them and 
 make them buy copies so we can sell our advertising 
 space perhaps a soft hand will be laid on our 
 shoulders, we may look up a trifle bewilderedly to see 
 who stands there ; and we may behold a stranger, 
 yet a stranger who knows us well, who has come to 
 guide us to the land of our missing children, who shall 
 stoop over, take our blue pencil, write "Thirty" 
 beneath the items of the page on which we are work 
 ing, and bid us follow. 
 
 When that time comes we shall not be afraid to go, 
 we say, because we have seen God in the faces and 
 souls of the ordinary men and women about us. 
 Although the curriculum of our earthly education 
 has been a mystery at times and in many strange
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 371 
 
 turnings in the long lane of living, although we have 
 grieved often at the pied skein we have made of our 
 lives because we have not been given to see the reason 
 for the apparent snarl and tangle of it all, we think 
 how weary God must be looking down on the world 
 and watching the iniquities of those whose education 
 is yet incomplete, and we are cheered and at peace. 
 For if the Almighty has the patience and the 
 optimism to keep the old world going in spite of the 
 grievous short-comings of many folk in many places, 
 things are not so bad as they seem and all must be 
 well with most of us in the end. 
 
 True to his agreement, Tom Purse did take his 
 mother away for a rest, a rest that meant more 
 than a cessation of bodily labor. It was a rest of the 
 soul and the spirit in the companionship of the man- 
 child she had reared, which companionship in the 
 struggle of life thus far had somehow been denied her. 
 
 When she had recovered and was strong again, it 
 was Fred who arranged the finances ; the sons who 
 had been only human in forgetting the loneliness of 
 the mother-heart who had given so much for them, 
 saw her start off with Tom. Though in years it was 
 but a short time ago, yet it was in those far-off 
 pleasant ages before the scourge of war had blighted 
 the world, that Tom started with his mother on her 
 great vacation to those far-away lands that only 
 exist for most New England mothers in books or 
 dreams. 
 
 There came a morning when Aunt Mary was helped 
 by her son across the gangplank of a great steamship. 
 The last good-bys were said by the boys who were all 
 there to see her off. The smallest details had been 
 arranged. Nothing lay ahead but the unspoiled
 
 372 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 Wonderland of the Old World. Nothing lay ahead 
 to the woman who had once been little Mary Wood 
 and married a poor printer for love, but reward for 
 the things she had gone through, reward and 
 enjoyment. 
 
 At noon, amid indescribable confusion, the board 
 ing of the last luggage and freight to the weird songs 
 of the stevedores, the blowing of many whistles and 
 the last leave-takings, the hatches were finally swung 
 into place, the gangplanks hoisted and the hawsers 
 drawn on board. Slowly the little tugs pulled the 
 great lazy monster from its stall in the city, awoke 
 her from her two-weeks slumber, swung her about and 
 faced her toward the deep blue distance. The wharf, 
 with the faces of those Aunt Mary loved and was 
 leaving behind just for a little time, dwindled to an 
 indistinct strip of wooden roofed confusion. The 
 great boat floated farther and farther away from the 
 strip of smiles and waving handkerchiefs and tears. 
 
 For the first time Aunt Mary saw Dame Liberty on 
 her island in the harbor, that iron woman holding 
 her torch aloft to the weak and oppressed of every 
 nation. The tugs, like sturdy irrelevant office- 
 seekers looking for loot, ploughed to and fro, in 
 different to the coming adventures of the great levi 
 athan or greater than the great leviathan, the hap 
 piness in the heart of one woman on its deck. 
 
 Soon all that could be seen of the city was the dis 
 tant overhanging smoke growing fainter and fainter. 
 The arms of the Atlantic were opening wider and 
 wider. America and home were only a mem 
 ory. But what of that ? Was she not going to Eu 
 rope to Europe ! with the big son, her son, who 
 had made this dream reality ? 
 
 Ahead of her were seven wonder days, days of
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 373 
 
 quiet days of infinite peace days of rest and 
 diversion and a laying aside at last of life s burdens. 
 Seven days, indeed, with the trailing, furling smoke, 
 the emerald green of the mountains of water, the 
 impromptu rainbows, the gulls that knew no home 
 by the ever-rocking cradle of the deep, the spray 
 from the swells and the foam from the prow ; seven 
 days with the swing and the swish through the 
 hours ; seven afternoons to sit lazily upon the 
 comfortable chairs of the deck and send her dream 
 cargoes off homeward into the blood-red sunset that 
 was setting for us too, at the same time, back home 
 in New England. Seven nights for the engine to 
 sing her to sleep with its sobbing and the melancholy 
 double-strokes of the bells to mark off the great 
 eternity of time and horizon, when the distance 
 slipped away, past the eye and into the soul, and 
 each low-hung sun on the rim of the world created 
 a shadow-ship that kept them convoy into the 
 mysterious depths of the night. 
 
 She stood by the rail of the gently swaying vessel 
 in the late evening. And Tom came and stood by 
 her side. 
 
 "Havin a good time, mother?" he asked cheerily. 
 
 But she could not reply. 
 
 It meant something to her this " Going Abroad." 
 She had indeed paid for her passage. 
 
 "Mother, I was just going through my black suit 
 to have the boy press it when I came across a letter 
 a woman gave me for you two nights after you 
 knuckled under and we thought you were going to 
 leave us. She wanted to see you but we wouldn t 
 let her in. She went off and returned with this 
 envelope. Maybe you ought to open it. It might 
 be something important."
 
 374 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 There were many lights on deck. Tom led his 
 mother to her steamer chair and she got her glasses. 
 She tore open the envelope. Two papers came out. 
 One was crumpled and wrinkled with long keeping. 
 The other was a blotchy letter but recently written. 
 She read the last first. 
 
 DEAR MARY: 
 
 I heard Thomas Joshua speak at the Tabernacle 
 to-night and some of the things he said hurt me 
 badly. You have six like Tom. I haven t even one. 
 It ought to seem unfair but it isn t. You paid the 
 price for them. I refused. It s a pretty square 
 world after all. We get just about what we 
 deserve. 
 
 I may not see you again, Mary. But for the sake 
 of my soul I want to say something for the man I 
 sent to the bad. I want some one besides me to 
 appreciate him. When I went through his things 
 after he disappeared twenty odd years ago, I found 
 the enclosure. I didn t say anything about it at the 
 time. Mean and dirty like I was, I intended to keep 
 it, and trot it out to lord it over you and make you 
 feel bad. I don t send it in that spirit now. I send 
 it for a square deal for Herbert some sort of poor 
 compensation. 
 
 Good-by, Mary Purse. I won t say God Bless You 
 for that is superfluous. He has done that already and 
 amply. I say, pray God for me, a lonely woman. 
 My cup of sorrow and remorse is very very full. 
 
 MABEL HENDEBSON. 
 
 Mary s old hand trembled a bit as she slowly 
 lowered the letter. Wonderingly, she picked up the 
 enclosure from her black-silk lap. 
 
 It was plainly a receipt for money paid. Across 
 the top in big type were the names :
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 375 
 
 PITS, RULING, DONOVAN & 
 
 WILEY, Attorneys. 
 
 Chicago, El. 
 
 And on the face of the receipt was the information 
 
 Received of Herbert Truman, Paris, Vt., $6000 
 for transfer to Mrs. John Purse, under terms and 
 conditions specified in correspondence, Jan. 17th to 
 May 10th inclusive, purporting to come from estate 
 of late Josiah Wood, Bankrupt. Less usual commis 
 sions. 
 
 For the partnership, 
 
 A. V. WILEY. 
 
 The import of the document dawned upon her. 
 With some of her oldtime vigor, Mary sprang from 
 the chair. She went to the railing. She stood there 
 with her eyes turned back over the sea toward home. 
 
 Herb Truman had been responsible for that 
 legacy ! 
 
 The ship swung softly from side to side. From 
 down on the surface of the waters came the ceaseless 
 swash of the spray. Pedestrians paced the deck. 
 From somewhere far up forward an orchestra was 
 playing dreamy music. 
 
 But of these things Mary Purse took no note. 
 
 The moon came up after a time, and made a fantas 
 tic dreamy place of the infinite wastes of water. 
 Lovers laughed in the shadowed nooks and corners. 
 The black smoke from the funnels trailed off to the 
 distances like a cloud of unleashed black phantoms. 
 
 Her thoughts were back in New England where the 
 peaceful dream-time of the summer night was upon
 
 376 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 the landscape and the crickets were cheeping down 
 in the roots of the ragged lilacs. 
 
 And here, with her lack-lustre eyes fixed on 
 unspeakable solitude, let us leave her. Let us leave 
 her and go back to our labors and our town and news 
 paper and the ordinary t^wio-legged men and women 
 who remain. Let us bid her farewell and see her sail 
 away in the path of the moonlight, calling "Bon 
 Voyage" to her, trusting that the time may come soon 
 when we may join the familiar faces and hear again 
 the familiar voices with her in the Great Port where 
 storm-tossed humanity comes safely to harbor at 
 last. 
 
 For some day, please God, it shall come our turn 
 also to embark upon a journey, to take a ship and 
 sail away for the Port of Missing Faces. Then like 
 Mary Purse, as she draws softly out of our hearts and 
 out of our story, we will become one with the thou 
 sands of souls on the bosom of the Infinite ; we too 
 will be a flash of phosphorus washed on the evening 
 billows. 
 
 THE END.
 
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