Hh 
 
 i\ 
 
tlBRA 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVEiǤITY 
 
 
MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 H Wcwel 
 
 BY 
 
 HARRY PERRY ROBINSON 
 
 When none icas for a Party 
 But all were for the State 
 
 And tlie Rich man helped the Poor 
 And the Poor man loved the GreaV 
 
 Maoaulay 
 
 NEW YORK 
 HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 
 
 1895 
 
Copyright, 1895, by Harper & Brothers. 
 All rights reserved. 
 

 
 
 IN 
 
 GRATITUDE TO, AND REVERENCE FOR 
 
 THE MEMORY OE 
 
 JAMES H. HOWE 
 
 THAN WHOM THIS COUNTRY HAS LOST 
 NO BETTER CITIZEN, OR NOBLER, GENTLER MAN 
 
 M637346 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. AN AFTERNOON CALL 1 
 
 II. FRIENDS AND ACQUAINTANCES 13 
 
 III. THE HOUSE IN FOURTH STREET 28 
 
 IV. OVER THE DINNER-TABLE 39 
 
 V. BEHIND THE SCENES 55 
 
 VI. TWICE TWO AND ONE OVER 66 
 
 VII. A MAN OF AFFAIRS 81 
 
 VIII. THE APOSTLE AND THE MULTITUDE 91 
 
 IX. LOOKING INTO THE GULF 101 
 
 X. THE POWER OF THE PRESS 117 
 
 XL AT CROSS-PURPOSES 129 
 
 XII. THE BEGINNING OF THE STRIKE 142 
 
 xiii. my sister's KEEPER 154 
 
 XIV. AN EVIL GOD 169 
 
 XV. THE GATHERING OF THE STORM 185 
 
 XVI. A TALK AT THE CLUB 198 
 
 XVII. BETWEEN THE CUP AND THE LIP 211 
 
 XVIII. THE FOUNDLING 225 
 
 XIX. A HOME-COMING 238 
 
 XX. ON THE VIADUCT 254 
 
 XXI. IN THE VALLEY OF SHADOW 265 
 
 XXII. THE INQUEST 274 
 
 XXIII. HORACE PUTS HIMSELF ON RECORD 287 
 
 XXIV. THE WHIRLIGIG OF TIME 304 
 
 XXV. A TRIP TO THE CEMETERY 321 
 
 XXVI. MY FRIENDS THE ENEMY 332 
 
 XXVII. UNSTABLE AS WATER 345 
 
 XXVIII. REAPING THE WHIRLWIND 360 
 
 XXIX. ON THE SLEEPING-CAR 368 
 
MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 AN AFTERNOON CALL 
 
 " It is not worthy of you," she said, petulantly. " I am 
 sure that it is not ; and you ought to know it !" 
 
 She was standing just inside the large bow-window, the lace 
 curtains (not white, but ecru) hanging on either side of her. 
 Facing the window, she drummed impatiently on the glass 
 with her fingers as she spoke. The man whom she addressed 
 without looking at him stood some two yards behind her, 
 near the middle of the room, half leaning on the back of a 
 large rug-covered arm-chair. 
 
 " I think," he said, quietly, " that there are a good many 
 things in politics that you do not understand." 
 
 " Of course there are," she retorted, "a great many things. 
 But there are also a good many that I know 1 '' (and she rapped 
 the window sharply to emphasize the word) " without having 
 to understand them." 
 
 " I can believe that," he laughed ; " but what is it in this 
 case that is so poor as to be unworthy of me ?" 
 
 "What? Why, all of it! The cause (as you call it)— the 
 party — the men whom you associate with — their whole be- 
 havior — everything — nothing !" She had turned to face him, 
 and spoke vehemently, throwing out her right hand ner- 
 vously as she enunciated each successive count in the com- 
 prehensive if disjointed indictment. 
 
 His quietness of voice and manner was in sharp contrast to 
 i 
 
2 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 her warmth. By the half-amused, half -admiring look on 
 his face it might have been conjectured that instead of con- 
 tinuing the discussion he would have preferred to tell her 
 how charming she looked, as she stood, flushed and alert, 
 framed in the draperies and the sunlight. But what he said 
 was : 
 
 " Well, as to the cause, you flatter me, of course, in think- 
 ing that I am too good for any cause ; but this cause is the 
 cause of the people, and I cannot imagine that that is un- 
 worthy of anybody. As to the party and the men — I confess 
 that ' sometimes their conduck isn't all as fancy paints ;' but 
 the best and noblest cause accumulates all sorts of follow- 
 ers. We would rather have all the good men ; but if the 
 bad ones come too, how can we say them ' nay ' ? The cause 
 itself in some measure dignifies them. Besides," he added, 
 " the bad man's vote counts, too." 
 
 " But why have you all the bad men and none of the 
 good ?" she broke in. " Why is everybody whom we know 
 against you ? There is papa and Judge Jessel and Mr. Car- 
 rington and Major Bartop and — " 
 
 " Major Bartop," he said, " is a Democrat. I can hardly 
 say that he is with us now, because since the fusion he has 
 taken no active part in politics. He has been very active in 
 the past, however — was in Congress and ran for governor 
 once, and was generally conspicuous as a partisan. Now, it 
 is true, he holds aloof." 
 
 " Of course he does ! How could he help it ? Don't you 
 think that the withdrawal of a man like that, whose tradi- 
 tions are on your side, is an even stronger condemnation than 
 if he had been always opposed to you? AVhy don't you 
 hold aloof, as you call it, too ?" 
 
 " The case is different," he said. " Major Bartop has won 
 his spurs. He is twenty years older than I, and his record 
 and his place are assured. I have still to win mine. It 
 would be more fair if you should 
 
 "' . . . with Fortune chide 
 The guilty Goddess of ray harmful deeds, 
 That did not better for my life provide 
 Than public means, which public manners breed.' " 
 
AN AFTERNOON CALL 3 
 
 " I don't know who your poet is — " 
 
 " It is Shakespeare." 
 
 " Well, I don't care ! It does not sound like him, and 
 you have probably twisted him from his context." 
 
 " I confess that it is reasonable to believe that Shakespeare 
 was not alluding to American politics ; but, as Henry James 
 would say, the ' immitigability of our moral predicament ' is 
 about the same in all ages, and Shakespeare's dilemma still 
 fits me. He took to deer -stealing and a disreputable life 
 about London playhouses. I have to wallow in politics." 
 
 " That is not true," she said, earnestly. " You do not mean 
 what you say, and are doing yourself an injustice. You are 
 not in politics for the sake of making a livelihood. That is 
 the wretched and, at the same time, the absurd part of it. 
 You have taken up the line that you have because you be- 
 lieve it to be your duty. If you were only a dilettante — an 
 idler who was playing at politics to pass the time — then it 
 would not matter. Neither I nor anybody would care. But 
 you are not. You have entered into it with your heart and 
 soul, and you have entered on the wrong side. This is the 
 misery of it !" 
 
 Horace Marsh dropped his jesting tone. He moved away 
 from the arm-chair and stood with his hands clasped behind 
 him, and looked, not at his interlocutrix, but over her head 
 and beyond into the sunlight and the blue sky. 
 
 " Yes, you are right," he said. " I was not speaking seri- 
 ously, and I am in politics because I believe it to be my 
 duty. It is not a merely local question — not a question of 
 Major Bartop — of your father — of me, Miss Holt. It is not 
 confined to this city — to this State — to this country. Nor is 
 it of this century only. It is the old, eternal conflict which 
 has torn all communities and all peoples since man had the 
 last of power and the lust of life." He spoke slowly, paus- 
 ing once in a while to choose a word, and solemnly, as one 
 conscious of a responsibility resting upon his words. " It 
 was the cause of those who were in bondage in Egypt, and it 
 was the cause of the black man in the South. It is the cause 
 of the voiceless millions all over the world and of every age 
 — or if not voiceless, they might as well be so, for they are 
 
4 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 spent with labor and weak with lack of food, and their voices 
 reach only to ears that are deaf, on which they beat in vain. 
 They are the millions of the cities and of the farms — the 
 granger and the yokel, the ryot and the fellah — by whatever 
 name those may be known who water the furrows with the 
 sweat of their faces ; the starving ' submerged tenth,' the 
 canaille, the dock-laborer of London and the mechanic out of 
 work — all they who crowd the alleys and the tenements and 
 the poor-houses of great cities. Beneath the crust of every 
 civilization since the world began there has been the same 
 teeming, reeking misery. Sometimes it bubbles to the sur- 
 face, in bubbles which burst in dynamite and blood. Some- 
 times the whole body of it rises in upheaval and shatters the 
 crust, so that the barricaded streets run red and palaces go 
 down in flames. Sometimes leaders arise who are able by 
 the more peaceful process of the ballot to make some fissure 
 in the crust — an air space, through which breath and sunlight 
 come for a while to the mass below. But the struggle and 
 the seething poverty never end. It seems as if now, for a 
 decade or two past, the terrible forces beneath the surface 
 have been working towards revolution — not here only, but 
 in all countries of the world together — as they have never 
 worked before. It may be that the end is coming — the last 
 great battle of the North — and that society will reconstitute 
 itself upon some larger plan which lies even now laid out in 
 the eye of God. But whether it be the end or only one more 
 boiling over, to be followed by another subsidence, I think 
 the change will be mightier and more far-reaching than any 
 which has been wrought before. I think, too, that, though 
 the struggle is world-wide, it is here in these United States 
 that the real battle will be fought and the real victory won. 
 As we threw off monarchy and stamped out slavery, so, it 
 seems to me, destiny will have it that here shall be the 
 scene of the final triumph over wretchedness and want. We 
 have built the two sides of the arch, and it needs only the 
 key-stone. ... I may be dreaming," he went on — " it may be 
 but young enthusiasm ; but I think not. The thing will come, 
 and left to itself it will come by brute force. This country 
 is within a measurable distance of anarchy to-day. In the 
 
AN AFTERNOON CALL 5 
 
 last resort of violence the physical superiority is necessarily 
 with the many ; and if we leave the lines to be drawn again 
 as they have been drawn always before, though all the brains 
 and refinement and learning of the world are on one side, 
 they will be no match for the muscle which is on the other. 
 In the older countries now the revolution is on the road to 
 working itself out with the bomb and the firebrand and the 
 knife. Surely we, in this country of freedom, can find a bet- 
 ter way ! We have scorned before the precedents of the 
 ages, and we can once more. It is only lack of such leaders 
 as might win the victory by peaceful means that throws the 
 multitude back on its ultimate and one certain resource of 
 violence. The change will come as surely as justice is en- 
 throned in the mind of the Almighty, and if not led other- 
 wise, it will come by blood. But it can be led otherwise, and 
 in the new groupings of parties now in progress in these 
 United States it seems — not alone to me, but to many others 
 — that there has arrived at last the opportunity for which man- 
 kind has waited through the centuries. And in proportion to 
 the opportunity is the peril, if the opportunity be neglected." 
 
 As he spoke, with the September sunlight on his lifted 
 face, there had been an earnestness and an exaltation in his 
 features which appealed immediately and irresistibly to all 
 that was feminine in his hearer. She, uplifted with him, 
 stood with her eyes fixed on his, her lips parted and face 
 flushed, and her fingers clasped nervously before her. But 
 now his manner changed, and something of the former tone 
 of banter came back to his voice. 
 
 " Of course, in such a cause, we cannot pick our fellow- 
 workers. It is difficult to fight the cause of the people with- 
 out having some considerable part of the people on your side, 
 and some of them are not very refined nor very intellectual. 
 They would be ill at ease, perhaps, in this room — and that is 
 the shame of it. In another generation the people may all be 
 at ease together. The best people, as the world understands 
 it, are seldom on the right side ; and least of all in this one 
 eternal controversy. The best people — the counterparts of 
 your father and Judge Jessel and the rest — were not on the 
 side of our Saviour and his apostles." 
 
6 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 As be had changed his tone and dropped to his every-day 
 level again, the spell passed away from her, and the last sen- 
 tence threw her sharply back into her old attitude of antag- 
 onism. 
 
 " That is not fair," she said, quickly. " An argument from 
 Scripture can never be fair. It does not appeal to reason only, 
 and we cannot meet it as we do an argument based on other 
 authority." 
 
 " That is true," he said, smiling, " and I withdraw it. Let 
 us say, instead, that the best people were not on the side of 
 the revolutionists in France." 
 
 " And what analogy is there between our attitude to-day — 
 the attitude of papa or myself — towards the working-classes 
 and the attitude of the nobility towards the French peasantry ? 
 I suppose you compare me to the Countess of What's-her- 
 name who wondered why the starving poor of Paris were 
 clamoring so foolishly for bread when they could buy such 
 nice brioches for a sou. You represent me to your own mind, 
 I presume, as soon to be confronting a red-capped mob armed 
 with pikes and pitchforks, with the house in flames around 
 me." 
 
 " Now, Miss Holt, you are more unfair than I. The per- 
 sonal argument is less permissible than the scriptural, espe- 
 cially from a woman, in proportion as the extraneous disa- 
 bilities which it imposes are worse. But," he added, " I can 
 imagine no one who would confront a mob — or do anything 
 else — more superbly." 
 
 She gave the words a half-contemptuous acknowledgment, 
 and was about to speak again when the butler entered and 
 announced " Mrs. Tisserton." 
 
 Mrs. Tisserton was exceedingly blonde — a blonde of the 
 " negative type," but to such an extreme that the mere nega- 
 tion of color became positive. Small, regular features, fluffy 
 flaxen hair, and pale blue eyes, combined with a trick which 
 she had of keeping her lips slightly parted as if in perpetual 
 interrogation, gave her a curiously childish face. Without 
 being beautiful, she was a woman who could not but attract 
 attention (especially of men) in whatever company she found 
 herself. The extreme blonde — probably in virtue of a certain 
 
AN AFTERNOON CALL 7 
 
 suggestion of potential frailty which her appearance conveys 
 to the masculine mind — is ever more stared at in the street 
 or in a car or in any place where people are gathered to- 
 gether than a handsomer brunette. Mrs. Tisserton's appear- 
 ance did her an injustice. The ordinary woman of the day, 
 with the usual social prejudices and predilections, if thrown 
 into casual contact with Mrs. Tisserton — say, on an ocean 
 steamer — would have looked upon her with suspicion, and 
 have accepted her as an acquaintance only tentatively and 
 with much caution. Yet here in the community where she 
 had dwelt, as girl and matron, for twenty years, no woman 
 was more universally accepted, had lived more completely be- 
 yond reproach, or was more sincerely respected by those who 
 knew her best. Mrs. Tisserton had herself come to be thor- 
 oughly aware of the equivocal attractiveness of her appear- 
 ance, and had not infrequently confided to her husband her 
 determination some day to dye her hair and live the rest of 
 her life a brunette and in peace. 
 
 " I never meet a new man," she said, " who seems to take 
 any sort of pleasure in my company " (a thing which men, 
 new or old, might very reasonably do) " without being con- 
 scious that every woman in the room, except half a dozen 
 who know me too well, is regarding me as a dangerous, de- 
 signing, and, probably, disreputable person. Nature ought 
 either to have made me as bad as I look or else have made me 
 look as good as I am." 
 
 On this occasion as she entered the room and saw the only 
 two occupants (of whom she was probably already aware 
 that at least one had something more than an inclination 
 for the other's company) standing and talking with greater 
 warmth than usually characterizes the casual chat at an after- 
 noon call, she stopped for a moment, as if apologetically, just 
 inside the door. Miss Holt, however, advanced with a cer- 
 tain quick and almost impulsive cordiality which was charac- 
 teristic of her. 
 
 " How do you do, my dear ? I am extremely glad to see 
 you," she said. " We were talking politics, and Mr. Marsh 
 was comparing himself to the apostles, and saying that I 
 ought to be treated like one of the French duchesses and 
 
8 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 things who were impaled by the mob and carried round in 
 pieces." 
 
 " How excessively disagreeable of him," murmured Mrs. 
 Tisserton, as, after shaking hands with the accused, she sank 
 into a comfortable chair. " I am not as sorry that I inter- 
 rupted you as I thought I was. Why is Mr. Marsh like an 
 apostle ?" she asked. She had a curiously deliberate and even 
 way of speaking, with an equal accent on every syllable, 
 which gave strangers the impression that she was affected. 
 " It sounds like a riddle, doesn't it ? And I give it up. It 
 cannot be anything in his personal appearance." 
 
 " No • it is his zeal," said Miss Holt. " I may be misrepre- 
 senting him, but I understood him to say that it was his zeal 
 for the voiceless millions. He is to be a sort of mouth-piece 
 for the misery of the centuries, and he thinks that you and I 
 and all of us frivolous social beings are heartless. "Which way 
 do you propose to level, Mr. Marsh — up or down ?" 
 
 " Neither," said Horace. " There is no talk of levelling. 
 Rich and poor there must always be ; but there need not be 
 hatred between them." 
 
 "And has he been trying to convert you?" asked Mrs. 
 Tisserton. " To make you a sort of Severine or Louise 
 Michel ? I saw that Louise Michel, in a French paper the 
 other day, said that her profession was that of a promulgator 
 of revolutions. Fancy making a profession of promulgating 
 revolutions, especially a woman !" 
 
 "It would be rather hopeless," said Marsh, "to endeavor 
 to make Miss Holt resemble Louise Michel. I went to hear 
 her in London once. She is such a deplorably unattractive 
 person and looks so harmless ! The man who was with me 
 said that she reminded him of a ' mother-in-law who had 
 seen better days.' " 
 
 " I think that is wicked !" said Mrs. Tisserton. " Why do 
 people make fun of mother-in-laws ? They are other people's 
 mothers, and it is awfully bad mannered. Look at Jack's 
 mother — was there ever a dearer old lady?" (Jack, it is need- 
 less to say, was Mr. Tisserton.) " But I wish I could remem- 
 ber in time when I am speaking whether they ought to be 
 called mother-in-laws or mothers-in-law." 
 
AN AFTERNOON CALL 9 
 
 " I know," said Marsh ; " it is like majors-general and aides- 
 de-camp." 
 
 " Or those abominable French participles," suggested Miss 
 Holt, " which always ' agree ' with the other thing, and become 
 feminine and plural when you do not expect them to." 
 , " I am so glad that Ada Cambridge had the courage to call 
 her book The Three Miss Kings," said Mrs. Tisserton ; u The 
 Three Misses King would have been insufferable." 
 
 At this point the party became aware that a new caller 
 had arrived at the front door, and Marsh rose to take his 
 leave. 
 
 " However," he said, " I did not come to talk politics or 
 grammar, but " (addressing Miss Holt) " only to say that I was 
 extremely sorry that I should not meet you at the theatre on 
 Wednesday. You know that I am sorry ; but it is my first 
 important speech out of my own bailiwick, and I must be on 
 hand." 
 
 " I think it is mean," said Miss Holt ; " the Braces are giv- 
 ing a theatre-party, and Mr. Marsh was to dine with us here 
 first. And now the apostle has to address the multitude on 
 that same evening." 
 
 " Jack heard you speak the other night somewhere in ' your 
 own bailiwick,' I suppose, and he was very complimentary — 
 for Jack, that is," said Mrs. Tisserton, "for Jack is not effu- 
 sive. But you really ought to be flattered, because I know 
 he did not agree with you, and Jack is not a bit like an apos- 
 tle, you know." 
 
 Marsh had doubts as to the degree of the compliment con- 
 veyed by "Jack's" admiration. Tisserton was not an intel- 
 lectual critic ; but a speaker who hit his level would probably 
 strike a fair proportion of a mixed audience. Marsh was 
 spared the necessity of expressing his sense of appreciation 
 of Mrs. Tisserton's husband's encomiums, however, by the 
 entrance of a new-comer, whom the butler announced as 
 " Mrs. Flail," and who was already responding to Miss Holt's 
 greeting in a loud and self-assertive voice. 
 
 Mrs. Flail w r as obviously a personage of local importance. 
 Her appearance acknowledged it ; her voice and manner pro- 
 claimed it. The widow of a banker who had died some ten 
 
10 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 years before, leaving her in more than comfortable circum- 
 stances, but childless, she had since then devoted much of her 
 means and nearly all of her time and energy (which latter 
 was extraordinary) to the management and support of those 
 multitudinous feminine organizations which seem necessary 
 to the social life of any self-respecting community, especially 
 if that community be located in the Western States of Ameri- 
 ca, in these last days of the nineteenth century. It was she 
 who had invented Egyptian Lunches — the mysterious func- 
 tions at which a select circle of erudite ladies assembled 
 every alternate Tuesday throughout a winter, and one of the 
 party having first read an essay, by way of grace, on some re- 
 cent phase of Egyptian discovery, the coterie sat down to 
 lunch and discussed chicken-salad and cuneiform inscriptions 
 together, and digested views on cartouches while nibbling 
 salted almonds. They were an immense success. 
 
 It was always, as a matter of course, in Mrs. Flail's draw- 
 ing-rooms that the lion of the day, whether an African ex- 
 plorer, a Russian princess, or a new pianist, was first exhib- 
 ited to the elite of the city. The lion's managers counted 
 upon this private exhibition, in making their dates for the 
 tour, as an eminently advantageous business detail. They 
 would no more have permitted the lion to decline Mrs. 
 Flail's invitation than they would have neglected to advertise 
 in the local papers. All of which (though Mrs. Flail was 
 doubtless ignorant of some of it) was evidence of that lady's 
 importance. The number of " classes " which she had or- 
 ganized in the course of ten years was almost incalculable — 
 classes in every European language and almost all branches 
 of history, in china-painting and water-colors, in photogra- 
 phy and palmistry, in aesthetics according to Delsarte, and 
 mnemonics according to Loisette, in Buddhism and cookery. 
 But though she was most conspicuous in organizations of an 
 intellectual sort, her labors in the cause of charity were 
 scarcely less exacting. It was with difficulty that she pre- 
 vented her sewing-circle at times from colliding with the date 
 for a class on Moorish architecture, and it sometimes taxed 
 both her ingenuity and the speed of her horses to wedge in 
 the meeting of the managers of the creche between a class on 
 
AN AFTERNOON CALL 11 
 
 Confucianism and a French conversazione on the women of 
 the Second Empire. 
 
 She rustled into the room now with a nimbleness which 
 was hardly to have been looked for in a person of her ample 
 proportions. She talked rapidly and with an enthusiasm 
 singularly unlike the even flow of Mrs. Tisserton's placid 
 voice. There could hardly, indeed, have been a stronger 
 contrast than was presented by these two women — one 
 blonde and rather frail, almost infantile of face, very gentle 
 of manner, dressed in a perfectly fitting tailor-made costume 
 of dark green, and charmingly gloved and booted — the other 
 florid and largely built, black -browed, and with massive, 
 square-cut features, full of energy and self-assertion, shod in 
 square-toed walking -shoes, wearing a black glove on one 
 hand only and a carelessly put on and apparently home-made 
 black cashmere gown, which hung in superfluous folds about 
 even her ample form. When Mrs. Flail sat down it was cor- 
 nerwise, and on the very edge of the large chair on which 
 Marsh had formerly been leaning. Sitting, with this good 
 lady, was not a means of rest, but rather the taking up of a 
 strategical position — the en garde of a fencer bracing himself 
 for encounter with an antagonist. 
 
 " What !" she said, somewhat out of breath, as she saw 
 that Marsh was taking his leave, "am I driving you away? I 
 have been trying to find time for ever so long to get to your 
 office to call on both you and General Harter to wheedle you 
 into subscribing to our new kindergarten. What is a good 
 time to find you ?" 
 
 *• Well," replied the other, smiling, " we are nearly always 
 to be found there, one or other of us, and shall always be de- 
 lighted to see you, whether we feel able to subscribe or not. 
 The children at the kindergarten do not vote, do they ? If 
 you could manage it so that a subscription might justifiably 
 be regarded as a campaign expense, you will probably, in 
 these piping times, find the General easier prey. The exigen- 
 cies of politics leave him little margin, I fear, for charitable 
 purposes." 
 
 " The children's parents vote," said Mrs. Flail. " But I de- 
 cline to degrade the kindergarten to the level of politics — at 
 
12 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 least, until it becomes necessary to interest the school-board 
 in taking it into the public-school system. However, you will 
 see me — be sure of that." 
 
 Miss Holt walked as far as the door of the room with 
 Marsh, and stood for a minute holding the portiere back 
 with one hand as she gave him the other. He held it while 
 they exchanged the last sentences. 
 
 " We see you at dinner on Monday, remember," she said, 
 " if we are to be disappointed later." 
 
 " I am not likely to forget it." 
 
 She was looking at him very frankly, and, it seemed to 
 him, something more than kindly, out of her large brown 
 eyes. But was it anything more than kindness ? Was there 
 anything else there than the universal good-fellowship which 
 she felt for everybody whom she liked ? How often had 
 he asked himself this same question on parting from her ! 
 
II 
 
 FRIENDS AND ACQUAINTANCES 
 
 As Horace Marsh left what the local papers were pleased 
 to refer to as "the Holt mansion," he stood for a while on 
 the broad steps, buttoning his gloves, and trying to read in 
 retrospect the riddle of the eyes which had been looking so 
 straightly into his. 
 
 Of his own love for her, he had no doubt, and had had none 
 for some months past. Thoughts of her were always with him 
 in his sub-consciousness as a background to whatever he might 
 be doing or saying ; as Goethe wrote to Charlotte Yon Stein, 
 " Among people I name thy name to myself silently." His 
 actions and ambitions he immediately and almost involun- 
 tarily referred to the standard of her approval, constituting 
 her the innocent censor of all his thoughts and deeds, and 
 doing nothing without asking first in his heart, " What will 
 she think of it ?" 
 
 In spite of this, he was allowing himself to follow a politi- 
 cal course which was essentially distasteful to her. Con- 
 scious of the paradox, he was yet satisfied with the motives 
 which impelled him to go as he did. 
 
 In the first place, as he had told her, there were " a good many 
 things which she did not understand " in politics ; and in the 
 second place, after she should come to understand them, he 
 believed that she would say that he had done well. Thanks 
 to a certain clean sense of self-respect which was in him 
 and a deep-rooted desire to live rightly, the result partly of 
 inheritance and early training, and partly of the conviction to 
 which his own observation had led him, that honesty of pur- 
 pose and strength of principle form the only sure founda- 
 tions of anv manner of real success in this life, he had be- 
 
14 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 lieved it better to hold to the course which conscience pointed 
 out to him, confident in his own ability to make something 
 of his career, and believing that, as she saw him succeeding, 
 he would in the long-run be more sure of her esteem than if 
 he were now at the outset to give up his principles for her 
 sake, and espouse at her bidding a cause which he believed 
 in his heart to be bad. 
 
 Women, he knew, loved strength in men. The majority 
 of them love, first, physical strength, and for the sake of it 
 will forgive almost any coarseness or brutality. They will 
 even love brutality, mistaking it for strength. But women 
 like Miss Holt, Horace said, are ultimately to be bound and 
 held only by force of character and principle. No good 
 woman ever yet failed to love a man more when she found 
 that even she herself could not turn him from the course 
 which he knew to be right. To the credit both of himself 
 and of his estimate of Miss Holt, be it said that Marsh had 
 never once seriously considered yielding to her in this. He 
 thought that he would give almost anything in the world to 
 make things otherwise — either that she might see things in 
 the same proportions as he saw them, or that the conditions 
 of society might be so changed that there would be no room 
 for this gulf between them. But he had not entertained the 
 idea of abandoning his course. 
 
 As he walked, still pondering, down the steps and along 
 the white-flagged pathway to the sidewalk, he was emphati- 
 cally a good-looking fellow. Those who came to know his 
 face well said that he was handsome, but " good-looking " was 
 a title which no one would deny him. His w^as an easily rec- 
 ognizable type, and it is one of the two best types of our 
 young American manhood. About thirty years of age, with 
 good blood in him, cleanly brought up and college-bred, he 
 was now confronting life soberly with a reasonably correct 
 estimate of its requirements and responsibilities. Born in 
 Massachusetts, the son of a clergyman and a scholar, he had 
 gone through Harvard creditably, and, after a post-graduate 
 legal course, spent two years in Europe. On his return to 
 America he had migrated to this Western city to enter the 
 office of an old friend of his father, a lawyer favorably known 
 
FKIENDS AND ACQUAINTANCES 15 
 
 beyond the limits of the local bar, but who had died a year 
 later. Thrown on his own resources, the young attorney had 
 for a while possessed a modest office and a still more modest 
 practice of his own, until, taking an interest in local politics 
 and so coming into contact with " General" (otherwise known 
 , as " Judge" and also as " Governor ") Harter, he had been in- 
 vited by that distinguished and versatile gentleman to fill the 
 place of a partner who had recently moved out of the State. 
 The firm of Harter & Marsh had been in existence now for 
 some two years. 
 
 It was a perfect afternoon ; one of those exhilarating days 
 of Indian summer, of which nature usually vouchsafes some 
 six weeks or two months throughout the Western States in 
 the autumn. Then, under the pale-blue sky, there is a qual- 
 ity in the thin sunlit air perhaps more delightful than any- 
 thing to be met with in any part of Europe, and which goes 
 some way to make amends for the malevolence and treachery 
 of the climate for most of the remaining months. It would 
 have been difficult not to feel "glad of the joy of livino* " on 
 such a day ; and, on the whole, Marsh was contented with 
 himself and with the world. 
 
 The street along which he was walking citywards was 
 what the real-estate advertisements termed "the most desir- . 
 able residence portion of the city." On this bright day the 
 succession of obviously well-to-do houses, each standing back 
 from the roadway with a well-kept lawn in front, looked at- 
 tractive enough. The buildings themselves exhibited all the 
 amazing variety of which Western architecture has shown it- 
 self capable. A heavy, jail-like establishment of rough-hewn 
 red stone, with narrow windows, stood next to a square-set, 
 comfortable colonial house of yellow brick with white trim- 
 mings and broad windows set in the smooth walls, next to 
 which flaunted itself a large wooden villa, with innumerable 
 piazzas, above which rose a riot of shingled gables and ob- 
 trusively ornamental chimneys, the whole culminating in an 
 abomination of a cupola (they called it " cupelo " here) capped 
 with a pretentious weather-vane. The entire structure, a 
 mere heaping together and conglomeration of " features " 
 with not so much as a hand's-breadth of unadorned space on 
 
16 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 which to rest the eye, was painted reddish-brown, save where 
 the pillars of the piazzas were picked out in yellow and white. 
 As Marsh arrived at this particular house, a carriage with 
 two showy sorrels came down the driveway, driven by a 
 coachman in gaudy livery. Our friend, standing to let the 
 carriage pass in front of him across the sidewalk, was re- 
 warded by being made the recipient of an effusive bow and 
 smile from the pretty but unnecessarily youthful matron who 
 was within — Mrs. Carrington. This was the Carrington resi- 
 dence, and one of the Misses Carrington, as tall as her mother 
 and looking nearly as old, still stood under the porte cochere 
 watching the carriage drive away. Marsh smiled in ungrate- 
 ful cynicism as the showy turnout clattered into the roadway. 
 At the next corner he was arrested by hearing his name 
 called, and, turning, saw approaching along the cross-street a 
 man, at sight of whom his face brightened. 
 
 " Hallo, Charlie !" he called, as the other came within 
 speaking distance ; " where have you been hiding yourself ?" 
 " Well," said Charlie, shaking hands cordially, " I've been 
 pretty busy up at the works. They're increasing their elec- 
 trical plant— putting in a lot of new machinery and things — 
 and have had a hard time about it, too. Some of it has not 
 .been the result of accident, either." 
 " How do you mean ?" 
 
 "Oh, little things have been going wrong in away in which 
 things don't usually go wrong of themselves. You know, of 
 course, that there has been talk of trouble for some time, and 
 the men are feeling pretty wicked. There'll be a strike be- 
 fore long, all right." 
 
 " Do you mean that the men have been tampering with the 
 machinery ?" 
 
 " I don't think the climate does it," said Charlie. 
 It was hazarded that Marsh belonged to "one of the two 
 best types of our young American manhood." If so, then 
 Charlie Harrington was a specimen of the other. He also 
 looked what he was — a mechanic who was also a gentleman. 
 He and Marsh came from the same town in Massachusetts, and 
 had been good friends as boys together till each had started 
 out on the path in life for which he considered himself best 
 
FRIENDS AND ACQUAINTANCES 17 
 
 equipped. Harrington had taken to mechanics because he 
 loved them — because Nature had seen fit to implant in him, as 
 she sometimes does, an instinctive understanding of mechan- 
 ical laws, just as she makes other men — men of ability, after 
 their kind — who can be in contact with machinery for years 
 without even coming to understand what it is that makes an 
 engine " go." After distinguishing himself not a little in his 
 course at the Institute of Technology, he had spent two and a 
 half years in the Pennsylvania Railroad shops at Altoona. 
 During those years his spare time was devoted to the study 
 of electricity, and when he left the railroad company's employ 
 it was to enter the service of a large corporation which built 
 and handled electrical plants and supplies. This connection 
 it was which brought him in contact once more with Marsh, 
 when he was sent out by his company, only a few months 
 after his old friend's removal to the West, to superintend the 
 installing of a lighting plant in the large iron and steel works 
 which were the chief industrial establishment of the city. 
 When the task was completed, Mr. Holt (his daughter Jessie 
 we have already met), who was the president of the iron and 
 steel company, and had seen something of Harrington during 
 the work of installation, invited him to stay and take per- 
 manent charge of the electrical plant at the works, in addition 
 to acting as consulting engineer to the street railway com- 
 pany of which Mr. Holt was also president and general man- 
 ager. Harrington had accepted the position, and had re- 
 mained in it ever since. 
 
 The two friends saw less of each other than either wished, 
 but when they met the old footing of boyish familiarity was 
 resumed. Walking together now, they chatted interestedly 
 of each other's affairs. Harrington told of his recent experi- 
 ments and his present ambitions, and of the labor troubles 
 which were threatening at the steel works. He told also of the 
 progress of his love affair. He had, as Marsh knew, been en- 
 gaged to be married for some time, and now formally be- 
 spoke Marsh's services as best man at the wedding, which 
 was to occur early in the following January. 
 
 Drifting back to the labor question, Marsh had asked his 
 friend how the strike, if it came, would affect him. 
 
18 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 ''That's the worst of it," Harrington replied. "I don't 
 think any of the officers of the company suspect it, and I 
 may be wrong myself, but I have an idea that personal dis- 
 like for me has a good deal to do with these present troubles. 
 If there happened to be a man in my place who was what 
 is called a 'friend of labor,' I think they would leave the 
 electrical apparatus alone." 
 
 " What have they against you ?" asked Marsh, in some sur- 
 prise. 
 
 " I never had much of a labor record," said Harrington. 
 " Of course, in my present position, I could not be expected to 
 belong to an organization ; but I didn't when I was with 
 the railroad. Not only that, but I talked on the subject pretty 
 freely at times. If I had been a little older, probably I would 
 not have done it. Those things follow a man ; and though I 
 have said nothing much here, the men know how I feel. And 
 then there's another reason." 
 
 Marsh waited for him to explain himself, which he pres- 
 ently did. 
 
 " This man AVollmer," he said, " who pretty well runs la- 
 bor matters to suit himself in these parts, boards with Mrs. 
 Masson. He started to make love to Jennie, and not unnatu- 
 rally blames me because she will have nothing to say to him. 
 If he saw his chance, I guess he 'Id do anything he could to 
 hurt me. That's what makes me have to be pretty careful 
 up at the works. It wouldn't be difficult, for a man who 
 knew how, to fix those wires so that some day when I was 
 going about my business I'd be dead before I knew it. . . . 
 The old lady," he added, after a pause, " would rather Jennie 
 took him than me. She don't like me a little bit." 
 
 They walked on in silence for a while, when Harrington 
 suddenly called his friend's attention to a man who was ad- 
 vancing to meet them. 
 
 " Do you know him at all ?" asked Harrington. 
 
 " Marshal Blakely ? Oh yes," replied his friend. 
 
 " Know him well ?" Harrington asked again. Before an- 
 swering, Marsh waited until the subject of their conversation 
 had passed them, the two men saluting each other with their 
 canes as they met. 
 
FRIENDS AND ACQUAINTANCES 19 
 
 " No," he said, " not exactly well. I see him around the 
 club a good deal and — elsewhere." 
 
 By " elsewhere " he meant chiefly in Miss Holt's com- 
 pany, but he did not care to be specific. 
 
 " Handsome chap, isn't he ?" asked Harrington again. 
 
 " Infernally handsome !" Marsh responded, with consider- 
 able emphasis, and added, under his breath : 
 
 " ' The sort of beauty that's called human 
 In hell.' "... 
 
 " What the novelists call i distinguished looking,' " volun- 
 teered the electrician. " But what kind of a fellow is he ?" 
 he pursued. " Is he a man that it is likely to do a girl any 
 good to know ?" 
 
 Marsh was so startled by the question that he asked, 
 sharply : 
 
 " Why ? What makes you ask that ?" 
 
 " He's been hanging around Jennie's sister, Annie, a good 
 deal" (Jennie Masson was his fiancee), "and in a sort of un- 
 derhanded way that I don't like. The old lady does not 
 know it, and I guess he thinks that nobody knows it; but 
 Jennie told me, and I saw them together myself a few even- 
 ings ago. I was just leaving the house, about ten o'clock, 
 and passed them as they were saying good-night rather con- 
 fidentially at the corner." 
 
 The information interested Marsh considerably. 
 
 " No, I don't think it is likely to do her any good," he 
 said ; " not that I know anything definite against the man. 
 But — well, perhaps it is only his confounded good looks. 
 It is impossible not to feel suspicious of a fellow with a face 
 like that. He is what the careful European mother would 
 call a typical * detrimental.' Besides — " 
 
 But he broke off, for what he wanted to say was that the 
 young lady's social position was not exactly that which a 
 man of Blakely's stamp would probably require in the woman 
 to whom he paid serious attention. But it was difficult to 
 say this of the sister of his friend's future wife. 
 
 At the next corner the two men separated, Harrington be- 
 ing on his way to call on Miss Masson, and Marsh strolled on 
 
20 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 towards his office. There was no need of haste, for it was 
 Saturday afternoon, and returning to his office at all was 
 little more than a formality, " to see if anything had come 
 in." As he walked he thought of Marshal Blakely and of 
 what he had just heard about him. 
 
 Marsh hated Blakely cordially. Probably he would have 
 done so under any circumstances, for the two had little in 
 common ; but what might have been only a negative antipa- 
 thy was aggravated into intense dislike by the fact of the 
 undeniable friendliness which seemed to have developed be- 
 tween Blakely and Miss Holt. It was easy for Marsh to tell 
 himself that she was not the girl to be seriously attracted 
 to a man like Blakely. The fact remained that she did ap- 
 pear to like him, and, as Marsh had lately said, he was indu- 
 bitably " infernally handsome." Blakely was the only man 
 in whose presence it had seemed to him that Miss Holt 
 showed the least embarrassment of manner. At first Marsh 
 had striven to believe that it was only his own jealous imagi- 
 nation ; but the day came when he knew that it was not. 
 
 It was in a ball-room, and he was standing talking to Miss 
 Holt when Blakely entered the room (he had a habit of ar- 
 riving at dances an hour or two later than anybody else), 
 and as he did so Marsh saw her manner change. They were 
 separated by nearly half the length of a good-sized ball-room 
 from the door at which Blakely entered, but Marsh caught 
 the one quick glance with which she recognized him almost 
 before he was inside the door. It was as if she must have 
 been watching the doorway for his arrival. Marsh saw also 
 that Blakely's eyes rested on her as he looked round the 
 room. Instantly a restraint and self-consciousness had come 
 into Miss Holt's manner. She was nervous and distraite, 
 playing alternately with her programme and her fan, and only 
 by an evident effort succeeding in keeping up a lifeless and 
 desultory conversation. Meanwhile Blakely was moving up 
 the other side of the room, stopping for a minute to talk 
 to one woman, to bargain with another laughingly for a 
 dance, then leaning over to speak to a chaperon seated on a 
 chair against the ball-room wall, or moving aside to let a 
 promenading couple pass; and he did it all with an air for 
 
FRIENDS AND ACQUAINTANCES 21 
 
 which Marsh cursed him in his heart. During this time 
 Miss Holt's back had been turned to the new arrival, and 
 certainly her eyes had not rested upon him since that first 
 minute when he was at the doorway. None the less, Marsh 
 could see that she was acutely conscious of the other's prog- 
 ress up the room, in the course of which he had now passed 
 the point opposite to where the two were standing. Miss 
 Holt, as if by accident, shifted her position, so that by turn- 
 ing her head very slightly to the right she could look directly 
 at Blakely where he now was. At the instant that she did 
 so, as if there had been some sympathetic communication 
 between them, Blakely also turned towards her, and their eyes 
 met. This time both bowed across the room. Blakely did 
 not, as Marsh had expected, come over to speak to her, but 
 went deliberately on his way, while Miss Holt turned quickly 
 back to her companion, with a higher color in her cheeks and 
 a confusion in her manner as she said, all in one sentence : 
 
 " I beg your pardon — I'm afraid I was not attending to 
 what you said — How warm this room is ! — Let us go and 
 sit on the stairs — Shall we ?" 
 
 Marsh could not reply for the wrath and the turmoil which 
 was in him. Bowing his acquiescence and offering her his 
 arm, he walked in rigid silence with her from the room, feel- 
 ing the blood buzzing in his temples. They found a place at 
 the foot of the stairs and sat down ; but though the silence 
 was torture to Marsh, he found it impossible to speak. In a 
 few minutes Blakely came strolling in seeming aimlessness 
 out of the ball-room. He glanced carelessly over the various 
 groups scattered through the hall, and made his way slowly 
 to where Miss Holt was seated on the stairs. Her self-pos- 
 session had returned to her now, and it was with perfect free- 
 dom that she shook hands and commented laughingly on the 
 lateness of his arrival. 
 
 "And is there any use in my asking for a dance at this 
 period of the evening ?" he had asked. 
 
 " I am not sure," she replied, although Marsh was aware 
 that she had refused half a dozen applicants in the last fifteen 
 minutes. 
 
 " Yes," she added, after pondering over her programme for 
 
22 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 a while, "you can have that one — No. 16. There is some- 
 body's name there, but he has another dance and I will ex- 
 cuse myself." 
 
 " It is very good of you, and more than I deserve," said 
 Blakely, gratefully, a sentiment with which Marsh most thor- 
 oughly agreed. A moment later the music began again, and 
 Miss Holt's partner for the next dance appeared, and led her 
 away with an air of smirking and apologetic triumph. 
 
 Marsh thought that he had never felt quite so miserable in 
 all his life as he did that night and for days after. Miss Holt, 
 he knew, had only met Blakely once or twice before, and 
 Marsh tried to assure himself by explaining to his own heart 
 twenty times a day that it was nothing more than the natural 
 curiosity of a woman to see something more of a handsome 
 stranger whom she had necessarily heard a good deal talked 
 about. Since that evening (which was two months ago) he 
 had seen no recurrence of embarrassment in Miss Holt's man- 
 ner in Blakely's presence, and had gradually acquired some- 
 thing like confidence in his theory of woman's natural curi- 
 osity. He had a younger sister, married now, acquaintance 
 with whom had taught him how large a space the youth of 
 the other sex occupies in the thoughts of even the best and 
 purest girls of the present day. The lover's natural conceit 
 also came to his aid and helped to allay his uneasiness. The 
 more he saw of her the more he was convinced that there was 
 no danger of her being seriously and permanently attracted 
 to such a man as Blakely. None the less, he hated Blakely, 
 and was wretched when they were together. This afternoon 
 he had an unreasonable suspicion that Blakely was on his way 
 to call on Miss Holt when they had met, and wished with all 
 his heart that he could find some decent excuse for returning 
 to the house himself. 
 
 But this was obviously out of the question. So he walked 
 moodily to the building in which his office was located. In 
 the firm's outer room a belated typewriter was still at work, 
 hammering spitefully on the keys, as if resentful of being 
 detained so long after business hours. Under ordinary cir- 
 cumstances Marsh would have spoken to her kindly in apol- 
 ogy for her detention, for he knew that she was working on 
 
FRIENDS AND ACQUAINTANCES 23 
 
 a brief for him. But he only wondered to himself whether 
 she, too, would neglect a good, sterling fellow for the sake 
 of a flashy, dissipated scoundrel, with a heavy cavalry mus- 
 tache and a pair of black eyes. 
 
 Passing into his private room, he picked up two letters which 
 were lying on the top of his desk, and looked indifferently 
 at the addresses. The handwriting did not interest him — 
 bills probably ; so he threw the two envelopes discontentedly 
 aside, and sat down to sway himself moodily from side to 
 side in his revolving-chair. As he did so he became aware 
 that the door from his room to that of his partner was ajar, 
 and from within came the sound of men's voices, raised as if 
 in heated discussion. 
 
 " It's dom ticklish work, I'm tellin' ye," said a loud voice, 
 with a strong Irish brogue, which Marsh recognized as belong- 
 ing to one of the Democratic city officials. " That road passes 
 mighty near to the State's Prison, that's what it does." There 
 was a pause, and then the same voice resumed : " It isn't for 
 now, I'm manin', for the boys would all be in it togither. But 
 suppose by any dom slip the election was to go the wrong 
 way, and the Republicans got possession of the books and 
 begun to make investigations?" 
 
 " They're more likely to get possession of the books if you 
 don't do it than if you do," said another voice, which Marsh 
 also thought he recognized. " But you can fix it — charge it 
 up to street-cleaning or police or something. If the men 
 strike there will be need of extra expenditure for police, 
 and don't you forget it." 
 
 " I'm thinkin' it would be more sagacious to assess the 
 boys openly," answered the Irishman ; but Marsh was alarmed 
 at what he had already heard and was anxious to hear no more. 
 He opened his desk noisily, and swung the rolling top back 
 with a crash, while he shifted his chair, making as much 
 noise as possible, and coughed ostentatiously. The voices in 
 the other room sank so that they reached him but as an indis- 
 tinguishable murmur. A few minutes later Marsh heard a 
 footstep cross the adjoining room, the door was pushed open 
 from the other side, and General Harter's imposing figure 
 stood in the doorway. 
 
24 MEN BOKN EQUAL 
 
 "Hallo, Marsh!" be said, with well -assumed heartiness; 
 " did not know you were here. Come inside ! We are hold- 
 ing an informal council of war." 
 
 " I only got in a few minutes ago," said Marsh, as he fol- 
 lowed his partner into the other room. 
 
 It was a large, well -lighted apartment, indicative of the 
 politician rather than the lawyer. The long, heavy mahog- 
 any table, covered with blue baize, with a clump of ink- 
 stands and pens and blotting-paper in the centre, was more 
 suggestive of meetings of a campaign committee than of con- 
 fidential interviews between attorney and client. At present 
 the only occupants of the room were the two whose voices 
 Marsh had already recognized. Timothy Sullivan, the big 
 Irish politician, was sitting in an arm-chair, with his silk hat 
 tilted forward on his forehead and his long legs stretched out 
 on the carpet in front of him, his toes in the air. The other 
 man, who stood looking out of a window, turned as the two 
 lawyers entered, and showed, as Marsh expected, the reddish- 
 bearded face of August Wollmer, the labor-leader. 
 
 " Come in, me boy !" the Irishman called, in his loud, thick 
 voice, " we was just after talkin' about yersilf. When the 
 Gineral here thought he heard you outside there I was just 
 sayin' that it was a dom fool piece of business the way your 
 dates were set for the campaign. Holy Moses ! we want 
 you to speak in every ward in the city, and as many of the 
 large towns outside as you can make before election. It's 
 the big audiences that you ought to have, instead of squan- 
 derin' yer talents on a lot of Jim Crow, cross-roads places 
 that don't poll enough votes among 'em to elect a scrub-wom- 
 an. What's the use of havin' good speakers if you don't use 
 'em? I'm goin' to give the committee some straight talk on 
 the subject, an' don't you forget it." And he snorted con- 
 temptuously at the outrage which was being perpetrated. 
 
 Marsh knew that the whole thing was a lie, born of the 
 impulse of the moment; but before he could reply Wollmer 
 spoke. 
 
 " That's so," he said. " I want to have you come out to the 
 works and talk to the men there. I haven't heard you speak 
 myself, but those who have say you are the best man we've got." 
 
FEIENDS AND ACQUAINTANCES 25 
 
 "Oh, I guess they've given me all I deserve," said Marsh. 
 " I am down for Jackson on Thursday and Olympia the fol- 
 lowing week." 
 
 "That's all right!" broke in the Irishman, impetuously. 
 " I haven't nothin' to say against Olympia nor yet Jackson. 
 They're good towns enough. But do ye look at some of the 
 speakers that are booked for all the big places — umbrageous 
 idiots, who can't hold a candle to yersilf." He spoke with 
 intense indignation, and shook the square forefinger of his 
 fat right hand at Marsh as if he were inculcating at once all 
 the three hundred and sixty-five virtues of Abracax. 
 
 Marsh was still too young not to feel pleased, in spite of 
 himself, by the flattery which was thus thrust upon him, and 
 he could not but admire the readiness with which the gross 
 Irishman had brought his batteries to bear. 
 
 But the subject was not at the heart of any one of the 
 party. Marsh showed no enthusiasm, and the General did 
 not speak at all, so the conversation soon flickered out in a 
 few desultory oaths and objurgations from the big Irishman. 
 In a short time the two visitors took themselves away, and 
 Marsh, after some commonplace remarks on affairs of the 
 office, returned to his desk, leaving the General alone. 
 
 It was drawing towards evening, and the typewriter had 
 gone, leaving the completed brief on Marsh's desk. He took 
 it up, but did not read it. The times were out of joint. 
 Blakely, he supposed, was still with Miss Holt, and he 
 fumed inwardly at the thought. And then there was this 
 crass Irishman and the oily Teutonic agitator! . . . " It is 
 not worthy of you," she had said. " The cause — the party — 
 the men whom you associate with !" 
 
 Horace Marsh had thrown himself into politics with all the 
 single-hearted zeal of the young reformer. From his boy- 
 hood he had taken an interest in social questions, and in his 
 travels in Europe had investigated not a little for himself the 
 condition of affairs in France, England, and Germany. He 
 saw how selfish and mercenary the majority of the " cham- 
 pions of the people " in all countries were, and how vicious 
 was nine-tenths of the doctrine that was preached from the 
 platform and the press to the working-classes of the world. 
 
26 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 But he had become convinced also that mighty forces were 
 at work beneath the surface — forces which could not be 
 checked, and which were in terrible danger of being turned 
 into channels which would bring horror to mankind. In 
 America it seemed to him that the peril was even nearer than 
 in any country of the Old World. There was less individual 
 anarchism of the violent sort — less talk of bombs and blood- 
 shed. But though the current here ran silently, was it not 
 deeper ? In the movement towards industrial revolution in 
 America there was less outward threat of force. It masked 
 itself with the semblance of lawfulness and constitution- 
 ality ; for the laws and the Constitution of the United States 
 give a more generous shelter to treason than those of any 
 other nation. And was not the danger, therefore, greater? 
 
 When Marsh returned to this country and took up life in 
 earnest the Third Party movement was about beginning to 
 assume something like national importance. He saw how 
 grossly the party in some localities — in this State and in that 
 — was being misled and put to most pitiful uses ; but in 
 it also it seemed to him that he saw a force rising which 
 was as yet measurably free from the dangerous teachings of 
 the European socialists, and which, with no evil traditions 
 behind it, might be guided into paths which would lead it to 
 greater good than the world had seen. If only the con- 
 science of the people could be aroused ! Then the Ameri- 
 can nation would sweep away the wire-pullers and the ward 
 politicians, and march on, guiding itself temperately and 
 purely. 
 
 When he spoke from the platform it was on a lofty level 
 and with a high enthusiasm of conviction which never failed 
 to carry an audience with him. When confronted with the 
 tricks and meannesses of the politicians of the day they re- 
 volted him. What need had the sacred cause of them ? 
 
 Of all the professional politicians whom he had met, General 
 Harter had inspired him with most confidence. He had be- 
 lieved in him thoroughly — believed that he w r as possessed of 
 the same high ideals as himself. He believed in him still. 
 It was true that in some few small things it had not seemed 
 to him that his senior partner was as — well, as rigidly scru- 
 
FRIENDS AND ACQUAINTANCES 27 
 
 pulous in his moral sense as he had thought. But they 
 had been small things only. The conversation of which he 
 caught the scraps that day gave him a deeper uneasiness than 
 anything that had yet occurred. And he sat at his desk, 
 pondering moodily until the room darkened into twilight and 
 grew chill. 
 
Ill 
 
 THE HOUSE IN FOURTH STREET 
 
 The lower end of Fourth Street, where Mrs. Masson and 
 her daughters lived, had once been the fashionable part of 
 town, but in the rapid growth of a Western community busi- 
 ness of a petty retail kind was already encroaching upon it. 
 At one corner of the square on which the Massons lived stood 
 a small " fruit and confectionery " store, nailed to the door- 
 posts of which hung recent copies of the cheaper illustrated 
 weekly papers. Immediately opposite a photographer's stu- 
 dio bore the name " Eldred, Artistic Photographer," in large 
 gold letters of flowing script on a black sign reaching the 
 full width of the second story of the building. At No. 319 
 — the next door to the house where lived the object of 
 Harrington's devotion — a large white card -board sign an- 
 nounced that there was the place of business of " Madame 
 Starret, Parisian Dressmaker. Dressmaking taught in all 
 its branches." Nearly every other house on both sides of the 
 street bore cards in the lower windows or pendent from the 
 door-handles, informing passers-by that there were rooms to 
 rent within, or that boarders were taken by the day or week. 
 
 The house in which we are chiefly interested was one of a 
 row of some six or seven three-storied brick buildings, uni- 
 form in size, and very plain and bare of ornamentation. 
 Once white, the paint had become blotched and discolored, 
 especially where the rain-water leaking from the rusty pipes 
 had stained the walls into irregular, map-like patterns of yel- 
 low and gray. The front door of each house, some four feet 
 above the level of the sidewalk, was reached by a short, steep 
 flight of artificial stone steps, with an iron hand -railing on 
 either side. 
 
THE HOUSE IN FOURTH STREET 29 
 
 As Harrington approached No. 317 another man came out 
 of the doorway. Seeing the electrician advancing, he waited 
 on the bottom step, and, while the two were yet some paces 
 apart, called out to him without formal greeting : 
 
 " You are luckier than I to-day, Charlie !" 
 
 " That so ? Why, what's up, Tom ?" 
 
 " Annie's side," said Tom, dolorously. " Miss Jennie says 
 she does not know what's the matter ; but she's in bed, and I 
 can't see her." 
 
 " I'm sorry, Tom," said Harrington. " I hope it's nothing 
 serious." 
 
 " Oh, I guess not. Miss Jennie says not." 
 
 Tom Weatherfield was, besides being very much in love 
 with Jennie Masson's younger sister Annie, a printer. A 
 sober, industrious fellow — unusually sober and industrious 
 for a member of that ordinarily rather dissipated and sport- 
 ively inclined fraternity — he had accumulated means enough 
 (or, as he would have said himself, " got enough ahead ") to 
 launch out in a small job-printing office of his own. Hav- 
 ing thus worked out his independence, he now felt justified 
 in undertaking to support a wife — which wife he proposed 
 should be Annie Masson. There had been no definite an- 
 nouncement of an engagement, for Annie — a fair-haired, pink- 
 cheeked girl of a rather shallow prettiness — was inclined, 
 while accepting Weatherfield's attentions publicly enough, to 
 be secretive as to the progress of their relations. Her sister 
 asked no questions, and those which Mrs. Masson ventured 
 upon received but unsatisfactory answers. 
 
 Harrington liked Tom Weatherfield. He pitied him, of 
 course, for the absurdity of his being in love with Annie 
 Masson. Not that Annie was not a good girl enough. Har- 
 rington always said that she was " one of the dearest girls in 
 the world ;" but for some time he had persisted in regarding 
 Tom's unconcealed admiration for her as a Machiavellian ruse, 
 under cover of which the villain hoped to worm his way 
 into the elder sister's heart. Weatherfield, however, was not 
 a man whom it was possible to suspect for long, and Har- 
 rington had gradually thawed towards the young printer until 
 an entirely cordial friendship had grown up between them. 
 
30 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 Harrington now began to ascend the steps, while Weather- 
 field, a picture of desolation, moved up the street. After 
 going a few paces he turned. 
 
 "By -the -bye," he called back, "did you hear that there 
 was to be a joint meeting of the steel-works men and street- 
 railway hands on Monday night at the new Labor Temple ?" 
 
 "I didn't know the temple was ready." 
 
 " It isn't," replied Weatherfield ; " but it is near enough to 
 it to hold a meeting in." 
 
 " What will they do ?" Harrington asked. 
 
 " Vote to go out together, probably," said Weatherfield, 
 who, as a member of the Typographical Union, was better 
 informed on local labor matters than was the electrician. " If 
 they don't, then the mill men will go out alone, in the hope of 
 the other fellows following later." 
 
 Harrington made no comment on this information, but 
 turned to go into the house, ringing the bell shortly, and 
 passing on into the hall without waiting for an answer. 
 As he entered Jennie Masson came out of a side-room to 
 meet him. 
 
 " I thought I heard your voice," she said, as she held up 
 her lips to be kissed. 
 
 Hers was, perhaps, not a pretty face ; but it was a face 
 that Andrea del Sarto would have loved. Her features were 
 regular and clearly cut, with a singularly restful expression, 
 and the soft brown hair, parted smoothly back on either side 
 of an unusually white forehead, gave her an air of curious 
 and Evangeline -like purity. The gray woollen gown was 
 almost concealed under a large white apron which reached 
 from her bosom nearly to her feet, and which was streaked 
 here and there with patches of color and stains of many 
 indistinguishable hues. The apron — as well as the stains 
 upon it — needed no explanation, for she had come to greet 
 her lover without laying aside a small plate which she held 
 in her left hand, while in her right she carried a little im- 
 plement with a crooked onyx tip, known to china-painters as 
 a " burnisher." 
 
 " That's pretty !" he said, approvingly, as, after kissing her, 
 he took her by the wrist and raised her hand holding the 
 
THE HOUSE IN FOURTH STREET 31 
 
 plate, so that he could look at it. " How well the two golds 
 come out !" 
 
 " Yes, I think they do," she said, putting her head on one 
 side and looking at her work critically. " I should like to 
 do a set like this in pink, but it is impossible to get the right 
 pink. I wish I could go to the Crown Derby works and steal 
 some of their color. They are the only people who can really 
 get the proper shade. A miserable woman sent me a sample 
 of a new color the other day which she guaranteed to be the 
 real Du Barry. I knew it would not be before I tried it; 
 and it came out of the kiln a horrid magenta — just as they 
 all do." 
 
 He had slipped his arm around her waist, and thev walked 
 side by side through the front room, from which she had 
 issued (and which was the family parlor), to the dining-room, 
 which opened off it to the rear, and which also served as her 
 studio. The dining-table was pushed to one side, while be- 
 yond, close under the window, stood a smaller table of plain 
 deal covered with a newspaper, on which were strewn in con- 
 fusion half a dozen plates, a cup or two, bottles of turpentine 
 and gold, a ragged and paint-stained silk handkerchief, two 
 old knives with blades thick with pigment, and a dozen or 
 more of brushes, pencils, burnishers, etc. — all the working 
 outfit of the china-decorator. Some deep shelves set into a 
 recess in the wall supported a medley of china plates and 
 cups and saucers, vases of all imaginable shapes, small pitch- 
 ers, and odds and ends of queer pots and things intended for 
 toilet articles. Most of these were still white ; others had 
 been experimented on and abandoned ; others again were 
 waiting to be fired, and still others had apparently been 
 given up as failures after firing — a pathetic accumulation, 
 which Harrington had christened "the poor-house," made 
 up as it was of the incompetent and the broken-down, those 
 who had started in life radically incapable, and had never 
 been put to any use, and those who had been given their 
 chance, and passed through the furnace and gone wrong. 
 
 " I hear that Annie's not well," he said, as she took her 
 accustomed seat at the work-table. 
 
 " No, poor girl ! I suppose Tom told you ?" He nodded. 
 
32 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 "We do not know what is the matter — nothing definite, I 
 think. She is just run down, and does not want to see any- 
 body — n ot even a doctor ; so I have persuaded mother to 
 get her out of town for a few weeks, and she is going to 
 Aunt Susan's, in Indiana, where she can have as much fresh 
 air and as little company as she pleases. Mother and Aunt 
 Susan do not speak, so I had to write myself and make 
 arrangements." 
 
 At this moment a sharply nasal voice was heard calling 
 from above — one of those voices which Dr. Holmes hated so 
 cordially. In the West the responsibility for this quality of 
 voice is thrown upon New England (for which, perhaps, Dr. 
 Holmes himself is largely to blame), but it must be confessed 
 that long sojourn in the Western climate, and even distilla- 
 tion to a second and Western-born generation, does not render 
 it materially more dulcet. 
 
 " Jennie ! Jennie !" called the voice. 
 
 Jennie laid down the plate and burnisher, and went into 
 the hall. 
 
 " Yes, mother !" 
 
 " Is that Harrington fellow down there ?" Mrs. Masson 
 asked, loudly enough (and with obvious intention) for Har- 
 rington to hear. 
 " Yes, mother !" 
 
 " How long is he going to stay 2" 
 
 " I don't know, mother ; I haven't asked him," replied the 
 girl. 
 
 " Well, don't he know Annie's sick ?" 
 " Yes, mother !" 
 
 The person up-stairs could be heard moving away, grum- 
 bling incoherently to herself, having, she conjectured, attained 
 her object of making the man below sufficiently uncom- 
 fortable. Indeed, as the girl returned to the room she 
 found Harrington (although he was not unused to these en- 
 couraging receptions from the lady of the house) looking 
 very miserable. 
 
 " I am awfully sorry, Jen girl !" he exclaimed, ruefully. 
 " Why, dear ? It isn't your fault," she said, as she returned 
 to her seat with a slightly heightened color in her clear cheeks 
 
THE HOUSE IX FOURTH STREET 33 
 
 and recommenced rubbing the plate vigorously, almost vi- 
 ciously, with the little burnisher. " Besides," she added, after 
 a pause, and looking up smilingly, " I like you well enough 
 for two." 
 
 " I believe you do, sweetheart !" And he slipped from 
 his chair on to his knees, putting his arms around her waist 
 and looking up into her face. " I know you do, Jen ; but I 
 am almost afraid to say it. It seems so presumptuous and 
 impossible." 
 
 She had laid down the plate and the burnisher, and stroked 
 his hair back caressingly from his forehead. 
 
 " I don't only like you, Charlie," she said, softly, " I love 
 you. I believe vou are just as good and true as a man can 
 be." 
 
 " I would have to be, darling, to be good enough for you." 
 
 Their lips met, and Harrington returned to his seat. Some 
 minutes of silence followed, in which both w r ere very happy. 
 The chill of the icy blast from above-stairs had vanished un- 
 der the warmth of the one kiss. 
 
 Mrs. Masson, it should be said, was not Jennie's own mother. 
 She was Masson's second wife, and when he married her Jen- 
 nie was already ten, and her sister seven years of age. The 
 girls had never liked their step-mother, and since their father's 
 death, four years before, had known little of the comfort of 
 home-life. Jennie was patient towards the older woman — 
 more patient than her impetuous sister — and never failed to 
 show her the respect, even if she could not feel the love, 
 which was due to a mother. 
 
 For a while nothing was to be heard in the room but the 
 peculiar tinkle of the onyx point on the china, and Harring- 
 ton sat and watched the rapidity with which she handled the 
 little tool. She had unusually white and shapely hands, al- 
 most ideally perfect hands, in spite of the constant contact 
 with turpentine to which they were subjected, and Harrington 
 liked to look at them. 
 
 At last she broke the silence. 
 
 " Tom was telling me that the trouble with the men up at 
 the works is coming to a head." 
 
 " Yes, I'm afraid it's so," said Harrington. " It's an idiotic 
 
34 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 thing, I think, and our friend Wollmer is more to blame 
 for it than any one else. The company is losing mon- 
 ey; it must be at present prices. All the higher salaries 
 have been cut, but none of us- has thought of grumbling. 
 We can't expect the company to go on in times like these, 
 when it is running behind right along, to pay us as much as 
 it does when it is making money. It can't do it. Moreover, 
 it will not hurt the company to shut down — that is to say, 
 that of course it hurts any company to go out of business for 
 a while, and with a large plant like ours there is considerable 
 actual expense and danger in shutting down and opening up 
 again, apart from the loss of business. But the loss would 
 not be as great as it would be from running three months 
 with the present pay-rolls and business as it is to-day. A 
 company hates to shut down if it can avoid it. It probably 
 could avoid it — anyway, it is willing to try — if the men would 
 consent to the reduction. If they won't consent, the works 
 will shut down, that is all. The men have the chance of work- 
 ing at about eighty per cent, of their present pay or not 
 working at all. They cannot possibly compel the company 
 to go on at the old scale ; that would simply mean insolvency ; 
 and it is better to shut down and wait for better times than 
 it is to fail." 
 
 " Then why don't the men see it in that way ?" she asked. 
 
 "Because they are fools, most of them. Because they 
 choose to believe what Wollmer and the rest tell them, in- 
 stead of looking at the facts and facing the situation square- 
 ly. They are just like any other lot of men. A few loud- 
 mouthed, restless, pernicious fellows among them do all the 
 talking. Two-thirds of the rest never think for themselves, 
 and believe whatever the leaders tell them. The other third 
 sit back and say nothing, either because they know it is use- 
 less or because they are afraid of the union." 
 
 "But I can't understand how men can be so silly," she 
 said. " Why does not somebody tell them the truth ?" 
 
 " Tell them, darling ! Who can ? They won't listen to any- 
 body. The press sometimes does, but it is the papers which 
 they don't read. The papers which they do read cater to 
 them and encourage them. If a sensible man gets up in 
 
THE HOUSE IX FOURTH STREET 35 
 
 meeting and tries to speak, he is cried down and ridiculed ; 
 and more than that, he is treated as a spy and a 'scab' ever 
 afterwards. Nobody can tell them anything except these 
 same loud-mouthed ones and the union leaders, who have no 
 ends to serve but their own aggrandizement, and haven't done 
 a stroke of work for years except with their mouths." 
 
 " But Mr. Wollmer talks here about the tyranny of the 
 corporations, and says that the company is trampling the life 
 out of the laboring men." 
 
 "Of course he does," said Harrington, hotly. "Tramp- 
 ling the life, indeed, when it furnishes them their bread and 
 butter ! When the works were started it was not, of course, 
 as a charitable institution. It was not with the direct inten- 
 tion of furnishing work and a living to so many men and 
 their families. But the result has been the same. The 
 stockholders who have put their money into it have not so 
 far received a penny in return. The first year the works 
 about paid expenses. The second year they made a profit, 
 but instead of declaring a dividend it was decided to increase 
 the plant, and that increase is only just completed. About 
 the time they began to put in the new machinery the finan- 
 cial panic struck the country, and since then business has 
 been at a stand-still. Not only has the company not made 
 any money, but it must have had to borrow heavily. The 
 men who invested about two million dollars in the thing have 
 so far not received a cent's return. More than that, they 
 have lost about half a million or three-quarters of a million of 
 their money. So much has just gone out of sight. There 
 has been the depreciation in value by wear and tear in three 
 years' run, and then in addition to that all property has gone 
 off from twenty to thirty per cent, in value during the panic. 
 Up to date the men who- created the mills have lost some- 
 where from half a million dollars upwards. Meanwhile they 
 have paid for labor some five or six million dollars, first and 
 last. Every penny there has been in it the men have got, 
 and half a million or so to boot. They have taken no 
 chances, and have had to stand no loss. Everything they 
 have done they have been paid for in cash on the 10th of 
 every month — and paid in good wages, too. Some of those 
 
86 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 men get six and seven dollars a day. Now, because the 
 company cannot stand it any longer — after it has lost money 
 and borrowed and run behind — and has to ask the men to 
 help it through by taking a cut in wages, they talk about 
 tyranny and trampling the life out of them. Oh," he added, 
 in a tone of deep disgust, "it makes me tired !" 
 
 " What will happen if they do strike ?" she asked, anx- 
 iously. 
 
 "They will be beaten," he replied. "They have not a 
 ghost of a chance of success. They cannot possibly com- 
 pel the company to do the impossible. They may come to 
 time quickly, or they may stay out and make trouble — hang 
 around and talk anarchism and drink while their wives and 
 children are hungry at home. They may grow violent, and 
 riot and destroy property. Then they will end by ' compro- 
 mising,' which is the phrase the labor leader uses for back- 
 ing down when he has been beaten — the same sort of a 
 compromise as Lee made at Appomattox." 
 
 " No ; but what I meant was, how will it affect you ?" she 
 asked. 
 
 " Oh, I may be out of a job for a while, but most proba- 
 bly the company would keep me in some way. If there is 
 any need of men — either as watchmen or special police or dep- 
 uty-sheriffs — in case of trouble, I should offer my services. I 
 can be of a good deal more use than strangers who don't 
 know the works." 
 
 "But you will not put yourself in any danger, will you?" 
 and she laid her hand tenderly on his knee. 
 
 " Not unless I have to," he said, laughingly, and taking her 
 hand in his, " you may be sure of that. I have too good a 
 thing waiting for me next January — a thing with brown hair 
 and the sweetest gray eyes in the world." He pressed her 
 soft, white hand caressingly to his lips and cheek, and then 
 continued, lightly : " But all this is a long way ahead. The 
 men have not struck yet. There are too many ' ifs ' in the 
 way before I can do anything very desperate for us to worry 
 about it now." 
 
 Once more the voice of Mrs. Masson was heard calling — 
 if possible, a shade more sharply than before. 
 
THE HOUSE IN FOURTH STREET 37 
 
 " Yes, mother," said the daughter, hurrying into the hall 
 and speaking from the foot of the stairs. 
 
 " Is that man there yet ?" 
 
 " Yes, mother." 
 
 " Well, ain't it nearly supper-time ?" 
 
 " It must be within an hour of it, mother." 
 
 And the old lady was heard retreating again, with Par- 
 thian murmurings of discontent, into her room above. 
 
 Harrington was only amused this time as he came forward 
 to meet his sweetheart. 
 
 "Well, Jen," he said, "I guess I had better be going, any- 
 way." 
 
 They stood inside the room while they bade each other a 
 lovers' farewell, and walked out hand in hand into the hall. As 
 they opened the front door Wollmer was ascending the steps. 
 
 " Good-evening, Miss Masson," he said, raising his hat, and 
 without recognizing Harrington. " How is your sister this 
 evening?" 
 
 "She is doing nicely, thank you," she replied, standing 
 aside to let him pass into the house, where, as Harrington 
 had told Marsh, he was now boarding. The others made no 
 comment on the meeting, but their eyes met laughingly. 
 
 "Good-bye, Jen," said Harrington, tenderly, taking her hand, 
 and, after a stealthy glance up and down the street, raising it 
 hastily to his lips. 
 
 " Good-bye," she said, as he ran lightly down the steps. 
 After a couple of paces he turned and lifted his hat to her, 
 while she laid the tip of a white forefinger on her lips and 
 tossed him the most fairy-like of kisses. 
 
 How quiet the street was on a Saturday afternoon! She 
 thought so as she stood for a moment and watched his re- 
 treating figure, then turned and looked the other way, where 
 no moving thing was in sight but one stray dog, sniffing aim- 
 lessly along the gutter. He thought so, too, as he walked 
 briskly northward, and turned the corner where the news- 
 papers fixed to the door-post of the little fruit-store flapped 
 drearily in the slight breeze that was blowing. And neither 
 he nor she had the gift of second-sight to enable them to see 
 that street but a few short weeks in the future. 
 
38 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 Have you ever noticed how a house which has become 
 suddenly notorious as the scene of some awful deed of vio- 
 lence, or because a great criminal has lived within its walls, 
 changes its aspect from that day ? You may have passed the 
 house in your daily walks for years, till every window and 
 chimney, every shrub and tree about it, is familiar. It was 
 nothing more than a commonplace homestead enough — no 
 .more than one grain of corn in a bushel-measure full. Sud- 
 denly the day comes when crowds flock to stand and gaze 
 upon it, and you stand with them. And now for the first 
 time it comes to you that this house stands apart from every 
 other house. It bears the impress of crime on every face of 
 it. How forbidding is that low doorway ! — and the rear 
 window (the very kitchen, doubtless, where the deed was 
 done), set back in the angle of the abutting wall ! How did 
 you fail to notice it before? The very hasp on the front 
 gateway has a sinister look, as if it were put there that it 
 might lift noiselessly to the midnight criminal. 
 
 Is there no science, no architectural phrenology or palmis- 
 trv, by aid of which we can tell these houses in advance — di- 
 vine which building is destined to be the abode of virtue and 
 peace, and which to live to be pointed at with shuddering, 
 and " bear the rust of murder on its walls " ? It needs no 
 science after the event. 
 
IV 
 
 OVER THE DINNER-TABLE 
 
 Monday evening, which was the date set, it will be remem- 
 bered, for the joint meeting of the mill hands and street-rail- 
 way men, was also the time at which Miss Holt had told Hor- 
 ace Marsh that she and her father counted upon seeing him at 
 dinner. 
 
 In former days the comfortable yellow stone house had been 
 the scene of frequent entertainments on a generous scale. 
 Since Mrs. Holt's death, however, three years before, Mr. Holt 
 and his daughter had not found the heart to undertake, any 
 functions of hospitality more formidable than an occasional 
 dinner-party, except when, once or twice, the house had been 
 thrown open for a concert or a reading in aid of charity. 
 
 Within a few weeks after the loss of his wife, Mr. Holt, find- 
 ing life insupportable in the old home, haunted by the mem- 
 ories of twenty years of her presence, had taken his daughter 
 to Europe. Returning himself a few months later, to take up 
 his quarters in a hotel, he had left her in Paris with some 
 friends, in whose company she had spent a year and a half in 
 England and on the Continent. The house, which had been in 
 the care of servants during these two years, had been reopened 
 on Miss Holt's return to America, and for the past twelve 
 months the father and daughter had lived there, not recon- 
 ciled to their bereavement, but growing by degrees less acutely 
 and constantly conscious of it, and coming gradually to re- 
 assume the family's former position in the social life of the 
 community. 
 
 Miss Holt made a sweetly gracious hostess, and Horace 
 thought that she had never looked more charmingly than when 
 she greeted him that evening. She was dressed in a gown of 
 
40 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 black and pale violet, cut moderately low, in an almost straight 
 line from shoulder to shoulder, and showing to advantage a 
 neck which, she was perhaps not unconscious, was good to be 
 seen. A deep bertha of black lace fell over the violet waist, and 
 a drapery of the same material, with one broad satin band half- 
 way down, veiled the violet satin skirt. The large black satin 
 sleeves, puffed very full, ended just above the elbow, showed a 
 well-formed and very white arm below. Her only jewel was 
 a large and quaintly-set amethyst ring on her left hand — a ring 
 which had belonged to her mother and grandmother before her. 
 
 Mr. Holt was a spare man of less than medium height; in- 
 deed, Horace noticed now, as they were side by side, that he 
 was only almost imperceptibly taller than his daughter. AYbite- 
 headed, gentle of manner and low-voiced, he had the air of the 
 scholar and recluse rather than of the man of affairs; yet in 
 all the State there was no one whose voice and example were 
 so powerful in financial and commercial matters as Lawrence 
 Holt's. In conversation he had a trick of keeping his eyes on 
 the ground, as if listening with attention to all that was said, 
 then raising them suddenly to his interlocutor's face, when 
 their blackness and brilliancy were not a little startling to 
 those unaccustomed to it. It was probably this trick that was 
 responsible for his reputation of being a difficult man for a 
 stranger to talk to, although no one of his varied interests and 
 the many demands upon bis time could have been more unaf- 
 fectedly easy of access to all comers. 
 
 The dinner being given as an informal welcome to Judge 
 Jessel and his wife on their return after spending the summer 
 abroad, the judge, a massive, square-cut 'man, with a clean- 
 shaven and ideally-judicial face, was seated at the table on Miss 
 Holt's right hand and Mrs. Jessel in the same relation to the 
 host. Mrs. Jessel, scarcely less massive than her spouse, 
 though shorter, was a dear motherly soul whom everybody 
 loved. There are people of whom we say that they are "good- 
 hearted," and it is intended and accepted as the poorest and 
 most negative compliment — a last resort of politeness towards 
 one of whom we would not speak ill. There are others in 
 whom good-heartedness is so pronounced and positive a qual- 
 ity that it transcends all others, and we speak of it without a 
 
OVER THE DINNER-TABLE 41 
 
 thought as to whether they have all or no other virtues behind 
 it. Everybody loved Mrs. Jesse], without stopping to ques- 
 tion if she were intellectual. Nor would any one have thought 
 of suggesting that she was not the best of company, although 
 in parties of more than two her contribution to the conversa- 
 tion would often be confined for half an hour together to the 
 constant flicker of a kindly smile and an occasional nod of 
 sympathy and encouragement. 
 
 Seated at the table, Horace found himself with Grace Will- 
 erby — a school-day friend of Miss Holt, who was now staying 
 in the house on a visit which promised to last some weeks — 
 (who was to Judge Jessel's right) on one side, and Mrs. Bartop, 
 the wife of Major Bartop, in regard to whose politics Horace 
 had found it necessary to enlighten Miss Holt, on the other. 
 Beyond Mrs. Bartop sat Mr. " Jack " Tisserton ; then Mrs. 
 Flail, who occupied the seat on the left hand of the host. 
 Facing our friend sat Arthur Pryce, a long-limbed Englishman, 
 with Mrs. Tisserton, who had Major Bartop on her right, be- 
 tween her and Miss Holt, 'on one side, and a Miss Caley on the 
 other. 
 
 As soon as the party was seated the deep voice of Judge 
 Jessel made itself heard. 
 
 " What a comfort it is to be back in the civilized West 
 again," he said, in the tone of a man who settles comfortably 
 in an easy-chair from a hard day in the saddle, "after months 
 of the crude and barbarous East. In Europe there is more lux- 
 ury and less comfort — at least, for the stranger — than I had 
 conceived possible." 
 
 " You probably saw England only from the hotel point of 
 view," suggested the Englishman, " and not from private 
 houses. Englishmen themselves never live in their own hotels, 
 you know." 
 
 " There is something in that, I suspect," said the judge — 
 "like the Arabs who, for fear of the tax-gatherers, preserve 
 an outward appearance of abject poverty, and keep their lux- 
 ury for the private recesses of their own dwellings. But it is 
 not hospitable. Strangers may be pardoned for wishing that 
 they would turn things inside out once in a while. However, 
 we did spend a week or two in the house of some friends in 
 
42 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 Kensington Gate, in London, and it was the most amazingly 
 well-ordered establishment that I ever saw. I will always be- 
 lieve that there must have been a huge Corliss engine some- 
 where down in the cellar, pounding silently along, whose revo- 
 lutions governed all the movements of the house. Mrs. Jessel 
 would not let me go down at night to see, lest I should catch 
 cold. But such unfailing punctuality and regularity of move- 
 ment are not in the nature of human beings. There were times 
 when it was oppressive. I wanted to stand up and shout." 
 
 During this conversation Marsh had felt Mrs. Bartop, on his 
 right, growing more and more uneasy. Mrs. Bartop had no 
 sympathy with the West. After a continued residence in one 
 locality of some twenty-five years, she still persisted in regard- 
 ing it only as a temporary exile. She would have her friends 
 believe that this quarter of a century was no more than a mere 
 way-side stoppage in her life's journey — but the alighting of a 
 bird on a bough in mid-flight. "As soon as Bartop's business 
 will permit," she would say, " we intend to go back. All my 
 family are in the East, you know." Meanwhile Bartop's busi- 
 ness had not permitted for twenty-five years, and showed no 
 signs of being less exacting in the future. With all its ab- 
 surdity, there was something of pathos in the uncompromising 
 hopefulness of the woman — the hopefulness of Dickens's pris- 
 oners in the Fleet. In appearance and disposition Mrs. Bar- 
 top was considerably more of a grenadier than her kindly hus- 
 band, who, nevertheless, had the record of a dashing cavalry 
 officer on the Confederate side in the Civil War. 
 
 "You- remind me, judge," she broke in at last, in a rather 
 hard voice, "of the Chicagoan who did not like Switzerland 
 because it was too hilly. ' Give him,' he said, ' Illinois.' I 
 cannot imagine how anybody can really like the West, with the 
 bad service and the dirty streets and the newness of every- 
 thing. It is so impossible to get anything here," she added, 
 comprehensively, " or to know what anybody is doing." 
 
 " Oh, I am not speaking of the Eastern States," said the 
 judge, good-humoredly, " but of Europe." But Mrs. Bartop, 
 who had never been abroad, recognized no difference between 
 New York and Boston and London and Paris. The civilized 
 world was divided into two geographical entities, the " East," 
 
OVER THE DINNER-TABLE 43 
 
 comprising all Europe, Asia, and Africa, and the Eastern States 
 of America, and the " West," consisting of that part of the 
 United States west of the Alleghanies ; and she had her doubts 
 as to whether this latter half was part of the civilized world. 
 
 "It does not seem to me," said the musically placid voice 
 of Mrs. Tisserton, "that there is much West any longer. I 
 have looked for the typically Western town so far in vain. 
 When I was in Minnesota I thought that surely that would be 
 Western enough, but the people of Minneapolis pride themselves 
 on being not at all W T estern. And they are not. They are in 
 the first generation as yet out there, and the people all came 
 from the East — chiefly from Maine apparently, except those 
 who are Scandinavians, and I don't know but that some of 
 them came from Maine too. In Helena, Montana, it was the 
 same. Society there is composed entirely, we are told, of mem- 
 bers of the best Eastern families. This summer I was in Col- 
 orado Springs for a while, and one of the first things I learned 
 was that I should find the place 'just a little bit of the East plant- 
 ed in the middle of the West.' Is there any West any more ?" 
 " Not this side of Buffalo and Pittsburg," said the judge, 
 laughingly. "That is where the West used to be. Now the 
 East has just flooded over and beyond that, and has left the 
 West stagnating behind it." 
 
 " Who is it," asked Miss Holt, " who calls Dakota a ' wil- 
 derness lighted by electricity '?" 
 
 " When I was in Dakota—" began the Englishman, senten- 
 tiously addressing Miss Caley, who sat beside him, in evident 
 preparation for an anecdote of some length. Mr. Pryce's anec- 
 dotes were notorious. He was reputed the dullest story-teller 
 in the Western States, and when he commenced with "that 
 reminds me " his friends fled. His turning to Miss Caley was 
 a signal for the breaking up of the general conversation. Mrs. 
 Flail at once attacked the judge for information as to whether, 
 as he had mentioned Kensington Gate, he gave much time to 
 the study of the antiquities in the Kensington Museum ; Tis- 
 serton engaged Mrs. Bartop with : " I was talking to your hus- 
 band the other day ;" while Miss Holt leaned over to the major 
 with a malicious glance at Horace, which the latter caught, and 
 said: 
 
44 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 11 1 did not know till the other day that you were a Demo- 
 crat, major." 
 
 "What enemy has done this thing?" asked the major, play- 
 fully. " Who has been seeking to prejudice you against me ?" 
 
 "No one; it was said in self-excuse. A friend of mine, who 
 is also a Democrat, quoted your example at me as a proof of 
 his own respectability." 
 
 "Oh!" and the major also threw a glance of intelligence in 
 the direction of Marsh. " Well, as I have company in my 
 shame, I do not mind confessing. It was born in me, I am 
 afraid, Miss Holt — a sort of hereditary taint." 
 
 "My friend also said that you took no active part in poli- 
 tics now — which is the reason, I suppose, that your other friends 
 are in doubt which side you belong to. Have you retired 
 from the lists, or are you only waiting, like Le Noir Faineant, 
 to see which is the weaker side, then to plunge in and give 
 your help to those who need it?" 
 
 " Nothing sochivalric as that, I'm afraid," replied the major, 
 "I suppose I have retired from the lists. The fact simply is 
 that though I am a Democrat, I am not a Populist. As I say, 
 I am a Democrat from heredity and from conviction. I could 
 not have inherited Populism because it did not exist when I 
 was born, and as for conviction — the Populists haven't any ; 
 only theories." 
 
 "So, since the two have united, you have no party to which 
 you can belong. Poor man !" 
 
 "It is a pitiful spectacle, is it not?" he asked. "Mrs. Bar- 
 top advances it as another argument why we should go back 
 East. To think of living in a country where you cannot even 
 get politics (let alone bonnets and dresses) to match your com- 
 plexion ! I ought to say, however, that if there were more 
 Populists of the stripe of your friend there, it would not be so 
 difficult to work with them. I admire him." 
 
 " Do you hear that, Mr. Marsh ?" asked Miss Holt, raising 
 her voice and addressing Horace. Of course he had heard. 
 Though endeavoring to maintain an animated conversation 
 with Miss Willerby, he had not lost a word of what was being 
 said at the foot of the table. 
 
 "I beg your pardon?" he asked, looking innocently at his 
 
OVER THE DINNER-TABLE 45 
 
 questioner. Miss Holt, with a movement of her hand, waived 
 the responsibility of explanation on to her neighbor. 
 
 " We were talking politics," said the major, and by this 
 time the whole company was listening, " and I was explaining 
 why, though I was a Democrat by inheritance, I was not a 
 Populist." 
 
 " He was also saying," added Miss Holt, "that if there were 
 more fusionists like Mr. Horace Marsh it would be less difficult 
 to work with them." 
 
 Horace bowed his acknowledgments. " And if," he said, 
 "there were more men like Major Bartop with us, ours would 
 be easier work. We need you badly, major," addressing him 
 directly. "The sons of Zeruiah," indicating the other end of 
 the table with a motion of his head, " are in danger of being 
 too hard for us." 
 
 " It is not so much Mr. Holt and the judge and the other 
 disreputable Republicans that you have to fear," said the major ; 
 " it is your own ragged regiment that is likely to make the 
 trouble." 
 
 "All the more reason then, surely," said Horace, " that such 
 men as you — men who are honored by the rank and file, and 
 who have won their confidence by gallant leadership in former 
 fights, often very hopeless ones, should not fail them now. 
 How can you expect a party to go right if you leave them to 
 the leadership of the wrong men ? If you would talk to them 
 you could do more in a week than I could hope to do in two 
 years." 
 
 "The political party does not commonly care to listen to 
 anybody who does not happen to tell it just what it wants to 
 hear. I have ' been there,' as they say," and the major smiled 
 cynically in remembrance of former defections from his stand- 
 ard when he strove to lead his party by paths which it liked not. 
 
 " But this party has as yet no preference as to what it hears 
 — within certain limits," continued Horace. " It is waiting 
 with its ear to the ground to catch the voice of its king. It 
 can be led." 
 
 "My sympathies," broke in Judge Jessel, "are with Mr. 
 Marsh, I confess, although I am a disreputable Republican. 
 Looking, that is to say, at the Populist cause as a national 
 
46 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 movement, it is leaderless. It might be moulded. The hour 
 has arrived, but the man is yet to seek. Perhaps we have no 
 statesman in this country to-day who is equal to the task; if 
 there were such a man — a man whose voice the nation was al- 
 ready accustomed to listen to, whose principles were beyond 
 reproach, and his public career unstained even by a suspicion — 
 he might place himself at the head of the movement, and make 
 it, perhaps, as noble in its ends as any party that the world has 
 seen. But when we come to look at the Populists locally, the 
 case is different. The party is not lovely, viewed piecemeal, 
 and it is becoming worse daily. I fear that it is not through 
 Populism that the salvation of the country is to come. It is 
 more likely to be through the reaction against Populism. The 
 decent people of all classes may be forced to band themselves 
 together to crush the third party, and out of that union may 
 grow the force which the country needs." 
 
 " But how, in default of a national leader, can we do other- 
 wise," asked Horace, " than work each in one locality with such 
 material as comes to hand ? I know no other way that we can 
 bring reform on a national scale except by doing that which is 
 laid before us and within our reach." 
 
 "And what" — it was Mr. Holt who spoke now — "what is 
 the reform that you expect to reach ? Is it the overthrow of 
 what some of your friends call the 'conspiracy of Wall and 
 Lombard streets?' Is proprietorship theft? Will you redis- 
 tribute property and all start equal again ?" 
 
 "No, not that, of course," said Horace, smiling, and speak- 
 ing, as he continued, carefully. " It is not so much the reform 
 we hope to make as the revolution we hope to prevent. There 
 is nothing wrong with any individual holding of property, 
 however great; nor with all the individual holdings in the 
 mass — with what is called the existence of the moneyed class. 
 The individual ownerships all over the country, whether small 
 or great (except in so far as they may have been acquired by 
 fraud and in violation of law), are justly held. They were 
 either ' occupied ' by the present owners, in virtue of their 
 superior moral force or business talents, or they were inherited 
 from those who had ' ocoupied ' thorn legally before. The 
 titles are good and in accordance with the law. The law itself 
 
OVER THE DINNER-TABLE 47 
 
 is good and in accordance with the eternal principles of right. 
 But through the progress of generations, concurrently with 
 the building of the law, there has crystallized round the mass of 
 individual ownerships cohering together a sentiment which is 
 fundamentally bad. I do not know what to call it, except the 
 idea of ivealth ; and this idea has altogether too much influence 
 in the disposition of the affairs of the nation. It is not that 
 any individual millionaire or any corporation has too much in- 
 fluence at Washington. It is not even that any group or class 
 of individuals has too much influence. It would be difficult — 
 but less difficult than invidious — to go to Washington and lay 
 one's finger on specific instances; instances of what in its gross- 
 est form is flat bribery, and in its mildest form is the swaying 
 of the Chief Executive by considerations of family and of con- 
 nections in the appointment of a justice of the supreme bench, 
 an appointment which in itself may be admirable. It is not, as 
 I say, however, any question of individuals or of a class. If it 
 were, the matter would soon remedy itself by the constant ac- 
 cessions to and defections from the moneyed classes in this 
 country, though I take it that the infusion of new blood in the 
 House of Lords in England every decade is scarcely less than 
 that into our aristocracy of wealth here. Yet no matter how 
 the component atoms of the class shift or rearrange themselves, 
 there is the all-pervading idea of nobility over there, with its 
 thousand ramifications and associations accumulated through 
 the centuries, and there is the idea of wealth, of more recent 
 growth but scarcely less all-permeating, here. It may be that 
 neither Congress as a mass, nor any individual Congressman, 
 nor any officer of the government will have been consciously 
 subjected to an undue influence during a whole session. Every 
 man connected with the affairs of state may be guided by his 
 conscience only, and honestly believe himself to be beyond re- 
 proach, yet at the end of a session this idea will be found to 
 have been all-pervading, to have governed in the distribution 
 of appointments and pensions, in appropriations and charters 
 and tariff schedules. It has not been more powerful nor less 
 present with one party than another, or one administration 
 than another. It rather accumulates strength and becomes 
 more firmly seated with each succeeding government. And 
 
48 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 there lies the danger." He paused for a moment before con- 
 cluding. " It is no change in the law that we need, it seems 
 to me; still less any disturbance of existing rights and inter- 
 ests. It is a sweetening of our national sentiment, a depolariz- 
 ing of our ideas. And I know not how that is to he reached 
 except through the medium of a new party and new men. 
 And it must be reached somehow, or the outlook is terrible. 
 There will be revolution." 
 
 The young lawyer had been listened to with attention ; but 
 though he directed his remarks chiefly towards Mr. Holt, he 
 was conscious of only one auditor, and of her he was acutely 
 conscious. For her part, Miss Holt had been absorbed in what 
 he was saying, and had paused with her fork half-uplifted in 
 her hand, and the same expression on her face as had been there 
 two days before, when Marsh had talked of his ambitions to 
 her alone. When he ceased Judge Jessel spoke. 
 
 " I confess again that I go a long way with Mr, Marsh. There 
 is danger, and there is need of sweetening — ' oh, for some civet !' 
 — and it is difficult to see how either of the great parties is to be 
 the purifying instrument. One yields the reins to the other, 
 and the taint is equally in both. If both together — that small 
 circle of both parties which really guides the nation — were to 
 step aside, there is nobody yet for them to hand the adminis- 
 tration to — nobody but the mob, which is far more reckless and 
 impure than either. It is the great neutral mass of right-think- 
 ing American citizens who need to be aroused and to act unit- 
 edly." 
 
 "Which," said Major Bartop, "I take it, is flat mugwump- 
 ery." 
 
 "And which is why," Marsh interjected, laughingly, "I 
 appeal to Major Bartop to come back and lead us." 
 
 Major Bartop remained silent. Mr. Holt brought the subject 
 back to lower and more commonplace grounds by saying : 
 
 " The trouble with the third party in this locality is that it 
 shows no inclination to seek new leaders or to be held to any 
 principles at all. It has simply been an accession to the ranks 
 of the Democracy in exchange for a forfeiture of much of its 
 respectability. So far as the guidance and mechanism of poli- 
 tics go, they are in the hands of the usual municipal ring of 
 
OVER THE DINNER-TABLE 49 
 
 worthless ' ward heelers ' — an Irishman to poll the Irish vote, 
 and a German for the German vote, and a Scandinavian for the 
 Scandinavian vote, and their Irish and German and Scandina- 
 vian friends. And just now it seems as if the labor tail was 
 wagging the whole aggregation." 
 
 " By-the-bye," said the judge, "there is a labor meeting to- 
 night, is there not, in which you are somewhat interested?" 
 
 "Yes," Mr. Holt replied, "at the new Labor Temple." 
 
 " Oh," remarked Judge Jessel, " the Labor Temple is com- 
 pleted, is it ? They were struggling with it when I went away. 
 Didn't you tell me that you helped them out?" 
 
 "A little," said Mr. Holt, drily. "I gave them a thousand 
 dollars in behalf of the street-railway company, and another 
 thousand in behalf of the iron-and-steel company. Then when 
 they were in difficulties about getting the roof on the building, 
 I gave my personal check for five hundred more." 
 
 " H'm ! and the first use they put it to is to holding a meet- 
 ing for the purpose of striking against you and the mill com- 
 pany and the street- railway company together. Verily the 
 4 whirligig of time' does ' bring in its revenges.' " 
 
 " I think the Labor Temple is so good, architecturally," re- 
 marked Mrs. Flail, with the feminine preference for form over 
 matter. The best of women, in keeping her household ac- 
 counts, is more interested in the neatness of her book-keeping 
 than in economy in results. A blot of ink on one of the 
 columns is a calamity far outweighing a failure to find a 
 balance. 
 
 "Don't you like it ?" she said, addressing Mr. Tisserton. 
 " I think it is so symbolical." 
 
 " Symbolical of what ?" asked that gentleman. 
 
 " Oh, of the idea, you know," said the lady, somewhat 
 vaguely. " It is a compromise between severity and vulgarity 
 — an engrafting upon classical models of the modern utilita- 
 rian ideas. It is what it is meant to be — a temple, but a temple 
 to the nineteenth century working-man. I took a good deal of 
 interest in it when the movement was started." 
 
 Jack Tisserton felt that this conversation was beyond his 
 depth. As he said himself, he " left all that kind of thing to 
 his wife." He took refuge in appealing to Mr, Holt. 
 
50 MEN BOKN EQUAL 
 
 " What is the particular trouble with the men now ?" he 
 asked. 
 
 " The old trouble," the host replied ; " the same trouble as 
 is being felt all over the country. The absolute inability on 
 the part of manufacturing or industrial enterprises either to 
 earn or to borrow money to cover their expenses, and a 
 simultaneous determination on the part of the men to be 
 paid money, whether we can get it or not. I wish they 
 would tell us how to get the money. We will do it gladly 
 enough." 
 
 " It seems so hard," said Miss Holt, wistfully, in the silence 
 which followed. "These men must know that papa would do 
 anything in the world for them individually — in fact, we do a 
 good deal for their wives and children when they are sick, and 
 so on. We are not monsters. Yet now they simply won't 
 believe what papa tells them. What can we do ?" she asked, 
 despairingly. As she looked round the table for an answer her 
 eye fell upon the Englishman, who felt himself in some way 
 compelled to reply. 
 
 " You cannot do a thing," said he, " except fight them. 
 They'll learn in time. You are going through the same thing 
 here as we have had to meet in England, you know." 
 
 There appeared here to Mrs. Flail an opportunity to obtain 
 instruction. Assuming the air of a counsel cross-questioning a 
 not too notoriously trustworthy witness, she said : 
 
 " What is your impression, Mr. Pryce, of our social system 
 in America ? Do you like the equality of the classes ?" 
 
 Mr. Price smiled languidly. 
 
 " Whenever I am asked that question," he said, " I always 
 quote a friend of mine — a young Englishman with whom I first 
 came over. We had been in New York about a week, I fancy, 
 when an American, with whom we had got into accidental 
 conversation at the hotel, began to ask us a whole lot of ques- 
 tions, you know, and finally he asked us what you did just 
 now — what we thought of the equality of the classes. ' Oh, 
 I don't know,' replied Birchall (that's my friend, you know), 
 ' I don't mind the equality of the classes.' He was thinking 
 of the chaps on the elevated railroads, and the waiters and 
 janitors and elevator boys, and all those sort of people, you 
 
OVER THE DIXXER-TABLE 51 
 
 understand. ' I don't mind their equality,' he said, ' but what 
 I do hate is their damned superiority!' " 
 
 The general laugh which followed, Mrs. Flail felt to be in 
 some measure at her expense, and she hastened to cover her dis- 
 comfiture by asking- another question. 
 
 "And what do you think of our country as a whole, Mr. 
 Pryce?" 
 
 The tone in which this question was put said plainly 
 enough, " Answer me that, if you can," and the fixity of gaze 
 with which she held her victim while awaiting his response 
 conveyed an evident intimation that he was expected to equiv- 
 ocate and have recourse to subterfuge, but that no shuffling 
 would be permitted. The Englishman, however, was equal to 
 the emergency. 
 
 " I don't think of it," he said ; " it is altogether too big. 
 No one mind can think of the whole of it at once. If you 
 divided up the task, you know — let the contract by sections, 
 as it were — to some six or seven minds at once, they might 
 be able to evolve a simultaneous thought on the whole country. 
 One mind can't do it." 
 
 Miss Holt thought it well to interrupt the cross-examination, 
 and having caught Mrs. Jessel's eye and received a sympathetic 
 nod from that good lady, signifying that she was ready, the 
 hostess rose and, followed by the other women, left the room. 
 The men soon followed, and found Mrs. Flail entertaining — or, 
 at least, occupying the attention of — the company with a de- 
 scription of a new violinist who had that day arrived in town, 
 and was to perform in concert on the following evening. As 
 the men entered they caught Miss Caley's voice interrupting 
 the elder woman's narrative with the question : 
 
 " What colored eyes has he ?" 
 
 " My dear child, don't ask me," said Mrs. Flail. In which 
 response she showed very clearly how widely she differed from 
 the majority of her sex ; for whereas a man, in describing 
 another, will sum him up in general terms by saying that he is 
 tall or short, dark or light, and " a pretty good-looking fellow," 
 a "rather colorless, unprepossessing kind of a chap" — or some 
 such characterization, looking rather to the quality of the man 
 than the details of his physiognomy — a woman, in similar case, 
 
52 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 will give " the inventory of Lis features," with the color of his 
 eyes, the shape of his nose, the nature of his mustache, and 
 (especially) the quality of his teeth. And what man ever 
 thought it worth mentioning that another had good teeth ? 
 
 During the evening Miss Caley played on the piano, first a 
 sonata of Beethoven and then the inevitable bit of Grieg. The 
 Englishman also obliged the company with the "Arab's Love 
 Song " and " London Bridge," which he sang with a rich bary- 
 tone voice, which, his friends said, " was worth the other six 
 feet of him." 
 
 Horace, after much manoeuvring, had succeeded in placing 
 himself on a sofa by Jessie's side. 
 
 " I like to hear you talk as you did to-night," she said, 
 frankly, as soon as he was seated, " and I am not sure that I 
 wasn't wrong the other day when I told you to emulate Major 
 Bartop and hold aloof. It may be better to work earnestly, 
 even if your friends think you are mistaken, than to sit still 
 because the work isn't all that you might wish." 
 
 Horace could have grovelled upon the Turkish rug and 
 kissed her feet for this. Under more favorable circumstances 
 it is difficult to say to what length his adoration might not 
 have carried him that evening; but, as hostess, Miss Holt was 
 compelled to give more than half her attention to the other 
 members of the party, rising to thank one of the performers 
 or to plead with another, and to execute those innumerable lit- 
 tle offices which are incumbent on a hostess if an evening is 
 to " go right." But Horace was blissfully happy. He barely 
 refrained from telling her incoherently in words, and he did 
 all he could to tell her with his eyes and the pressure of her 
 hand at parting. When he left the house he sprang down the 
 steps at one stride, and could have shrieked aloud to the night 
 air in very joyousness. 
 
 When the last guest had left, Mr. Holt hastened to the li- 
 brary, where the butler had told him that James Darron, the 
 manager of the steel company, was already awaiting him, to- 
 gether with Superintendent Boon of the street railway. 
 
 " Well ?" asked Mr. Holt, as he entered the room. 
 
 " W T ell," said Darron, " they decided to wait for a while." 
 
OVER THE DINNER-TABLE 53 
 
 An evident look of relief came into Mr. Holt's face as he 
 seated himself at the table, motioning the others to do the 
 same. 
 
 " Tell me about it," he said. 
 
 " There was a big meeting," Darron began, " and it all went 
 one way. There was the usual talk, and the more extrava- 
 gant the speakers were the more they were applauded. Some 
 of them were pretty bitter — especially Wollmer and Hender- 
 son and Riley and Craft. Up to the last minute it looked as 
 if there could be only one conclusion — they would all go out 
 at noon to-morrow. Suddenly Wollmer came forward and 
 said that General Harter, the candidate for Governor of the 
 State on the Democratic ticket, was present, and would like to 
 speak. Wollmer asked them to give full weight to what the 
 General said. Harter then came out (he was enthusiastically 
 applauded) and spoke in his usual pompous way. But it was 
 a mighty good talk. He counselled them to moderation, and 
 implored them not, by any hasty action, to bring distress to 
 the city or discredit to the fair name of the dear State, to the 
 highest office in which he had the honor now to be an aspirant. 
 You ought to have heard them cheer ! He asked them to wait. 
 Appealed to them not to dedicate the new and glorious edifice 
 in which they were assembled by any headlong action which 
 they might regret. He offered his services as arbitrator — either 
 alone or in company with the mayor of the city and the Re- 
 publican candidate for Governor. 'Anyway/ he said, ' wait until 
 you have exhausted every resource, when the crime of what 
 may follow will be on the heads of those who refuse to meet 
 vou.' When he got through, as soon as he could be heard 
 through the applause, Wollmer besought the meeting to take 
 the advice of the honored statesman who had just sat down. 
 He said Harter was right, and they had better wait. There 
 was some more talk, and then a joint committee was appointed 
 to confer with the management of the two companies and re- 
 port at another meeting to be called by the committee when 
 it saw fit." 
 
 Mr. Holt made no comment on this narrative. 
 
 " I think," said Boon, " that it was a put-up job from first 
 to last." 
 
54 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 " Of course it was," said Mr. Holt — " of course it was. And 
 a clever job, too." 
 
 As he said good-bye to the two men at his front door a few 
 minutes later he murmured to himself again, " A very clever 
 piece of work — confoundedly clever !" 
 
BEHIND THE SCENES 
 
 It was clever. That was evident from the tone of the local 
 press on the following day. 
 
 Horace, stopping at the club on his way home from the 
 dinner, had heard there the result of the meeting, in much 
 the same words as it had been given to Mr. Holt in the li- 
 brary, and in his condition of semi-intoxication it had been 
 another cause of rejoicing. At breakfast the next morning 
 he read the account of the affair in the newspapers with ea- 
 gerness. 
 
 First he looked at the organ of the local Democracy, the 
 World. The account of the meeting, several columns long, 
 was headed in the approved alliterative journalistic style of 
 the day : " Hearkened to Harter ! — The Democratic Champion 
 Saves the City ! — He Pours the Oil of Reason on Labor's 
 Troubled Tide '.—The Strike Postponed, as Violence Hides 
 Its Head before His Cogent Counselling !" 
 
 On the editorial page the same journal devoted a column, 
 in all the dignity of " double leads " and much confusion of 
 metaphor, to the praise of the " gallant General." " Seldom, 
 or never, perhaps," so it was asserted, " had it fallen to the 
 lot of any man in public life at one single stroke of states- 
 manship to render so signal service to his party, the people, 
 and his State. At the last moment, when all seemed lost, 
 and when the ardent but not unjustifiable language of their 
 proper leaders had already swayed the seething meeting to 
 the point where all stood waiting only to cast the last irrev- 
 ocable lot ; when it seemed that no human voice could stay 
 the tide of indignation and of wrath — at this moment there 
 leaped Curtius-like into the gulf our honored candidate for 
 
56 MEN BOEN EQUAL 
 
 Governor of this noble State, and by one act of self-devotion 
 he saved the city from the red peril which threatened it. 
 Never before has the gallant General shown so conspicuously 
 his courage, his statesmanship, and his power over the peo- 
 ple, who are determined to have no other man for their next 
 Governor." 
 
 Even the papers of the opposition were compelled to give 
 the Democratic candidate some credit for his action. They 
 did it sneeringly, however. The Republican spoke of the 
 scene as " dramatic in the extreme ; perhaps too dramatic to 
 have been given unrehearsed." The opportunity to do the 
 right thing was so obvious that little credit could be claimed 
 for having seized it. It would have been a disgrace to any 
 man not to have done so. " Those who understand 'General ' 
 Harter have long ceased to be surprised at, however much 
 they may regret, the air of trickery and charlatanism with 
 which he succeeds in investing his every public act." 
 
 On the whole, the episode had been a distinct triumph of 
 Democracy, and still more a personal triumph of the senior 
 member of the firm of Harter & Marsh. So it was in the 
 best of spirits that Horace took his way to the office, his 
 light-heartedness finding vent en route in the purchase of 
 three dozen roses, which he ordered to be sent to Miss Holt. 
 He nodded gleefully to such acquaintances as he met on the 
 street, and all the way to the Metropolitan Block (where his 
 office was situated), and even going up in the elevator he was 
 humming to music of his own making the lines: 
 
 " ' For each red rose the secret deep 
 
 In its sad, happy heart encloses 
 Of kisses, making love's heart leap ; 
 
 And every summer wind that blows is 
 A prayer that maidens be less coy 
 
 Of kisses ere brief life be sped. 
 Heaven taught the earth a fair employ 
 
 When Venus kissed white roses red.' " 
 
 When he arrived he found that his partner had been at the 
 office early, and was already receiving visitors and congratula- 
 tions. The first caller of the day had been Sullivan, the big- 
 Irish politician. He strode into the General's inner office un- 
 
BEHIND THE SCENES 57 
 
 announced, and slapped his hat and cane down noisily on 
 the baize - covered table. Then thrusting his hands into 
 his pockets and standing with legs wide apart, he shook his 
 head admiringly at the General, who smilingly awaited a 
 greeting. 
 
 " Oh, it was slick !" broke out the Irishman, at last — " it 
 was dom slick ! It was just a Napoleonic stroke of genius, 
 that's what it was ! I had me doubts, when we wer' talkin' 
 it over in the office here, whether the thing could be done. 
 But done it was — done to the queen's taste, bad cess to her ! 
 Tim Sullivan was wrong for once — and oh, it was slick ! Holy 
 Moses, it was slick ! Have ye seen the papers f he asked, 
 banging his huge hand down on the table. 
 
 The General had. In fact (though this did not appear), he 
 had read the proof of what the World was to say on the sub- 
 ject the night before. He accepted the Irishman's enthusi- 
 asm now with becoming modesty. Presently Wollmer en- 
 tered — a very different entry to that which the Irishman had 
 made. He came in noiselessly, almost stealthily, but the ole- 
 aginous smile of satisfaction on his features was scarcely less 
 expressive than the other's boisterous hilarity. 
 
 " And now here's the pair of ye," said the Irishman, as he 
 looked them over from head to foot. "Oh, but it's two Mach- 
 iavelis ye are ! Csesar and Pompey and Pompey and Caesar — 
 an' ye could have given the both of them points ! There 
 was never a mother's son of a Greek of them all could have 
 held a candle to ye !" 
 
 Timothy Sullivan was never notoriously accurate in his 
 classical or literary allusions. The opposition papers seldom 
 failed to recur when possible to a meeting some years before, 
 at which the Irishman had referred to German as one of the 
 " dead languages," and it was he of whom the story was told 
 that, after a certain election in which his party had been de- 
 feated chiefly, as it was understood, by the Scandinavian 
 vote, he had expressed a fervent wish that "every dom Swede 
 of them was back in Switzerland." 
 
 When Marsh arrived there were already some half a dozen 
 of the leaders of the local Democracy assembled in the room, 
 and among them pranced Sullivan in ecstasy, calling upon 
 
58 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 each new-comer to witness to "the slickness of it." In the 
 presence of the later arrivals, however, a critical observer 
 might have noticed that no further reference was made to the 
 coup having been prepared in advance. With all his appar- 
 ent impulsiveness the Irishman never made mistakes of that 
 kind. Marsh was barely inside the door before he was seized 
 by the lapel of his coat and led up to where the General 
 was standing. 
 
 "Let me introjuce ye," said the Irishman, "to Mr. Aris- 
 tides Gambetta Cavour, yer partner in business, ye lucky spal- 
 peen, who is otherwise known as the Moses and Aaron com- 
 bined, or the Siamese Savior of the Dimicratic party." 
 
 While Horace was congratulating his partner the Irishman 
 put on his hat. 
 
 " I'll be back after a while," he said to the party, " but 
 meantime I'm thinkin' that there are some boys as '11 be want- 
 in' drinks, and there is never a Dimicrat in all the Fourth 
 Ward — man, woman, or child in arms — that can ask a drink 
 of Tim Sullivan this day and be refused. This is no day for 
 a man who votes the ticket to go dry ! 'Twould be a shame 
 to the party, it would ; a dirty shame." 
 
 An hour or so later, as Marsh was sitting in his office, 
 Charlie Harrington walked in. He had come down-town — 
 an unusual thing for him in the forenoon — to assist at the 
 departure of his fiancee's sister for Indiana. 
 
 " Is that the sister you said you had seen with Blakely ?" 
 asked Marsh. 
 
 " The same ; Jennie only has one sister." 
 
 " Well, it may not do her any harm to be away from him. 
 You told me that she was engaged to somebody, didn't 
 you ?" 
 
 " We don't know whether they are engaged or not. They 
 act like it — anyway, Tom does," Harrington said. " We have 
 our hopes, Jennie and I, that the wedding in January may be 
 a double event. Nothing definite has been said on behalf of 
 the other couple, however. It will be pretty hard on the old 
 lady," he added, thoughtfully, "if both the girls leave to- 
 gether." 
 
 Presently the conversation drifted to the meeting of the 
 
BEHIND THE SCENES 59 
 
 night before. Harrington did not appear to be much im- 
 pressed with the behavior of the gallant General, a fact which 
 Marsh set down chiefly to his friend's Republicanism. 
 
 " It was a cheap trick at best," said Harrington, " and if 
 the men weren't fools they would have seen it. To be led 
 by the nose and played upon and worked up to excitement, 
 and then — presto ! Wollmer pulls a string, and they are all 
 put to bed again and tucked in, like good little children. I 
 don't want a strike, but I almost wish that some hot-headed 
 man had got up and told the meeting how it was being fooled, 
 and spoiled the game." 
 
 ''Why, do you think it had been planned in advance?" 
 asked Marsh, with a remembrance of the hints of the Repub- 
 lican paper. 
 
 " Of course it had," said the other. 
 
 41 1 think not," Marsh replied, quietly. " I have not asked 
 the General, but I think not." 
 
 Harrington made no reply, but after a short silence he 
 said : 
 
 " I should think you would be afraid of being drawn too 
 far into this labor business. Of course, you know what you 
 are about ; but don't you find Wollmer and his crowd a lit- 
 tle difficult to stomach as collaborators ?" 
 
 " They are not my collaborators," said Marsh, with some 
 warmth. " We mark out the policy of the party, and if Woll- 
 mer or any one else chooses to follow us he can. Of course, 
 the more who follow the better. But they must follow on 
 our terms, and if the labor element or any one else think they 
 can dictate to us, they will find themselves mistaken." 
 
 "To a man up a tree," said Harrington, "it looks a good 
 deal as if the labor element was dictating now. I wonder if 
 you know, Horace," he added, after a pause, " what a thor- 
 oughly brutal set these labor leaders are." 
 
 " In what way brutal ?" 
 
 " Well, I was only in contact with it for a couple of years," 
 Harrington said, " and it did not matter with me. I did not 
 go into the railroad service to make that my career, and so 
 far as I was concerned it was only a certain amount of dis- 
 comfort for those two years, and a constant necessity to look 
 
60 MEN BOEN EQUAL 
 
 out for myself. To be sure," he added, " it has followed me 
 here, as I was telling you the other day, and I still have to 
 be pretty careful lest an accident should happen. But with 
 young fellows who go into railroading for their life's work it 
 is different, and it is not as bad in the shops as it is in some 
 other departments. It used to be the case that any clean, 
 industrious, and reasonably intelligent young fellow who 
 went into railroading at the bottom and attended to his busi- 
 ness was sure of promotion. A pretty large percentage of 
 the presidents and general managers to-day worked up that 
 way. But the brotherhoods have changed all that. A young 
 fellow goes in now full of ambition and determined to carve 
 out his own salvation. He has not been in the service long 
 before the brotherhood is after him, and he has to make his 
 choice between an honorable career and loyalty to his company 
 or submission to the brotherhood. If he chooses the latter, 
 there is an end. He can rise so high, but he will never be fit 
 to become an official. If he is a self-respecting fellow with 
 nerve he will choose the other course, and then the trouble 
 begins. It is not long before he finds that he is unpopular 
 with the other men. His work is made just as hard for him 
 as it can be, and life gets pretty near being a burden. If he 
 holds out, there are lots of ways of discrediting him. An ac- 
 cident happens, and he is to blame. He knows better, but 
 there are plenty of witnesses against him, and the management 
 has no choice but to let him out. And when a man is once 
 let out in that way he can hunt for another job at railroading 
 until he dies in the poor-house. He has to choose another 
 career if he wants to make a living. If that does not work, 
 it is not difficult to get a man killed or maimed for life in the 
 train and yard service. Again there will be no lack of wit- 
 nesses to prove that it was his own fault. If somebody else 
 is shown to be partly to blame, the only difference is that the 
 railway company has to pay damages, and then the brother- 
 hood has the laugh on the two enemies at once — the man 
 whom they killed or crippled, and the company as well. I 
 tell you," he added, bitterly, " it is just as impossible for a 
 clean, self-respecting, honest young fellow nowadays to go 
 ?nto railroading, beginning at the bottom of the ladder and 
 
BEHIND THE SCENES 61 
 
 working up to the top, as they used to do fifteen or twenty 
 years ago, as it is for him to walk across the Atlantic ! Even 
 in my own short time in the shops I saw something, and heard 
 a good deal more." 
 
 " You know more about these things, probably, than I do," 
 said Marsh. " But if what you say is true, that only makes 
 one more abuse that we have to reform." 
 
 " And you can't be too quick about it," replied the other. 
 " But the way things are going now it looks to an outsider 
 more as if labor was going to run the party than as if the 
 party was going to reform labor. However," and he got up 
 from his chair, " I didn't come in to talk politics or to argue 
 — only to shake hands and see how you were." 
 
 Marsh rose also, and the two stood chatting laughingly for 
 a few minutes on the old footing of boyish good-fellowship 
 before Harrington went away. 
 
 Left to himself, Horace felt the first serious misgivings as 
 to his political career which had beset him since he threw 
 himself into public life. His ideals were unshaken. The 
 belief in the country's needs, the conviction as to where his 
 own duty lay, the visions which he had of the nation's future 
 — these were beyond the reach of doubt. But these men 
 with whom he was working, whom he believed to be informed 
 with the same inspiration as himself, was it possible that they 
 were other than he had supposed ? He had indignantly repu- 
 diated the idea that Wollmer was his collaborator. But the 
 General ? Could he have stooped to so tawdry a trick on the 
 preceding night as Harrington had implied ? He shrank, too, 
 as he remembered those words he had overheard three days 
 before : " Mighty near to the State's Prison," the Irishman 
 had said. " Charge it up to street cleaning or to the police." 
 And Marsh seemed to hear again the echo of the accents in 
 which Wollmer had spoken. The General had not taken 
 part in the conversation ; but he was there in the room un- 
 doubtedly, a party to all that was going on. Bah ! it could 
 not be. It was something else they were talking of, some- 
 thing in itself harmless. He would not believe it otherwise. 
 He would ask the General frankly for himself, and knew that 
 it would be explained. And he thrust the thoughts from 
 
62 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 him, and plunged into the work which lay before him on his 
 desk. 
 
 It was well — or was it ill ? — that Horace could not hear an- 
 other conversation which went on shortly afterwards in the 
 same adjoining room. The participants, as before, were the 
 General, Wollmer, and the Irishman. 
 
 The last named had returned from his errand of mercy, 
 which had evidently not been in vain. 
 
 " Holy Moses !" he exclaimed as he came into the room, 
 using his favorite form of invocation ; " but it's nothing 
 more than one colossal sponge, is the City Hall. The whole 
 gang has its mouth wide open, like so many birdies all agape 
 in their nest waiting for their mother. Ye might parade the 
 entire street-sprinkling force of the city round the hall till 
 sundown, every cart of them squirting whiskey, and ye would 
 be no nearer the bottom of their appetites than when ye 
 started. Talk of the thirst of the Sahara and India's coral 
 strand ! Why, it's milk and honey beside the capacity of this 
 self-same Dimocracy when treats are free !" And he wiped 
 his broad face with a large handkerchief, perspiring at the 
 very thought of the scenes that he had been through. He 
 himself had doubtless taken his share of the refreshments in 
 honor of the previous evening's triumph, but whiskey had 
 little effect on his huge frame. His voice, perhaps, was a 
 trifle louder, and his movements somewhat more emphatic 
 than usual, but where there was so much volume and empha- 
 sis already a little additional of either made no material dif- 
 ference. 
 
 The triumvirate had been in consultation for perhaps an 
 hour, and apparently things did not go smoothly. The General 
 sat with his chair tilted back, a look of annoyance on his face, 
 and drummed nervously on the table with his fingers. The 
 Irishman's hands were thrust nearly to the elbows into his 
 capacious pockets, and beneath his hat, balanced on the very 
 back of his head, his face was flushed and thunderous. Woll- 
 mer leaned serenely on the table, making figures with a stubby 
 pencil on a sheet of paper. 
 
 " It seems to me," said the General, " that two months 
 
BEHIND THE SCENES 63 
 
 before election is too soon. It will be difficult to keep them 
 quiet so long, and if there is serious disturbance it may do 
 more harm than good. The public sympathy is always with 
 the strikers at first, but violence soon wears out the public's 
 patience." 
 
 " An' if the cost is to be anywheres near what you say," 
 said the Irishman, addressing Wollmer, " there isn't a city in 
 America, barrin' the New Jerusalem with its golden streets, 
 whose treasury could stand it. Eight weeks of such pipin' 
 as that — it would beggar the Rothschilds themselves to pay 
 the bill. Four hundred thousand ! Holy Moses !" 
 
 " I see no alternative," said the General ; " you must man- 
 age somehow to hold them for a while vet." 
 
 " I have held them pretty well," snarled Wollmer, " al- 
 ready. I worked it last night for you. But let the men 
 once get an idea that I'm fooling them, and the whole crowd 
 of us can go to blazes." 
 
 " What is the longest that the committee can now defer 
 calling the next meeting ?" asked the General again. 
 
 " Well, we may be able to wait a week — then three days 
 more before the day of the t meeting — then two days more. 
 We may stretch it to two weeks altogether." 
 
 " That makes six weeks to election after they've struck," 
 said the Irishman. " Three hundred thousand ! And how 
 much will you get out of that yourself ?" he asked suddenly, 
 looking straight at Wollmer. 
 
 " I do not know what business that is of yours," replied 
 Wollmer, with confident impudence. " The situation is this : 
 The General here has to be elected Governor, and the city 
 Democratic ticket must go through. Well, the General's busi- 
 ness is to go on as he has been going and run his campaign. 
 When he and the party are elected, you will have the city 
 patronage and the rest, and that is good enough for you. To 
 do this you need the labor vote. I can give it to you, but I 
 propose that I shall name the price and not anybody else. 
 And there is not going to be any auditing of my accounts, 
 either. I have to turn over the vote — that is my business. 
 You can furnish the funds to buy it with — that is your busi- 
 ness. There are three thousand men in all, and, at ten dollars 
 
64 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 a week, that is thirty thousand dollars. Add all the expenses 
 that will come up, and it makes fifty thousand dollars. Six 
 weeks at that is three hundred thousand. You can take it at 
 that price or leave it, just as you please." 
 
 " That's about one hundred thousand for Mr. Wollmer," 
 said the Irishman, quietly. The other made no reply, but con- 
 fined himself to scribbling on his scrap of paper. Suddenly 
 Sullivan threw his head back and burst into a deep-chested 
 guffaw. 
 
 " An' to think of us settin' here," he said, " an' hagglin' 
 like so many fish-wives, when it's closer together we are than 
 Fidus an' Achates, an' there's just as much chance of our fail- 
 ing to come to terms as there is of the crown of my hat quar- 
 relin' with the brim. So far as I'm concerned, it's just this: 
 it isn't Tim Sullivan that proposes to put himself in the peni- 
 tentiary at this point in his glorious career. Nor is it that 
 same Tim Sullivan who proposes to lose this election. Sure, 
 haven't we two weeks to work in yet ? Let yer committee go 
 ahead and dally along just as much as ye can, an' by the time 
 that ye can't do nothing any longer I'll know just what the 
 resources of the city can surrender." 
 
 He was the same genial Irishman once more, and all trace 
 of menace or of wrath had passed from his face. But Woll- 
 mer was not easily taken in. 
 
 " Well, as you please," he said, indifferently ; " I just wanted 
 to have an understanding. You know now what it will cost, 
 and there is no chance, either one week or two weeks hence, 
 of its being any less." 
 
 It was difficult to find any satisfactory answer to this, so 
 the Irishman contented himself with stretching himself till his 
 huge joints cracked and yawning cavernously, while the Gen- 
 eral coughed. 
 
 " By-the-byc," said Sullivan, suddenly changing the subject, 
 " how much does the boy there know of things ?" and he 
 nodded towards Marsh's room. 
 
 " I never talk to him of campaign matters," said the Gen- 
 eral, uneasily, " except as concerns his own speeches." 
 
 As a matter of fact, the General had of late begun to feel 
 ashamed in the presence of his young partner. He knew that 
 
BEHIND THE SCENES 65 
 
 Marsh believed in him thoroughly, and he dreaded, when they 
 were together, lest the young man should lead the conversa- 
 tion to the level of the ideal politics in which he lived. Per- 
 haps the General had some echo of a remembrance of high 
 ambitions which had inflamed him at Horace's age. At least, 
 he guessed vaguely how abhorrent much of his present work 
 would be to the younger one, and he shrank from converse 
 with him on political affairs, lest by some chance word or 
 false ring in his voice the other's suspicions should be awak- 
 ened. 
 
 " It is a purty boy," said the Irishman, w T ith a nod of in- 
 telligence. " As I was tellin' him the other day, the party 
 will be wantin' United States Senators some day soon of just 
 such stuff as he. But he'll have to leave his campaign in the 
 hands of his friends, for Tim Sullivan's much mistaken in the 
 lad if he'll ever take kindly to politics outside o' the public 
 speakin'. He does that to suit Demosthenes himself, for it's 
 a spark of the sacred fire itself that's in him. But it isn't the 
 sacred fire that wins elections in these degenerate days. It's 
 great stuff to set the meetin' cheerin', but when it comes to 
 castin' votes it's other things entirely that counts. But it's a 
 good lad," the Irishman continued, " an' we must keep him 
 with the party, an' I'm thinkin' the best way to do that is to 
 let him know as little as may be of what the party's doin'. 
 When ye're breakin' a pup there is such a thing as scarin' the 
 beast at the outset, and never a cent of good he'll be to ye 
 thereafter." 
 
 The big Irishman, accustomed to handle men, spoke of the 
 young lawyer as of a child — a child to be petted and pleased 
 with fairy tales and promises of toys, while his mind is 
 shielded from knowledge of the wickedness of the world. 
 
VI 
 
 TWICE TWO AND ONE OVER 
 
 The next day, being Wednesday, was Miss Holt's day "at 
 home." On this particular Wednesday she was assisted in the 
 reception of her callers by her two friends, Grace Willerby and 
 Mary Caley. From the middle of the afternoon until six 
 o'clock there was a constant coming and going amid the flutter 
 of skirts and ripple of laughter, while the reception-rooms were 
 clamorous with the twitter as of an aviary and the tinklina of 
 teacups. 
 
 Horace bad intended to call that evening. He had. work, 
 however, to get out of the way before he left town on the fol- 
 lowing day for his speech at Jackson, which compelled him to 
 stay at the office until late. It was eight o'clock before he 
 reached his club for dinner, and after half-past nine before he 
 found himself on the Holts' door-step. The first thing that he 
 was conscious of on entering the dimly lighted room was that 
 Marshal Blakely was talking to Miss Holt. 
 
 Blakely was comparatively a new-comer in the cit}% having 
 arrived only some two years before, when Miss Holt was in Eu- 
 rope. In a Western town of only moderate size (less than two 
 hundred thousand inhabitants) "society," though including 
 usually some amazingly incongruous and even unpromising 
 elements, is necessarily small ; the smallness being the result, 
 however, less of a premeditated exclusiveness than of lack of 
 proper material. In fact, the "scarcity of men" or of "girls," 
 as the case may be, furnishes each season a never-failing topic 
 of conversation among hostesses and mothers, and as a subject 
 for lamentation offers a pleasing alternative to the perennial 
 grievance of the poverty and crudity of the available supply of 
 domestic help. Society, therefore, welcomes with cordiality 
 
TWICE TWO AND ONE OVER 67 
 
 any reasonably presentable accession to its ranks arriving with 
 even moderate credentials from other cities. The number of 
 these accessions will rarely exceed one or two in any given sea- 
 son, and in the case of a man it is only necessary for a new 
 arrival to show some aptitude to the usages of society, and to 
 avoid making any very serious blunder, to find himself, soon 
 after his introduction, not only universally invited, but even rec- 
 ognized, in a rather tepid way, as the " rage " of the day. It 
 is surprising to see over what indifferent material, of the youth- 
 ful male sort, Western society can become mildly enthusiastic. 
 
 In Blakely's case the enthusiasm had amounted to something 
 more than tepidity. His remarkably good looks and air of a 
 man of the world were in themselves sufficient to excite at least 
 a languid interest in the women accustomed to the rather mo- 
 notonous and, it must be confessed, mostly somewhat common- 
 place men who constituted local society. Moreover, whether 
 from policy or inclination, he had not shown conspicuous anx- 
 iety to be "taken up," but had refrained from cheapening his 
 company or making his presence common at all those miscel- 
 laneous festivities of a lesser sort in which Western society dis- 
 ports itself. Given these factors, the result was a mathematical 
 certainty. He came to be an invariable topic of conversation 
 at feminine lunches and five o'clock teas. It was generally 
 surmised that there had been some tremendous romance in his 
 past, many versions of which, ranging all the way from the 
 accidental suicide of his beloved to tales of Corsican vendetta, 
 gained considerable currency. Hostesses were most gracious 
 to him. Girls fluttered at his approach. Even men who were 
 not naturally drawn to him, from hearing him so much dis- 
 cussed by the women, came to regard him as in some way a 
 person of more than ordinary importance, and treated him with 
 cordiality and even deference at the clubs and in business. 
 
 Letters from her friends had given Miss Holt, while in Eu- 
 rope, more than one description of him. Mrs. Tisserton had 
 written that he was like " some sort of an evil god," and added 
 that she " pitied the girl who found herself in his power, as 
 probably many had done in the past, and doubtless more would 
 do in the future." It is not in feminine nature not to feel 
 some curiosity to meet an evil god, especially when the owner 
 
68 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 of that nature is twenty-three years of age and the god some 
 half a decade older. But some months had passed after Miss 
 Holt's return home before she met Blakely. She had heard 
 much of him. " Oh, but you must meet him," her friends said, 
 and more than once she was told how much he wished to be 
 introduced to her. But at first Miss Holt had not been "go- 
 ing out," and then came Lent. Finally, when she did see him, 
 it was at the theatre. 
 
 She was in a box on a level with the stage, but removed 
 some distance from it. Shortly before the curtain rose she 
 became aware of a man in evening dress (which was not the 
 invariable costume of men attending the theatre there alone), 
 who was taking his seat in the parquet, some three or four 
 rows farther to the rear of the house, and perhaps six chairs 
 distant from the line of the box. Her glance had only fallen 
 on him for an instant, but she knew at once that it was lie, 
 and she was further conscious that his eyes were fixed on .her. 
 One of her companions leaned over and whispered hurriedly 
 that there was Mr. Blakely. The thing annoyed her. The in- 
 formation was superfluous, and, moreover, had been so clumsily 
 imparted that she was well aware that he had seen the move- 
 ment and understood it. Miss Holt, therefore, kept her eyes 
 obstinately on the drop-curtain, refusing to turn her face by 
 the smallest inclination in his direction. But she knew that 
 he still looked at her, and under his gaze she felt her pose 
 growing stiff and awkward, and herself becoming, an unusual 
 thing for her, embarrassed and self-conscious. 
 
 All through the evening she felt that his eyes were on her 
 much more than on the stage. Twice during the progress of 
 the play the restraint became intolerable, and she had suffered 
 her glance, as if carelessly, to wander over the house and fall 
 on him in passing. Each time his eyes had shifted away, so 
 that without their glances meeting she could not help know- 
 ing that his had but just left her face. Moreover, she knew 
 that he meant her to know it. She was constrained and un- 
 comfortable throughout the evening. It made her angry — 
 firstly, because there was no reason for embarrassment, and, 
 secondly, because she knew that he must notice that it existed, 
 and could scarcely fail to understand its cause. 
 
TWICE TWO AND ONE OVER 69 
 
 As the curtain fell on the last act and she rose from her 
 seat, her face turned involuntarily full towards him. He was 
 looking at her, and for a moment their eyes met steadily. 
 Then hers fell, and she turned confusedly to the man who was 
 holding her wrap for her. She was painfully conscious that 
 she flushed as she did so, and her spirit chafed under the un- 
 reasonableness of the whole thing. All the way home in the 
 carriage her face burned, and long after she should have been 
 asleep she tossed uneasily, full of wrath and mortification, and 
 haunted the while by that scene in Tolstoi's War and Peace, 
 wherein Natacha surrenders herself to Anatole in one meeting 
 of their eyes in the opera-house. 
 
 For some time she had rather avoided meeting him, and had 
 endeavored to turn the conversation into other channels when- 
 ever his name came up. When they did meet and were in- 
 troduced, he had been singularly silent and deferentially re- 
 served. No reference was made on either side to the evening 
 at the theatre, and he had compelled her to bear the larger 
 share of the conversation, while he listened with downcast 
 eyes and an attitude of extreme humility. There was nothing 
 of the air of the conqueror about him, nothing to imply the 
 existence of any previous relations between them, except, per- 
 haps, even in his humility, the slightest smile about his lips, 
 and sometimes an inscrutable light of something between 
 amusement and self-confidence in the recesses of the eyes 
 which he raised once and again to hers, which seemed to tell 
 her, so that her whole being revolted against it, that his air of 
 deference was but to humor her, and that their positions to 
 each other might be otherwise if he pleased it. His quietness 
 and submissiveness were so different from his ordinary manner 
 towards women that she could not fail to be aware of them, or 
 to know that he intended she should be aware of them, and 
 that they were meant to convey to her an intimation that she 
 stood apart from all other women in his regard. He could not 
 have adopted an attitude more surely calculated to pique her 
 pride or to make her more acutely conscious of the influence 
 which he had already established over her. 
 
 Never before had any man succeeded in placing her in a 
 similar, and what was so essentially a false, position towards 
 
70 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 him. She told herself that he was insolent ; but that he had 
 not been. She said that his behavior was unwarrantable ; but 
 what had he done that was tangible at which offence could be 
 taken ? She assured herself that she hated him ; nevertheless, 
 she was conscious of a persistent and unreasonable desire to 
 see him, and when driving in the street her eyes would con- 
 tinually single out from among the throng on the sidewalk 
 men whose figures from a distance resembled his. But though 
 she seemed to meet Horace Marsh frequently when down-town, 
 and other acquaintances from time to time, she had never yet 
 seen him. 
 
 Then came the evening at which Horace had been so miser- 
 ably aware of her constraint at Blakely's presence. Since then 
 they had met several times, and, as Horace had seen, she had not 
 again betrayed any embarrassment in his company. She told 
 herself that there was no longer danger of her feeling any — 
 that the effect of his fixed gaze that evening at the theatre 
 had been no more than she would have felt at being similarly 
 stared at by any other man whom she had not met, but whom 
 she had heard much talked of. She even affected to be more 
 at ease in his company than in that of any other man of her 
 acquaintance, adopting with him a tone of light-heartedness 
 and nonsensical raillery which was new in her. But at the 
 bottom of her heart she knew that she was acting, that the 
 gayety was assumed only because she feared to give him an 
 opportunity of being serious. So far he had maintained his 
 first attitude of deference. She was safe at present within the 
 defences of forced mirthfulness which she had erected" around 
 her; but he had made no attempt to break these defences 
 down. Should he attempt it, how strong would they prove? 
 She scarcely dared to think, but once and again a certain tone 
 in his voice, or a new light in his eye, had made her heart 
 throb so that she nearly choked, and made her tremble in her 
 intrenchments. 
 
 To-night, for the first time, lie seemed to have made up 
 his mind to abandon in part, but in part only, his attitude 
 of humility. There was something more of confidence in 
 his manner at meeting, something — not quite a pressure of 
 her hand, but the holding of it prisoner for an instant — 
 
TWICE TWO AND ONE OVER 71 
 
 which awoke her alarm. Then he had referred to their first 
 meeting. 
 
 " I have not seen you at the theatre for a long time," he 
 had said. 
 
 " No, I have not been there at all this fall — not since last 
 spring," she replied. 
 
 " I have only seen you there once," he said, with his eyes 
 downcast. 
 
 She strove to make her voice sound careless and indifferent 
 as she asked in reply : 
 "When was that?" 
 
 But the tone sounded false to herself, and he had not an- 
 swered. Only he raised his eyes to hers, and his gaze said 
 plainly enough : "There is no need for me to tell you ; we both 
 remember." He quickly dropped his eyes again, and both sat 
 silent for a space. It was at this moment that Horace entered 
 the room. There were half a dozen others there, but he was 
 conscious, acutely conscious, only of those two, and he knew 
 that there was silence between them, and that something was 
 passing — if not a crisis, at least something which marked an 
 epoch in the relations between this man whom he hated so and 
 the woman whom he loved. 
 
 She rose to meet him quickly, and as if she were very glad — 
 as indeed she was — to escape from the strained silence which 
 seemed to be stifling her. Horace saw that she was glad, but 
 he was too near guessing the reason of it to take much com- 
 fort in her friendliness. 
 
 " I am so much obliged to yon for the flowers," she said, 
 nodding her head towards a side-table whereon his roses stood, 
 massed in a deep-toned Rookwood vase. " There was no card 
 with them, but I know they came from you — did they not?" 
 
 " There was no need of a card," he said, half-jestingly, " for 
 ' each red rose,' you know, has a capacity for speaking which 
 other flowers have not." 
 
 " Is that so ?" she replied, indifferently. " Anyway, I adore 
 American Beauties; they are so full of sunlight, and their 
 perfume intoxicates me. I want to crush them, or bury my- 
 self in them, or roll over them, like a cat, or something. Sniff- 
 ing is so inadequate !" And she walked over to them now 
 
72 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 and thrust her face into the blossoms, and found their dewy 
 scented coolness inexpressibly refreshing*. 
 
 Horace passed on to shake hands with the other women, and 
 to exchange words of greeting with the men in the room. He 
 was still standing up engaged in this when he saw that Blakely 
 was saying "Good-night " to Miss Holt. 
 
 "Must you be going?" he had heard her voice say, and the 
 tone sounded conventional enough. She alone knew that for 
 the first time in her life she wished for a man to stay even 
 while she feared lest he should. "Or does he know it, too?" 
 she asked herself, with trembling. There was a quiet, authorita- 
 tive look of understanding in his eyes, and a pressure of her 
 hand — a definite pressure this time, which could not be mis- 
 taken — which she fancied told her that he read her heart. 
 
 Others left soon after. At nearly ten o'clock it was probably 
 too late to expect more callers, and there remained with the 
 three women only Marsh and Barry, Marsh's chum, who would 
 presumably wait that they might go home together. 
 
 " I know that I arrived most unorthodoxly late," said Marsh, 
 as the five were seated in an irregular semicircle round the 
 open fire, " but I had a lot of work to do which kept me at the 
 office, and I am to be out of town for a couple of days. I had 
 to come to-night, or I should not have had the distinguished 
 pleasure of seeing you ladies again until Saturday, which would 
 have been intolerable. And now that I am here I know that I 
 ought to be going again. But that looks equally intolerable — 
 especially as I have Barry to keep me in countenance." 
 
 " To-morrow," said Jessie, "is the day when the apostle ex- 
 horts the multitudes, is it not ?" 
 
 " To-morrow," said Horace, briefly ; " and the apostle hates it." 
 
 " What, the multitude ?" asked she. " Bad apostle !" 
 
 "No, the job," Marsh replied, "if the apostolic calling can 
 be said to resolve itself into jobs. I wonder," he added, medi- 
 tatively, " whether the real apostles ever hated to talk — whether 
 there were times when they were not in the mood for it, and 
 whether they were nervous beforehand. One cannot imagine 
 it, but I suppose they did." 
 
 " Is it not recorded," asked Barry, " that on one occasion at 
 least Peter stood up and was bold ?" 
 
TWICE TWO AND ONE OVER 73 
 
 "Yes," Marsh replied ; " but that was before a comparatively 
 small audience. Besides, the mere fact that it was worth re- 
 cording then would seem to imply that he was not always so." 
 
 "But on this occasion," interjected Miss Holt, "I thought 
 the apostle was eager for the fray. He spoke as if he were a 
 few days ago." 
 
 " In some ways he is," Marsh said, slowly. " He wants to 
 make the exhortation well enough. But to-morrow he would 
 rather be elsewhere. I should like to have been a member of 
 the theatre-party." 
 
 11 Who is going ?" asked Miss Caley. 
 
 Horace had been longing to ask that question, but did not 
 dare. 
 
 " I do not know them all," said Miss Holt, " I understand 
 there are to be three boxes. The Tissertons are going, I know, 
 and we three, and — and Mr. Blakely." There was an almost 
 imperceptible change of tone as she mentioned the last name, 
 but a change which at least one of the auditors caught. "Are 
 you going, Mr. Barry ?" she asked, quietly, turning to that per- 
 son. 
 
 " No, I am not bidden," he replied. " Mrs. Brace does not 
 like me." 
 
 "Impossible!" exclaimed Miss Willerby, with exaggerated 
 incredulity. 
 
 "But a fact, just the same; and I have been overwhelmingly 
 sweet to her," Barry complained. " It was not my fault in the 
 first instance, anyway. I accidentally overheard her lecturing 
 Brace one day — oh, years ago. It was at the Carringtons', at a 
 dance, and I was hunting for my partner round those intermi- 
 nable verandas. Before I knew it I had heard two or three sen- 
 tences, and before I could escape she had discovered me. Jingo ! 
 she was giving it to him, too !" 
 
 " What a shame," said Miss Holt, languidly. " He is such 
 a dear, inoffensive, gentle creature." 
 
 "You cannot imagine his not behaving like a perfect lady 
 under any circumstances," Miss Willerby remarked. 
 
 A certain proneness to sarcasm was that young woman's 
 chief fault. A striking, even a handsome girl, tall and slender, 
 blonde, but with dark eyebrows, had she been born to wealth 
 
74 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 she would have been the pet and leader of any society in which 
 she might have been thrown. As it was, she had been familiar 
 from a child with all the shifts and inconveniences of a house- 
 hold in straitened circumstances. At first she had rebelled bit- 
 terly against her inability to have as many dresses and hats, as 
 many ornaments and pleasures, as other girls of her age. Grad- 
 ually, however, she had learned to keep her resentment to her- 
 self, and by the use of her deft needle to repair as far as pos- 
 sible the deficiencies of her wardrobe. She was never richly, 
 but always becomingly dressed. As soon as her education was 
 completed she had been compelled to take a place as teacher in 
 the public schools, and the days which her friends spent in 
 pleasure and flirtation and thinking of their dresses had been 
 occupied for her with work, and work of a hard and harassing 
 kind. Reading much by herself in the long evenings, she had 
 acquired a certain independence of thought, as she had early 
 learned to rely upon her own resources for her gowns. She 
 was not cynical ; the natural fulness and sweetness of her nat- 
 ure forbade that — only a somewhat reserved girl accustomed to 
 think and act for herself, reconciled to the fact that one of her 
 moderate means could in her position in society expect few 
 lovers. In return she was inclined to be regardless of what 
 the world, from which she received so little, thought of her. 
 Her pupils loved her, and her friends of both sexes said : 
 " What a pity she does not marry ; she would make such a 
 splendid wife !" When any suggestion of the kind was made 
 to her she laughed a little bitterly, saying that she would al- 
 ways be an old maid ; she could not afford a husband. For 
 the rest, she kept her own counsel, did with even good-nature 
 her day's work as it was allotted to her, and was the strength 
 and comfort of a somewhat sordid and cheerless home. It was 
 not surprising if, in her broodings, and feeling herself, as she 
 did, so much apart from the world to which she was so near, 
 she had acquired a trick of sarcasm of speech which was really 
 without malice or uncharitableness. In speaking of her to 
 Horace, Miss Holt had said more than once that there was the 
 making of a heroine in the girl — if she was not one already. 
 
 As she sat now in the centre of the circle about the fireplace 
 she was conscious, but not resentfully, of being the odd mem- 
 
TWICE TWO AND ONE OVER 75 
 
 ber of the party — the puss without a corner. A stranger coin- 
 inor in would probably have said that she was the handsomest 
 and most interesting person in the room. But on her left sat 
 Miss Holt with Horace on the other side of her, and Miss Wil- 
 lerby did not need to be told how little Horace cared whether 
 any other person was present or not. On her right Barry's 
 body was inclined at as sharp an angle as possible towards Miss 
 Caley, to whom, from time to time, he addressed trivial asides 
 in a subdued tone of infinite tenderness. 
 
 Barry was always in love with somebody. He never denied 
 it, but justified himself by quoting Sterne: "I have been in 
 love with one princess or another all my life, and hope I shall 
 go on so till I die, being firmly persuaded that if ever I do a 
 mean action, it must be in some interval betwixt one passion 
 and another." 
 
 Marsh, some time back, had been immoderately delighted by 
 accidentally coming across, in Longfellow's " Spanish Student," 
 
 the lines : 
 
 ..." That heart of thine 
 Is like a scene in the old play ; the curtain 
 Rises to solemn music, and lo ! enter 
 The eleven thousand virgins of Cologne !" 
 
 He had gleefully given the quotation to Barry to read, and 
 since then, whenever the latter embarked on confidences in re- 
 lation to his latest flame, it was only necessary, to close the 
 conversation, for Marsh to say, in a tone of affected careless- 
 ness : 
 
 " By-the-bye, Barry, have you ever read ' The Spanish Stu- 
 dent ' ?" 
 
 In Miss Caley it seemed as if Victorian had met his match. 
 It is Howells who has made one of his characters say that 
 " What's passing in every girl's mind when she's thinking " 
 is " processions of young men so long that they are an hour 
 o-ettino- by a given point." Miss Caley was a soft, kitten -like 
 young person, undoubtedly pretty, but possessed of an incurable 
 habit of flirtation. Neither age nor condition of servitude ap- 
 peared to make material difference in the other party, provided 
 only that the other party was of the male sex. She had a 
 preference for youth — anywhere from fifteen to thirty -five 
 
76 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 years of age — and a decided preference for dark eyes and a 
 curly mustache. But in default of these desirable accessories, 
 almost anything male would suffice. Let it be the aged min- 
 ister, come to make a pastoral call, or a messenger-boy arriving 
 with an accidental billet-doux, it was beyond the power of Mary 
 Caley to prevent her eves from saying to them, as plainly as 
 eyes could speak : " Do fall in love with me ! Please fall in 
 love w ? ith me!" It was not her fault, she honestly believed. 
 Those incorrigible eyes, with their long brown lashes, were sim- 
 ply beyond her control. Their appeal, moreover, was not often 
 resisted. Even the minister pronounced her a " decidedly 
 prepossessing child," while the messenger- boy dreamed for 
 nights afterwards of rescuing her from Indians, and longed for 
 the day when another message would take him to her house. 
 For the others, those with the eyes and mustaches, they often 
 took it seriously — for several days at a time. During those 
 days she went in ecstasy, moving joyously through the house 
 spilling snatches of song, and always on the lookout for call- 
 ers or messages or presents of flowers and bonbons — of which 
 she received amazing quantities in the course of a year. She 
 said it was all "such fun,' 1 and would confide to other members 
 of her family in occasional bursts of hysterical confidence, min- 
 gled with laughter, during which she would hide her face and 
 her blushes in the sofa cushions, what he (the "he" of the time 
 being) had said to her; to all of which the members of the 
 family would listen, too much amused to be seriously shocked, 
 for they knew that it would not last, and that admonition would 
 be wasted. Then " he " would grow jealous ; there would be 
 a stormy scene of recrimination and tears, and all would be over 
 — forever. A day or two days, or sometimes a whole week, 
 would pass, during which she hated mankind, and revolved fear- 
 some thoughts of prussic acid and pistols. This was only the 
 overture, however, to the next act. The curtain rose with a new 
 leading gentleman. 
 
 Just now her eyes talked to William Barry. The fitful fire- 
 light helped them, so that they were astonishingly eloquent. 
 Nor was Barry likely to steel himself against them. 
 
 And all this Miss Willerby understood as she sat and looked 
 into the fire. 
 
TWICE TWO AND ONE OVER 77 
 
 For Horace, he only knew that Blakely was to take his place 
 at the theatre next evening-, and that she was sitting by his side 
 now, and that his heart was breaking. She was dressed in a 
 simple, half -evening costume of the soft material known to 
 dress-makers as "Henrietta," of the same shade of violet as she 
 had worn at the dinner — her favorite color, apart from the fact 
 that she was not yet fully out of mourning. It was cut round 
 at the neck (in what is called the Gretchen style), and as she 
 lay back in her voluminous chair the firelight lit up the fulness 
 of her throat and the soft curves of her cheek, once and again 
 touching the white forehead, from which her dark hair was 
 drawn in rippling waves upward and backward. Her beauty 
 was of a high, serene type which would stand this mode of 
 coiffure, ruinous to a merely pretty face which relies on piq- 
 uancy for its charm. As she reclined now, in an attitude of 
 complete relaxation, her hands resting on the broad arms of 
 the chair and her head thrown back, the eyes almost closed as 
 she looked at the fire, so that the dark lashes nearly rested on 
 the cheek, with the whiteness of the throat and forehead, she 
 seemed to Horace beyond expression beautiful with a beauty 
 that was queenly and most pure. He longed to lean over and 
 put his lips on hers; and he clinched his hands till the nails 
 almost dug into the flesh as he said again and again to himself 
 that he must win her. Surely it must be so ! Why else had 
 he thus been thrown near her, and why was this love, on which 
 all the hopes and ambitions of his life depended, given to him 
 if it were to be futile? And he sickened and burned at the 
 thought that any other man — and, most of all, Blakely — could 
 ever possess her. 
 
 The conversation was desultory and lifeless, as it could not 
 help but be when more than half the company were so busy 
 with their own thoughts and emotions. 
 
 " But there must be some men, surely" said Miss Caley, plain- 
 tively. "Mr. Blakely is going to be of no use to us" indicat- 
 ing Miss AVillerby by a glance. 
 
 Miss Holt made no sign that there was any significance in 
 the speech, and there was silence. 
 
 "I wish I were going," said Barry to Miss Caley, in an under- 
 tone full of mean in o;. 
 
78 MEN BOEN EQUAL 
 
 " I wish you were," said that young lady, casting her eyes down 
 with the air of one from whom a reluctant confession is wrung. 
 
 Then they drifted back to the subject of Horace's impending 
 speech. Miss Caley thought it must be just sweet to be able 
 to sway masses. Didn't Mr. Barry think so? He did, and was 
 deliciously conscious of being swayed himself. 
 
 "Are you ever nervous?" asked Miss Willerby. 
 
 " Horribly !" Marsh replied. " I am uneasy for a day before, 
 and the last half-hour is agony. When I am being introduced 
 to the audience I am going through the very valley of the shad- 
 ow. I run cold up the back, and my mouth is sticky. By the 
 time the applause has died away the faces before me begin 
 slowly to individualize themselves, instead of being merely a 
 sea of white discs. But the silence when the applause stops 
 and the audience comes to attention is awful. It is a frightful 
 effort to break it, and when I do so my voice sounds cracked 
 even to myself. After a few words it begins to steady down, 
 quite of its own accord and without volition on my part, and 
 adjusts itself to the room. Once it has fairly found its gait, as 
 it were, I like it, especially if the audience is responsive, and 
 answers promptly when I call upon it." 
 
 "It must be splendid!" said Miss Caley, with enthusiasm. 
 " Is your eloquence turbid, Mr. Marsh ?" 
 
 " Sometimes my thoughts are," he laughed. 
 
 There was a moment's pause, and then Miss Willerby spoke. 
 
 " ' 'Twixt banks intent the turbid river rolls,' " she .said, 
 musingly, to the fire. "Nobody can tell me where that quo- 
 tation comes from." 
 
 " Shelley," suggested Miss Caley. 
 
 Even to Barry there was a certain ineptitude in this, and lie 
 said, humbly : 
 
 " I don't think it can be Shelley. It doesn't sound like him." 
 
 "Don't you think so? I love Shelley, don't you?" she 
 asked, confidentially. He did, of course, as was his duty. 
 
 " What is it?" she asked, feeling her way to a quotation : 
 
 " ' The fountains mingle with the rivers, 
 The rivers kiss the sea.' . . . 
 
 I think he is sweet!" 
 
TWICE TWO AND ONE OVER 79 
 
 "Was the quotation from Willerby?" asked Miss Holt. 
 
 "No; it was the first line of a poem that I saw published 
 the other day in an educational paper — an original poem by a 
 young Hindu student in some college in India. I think it is 
 immense." 
 
 " What does he mean by ' intent ' ?" asked Horace. 
 
 " I don't know : I don't think he did. He used all sorts of 
 queer words later on — like a negro, without any apparent rec- 
 ognition of their sense. But if some great poet had written 
 that, we should all say it was splendid — "Twixt banks in- 
 tent.' " 
 
 And silence fell again. 
 
 "I didn't know that Indians spoke English," said Miss 
 Caley, presently. " I thought they spoke Indian. Didn't 
 you?" turning to Barry. 
 
 " Well — er — " and he hesitated — " they do, you know, nat- 
 urally — Hindustani, that is. But they are taught English." 
 
 "Oh ! by the missionaries and things." 
 
 Barry nodded, without committing himself in words. 
 
 " I should love to be a missionary — it must be so noble !" 
 she said ; " wouldn't you ?" 
 
 " If you were a missionary I would rather be a savage," he 
 said, softly. " Would you teach me ?" 
 
 " If you'd promise not to eat me," she laughed. 
 
 "I don't know whether I would or not;" and he looked at 
 her carnivorously. 
 
 Meanwhile the clock on the mantel showed that it was near- 
 ly eleven o'clock, and Horace knew that they must be going; 
 so he rose reluctantly. The others did the same. 
 
 "It is awfully hard to go," he said, "and plunge into the 
 outer darkness." 
 
 " Don't call it that !" said Miss Caley ; " the outer darkness 
 is where devils and things are thrown." 
 
 "And don't you consider us as two poor devils?" asked 
 Marsh. And there was real misery in his eyes — misery min- 
 gled with reproach — a9 he took Miss Holt's hand to say 
 " Good-night." She gave it, and smiled very sweetly and ten- 
 derly in reply, as if she would like to comfort him and make 
 amends. 
 
80 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 When the men had bowed themselves out and the front door 
 was shut behind them, the three girls stood for a minute mus- 
 ingly. Miss Caley sat down at the open piano and ran her 
 right hand lightly over the treble. Then she jumped up again. 
 
 " What eyes Mr. Blakely has !" she said. 
 
 There was no reply for a minute; then Miss Willerby, stand- 
 ing with one foot on the fender, said, with apparent irrelevance 
 but in a tone of conviction : 
 
 " The tip of Mr. Marsh's little finger is worth the whole of 
 Mr. Blakely, body and soul together, with all his cousins and 
 aunts and parents and grandparents and remote ancestors 
 thrown in." 
 
 "Don't talk of remote ancestors just before going to bed !" 
 exclaimed Miss Caley. " I know I shall see ghosts if you do." 
 
 Miss Holt had not seemed to hear this conversation, but had 
 touched the button of an electric bell, in response to which the 
 butler now entered the room. 
 
 "Is Mr. Holt still in the library, Thomas?" asked his mis- 
 tress. 
 
 " Yes, miss." 
 
 " Will you girls have anything to eat or drink before going 
 to bed — lemonade or anything?" 
 
 "Gracious, no, dear!" said Miss Willerby; "we have been 
 eating and drinking all day !" 
 
 "Well, let us go and say good-night to papa. You can turn 
 out the lights here, Thomas. Come on, girls! Good-night, 
 Thomas." 
 
 " Good-night, miss ;" and the butler moved silently over to 
 the piano -lamp and, stooping under the shade, felt for the 
 knob by which to turn it down ; while the three left the room, 
 Miss Holt leading and the others following, Miss Caley with 
 her arm caressingly round Miss Willerby's waist. 
 
VII 
 
 A MAN OF AFFAIRS 
 
 Barry, in addition to his extraordinary susceptibility to the 
 charms of the fair sex, was a person of some originality in 
 other ways. His father had been one of the " early settlers " 
 when the now flourishing city was no more than a trading- 
 post in the wilderness, and the son had lived here, except for 
 occasional absences of a few months at a time, all his life. 
 Having been at school with more than half of the women and 
 men of his age in town, he called them by their Christian names, 
 and they in turn, men and women alike, called him "Will." 
 He had led more cotillons and acted as best man at more wed- 
 dings than any other three men in the place, and had danced 
 and fallen in love, for he was now thirty-six and had begun to 
 dance at eighteen, with more than a dozen successive "crops" 
 (as he called them) of girls. His partners of to-day had sat 
 upon his knees years ago when he called to make love to their 
 aunts and elder sisters, and his partners of the old days had 
 daughters to whom Barry found it necessary now to take off 
 his hat in the street. It would not be many years before he 
 was dancing with them, he said. He himself had scarcely 
 aged in the last eighteen years. In appearance he was tall 
 and loose-jointed, slightly round-shouldered, with lightish brown 
 hair and mustache, the former dry and unruly, especially one 
 lock which insisted on falling over his forehead almost to his 
 eyes, so that, as he hurried about a ball-room, he was forever 
 smoothing it with his hand or throwing it back with a colt-like 
 toss of the head. 
 
 His business capacity had not so far given evidence of being 
 remarkable. For a time he had studied law, and had been ad- 
 mitted to the bar. The window of his office bore the sign in 
 
 6 
 
82 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 gold letters " William Barry, Attorney-at-Law — Real Estate and 
 Loans." As a matter of fact, be did almost anything now ex> 
 cept practice law, interesting himself in whatever came bis 
 way, especially in the organization of companies (which were 
 never fully organized) for the exploitation of impracticable 
 patents. He was not known to have made money in anything; 
 but was constantly losing small amounts in almost everything. 
 However, though his father had been of a thriftless turn in his 
 later years, there still remained enough of the original home- 
 stead claim, now valuable city property, to make the son some- 
 thing more than well-to-do, and to place him, barring some 
 exceptional recklessness, beyond the danger of financial discom- 
 fort to the end of his days. Business, with him, was not a 
 means of making money, but a method of passing the time. 
 He supported his office much as another man might support a 
 stable or a conservatory. He used to say himself that it was 
 fortunate that he was not of a naturally industrious disposi- 
 tion ; it would soon ruin him. At present he only worked 
 half the time — dabbled in business as one might dabble in 
 horse-racing — and the expenditure came comfortably within the 
 limits of his income. - If he were to work all the time, he 
 would assuredly live beyond his means. 
 
 It was in this same paradoxical spirit that he approached 
 the details of his work. It was not the commercial value of a 
 scheme that interested him so much as its artistic merits. Thus 
 he had a few days before unfolded to Marsh the outline of a 
 project for a new company to which he was just then devoting 
 his time. It was to be called the National Monumental Asso- 
 ciation, and was in the nature of an insurance company ; but 
 instead of paying a sum of money to the heirs at death, the 
 association would erect a monument to the deceased in some 
 conspicuous location in the city. The plan contemplated, in 
 the first place, the securing from the city of an exclusive 
 franchise for the erection of monuments in the parks and 
 public squares, the association agreeing, in exchange for the 
 franchise, to erect at least one monument every year in com- 
 memoration of some distinguished fellow - townsman. The 
 designs for the monuments would be subject to the approval of 
 the City Council. A list of some two hundred or two hundred 
 
A MAN OF AFFAIRS 83 
 
 and fifty " prominent citizens " was drawn up, and these were 
 to be approached and solicited to subscribe. A payment of 
 two hundred dollars a year, during life, would secure at death 
 a life-size marble statue of the deceased, to be erected on a site 
 selected at the time of payment of the first premium. Two 
 hundred and fifty dollars a year would secure an heroic figure 
 with a base ten feet in height. Five hundred dollars a year 
 would suffice for a granite plinth twenty-five feet high and a 
 colossal figure on the top. Special rates were to be provided 
 for equestrian statues, memorial arches, and fountains, and for 
 statues approached by flights of steps and supported by sym- 
 bolical groups, while scales of payment were further graded 
 in accordance with the desirability of the site selected. 
 
 "It isn't in human nature," he said, enthusiastically, "that 
 any of these men will refuse to come in. Ninety per cent, of 
 them will subscribe, anyway. There will be money in it, and, 
 morover, the association will be a public benefactor. In twenty- 
 five years the city will be better supplied with statues than any 
 town of its size in the country." 
 
 Whether he was really in earnest in the scheme or not it 
 was difficult to say, but at least he was devoting his time to its 
 development with considerable ardor. He had drawn up the 
 articles of association and a draft of a franchise to be sub- 
 mitted to the council, and was at work on the prospectus, in 
 which the advantages to subscribers were set forth in alluring 
 and picturesque phraseology. He had had maps of the city 
 prepared, on which all possible monumental sites were marked 
 with a red star, and each was numbered. These were to be 
 classified according to their desirability and their suitability for 
 special types of monuments. Draughtsmen were at work de- 
 signing statues of a variety of types which were to be used by 
 the canvassers of the association in soliciting patronage, and 
 full instructions were to be drawn up for the guidance of the 
 canvassers in approaching every individual on the list-^-with 
 hints as to his character and means, and the class of statue 
 which each was most likely to be disposed to invest in. 
 
 This preliminary work on his schemes Barry never failed to 
 elaborate on the minutest scale. Usually the scheme ended 
 with this preliminary work, and Marsh did not anticipate that 
 
84 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 the National Monumental Association would ever advance be- 
 yond the stage at which his other projects had been dropped — 
 as, for instance, his Ladies' Clearing-house and Five o'Clock 
 Tea Parlors, on which he had been so busy a few weeks ago. 
 This plan contemplated the establishment somewhere down- 
 town, in one of the large office buildings, of a suite of rooms 
 to be furnished as luxuriously as possible, with heavy draper- 
 ies, deep chairs, and mellow lights, at which women would 
 drop in and chat during the afternoon, and where men, leaving 
 their offices for twenty minutes in the middle of the hurry of 
 business, could refresh themselves with a cup of tea amid these 
 sumptuous surroundings, and with the added distraction of 
 women's society. He was sure that both men and women 
 would patronize the parlors largely — especially in view of the 
 clearing-house feature of the scheme. Women would not only 
 meet here and exchange calls, but they would leave at the office 
 blocks of their cards — two hundred, say, at a time — together 
 with lists of those for whom they were intended. The lists 
 thus left would be checked off against each other, and the cards 
 " cleared," as checks are through a regular clearing-house, once 
 a week, or as often as might appear desirable. It would relieve 
 women of all the drudgery of the social " calling" of to-day. 
 
 Barry had spent considerable time in what he called " mis- 
 sionary work" among the women of his acquaintance in behalf 
 of this enterprise. He had obtained the refusal of a long-term 
 lease on a desirable suite of offices suitable for the purpose ; 
 had made elaborate calculations of income and expense ; had 
 received estimates and competitive designs for the decoration 
 and furnishing of the rooms from all over the country. Then 
 the thing had been shelved — only for a while, Barry said, 
 because he was busy with other things. 
 
 The number of schemes of this kind which he evolved was 
 almost endless. One was for an International Matrimonial 
 Bureau, a regularly incorporated company, which was to place 
 the existing system of international marriages of American 
 heiresses to European noblemen, where Barry asserted it right- 
 fully belonged, on a frank and open commercial basis. Wealthy 
 fathers of marriageable daughters in this country were to be 
 invited to subscribe in annual payments to a common fund, 
 
A MAN OP AFFAIRS 85 
 
 which fund was to be used for purchasing the outfits and pay- 
 ing the travelling expenses of eligible noblemen in Europe, who 
 would be consigned to this country with letters of introduction 
 only to the subscribers to the fund. 
 
 Another plan contemplated the contracting for advertising 
 rights in all the elevators in office buildings in large cities, the 
 space to be sublet to advertisers, as is done now in street-cars, 
 etc. Yet another had in view the establishment of what Barry 
 called a Card School, whereat, in apartments similar to those 
 of the Social Clearing-house and Five o'Clock Tea Company, 
 ladies were to be given lessons in whist, ecarte, euchre, piquet, 
 Boston, cribbage, bezique, hearts, and whatever else might be 
 the fashionable card games of the day. 
 
 In all of Barry's schemes there was sufficient commercial 
 plausibility to forbid their unqualified condemnation without 
 trial; but they possessed also a certain twist and eccentricity 
 which prevented their being a tempting field for the invest- 
 ment of capital. The only company which he was known to 
 have ever fully organized was one for the refining of sugar by 
 the use of an electric current, based on patents which had sub- 
 sequently been proved to be worthless. For the rest, they 
 never advanced beyond the preliminary stages, but sufficed 
 meanwhile to keep their originator pleasantly and not too ex- 
 pensively occupied, as well as affording endless entertainment 
 to his friends. 
 
 Barry's mother had died when he was a child, and his father 
 had followed her when the son was sixteen years of age. He 
 had no brothers or sisters. Marsh liked him, as did everybody 
 else, and for nearly two years the pair had shared the suite of 
 bachelor apartments which they now occupied — two sitting- 
 rooms, two bedrooms, a bath-room, etc. The rooms were situ- 
 ated well down-town, and on this Wednesday night the two 
 walked the mile and a half which lay between the "Holt man- 
 sion " and their quarters almost in silence. It was a beautiful 
 night, crisp and cold, without moonlight, but the sky luminous, 
 and every star brilliantly distinct. The paved sidewalks lay 
 glistening white before them, and on either side the outlines of 
 the houses and trees stood out in clear-cut silhouette against 
 the steely background. They walked briskly, each occupied 
 
86 MEN" BOEN EQUAL 
 
 with his own thoughts, their arms swinging, and their foot- 
 steps, as their heels struck the stones in unison, echoing in the 
 silent night air. Scarcely a word had been exchanged when 
 they reached their quarters. 
 
 The gas having been turned up, each disappeared to his own 
 room, but presently reappeared, patent-leather shoes having 
 been exchanged for slippers, and dress -coats for, in Marsh's 
 case, a gray sack-coat, and, in Barry's, for a gorgeous scarlet 
 smoking- jacket, faced with quilted blue silk. The room was 
 large and comfortably furnished, the big centre-table littered 
 with books, magazines, and writing-materials. Three of the 
 walls were almost covered to a height of some five feet from 
 the floor with book-shelves, well filled with the united libraries 
 of the two men. Above the book-shelves hung a number of 
 engravings and etchings, all good and some of considerable 
 value, sprinkled between trophies of fencing masks and foils, 
 tennis L racquets, boxing-gloves, guns, rods, riding- whips, and 
 the like. Over the entrance was a large elk's head with 
 branching antlers. Along the fourth side of the room, on 
 either hand of the fireplace, ran a deep wall-seat, comfortably 
 upholstered and strewn with many cushions. On this, after 
 the two had filled and lighted their pipes (for both were, in the 
 privacy of their chambers, pipe smokers), Barry threw himself 
 at full length, while Marsh sank back into the recesses of a vast 
 arm-chair. The latter smoked a short English brier, while his 
 companion flaunted one of those impossible German mon- 
 strosities with a portentously long and flexible stem and a 
 painted porcelain bowl, with which Barry was always in diffi- 
 culties, and constantly spilling the lighted tobacco in small 
 heaps on the floor, which smoked like altar fires until he rolled 
 off the lounge to stamp them out with his foot. 
 
 For some minutes they puffed in silence, which was at last 
 broken by Marsh. 
 
 " What's a man to do when a scoundrel comes across his 
 path and gets in his way ?" he asked. 
 
 " What kind of a scoundrel ?" queried the other. " One 
 that the police are after, or just an every-day, evening -dress, 
 snake-in-the-bosom, husband's-best-friend kind ?" 
 
 " Well, the police would be no use in this case." 
 
A MAN OF AFFAIRS 87 
 
 " Oh I" said Barry, sententiousl y, " then the best thing to do 
 is to let him alone." 
 
 " But if he is in love with the girl you are in love with ?" 
 Marsh suggested. 
 
 "The man who is in love with your girl is always a scoun- 
 drel," remarked the dogmatic Barry. 
 
 " Well, but what would you do?" 
 
 " What would I do ?" snorted Barry, contemptuously. 
 " What do I do, you mean. Why, go in and cut him out 
 and get the girl. Sometimes," he added, philosophically, " the 
 other fellow goes in first, however, and then he gets the girl." 
 
 " Generally, I should say," Marsh remarked, " judging from 
 results. You don't seem to have hung on to many of the 
 girls that you have got." 
 
 " That's a fact," Barry exclaimed, briskly, and with a cer- 
 tain bird-like air of surprise, as if some entirely new and inter- 
 esting fact had been brought to his attention. " I haven't, 
 have I ? Not one ! Nary girl." 
 
 Then silence intervened again. Presently Barry continued: 
 
 " He is a scoundrel, though. I'm with you there." 
 
 " Who ?" asked Marsh, in surprise. 
 
 " Why, Blakely," replied the other. Marsh made no com- 
 ment, but he had not intended that the personal application of 
 his inquiries would be so readily grasped and so bluntly put 
 into words. They puffed on again for a while, and then Bar- 
 ry broke out : 
 
 " It's an amazing thing," he said, " how good girls insist on 
 falling in love with worthless men. The better the girl, in fact, 
 the worse the man whom she seems to prefer. Given a good 
 girl with a good brother, and she will always fall in love with 
 a man whom he won't ask to his house." 
 
 "It really seems," Marsh assented, gloomily, "as if the 
 average woman liked wickedness in men." 
 
 " Like it !" broke in Barry, " she adores it ! It is just the 
 kind of wickedness that she ought most of all to abominate 
 that she adores most. A clean fellow, with honest ambitions 
 and made of the right stuff, has no manner of show compared 
 to a dashing, dissipated rake, who makes a business of making 
 fools of women. If getting a wife was the only end of ex- 
 
88 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 istence, we should have to turn our code of morals upside- 
 down, and blackguardism would be a leading virtue." 
 
 " I wonder, however," suggested Marsh, " if men are not 
 equally fascinated with bad women." 
 
 "Bad men are," said Barry — "and the majority of men 
 are bad. Scott ! what a beastly thing the average man of 
 the day is ! And, therefore, in a casually assorted hundred 
 men, the fast, flashy woman will find more admirers than the 
 sweet, modest girl. But the best men want their women 
 good — especially for marrying. But the trouble is that it is 
 the best women who want the bad men. They take them 
 like people in England eat that fruit — what is it called? — med- 
 lars ! — just rotten ! And they marry them, too." 
 
 " ' Here continueth to rot the body Sir Somebody Some- 
 thing,'" Marsh quoted from the famous epitaph. "But there 
 is one thing to be said: women don't know what a bad man 
 means." 
 
 " Not until they marry him," said Barry, " and then they 
 find out. It's terrible. And what is to be done ? Tell them 
 everything ? Nobody can do that except the girls' mothers, 
 and it must be pretty hard for a mother to put those kind of 
 things into a pure girl's mind. And do we — the other men, 
 I mean — want girls to know everything?" 
 
 " There is no way to help it except by men being better," 
 said Marsh. " The average man — take the average man in 
 the average ball-room — isn't fit to touch the average girl that 
 he dances with." 
 
 " Of course he isn't. But you may as well talk of making 
 the earth roll backward as of making men better. So long 
 as society is anything like what it is, and human nature is 
 human nature, men are going to be beasts and women are 
 going to love them for it." 
 
 " I am not so sure of that," said Marsh, thoughtfully. 
 " One thing, I think, is certain, and that is, that in the last 
 hundred years, whether men have grown to be any better in 
 regard to women or not, they have grown to seem better. 
 The tone of conversation among gentlemen has immeasurably 
 improved. There weren't any gentlemen in those days, ac- 
 cording to our ideas, or mighty few. Men bragged about 
 
A MAN OF AFFAIRS 89 
 
 things then that they keep to themselves to-day, and from 
 boasting- of a thing to being ashamed of it is a good long 
 step towards reform. It is quite true that we still regard as 
 venial offences lots of things which ought to be treated as 
 deadly sins. But they are offences now. They were not in 
 the last century ; and I think we are on the upward road the 
 whole time. I believe in human nature — in social as well as 
 political ethics. It is Emerson, isn't it, who says that it is 
 only by strength of its silent virtue that mankind continues 
 to exist — or words to that effect ? In this and in other things 
 I think men are getting better, and will get better." 
 
 "Maybe; but not fast enough to do much good in our 
 generation. It may come in time to save our granddaughters, 
 but I doubt it. No wonder they draw Cupid as blind! And 
 yet they say that the unknown is always terrible. Not for 
 women it isn't. I suppose the time is coming when we shall 
 be ashamed to lie and steal from the custom-house and the 
 government in matters of taxes, and so forth. But we are a 
 good long way from it yet." 
 
 There was a silence of some minutes, during which the 
 thoughts of each wandered after their own bent. At last Barry 
 spoke again. 
 
 " Look at Effie Marston, who married that Braisted fellow," 
 he said. " She was one of the sweetest girls in town, and 
 there was not a decent man here who would have put him up 
 at a club or asked him to dinner. I saw her a year afterwards 
 in New York. What a wreck she was ! I hardly knew her." 
 
 " Then that Hardy girl — Nellie — " said Marsh, " throwing 
 herself away on King !" 
 
 " Yes ; there's another case. Why, I was in love with 
 Nellie Hardy myself once. Not sure that I wasn't in love 
 with Effie Marston, too, for that matter." 
 
 Marsh's pipe was out, and he rose and knocked the ashes out 
 and hung it on a rack beside the mantel. 
 
 " Speaking of girls," began Barry, in a new tone, " did you 
 notice Miss Caley much? I think she's about as fascinating a 
 thing as I have ever seen — " 
 
 " Have you," said Marsh, as he stretched himself drowsily, 
 " ever read Longfellow's ' Spanish Student' ?" 
 
90 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 " Oh, shut up !" exclaimed Barry, as he rolled off the lounge, 
 upsetting in the process his ashes on the floor. "Damn Long- 
 fellow's ' Spanish Student ' f 
 
 And he, too, put away his pipe, and stretched himself. 
 
VIII 
 
 THE APOSTLE AND THE MULTITUDE 
 
 Long after Barry was asleep Marsh lay tormented with 
 thoughts of Blakely and Miss Holt as they would be at the 
 theatre the next evening. When he slept it was to dream 
 confused dreams of Miss Holt, dressed in the garb of an 
 apostle, on trial for misappropriating municipal funds, and 
 pleading in excuse that she did not know that Blakely was 
 rotten. Before his usual hour for rising in the morning he 
 found himself suddenly wide awake, his mind picking up the 
 dismal thread of his thoughts where he had dropped it the 
 night before. In the cold, new light the situation showed 
 even more cheerless than it had overnight. Indesperation 
 he threw himself out of bed and dressed with superfluous en- 
 ergy, splashing much in his bath, and brushing his hair with 
 ferocity. But do what he would, forever was there drum- 
 ming in the back of his head the thought that they would be 
 together that evening. At breakfast he pretended to read 
 the paper, but what he read was meaningless. He saw what 
 purported to be a " special telegram " from Jackson, saying: 
 
 " The largest rally of the season is expected at Jason Hall 
 to-morrow, when the Hon. Horace Marsh is to speak on 
 the principles of the new Democracy. The distinguished 
 young orator will arrive in Jackson in the afternoon, and will 
 be met by a deputation of leading Democrats, who will escort 
 him to the Boston House, where a suite of rooms has been 
 reserved for him during his brief stay in the city." 
 
 He smiled to himself at the " Hon." before his name, and 
 wondered what the deputation of leading Democrats would 
 do if he failed to appear on the appointed train, but stayed 
 behind to attend a theatre-party. The morning was cold and 
 
92 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 raw, and Marsh's temper did not improve as he walked 
 through the chilly air to his office. He opened his mail and 
 found it uninteresting. A letter from a client making polite 
 suggestions as to the line of defence in a certain suit only- 
 made him wish that there was some legal method of proceed- 
 ing against Blakely — an injunction to stop the theatre-party, 
 or something of the sort. The regular monthly statement 
 from the livery-stable at which he kept his saddle-horse con- 
 jured up the vision of those two riding side by side, " Mr. 
 and Mrs. Marshal Blakely" — and how superb she was on 
 horseback ! And he rode well, too, confound him ! 
 
 Then his partner came in, rubbing his hands cheerfully and 
 asking him when his train left. 
 
 " In about three-quarters of an hour," said Marsh, in a tone 
 of discontent ; " it leaves at ten ten." 
 
 " Well, you haven't much time, have you ? How are you 
 feeling to-day ? We want a rattling speech to-night." 
 
 Marsh grumbled something about feeling well enough, and 
 the General retired to his own room, unpleasantly conscious 
 that his young colleague was not in a kindly mood. 
 
 "Get me a messenger -boy, will you, Franklin," Marsh 
 called to one of the clerks in the outer office, and he heard 
 the " whir-r-r-r-r " of the mechanical call that was affixed to 
 the wall as Franklin turned the handle. The boy came, 
 chewing gum, and lolled against Marsh's desk, letting his 
 eyes wander superciliously round the office as Marsh gave 
 him his instructions to go to his rooms, get his valise, take it 
 to the station, and wait there for him. The boy fumbled te- 
 diously over his book of charges. 
 
 "Thirty-five," he said. Marsh gave him the money and 
 fifteen cents for himself. The boy turned the coins over in 
 his hand, but made no remark either of thanks or complaint. 
 
 " Sign that," he said, laying a crumpled ticket on Marsh's 
 desk. Marsh did so, and the boy lounged out of the office 
 whistling, and hitting the chairs as he passed them with a 
 stick which he had in his hand. 
 
 Twenty minutes later Horace had said good-bye to the Gen- 
 eral, and was buttoning up his overcoat on the point of leav- 
 ing the office when Sullivan came in. 
 
THE APOSTLE AND THE MULTITUDE 93 
 
 " Marrchin' order, is it, me boy ?" he rolled out, laying a 
 heavy hand on Marsh's shoulder. " The young Hannibal in 
 the act o' starrtin' to cross the Alps and invade the innemy's 
 counthry. But it isn't vinegar at all that he'll be usin' to 
 soften the rocks, but just honey and molasses and sweet blar- 
 ney. Well, give it to 'em, me lad ! There's a score or so o' 
 benighted Republicans too many in Jackson that's needin' 
 convartin' badly — not to mention certain self-glorified Dimi- 
 crats that thinks they own the party." 
 
 At length Marsh reached the station, and found the messen- 
 ger-boy, the valise on the platform beside him, engrossed in 
 the titles of the paper-covered novels at the news-stand. Marsh 
 relieved him of his charge and signed the crumpled ticket once 
 more, and the boy lounged away again without having said a 
 word. It was a local train, consisting of only one day-coach 
 and a smoking-car. The coach was stiflingly hot, and the red 
 plush seat which Marsh selected looked very dusty. There were 
 about a dozen other people in the car, including the inevitable 
 baby. It seemed to Marsh as if the train were an unconscion- 
 ably long time in starting, and then it ran slowly and stopped 
 at every station. At each stop the agent came out with a 
 scrap of paper in his hand, and a row of men in dusty brown 
 clothes, their trousers tucked into their boots, and broad- 
 brimmed slouch-hats on their heads, leaned against the wooden 
 depot-building, and looked moodily at the train as it pulled 
 in and out. As it started the brakeman came into the car, bang- 
 ing the door behind him, and set himself to work clatteringly 
 at the stove, with no other apparent purpose than to make a 
 noise. Marsh tried to force himself to think of what he was 
 to say that evening, but all the while the wheels pounded over 
 the rail joints with a " clickety ! clickety.! Marshal! Blakely ! 
 clickety ! clickety ! curse him ! curse him !" and it grew hot- 
 ter and hotter in the coach, and the baby cried, -and Marsh 
 wondered why on earth he had ever gone into politics. 
 
 About one o'clock he ate a sandwich — an intolerable deal 
 of bread and not one ha'penny worth of ham — at a small 
 way -station, and drank two mouthfuls of gritty coffee. Re- 
 turning to the train, he entered the smoking-car for a cigar 
 after his meal, but the place smelled foully, and the floor was 
 
94 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 littered with tobacco- juice and orange-peel. Horace threw 
 away his cigar before it was half smoked, and returned to his 
 place in the day-coach. 
 
 About three o'clock they reached Jackson, and Marsh, step- 
 ping from the car, was met by the deputation of leading Demo- 
 crats, three in number, each wearing a silk hat and a flower in 
 his button-hole. The spokesman introduced himself and then 
 his fellows, and insisted on taking Marsh's valise from his re- 
 luctant fingers. The party entered a large open hack, which 
 was waiting for them, while the driver, having alighted from his 
 box, but holding the reins in his hands, held the door open 
 and swore at the horses, which showed signs of fidgeting. It 
 was only two squares to the Boston House, a low, two-story, 
 wooden building, where Marsh registered and shook hands 
 with the proprietor, who said that he was glad to meet him. 
 The " lobby " of the Boston House was a big bare room, with 
 an uneven plank floor still wet with washing, studded with 
 large leather cuspidors and with a huge iron stove in the centre, 
 around which were seated a dozen men, who looked in seem- 
 ingly contemptuous curiosity at the party as it entered. In 
 one corner was a cigar and news stand, and in another the 
 hotel office. The walls were hung with flaming advertise- 
 ments of railways and framed pictures of blonde young women 
 in excessively low evening dress, who sipped in simpering de- 
 light champagne of various brands. 
 
 Would Mr. Marsh like to drive around town, or was he 
 tired after his journey, and would he prefer to go to his room 
 and rest? He would much rather go to his room, if the gen- 
 tlemen did not mind. On the contrary, the gentlemen were 
 evidently relieved. It would be necessary, they explained, to 
 leave the hotel at about- half-past seven, when the same depu- 
 tation would have the pleasure of escorting Mr. Marsh to the 
 hall, and if Mr.. Marsh would not object to taking his supper 
 rather early — say, at half-past five — they would have an informal 
 levee in the hotel lobby for an hour or so, in order that the 
 local Democracy might meet and be individually presented to 
 the distinguished guest. Mr. Marsh signified his modest ac- 
 quiescence in this arrangement, and was shown to his " suite 
 of rooms." 
 
THE APOSTLE AND THE MULTITUDE 95 
 
 The suite consisted of the ordinary Western hotel bedroom, 
 and a small and uninviting bath - room opening therefrom. 
 The bedroom exhibited the usual poverty of furnishing. A 
 large double bed; a chest of drawers surmounted by a mirror; 
 a small, oblong deal-table, covered with a white table-cover, in 
 the centre of the room; one rocking-chair; two cane chairs; 
 a white ice-water pitcher, and a corrugated china match-safe 
 on the mantel completed the equipment, except that on one 
 wall hung an engraving — an excellent impression of Girardet's 
 reproduction of Jules Romain's "Triomphe de Vespasien et 
 de Titus," and Marsh wondered how in the world such a thing- 
 came to be in such a place. He looked at it for a while, and 
 thought what a dreadfully jolty and uncomfortable vehicle the 
 triumphal car must have been, and what ridiculously small 
 heads the horses had for their fat and well-fed bodies. He 
 gazed aimlessly out of the window, and read the advertisements 
 on a hoarding opposite. Then he shook himself, and set res- 
 olutely to work to rehearse his speech for the evening. But 
 it was useless. The words would not come, and the only thing 
 that he could think of was the theatre-party. So he let his 
 thoughts have their way, and somehow the hours dragged along. 
 
 At the appointed time he went to supper, and wrestled for 
 a while in the mournful silence of the bare dining-room with 
 a piece of impossible steak. Reaching the lobby of the hotel, he 
 found his three friends of the afternoon already awaiting him, 
 and the tedious process of introduction began. For over an 
 hour he stood there, and shook hands with an immense number 
 of uninteresting people — mostly colonels and judges and ma- 
 jors — who seemed to have nothing to say beyond that they 
 were pleased to meet him. He did his best to find some re- 
 mark to make to everybody, and to keep up between times 
 a fragmentary conversation with the body-guard that had 
 grouped itself around him. Gradually the room filled up, and 
 the air was thick with tobacco-smoke. 
 
 " I haven't seen so many people in this room," said the 
 spokesman of the deputation at his elbow, "since Voorhees 
 was here two years ago." The spokesman was a red-faced, 
 plethoric gentleman, who somehow conveyed by his manner 
 the impression that whatever he said was of great moment. 
 
96 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 Marsh endeavored to look properly flattered. But all the 
 while he was sickeningly conscious that the whole thing was 
 a ridiculous farce. He felt, as he had never felt on any 
 former occasion, that he and these men had little in common, 
 that he was not of their kind, and that they were not the 
 material of which the ideal party for the redemption of the 
 country could be formed. The announcement that it was 
 " nearly time to be moving " came as an immense relief, and 
 he escaped again to his room, to spend as much time as possi- 
 ble in washing his hands and face, arranging his necktie, and 
 putting on his overcoat. 
 
 On the way to the hall he could think of nothing except 
 that elsewhere others were on their way to the theatre, and 
 as he stood among the side - scenes on the stage he had a 
 curious feeling that he was not really there. The voices of 
 the members of the body-guard which had again accumulated 
 around him came from far away, and their demonstrative en- 
 thusiasm as one after another peeped out to see how the hall 
 was filling up appeared absurdly trivial. Then the moment 
 came when the body-guard filed on the stage, and took their 
 seats, among much shuffling of feet, on the chairs which were 
 arranged in a semicircle facing the audience. Only the spokes- 
 man of the deputation, who was also to be chairman of the 
 meeting, stayed with him. The short burst of perfunctory 
 applause which had greeted the appearance of the body- 
 guard died away, and silence settled on the house, broken 
 only by an occasional cough or the movement of feet in the 
 rear. Then the chairman signalled to him, and the two 
 stepped out. This time the applause was more in earnest, 
 and Marsh found himself bowing in the glare of the foot- 
 lights, with no thought except of the ridiculousness of his 
 being here when the whole happiness of his life was at stake 
 in a game which was being played that night a hundred 
 miles away. 
 
 The formal introduction was soon over, and as the chair- 
 man retired to his seat the applause broke out anew. Horace 
 stepped forward mechanically, and squared his shoulders as 
 if to begin to speak. He let his eyes wander over the sea of 
 faces before him, and the big audience was still as if it were 
 
THE APOSTLE AND THE MULTITUDE 97 
 
 frozen. Seconds passed, and he did not speak. The silence 
 became oppressive, and an uneasy shuffling of feet broke out 
 here and there in the hall. Suddenly Horace's voice came 
 forth in spite of himself. He knew the first few sentences 
 of his speech by heart, and, as it seemed to him, without any 
 volition on his part, the voice spoke them. He was afraid — 
 so this voice which issued from him said — that the audience 
 might be disappointed in what he had to tell them, being mis- 
 led by the advertised title of his address. If under the name 
 of the principles of Democracy they expected him to elucidate 
 the motives of the Democratic party of the past, if they ex- 
 pected any fiery arraignment of the members or the actions 
 of the Republican party, they would be disappointed. The 
 principles of the Democracy, the principles which he trust- 
 ed underlay and would always inspire the united party to 
 which they all belonged, were simply the principles of honor 
 and truth which underlay and inspired all right government 
 in all ages and all nations. " It is necessary " (so the voice 
 continued) "that we — you and I — should understand these 
 principles and lay them to our hearts ; for this government is 
 a government by the people, and it is we — you and I — who 
 are of the party of the people, and " (and he raised his right 
 hand involuntarily to emphasize what he was saying) " ive — 
 must — govern /" 
 
 There w r as a moment of silence as he paused, with his 
 hand uplifted. Then in a sudden crash came the applause. 
 Thenceforward it was easy. The audience proved itself quick 
 and responsive, and he played with it. He talked to them 
 and they listened. He dropped his voice to a conversational 
 tone to tell an anecdote, and they laughed. He rose to a 
 higher level and spoke of the eternal principles of government, 
 and they seemed to hold their breath. He drove home a 
 maxim of political morality, or flung at them some high aph- 
 orism of one or other of our country's great men of the past, 
 and the thunder came in reply. 
 
 For an hour and a half he spoke, with no thought now 
 save of the cause of which he was speaking. He led his 
 audience with him out of the valley and low ground of parti- 
 san politics, up to the foot-hills, and then to the mountain- 
 
 7 
 
98 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 tops ; and he held them there. There was no abuse of indi- 
 vidual leaders of the other side, nor of the Republican party 
 itself. In much the same language of abstraction and gener- 
 ality as he had used at the Holt dinner -table, he told his 
 hearers that it was not by arraigning individuals or inviting 
 recrimination that the ends of the nation could be served or 
 the ends of right. Let the dead past bury its dead. There 
 had been errors made and wrongs done ; but it was idle to 
 throw all blame for those errors and those wrongs on one 
 party or one set of men. " Let us rather rejoice," he said, 
 " that Providence in its mercy has seen that with only men 
 to govern — men with all humanity's natural proneness to err 
 and to be unjust — the history of our country holds so much 
 that is high and noble. Let us rejoice rather in our com- 
 mon heritage of honor, seeking not to pull down but to build 
 up, not striving to distinguish between this good thing which 
 is ours and that doubtful act which is theirs, but holding intact 
 as on one glorious scroll all the noble traditions of our coun- 
 try's past. We are not the heirs to the estate of any party, 
 but to all our nation's history. Let us remember the wrongs 
 done only as warnings to us in the future ; let us cherish 
 whatever is good for an example for our guidance. We can 
 take no backward step. All the glor.y that is gone, though 
 living with us yet, is but a preparation for the greater glory 
 yet to come. It is into our hands — the hands of you and 
 me — that the destiny of the nation that we love so well is to 
 be given — given only in trust for the generations that come 
 after. It is for us to see that in our hands the nation passes 
 only from greatness to greatness, and this cannot be except 
 we place our trust in God, and recognize that only by truth 
 and justice can any government prosper." 
 
 He had spoken throughout not only with spirit and enthu- 
 siasm, but with a tone of conviction in the future of the cause 
 which gave a singular weight and air of truth to whatever he 
 said. The speech was hardly what his audience was accus- 
 tomed to listen to or to look for in party oratory. There 
 were some who felt at times a certain thrill which some- 
 how reminded them of long-forgotten sensations which had 
 come to them as children when in church. But though most 
 
THE APOSTLE AND THE MULTITUDE 99 
 
 of what they had heard was unexpected and strange, they 
 could not but feel that it was good and impassioned and pure. 
 They had listened breathlessly to every word, and at the end 
 they were conscious that their faces were flushed with a cer- 
 tain triumphant exaltation of spirit. The applause as the 
 young orator closed was deafening, and he was compelled 
 again and again to come forward and bow repeated recog- 
 nitions long after he had stepped back and his place had 
 been taken by the chairman of the meeting, who stood smil- 
 ingly waiting in silence before he could ask for the usual vote 
 of thanks. 
 
 In doing so he also took occasion to " make a few re- 
 marks." They were brief, but they jarred on Marsh's senses 
 horribly. He, in speaking of the party's mission, had nec- 
 essarily referred to " those influences of wealth and posi- 
 tion and personality which are supposed to have more weight 
 in our government than is consistent with the principles on 
 which our Constitution is founded." He had spoken only in 
 the broadest terms fitted to the high ideals which he preached. 
 To his amazement, however, the chairman selected this one 
 passage of his speech for special comment, and he gave to it 
 a local significance which was not only far from Horace's in- 
 tention, but which revolted him. The words to which they 
 had just listened, said the chairman, on the subject of the in- 
 equality of the distribution of wealth and the tyranny of the 
 corporations, and those millionaires whose fortunes and power 
 were based upon the iniquities of the Republican party's sys- 
 tem of government for the benefit of the few would, the 
 chairman was sure, have more than common weight, inas- 
 much as their distinguished guest resided in, and had only 
 that morning left, their sister city, which, as his hearers 
 knew, was about to be convulsed by a Titanic struggle be- 
 tween the forces of outraged labor and tyrannical capital. 
 As the speaker had so eloquently said, it was one of the 
 proudest boasts of the Democracy that it was the friend of 
 labor, and the entire party in the State would sympathize with 
 the working-men in the noble conflict in which they were 
 embarking. 
 
 For a moment Horace had a wild idea of protesting against 
 
100 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 assigning to him any such sentiments as the chairman cred- 
 ited him with. But that was obviously useless. He was al- 
 ready bowing in acknowledgment of the applause with which 
 the thanks of the meeting had been voted to him, and from 
 all parts of the house, amid much trampling of feet and scrap- 
 ing of chairs, a movement had set in towards the stage. Then 
 came more handshaking, and Horace was compelled to smile 
 his thanks to endless meaningless compliments ; but through 
 it all he could only wonder dully what had happened at the 
 theatre. 
 
 At length he was alone in his room at the hotel once more, 
 and almost as soon as he was in bed he fell asleep from mere 
 physical exhaustion. 
 
 He returned to town by a train leaving in the middle 
 of the forenoon, being escorted to the station by the dep- 
 utation of the preceding day. Half-way on his journey he 
 obtained at a way-station his customary morning paper. His 
 speech he found reported at considerable length, filling over 
 a column of " special telegram," and he read it with the usual 
 annoyance at printers' errors and reporters' ineptitude. When 
 he came to the last paragraph, however, his face lowered. 
 The chairman's closing remarks were also reproduced in full, 
 and, turning to the editorial page of the paper, he found there 
 a long article, very laudatory of himself, in which all that 
 the chairman had said was imputed to him, and he was repre- 
 sented as having made a stirring speech in behalf of the cause 
 of labor and in bitter arraignment of the two companies of 
 which Mr. Holt was president. 
 
 Had he been more experienced in the intricacies of practi- 
 cal politics, he would doubtless have understood that the 
 word had gone out from headquarters that the strike was 
 to be an issue in the campaign, and that the cause of the 
 strikers was to be the cause of the party. As it was, he 
 only cursed the clumsiness of newspaper writers in his heart, 
 and thought with agony of what Miss Holt would think if 
 she should see that paper. There was little chance of that, 
 however, he guessed ; for it was not probable that the Dem- 
 ocratic party organ furnished the regular morning reading in 
 the Holt household. 
 
IX 
 
 LOOKING INTO THE GULF 
 
 Novelists have much to say about the slender thread upon 
 which the fortunes of our lives are strung — the trifling acci- 
 dents and chance meetings by which our destinies are swayed; 
 but we hear little of the narrow escapes — the propinquities 
 which just miss being meetings — the coincidences which barely 
 fail to coincide. If once in a while we find ourselves con- 
 fronted by a well-known face in a foreign land, we think it a 
 marvellous thing, smacking almost of the supernatural. But 
 how often do we escape these collisions only by a hair's- 
 breadth ? We enter the very car, perhaps, from which our 
 friend alighted at the last station ; we tread in his footsteps, 
 where he has been but a minute before ; he passes by the 
 door of the house wherein we are hidden. So in dreams 
 ten thousand things may come to us — things clothed in veri- 
 similitude, and which might just as well happen ; but they 
 do not. And they pass and are forgotten. At last comes 
 one dream which impinges, be it never so slightly, on the 
 happenings of the next day or the next month, and we cry, 
 " A miracle I" We store it in our memory, and tell it again 
 and again in after-years, as in some sort reflecting credit on 
 ourselves, testifying to our possession of a measure of a sec- 
 ond-sight. 
 
 There was a moment when Horace was on his way to take 
 the train to Jackson when, had he but turned his head, he 
 might have seen Miss Holt. She, indeed, saw him, and leaned 
 forward in her brougham, wishing that he would turn, and 
 ready on the moment to tell her coachman to stop. With- 
 out any close analysis of her feelings, she felt that she had 
 caused him to suffer, and was eager to make amends by wish- 
 
102 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 ing him at least good-speed on his day's errand. But there 
 was no good fairy to touch him on the shoulder — no mag- 
 netism in her thoughts to make him turn. So he passed on, 
 brooding with downcast eyes, missing the smile and the touch 
 of the hand and the kind words which were awaiting him, 
 and which would have gone so far to alleviate the discom- 
 forts of the trip — to have made the hot and dusty car clean 
 and comfortable, to have rendered the sandwich palatable, 
 and given the coffee flavor. So largely subjective are the im- 
 pressions which we receive from external things. 
 
 Miss Holt, at the time, was on her way to her father's of- 
 fice, to discuss with him some questions of domestic expen- 
 diture. She had arisen that morning with a light heart, and 
 Miss Willerby had not failed to notice the joyousness with 
 which she presided at the breakfast-table. Arriving at her 
 father's office, and learning from the obsequious clerks with- 
 out that he was disengaged, she passed in unannounced. He 
 was always glad to see her, for they were good friends. As 
 they talked now she stood by his side, with her arm caress- 
 ingly on his shoulder. She had about concluded the mission 
 on which she had come when a clerk announced that the com- 
 mittee was there. 
 
 " I said that I would meet them at a quarter-past ten this 
 morning," Mr. Holt said to his daughter, " and it is five-and- 
 twenty minutes past now. Show them in !" addressing the 
 clerk. And then to his daughter again, " Would you like to 
 hear what they have to say ? If so, go in there," pointing 
 to the door of another room, " and leave the door ajar. The 
 other door into the hall is open, and you can step out when- 
 ever you are tired." 
 
 She kissed him hurriedly, and without a word went into 
 the room which he had indicated. She had hardly pulled 
 the door to behind her, leaving it an inch or two open, when 
 the committee entered, seven in number. They came in, tread- 
 ing on each other's heels, and with a curious mixture of bash- 
 fulness and defiance in their manner. 
 
 " Come in, gentlemen," said Mr. Holt, advancing and shak- 
 ing hands with each, " and be seated, please." 
 
 Chairs enough had been placed in the room in anticipa- 
 
LOOKING INTO THE GULF 103 
 
 tion of their coming, and they had soon arranged themselves, 
 each sitting stiffly, holding his hat in his lap. A stenog- 
 rapher also entered, and took his seat at a table in one corner 
 of the room. 
 
 " Now, gentlemen," Mr. Holt began, " before we proceed to 
 business, let me know exactly with whom it is that I am deal- 
 ing. Whom do you represent ?" 
 
 It was Wollmer who replied. 
 
 " We are a joint committee representing the employes of 
 the Western Iron and Steel Company and the street-railway 
 company — all classes of the employes of both companies." 
 
 " And to begin with, Mr. Wollmer," for Mr. Holt knew 
 W^ollmer well, " which do you personally represent ?" 
 
 " I represent both. I am committeeman-at-large." 
 
 " But of which company are you an employe ?" 
 
 " Neither," said Wollmer, uneasily ; " I represent the organ- 
 izations." 
 
 " Then I am afraid I must decline to talk with you," said 
 Mr. Holt, firmly, but courteously. " I can recognize nobody 
 in these negotiations but the employes of the companies." 
 
 " You decline to recognize the organizations?" 
 
 " I do." 
 
 " You know that that is one of the questions now at issue, 
 and that the organizations propose to insist on recognition ?" 
 asked Wollmer, threateningly. 
 
 " I have gathered as much," replied the other. " But I 
 have no intention, on behalf of the companies, of conceding 
 the whole question by recognizing the organizations through 
 you in advance." After a moment's pause, Mr. Holt contin- 
 ued : " I have no objection to your remaining in my office, 
 Mr. Wollmer, if these gentlemen desire it, as a spectator, but 
 I must respectfully decline to allow you to take any part in the 
 negotiations." 
 
 " I don't think," said Wollmer, endeavoring to speak calmly, 
 " that you are taking the right course to reach a settlement, 
 Mr. Holt." 
 
 " I am sorry," Mr. Holt replied, curtly ; " but I am protect- 
 ing, to the best of my ability, the interests of the companies 
 which I represent. And now, gentlemen," addressing the others 
 
104 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 with a business-like air, " I understand that you six are all em- 
 ployes of one or other of the companies. If you will permit 
 me to suggest it, I think it will be better — indeed, I presume 
 it is what you would propose — that we should take up the af- 
 fairs of one company first. If it is agreeable to you, we will 
 give the iron-and-steel company preference. If you will ar- 
 range yourselves, gentlemen, so that the representatives of the 
 iron-and-steel company sit together, we can confer in regard 
 to the interests of that company. It may even be better when 
 that is concluded to postpone the conference with the employes 
 of the street-railway company until another day, in order that 
 we may think over the situation carefully." 
 
 In accordance with his suggestion there was a shifting of 
 seats, until Mr. Holt, who knew all the men present by sight 
 well enough, saw that the three representatives of the iron-and- 
 steel company — Henderson, Riley, and Smith — were together, 
 Henderson sitting next to Wollmer, who had retained his place 
 at one end of the row. It was to Henderson in particular, 
 though his glance also took in the other two, that Mr. Holt now 
 addressed himself. 
 
 " You have come, I believe, gentlemen, as a properly accred- 
 ited committee of the employes in the shops of the Western 
 Iron and Steel Company," he said, " to protest against the new 
 scale of wages." 
 
 Henderson bowed. 
 
 " On what grounds do you protest against it?" 
 
 "Because the wages proposed are less by about fifteen per 
 cent, than the union schedules. The agreement under which 
 we are working now is based upon those schedules — " 
 
 " Not ostensibly, I believe," interrupted Mr. Holt. " There 
 is no reference to the union in the agreement. And I think 
 you are aware, Mr. Henderson, that the company and myself 
 have always consistently declined to recognize the union or any 
 of its rules or schedules in any way." 
 
 " We consider that immaterial," replied Henderson, " so far 
 as the wages are concerned. We do demand recognition of 
 the union hereafter. There was no reference to the union 
 schedule in our last agreement, but the wages were based upon 
 it—" 
 
LOOKING INTO THE GULF 105 
 
 " They may have coincided with it," suggested Mr. Holt. 
 
 "Coincided with it," agreed Henderson ; "and, so far as we 
 were concerned, it was the fact that they coincided that caused 
 us to accept them. We decline now individually and collec- 
 tively to work for less than that schedule." Here Wollmer 
 leaned over and whispered something in Henderson's ear, who, 
 thus prompted, added, " And, for the purpose of preventing any 
 similar attempts in the future on the part of the company to 
 reduce wages below the scale, we demand that the union shall 
 be recognized, and that it be stated in the agreement that our 
 wages are based on the schedule." 
 
 " And if the company refuses to accede to these demands ?" 
 asked Mr. Holt. 
 
 "This committee will have no alternative except to recom- 
 mend a strike," replied Henderson. 
 
 " Let me understand this clearly," said Mr. Holt. " In the 
 written statement of your demands, which I have here, the first 
 three articles are concerned with wages only. No reference to 
 any organization is made in them. The fourth article alone 
 demands the recognition of the union, by itself. Do I under- 
 stand that that fourth article is an integral and necessary part 
 of vour programme?" 
 
 "It is." 
 
 "That is to say, that it is perfectly useless to endeavor to 
 come to any understanding on the wage question — not that I 
 mean for an instant to suggest that the company could pos- 
 sibly contemplate any other terms than those proposed in the 
 new schedule ; yet it would be perfectly useless to endeavor to 
 find any ground of compromise, as, whatever wages we might 
 offer, none would be acceptable unless we recognized your organ- 
 ization I" 
 
 " The wages must be based upon the union schedule." 
 
 " That is not my question. What I want to know is — do 
 you absolutely insist on a recognition of the union, in so many 
 words, as a necessary concession on our part?" 
 
 "We do." 
 
 There was a general movement and shuffling of feet among 
 the members of the committee — a movement as of relief when 
 a crisis is reached and tension suddenly removed. In the next 
 
106 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 room Miss Holt drew a long breath and leaned forward again to 
 listen. Mr. Holt threw himself back in his chair. 
 
 " Well, gentlemen," he said, " now I think we understand 
 each other. This is not a question of wages, but of the union. 
 I have here," laying his hand on some papers which lay before 
 him, " a number of extracts from our books, balance-sheets, and 
 summaries of pay-rolls, which I was prepared to go over with 
 you — not so much with expectation of finding any ground for 
 mutual concession, but rather hoping to appeal to your rea- 
 son by showing you the necessity, the inexorable necessity, of 
 our position. I was prepared to discuss matters with you most 
 fully and frankly. But all this, it appears, is useless. I may 
 say at once, gentlemen, that the Western Iron and Steel Com- 
 pany will never do what you demand. We will shut down rather, 
 and stay shut down until the plant goes to pieces from rust and 
 rot. We have placed no restrictions upon our men joining any 
 labor organization that they pleased ; but we insist upon our 
 right to employ whom we please, whether members of any par- 
 ticular organization or not. We will not surrender that right. 
 We will not throw over our non-union men whom we now have 
 with us. We will under no circumstances recognize any union 
 or order or brotherhood or organization or corporation as hav- 
 ing any authority over our employes as our employes or any 
 right to come between us and them. AVe are always glad to 
 hear any complaint which our men may have to make ; we will 
 meet them in a spirit of fairness, and will endeavor to remove 
 any reasonable grievance which may exist. But we will deal 
 with them directly. We will not recognize the union." 
 
 The men received what he had to say in silence. After wait- 
 ing for them to speak, he continued : 
 
 "This seems to me to end our meeting, unless you have some 
 other alternative to suggest." 
 
 "I know of nothing more," said Henderson. 
 
 " Well, let us have no misunderstanding. There is no ques- 
 tion of wages now at issue between us. It is a question of the 
 recognition of the union, pure and simple." He looked at Hen- 
 derson as if expecting a reply. 
 
 "Yes," said that gentleman, reluctantly. Mr. Holt turned 
 to his stenographer. 
 
LOOKING INTO THE GULF 107 
 
 " Watson, would you mind reading over those last words of 
 mine to these gentlemen ?" Watson did so. 
 
 "You three gentlemen all clearly understrnd that?" Each 
 of the three addressed said that he did. 
 
 "Well," continued Mr. Holt, "reporters of the newspapers 
 will undoubtedly wish to talk to both of us on this subject, and 
 there is no room now for any divergence in our sentiments. 
 The question at issue is one of the union only — not one of 
 wages." And he arose as if to terminate the interview. 
 
 "One thing more," said Henderson, who had been confer- 
 ring with Wollmer in whispers ; " will you submit the matter 
 to arbitration ?" 
 
 " To whose arbitration ?" asked Mr. Holt, who had been ex- 
 pecting this question before. 
 
 " Well, say to General Harter." 
 
 " No." 
 
 " On what grounds do you refuse ?" 
 
 "Because I do not think General Harter would be a fit man. 
 I wish to say nothing disparaging of him, but as candidate for 
 the governorship on a party ticket he would be incapable of 
 giving the case a dispassionate hearing. It is not General 
 Harter that I object to ; it is the Democratic candidate for 
 governor." 
 
 "So you decline to submit to arbitration?" asked Hender- 
 son. 
 
 " By no means. If you will select some party who is not a 
 candidate for office, I will name somebody on my part. I will 
 name one now. I will name Judge Jessel. Let those two se- 
 lect a third party, and I am willing to leave the question at issue 
 to them — either the simple question of the recognition of the 
 union or the entire list of articles in your demands." 
 
 " We cannot do that," said Henderson. " General Harter 
 has offered his services, and it would be discourteous of us to 
 refuse to stand by him." 
 
 Mr. Holt smiled. " Or I will consent to abide by the deci- 
 sion of any committee which the Chamber of Commerce may 
 appoint, or the Board of Trade, or any other association of 
 business men." 
 
 " The business men would side with von," said Henderson. 
 
108 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 " I think they would," returned Mr. Holt, dryly. 
 
 The men now rose, and as they did so Mr. Holt said again : 
 
 " Once more, let there be no misunderstanding between us. 
 I do not decline to submit to arbitration. I only decline to 
 accept as arbiter any man who is a candidate for office on either 
 side in the coming election. I offer to accept arbitration on any 
 other reasonable terms." 
 
 The men signified their understanding, and were preparing to 
 leave the room when Mr. Holt turned to the three who repre- 
 sented the street-railway company. 
 
 " Gentlemen, you have heard the position which your friends 
 have adopted on behalf of the iron-and-steel company's em- 
 ployes. I suggested at the beginning of the meeting that it 
 might be well for us to postpone our conference until another 
 day. If it is agreeable to you, I shall be pleased to meet you 
 at the same time to-morrow here. Meanwhile, I hope you will 
 think the matter over clearly in your minds. Your demands 
 are much the same as those of the employes of the iron-and- 
 steel company. With you, also, there is a question of wages, 
 and there is a question of recognizing your union. I may say 
 here now that, on the question of the labor organizations, the 
 attitude of the two companies is the same. I want you three, 
 between now and to-morrow, to consider your own interests 
 carefully and those of your families, so that you may not come, 
 if it is possible to avoid it, with the door already shut against 
 any possibility of compromise, as it has been shut to-day." 
 
 The men accepted what he said in sullen silence, and turned 
 to leave the room. During the continuance of the conference 
 Wollmer had with difficulty restrained himself on several occa- 
 sions from breaking in. Now that the formal meeting was 
 over, he could refrain no longer. 
 
 " It's all very well for you, Mr. Holt," he said, hotly ; "you 
 are rich and powerful, and think you can trample on the labor- 
 ing man as you please. It is no question of a livelihood with 
 you. With these men — with us — it is ; and we may be weak 
 and poor singly, but you may be sorry that you made an enemy of 
 labor yet before you've done. You have everything you want. 
 Your daughter has her carriages, and all the dresses, and — " 
 " Silence, sir !" broke in Mr. Holt, authoritatively. " I forbid 
 
LOOKING INTO THE GULF 109 
 
 you to say one word about ray daughter or my domestic affairs. 
 I am meeting these gentlemen (not you) in behalf of the two 
 companies, and not in my individual capacity. I do not mind 
 telling you that for the two years in which I have been presi- 
 dent of one of them, and that for the three years that I have 
 been president of the other, I have received no cent of salary 
 from either. I have large sums of money invested in both, on 
 which as yet I have received no return. If I have an income 
 from other sources, I earned that income myself, and it is a 
 matter which in no way concerns either you or these gentle- 
 men." 
 
 Wollmer made no reply, but followed the others out of the 
 room with a swaggering gait. Mr. Holt made a sign to the 
 stenographer that he would not be needed any more. As soon 
 as the door was shut behind them, Jessie came from her hid- 
 ing-place with blanched face. 
 
 "Oh, papa !" she sobbed, falling on her knees at her father's 
 feet, and laying her face in his lap, " can I do anything to 
 help ? Is it true that if I didn't have a carriage and so many 
 dresses — " 
 
 " Hush, my child ! No," said her father, tenderly, patting 
 her on the shoulder ; " it makes no kind of difference, and it 
 was only that fellow's insolence." 
 
 " Oh ! but I spend so much ! If I didn't, and we econo- 
 mized on our household expenses — not to interfere with your 
 comfort, you know, papa, but just luxuries — we could save 
 twenty thousand dollars a year so easily !" 
 
 " And how would we save it, ray darling ? We should have 
 to cut off a good many contributions to charity. We should 
 have to discharge two or three house-servants and at least one 
 man from the stable. Would that do any good — throwing 
 them out of work? And all the money that you spend, my 
 child, goes to labor in one way or another. It is not wasted. 
 And if you did save twenty thousand dollars a year ? That 
 would be less than fifty cents a month divided equally among 
 all the men. The question of wages is one of three hundred 
 and fifty thousand dollars a year. Twenty thousand dollars are 
 of no use, even if it were possible for me to give my private 
 income to pay the companies' employes. The money is better 
 
HO MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 spent — better so far as the interests of the poor are concerned 
 — as we spend it now than it could be in any other way." 
 
 She rose from her knees, and laid her face against his for a 
 minute; then moved to the window, where she stood and wiped 
 away the tears that ran down her checks. 
 
 Mr. Holt also rose, and, standing beside her, put his arm 
 round her waist. 
 
 "They always try to make capital," he said, "by attacking 
 the individual who may be rich, no matter how hardly he 
 earned his money or how he spends it. But it is not a ques- 
 tion of individuals ; it is not a question of you or of me. It 
 is a question of one-half of mankind against the other half ; 
 a question of all countries and all ages." 
 
 She remembered how Horace Marsh had said the same 
 thino- to her a week ago in almost the same words. She did 
 not reply, but stood silent for a while longer ; then, turning to 
 her father, she took his face between her hands. 
 
 "And I only make it harder for you, don't I, you dear old 
 papa," she said, "with my tears and silliness? But I don't 
 want to! I am not crying now, and I am going right away, 
 in one of my very most expensive dresses " (it was a charming 
 black tailor suit) "and the carriage waiting for me at the 
 door," and she ran laughingly to the door, and threw him a kiss 
 as she went. 
 
 As she appeared on the sidewalk below, the carriage, which 
 had been waiting on the opposite side of the street, crossed 
 over, and she told the coachman to drive her home. Inside the 
 brougham she lifted her veil again and wiped away the later 
 tears, which were still wet upon her checks. One of the most 
 tender-hearted of women, she had all her life suffered intensely 
 at the sight or even the thought of the misery of others. No 
 inconsiderable portion of her time as well as of her income was 
 spent in works of charity, and a day rarely passed in which she 
 did not drive to some poor house to relieve distress, knowledge 
 of which had come to her through one channel or another. 
 Of the labor question she had thought but dimly until recent- 
 ly, and then only as some remote and uninteresting abstraction 
 — much as, she thought of the Tariff, or the Bering Sea contro- 
 versy, or the Irish question. Of late, when this remote abstrac- 
 
LOOKING INTO THE GULF 111 
 
 tion bad suddenly seemed to become concrete and near at band 
 — so as to be threatening tbe very peace of her own home — the 
 aspect of it which chiefly struck and pained her was the appar- 
 ent unreasonableness of the men. Surely they knew, as she 
 had said at the dinner-table, that she or her father would do 
 anything they could to help them ! What, then, did they want? 
 The impossible ? It had seemed to her that it must be that they 
 did not understand. They must be under some absurd misap- 
 prehension — a misapprehension which could be reasoned out 
 of them. Now for the first time some definite recognition 
 of the immensity and reality of the terrible problem came to 
 her. It seemed as if a great cloud had settled over the earth, 
 and beneath it opened an abyss, black and fathomless, full of 
 writhing, struggling men and women — " one-half of mankind 
 against the other half." 
 
 Heretofore the men at the works and the employes of the 
 street-railway company had seemed her friends — there were 
 good men and bad among them, she knew ; but she felt kindly 
 to all, and had assumed it as granted that they felt kindly to her. 
 Could it be that they were her enemies — that they sneered at 
 her dresses and her carriage as she passed ? And she sank back 
 into the shadow of the brougham as she thought of it. Could 
 it be possible that these men hated her ? And she remembered 
 what Horace had said about the French revolution, and shud- 
 dered—not with physical fear for herself, but in mere horror at 
 this new aspect in which the world appeared to her. 
 
 She remembered now how as a child the knowledge of death 
 had first come to her. It was only a dog that died — a poor, 
 silken -haired, bright -eyed terrier which she had loved very 
 dearly ; for there is a golden age in childhood, when beasts and 
 men speak one another's language and are of kin. They had 
 told her that Gyp was dead — dead forever; and this new, 
 strange word made her heart stand still. She had watched in 
 tearless silence while they buried the poor thing beneath a lilac- 
 bush ; then she had crept away by herself and cried — cried as 
 she had never cried before, till her mother came and found her, 
 her little body convulsed and weak with sobbing. For some 
 days she crept forlornly about the house — so silent now that 
 Gyp was gone — and would not play, but only sit and think. 
 
112 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 Her father bought another dog; but it was not Gyp. Then 
 as she sat on the floor by her father's side while he was read- 
 ing the paper, she had looked up suddenly and asked : 
 
 "Haven't you got a papa, papa?" 
 
 " Not now, Jess," he replied ; " he was your grandpa." 
 
 " Where is he now ?" 
 
 " He is dead." 
 
 " Dead " again ! So papas died and dogs died and roses 
 died — died forever ! She told her dolls of it, and they cried 
 over it together. It terrified her to have the gas turned out, 
 not for fear of the dark, but because the light had " gone 
 dead ;" and she watched the birds as they flew, and feared lest 
 they should die as she watched. 
 
 ..." The woful cry 
 Of life and all flesh living cometh up 
 Into my ears, and all my soul is full 
 Of pity for the sickness of this world." 
 
 Then she had fallen ill, and lay through the long days and 
 nights in the hush of the darkened room, her little face hot 
 and flushed with fever, and had talked incessantly in her 
 delirium of Gyp and of grandpa and of dead flowers. Her 
 mother had taken her away " into the country," where slowly 
 she had grown well again, and her thin arms and wasted body 
 became plump and firm. But the thought of death stayed 
 with her. Her parents said that her illness had changed her 
 wonderfully ; that she had become, instead of the bubbling, 
 prattling child that she had been before, rather melancholy and 
 reserved. But it seemed to her that the world had changed, 
 and that sunlight had gone out of it. 
 
 The second great disillusion which we must all suffer, the 
 knowledge of evil in the world, had come to her gradually. 
 She had pondered over it by herself, and had asked many 
 questions not a little perplexing to answer. But she had 
 taken refuge in her faith in God — a faith which she had never 
 lost — the perfect faith which is given to many women, but to 
 which few men in these days can attain. 
 
 Now, without the physical shattering which the knowledge 
 of death had brought to her as a child, she seemed to feel the 
 
LOOKING INTO THE GULF 113 
 
 same dull terror. There was the same darkening of the world. 
 It was not only death, but " the spirit of murder working in 
 the very means of life " : — 
 
 ... "So the fair show 
 Veiled one vast, savage, grim conspiracy 
 Of mutual murder." 
 
 When nearing home the carriage met one of the electric 
 street-cars, and it seemed to her that the engineer (or motor- 
 neer — she hated the word) eyed the carriage and her askance, 
 and with a look of suspicion and dislike that she had not seen 
 before. She turned her face away, and would not look at the 
 conductor on the rear platform of the car as it passed. 
 
 At lunch she was absent-minded and silent, so that Miss Wil- 
 lerby wondered what could have happened since the morning 
 to change her so, while Miss Caley (who had received an im- 
 mense box of candies from Barry) prattled and laughed, and 
 talked childish nonsense. 
 
 After lunch the three went for a walk together, and when 
 they returned Mr. Barry called and hung over the piano while 
 Miss Caley, after much urging, played to him, and looked un- 
 utterable things out of her eyes. With the five- o'clock tea 
 came the evening paper, and Miss Holt read the account of the 
 morning's conference. It was a Republican paper, and the re- 
 port of what had occurred was fairly accurate. A strike, so 
 the paper said, was now inevitable. It would probably be de- 
 clared early in the following week. 
 
 Jessie dressed for dinner listlessly, and with no pleasurable an- 
 ticipation of the evening's entertainment. She wished that they 
 were not going. She knew how worried her father must be, 
 withal that he kept such a brave and smiling face at the din- 
 ner-table, and she would much rather have stayed at home that 
 evening, and tried to pet and comfort him. But she took a 
 long and very tender farewell of him, and they drove to the 
 theatre. 
 
 In the foyer they were met by Mr. Brace, and found the 
 rest of the party gathered about the ladies' dressing-room. All 
 had arrived except Mr. Blakely, who came a minute later, and 
 then they made their way in single file to the boxes, with much 
 
114 MEN BORN EQUAL. 
 
 rustling of skirts and the usual difficulty in being allotted to 
 their respective seats, during which the eyes of the whole house 
 were fixed upon them. 
 
 Miss Holt found that Blakely was assigned to the seat next 
 to her, at her right shoulder. In front of her sat Miss Wil- 
 lerby, with Pryce, the Englishman, as cavalier. Behind her 
 was Mrs. Tisserton, with the " dear, inoffensive creature," their 
 host. They were in the same box that Miss Holt had occupied 
 on that night when she had first seen him here, the other two 
 boxes between them and the stage being occupied by the rest 
 of the party, Miss Caley being placed in immediate contiguity 
 to the footlights, where she sat charmingly conscious that she 
 was the most conspicuous person in the house. 
 
 It seemed to Jessie, with some feeling of wonderment, that 
 she was very little moved by Blakely's proximity. Even when 
 he said, meaningly : 
 
 " I have seen you in this box before," she had only replied, 
 with perfect simplicity : 
 
 " Yes, I remember." 
 
 He, too, was conscious of the change. Somehow, he felt, she 
 was further away from him ; something had come between 
 them since last night, and he wondered what it might be. 
 Could she have heard anything against him? Had Marsh told 
 her anything after he himself had left ? But what had Marsh 
 to tell? He was very attentive to her, in all those small ways 
 for which companionship at the theatre gives opportunity. 
 He had helped her in taking off her wrap, and even ventured 
 to touch, under pretence of arranging, the light black lace scarf 
 which she kept over her shoulders. He held her opera-glasses, 
 ready to offer them whenever a new character came on the 
 stage. He folded her programme, and was solicitous as to the 
 position of her chair. There was devotion in his every move- 
 ment ; but she was unresponsive and inaccessible. So he sat 
 back and chewed his mustache, and, while watching her out 
 of the corner of his eye, affected to be engrossed in the music. 
 
 At the end of the first act the occupants of the boxes 
 clapped, and Blakely joined in in a polite, perfunctory way as 
 he leaned over and made a commonplace remark about the 
 music. She answered briefly, and turned to look over the au- 
 
LOOKING INTO THE GULF 115 
 
 dience. A question from Mr. Brace was answered in a mono- 
 syllable, and with a forced smile upon her face. Then she 
 settled in her seat, and gazed absently at the drop-scene. Think- 
 ing it best to let her have her way, he remained silent. Pres- 
 ently she turned to him. 
 
 " Do you know much about the labor question, Mr. Blake- 
 ly ?" she asked. 
 
 The question startled him. 
 
 " I do not know much about anything," he replied, modest- 
 ly ; " but we all have to know something of the labor question. 
 I understand that your father is likely to have a strike on his 
 hands — and an ugly one, I fear. We had a strike once (my 
 father has some cotton-mills back East, you know), and it was 
 not a pleasant experience." 
 
 " What did you do ?" she asked. 
 
 " Oh, we beat them. They stood out as long as they could, 
 but their wives and families were starving, and the fools had 
 to give in. They did some rioting, threatened my father's life, 
 and destroyed some of his property, and all that. Some of 
 them — six, I think — went to jail for it." 
 
 There was a hardness and lack of sympathy in his tone that 
 hurt her. He smiled as he spoke. There was no thought for 
 the misery of the wives and children who had been starving, 
 or for the wives and children of those who went to jail. The 
 wickedness, the inhumanity of it all evidently did not appeal 
 to him. It was a necessary condition of society. These men 
 were enemies, that was all ; and they must be beaten, and 
 starved and jailed. 
 
 At this moment Miss Willerby leaned back and said, in a 
 half-whisper : 
 
 " Don't you wish you could hear what Mr. Marsh is saying 
 now?" 
 
 It may have been only by accident that the suggestion came 
 at that moment, or it may have been that she had heard 
 Blakely's words, and guessed their effect on his auditress. But 
 however that may be, her words had their effect. Jessie's 
 thoughts turned to Marsh — he, at least, had sympathy with 
 the "voiceless millions" in their misery. To him it was not 
 merel3 r a necessary and inevitable warfare, this between capital 
 
116 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 and labor. He believed it to be reconcilable, and was devoting 
 his life's work to endeavoring to bring about a reconciliation. 
 Yes, she thought, as the curtain rose again, she would give 
 much to hear what he was saying, and still more, she thought, 
 to have him here by her to talk to him and hear him talk. 
 
 After the second act there was a general shifting of places 
 among the men of the party. Blakely's seat was taken by an 
 insipid, fair -haired youth of the name of Baldwin, who dis- 
 played a great quantity of white shirt-front, white vest, white 
 collar and cuffs, whom Jessie knew but slightly and was com- 
 pelled to some extent to entertain. Blakely she could see in 
 the stage-box talking to Miss Caley, who chattered effusively 
 to him with rather exaggerated gestures — for the benefit of the 
 house. 
 
 At supper at Mr. Brace's house, after the opera, Miss Holt 
 again found Blakely next to her. The party was a merry one, 
 seated at two round tables, nine to each, between which laugh- 
 ing badinage passed back and forth. She continued to appear 
 light - hearted with the rest, and parried every effort of her 
 neighbor to bring the conversation between them down to a 
 personal footing. She could not but be aware that he was 
 looking unusually handsome even for him, and more than 
 once, on meeting his eyes, she was compelled to avoid their 
 glance with something of the old feeling of fear. On the whole, 
 however, she was conscious of greater security and more self- 
 confidence than she had felt in his company from the time of 
 their first meeting ; and it was with a certain placid satisfac- 
 tion that she noticed his look of disappointment as she re- 
 plied with genuine indifference to his impressive "Good-night," 
 into which he threw all the depth of meaning of which his 
 voice was capable. 
 
X 
 
 THE POWER OF THE PRESS 
 
 As Horace conjectured, there would, under ordinary circum- 
 stances, have been little chance that Jessie Holt would see the 
 morning World. But though the Republican journals furnished 
 the usual reading both of Mr. Holt and his daughter, all the 
 local daily papers were received at the house. This morning, 
 with the impression of the events of the preceding day still 
 upon her, Miss Holt looked eagerly over the columns of the 
 Republican for a report of Horace's speech, and finally found 
 a three -line item in an out-of-the-way corner of the paper, 
 which merely mentioned the fact that he had spoken, and had 
 "entertained his audience with the usual Democratic sophis- 
 tries." So she went to her father's library for a copy of the 
 World, and, finding here the fuller article, settled herself in a 
 corner to read it. 
 
 Lacking the necessary experience to fill out the skeleton of 
 the reporter's abstract, she could only gather that the speech 
 had been a dignified appeal in behalf of high principles and 
 sound morality. The newspaper summary, however, fell far 
 short of satisfying her, and she wished that she could have 
 heard him, or that she might inveigle him into going over the 
 ground again at a private performance for her benefit. She 
 had stopped reading at the point where Horace had closed 
 his remarks amid enthusiastic applause. Resuming again, she 
 went on : 
 
 " As soon as Chairman Dallas could make himself heard, he 
 moved a vote of thanks to the orator of the occasion in a short 
 speech, in the course of which he said . . ." 
 
 She read on unsuspectingly. Then her cheeks began to 
 burn. When she reached the end of the article she drew a 
 
118 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 long breath and sat gazing dazedly before her. She did not 
 for a moment do Horace the injustice to believe he had said 
 the things which seemed to be imputed to him. Without stop- 
 ping to consider how such a misrepresentation could have oc- 
 curred, her woman's instinct told her that there was an error 
 somewhere. But he had sat there and heard this other man 
 speak ! He had not protested against it ! He had acquiesced 
 in it! 
 
 After a while she began aimlessly to turn over the pages of 
 the paper in her hands. As she did so her eye again caught 
 Horace Marsh's name in the middle of one of the editorial col- 
 umns. She read a few lines, and then went back to the begin- 
 ning of the article and read it steadily through. 
 
 When she had finished reading she was faint and sick at 
 heart, and, passing her hand over her forehead, found it damp 
 with a cold moisture. So he had said it ! He had said it all, 
 and more ! He had " scathingly denounced," so the paper said, 
 "the arrogance and inhumanity of those who are seeking to 
 trample on the rights of free men, and degrade them to the 
 level of the pauper laborers of Europe." That meant her fa- 
 ther. Since yesterday afternoon it had seemed to her that 
 Marsh was the one man whom she longed to talk to, the one 
 human being who might be able to help her. He understood 
 these things — not only understood them, but was setting him- 
 self resolutely to face them with courage and, what was more, 
 with hope. It was hope that she needed. If she could only 
 meet him, she had thought, he would be able to show her 
 where there was a ray of light in the darkness. 
 
 And now ! How could he come to their house as he had 
 done ? How could he sit at her father's table ? The thought 
 of it was intolerable. She would say that it was impossible 
 but that here was the cold, hard type before her eyes. She 
 read the article once more, and was sitting still staring at the 
 paper when Thomas, the butler, came to ask for the day's 
 orders. She would be there in a minute, she said. Then she 
 rose, and tore the paper, slowly and mechanically, into small 
 pieces, and threw them into the waste-basket. 
 
 It was not until two hours later that Horace read the same 
 
THE POWER OF THE PRESS 119 
 
 article on the train. He was still chafing at it when lie reached 
 bis office that afternoon. 
 
 " Anything special happened, Franklin, while I have been 
 gone ?" he asked of the clerk. 
 
 " No, sir, I think not." 
 
 Entering his own office, Marsh took off his hat and overcoat, 
 and, after a glance at the envelopes which were awaiting him, 
 went straight into his partner's room, the door of which stood 
 open. The General was sitting at his desk, but rose to greet 
 the young man cordially as he came in. 
 
 " Well, I congratulate you," he said ; " you must have done 
 well — remarkably well, by all accounts." 
 
 " They seemed to like it," Horace replied ; " but have you 
 seen that cursed article in the World?" 
 
 " What article ?" asked his partner, uneasily. 
 
 Marsh picked up a copy of the paper which was lying on the 
 table — open at the editorial page, curiously enough, and folded 
 so that the very article in question was uppermost. 
 
 "This thing," he said, slapping it contemptuously with the 
 back of his hand, and handing it to his partner. That gentle- 
 man began in apparent innocence the supererogatory task of 
 reading the article again ; for not only had he read it more 
 than once himself, but it had been approvingly discussed in 
 his office by a large number of leading Democrats during the 
 day. 
 
 " Oh yes," he said, with an air of sudden recollection, after 
 reading a few lines, "I saw that this morning. These papers 
 are always making clumsy mistakes. Of course, you did not 
 say anything of the kind I" 
 
 " Why, I never mentioned labor matters ! If I had men- 
 tioned them, it would have been in a different strain to this stuff 
 here. In the first place, Mr. Holt is my friend. In the second 
 place, I believe he is right in this matter. He is a gentleman, 
 and a man to be trusted and honored, while Wollmer and his 
 gang — " Horace checked himself before putting his opinion 
 of the parties in question into language which would have 
 been somewhat too forceful to be courteous, considering the 
 General's intimacy with the labor leader. 
 
 "It is an unfortunate mistake," said the General, sooth- 
 
120 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 ingly ; " but there is no great harm done, and it can be 
 corrected." 
 
 "Yes," Marsh retorted, little mollified, "it can be corrected. 
 I shall write to the World, and go and try to see Pawson. 
 If I don't see him, I will see somebody up there." 
 
 The General had wit enough not to appear to oppose his 
 young partner's plan directly. 
 
 " Well, if you think best. But I would not do anything 
 rash," he said. "You know there has been a second meeting 
 this morning between Holt and the street - railway men. It 
 ended the same way as the one did yesterday, and the strike, 
 on both companies, is now practically a certainty. Do you 
 think that to-morrow would be an opportune time for saying 
 anything on the subject % It seems to me," and he dropped 
 into the pompous senatorial tone in which he loved to deliver 
 anything which sounded like a noble sentiment or a maxim of 
 patriotism, "that in moments of peril such as this, it is the 
 duty — I may say, the bounden duty — of all good citizens to do 
 all in their power to allay public apprehension, and to refrain 
 from doing anything to excite ill-feeling." 
 
 " In justice to myself, however, whether I am a good citizen 
 or not, I have got to have this thing straightened out." 
 
 Then an idea occurred to the General. With all his six feet 
 of stature and imposing presence, and in spite of his public 
 prominence and conspicuousness as a party leader, General 
 Harter was something of a moral jelly-fish, needing in crises 
 the support of stronger men. Once assured of their backing 
 in private, however, there was no one who could present him- 
 self more effectively before the public, or impress the mob 
 more successfully with an idea of his independence of charac- 
 ter. At this juncture he needed Sullivan. If any one could 
 smooth the ruffled feathers of his young partner and lure him 
 from the flight which he threatened, it was the big Irishman. 
 
 " By-the-bye, speaking of this morning's meeting," he said, 
 " that reminds me that I promised, when the result of the 
 meeting was known, to call up Sullivan, and let him know when 
 I could see him. I am afraid he will be waiting to hear from 
 me." 
 
 He pressed a button, and Franklin entered. 
 
THE POWER OF THE TRESS 121 
 
 "I wish you would telephone to the City Hall," said the 
 General, " and tell Mr. Sullivan that I shall be glad to see him 
 right away at this office." 
 
 A minute later Franklin returned, and said that Mr. Sullivan 
 would come at once. 
 
 General Harter detained Marsh some time longer, asking 
 him questions about his trip, until he judged that Sullivan 
 might be close at hand, and then let him go. The General's 
 office had two doors. As soon as Marsh closed one behind 
 him, the General opened the other wide, and left it standing so. 
 It led directly into the hall, and the Irishman would pass it on 
 his way from the elevator, and the General did not wish him 
 to come through the outer office, where he must meet Marsh 
 before he had seen him himself. 
 
 Sullivan arrived much out of breath with his hurried walk, 
 and breathing stertorously. 
 
 " Holy Moses !" he grunted, " it's comin' up in the ele- 
 vators that tires me so. It's just the idea of climbin' does it. 
 All the way up I am thinkin' of the stairs that I might be 
 walkin' up if the elevator was broken down, and the thinkin' 
 of them is as bad as the walkin'." 
 
 He drew a chair up to the General's desk, and the two held a 
 short colloquy in undertones. Then the Irishman rose. 
 
 " Sure an' I'll fix the lad !" he said, and walked into Marsh's 
 room, hammering on the door as he did so with the heavy gold- 
 headed walking-stick which he always carried. 
 
 " How are ye, me boy ?" he cried, heartily. " So the young 
 Hannibal has crossed the Alps and back again without so 
 much as losin' a life or burstin' a button. An' ye struck 'em in 
 fightin' trim, too, I hear?" 
 
 " Oh, I got along all right," Marsh replied. 
 
 "To be course !" said the Irishman. " To be course ye did. 
 An' have ye read the paper to see what a blatherin' idiot that 
 man Pawson has been makin' of himsilf." 
 
 " Yes, I have," Marsh jerked out, discontentedly. 
 
 " Well, an' if it isn't just like the man. It isn't only that 
 he never opens his own yawping mouth without puttin' his 
 foot in it, but he won't let another man open his without 
 wantin' to stuff his whole undacent extremities in there too — 
 
122 MEN BOEN EQUAL 
 
 an' it's up to the knee tbey go every time. When I read the 
 paper myself this mornin'," he continued, unblushingly, " I 
 says to mesilf, says I, ' He don't know the young Spartacus yet,' 
 says I, 'an' he couldn't appraciate him if he did' — no more 
 than a pig can appraciate quails on toast. If it wasn't just at 
 this time I would advise ye to write to the fool and set him 
 straight." 
 
 " I have intended doing so, anyway," said Marsh. 
 
 " Oh, but ye can't now, me lad," and the Irishman shook 
 his big head gravely. "Ye can never do it in the world. 
 The town's just bubblin' now, an' for the next week it '11 
 be touch an' go betwixt peace and bloodshed. There's only 
 one man in this whole city that may be able to prevent a 
 strike, an' that's your own highly respected partner within 
 there. Ye saw that the other night. The boys trust him — an' 
 well they may — an' it's just the chance there is of his bein' 
 able now to stop the trouble. But one word from yersilf on 
 the other side — bein' as ye are not only the leadin' orator of 
 the Dimicratic party, but his very partner and colleague — 
 one word from yersilf, and it's bloody war. It 'Id be settin' 
 the torch to the capitol — like the geese themselves. It's riot- 
 in' there 'Id be inside of a week, an' yerself would be respon- 
 sible. I'd pity the feelin's of ye when the strike had come, 
 and there was riotin' and women cryin' and men bein' killed, 
 an' ye tryin' to slape o' nights with the weight of it all on 
 your conscience. Let alone that ye 'Id wreck the party and 
 blast yer own career — the purtiest career, be it said, in these 
 United States to-day." 
 
 " But a lie has been told about me !" Marsh exclaimed, as he 
 rose and paced the room — " a lie which wrongs me, and must 
 be set right." 
 
 " Oh, pshaw ! An' how many lies do ye think have been 
 tould of Tim Sullivan ? There's never a wake but the Repub- 
 lican organs call me a horse-thief, which is a lie an' a foolish 
 one; for what would I be doin' with a horse, when there's never 
 a baste that's been built since the days of Troy as could bear 
 the weight of me ? An' the party papers call me a high-minded 
 gentleman and model citizen — an' that lie's foolisher yet. 
 They've lied about me both ways for twenty years, an' for all 
 
THE POWER OF THE PRESS 123 
 
 their lyin' I've never a friend or an innemy more or less than 
 I've made mesilf. It was younger than ye are now that I was 
 when I was on the force, an' the papers accused me o' usin' my 
 club outrageously on inoffensive citizens, just for all that I'd 
 hit a man one when he talked back on the strate to me. It's 
 simmerin' mad that I was when I come to the station that 
 mornin' and tould my tale to the captain. An' the captain, he 
 just looked me stiddy in the eye, an' 'Go aff to yer bate,' says 
 he. ' But it's a lie !' says I. ' Let 'em lie,' says he. ' But 
 what '11 I do ?' says I. ' Go aff to yer bate,' says he. ' But 
 they've lied on me !' says I. ' Let 'em lie,' says he. ' But how 
 can I stop it?' says I. 'Go aff to yer bate,' says he. 'If ye 
 think it '11 help ye,' says he, 'ye might soak yer head for a 
 while.' An' I've never forgotten the lesson. When they lie 
 on me now, an' I feel the Irish blood of me risin', ' Let 'em 
 lie, Tim Sullivan,' says I, ' an' go aff to yer bate,' I says." 
 
 Marsh laughed in spite of himself, and the Irishman fol- 
 lowed up his advantage. 
 
 " It's better use yer can make av yer time than stoppin' to 
 fight with every sort of a fool that lies on ye. It wasn't the 
 girl that stooped to pick up apples as won the race in the 
 Bible. An' as for this particular lie, it's a clumsy one, an' 
 them as knows ye know it's a lie, and them as don't can think 
 what they please. If ye have any friends," he added, inno- 
 cently, " that yer want to set straight, on the quiet like, do it. 
 Tell them the falseness of it, if ye think there's need. But as 
 for writin' to the papers an' wreckin' the party an' ruinin' the 
 General an' settin' the town by the ears, it's not yersilf that 
 could do it." 
 
 Marsh stood with his hands in his pockets, looking out of 
 the window in evident indecision, and the Irishman knew that 
 he had gained his point. So he rose to go. 
 
 " It needn't occur again,' 1 he said. " I'll speak to the blath- 
 erin' idiot Pawson mesilf. an' tell him I'll break the pagan head 
 av him if he fails to have ye correctly reported hereafter. It '11 
 be aisy enough whenever ye speak to have it said that, ' in ac- 
 cordance with his custom, the young orator made no reference to 
 local issues, but confined himsilf entirely to a brilliant elucida- 
 tion of the lofty principles which should inspire the party in 
 
124 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 its general behavior,' or words to that effect. It won't be two 
 weeks before every man and child in the city knows ye for 
 the only man on either side as never descends to speak on the 
 labor question." 
 
 Marsh still gazed from the window without replying, and 
 the Irishman, not even saying good-bye, left him, to re-enter 
 the General's room. 
 
 " It's red-hot the lad is," said he, winking at that gentleman, 
 and speaking in tones loud enough for Marsh to hear, " over 
 what the pestiferous lunatic Pawson was after savin' in the 
 paper to-day. Maybe you didn't notice it! Well, it was 
 outrageously unjust, an' no blame to the boy for bein' hot. It's 
 but for the sake of yersilr an' the party the lad's decided not 
 to write to the papers to-day and vindicate himself from the 
 aspersions on his character." 
 
 A minute later Marsh heard the ponderous footstep of the 
 big politician as he went to the elevator. Sullivan whistled 
 quietly to himself as he descended, and by the time that he 
 reached the street the whole affair had gone from his mind. It 
 was only an incident in the day's work. 
 
 In accordance with the Irishman's suggestion, Marsh sat down 
 and wrote to Mr. Holt. It was a brief and dignified letter, in 
 which he simply said that he hoped that it was not necessary 
 for him to tell Mr. Holt that he had been entirely misrepresent- 
 ed by the Democratic papers that morning, and that in his 
 remarks at Jackson he had said nothing to give any excuse for 
 the views which had been ascribed to him. He had not re- 
 ferred to labor matters at all, or said anything which could, 
 however remotely, be construed as expressing a sympathy, 
 which he did not feel, with those who were endeavoring to 
 make trouble between the men and Mr. Holt's companies. 
 
 Mr. Holt received the letter the next morning and read it 
 through. The explanation was not necessary, for Mr. Holt 
 knew enough of Marsh, and was sufficiently familiar with po- 
 litical trickery, to have already conjectured that the thing was 
 a mistake. Still, he liked Marsh, whom he believed to be a 
 clean and capable young fellow, for having written. Then the 
 incident was forgotten under the pressure of more important 
 affairs. 
 
THE POWER OF THE PRESS 125 
 
 As General Harter had said, the street-railway employes 
 had chosen to adopt much the same position as had been taken 
 by the men of the iron-and-steel company. The conference 
 with Mr. Holt had been brief and futile, and a strike was now 
 assured. In accordance with his engagement with the Demo- 
 cratic leaders, however, Wollmer was compelled to prevent mat- 
 ters coming to a head for another week, if possible. So he 
 impressed upon the committee the necessity of taking every 
 possible step to avoid appearance of precipitateness, and to 
 surround the strike with all the circumstances of legality. Be- 
 fore calling a general meeting of the men, at which only a 
 quarter or a third could be present, they must "poll" the men 
 individually, and get the formal vote of the majority of all con- 
 cerned in favor of a strike. This could be done in three or 
 four days. The vote could then be reported to the meeting, 
 and in the eyes of the public there would be every evidence 
 that the committee had acted in the most conservative way, 
 and that the strike was only finally decided upon after every 
 resource had been exhausted, and in obedience to the deliberate 
 decision of an actual majority of the men. Pains were taken 
 that the public should be well informed through the press of 
 the prudent course which the committee were taking, and of 
 their extreme reluctance to force a crisis. So the town knew 
 that there were yet some days of breathing-time. 
 
 For the management of the two companies, however, these 
 were busy days. As for the steel works, there was no question 
 as to the course to be pursued. When the strike came the 
 shops would be shut down for an indefinite period. Every 
 precaution would have to be taken to avoid danger to the 
 property at the time when the men quitted work, and to pro- 
 tect it against malicious injury afterwards. 
 
 With the street-railway company it was different. It could 
 not shut down and remain idle indefinitely. It must make 
 every effort to maintain its service unimpaired, at whatever 
 cost, and must run cars on all its lines every day under pen- 
 alty of forfeiture of its franchises. After much consultation, 
 the officers of the company decided that the only course to 
 pursue was to anticipate the strikers by " locking out " as 
 many hours as was necessary before the strike was to occur. 
 
126 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 Experience with electric street-railway strikes in other cities 
 had shown that while some men, when the appointed hour ar- 
 rived, might take their cars back to the barns, the majority 
 would leave them wherever they might happen to be on the 
 route. Before leaving, moreover, not a few would probably 
 disable the car in some way. By waiting for this to occur 
 the company would at the least be put to considerable incon- 
 venience and expense, and might suffer material loss by the 
 damage to its equipment. It was deemed wiser to forestall 
 the men, and to prevent them from taking the cars out at all 
 that day. 
 
 But the officers knew that at best they could reckon on the 
 loyalty of only a very small proportion of the employes. It 
 remained to have in readiness such reinforcements as were 
 available. Communication was opened with agents in various 
 cities, who were instructed to engage the best men to be got, 
 and to send them on at once — not in parties, but singly ; rep- 
 resentatives of the company would meet them at the station, 
 and care for them until the day when they would be needed. 
 
 It was on Friday that the fruitless meeting between Mr. 
 Holt and the employes of the street-railway company had 
 been held. By Monday recruits were already arriving, one 
 and two at a time, from Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City, 
 Omaha, St. Paul, Minneapolis, and other cities. By Tuesday 
 night the company had sixty men in readiness. On Wednes- 
 day it was announced by the committee that the poll of the 
 employes was finished, and the joint meeting was called for 
 the following evening. That afternoon one hundred and 
 fifty men had arrived in town or were on their way, due to 
 arrive during the night, in addition to fifty who had been en- 
 gaged in the city itself, and instructions were sent to all agents 
 that no more were needed. 
 
 The meeting was held, and Wollmer presented the report 
 of the committee. A large majority, over seventy per cent., 
 of the street - railway men had voted in favor of a strike, 
 and over ninety per cent, of the iron-and-steel company's em- 
 ployes. The committee, Wollmer said, had exhausted every 
 argument with the management of the companies, but in vain ; 
 the gentleman who was president of both companies would 
 
THE POWER OF THE PRESS 127 
 
 listen to no reason. It was only with the greatest reluctance 
 that the committee had finally decided to take the individual 
 votes of all concerned. Those votes were overwhelmingly in 
 favor of an immediate strike on both companies. This, the 
 speaker believed, ended the duties of the committee, who de- 
 sired to express their appreciation of the obligations that they 
 were under to the Hon. William Harter, the candidate for 
 governor of the State on the Democratic ticket, and begged to 
 be discharged. It rested with the meeting to take such action 
 as it saw fit. 
 
 The meeting was not slow in taking that action. A vote of 
 thanks was awarded to the committee, and another to General 
 Harter. The resolution declaring, after much preamble, that 
 it was the duty of the officers of the several organizations to 
 which the employes of the two companies belonged to order a 
 strike in the usual course, and that the officers and members of 
 all such organizations should act together for the best interests 
 of all, was then put and carried amid a tumult of applause. 
 The exact time at which the strike should take effect was left 
 to the officers of the various organizations to decide ; but a 
 recommendation was made that it should not, if possible, be 
 deferred beyond forty-eight hours after the time of the ad- 
 journment of that meeting. 
 
 A few speeches were made, which were for the most part 
 moderate and conservative in tone. Once a speaker arose who 
 commenced with much waving of his arms to advocate the use 
 of dynamite and Winchester rifles ; but he was promptly hooted 
 down. Within two hours after coming to order the meeting- 
 had adjourned in a dignified manner and without disturbance. 
 Except for a few scattered shouts and cries from different 
 quarters of the large audience, the men filed out of the temple 
 in silence, as if fully conscious of the responsibility of their 
 action, and resolutely prepared to stand by it to the end. 
 
 To the public — to one who could not see beneath the surface 
 and understand how the wires, in the fingers of half a dozen 
 men, were pulled so that all the mass of sober, self-respect- 
 ing citizens were no more than puppets in their hands, and 
 who could not read the motives by which these leaders were 
 prompted — the meeting was an impressive manifestation of the 
 
128 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 self-control and love of law and order of the American working- 
 man. And it was as such that the papers of all classes spoke 
 of it the next day. 
 
XI 
 
 AT CROSS-PURPOSES 
 
 It is a natural infirmity of the human intellect that it 
 should regard as new any fact with which it comes in con- 
 tact for the first time ; and it seemed to Jessie, not so much 
 that her eyes had been opened, but as if a change had come 
 over the spirit of the world. The illusion in her case was 
 heightened, and in a measure justified, by the fact that some 
 of the phenomena in her own horizon were new and even 
 from day to day in process of generation. The strike itself 
 was a distinct fact which had not previously existed. It was 
 only the gathering into one thunder-cloud at the storm cen- 
 tre of the scattered forces and elements which had hitherto 
 been spread harmlessly all over the skies. But who, though 
 he dreads the storm when it comes, has a thought for the 
 moisture and electricity which may be carried in the air 
 when the heavens are clear ? Moreover, Horace Marsh's dis- 
 loyalty, as it seemed to her, was a thing of yesterday. It 
 marked an epoch. 
 
 In all her acquaintance with Marsh she had rather shrunk 
 from questioning her heart in regard to him, or speculating as 
 to their possible future relations. That he loved her, she 
 was aware — as no woman could have helped being. How se- 
 riously he loved her, or how much of his life and hopes were 
 involved in his passion, she had not cared to consider; 
 chiefly, probably, from the instinctive dread of her gentle 
 nature of the thought of causing suffering to any one. For 
 had she put the question to herself, she knew, without put- 
 ting it, she must have said that she did not love him. She 
 admired him and liked his companionship. She recognized 
 his intellectual strength and his moral cleanliness. As a figure 
 
130 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 in a latter-day romance she would have sympathized with 
 him, and her judgment would have pronounced against any 
 heroine who rejected him. But neither men nor women 
 bring to the consideration of the affairs of their own hearts 
 the same dispassionate reason with which they pass upon the 
 conduct and analyze the mistakes of others. How many 
 women have refused to marry men who would have made 
 them happy, and rejoiced sincerely in the good-fortune of 
 girls, their friends, when they have accepted these same men 
 — and then earned the pity of those friends by throwing 
 themselves away on husbands who were worthless ? Any gam- 
 bler will tell you how much easier it is to play another man's 
 game than to use judgment when your own money is at stake. 
 
 Jessie had never felt in Horace's presence those tender 
 emotions — those swayings of the inclination " dearer than 
 can be justified to reason " — which are accepted as the neces- 
 sary and proper symptoms of love. Only for that one day — 
 when driving home from her father' s office, at the opera, 
 and during the wakeful night which followed — had she for 
 the first time experienced any conscious desire for his com- 
 panionship. Then, indeed, she had turned to him, whether 
 for his heart's sympathy or for intellectual consolation she 
 had not considered. Only she longed for him. And with 
 the very next morning had come the disillusion and the 
 wreck ! 
 
 During these days she did not speak of him. Had she 
 done so, things might have gone differently. There were 
 times when she wondered that her father had not mentioned 
 his name, for it seemed to her that the disgrace of his defec- 
 tion must have touched her father as closely as it had her- 
 self ; but the work of preparation for the coming struggle left 
 Mr. Holt little leisure to think of other things, and Marsh, 
 with the episode of the speech at Jackson, had been com- 
 pletely forgotten. Jessie even expected that casual visitors 
 would speak of it ; for was not his shame public ? Did not 
 the whole town know it? 
 
 It was well that she was compelled to busy herself with the 
 affairs of the household and the entertainment of her guests, 
 as the misery of the time could scarcely have failed to bring 
 
AT CROSS-PURPOSES 131 
 
 on a second sickness similar to that of her childhood. She 
 often longed to be alone in the house ; but without her being 
 aware of it, the presence of her two friends and the necessity 
 of exerting herself in their behalf was the best medicine pos- 
 sible. Once Miss Willerby had asked whether it would not 
 be better that she should go away — whether she was not 
 rather in the way in this season of anxiety. 
 
 " No, dear," Jessie had said, as she put her arms around 
 her friend's waist. " We need friends now ; we need any- 
 body who will not desert us in the time of trial." 
 
 The bitterness with which she spoke surprised the other, 
 who, however, concluded merely that Jessie's mind must be 
 filled with something that her father had told her, of some 
 desertion to the enemy on the part of political or business 
 friends whom he had trusted. She did not think of Marsh. 
 She had not seen the paper containing that fatal article, and 
 knew nothing of the struggle which had been going on in 
 her friend's heart. That Jessie should be anxious and should 
 show it in her face and manner was only natural at such a 
 time. There was no need to look for specific reasons for her 
 lack of spirits. 
 
 As for Miss Caley, she was engrossed in her relations with 
 Barry, an affair which was rising to its crisis with all the ra- 
 pidity and certainty of a Greek tragedy. When the protago- 
 nist was on the stage — that is to say, when she was in Barry's 
 company — the action moved quickly. In the intervals she 
 herself played the part of the chorus, with rhythmic confi- 
 dences about the domestic altar of the Holt household. The 
 impending strike she accepted with complacency as a fitting 
 setting for the piece, giving it just the circumstances of 
 gloom and dignity which were needed. The chorus, perhaps, 
 was a trifle more personal and frivolously inclined than is 
 customary ; but it possessed compensatory advantages in the 
 matters of entertainment and transparency of motive and ex- 
 pression. Indeed, her comments upon the plot were naivete 
 itself. 
 
 " He has the most wonderful memory !" she assured her 
 friends one day, after Barry had gone. " He has been quoting 
 Shelley to me nearly all the afternoon. I happened to say, you 
 
132 MEI * BORN EQUAL 
 
 know, that I was fond of Shelley that evening when we were 
 sittino- round the fire, and he has been reading Shelley ever 
 since ! And if you could have seen his eyes !" And she 
 gave a little shiver of ecstatic reminiscence. " And when we 
 talked about the emotions and how funny it was that we 
 always knew whether one was going to like a person when 
 one first saw them. That wasn't the case with Fred Jones 
 and me, because we hated each other for ever so long at first. 
 But then we hate each other now again, so it's all right. 
 That proves the rule, you know. But, anyway, I didn't tell 
 him anything about Fred (I had two letters from Fred to-day), 
 and he — Mr. Barry, I mean — said that he had known that he 
 was going to like me awfully just as soon as he came into the 
 room. I told him I did too. Bat that wasn't quite the truth, 
 you know, because I hardly saw him for ever so long. But 
 what could I say ? I couldn't tell him that. But he must 
 have suspected something, because he said that he had been 
 awfully jealous of Mr. Blakely that first night. As if Mr. 
 Blakely gave him any chance of being jealous ! Why, he 
 didn't even look at me !" 
 
 At other times the strain was stormier, fraught with stress 
 and woe. On one occasion after Barry had made his exit she 
 was discovered sitting, as it might have been Ariadne pas- 
 sioning, looking very small and forlorn on a very large sofa, 
 with a little much - crumpled handkerchief in her hand, and 
 evident signs of tears about her cheeks and eyes. 
 
 " It is all the horrid strike," she said, sobbing. " Can't the 
 police or somebody do something to stop it ? We have been 
 talking all about it, and he said if there w T as a riot and the 
 company needed men to help it that he would be sworn in 
 or something, and would go out and fight. And I positively 
 forbade him to do it. I said if he cared for my wishes a bit 
 he wouldn't, because he might be killed ; and I said if he 
 didn't promise not to, I would never speak to him again as 
 lon^ as I lived. And he was just as obstinate ! He said 
 that I wouldn't mean it always, and that I couldn't want him 
 not to do his duty. Oh, he's awfully high-minded ! And 
 then I got angry. He has been telling me about his business 
 — about making people pay things, you know, until they died, 
 
AT CROSS-PURPOSES 133 
 
 and then putting up statues to them (it was just as interest- 
 ing !), and I asked him whether he would pay, and what kind 
 of a statue he would put up to himself if he got killed. And 
 that made him angry. He said that I was heartless and 
 couldn't really care for him, or I wouldn't talk in that way. 
 And then he went away — as solemn and cross and dignified 
 as he could be." And she rubbed her cheeks with the 
 crumpled pocket-handkerchief, and sat the picture of deso- 
 lation. 
 
 But Jessie, listening, wondered how Barry's " high-minded- 
 ness " would consort with Marsh's principles. Living together 
 as they did, how did they agree ? What shame it would be 
 to Horace if the time ever came when Barry did offer his 
 services ! 
 
 Meanwhile it was ordained, by that contrariness which 
 sometimes looks so much like deliberate malice on the part 
 of fate, that Horace and Jessie should not meet. For the 
 first day or two after his return he had been restrained from 
 calling, partly by the necessity of attending to work which 
 had accumulated in his absence, and still more, perhaps, by a 
 feeling of bashfulness and uncertainty as to the effect of that 
 article, supposing it to have been read, and of his note to 
 Mr. Holt. At length, not having heard in reply to the note, 
 he had called at the house on Sunday afternoon ; but nobody 
 was at home. It perversely happened also that Mr. Holt, re- 
 turning before his daughter, had picked up the card which 
 Marsh left, and, after reading it, thrown it into the bowl which 
 stood on the hall-table for the reception of the pieces of paste- 
 board after they had done their duty ; and there it was irrev- 
 ocably lost. Mr. Holt had not thought of the matter again, 
 and Jessie never knew that Horace had been to the house. 
 On Monday Marsh had to leave the town for his speech at 
 Olympia, returning on Tuesday, and leaving again on the fol- 
 lowing day (which was Miss Holt's day at home) for a trip 
 to a number of smaller places in the State, which would keep 
 him away for a week. 
 
 His silence Miss Holt of course ascribed to shame. When 
 on the Wednesday she received some roses from him, sent 
 just before he left the city, she threw the card, which this 
 
134 MEN BOEN EQUAL 
 
 time accompanied the flowers, into the fire, and gave the 
 roses themselves to the butler with injunctions to take them 
 out into the kitchen. But the prudent Thomas took them to 
 his own bedroom instead, wondering meanwhile who it might 
 be from whom his mistress did not care to accept flowers. 
 He hoped it might be that Mr. Blakely. But, whoever it was, 
 Thomas was loyally convinced that he deserved it. 
 
 Nor did Jessie derive any news of Horace's movements 
 from the newspapers. She confined herself now to the read- 
 ing of the Republican, in which no mention was made of 
 Marsh's doings or sayings, though there was abundant abuse 
 of the Democratic leaders in general for their demagogic 
 and hypocritical friendship (so the Republican organ styled 
 it) for the working-man, and their advocacy of his cause in the 
 present labor troubles — abuse, however, which was shrewdly 
 tempered with expressions of Republican sympathy for the 
 same working-man (whose vote would count on either side), 
 viewed as an abstraction, although the sympathy was pre- 
 vented from being actively displayed in his behalf in the im- 
 mediate and local controversy by what the organ wished to 
 be regarded as a judicial impartiality, which forbade either it 
 or the party to assume a hasty attitude on either side in any 
 personal quarrel without the fullest understanding of all the 
 arguments of both parties. In fact, the Republican press 
 was in a particularly uncomfortable dilemma, of which it was 
 able to do no more than dally with both horns with the best 
 grace that it could. 
 
 Had Miss Holt chosen to read the Democratic papers she 
 would have found all Marsh's speeches reported, not, indeed, 
 at as much length as those of some other speakers who de- 
 voted themselves to the discussion of the labor question, but 
 still with a fulness which showed that the party attached con- 
 siderable importance to the young lawyer's words and influ- 
 ence. Sullivan appeared to have kept his promise to inter- 
 view the editor Pawson — or, at least, some instructions had 
 gone forth from Democratic headquarters which prevented a 
 repetition of the misrepresentation to which Marsh had been 
 subjected in the matter of his speech at Jackson. More than 
 once, indeed, in the editorial comment upon his utterances, 
 
AT CROSS-PURPOSES 135 
 
 Horace recognized an echo of Sullivan's words, when the 
 Irishman had suggested in the office how the general tenor 
 of Marsh's oratory might be explained to the public ; and, as 
 a matter of fact, as Sullivan had foretold, those members of 
 the party who were close students of the internal currents in 
 public affairs soon came to understand that of all the Demo- 
 cratic speakers Marsh alone was conducting a campaign of 
 principle, and without reference to local or temporary issues. 
 The better men admired him for it, but those of the baser 
 sort decided that he lacked courage, and wondered why any 
 man should hesitate to come out frankly in favor of the prin- 
 ciples of his party. Marsh himself was so engrossed in his 
 own work and so filled with his own ideals that he was hard- 
 ly aware how far he had drawn away from the rest of his 
 party — or the rest of his party from him. He read the 
 papers, indeed, and noticed regretfully how violently indi- 
 vidual speakers expressed themselves on the question of the 
 strike — a violence, however, which, remembering his own ex- 
 perience, he conjectured to be largely intensified in its filtra- 
 tion through the editorial mind of the " blathering idiot " 
 Pawson. 
 
 Of her other friends and acquaintances Miss Holt saw even 
 more than usual. They naturally called to condole with her 
 on the threatening aspect of the situation (sometimes, it 
 seemed to her, that they came rather to rejoice in it), and, 
 moreover, there were callers on Miss Willerby and Miss 
 Caley as well as on herself. 
 
 Mrs. Bartop had held forth at considerable length on the 
 deplorable condition of a community where such a state of 
 affairs was possible. 
 
 " As I tell Bartop," she said, " it is inconceivable that such 
 a thing could happen in the East, or in any well-governed 
 city." 
 
 Mrs. Flail had called, even busier than usual ; for while she 
 permitted no interruption of her regular meetings, and the de- 
 mands on her time made by the various organizations in which 
 she was interested had to be met, she was further immersed 
 in preparations for a gigantic soup-kitchen for the comfort of 
 the families of the men who would be thrown out of work by 
 
136 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 the strike. The incongruity in her appealing to Miss Holt 
 for assistance in such a cause did not appear to strike the es- 
 timable woman. That evening Miss Holt referred the mat- 
 ter to her father. 
 
 " Subscribe, by all means," he said, smilingly. 
 
 " I thought you would want me to," the daughter said, 
 " but it seemed better to ask you first." 
 
 " Don't do more than other people — so that it will look 
 conspicuous, or as if we were trying to be quixotic. But do 
 what is right. However," he added, after a pause, "I doubt 
 if there will be any need of soup-kitchens. The strikers are 
 not likely to starve, I understand." 
 
 " Why not ? I hope not, I'm sure." 
 
 " Well, there may be nothing in it ; but there are ugly 
 stories afloat about an intention to use the city's funds in 
 support of the men. It hardly seems credible, but the City 
 Hall crowd are pretty unscrupulous." 
 
 Blakely had called, and shown considerable tact. Having 
 expressed his sympathy with Miss Holt and her father briefly, 
 and in words which sounded earnest, he had devoted him- 
 self during the rest of the hour for which he stayed to talk- 
 ing to Miss Willerby, until at parting, when, pressing his 
 hostess's hand, he had said : 
 
 " I wish I could do anything, even the least thing, to com- 
 fort you and make the worry less," accompanying the words 
 with a look for which Miss Holt was very grateful, and 
 which made her feel that she had done him an injustice in 
 pronouncing him hard and unsympathetic. At least, how 
 much better his course was than that of the other — the other 
 who, alone of all their friends, deserted them now. 
 
 Not in the Holt household alone, but all over the city the 
 impending strike was the chief topic of interest. Although 
 the recommendation after the meeting in the Labor Temple 
 had been in favor of declaring the strike effective within 
 forty -eight hours from the adjournment of the meeting — 
 which forty -eight hours would have expired on Saturday 
 night — it was not difficult for Wollmer, who desired to keep 
 to the letter his agreement to delay matters for a full two 
 
AT CROSS-PURPOSES 137 
 
 weeks, to persuade the labor leaders that Saturday would be 
 a most injudicious day on which to strike, as it would give 
 the companies (and the street-railway company especially) 
 a day and a half, or until Monday morning, in which to col- 
 lect their forces and prepare for the business of the follow- 
 ing week. Eleven o'clock on Monday forenoon was the time 
 then finally decided upon. 
 
 During these days of suspense there was perhaps no house 
 in the city, outside of that of Mr. Holt, wherein as much 
 anxiety was felt as in the establishment in Fourth Street, 
 where Wollmer boarded with Mrs. Masson. With the extra 
 work and additional precautions which were now necessary, 
 Harrington could spend but little time in his sweetheart's 
 company. When he was with her, much of the trouble was 
 forgotten, for he managed to maintain a show of light- 
 heartedness, and ridiculed her apprehensions for his safety. 
 But in his absence, while she sat at her small table and 
 " dusted " and painted and burnished at her cups and sau- 
 cers, the clouds gathered again. However brave he might 
 be, her heart told her that the peril which lay ahead was a 
 real one ; and when they met at the breakfast and supper 
 table Wollmer spared no pains to increase the uneasiness. 
 He took malicious pleasure in telling again and again how 
 confident were the men and how sure of victory ; how impos- 
 sible it was for the street-railway company to hope to op- 
 erate its cars, when there were not only their own striking 
 employes to contend with, but the two thousand men from 
 the steel works as well ; how the strikers intended, in the first 
 place, to bring all their united forces to bear upon the street- 
 railway company to compel it to come to terms, and, failing 
 that, how it would be impossible for any leaders to restrain 
 the men from wrecking the iron -and -steel plant. Arriving 
 at this point, he never failed to dilate upon the hopeless- 
 ness of the iron-and-steel company's endeavoring to pro- 
 tect its property against the overwhelming numbers which 
 would be arrayed against it, and the certain death which 
 would await any handful of volunteers whom the company 
 might attempt to install as a garrison at the mills. 
 
 In all this he was aided and abetted by Mrs. Masson. 
 
138 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 She listened approvingly to Wollrner's doleful vaticinations, 
 and when he finished would seize the opportunity to drive 
 the nail home in her step-daughter's mind by specific in- 
 ference to " that Harrington fellow " as one who, by his 
 wicked foolishness, was most certain to invite his own de- 
 struction. 
 
 The effect upon Jennie of these conversations, to which 
 she was treated twice a day with unfailing regularity, can 
 easily be imagined. Moreover, she had other causes of anx- 
 iety besides her fear for her lover. She had cause to have 
 serious doubts as to her step-mother's sanity. Not only did 
 that individual appear to grow daily more and more sub- 
 servient to Wollrner's influence, and more and more vindic- 
 tive in her hatred of Harrington and all who were opposed to 
 the strikers in the present trouble, but she had taken of late 
 to throwing out, from time to time, mysterious hints of some 
 unknown benefit which was to come to the Masson house- 
 hold in case the Democratic party was victorious at the com- 
 ing election and General Harter became governor of the 
 State. This windfall, of whatever nature it might be, seemed 
 to depend more on the General's personal success than on the 
 triumph either of the party or the strikers. The hallucina- 
 tion, Jennie conjectured, was the result of some absurd delu- 
 sion which, to secure his own ends, Wollmer had woven about 
 the old lady's mind ; none the less, on more than one occa- 
 sion, when her step-mother was throwing out these dark al- 
 lusions from behind the teacups at the table, Jennie thought 
 she caught an expression of curious bewilderment in Woll- 
 rner's face, as if he were as much at a loss as herself as to their 
 meaning. Usually Wollmer received these remarks in silence ; 
 but once he said : 
 
 " Yes, it is going to be a great thing for the cause of labor 
 if the Democrats win, as they're bound to do." 
 
 " It ain't so much the party," croaked the old woman, who 
 was singularly yellow and ill-favored; "it's the governor. 
 It's a good deal to be governor of a State like this, even if it 
 ain't quite the same as being president. A governor can do 
 a lot for those as he's bounden to. But as for this other 
 Harrington fellow — " 
 
AT CROSS-PUKPOSES 139 
 
 And there was alwa) T s in her mind, which seemed to be as 
 wrinkled as her cheeks, this same connection between the Gen- 
 eral and the " other Harrington fellow." The latter, on being 
 informed of the step-mother's eccentricity, had laughed at it. 
 
 " Poor old lady," he said, pityingly, " Wollmer is too 
 much for her. I don't wonder that eternal listening to him 
 is affecting her brain. Perhaps he'll be turning your head 
 next, Jen." 
 
 They were standing as they talked in the front parlor of 
 the Masson abode, a cheerless room, in spite of the efforts of 
 the two girls to make it seem home-like and inhabited. A 
 large mirror with a plain gilt frame surmounted the mantel, 
 in the centre of which, among a number of knick-knacks of 
 various sorts, chiefly of Jennie's decoration, stood a pho- 
 tograph of Mrs. Masson, taken some twenty years before, 
 when she was Mrs. Brady, a widow, and which showed her 
 at that time to have been by no means an unprepossessing 
 woman. It was, indeed, the remnant of these good looks 
 which had attracted Mr. Masson a few years later, and it was 
 not until after he had persuaded her to take his name in 
 place of the lamented Brady's that he discovered how thor- 
 oughly vicious and shrewish a person he had given to his 
 daughters as a second mother. 
 
 " Pretty hard to believe that she ever looked like that, 
 isn't it?" Harrington asked, musingly. "I wonder if you'll 
 ever change so much, Jen ? If so, it will be in the other di- 
 rection and because your halo begins to blossom." 
 
 " I guess not, Charlie," she replied, absently. " But what 
 on earth has General Harter to do with us or you ?" 
 
 " Nothing. Wollmer has just been stuffing her mind full 
 of nonsense, that's all. He has been telling her how much 
 he can do with Harter — and I guess there's something in 
 that — and what influence he is going to have with the ad- 
 ministration when Harter's elected ; and she, poor old woman, 
 has got it into her head that in some way she is to share in 
 the good things. Perhaps she's going to marry Wollmer," 
 he added, laughing; " as he can't get the daughter, he'll con- 
 tent himself with the step-mother. How would you like 
 him for a father ?" 
 
140 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 Jennie only shook her head and smiled sadly. 
 
 Another cause of uneasiness to Jennie Masson was her sis- 
 ter Annie. Annie, it appeared, had never reached her Aunt 
 Susan. The aunt lived at Western, Indiana. By an absurd 
 but intelligible mistake Annie had left the train at Caston, a 
 town forty miles this side of her proper destination, being- 
 misled by the similarity of the names as pronounced by the 
 stentorian but not too carefully articulate brakeman. The 
 train had gone when she discovered her mistake. It was 
 slowly growing dark, and the station-agent had told her that 
 there was no other train by which she could reach Western 
 until the same hour on the following day. Understanding 
 her dilemma, the agent had volunteered his services, and had 
 directed her to a house where, with his assistance, she had 
 obtained lodgment for the night. The house, Annie wrote 
 her sister, was so clean and nice, and the people, Mr. and 
 Mrs. Dale, who had the dearest little seven-year-old girl in 
 the world, were so kind to her that she had come to the con- 
 clusion that she would be very much more comfortable with 
 them than with her rather imperious-minded aunt at West- 
 ern. So she had made arrangements to remain where she 
 was indefinitely. The agent had sent for her trunk next 
 day, and as the time passed she had grown altogether de- 
 lighted that she had made the mistake that she had. 
 
 Her sister knew enough of her wayward disposition to deem 
 it better to refrain from expostulations. So she wrote loving- 
 ly, saying how glad she was to know that Annie was comforta- 
 ble, and sent word to Aunt Susan that, owing to a change in 
 plans, Annie would not visit her. The disappointment was 
 softened by the present of a dainty little cup and saucer of 
 Jennie's painting, which were altogether too good for her 
 aunt to appreciate. Indeed, that lady contemptuously pro- 
 nounced them "finicking." 
 
 Altogether, Jennie Masson had worry enough in these days; 
 she saw so little of Charlie now, and had no one else to go 
 to for comfort and courage. Even Tom Weatherfield, who 
 called occasionally, was too dolorously self-centred in his 
 beloved's absence to afford much companionship or consola- 
 tion. They were gloomy times, Jennie felt, as she sat and 
 
AT CROSS-PURPOSES 141 
 
 worked all day with her sweet, peaceful face bowed over the 
 little bits of china which grew to be so beautiful in her 
 hands. 
 
XII 
 
 THE BEGINNING OF THE STRIKE 
 
 At the steel works the strike was inaugurated in orderly 
 and peaceful fashion. At one minute before eleven o'clock the 
 full force was at work, each man in every department appar- 
 ently intent on the task before him. By two minutes after 
 eleven every tool was deserted, every man walking silently to 
 the coat-room, rolling down his shirt- sleeves or wiping the 
 perspiration from his face as he went. Fifteen minutes later 
 the last of the long files of men had issued from the various 
 buildings, and the strike had begun. 
 
 The officers of the company made no attempt to interfere 
 or to argue with the men. There was nothing, except the 
 unusual silence of the hands and the absence of the custom- 
 ary horse-play and joking, to distinguish it from the ordinary 
 breaking up, when the great whistle sounded the end of the 
 day's work. Apparently the idea occurred to James Darron, 
 the manager, who stood watching the men moving by. 
 
 " No whistle to-day," he remarked to Harrington, who hap- 
 pened to be by his side, " nor for many a month to come, I 
 guess." 
 
 In their respective buildings the foremen of the different 
 departments were at work, with the assistance of some two- 
 score of outside men, whose services had been engaged for 
 the day. The great engines were shut down and the fires 
 extinguished ; the hand-tools, which had been dropped by the 
 men where they stood, were collected and carried off to the 
 store-room; and on the machinery wipers were at work, clean- 
 ing up; men with baskets and brooms went through every 
 shop, gathering up the scraps and sweeping out. By dusk 
 the work was finished. Two watchmen, for no extraordinary 
 
THE BEGINNING OF THE STRIKE 143 
 
 precautions were considered necessary, remained on guard, and 
 for the first time since the fires had been started, nearly three 
 years before, the great plant on which ten thousand souls de- 
 pended for their immediate livelihood, and which indirectly 
 supported twice as many more, was dead, with not so much as 
 a smouldering spark of life in all its huge frame. 
 
 Harrington waited only long enough to see that the men 
 left peaceably, and that there was no immediate danger either 
 to the property as a whole, or to the electric plant which was 
 immediately under his care. By half-past eleven he was on 
 his way to the central barns of the street-railway company. 
 
 It was with no little anxiety, and a curious feeling of home- 
 lessness, that he set his face city-wards. The last news from 
 the street-railway company's offices, received by telephone 
 about an hour ago, was to the effect that there had been no 
 trouble, and that cars were running. The men, this much 
 Harrington knew, had been unprepared for the action of the 
 company. Of all the old employes, only eighty, of whom fifty 
 were conductors and thirty engineers, had been regarded as 
 trustworthy enough to be retained in the service. Of the 
 rest, each had been met at the barns that morning with an en- 
 velope containing his pay and a formal notice of discharge. 
 With the two hundred new men and the eighty who were con- 
 sidered loyal the company had been able to put enough cars 
 into operation to fairly accommodate the public. 
 
 Beyond this, the brief telephone message already mentioned 
 was all the information that had been received at the steel 
 works. What might have happened in the last hour Har- 
 rington could not guess ; but he feared the result of the ar- 
 rival down-town of the hands from the works. 
 
 The iron-and-steel company's plant was situated at the 
 north end of the city, while the barns for which Harrington 
 was bound lay about two miles distant to the southwest. The 
 quickest way to go from one point to the other was by means 
 of an electric car on the line which passed within two hundred 
 yards of the mills, changing at a point about half-way down 
 town to a car which ran directly to the barns. 
 
 When Harrington reached the tracks no car was in sight in 
 either direction, though the road lay straight and unobstructed 
 
144 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 as far as the terminus of the line to northward, and for nearly 
 a mile in the direction of the city. This was ominous ; and he 
 set himself to walk at a rapid gait towards town, keeping be- 
 tween the rails. The road seemed strangely deserted and silent. 
 It was a clear day, cold enough for his breath, as he walked, to 
 be faintly visible in the atmosphere. The rails in front of him 
 glimmered coldly in the thin and fitful sunlight. The road was 
 dusty, with a white and powdery dust, for there had been no 
 rain now for some three weeks, and very bare in its whiteness, 
 with the wires overhead and the poles at regular intervals on 
 either hand, and not a moving thing in sight, except where 
 some clumps of black figures, presumably the rear-guard of the 
 receding column of strikers, were just disappearing where the 
 street curved in the distance. There were no stores on this 
 first half-mile of the road, nor any buildings — save on one side 
 a small group of cottages, standing well back from the high- 
 way, and on the other, still farther off, a clump of farm build- 
 ings in the middle of a patch of wind-swept cottonwood-trees, 
 which had been there before the city existed. 
 
 Harrington hurried on, walking in the middle of the road, 
 and growing more anxious with every minute as no sign of an 
 approaching car reached him* At length a man appeared com- 
 ing in the opposite direction, and Harrington hailed him. 
 " Can you tell me if the cars are running?" he asked. 
 " I guess so," the stranger replied. " They have been, after 
 a fashion, all mornin'." 
 
 "Any trouble down-town, do you know?" 
 " I don't know. I hain't been down-town to-day." 
 This was some consolation, but of a slender and negative 
 sort; and Harrington started again to walk rapidly. As he 
 did so he thought that he caught the faintest echo of the pecul- 
 iar reverberant, humming noise made by an approaching car. 
 The sound grew louder, and as Harrington approached the 
 bend in the road a car came sweeping round the corner. It 
 was empty, but there was an extra man with the engineer, and 
 two others stood one on each side of the conductor — strikers, 
 evidently, endeavoring to persuade the men to join them. Im- 
 mediately behind this car came two more in quick succession. 
 On each of these also strikers were laboring with both the em- 
 
THE BEGINNING OF THE STRIKE 145 
 
 ployes. In one sat a solitary, venturesome passenger, and of 
 another Harrington noticed with alarm that one of the win- 
 dows was broken. 
 
 There was no likelihood that the first of these cars would 
 reach the terminus of the line and return in time to be of any 
 service to our friend, so he struck off to the sidewalk, for he 
 was reaching the region of retail stores, and pushed on his way. 
 At the junction with the line to the barns — what was known as 
 the Lincoln Street line — a car going in his direction was just 
 passing, which Harrington boarded. There was no other pas- 
 senger within, nor was there any one with either the engineer 
 or conductor. 
 
 " Had much trouble ?" Harrington asked of the latter, as he 
 stepped on the platform. The conductor only looked at him 
 surlily and did not reply. 
 
 " I'm an officer of the company ; my name's Harrington," 
 he exclaimed. " I'm just down from the steel works and on 
 my way to the barns." 
 
 "No; can't say as we've had much trouble," said the con- 
 ductor thereupon. " It looked ugly a while back ; but it ain't 
 a marker to what's ahead." 
 
 " It looks serious, does it ?" Harrington asked. 
 
 " You bet ! If I'd a-realized, I don't know as I'd have come." 
 
 "You are one of the new men? Where do you come 
 from ?" 
 
 " Cincinnati," replied the conductor. " We had a strike 
 there a year and a half ago ; but gee-whizz ! Not but what 
 we was warned," he added, " for the company did not get us 
 here under no false representations. They told us all about 
 the steel works an' everything ; but these things sound sort o' 
 different five hundred miles away to what they does when you 
 gets in the midst of 'em." 
 
 Harrington could not blame the man for his uneasiness, but 
 it filled him with foreboding. He measured the conductor 
 with his eye, and saw that be was a strong, well-built fellow, 
 with a clean-cut face. He had, it appeared, been through a 
 strike before, and might be accepted as at least a fair sample 
 of the new men. If, then, he was already showing signs of 
 weakening so early in the fight, it was a poor outlook for the 
 
 10 
 
146 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 company. Harrington had taken a seat inside the car, and 
 leaned forward to speak to the conductor again. 
 " Is this your last trip before dinner?" 
 " No ; I've got to make one more, I guess." 
 But there was a half-heartedness in his voice which seemed 
 to his hearer to imply an uncertainty as to whether he would 
 ever make that trip. 
 
 Nothing more was said, and the electrician turned his atten- 
 tion to the people on the sidewalk. This was a busy part of 
 the city, and as the car passed everybody stopped to look at 
 it, rather as if they expected that it might explode. At each 
 corner stood a knot of idlers, of whom it was difficult to say 
 who were strikers and who were not, but they made no dem- 
 onstration of hostility. Once a small child, perhaps eight 
 years of age, ran alongside of the car for some distance, cry- 
 ing " Scab ! Scab ! Scab !" and some loungers at a corner 
 cheered him on with " That's right, sonny !" Harrington 
 glanced at the conductor and saw that he flushed, though he 
 stood with his arms folded, looking straight ahead, affecting 
 not to hear. At another place a large woman, standing bare- 
 headed in a doorway, screamed out something unintelligible 
 and shook her fist at the car. Something in the tone of the 
 voice reminded Harrington of Mrs. Masson. 
 
 As they approached the barns the number of idlers on the 
 sidewalk increased, and at one place a man swung himself on 
 the car as it was moving, while two more climbed up beside 
 the engineer. The one who had boarded at the rear began to 
 talk eagerly to the conductor, but in a voice so low that Har- 
 rington could not catch what he said. The conductor did not 
 answer, only once shaking his head to reply to a question in 
 the negative, and then moving into the car as if to escape fur- 
 ther argument. Harrington knew the other by sight as a for- 
 mer employe of the company, and apparently was recognized 
 in turn, as he judged from the look which the striker gave 
 him as he dropped off the car again, calling to the conductor 
 as he went : 
 
 " You're a fool if you don't— and you may be worse." 
 The last two squares before the barns were reached were 
 crowded. On either side of the street a continuous wall of 
 
THE BEGINNING OF THE STRIKE 147 
 
 strikers, in some places two or three deep, lined the road, and 
 a storm of hisses and groans, with shouts of "Scab!" accom- 
 panied the car. In the immediate vicinity of the barns the 
 crowd was so dense that there was barely room for the car to 
 pass, and so demonstrative that Harrington thought an attack 
 was about to be made, and he stepped quickly out to help the 
 conductor. Amid the shouts and groans he caught his own 
 name more than once, and the threats of many of the shaken 
 fists, he saw, were intended personally for himself. It was a 
 sea of angry faces and waving arms that he looked down upon, 
 and his blood tingled. Suddenly the car swung round the 
 corner and in another moment was safe under the shadow of 
 the barn, and Harrington was conscious that he drew a deep 
 breath of relief as he stepped to the ground. 
 
 No ; he certainly did not blame the man from Cincinnati 
 for his uneasiness. 
 
 The central barns immediately adjoined the company's 
 main power-house, and here Harrington had work to do whicli 
 kept him for an hour or more. As he moved about the power- 
 house talking to the men, or sat in the office in conversa- 
 tion with the minor officers of the company, he could hear the 
 shouts from the crowd without rising and falling as one car 
 after another came in or went out, or as some incident arose 
 to enrage or divert the mob. Every one who arrived from 
 down-town brought news that it was at "the loop" that the 
 aspect of affairs was most threatening. Harrington was anx- 
 ious now to visit the other power-house and the barns upon 
 the South Side. To do this his way lay by the loop in ques- 
 tion — a point in the centre of the city where the various 
 lines converged, and, circling around two blocks of buildings, 
 started on their return journeys. Here on ordinary days, 
 when the full service was in force, there was an almost con- 
 tinuous procession of cars. 
 
 Boarding the next car that left the barns, Harrington start- 
 ed on his trip down-town. As they swung out into the street 
 there arose the same roar of groans and curses as Harrington 
 had already passed through once, and the same mass of an- 
 gry faces and waving arms surrounded him. No attempt was 
 made at obstruction, however, and the trip passed without 
 
148 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 incident of moment until the beginning of the loop was 
 reached. Here, in the space of a few squares, were massed 
 several thousand people, the strikers being reinforced with all 
 the idlers and curiosity -seekers who gather on such occa- 
 sions. Approaching the loop, Harrington dropped off the 
 car and made his way to the sidewalk, where, behind those 
 who stood in their places along the curb, a sluggish stream 
 of passers in either direction slowly forced its way along. 
 With this current he moved laboriously to the vicinity of 
 the corner where the cars were most frequent and the crowd 
 densest; then edging himself as nearly as possible to the 
 roadway, he watched over the shoulders of those in front of 
 him the passage of the cars. 
 
 Each as it approached the curve was stopped, and waited 
 for some seconds before proceeding. Two or three passed 
 without mishap ; then Harrington saw the engineer on the 
 next car, as it stopped, raise his fist as if to strike one of the 
 men who was clinging to the railing and, presumably, abusing 
 him. In an instant the line of men on either side broke, and 
 a dozen at once were swarming round the engineer. It looked 
 for a moment as if he would be pulled from his place and 
 badly handled ; but the cries of " Let him go I" " Leave the 
 scab alone !" and the like, which rose from a hundred throats, 
 brought the strikers to their senses, and they drew back, one 
 who had snatched the engineer's cap from his head throwing 
 it contemptuously into his face, amid the hoots and laughter 
 of the crowd. 
 
 Scarcely had the noise created by this incident subsided, 
 when the engineer of the next car to arrive at the corner 
 stopped his car, gave the lever one additional and vicious 
 jerk, and, throwing his leg over the railing, jumped to the 
 ground. There had been desertions before, but this was the 
 first that Harrington had seen, and his blood boiled as the 
 throng around him shouted in frantic exuberance of delight. 
 The deserter was caught up almost as soon as he touched the 
 ground, and, hoisted shoulder-high, was passed, struggling 
 and kicking in the air, back to those on the sidewalk, where 
 he was soon lost to sight. Turning his attention again to the 
 car which was standing idle, Harrington felt his heart leap as 
 
THE BEGINNING OF THE STRIKE 149 
 
 he saw the conductor pass quietly through the car, shutting* 
 both doors carefully behind him, and take the engineer's 
 place. The air was full of the cries of the strikers, who for 
 a moment did not appear to notice a figure which came from 
 Harrington did not know where, and stepped on to the rear 
 platform of the car. It was Superintendent Boon, of the 
 street-railway company. The self-appointed engineer saw 
 him coming through the car, and waited with his hand on the 
 lever. The superintendent stood by his side and asked him 
 a question or two — presumably as to his ability to handle the 
 car. The other nodded in reply, and as the lever was released 
 and swung round the car moved off. 
 
 For some time longer Harrington stood. It was keenly ex- 
 citing; but, on the whole, the electrician was considerably 
 encouraged, perhaps surprised, to see how little disposition 
 to use violence the strikers showed. They were for the most 
 part good-humored and ready to laugh at any ludicrous turn 
 which affairs might take, and the jeers and abuse were min- 
 gled with good-natured chaffing and raillery. 
 
 Around this corner were stationed some twenty policemen, 
 who, however, made no effort to interfere with the actions 
 of the crowd. Probably it was well that they did not, for a 
 show of authority on their part might have lessened the good- 
 humor of the men, and the representatives of the law were far 
 from being strong enough to cope with the mob in case of a 
 collision. But Harrington fancied that he saw something- 
 more than a prudent neutrality in the attitude of the officers. 
 They seemed to him to have rather the air of sympathizers 
 with the strikers, and to rejoice with them whenever they 
 gained an advantage. The mayor of the city, as Harrington 
 knew, was a demagogue of the shallowest type, a creature of 
 Sullivan's, who had already in semi-public utterances voiced 
 his advocacy of the strikers' cause. It was generally under- 
 stood among the officers of the two companies that they 
 could expect but little active support from the municipal au- 
 thorities, except, possibly, in case of extreme riot and dis- 
 orderliness. At present, at all events, the crowd at the loop 
 showed no signs of awe of the police, nor did they pay any 
 attention to their presence. 
 
150 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 Then came another desertion. This time it was a con- 
 ductor who dropped quietly off the car as it came to a stand- 
 still, and waved his hand to the crowd. At first the bystand- 
 ers were uncertain whether or not to interpret his action as 
 making an accession to their ranks. At this signal, however, 
 the air was rent with their applause, and the conductor was 
 picked up and passed along as the engineer before had been. 
 The engineer of this car had not noticed the departure of his 
 fellow - employe, and stood for a while with a look of be- 
 wildered inquiry on his face at the noise which the crowd 
 was making, waiting for the conductors signal to start. 
 When the signal did not come he turned to look at the con- 
 ductor, and then for the first time discovered that he was 
 alone. The crowd, understanding the situation, redoubled 
 their shouts and laughter, and when a voice from the rear, 
 rising above the tumult, yelled " Where is my wandering 
 boy ?" even the engineer smiled. Harrington had by this 
 time forced his way to the front, and, seeing that the car was 
 one which would carry him to his destination, he stepped on 
 the rear platform, and gave the starting signal in two quick 
 jerks of the bell -rope, nodding as he did so to the engi- 
 neer, who, being an old employe of the company, recognized 
 him. As the car started a broken orange, thrown some- 
 where from amid the mass, struck Harrington on the shoul- 
 der, spattering his chin and shirt-front with juice and pulp. 
 The crowd, many of whom knew him by sight, roared 
 their applause at the accuracy of the aim. Lying on the 
 seat inside the car, where his predecessor had thrown it 
 before leaving, Harrington saw the brass conductor's badge, 
 which he picked up and pinned on the breast of his own 
 coat. 
 
 The run to the South Side barns (in the course of which 
 Harrington collected fifteen cents for the company in fares) 
 was made without interruption, and he left the car without 
 regret. He was glad enough when the badge and the fifteen 
 cents had been safely surrendered at the superintendent's 
 office at the barns. Here at the power-house Harrington 
 found enough to do to keep him busy until late in the after- 
 noon, and his knowledge of the progress of affairs was con- 
 
THE BEGINNING OF THE STRIKE 151 
 
 fined to the intelligence brought by the men as they came in 
 or which arrived over the telephone. 
 
 The day, indeed, passed without any more serious disturb- 
 ance than Harrington had already seen. The strikers as yet 
 were evidently disposed to use no other force than that of 
 moral suasion. There were a few breakages of car windows, 
 and one engineer who was struck by a stone on the temple 
 was badly but not fatally cut. Two or three cars were more 
 or less disabled by accidents arising from the awkwardness of 
 M green " engineers, and, most serious of all perhaps, several 
 women and one man were injured in various degrees in the 
 crowds on the sidewalks. For the rest, the strikers did not 
 seem to take things very much in earnest on this first day. 
 By dark the crowds about the loop had materially dimin- 
 ished. At eight o'clock the company abandoned its service 
 for the day, and both sides rested on their arms. 
 
 Looking over the field, the officers of the company were 
 fairly satisfied with the result of the day's warfare. Of the 
 two hundred and eighty men who had started out on the cars 
 in the morning, forty-three had gone over to the enemy. On 
 the other hand, nearly a thousand applications for employ- 
 ment had been received at the company's various offices from 
 men out of work. None had been engaged. Probably seven- 
 ty or eighty per cent, of the applicants would be unfit for the 
 positions, either physically or morally. In such cases a great 
 many men will apply for places out of mere bravado and for 
 amusement, so that they may say afterwards that they han- 
 dled a car for a day during the strike. A still larger number, 
 men to whom honest or continuous work is naturally re- 
 pugnant, would apply, not for amusement nor with a view to 
 earning wages, but in order that, by deserting, they might 
 earn the gratitude of the strikers, and perhaps work their way 
 into the ranks of those whom the labor organizations support- 
 ed during the continuance of the strike in more or less afflu- 
 ent idleness. Some few also might apply with the deliberate 
 intention of injuring the company by disabling a car when on 
 the road and then leaving it. Against all these classes of im- 
 postors it was necessary for the company as far as possible to 
 protect itself. Every applicant, however, had been instructed 
 
152 MEN BOKN EQUAL 
 
 to sign his name on rolls kept for the purpose, and to call 
 again on the following day. 
 
 The strikers, on the other hand, proclaimed themselves 
 equally well pleased with the outcome of the day. At a 
 crowded mass - meeting held that evening, which was ad- 
 dressed by Wollmer and the other labor leaders, every speaker 
 congratulated the men on the good-temper and the law-abid- 
 ing spirit which had been shown. The desertions from the 
 enemy w r ere exaggerated. The company, it was declared, 
 had been making desperate efforts for weeks past to collect 
 men from every city in the country. It had drawn upon ev- 
 ery possible source. The men had seen the result. It had 
 started the day with a miserably inadequate service, and the 
 defections since the strike began had reduced the force to a 
 little over one hundred men. All that the men had to do was 
 to continue their efforts to win the employes over one by one, 
 and there could be but one outcome. 
 
 As for the employes of the iron-and-steel company, they 
 might have to wait a little longer. They had expected that. 
 Let them now work with the street-railway men to win their 
 fight, and the moral weight of that victory would aid them 
 enormously in their own cause. The iron-and-steel company 
 could perhaps afford to keep the works idle for a while, but the 
 stockholders would not consent to an indefinite prolongation 
 of the shut-down until their property went to pieces from rust 
 and decay. Sooner or later, by early spring at furthest, the 
 company would be compelled to resume operation. When it 
 did so, then would be the time for the men to assert them- 
 selves, to insist on re-employment and on the recognition of 
 the union. 
 
 The speakers were not only enthusiastic, they were tri- 
 umphant. The audience responded with prompt and boister- 
 ous applause at every opportunity. 
 
 During the proceedings Timothy Sullivan sat upon one side 
 of the stage, concealed from the audience, but where he could 
 see and hear the speakers. As the meeting broke up, Woll- 
 mer joined him. 
 
 " It's Niagara itself ye've let loose," said the Irishman, in a 
 low tone, " an' can ye hould it ? Ye've got it now all right, 
 
THE BEGINNING OF THE STRIKE 153 
 
 but how long will it stay ? So long as she keeps within her 
 banks 'tis well, but once let her get away from ye an' flood 
 the country, an' you an' I an' all the Dimicratic party might 
 as well be swimmin' the Whirlpool Rapids." 
 
 " I shall hold them," said Wollmer, complacently. 
 
 " Oh, I know ye'll try," sneered Sullivan, " for there's 
 twenty thousand dollars a week in it for yersilf. But, by 
 God, it '11 come dear if they get away from ye !" 
 
XIII 
 
 MY SISTER'S KEEPER 
 
 The second day of the strike passed as uneventfully as the 
 first ; but when the third day opened the strikers were aware 
 that a large number of new men had been enlisted, and that 
 the company intended to increase its service. Had the news 
 not already leaked out, the perceptible increase in the number 
 of cars and the new faces which appeared on some of them 
 would have soon proclaimed the fact. This action on the 
 part of the enemy was regarded by the strikers as in the 
 nature of a challenge — an invitation to leave their intrench- 
 ments and fight in the open. Nor were they slow to respond. 
 There was less laughter now among the crowds around the 
 loop, and more bitterness in the abuse which was directed at 
 the men as they passed on the cars. Stones and other mis- 
 siles began to be used freely, and on many occasions men, 
 climbing on the front or rear of a car, struck at the engineers 
 and conductors with their fists or with sticks. 
 
 Towards the end of the forenoon one of the new hands 
 derailed his car at a switch only a few squares from the loop 
 and in a central part of the city. Whether it was an accident 
 or the result of malicious intent it was difficult to say ; but 
 the suspicion of intention was strengthened by the fact that 
 as soon as the car had come to a stand-still, lying diagonally 
 across the roadway, both the engineer and conductor deserted 
 to the strikers. The engineer of the car following chanced 
 also to be a new and inexperienced man. The corner of the 
 derailed vehicle projected very close to the rails on which he 
 had to pass. Believing, however, that there was space enough, 
 and flurried perhaps by the yells of the throng on the side- 
 walk, he endeavored to go by without slackening speed. He 
 
my sister's keeper 155 
 
 had miscalculated the distance, and struck the rear of the de- 
 railed car with sufficient force to throw it still farther from 
 the rails, so that it lay almost directly across the road, while 
 the second car was also thrown from the track on the oppo- 
 site side. 
 
 On the commencement of the strike Mr. Holt had advised 
 his daughter to avoid driving down-town. On this partic- 
 ular morning, however, news reached Jessie, shortly after 
 breakfast, of a poor family on the West Side which was in the 
 extremity of distress — a widowed mother who was ill, while 
 her children were hungry and in want of the bare necessaries 
 of life. Jessie had invited Mrs. Tisserton to luncheon that 
 day, and to reach the part of the city where the poor family 
 lived and return in time for lunch by any other means than 
 driving would be impossible. In her father's absence she 
 sent for Wilson, the coachman, and consulted him as to the 
 safety of making the trip. Now, W T ilson, possessed of a pro- 
 found contempt for the strikers, individually and collectively, 
 had grumbled not a little at what he considered Mr. Holt's 
 superfluous caution. 
 
 "As if," Wilson snorted, "either me or the princess" (for 
 so the servants called her) " was afraid o' this riffraff." 
 
 On being summoned to the presence of his young mistress, 
 he ridiculed the idea of danger. 
 
 " I'd show 'em !" he said, truculently. " Savin' yer pres- 
 ence, miss, I'd show 'em !" 
 
 The precise nature of the punishment which he proposed 
 to inflict upon any of the mob who presumed to interfere 
 with their progress did not appear ; and Miss Holt had an 
 uneasy feeling that his attitude lacked something of being 
 adequate to the occasion. It was less the voice of the saga- 
 cious minister who, after weighing the chances of danger in 
 a proposed enterprise, had decided that the undertaking was 
 safe, than of a hot-headed captain, eager only to come face 
 to face with the foe. But her own anxiety to go on the er- 
 rand of mercy overcame whatever forebodings she might have 
 felt, and Wilson received orders to bring the brougham round 
 at once. 
 
 The trip across the city was made without interruption, 
 
156 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 and Miss Holt had no difficulty in finding the address to which 
 she had been directed. The destitution of the family had 
 not been exaggerated. They lived in two small rooms on the 
 third floor of a large building — rooms very bare of furniture, 
 and from which Miss Holt's eye, experienced now in the sad 
 significance of the hieroglyphics of poverty, saw at a glance 
 that every article on which money could possibly be obtained 
 had already found its way to the pawnbroker. Here dwelt 
 the mother and her three children, the eldest a girl of eight 
 and the youngest a boy of three and a half years. The sound 
 of crying came to Jessie's ears as she approached the door, 
 and it was not until she had knocked twice that a voice within 
 said " Hush ! be still," and the door was cautiously opened a 
 few inches. 
 
 " Does Mrs. Silling live here ?" 
 
 " Yes ; do you wish to see her ?" 
 
 " If I may, please." 
 
 " I don't know as you can," replied the girl of eight, who 
 already had the manner of a woman, and whose face was old 
 in the knowledge of sorrow ; " I'll ask." 
 
 Jessie did not wait for the child's return, but, pushing the 
 door open, stepped into the first of the two rooms. In the 
 middle of the naked floor sat the two younger children, their 
 poor little bodies partly covered with rags which it was absurd 
 to speak of as " clothing." They had between them an old 
 horseshoe and a piece of cotton-cloth twisted to the sem- 
 blance of a doll for playthings. The thin faces under tousled 
 hair were smudged and wet with tears. As she met iheir 
 wide eyes, with the expectant awe-stricken look — so unutter- 
 ably pathetic in the children of the very poor — Jessie's heart 
 ached. 
 
 But her immediate business now lay in the farther room, 
 where, in the dim light — for there was no window to the sec- 
 ond apartment — stretched on a mattress, on the poorest of 
 broken beds, and covered only by a worn red quilt, lay the 
 mother. Only the thin white face was visible, which hardly 
 turned towards the visitor as the large dark eyes looked up 
 to Jessie. The latter felt a lump rising in her throat as she 
 laid her ungloved hand upon the woman's forehead, and there 
 
MY sister's keeper 157 
 
 was something in the softness and warm tenderness of the 
 touch which brought tears to the big, sad eyes. Jessie felt her 
 own tears coming. To conceal them she turned to the eldest 
 child, who stood silently by the bedside. 
 
 " How long has your mother been ill ?" 
 
 " Been sick? More'n a month now." 
 
 " Your father is dead «" 
 
 The child nodded. 
 
 " Your mother does washing when she's well ?" 
 
 The child nodded again. 
 
 Jessie looked round the room, and saw how forlorn it was. 
 
 " It is very cold here," she said. 
 
 " It's awful cold nights," said the little girl. " We hain't 
 had no fire for — oh, for weeks. I tries to sell papers some 
 evenin's," she added, as if apologizing for not being better 
 able to support the family, poor, wan little thing ! " But it's 
 hard for me to be away. They can't take care o' mother," 
 nodding her head in the direction of the smaller children, 
 who had now crept into the rear room, and stood, hand in 
 hand, gazing, fingers in mouth, at Jessie. Heavens ! what 
 care could be taken of any one amid such surroundings ? 
 
 " Could you come away with me now for a few moments 
 and leave them ?" Jessie asked of the eldest girl again. 
 
 "I guess so." 
 
 Jessie waited an instant in unconscious expectation that 
 the other would " put on her things." But it soon appeared 
 that the child was ready to go. There was no need of prep- 
 aration, for she possessed no other costume. So Jessie 
 leaned over the bed and stroked the sick woman's forehead, 
 and stooped and kissed her. 
 
 As she went to the door, followed by the girl, she stopped 
 for a minute by the younger children, and, taking a hand of 
 each in hers, "You must be very good till we come back," 
 she said, " and if you don't cry or make a noise of any kind 
 I'll bring you something you will like." 
 
 " What is your name ?" she asked her companion as they 
 went down the shaky stairs. 
 
 " Lizzie." 
 
 il Has a doctor seen your mother ?" 
 
158 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 " No." 
 
 Arriving at the street, the child looked in amazement at 
 the brougham which was moving up and down, the horses 
 stamping, and tossing their heads, the object of admiration 
 to, as it seemed to Jessie, an almost incredible number of 
 ragged and dirty little children. 
 
 " Is them yours ?" asked Lizzie, breathlessly. 
 
 " Yes, they are my father's. Now, where can we get wood 
 and coal ?" 
 
 " Next block, on the other side of the street," said the 
 little girl, pointing in the direction indicated with her thin 
 hand. 
 
 " And where is there a drug-store ?" 
 
 " Round the corner, that way." 
 
 " Well, now go to the wood and coal place and give them 
 that." And Jessie put a bill into the girl's hand. " Bring 
 back, yourself, as much wood as you can carry, so that we can 
 start a tire at once, and tell them to send some more, and 
 some coal as soon as possible. Give them all the money, 
 and tell them that you will use it up as you need it. Do you 
 understand ?" 
 
 The girl nodded. 
 
 " Run along, then. I am going to the drug-store and over 
 there," indicating a general store at the corner, " and will be 
 back almost as soon as you." 
 
 From the smooth-faced clerk at the drug -store she ob- 
 tained the address of a Dr. Chinnery, and drove to his 
 house. The doctor was not at home, so Jessie left a mes- 
 sage for him, asking him to call on Mrs. Silling as soon as 
 possible, and to take charge of her case, and proceeded to 
 the general store which she had already noticed. After a 
 visit to a dairy, where they also sold bread and other prod- 
 ucts of the bakery, she returned to the wretched rooms, 
 taking with her an india-rubber cat and a large woolly ball 
 as presents for the children. 
 
 Here she found Lizzie on her knees before the stove, in 
 which a fire was already roaring with a blaze of kindling- 
 wood, while the two younger ones stood on either side, and 
 spread their little hands to catch the first rays of warmth. 
 
my sister's keeper 159 
 
 " That's right," Jessie said, cheerily ; " and have you "been 
 very good ?" she asked the elder of the two little ones. The 
 child looked up shyly and nodded. 
 
 " Then," said Jessie, kissing her, " here's what I promised 
 you," and she produced the woolly ball. The smallest child 
 was soon in possession of the cat ; and the two, without a 
 word, sat down solemnly on the floor for a deliberate ex- 
 amination of these new and amazing properties. 
 
 Jessie walked to where the sick woman lay, who, too weak 
 to speak, raised her left hand feebly from under the quilt, 
 and laid it, palm- upward, on the bedside. Jessie under- 
 stood, and placed her own left hand in it, while with her 
 right she stroked the white forehead. The thin fingers 
 closed round the soft hand and clung to it tenaciously. 
 
 In a few minutes the articles which Jessie had ordered 
 arrived. Some milk was soon warmed, and the two younger 
 children sat themselves on the floor, with their backs against 
 the wall, eacli with a cupful of milk, into which they dipped 
 lumps of the bread and ate it — a proceeding to which they 
 sat themselves with such voracity that Jessie was compelled 
 to tell them that they must eat more slowly, or she would 
 have to take the good things away again. Lizzie also had 
 her cup of milk and her bread, but she set it on the floor 
 in a corner while she watched Miss Holt pouring some of 
 the warm liquid from a teaspoon between the sick woman's 
 lips. Without the doctor's approval, Jessie did not dare to 
 allow the invalid to take too much. A little hot milk could 
 do no harm, but beyond that she was afraid to venture. 
 
 " I am not going to give you anything more to eat now," 
 she said to Mrs. Silling, " because the doctor is coming soon, 
 after I have gone — Dr. Chinnery." The woman smiled 
 faintly and nodded. " He will know what you ought to have 
 and what ought to be done for you. You are to do just 
 what he says, and Lizzie can get anything you want from the 
 drug - store round the corner." Jessie kissed the woman's 
 forehead again, adding, " Now be brave until he comes, and 
 we will soon have you well again." 
 
 Taking Lizzie into the other room, she asked her if her 
 mother belonged to any church. 
 
160 MEN BOKN EQUAL 
 
 " She used to go to the 'Piscopal church on Sixteenth 
 Street, but that was long ago." 
 
 " Has the minister ever been here ?" 
 
 The child shook her head. " I guess he hasn't any use 
 for poor folks. We can't give nothin' to the church." 
 
 How had she come to think these things ? Probably she 
 had heard her mother talking, and it was not the first time 
 that Jessie had caught from the mouths of little children of 
 the very poor fragments of wisdom, showing a bitter and 
 cynical knowledge of the world, which Jessie herself could 
 scarcely appreciate. 
 
 " Your things are at the pawnshop ?" she asked ; for she 
 knew that these matters are talked of with a directness and 
 absence of shame among the destitute to which she had had 
 some difficulty at first in accustoming herself. 
 
 The child nodded and glanced round the empty rooms. 
 
 " How much do they amount to altogether ?" 
 
 " Eighteen dollars and thirty cents," said the child, prompt- 
 ly. " The last thirty cents was for Nellie's shoes." 
 
 " Will they deliver them here, or do you have to fetch 
 them V 
 
 " Have to fetch them." 
 
 " Well, here are twenty dollars, and five dollars more in 
 case you need anything that has to be paid for," and as she 
 gave the child the money she had no misgivings that it would 
 not be properly spent. "Indeed, there are some things that 
 I want you to get. You must go and buy a broom and a 
 scrubbing-brush and some soap to scrub the floor — you 
 know the kind of brush I mean ?" The child nodded again. 
 " And have you a pail ?" 
 
 " We've got that one," said the child, pointing to one which 
 stood in a corner. 
 
 " Will it hold water ?" 
 
 " If you don't fill it too high up." 
 
 " Well, it will do, I dare say. Now, when the doctor comes 
 I want you to ask him whether it is safe to scrub the 
 rooms, or whether the damp would be bad for your mother. 
 Do you understand ? If he says it would be bad, then just 
 sweep them out; but if he will let you, give the floors and 
 
my sister's keeper 161 
 
 wood-work a good scrubbing with soap and hot water. Do 
 that before you get the things from the pawnshop. I would 
 not give the children " (and there was no sense of incongru- 
 ity in speaking to this little thing of eight years as to a grown- 
 up woman of the " children ") " anything more to eat yet. 
 Wait until the doctor comes, and tell him what they have had ; 
 show him the things there, and ask him if you had not better 
 cook a piece of the steak for their dinner. But, child, you 
 have not had anything to eat yourself yet !" Jessie sudden- 
 ly remembered. 
 
 " That's all right," said the girl ; but she cast an almost 
 wolfish glance into the corner where her cup stood on the 
 floor, with the big slice of bread on the top of it. 
 
 " You are a brave little thing," and Jessie laid her hand on 
 the rough, brown head. But the child only looked up at her 
 with surprise in her eyes. 
 
 Jessie went back to the inner room, Lizzie following silent- 
 ly, and pressed the sick woman's hand. 
 
 " I will be back to-morrow, and meanwhile Lizzie and the 
 doctor will take care of you." And the thin lips moved in 
 what Jessie knew was meant for a blessing. 
 
 " Good-bye !" she said to Lizzie, stroking the child's head. 
 
 " Good-bye !" replied the other, simply, and Jessie knew 
 there was no need for the child to put her gratitude into 
 words. But the second girl, Nellie, came running up, and, 
 clutching Jessie's dress with both her hands, put up a wet and 
 crumby mouth to be kissed. Jessie caught her up and kissed 
 her, and saw that she left a tear on the dirty little cheek as 
 she did so. The smallest, a mere fragment of humanity in the 
 middle of the bare floor, only sat and pinched the india-rub- 
 ber cat. 
 
 Sinking back into a corner of the brougham as she started 
 home, Jessie ran over in her mind the things, in the way of 
 bedding and clothes for the children, that she would bring 
 from the house or buy before her visit on the following day. 
 Occupied with these thoughts, and full of the pathos of the 
 scene which she had just left, she scarcely noticed which way 
 the carriage was going. For the time the strike was forgot- 
 ten, until suddenly there broke upon her ears the roar of 
 11 
 
162 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 voices, heard from a few squares away, as the crowd gathered 
 by the loop greeted some incident of the conflict. Jessie now 
 became aware that Wilson, in bravado, had taken in returning 
 a route which led more nearly through the centre of town 
 than that which he had followed earlier in the day. Through 
 the glass in front of her Jessie could see that there was a con- 
 siderable crowd assembled at the next corner, and a minute 
 later the carriage was swinging round the same corner, with a 
 wall of men on either side. 
 
 As soon as Wilson had turned the corner he found himself 
 confronted by the two cars which had been derailed some fif- 
 teen minutes before. The horses had grown accustomed to 
 the electric cars when moving peaceably on the tracks ; but 
 two cars thrown sideways across the road were a new thing 
 to them, and, as their driver tried to slow them dowm, they 
 showed evident signs of alarm at the obstacle in front. Tak- 
 ing in the situation rapidly, Wilson had concluded that there 
 was room enough to pass on the right side of the street be- 
 tween the front platform of the foremost car and the side- 
 walk, and determined to put the horses through there — at 
 least, the strikers should not see him turn round. If there had 
 been no other element to be taken into account but the ob- 
 stacle of the cars themselves, he would probably have suc- 
 ceeded in holding the horses while he steered them past. But 
 at this moment the crowd recognized the carriage, and imme- 
 diately a roar arose from both sides of the street which, add- 
 ed to the unknown danger of the obstruction in front of 
 them, so terrified the horses that they commenced plunging. 
 At the same time two missiles were thrown from somewhere 
 in the crowd — one an apple, which struck the wood-work of 
 the carriage so close to the window that the pane was spat- 
 tered with juice, and the other a stone which, as Jessie could 
 see, came perilously near to hitting Wilson as he sat on the 
 box. 
 
 The situation was critical. The horses continued to plunge 
 and rear, while Wilson, with his voice and occasional light 
 touches of the whip, strove to bring them to their senses. It 
 seemed to Jessie as if every moment would be the last — as if 
 in the next instant the horses would surely break from all re- 
 
my sister's keeper 163 
 
 straint and dash either into the yelling crowd upon the side- 
 walk or against the barricade in front. But as high-bred 
 horses will (for horses differ in their reasoning power in mo- 
 ments of danger almost as men do, and it is in crises that 
 both show the blood that is in them), even in their terror, the 
 beasts recognized the familiar voice of authority. They 
 plunged and reared, now jerking the brougham violently for- 
 ward for a few feet and then almost as suddenly backing. At 
 the end of some minutes, while the mob shrieked itself hoarse, 
 the carriage had scarcely moved from its original position, 
 except that it had worked a few feet, perhaps, nearer to the 
 right side of the road, on which lay the only chance of pass- 
 ing the obstacle ahead. 
 
 Suddenly a figure, different in dress and manner from the 
 mass of the strikers, pushed through from the sidewalk to 
 the roadway and advanced towards the carriage. It was 
 Blakely. Keeping an eye on the horses, he opened the car- 
 riage door. 
 
 " Be perfectly cool," he said ; " but you had better get out. 
 Wait till the horses back again. Give me you left hand, and 
 step out quickly, when I say so, on your right foot — mind, 
 your right foot." 
 
 She leaned forward and gave him her left hand, which he 
 took in his, as she was bidden. A moment later the horses 
 backed again. 
 
 " Now 1" said he, sharply. She jumped lightly out, while 
 he slipped his right arm round her waist to steady her, and 
 drew her away from the carriage door, which, still holding her 
 left hand in his, he then reached out to and shut. It was only 
 just in time ; or perhaps the click of the closing door was the 
 last straw which broke the self-restraint of the frightened an- 
 imals. They plunged wildly forward. 
 
 " Oh, he'll be killed !" screamed Miss Holt, as Wilson 
 threw his whole weight on to the right rein. 
 
 There was a sudden sway of the carriage and a breaking of 
 the front ranks of the crowd as the horses dashed almost on 
 to the sidewalk ; a sharp, resonant crash as the axle of the left 
 front wheel struck the corner of the car. The jar made the 
 carriage rock till it seemed as if the coachman must lose his 
 
164 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 seat, but he did not. An instant later he was as firm and 
 square-shouldered as ever, talking soothingly to the horses, 
 which were plunging again in the open roadway beyond the 
 barricade. It was admirably done, and the yells of the crowd 
 sounded more like a cheer as, with the whole space of the road 
 ahead of him, Wilson quickly brought the spirited animals 
 under control. 
 
 "He's all right," said Blakely. And Miss Holt drew a 
 long breath of relief. Then she realized the conspicuous- 
 ness of her position, standing, Blakely holding her hand, in 
 the middle of the road, with the eyes of all the crowd on 
 either side fixed upon them. But her companion drew her 
 arm deliberately under his, and walked to the sidewalk, while 
 the men in front fell sheepishly to either side, and made way 
 for the pair. 
 
 " I am almost mean enough," he said, in a low voice, as 
 they pushed through the throng, "to wish that the carriage 
 had been smashed — not so as to hurt Wilson, of course, but 
 so that if there had been anybody inside, they would have 
 been hurt. Then I should have the credit of having saved 
 you from something." 
 
 " But you did," she replied ; " the danger was just as great, 
 even if it ended all right. I am as grateful as if you had 
 saved my life." 
 
 " And there is only one thing in all this world which 1 
 should prize more than your gratitude," he said, speaking 
 still more low. 
 
 She did not reply, and he thought it best to change the 
 subject. 
 
 " You will walk home, will you not ? Please," he plead- 
 ed, " let me have the pleasure of escorting you. It might 
 be unsafe to get into the carriage again. The horses are 
 frightened, and we do not know how much the carriage is 
 hurt." 
 
 " I suppose I had better walk," she said, doubtfully. 
 
 " Let me leave you in here a minute," as he stopped before 
 the open door of a store, " until I go and tell him that you 
 will walk." 
 
 She stepped up obediently on the step of the store in ques- 
 
165 
 
 tion, while he released her arm and left her, to push his way 
 to the street again. Wilson had turned the horses, and was 
 walking them quietly back, looking for his mistress in the 
 crowd. As she stepped up into the doorway he saw her, and 
 drew up to the curb just as Blakely emerged from the throng. 
 
 " That was splendidly done," said the latter, cordially, and 
 AVilson touched his hat modestly in acknowledgment of the 
 compliment. "But Miss Holt thinks she would rather walk 
 home, and asked me to tell you to drive on." 
 
 " It's all right, Mr. Blakely," said Wilson, who was reluc- 
 tant to give the strikers the comfort even of the knowledge 
 that they had interfered with the drive ; " she may just as 
 well let me take her as not." 
 
 " She's a little frightened," Blakely replied, " and it is bet- 
 ter that she should walk a bit." 
 
 He stooped over to look at the axle. 
 
 "The carriage isn't hurt, is it?" 
 
 " Oh no, sir !" said Wilson, in a tone of contempt, scarcely 
 deigning even to lean over on his box enough to look down 
 at the wheel which had suffered the collision ; " just a little 
 paint, that is all, sir." 
 
 That appeared to be the case. 
 
 " Pretty well built," remarked Blakely, and, nodding to Wil- 
 son, he returned to Miss Holt, who, from her position on the 
 door-step, waved her hand to the coachman as he whipped up the 
 horses and swung them round with rather unnecessary dash, to 
 show the onlookers that neither he nor the horses had suffered. 
 
 It was impossible that Jessie should not tell herself how 
 handsome Blakely was as he turned his laughing face up to 
 her again, and how enormously to advantage he appeared in 
 contrast with the men around him. He had borne himself, 
 too, admirably, with just that self-possession in the moment 
 of danger which appeals most directly to a woman's admira- 
 tion. She thought of him as he had been in the theatre on 
 that first evening, and it was with a return of the old em- 
 barrassed feeling of subjection that she placed her hand again 
 on his arm as he pushed a path for them through the peo- 
 ple. He, conscious perhaps of his advantage, talked playfully 
 of other things. 
 
166 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 " How on earth did you come to be driving down-town ?" 
 he asked. "It is awfully risky." 
 
 " I know. Papa told me not to. But there was — there 
 was an important engagement over on the West Side which 
 I had to keep." 
 
 "An important engagement with the dress-maker?" he 
 asked. 
 
 " No ; that is mean. Women sometimes do other things 
 besides see a dress-maker." 
 
 " Hats, perhaps ?" he asked. 
 
 "It was a very — important — engagement," she replied, 
 " which had nothing to do with any part of my costume." 
 
 " Then I give it up," he said. " When is a woman not a 
 woman ? When she has important engagements which have 
 no reference to dress." 
 
 So they talked nonsense until they reached a place where 
 the sidewalks were not crowded. Then she withdrew her 
 arm from his and walked on by his side. Presently he 
 said: 
 
 " Now, as I consider myself your keeper for the morning 
 — heigho ! that it is only for a morning ! — I am going to or- 
 der you about." 
 
 She pursed up her lips and gazed up into his face with an 
 affected air of meek and childish attention, folding her hands 
 in front of her. But he looked as if he were going to kiss her 
 then and there ; so she dropped her hands and asked, in her 
 natural tone : 
 
 " I beg your lordship's pardon ?" 
 
 He laughed. " The first thing that I am going to do is to 
 leave you and send you home in a hack. You won't half ap- 
 preciate the heroism of it ; but you must be tired, and you 
 have walked enough." 
 
 She was aware now that the strain of the events of the 
 morning had made itself felt ; so she offered no protest. 
 
 " We will go over this way to the station," he continued, 
 " where we shall find plenty of vehicles of all sorts. We will 
 select the shabbiest possible hack with the most sheep-like 
 horses. And then — and then I will say good-bye." 
 
 Arriving within view of the row of carriages which were 
 
MY SISTER S KEEPER 167 
 
 drawn up in a single file along the side of the road, he stopped 
 and examined them. 
 
 "I think," he said, deliberately, "that those gray things, 
 which may or may not be horses, in the second hack from this 
 end are sufficiently peaceful. They might fall down ; but they 
 couldn't do anything more than that." 
 
 So they crossed the street, and, after resisting the impor- 
 tunities of a score of other drivers who vociferously volun- 
 teered to drive him and " his lady " to " any part of the city 
 for one dollar," he succeeded in installing her in the vehicle 
 in question. He held the door open while the hackman busied 
 himself with ostentatious speed in removing the horses' blank- 
 ets and lifting the weight to which they were hitched up to 
 the box. 
 
 " I am very, very grateful to you," she said, earnestly, as 
 she gave him her hand. 
 
 " And do you suppose that I am not very, very happy ?" he 
 asked, as he took and held it. 
 
 " Where to, sir ?" asked the driver. 
 
 " To Mr. Holt's, in Jefferson Avenue," replied Blakely, and 
 then, leaning into the carriage, he said, in a voice which was 
 almost a whisper : 
 
 " I suppose you will be angry with me, but do you know 
 that you are the sweetest and most beautiful woman that the 
 Almighty has made ?" 
 
 It was a moment before she could reply. 
 
 " You know that I am too grateful to be angry at anything. 
 But that is not fair." 
 
 None the less she smiled, and she knew that her eyes said 
 to him that she was glad. He closed the door quietly without 
 taking his eyes from hers, and raised his hat slowly as the 
 carriage pulled out and drove away. 
 
 Arriving home, Jessie had barely time to get ready to re- 
 ceive Mrs. Tisserton. At the lunch-table she told the story 
 of the morning's adventure. Miss Willerby received it rather 
 coldly, while Mrs. Tisserton looked at Jessie, and said : 
 
 " Take care ! Do you remember what I wrote you of Mr. 
 Blakely when you were at Mentone ?" 
 
 Jessie did remember — " Pity the girl who finds herself in 
 
168 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 his power, as doubtless many girls have done before, and 
 probably more will in the future." 
 
 But Miss Caley said it was just splendid. She loved those 
 sort of things ; they were so romantic. 
 
 " Oh, how I wish Mr. Barry would save me !" she sighed. 
 " Can't I take the brougham, Jessie, and tell him where to 
 wait for the catastrophe ? But probably he would only run 
 away when the time came. Nothing heroic ever happens to 
 me !" she complained, forlornly. " I have never been rescued 
 by anybody — except when 1 was about thirteen, and Willie 
 Maxey pulled me out of the ice when I was skating. We 
 made ever so much of that, and it was lots of fun. But we 
 both knew that the water was only two feet deep, and there 
 was no possible danger of anything except a cold — and the 
 fishes. And he didn't even save me from that (the cold, I 
 mean), because I had it horribly — oh, for weeks afterwards !" 
 
XIV 
 
 AN EVIL GOD 
 
 Horace Marsh, returning to town on the following day, 
 read an account of the incident in the morning paper. The 
 Democratic organ, in the paragraph which it devoted to the 
 affair, made no mention of any hostile demonstration on 
 the part of the strikers as having contributed to the panic of 
 the horses. It appeared that they had simply been alarmed 
 "by the derailed cars and the crowd on the sidewalk." The 
 courage and coolness shown by Mr. Marshal Blakely, "the 
 well-known young society man who is a close friend of the 
 Holt family," were gracefully commented upon ; and Horace 
 wondered what courage or coolness was required to help a 
 young woman out of a carriage which was standing still. And 
 why had this good-luck fallen to Blakely of all men in the 
 world ? Why could not chance have thrown the opportunity 
 in the way of Horace Marsh himself ? 
 
 Mr. Holt, receiving a more veracious account of the episode 
 from his daughter, sent Blakely a short note of thanks " for 
 the assistance which you rendered to my daughter — who, I 
 need not say, is very dear to me — at what was undoubtedly a 
 moment of danger. I shall always," he added " — as will Miss 
 Holt — feel under obligations to you for the courage and 
 promptness with which you acted." 
 
 Blakely received this letter on his arrival at his office on 
 the following morning. Having read it, and not being over- 
 burdened with business, he swung his chair round to the win- 
 dow, put his feet up on the sill, and set himself to think it 
 over. 
 
 Was he in love with Miss Holt ? He was making love to 
 her, certainly. That was his habit — a habit from which he 
 
170 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 never permitted himself to depart in the case of any woman 
 who was reasonably young and sufficiently good-looking. 
 " The chief business in life of the youth of either sex is think- 
 ing of the youth of the other sex." The accuracy of this as 
 a maxim of universal applicability may be debatable; but 
 with Marshal Blakely certainly no other interest engrossed so 
 much of his time and abilities as did the making of love. He 
 was not without other interests, for he was fond of, and as a 
 rule proficient in, most of the things in which men delight. 
 He rode well, was a good shot, and a keen fisherman. But 
 there was no sport which appealed to so many sides of his 
 nature and gratified him so fully as the pursuit of woman. 
 There was pleasure undoubtedly in killing a salmon or a deer. 
 But at best it was not a contest with one's equal. Moreover, 
 when you killed them they were dead; and there was an 
 end. 
 
 Not that he had ever deliberately reasoned it out with 
 himself in these terms. He accepted the facts as he found 
 them, and went where the best sport was. 
 
 He was not the typical villain of the novelist, nor the 
 typical operatic villain ; only a young man in ordinary life, 
 rather better equipped than the majority of his fellows — 
 firstly, by nature, and, secondly, by practice — for the con- 
 quest of women. He has his counterparts in every com- 
 munity. In the opera — no matter whether the maiden is 
 married to the villain with the bass voice or to the gentle 
 swain with the tenor; no matter whether the ceremony oc- 
 curs in the village market-place among the pealing of bells 
 and the pelting of paper flowers, or in the bandit's cave, with 
 only the banditti for witnesses and an unfrocked friar for 
 priest — it is always on the wedding ceremony that the cur- 
 tain falls. In real life there is an " afterwards." And this 
 was the trouble in regard to Miss Holt. 
 
 Blakely had made love to many women, but had never 
 been formally engaged to be married. Precisely how the 
 affairs ended was known only to the women and to him. 
 Some of those to whom he had laid siege had been mar- 
 riageable ; others were not, under a constitution of society 
 which refuses to recognize polyandry. But Blakely had 
 
AN EVIL GOD 171 
 
 never been consciously near to the danger of falling into 
 wedlock. Some day he might ; but why do it yet a while ? 
 In the first place, he had never felt any disposition to become 
 seriously — or, at least, sufficiently — in love. Not that there 
 were not admirable women — women in whose society he had 
 taken much delight for a while — women in whose possession 
 he professed to consider other men very lucky. There were 
 beautiful women, witty women, delightful women, intoxicat- 
 ing women. As Blakely would have put it himself : For a 
 man who wants a wife, there are plenty of women who will 
 make wives altogether too good for him. For himself, he 
 did not want a wife. Pushed to an ultimate analysis of 
 his feelings, he would probably have confessed that he had 
 been so accustomed to dissipate his affections over many — 
 so habituated to the pleasure of pursuit and change — that he 
 doubted his own ability to concentrate his regard now and 
 to the end on any one. He had so practised playing with 
 the deepest emotions, used the solemnest vows so lightly, 
 had so feigned every form of enslavement and self-abasement 
 and self - surrender, that he could not imagine himself as 
 really enslaved — carried away by real emotion and breathing 
 vows in earnest. How often had he sworn that his whole 
 life lay in winning one woman's favor ! And how soon 
 afterwards had he yawned and gone elsewhere ! Could it 
 be that the issue would ever arise on which his life was, in 
 fact, at stake ? He could not conceive of himself as being so 
 absorbed in one woman that forever after all others would 
 lose their attractions. 
 
 He often wondered whether he was an exception in this. 
 There were happy homes, of course. For that matter, there 
 were churches. Both were eminently desirable institutions 
 for the preservation of society. But when you came to look 
 at particulars and individuals, it was undoubted that devout 
 church-members sometimes were backsliders. And he knew 
 married men of his acquaintance, men most happily and 
 charmingly married, who did not impress him, when out of 
 the society of their wives, as impervious to the attractions 
 of other women. And with married women — women who 
 were apparently model wives — it had not been his experience 
 
172 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 that devotion to a husband necessarily excluded the possi- 
 bility of a second passion. If it were possible to look into the 
 very souls of some of these — say, a hundred carefully selected 
 of the most exemplary husbands and wives — what would be 
 found there ? Were they really, in their innermost hearts, 
 happier for the ties which bound them ? 
 
 Society was happier, of course. But that was not the 
 question. It was incontestably necessary that people in gen- 
 eral should marry. But how about the particular person ? 
 Was it not only a sacrificing of the individual for the pub- 
 lic good? "The individual withers, and the world is more 
 and more." 
 
 Supposing a man (himself, for instance), of whom a woman 
 need never be ashamed, to have married a woman as beauti- 
 ful and charming as you please ; supposing them to be well- 
 off in a worldly way, and with all desirable surroundings ; 
 supposing, then, the excitement of pursuit and the pride of 
 possession to have passed, what would be their life after- 
 wards ? Understanding them, of course, both to have strength 
 enough and sense enough to appear happy, and to respect 
 the conventionalities, what would be their true inward feel- 
 ings? It was a question which he would have very much 
 liked to have had answered. But, so far, the evidence which 
 he had seen had been confusingly contradictory. The bulk 
 of the evidence, that which appeared on the surface, and 
 which was contained in the professions of married people, 
 was largely on one side. But one-half of this evidence was at 
 best open to a suspicion of being biassed. Such fragmentary 
 testimony as came to him on the other side from his own ex- 
 periences was sometimes startlingly positive and unpreju- 
 diced. 
 
 As for Miss Holt, he had set himself, just like the villain in 
 the play, deliberately to win her. He modestly believed that 
 he could succeed — that he had, in fact, succeeded. Luck had 
 been on his side. He had played boldly, and the thing, so 
 far, had gone far more easily than he had anticipated. And 
 what then ? Did he wish to marry her ? She was rich, cer- 
 tainly ; but he had means enough. As her husband he 
 would, from a worldly point of view, hold an eminently de- 
 
AN EVIL GOD 173 
 
 sirable position. If not exactly "the sweetest and most 
 beautiful woman that the Almighty had made " (and he won- 
 dered how often he had used that particular phrase to vari- 
 ous women — a phrase which, he flattered himself, was rather 
 neat, and which he had never yet known a woman to resent), 
 she was certainly a beautiful as well as a very high type 
 of woman. All this he understood. But — ? To the bach- 
 elor the land beyond the altar is almost as unknown and 
 mysterious as the land beyond the grave ; and, for purposes 
 of experiment, marriage has practically the same disadvan- 
 tage as death of being irrevocable. 
 
 And if he did not mean to marry her? On this point he 
 pondered considerably, before his reverie came to an end, as 
 he turned Mr. Holt's letter over and over in his fingers. 
 Oh, well, he would wait, and see how things turned out. It 
 was not a situation that was new to him, and, in the past, 
 circumstances had worked themselves out to various results ; 
 but never, so far, with any great disaster to himself. So he 
 would wait. He would not show himself to be in any haste 
 to thrust himself upon her. It would do no harm to let her 
 wonder for a day or two why he did not call. Meanwhile 
 he would send her some flowers, with a polite note hoping 
 that she was none the worse for the excitement of the pre- 
 vious day. 
 
 To Mr. Holt also he wrote briefly, thanking him for his 
 letter, which, Blakely said, attached much more importance 
 to the incident than the facts warranted. The service which 
 he had been able to render was very slight. 
 
 Jessie received the flowers and the accompanying note on 
 her return from the second visit to Mrs. Silling, which had 
 been made in a hired carriage and by a roundabout route 
 which did not take her through the heart of the city. At 
 the sick woman's bedside she had found Dr. Chinnery, who 
 proved to be a large, hearty man, possessed of that cheery 
 manner which goes so far to inspire courage in a patient. 
 Altogether, Jessie was pleased with and felt confidence in 
 him. 
 
 The rooms had undergone a transformation. Lizzie had 
 carried out her orders faithfully, and Jessie saw that the floor 
 
174 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 and the wood-work had been well scrubbed. The "things" 
 had been recovered from the pawnbroker, including a table 
 and three chairs, a large tub and a stool to set it on, ironing- 
 boards, a wringer, and flat-irons of various sizes. A square 
 of cheap carpet was on the floor between the two rooms, 
 while in the rear one a large mattress with a couple of quilts 
 lay on the floor, whereon evidently the children slept. A 
 number of small articles — a kettle and some pitchers, a dish 
 or two, some plated spoons and forks, as well as the chil- 
 dren's shoes, were arranged in their proper places, and Jessie 
 was moved to amazement at the number of things which a 
 pawnbroker requires from the poor and helpless before he 
 will advance eighteen dollars and thirty cents. 
 
 Mrs. Silling already showed signs of improvement, turning 
 her head without effort, and being able, and rather too will- 
 ing, to talk in a weak and husky voice. The doctor laughed 
 at Jessie's suggestion that a trained nurse should be em- 
 ployed to look after the patient. 
 
 " Oh, she is just run down," he said, " with overwork and 
 worry. If you were in her condition, Miss Holt (supposing 
 it to be possible for you to bring yourself to it), you would 
 need not only one nurse, but two. As soon as you could be 
 moved I should order you away for a change of air — some- 
 where in the South. It would take you six months to pull 
 up. But with these people it is different. The mere revolu- 
 tion from hunger and cold to warmth and proper nourish- 
 ment, from want of care to the feeling of comfort and of 
 being looked after, is change enough in her case. It is more 
 of a change than all the travel or dieting could bring you. 
 She will be at work again inside of two weeks. If we did 
 need a nurse," he added, " we could not have a better one 
 than little Lizzie here." 
 
 " I saw in the paper this morning," he said, at another 
 time, " that you had some trouble yesterday with your car- 
 riage in the mob, Miss Holt. It was on your way home from 
 here, I suppose ? Well, you can comfort yourself with the 
 knowledge that the trip was worth the risk. Forty-eight 
 hours later — perhaps, even, if you had waited until to-day — 
 it would have been too late." 
 
AN EVIL GOD 175 
 
 Jessie did not reply, but her heart was filled with anger 
 against the conditions of society which made it possible that 
 the life of this woman and the lives of her three children 
 should thus be left in the centre of a large city, with wealth 
 and plenty on every side, to the accidental intervention of a 
 stranger like herself. It was by what to her seemed the 
 merest chance that Jessie had heard of the family — a friend 
 of one of the house-maids had heard of their condition from 
 another friend, and the story had been casually repeated till 
 it had reached Miss Holt ; just one of those chances, Jessie 
 thought, by which Providence loves to work. But what 
 were the churches doing ? Had they really " no use for poor 
 folk ?" And what of all the charitable organizations in which 
 Mrs. Flail was so benevolently interested ? Was it nobody's 
 business to see that women and children did not die of hun- 
 ger and cold ? 
 
 Jessie Holt was no novice in charitable work. Often be- 
 fore had she been filled with bitterness at the apparent pow- 
 erlessness of organized charity to cope with real distress. 
 But during this last week, since that day when in her father's 
 office she had for the first time heard from another mouth 
 comments, not intended for her ears, on her own extrava- 
 gance — her carriage and her dresses — the landscape of life 
 had somehow arranged itself in clearer perspective before 
 her eyes. The high lights were sharper and the shadows 
 deeper. Or, rather, it was no longer as on a painted canvas 
 that she looked, but a play, a Passion play, a play of life and 
 death, in which real men and women and little children 
 moved and suffered and died — died trampling on each other, 
 " one-half of mankind against the other half." And of those 
 who trampled she herself was one. 
 
 Just as in childhood we have, each of us, to learn our indi- 
 viduality, 
 
 "So rounds he to a separate mind, 
 
 From whence clear memory may begin; 
 As thro' the frame that binds him in, 
 His isolation grows defined," 
 
 as we find 
 
 ... "I am not what I see, 
 And other than the things I touch ;" 
 
176 MEN BOKN EQUAL 
 
 so there comes to all of us later — all of us, that is, who have 
 any right to be of mankind at all — a reverse current of dis- 
 covery, a current " remerging in the general soul." This hu- 
 manity from which we had thought ourselves distinct — we 
 are still of it. These men and women around us — they are 
 but other ourselves. There is no magic circle drawn around 
 our own small personality. Our part is but a part of the 
 common life, just as is that of each of them. We are our 
 brother's keeper, and our sister's and her children's. 
 
 Mrs. Silling at least should not die ; and as for Mrs. Flail's 
 organizations, at the worst here were two recruits for the 
 kindergarten. So Jessie set herself to unpack the great bun- 
 dle which she had brought in the carriage with her, and 
 which the hackman had carried up -stairs — blankets and 
 sheets for the sick woman's bed, clothes for the children, 
 and towels and all manner of odds and ends for domestic 
 uses — while Dr. Chinnery looked on with a broad smile on 
 his wholesome face, and Lizzie moved quietly about, taking 
 each article in its turn from Miss Holt's hands, and folding it 
 up and setting it in order away. 
 
 Throughout the morning Lizzie said little, except when she 
 insisted on rendering a scrupulous account of her expendi- 
 tures, and offered to return to Jessie the four dollars and 
 twenty-six cents which remained. When Jessie had arrived 
 the girl had simply nodded in an indifferently friendly way, 
 and thereafter remained silent, but watchfully ready to do 
 whatever was needed of her. A stranger, unaccustomed to 
 specimens of her class, would have said that she was curi- 
 ously insensible and ungrateful. But Jessie and the doctor 
 knew better, and had the former wanted thanks those of the 
 sick woman, contained more in her looks and the pressure of 
 her hands than in words, and the wet but demonstrative 
 kisses of the younger children would have sufficed. 
 
 On leaving she could not but see the change which she 
 had brought to the family, nor help feeling that the work 
 which she had done was good. On the drive home she was 
 light-hearted, and looked with eager interest at whatever 
 caught her attention on the journey. Sombre though the 
 background of her thoughts might be, there was light and 
 
AN EVIL GOD 177 
 
 color in the foreground. As in times of illness the perma- 
 nent and deep-seated pain may be forgotten in moments of 
 incidental pleasure, so the local happiness overlaid and ob- 
 scured the sadness which was at her heart. She read Blake- 
 ly's note, and, taking off her gloves, arranged the flowers that 
 he sent in the same Rookwood vase as had carried Marsh's 
 American Beauties a short time back, humming to herself the 
 while, and bursting into short, glad, unconscious snatches of 
 song. Neither of her guests was at home ; so she tripped 
 up the broad staircase, still singing to herself, to her room, 
 and, having taken off her things, and finding still half an hour 
 to spare before luncheon, sat down to write a note to Mrs. 
 Flail, saying that she had two candidates for admission to 
 the kindergarten, and inquiring what formalities of a fiscal 
 or other kind were necessary before they could be accepted. 
 
 Meanwhile, Marsh sat in his office in the Metropolitan 
 Block. He had reported to the General on his return, and 
 had given in outline an account of his trip, answering many 
 questions as to the tone of his reception at one place and an- 
 other, and what this or that prominent Democrat whom Marsh 
 had met had said. In turn Marsh had asked questions about 
 the strike, and about the outlook of the campaign in the city. 
 General Harter was something more than hopeful, and well 
 satisfied with himself and the progress of events. He spoke 
 in unctuous, well-rounded periods, as if already delivering 
 himself from the august elevation of the gubernatorial chair. 
 
 This over, Horace set himself conscientiously to pick up 
 the threads of the office work where he had dropped them, 
 distressingly conscious the while of the difficulty of doing 
 justice to a legal practice and a political campaign concur- 
 rently. Moreover, he was in no mood for work. He wanted 
 to see Jessie. She haunted him. Her presence was around 
 him, by his desk, as he wrote. He could hear her voice and 
 see her face, and he " named her name to himself silently." 
 After dinner he would call ; but till then the day dragged 
 wearily. 
 
 At last he was there, standing with Barry (who was a regu- 
 lar caller now) on the door-step of the house. Yes, the ladies 
 12 
 
178 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 were at home — and Marsh could have blessed Thomas for 
 saying so. But that functionary seemed to regard the fact 
 as not at all out of the common, and set himself with his cus- 
 tomary archiepiscopal solemnity to relieve the callers of their 
 hats and coats before leading them to the drawing-room. 
 Horace was conscious that his heart beat almost audibly as 
 he entered the apartment, where he saw that there was al- 
 ready one caller sitting with the women — Baldwin, the much 
 becuffed and becollared young man of flaxen hair. 
 
 Miss Holt had known that this meeting must come. The 
 flowers which she had received and had passed on to Thomas 
 were a sufficient intimation that Marsh proposed to endeavor 
 to retain his footing in the household. She had thought at 
 one time of telling Thomas to say that she was not at home 
 when Horace called ; but she shrank, however much he might 
 merit it, from making the servants parties to the knowledge 
 of his disgrace. It was best to face the meeting when it came, 
 and to let him understand by her manner that she knew of 
 his treachery and valued him as he deserved. 
 
 Her greeting now was entirely courteous. It could not 
 have been otherwise. Of the others present, Miss Willerby 
 alone noticed its coldness, and was at a loss to understand the 
 reason. But to Horace himself, who knew how impulsively 
 and frankly glad and eager her usual welcome to him was — 
 especially when he had chanced to be away for some days — 
 and who had so looked forward to her quick questionings 
 about his trip, it was as if a sudden blow had struck him. 
 By the time that he had shaken hands with the others, Miss 
 Holt had resumed her seat, and, with her back half-turned to 
 him, was deep in conversation with Mr. Baldwin, while that 
 callow gentleman, amazed at the unwonted interest which his 
 hostess showed in him, wondered how he had ever thought 
 Jessie Holt " stuck up." 
 
 It was evident that she did not propose that Horace 
 should catch her eye. To force himself upon her was out of the 
 question. Moreover, as Miss Caley and Barry were already 
 deep in confidences upon the sofa in the corner, Marsh found 
 himself standing alone with Miss Willerby, to desert whom 
 would have been impossible. There was nothing for it but to 
 
AN EVIL GOD 179 
 
 sit down with her. That experienced young woman saw that 
 something was wrong, and saw also that Horace was as much 
 bewildered as pained; and she forgave him when he said 
 that he had been " very well, thank you," in reply to her 
 question whether he had been out of town. She strove to 
 maintain the semblance of an animated chat. She talked of 
 whatever came to her, and he said " no " and " yes " at ran- 
 dom ; all the while watching Miss Holt and wondering — 
 wondering — wondering. 
 
 What did it mean ? That article ? Nonsense ; that was a 
 week ago, and his letter to her father had remedied any evil 
 that could have been done by that. Had the opposition pa- 
 pers been maligning him since he went away ? Possibly, but 
 he would have heard of that from his party associates. Some 
 so-called " friend," then, had been poisoning her mind ? But 
 who ? Blakely ? That was scarcely credible ; for what could 
 Blakely say ? Turn it which way he would, it was incompre- 
 hensible, and the only thing to do was to learn the truth from 
 her. But Pryce, the Englishman, arrived, and, dividing Miss 
 Holt's attention with Baldwin, only made another barrier 
 around her, and left Horace paired, as before, with Miss Wil- 
 lerby. Then the Tissertons came, and Baldwin left ; and 
 Horace found himself talking to Mrs. Tisserton, while Miss 
 Willerby labored with "Jack." Presently that curiously 
 mannered personage arose unceremoniously, and, deserting 
 Miss Willerby, went over and annexed Baldwin's vacated 
 chair — a thing which Horace had longed to do for half an 
 hour past, and had lacked the courage. Horace now had two 
 ladies on his hands. Soon Mr. Pryce rose to go. Horace 
 could stand it no lono-er. He would take the Englishman's 
 place, and compel Miss Holt to speak to him at least. But as 
 he got up from his chair to carry out this resolution, the per- 
 verse Barry, who until that moment had been oblivious to 
 everything except Miss Caley's proximity, saw Marsh's sudden 
 uprising, and, taking it to be the signal for departure, stood up 
 also. 
 
 Miss Holt saw Barry rise, and she walked as far as the door 
 of the room with the retiring Englishman, and, smiling her 
 adieux to him, moved to where Barry was standing without 
 
180 
 
 MEN BOEN EQUAL 
 
 turning her face in Horace's direction — and Horace knew in 
 his heart that she did it purposely. 
 
 " What ! going so soon ?" she asked Barry, sweetly. 
 
 " Is it soon ?" he said. " I know it seemed soon to me ; but 
 I had no idea that anybody's company could make time pass 
 as quickly for you as Miss Caley's makes it pass for me." 
 
 " Well, I don't wonder that Mary monopolizes you if you 
 say things like that," replied Miss Holt. 
 
 She shook hands with Barry, and then turned slowly round, 
 as if unaware that Horace was at her shoulder. As soon as 
 she faced him — 
 
 " Good-night, Mr. Marsh," she said, and held out her hand. 
 
 " Good - night," he said, slowly. But in answer to his 
 questioning gaze she only looked at him steadily, as if he had 
 been at best but an indifferent acquaintance. 
 
 It was a raw, cold night. The Indian summer, it seemed, 
 was breaking, and mist hung low in the streets, so that the 
 houses on either side of them, as they walked, were no more 
 than shapeless masses of solidity, and the electric lights 
 which hung suspended at the crossings of the streets were 
 surrounded with a halo of pearl. Marsh felt the chill of the 
 weather in his bones, and turned up the collar of his coat and 
 thrust his hands into his pockets ; but Barry, impervious to 
 climatic influences, whistled aggressively as he walked. He 
 was deplorably destitute of an ear for music, but strove 
 to atone in vigor for lack of melody. As a rule, Barry's 
 whistling rather entertained Marsh, who would amuse him- 
 self by guessing whether his friend was rendering an air or 
 only improvising. Now the noise jarred on Marsh's nerves, 
 and he answered briefly to such commonplace remarks as his 
 companion occasionally blurted out between whistles. 
 
 When they were settled in their customary places — Barry 
 stretched at full length on the lounge and Horace ensconced 
 in his favorite chair — it was impossible that the latter, after 
 the nights of hard work and of scanty sleep in the forlorn 
 bedrooms of second-class hotels, should be entirely unmoved 
 by the grateful sense of warmth and homelike comfort. The 
 feeling of physical well-being, in spite of his mental wretch- 
 edness, prompted him to be the first to break the silence. 
 
AN EVIL GOD 181 
 
 " It is an amazing world !" he said. 
 
 Barry, being in love, promptly applied the remark to his 
 own circumstances. Whatever he read or heard now bore 
 significance only as it could be traced to a connection with 
 her. The matter in the newspapers — whether it related to 
 politics, business, sport, or crime — had no interest unless it 
 dealt with affairs feminine. A hint at a woman in the head- 
 ing of an article was enough to commend it to his perusal. 
 Even the price of wheat was meaningless, except in so far as 
 "wheat" rhymed with "sweet," and Mary Caley was that. 
 
 " It is an amazing world I" he replied. " A month ago — 
 think of it! a month ago — I had never seen her, scarcely 
 knew that she existed ; and now— Why, it seems incredi- 
 ble !" 
 
 Marsh forbore to make even an allusion to Longfellow. 
 
 " Have you seen Miss Holt often lately?" he asked. 
 
 " Two or three times a day," replied Barry, calmly. 
 
 " She seemed out of sorts in some way to-night," pursued 
 Marsh, craftily. " Has anything particular happened to her?" 
 
 " Not that I know of. Maybe the scare of yesterday was 
 too much for her." 
 
 " Possibly ;" but Marsh knew better. " How has she seemed 
 when you have seen her before during the last week ?" 
 
 "Oh, I don't know" — the absurdity of supposing that 
 Barry would know ! — " about as usual. Of course she 
 hasn't been particularly gay. The strike would account for 
 that." He was abominably obtuse. 
 
 " Has that man Blakely been up there much ?" 
 
 " No ; only seen him once, I think." 
 
 Evidently nothing was to be gained from this source ; so 
 Horace relapsed into his own thoughts. Barry went on talk- 
 ing, but his companion paid no heed to him. What could it 
 be ? It was useless conjecturing — conjecture was baffled at 
 the outset. How was he to find out ? He could not call — or 
 thought he could not— again. Would it be possible to write 
 — to word a letter so that she would be compelled to answer, 
 without any danger of seeming impertinent and giving of- 
 fence ? He turned the idea over and over in his mind, phras- 
 ing a note this way and that. Yes ; probably that was the 
 
182 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 best thing to do. He would write, and in writing would 
 simply ask her the point-blank question, " What have I done ?" 
 It was a relief to have come even to this poor resolution, and 
 he would execute it at once ; so he rose from his chair. 
 
 Barry was still talking. With the sobering responsibility 
 of prospective matrimony upon him, he had worked his way 
 round to a discussion of his financial condition and a bewail- 
 ment of what he termed his lack of " stick-to-it-ativeness " 
 in business. 
 
 " I tell you," he said, " the main thing in this life is ad- 
 vertising. Take up a thing — no matter what — and advertise 
 — advertise — advertise ! Keep pounding away at it ! It is 
 all bosh to talk about not wanting your name in the papers. 
 Name in the papers means success. Whether you have a 
 church, or a school, or a grog-shop — advertise it ! Especially 
 if you are starting out as a young man — advertise ! If I had 
 to begin life again in a new place I would commence from 
 the first day to call attention to myself. Wear a green hat ; 
 wear your coat inside out ; don't wear a necktie — do any- 
 thing that nobody else does. Wear your hair long or 
 walk with a skip and a jump. That's the stuff. In ten 
 years you'll be famous. When you get into a street-car 
 everybody will tell everybody else ' That's Tompkins.' You 
 will be pointed out in theatres to strangers as ' Tompkins, one 
 of our well-known men.' To be one of our well-known men 
 nowadays is to be half-way on the road to wealth. Report- 
 ers know you, and they always mention you as being where- 
 soever you happen to be. The public gets to know your 
 name, and those who are not acquainted with you think you 
 must be a devil of a fellow. Even those who are acquainted 
 with you come under this influence. They like to be seen 
 with you and associated with yon. People want your name 
 on things. Banks give you credit. Why, national reputa- 
 tions have been made in this country by wearing no neck- 
 ties and going without overcoats." 
 
 Horace laughed. 
 
 " As usual, in what you say, Barry, it's only one-half id- 
 iocy. The public is always mixing up cause and effect. Be- 
 cause big men are notorious, therefore they think that the 
 
AN EVIL GOD 183 
 
 man who is notorious is big. Because genius is eccentric, 
 eccentricity shows genius. ' To be great is to be alone ;' 
 and, therefore, to be alone is to be great. The public has 
 grown so accustomed to miracles in science, to inventions which 
 have created revolutions, and to hearing it said that it is un- 
 safe to say that anything is impossible, that the surface im- 
 possibility of the latest and craziest scheme is its surest rec- 
 ommendation. Credo quia incredibile /" 
 
 " That's what !" Barry exclaimed. "We all expect the un- 
 expected now. If I had made a fool of myself for the pub- 
 lic benefit once a week for the past five years, I should be a 
 big man now." 
 
 " Six feet two ought to be big enough as it is," Marsh 
 suggested, " and I don't know what you have to growl about. 
 You are as happy just now as a man can be. It is we poor 
 devils who work hard, as hard as we know how, and only look 
 up from our work long enough to see that everything worth 
 having in life is slipping away from us — it is we who suffer." 
 
 To this Barry did not reply. 
 
 " Well, I have got to write a letter," said Marsh ; and he 
 sat himself down at a writing-table in the corner. He hesi- 
 tated a minute, and then wrote boldly : 
 
 "My dear Miss Holt, — You may think this letter an 
 impertinence, but I trust that you will not — at least, please 
 understand that I do not mean it as such. 
 
 " It was impossible for me to-night not to see that some- 
 thing had happened to change your attitude towards me — to 
 make you dislike me, which I have hitherto made bold to be- 
 lieve that you did not do. This is no time for me to tell 
 you how much your like or dislike means to me, but I hope 
 you will believe me when I say that I am utterly at a loss to 
 guess what this thing may be. There must, I am sure, be 
 some misunderstanding "somewhere. 
 
 " Will you let me know what the matter is ? If you will 
 tell me when I may call and see you, you know that I shall 
 be only too happy to come at any time. 
 
 "Yours, very much in earnest, 
 
 " Horace Marsh." 
 
184 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 He read it over twice. It was not an ornately worded 
 epistle ; but it told its tale. 
 
 " I guess it will do," he thought. 
 
 As he was putting it into an envelope, Barry arose and 
 knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and the two separated for 
 the night. 
 
XV 
 
 THE GATHERING OF THE STORM 
 
 The next morning it was raining — not an accidental shower, 
 but a steady, gray downpour, telling of a permanent change 
 in the weather. It rained all that day, and the next and 
 the next, which was Sunday. The effect of the change was 
 quickly seen in the course of the strike. 
 
 In the sunshine it had been pleasant for the crowds to 
 stand at the street corners and easy to be good-humored. 
 Under the cold, persistent rain, falling in small drops, but 
 fast and thick, loafing in the open air was a different thing. 
 Even around the loop now the number of strikers was small — 
 just a single row of men standing back: against the walls ; 
 and they watched the cars go by in sullen silence. The ma- 
 jority either stayed at home or at their boarding-places, 
 where time hung heavy on their hands, and they grew mo- 
 rose ; or they congregated in certain resorts where beer was 
 accessible, where they quarrelled among themselves, or, en- 
 couraging each other's discontent and growing bold in com- 
 pany, talked bitterly against the companies and broached 
 plans of violence. In these places they segregated them- 
 selves into groups, according to their nationality — in one, the 
 Irishmen ; in another, the Poles ; here the Bohemians ; there 
 the Huns. Among the mill hands were men of a dozen 
 races, and the great majority spoke but little English. Cer- 
 tain drinking-saloons located in a low quarter of the city, 
 which was known to the newspaper men as "The Pit," were 
 the rendezvous of the Poles and Bohemians, and in each of 
 these once and again during the day the clamor of voices 
 and rapping of beer-mugs on the tables would be stilled as 
 some fluent speaker, red-bearded and fierce-eyed, mounted 
 
186 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 on his chair and preached to them in their own tongue doc- 
 trines of what they knew as " liberty " — the liberty of the 
 bomb and the assassin's knife. 
 
 The street-railway company, from the time when it had 
 begun to hire new men, increased its force daily. Taking 
 advantage of the change in the weather which drove the men 
 from the streets, efforts in this direction were redoubled, un- 
 til by the end of the week the service on all lines in the city 
 was in regular operation with a full force of men. There 
 were those who said, in the streets and in the newspapers, 
 that "the backbone of the strike was broken." But Mr. 
 Holt and his colleagues knew better. The real struggle had 
 not begun. 
 
 The effect of their long idleness and of the inflammatory 
 speeches to which they had listened soon began to be seen in 
 the temper of the men ; and in place of the open and half- 
 bantering hostility of the street-corner crowds, secret deeds 
 of violence began to be perpetrated. Employes of the com- 
 pany going home from their work at night, if by any chance 
 they were found singly, were assaulted and roughly handled. 
 The wires were cut several times, and in one case the end of 
 the "live" wire, falling to the ground, killed the horse in a 
 passing wagon, while a policeman who endeavored to remove 
 the harmless-looking thing received the current in his body, 
 and his recovery was doubtful. Stones were thrown through 
 the windows of the barns and the power-houses, and men, 
 working their way into the former and eluding the vigilance 
 of the watchmen, tampered with the standing cars. A car 
 on its last trip one night on the Milltown line was attacked, 
 in the neighborhood of the deserted works, and though the 
 conductor escaped, the engineer was beaten and trampled al- 
 most to death. An attempt was made on the same night 
 to burn a boarding-house wherein a number of the men 
 were now living, but without serious results. The officers 
 of the company were in daily receipt of threatening letters, 
 warning them that unless the company yielded they would 
 die. Harrington received many such epistles. 
 
 Harrington, little by little, had come to be regarded by 
 the strikers as one of their worst enemies. He had not 
 
THE GATHERING OF THE STORM 187 
 
 sought to make himself conspicuous, but notoriety was 
 thrust upon him. In the vindictive speeches in the saloons 
 his name now occurred nearly as often as that of Mr. Holt him- 
 self, or those of General Manager Darron and Superintend- 
 ent Boon. It has already been seen that he was not liked 
 by the labor organizations before the trouble began. Being 
 the only officer connected with both companies, with the ex- 
 ception of Mr. Holt, he was known to the employes of both. 
 In the very first hour of the strike, as has been told, he pro- 
 voked the hostility of the men by taking the place of the 
 deserting conductor. Later, under similar circumstances, he 
 had made almost an entire round trip, handling a car as its 
 engineer. In each case it was accident that brought him on 
 the scene at the moment when his services were needed ; but 
 the two instances together served to give him in the eyes of 
 the strikers the appearance of peculiar activity in behalf of 
 the company. Then as his duties kept him largely confined 
 to the main power-house and central barns, he was formally 
 intrusted by the company with the task of protecting these 
 buildings, a dozen extra men being put under his authority 
 for the purpose. It was an exasperating office, for the strik- 
 ers resorted to all manner of devices for his petty annoyance, 
 and constant watchfulness was necessary to guard the prop- 
 erty against minor injuries. His men, too, were continually 
 in small broils and scuffles with individual strikers ; and his 
 name (he was sneeringly spoken of as " Captain Harring- 
 ton ") came to be well known to newspaper readers. One 
 day as he was walking through the barns, going in and out 
 between the idle cars, he came suddenly face to face with 
 Craft, whose name has already been mentioned as among the 
 speakers at the meetings in the Labor Temple, and who was 
 an officer of the local organization of the street - railway em- 
 ployes. How Craft had managed to smuggle himself into 
 the barns Harrington could not conjecture, but he knew him 
 well by sight. They met in the narrow pathway between the 
 cars standing on parallel tracks. 
 
 " How did you get in here ?" asked Harrington, quickly. 
 
 " Go to hell and find out !" replied the other. 
 
 Before he could speak again Harrington hit him. The 
 
188 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 electrician had learned to spar, and hit both quickly and 
 hard. Almost before he was aware that Harrington intended 
 to strike, the labor leader found himself sprawling upon the 
 floor. Before he was fairly on his feet a second blow struck 
 him. In spite of his bulk and his blustering talk Craft was 
 a coward at heart, and now suffered himself to be pushed 
 almost without resistance to the door of the barns, where 
 Harrington half threw and half kicked him out into the mud 
 and rain, a woful spectacle. A score or more of strikers 
 standing round saw their leader's humiliation, and the inci- 
 dent found its way into the papers the next day. 
 
 All these things together contributed to single out Har- 
 rington as one of the especial objects of the strikers' hatred, 
 while Wollmer, for his personal dislike's sake, saw to it that 
 the electrician's unpopularity was not suffered to decrease. 
 
 Jennie Masson, who was still much alone, and for whom 
 these days were very gloomy, saw how frequently her lover's 
 name was now in print with mingled feelings of fear and 
 pride. She knew that he was right, and would not for 
 worlds have had him be less courageous or less a man ; but 
 her heart ached for the peril that he was in. When he called 
 one evening she found that he carried a revolver strapped 
 round his waist ; and this evidence that, in spite of the laugh- 
 ing way in which he talked, he was conscious of his own dan- 
 ger deepened her forebodings. 
 
 At last, as the strikers grew bolder and the deeds of vio- 
 lence more frequent, Mr. Holt, in behalf of the street-railway 
 company, applied to the mayor of the city for protection for 
 the company's property and the lives of the employes. He 
 enclosed the mayor a list of the individual acts by which his 
 company had already suffered damage, and represented that 
 the situation demanded especial precautions. The step was 
 taken less with the hope of obtaining the assistance asked 
 for than with a view to placing himself and the company on 
 record as having sought protection in abundance of time, and 
 throwing on the municipal authorities the responsibility for 
 whatever might follow. 
 
 His honor replied that he could see no reason as yet for 
 any extraordinary measures of protection. The public peace 
 
THE GATHERING OF THE STORM 189 
 
 was not threatened, and he (the mayor) had an abiding faith 
 in the orderliness and love of law of his fellow - citizens. 
 He ignored the list with which Mr. Holt had furnished him, 
 and said that the official reports of the chief of the police 
 department showed no remarkable increase in crime — cer- 
 tainly no more than was reasonably to be expected when so 
 many men were out of work. The regular police-force of 
 the city was fully occupied with its present duties ; nor was 
 there at the disposal of the city any fund which, as the 
 mayor was advised by the City Attorney, he would be justified 
 in using, in the present condition of affairs, for any such pur- 
 poses as the president of the street-railway company re- 
 quested. 
 
 Mr. Holt replied that he was well aware that his own 
 sources of information as to the prevalence of crime must be 
 vastly inferior to those at the disposal of the mayor and the 
 chief of the police department. None the less, his personal 
 belief was that the situation was threatening in the extreme, 
 and that there was danger at any moment of concerted ac- 
 tion on the part of the men now unfortunately unemployed, 
 which might result not only in considerable damage to pri- 
 vate property, but in grave disturbance of the public peace. 
 The mayor would doubtless understand that he (as well as 
 the other officers of the street-railway company) was anxious 
 to take every possible precaution to protect the interests of 
 the stockholders of the company, which were intrusted to his 
 charge. As the mayor had suggested that the police-force of 
 the city was inadequate to meet emergencies which might 
 arise, and in view of what the mayor had said as to the lack 
 of funds in the city treasury, the street-railway company was 
 willing to provide any number of men that might be thought 
 sufficient, at the company's own expense, to give the needed 
 protection, if the city government would assume control of 
 them, and would invest them with the proper authority as 
 special officers. 
 
 The mayor answered that the city w T as not yet in such 
 straits that it was necessary for it to throw itself on the 
 generosity of private citizens or corporations for assistance 
 in the conduct of public affairs. When the city government 
 
190 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 needed men to enforce the laws he had no fear that enough 
 would not he forthcoming from the residents of the city at 
 large in answer to any call which might be made upon them. 
 It would be time enough, the mayor said, to consider the 
 means by which riot or disorder should be repressed when 
 riot or disorder showed itself. 
 
 Mr. Holt informed the mayor that he was much gratified 
 to know that his honor felt so little uneasiness as to the out- 
 look. The street-railway company had no doubt of the abil- 
 ity of the city government to protect the lives and property 
 of the citizens, but the mayor would doubtless pardon Mr. 
 Holt's natural anxiety in behalf of the large interests which 
 were in his care. Mr. Holt further begged to officially notify 
 the mayor that the street-railway company would be com- 
 pelled to hold the city responsible for any danger to its prop- 
 erty or the lives of its employes which it might suffer from 
 the acts of violence of other parties, against whom the com- 
 pany had tendered the city all possible assistance in securing 
 protection, which tender had been refused in his honor's 
 recent communication. 
 
 This correspondence was published in full in the press, 
 and the party organs attacked the president of the street- 
 railway company bitterly for his " aspersions on the inten- 
 tions of the strikers," and his " attempt to sow uneasiness 
 and apprehension in the public mind." Mayor Bonderson 
 was correspondingly applauded for his patriotism, his confi- 
 dence in his fellow-citizens, and his refusal to place the city 
 under a " reign of terror, by establishing a condition of affairs 
 which would have bordered upon martial law." 
 
 The more thoughtful of the citizens, however, looked on 
 at the course which things were taking with alarm, as from 
 day to day crimes of all sorts grew more frequent. The em- 
 ployes of the street-railway company did not dare to go to 
 or from their work except in bands of ten or more. An epi- 
 demic of burglary broke out in the city. Inoffensive citizens 
 walking alone were held up and robbed. Attempts were 
 made on two successive evenings to set fire to the iron-and- 
 steel company's plant, and a large force of watchmen was 
 kept constantly on duty there. The guerrilla warfare against 
 
THE GATHERING OF THE STORM 191 
 
 the street-railway company was continued, and small injuries 
 were done to its property in every conceivable way. Not 
 only were the wires cut (or, rather, shot in two ; for the 
 strikers found a charge from a shot-gun to be the easiest 
 and surest way of parting the cable overhead), but at night 
 groups of men would set silently to work at remote points 
 on the various lines and tear up the tracks, sometimes for a 
 space of fifty yards at one place, and, carrying the rails away, 
 hide them in ditches and out-of-the-way corners. Switches 
 and frogs were battered and broken so that cars could not 
 pass without derailment. Employes on the cars were at- 
 tacked with missiles of every sort. Out of the darkness in 
 the night figures would suddenly appear beside a moving car, 
 and hurl huge stones and clubs at the engineers and conduct- 
 ors. Not infrequently the weapons thrown broke through the 
 window, and showered splinters of glass over passengers within. 
 
 Occasionally offenders would be arrested, not by the en- 
 ergy of the police, but captured first by employes of the 
 street-railway company, and handed to the police afterwards. 
 When brought before a justice, they were either discharged 
 or let off with a small fine, for which the money was readily 
 forthcoming. 
 
 As in all troubles between a railway company and its em- 
 ployes, no matter whether it be a street-railway company or 
 a larger steam road, the chief sufferer was the public. No 
 individual member of the community suffered as largely as 
 did the company, but in the aggregate the loss to the people 
 was incomparably larger than to either of the immediate 
 parties to the fight. This is always so. The direct and in- 
 direct injury to the public interests by the railway strikes of 
 the last decade in the United States has amounted to many 
 hundreds of millions of dollars. But the American people are 
 most patient. In the individual controversy their sympathy at 
 the outset is invariably on the side of the employes. It is 
 onlv as the strike progresses — as crime and disorder become 
 prevalent — as the worst side of the system of labor organiza- 
 tions is turned outward to the public view — as the lawless 
 element, which will always ultimately control the mass of 
 the unemployed, begins to tyrannize over the public, that the 
 
192 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 people rebel, and their sympathy is alienated from the side 
 of the men. 
 
 As each successive strike begins, however, the public con- 
 tinues to give the same ungrudging support to the men that 
 it has given before. But out of the many particular disap- 
 pointments it appears that the public is slowly and unwill- 
 ingly coming to learn the general lesson — the lesson that it 
 is no disinterested spectator of the conflict, but that if it suf- 
 fers the trouble to continue, itself will infallibly be the chief 
 loser, whichever side wins. There is a natural instinct in all 
 men, when two parties of evenly matched strength are fight- 
 ing, to stand aside and let them fight till the best man is 
 victorious. But the case is different when the arena which 
 the contestants have selected for their struggle happens to be 
 in the centre of one's own flower-bed. And no matter where 
 the ring may be pitched for any struggle between a railway 
 company and its men, it must always be the public property 
 that will be trampled under foot. 
 
 Moreover, in spite of the talk of labor leaders about "peace- 
 ful strikes" and "lawful and constitutional warfare," the 
 public is having forced upon it the knowledge of the fact 
 that a peaceful strike, carried through without infraction of 
 the laws, is, at least in the case of such quasi-public institu- 
 tions as the railways, an impossibility. The labor leaders 
 know when they embark upon a strike that they cannot carry 
 it through to success without violation of the law. If they 
 simply call their men out, and make no further move to pre- 
 vent the employer continuing operations with new men, the 
 strike is necessarily a failure. The essence of the modern 
 strike is that the employer should be prevented from continu- 
 ing with new men ; and this cannot be done without violence. 
 In the case of a railway, the mere attempt to do it (apart 
 from any individual acts of violence) is a violation of the law 
 of the nation and an insurrection against the government. 
 The regulation of commerce is a function of the State, and to 
 interrupt that commerce by violence is rebellion. Under the 
 modern labor doctrines of the solidarity of all labor organi- 
 zations, the public is coming slowly to an understanding of 
 how serious such a rebellion may become. 
 
THE GATHERING OF THE STORM 193 
 
 In this controversy between the street-railway company 
 and the labor organizations, the public men of both parties, 
 owing to the nearness of the elections, were more than ordi- 
 narily loath to take the initiative in coming forward to inter- 
 fere. After much delay, however, a mass-meeting of citizens 
 was called by a number of leading men, irrespective of party, 
 " to consider," as the call said, " the condition of affairs now 
 existing in our city, and to endeavor to derive means for 
 harmonizing the conflicting interests of the two parties to 
 the struggle now in progress, which struggle is so seriously 
 detrimental to the welfare of the public in general." 
 
 At this meeting a committee of well-known men was ap- 
 pointed to confer with the officers of the companies and the 
 leaders of the men, as well as, in case of failure to arrange a 
 compromise between them, with the mayor of the city. The 
 committee did its best ; but that best was futile. 
 
 Mr. Holt assured the committee that he and all other offi- 
 cers of the street-railway company were as anxious to see 
 crime suppressed and order restored in the town as any 
 other citizen could be. But as for the company itself, Mr. 
 Holt could not see what it was able to do. It had no quarrel 
 with its employes or anybody else. It was operating its 
 road, and had all the men that it needed. These men ap- 
 peared to be entirely contented, and the feeling between 
 them and the company was excellent. As for the former 
 employes who were now out of work, the company had no 
 quarrel with them — no relations with them of any kind. 
 The company only desired to let them alone and be let alone. 
 As for discharging the present hands and re-employing the 
 old men, such an injustice was not to be thought of. As for 
 the labor organizations, the company had no members of any 
 in its employment, and there was no more reason why it 
 should have any dealings with them than with the Unitarian 
 Society, or the Bimetallic League, or the Woman's Christian 
 Temperance Union. 
 
 On behalf of the iron -and- steel company, Mr. Holt said 
 that the company had simply shut down and gone out of 
 business indefinitely. There was nothing in the condition of 
 trade to warrant a reopening. He did not think that there 
 
 13 
 
194 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 would be for twelve months to come. The men had left of 
 their own accord, and had not applied for re-employment. If 
 they did apply, even unanimously agreeing to come back on 
 the company's own terms, it was improbable that the com- 
 pany could consider a resumption of business. It would need 
 a fund of from a million to a million and a half of dollars to 
 justify the company in starting now, with the certainty of 
 operating for some months at least at a loss. The company 
 could raise no such sum. Mr. Holt did not think that the 
 men could, or that the citizens would be willing to. 
 
 From the labor leaders the committee derived even less 
 comfort. Wollmer, who spoke for the strikers, said that 
 they had nothing to do with the crimes which were being 
 committed. They were done by others, chiefly by emissaries 
 of the street-railway company, who injured the company's 
 own property for the purpose of discrediting the strikers 
 and exciting public prejudice against them. The strikers 
 themselves, Wollmer said, were a peaceable, law-abiding set 
 of men, who proposed to continue to keep the peace. But 
 they would never give in. As for the crimes — that was a 
 matter for the police. 
 
 So the committee went to the mayor, and Timothy Sulli- 
 van assisted, as a silent partner, at the interview. His honor 
 took much the same ground as he had occupied in his cor- 
 respondence with Mr. Holt. He himself saw no especial 
 necessity for extraordinary measures for the public protec- 
 tion. But if the committee insisted — " mind," he repeated, 
 " if you, as representatives of the citizens, insist upon it " — 
 why, of course, he would instruct the chief of the police de- 
 partment to make a large increase in the force, and other- 
 wise to take all possible precautions to prevent crime and 
 suppress disorder. The mayor warned the committee, 
 however, that the expense would be great, and that the 
 city treasury was in no condition to stand any additional 
 drain. 
 
 After some consultation, the committee decided that it was 
 best that the mayor should " go ahead " and do whatever was 
 necessary. Anything was preferable to a continuance of ex- 
 isting conditions. 
 
THE GATHERING OF THE STORM 195 
 
 So the mayor sent for the chief of police, who approached 
 and listened attentively while the mayor said : 
 
 11 These gentlemen here, as representatives of the citizens 
 by whom they were appointed as a committee, when in mass- 
 meeting assembled, have instructed me to spare no expense in 
 maintaining peace and a respect for the law in this city. 
 They insist on as large an increase in the police -force as 
 may be necessary, and on the taking of any other measures 
 that we can devise for the proper protection of the lives and 
 property of the public. I want you, if you please, to draw up 
 a scheme, showing how many additional men you will need 
 for the thorough patrolling of the city, and making any sug- 
 gestions that you can which will assist in carrying out the 
 wishes of the committee." The chief of police bowed. 
 
 " I think, gentlemen," continued the mayor, turning to the 
 committee, " that those instructions fairly represent what you 
 require of me. Of course, it is unnecessary for me to say that 
 if any question as to the wisdom of these expenditures should 
 come up hereafter, I shall expect you to relieve the present 
 administration of all responsibility for them." 
 
 The committee signified its understanding of these con- 
 ditions, and after some desultory questions with a view to 
 ascertaining what the expense was likely to be — questions 
 to which the mayor found it impossible to even hazard an 
 answer without further consideration and consultation — 
 withdrew. As soon as the committee had left, the chief 
 said : 
 
 " What shall I do ?" 
 
 " Nothing," replied the mayor. " Better put on a few new 
 men and talk a good deal about the enormous increase in the 
 force." 
 
 The chief winked at Sullivan and retired. Then that wor- 
 thy arose and stretched himself : 
 
 " Talk of rollin' off a log !" said he, and he too strolled out 
 of the office. 
 
 Thenceforward the Democratic papers talked much of the 
 extraordinary expenditures which were made necessary by 
 the large additions to the police-force which had been made, 
 and the " other measures " (which were not specified) which 
 
196 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 Mayor Bonderson, with the able assistance of Chief Winley, 
 was taking for the prevention of crime. 
 
 But there were citizens who had the temerity to say that 
 they saw little difference either in the number of policemen 
 on the streets or in the amount of crime committed. 
 
 Even Timothy Sullivan indeed seemed to think that there 
 was too much crime, judging from his remarks at a stormy 
 interview which took place two days later in General Harter's 
 office. The parties to the conversation were the usual trium- 
 virate. 
 
 " They must stop it, I tell ye," said the Irishman, violently, 
 bringing his list down on the baize-covered table with a bang 
 which made the inkstands jump. " There's no use o' palaver- 
 in', they must just stop it ! The public may be a dom fool up 
 to a certain point— it always is ; but beyond that point ye'd 
 best not monkey with it. I've been there before, an' I tell ye 
 they must stop it. AVe can blow all we plaze in the papers 
 about the amazin' ingenuity of his honor an' that goat Win- 
 ley in arrestin' criminals, an' we can swear till we're green 
 that ther' isn't a striker who'd descend to violence, but it's the 
 public that knows best when it's held up an' robbed an' hit 
 with clubs. Talk of the ingenuity of the administration don't 
 go when a man's been sand-bagged." 
 
 " What do you want me to do ?" asked Wollmer. " Do 
 you think three thousand men, and out of work at that, can 
 be given rag-dolls and bottles and kept in a nursery ?" 
 
 " I don't care a dom what ye do," replied Sullivan ; " only 
 stop it ! When ye first came to the Gineral and mesilf here 
 in this same office and said as ye could have the men strike 
 if we willed, ye also said ye could hould 'em till after elec- 
 tion. We took ye at yer word, an' in two weeks ye've re- 
 ceived from the sacred funds of the municipality just one 
 hundred thousand dollars, for the which, next to the Al- 
 mighty, ye're indebted to the dom fool of a committee. How 
 much money ye may have got beyond that from the assess- 
 ments of the orders is none of my business, an' I guess that 
 the other friends who are in wid ye need all that. But ye've 
 had yer price so far, an' we can pay ye (thanks to the same 
 committee agin) for four weeks to come, which is the elec- 
 
THE GATHERING OF THE STORM 197 
 
 tions. But it isn't for the sake of yer swate face as we're 
 payin' ye, nor for any other consideration whatsoever beyond 
 that ye should kape these men quiet an' hould public sym- 
 pathy wid them an' against the Republicans." 
 
 There was silence for some seconds, and then Sullivan con- 
 tinued : 
 
 " If ye can't hould them, thin we must ; and if we hev to 
 employ the extry men in airnest as we're philanderin' about 
 now, there'll be no more money comin' from the city for Woll- 
 mer. An' if riot breaks out an' the militia come in, there'll 
 be more votes lost to the Dimicratic parrty than all the 
 dom labor element in the State can give it. An' mark ye 
 further," said the Irishman, rising, " if there's any such 
 trouble occurrin' as that comes too, I'll hould the red head of 
 ye in that same stove there till yer own mother won't know 
 the face of ye from the side of a baked apple." 
 
XVI 
 
 A TALK AT THE CLUB 
 
 The letter which Horace had written he sent by messenger 
 on the following morning. If she were at home and replied at 
 once, he ought to receive the answer by noon. As the morn- 
 ing wore away he looked up anxiously every time that the 
 office door opened, thinking that it was a letter from her. 
 By one o'clock no answer had arrived, and he went out to 
 luncheon, telling himself that she could not have been at 
 home when his message arrived. Through the afternoon he 
 waited in vain, uneasily at first, but comforting himself with 
 the assurance that she had doubtless preferred to write to 
 him at some length, and would send the letter by mail that 
 evening. 
 
 The following morning he was at the office early, and picked 
 up his mail without waiting to lay aside his hat and umbrella. 
 He ran the envelopes over quickly. There was nothing in 
 her handwriting. Once more he looked at them. No; there 
 was nothing. 
 
 " Franklin, is this all the mail there was for me ?" he called 
 to the outer office. 
 
 " Yes, sir. General Harter's mail is on his desk." 
 
 The General was out of town, speaking at outside points, 
 and Horace, thinking that perhaps the clerks had made a 
 mistake, went into his office and looked through the pile of 
 envelopes lying on his partner's desk. No ; there was noth- 
 ing for him. Could it be that she had posted the letter too 
 late for the first morning delivery ? Possibly ; outside of the 
 business centre of the town, in localities such as that wherein 
 Mr. Holt lived, the collections from the mail-boxes were few. 
 She might have written to him in the afternoon, and sent 
 Thomas out to the mail-box after dinner. In that case the 
 
A TALK AT THE CLUB 199 
 
 letter might well fail to arrive the first thing in the morning. 
 It would come by a later delivery. 
 
 Once more, however, the morning dragged along without a 
 word from her. Lunch -time arrived, and Marsh took his 
 way to the club through the rain and mud, wondering what 
 could have happened. There had been a miscarriage some- 
 where. The idea that she would not reply to his letter — that 
 the misunderstanding which had arisen between them was of 
 a permanent nature, or anything so serious as to make her re- 
 fuse to have anything more to say to him — did not occur to 
 him. But this delay was inexplicable. Moreover, this was 
 Saturday. If he did not hear that afternoon, the whole gulf 
 of Sunday would intervene before there could be any commu- 
 nication between them. How in the world would he manage 
 to get through the long Sunday if he could not call on her ? 
 He had counted on spending much of the day in her company. 
 
 Arriving at the club, he put his wet umbrella in the stand 
 by the door, and handed his hat and overcoat to the boy in the 
 cloak-room. He was still standing by the door in the cloak- 
 room, turning down the bottom of his trousers, which had been 
 rolled up as he came through the wet, when Judge Jessel and 
 Major Bartop issued together from the reading-room opposite. 
 
 " Ah-ha !" said the judge, on seeing Horace, " here is the 
 very man we are looking for. Marsh, Bartop and I have en- 
 tered into a conspiracy to get you to lunch with us. Have 
 you anything else to do ?" 
 
 " No ; I shall be delighted." And Horace shook hands 
 with the two friends. 
 
 " That's good. It's Saturday, and you need not rush back 
 to your office, so we can have a long talk," said the judge, 
 heartily. Turning to the broad shelf which ran out from the 
 wall, and on which were arranged the luncheon-cards and 
 order-blanks, he picked up one of the small pencils tied by a 
 string to a ring in the wood, and set himself to the serious 
 task of ordering a meal. 
 
 " What will you fellows eat 3" he asked. " What do you 
 crave ? Blue Points, anyway, to begin with, 
 
 "'For blue is the sweetest color that's worn' 
 
200 MEN BOEN EQUAL 
 
 — or eaten," he hummed. " Blue-fish, blue-winged teal, blue- 
 berries — everything blue is good. I never ate a blue shark 
 or a blue-faced baboon, but if I did I know they would be 
 better than other sharks and baboons." The judge was noted 
 for the austerity of his bearing upon the bench, but his wife 
 always said that he was only a great big boy. 
 
 " ' Though the brilliant black eye may in triumph let fly 
 All its darts without caring who feels them, 
 Yet the soft eye of blue, though it scatters wounds too, 
 Is much better pleased when it heals them,' " 
 
 quoted the major. 
 
 " That's bosh !" said the judge. " Mrs. JessePs eyes are 
 black. Blue noses are bad, too. But luncheon ! Here, 
 why don't you fellows help me ? If you don't make sugges- 
 tions, I will feed you on tripe and ginger ale. Bartop, I 
 know, insists on a baked apple to wind up with, but we must 
 have things between ; Blue Points and baked apple won't do. 
 Here, help me ! Consomme royal" he murmured ; " that 
 means with an egg in it, though I have no idea what eggs 
 have to do with royalty — except that they are brittle and 
 smell foully when they are bad. Do you men like eggs in 
 your soup ? Well, I do, anyway. Consomme royal — one por- 
 tion and a half. If you won't eat the eggs, I will take all 
 three — 
 
 " ' There is a happy land, far, far away, 
 
 Where they have soup and eggs three times a day.' " 
 
 " I don't think you need help," said Horace, laughingly. 
 " Anyway, if you do, the major can give it. Too many cooks 
 spoil the lunch — especially in ordering it; and I am going to 
 wash my hands." 
 
 " If you do, you shall have nothing but vinegar to drink. 
 'Wilt drink up Eisel?'" 
 
 " I will drink anything," said Horace, as he made his way 
 to the lavatory. Contact with reasonable fellow-beings was 
 doing him good, and he was surprised to find himself almost 
 light-hearted as he joined his companions in the reading- 
 room, where they had ensconced themselves in two large 
 
A TALK AT THE CLUB 201 
 
 arm-chairs, a third being drawn up close to them for Horace. 
 As he approached they had their heads together in deep con- 
 sultation, but they broke off as Marsh joined them. He felt 
 that they were talking of him, but judged from their cordi- 
 ality that they had said nothing bad. 
 
 Ten minutes later a servant informed the judge that his 
 luncheon was served, and the party ascended to the dining- 
 room. As soon as they were seated at their table the judge 
 spoke. 
 
 " Now, Marsh, we told you that this was a deliberate con- 
 spiracy. We wanted you to lunch with us because we want 
 to talk to you — talk politics." 
 
 " I am willing," Marsh replied, as he dropped Tabasco sauce 
 on his slice of lemon, preparatory to administering the dilution 
 to the oysters. 
 
 " I hope you will stay willing, because we are going to try 
 and convert you. This is an organized attack for the purpose 
 of seducing you from your party." 
 
 " To make a Republican of me ?" Horace asked. " How 
 are you going to abet any such scheme as that, major ?" 
 
 " It is not to make a Republican of you," Major Bartop said, 
 "but to draw you away from your present crowd. This cam- 
 paign is not a conflict between Democrats and Republicans ; 
 even the fight of two years ago was not, though it pretended 
 to be. The Populists are not Democrats any more than they 
 are Republicans. In some states and localities they are fused 
 with the Republicans to-day. They are simply the accumula- 
 tion of the malecontents and dissidents from both parties. In 
 every country which is under party government the people first 
 divide themselves on some large question into two more or less 
 equal parties. From these great bodies in the process of daily 
 friction fragments are constantly being rubbed off, and this 
 detritus goes on accumulating until it amounts to enough to 
 make a third party. So, on some one issue or a jumble of 
 issues, it finally coheres and starts out as an independent en- 
 tity, and generally sells its support to whichever of the other 
 two bodies is able to pay most for it at the time. In this 
 State two years ago, as you know, the Democrats bought it. 
 Perhaps I know more than you do of the inside of the deal. 
 
202 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 The judge doubtless knows what price the Republicans could 
 have had it for ; but they declined the offer. What the Demo- 
 crats got when they made the purchase was a certain number 
 of votes. What they paid was a certain number of offices. 
 The persons who cast the votes were the offscourings of 
 both parties in the State — all the cranks and theorists, dema- 
 gogues, anarchists, ignoramuses, and others, who were too good 
 or too bad to be Democrats or Republicans, or did not know 
 enough of the English language to be either. When the hetero- 
 geneous mass was dumped, neck and crop, into the Demo- 
 cratic camp, there were a good many of us who shook our heads 
 and fought shy of our new comrades. Putting myself out of 
 the question, I think I may say that they were the best men in 
 the party. Two years of experience of the allied forces in 
 power has only strengthened our aversion. The present cam- 
 paign started out on a basis of the Democratic party minus its 
 best element, but plus the Populist offscouring, versus the 
 Republican party. The best element of Democracy held 
 aloof. As time has passed, and especially since the strike be- 
 gan, the neutral Democrats have one by one gone over to the 
 Republican camp. I myself shall vote a straight Republican 
 ticket this fall. More than that, a great many more Demo- 
 crats who managed to stomach the Populists two years ago 
 are throwing them up now, and within the last week or two so 
 much has been going on quietly that I believe that one-half 
 the regular, old-time Democrats will be Republicans in this 
 election. It is no longer a question of Democrat against Re- 
 publican ; it's a question of law and order and decency against 
 mob-rule and anarchy and crime." 
 
 " What we want to know," said the judge, as Major Bartop 
 ceased, " is, what common ground or sympathy you can pos- 
 sibly have with this latter party ?" 
 
 "You gentlemen," said Marsh, after a short deliberation, 
 " are of course very much better posted than I am in the de- 
 tails of politics. You are considerably older than I am, and 
 much more experienced both in politics and life. At the same 
 time, I do not think your statement of the case, major, is 
 entirely fair. Much of what you say as to the miscellaneous 
 character of the Populist contingent is justifiable ; but not all. 
 
A TALK AT THE CLUB 203 
 
 In large measure they are the offscourings and the dissidents 
 from both parties. They represent in detail all manner of 
 queer beliefs and impossible theories. They lack any unity of 
 principle. But they have one thing in common, which is the 
 capacity to be led. The mere fact of their incongruity and 
 aimlessness — or, rather, the diversity of their aims — makes 
 them, as a party, open to conviction. They have now no single 
 common cause. Give them one, and they can be solidified and 
 concentrated upon it. So far they may have been misled and 
 used chiefly for evil. They can be led rightly and used for 
 good — for great good. As with any other force, it is only a 
 question of the direction in which it is turned whether it be- 
 comes a beneficent or a maleficent power — whether it works 
 for ruin or for salvation." 
 
 " What do you hope to be able to make the Populist party 
 do that is good ? What evidence have you that you can lead 
 them at all? Wherein are they now without leaders?" 
 
 " I understood you yourself to say that they were leaderless, 
 at Mr. Holt's dinner-table, not very long ago." 
 
 " As a national party, yes. As Bartop pointed out, look- 
 ing at the whole country, they have no political unity, no 
 consistency. In some places they are allied with one party, 
 and in some with the other. That is not a phenomenon pe- 
 culiar to this particular party in this particular crisis. It is a 
 necessity for all new third parties ; the most that they can 
 hope for for a while is the balance of power. The present 
 situation in this country has had its counterpart in every coun- 
 try and in all ages. The words ' Democrat ' and ' Republican ' 
 are only symbols — localizations of eternal facts. What we are 
 saying now was doubtless said over and over again in ancient 
 Athens and Rome. It has certainly been said within the cen- 
 tury — almost within the decade — in England and France and 
 Germany and Italy." Marsh nodded his acquiescence, and the 
 judge continued : " This human detritus, as the major calls 
 it, accumulates until it includes enough individuals to make 
 it in itself a political factor. At this point, if the right lead- 
 er appears, it may be converted from an inert mass into a 
 fighting-machine — from a mere negative protest against the ex- 
 isting parties into a formidable opponent of them. This has 
 
204 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 been done again and again in history. In this country now 
 the process of detrition has been at work for a quarter of a 
 century — since the war ; and it looks as if the neutrals, the 
 Adnllamites — the unannexed — were numerous enough to form 
 a third party of considerable bulk. In human nature it could 
 not be otherwise. But " — aud the judge emphasized the word 
 with a rap of his wineglass on the table — " we are not now 
 considering an abstract historical proposition, nor have we to 
 deal with this new party as a national fact. We are talking 
 practically of municipal affairs — at most, of a State cam- 
 paign — and we have to consider that distinct section of the 
 general detritus which has accumulated around our own local- 
 ity. It may be a good thing that snow should fall on the prai- 
 ries and the farms. In due course it will melt, and moisten 
 the soil, and be led into its proper channels in the river-beds. 
 Let it fall, then, and lie there, by all means. But shall we not 
 shovel off that which has drifted on our own front door- 
 steps ?" 
 
 " You mean that the Populist party here, because it happens 
 to be opposed to you, must be beaten down and smothered ?" 
 Marsh asked. " And if this is done in each separate locality, 
 what becomes of the great mass in the country at large as a 
 possible power for good ?" 
 
 " I mean that while the great mass may be no worse 
 than neutral, and may contain the potentiality of good, the 
 local portion of that mass with which we have to deal is 
 working for harm — desperate harm. If you will pardon me, 
 here is your fallacy. The party as a whole is leaderless ; 
 therefore you assume that in its several parts it is unled. 
 The snow falls evenly over the plains and lies there ; but are 
 we to ignore the local eddy which swirls it round the street- 
 corner into our faces and chokes up our halls ? What are 
 Sullivan and the City Hall crowd — Wollmer and the labor 
 chiefs — Bailey and the Democratic Central Committee — if 
 they are not leaders? And what are they working for? 
 What will be the result if they are victorious at the polls 
 next month?" 
 
 " With similar victories in other parts of the country, 
 which I believe will occur," said Marsh, "it will help to in> 
 
A TALK AT THE CLUB 205 
 
 press upon the people the fact that the new force is a force 
 which must be reckoned with. It will — for nothing succeeds 
 like success — give the party itself more strength and cour- 
 ao-e. It will help to unify it. It may call out the leaders 
 who are destined to mould it — the men who will temper it, 
 and harmonize it, and show it the straight path to the work 
 which it has to do. And when that work is done, it will be 
 found that the shadow of revolution now hanging over the 
 country will have passed away." 
 
 " And locally ?" asked the major. 
 
 " Locally ? Well, locally — in the State and in the city — I 
 believe that the Democracy is as capable of giving a reason- 
 ably good government as is the Republican party." 
 
 " But there is the trouble," broke in the judge ; " it is no 
 question of Republican or Democrat. Supposing that this 
 conglomeration had been joined to the Republican party two 
 years ago, I should be a Democrat at this election, Bartop 
 would be the party's candidate for governor, and you would 
 work with us to have him elected. There is little difference 
 enough between the two parties, and little enough between 
 the men who compose them. Neither is inspired; nor is 
 either entirely diabolical. In the past the Democracy has 
 shown itself capable of the worst abuses in municipal affairs, 
 and the Republican party has produced the greatest national 
 scandals, which is only a result of the fact that the Demo- 
 crats have been chiefly in control in our large cities, and 
 the Republicans most in power in federal affairs. Each has 
 sinned in proportion to its opportunity. Had the positions 
 been reversed, the burden of offence would have to be ex- 
 changed. But here comes in a new factor — neither Re- 
 publican nor Democratic, but composed of all the bad and 
 dangerous and disaffected elements, which happens tempora- 
 rily to be tacked on to the tail of the Democracy. They have 
 not one good aim. There is no one man who is trying to 
 lead them aright, with the exception of yourself. They have 
 alienated the good-will of the decent men of their own party, 
 and have attracted to them the scum of the other. And you 
 are working with them — why V 
 
 " How comes there to be this large element of the disaf- 
 
206 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 fected ?" asked Marsh, in his turn. " What is the ground of 
 their discontent ?" 
 
 " Ignorance chiefly," replied the major, shortly — " igno- 
 rance and false teaching." 
 
 " That is a large question," Judge Jessel said, more deliber- 
 ately. " In the main the third party consists of two distinct 
 classes — the labor element and the granger element. They 
 are the counterpart of each other, and at bottom, in spite of 
 surface differences, it is a mistake to say that their alliance 
 is not legitimate and natural. They are the two halves of 
 the one portion of mankind, each modified according to its 
 environment : in the one case the environment of city life, 
 and in the other the environment of the farm. The labor 
 element (and mind that a sharp distinction must be drawn 
 between the labor element and the working-men — the labor 
 element as a political factor, a public entity, is no more 
 coextensive with the working-man than is the Prohibition 
 party, politically, coextensive with that mass of the people 
 who do not drink — the labor element, as we speak of it, is 
 a small portion of the working-class — a portion which has a 
 certain fanaticism and love of notoriety — united to a large 
 number of men who ought to be working but will not) — the 
 labor element, I was saying, if, individually, it had gone to 
 farming, would be grangers. The members of the Farmers' 
 Alliance, had they happened to stay in cities, would be the la- 
 bor politicians. Coelum, non animum — It is the surroundings, 
 not the nature, which makes one one and the other the other." 
 
 " But how has either come to be where it is ?" asked 
 Marsh. " There never was in history a case of popular dis- 
 content without a legitimate popular grievance at the bottom 
 of it. It is only the smoke from the fire." 
 
 " There never was in history a case where a large part 
 of any people did not consider themselves to be ill-used," 
 replied the judge. " As a mass, these people all believe that 
 society as it is now constituted is in conspiracy against 
 them. You and I know very well that individually a great 
 majority of them are incapable of maintaining themselves 
 decently in any condition of society. If we had a dividing 
 up and a new start, so that 
 
A TALK AT THE CLUB 207 
 
 1 Distribution should undo excess, 
 And each man have enough,' 
 
 it would not be ten years — not two— before they wanted anoth- 
 er division. Even the Chinese plan (or is it Japanese ?) of wip- 
 ing off all debts with the new year, so that every man begins 
 even, would be no good. No one would trust them after the 
 first year, and their last state would be worse than their first. 
 I admire the American farmer as a whole, and have great 
 sympathy with him. We all must have. He is a great part 
 of our country's strength. But, again, we are considering him 
 in the mass. Take him as an individual, and I grant his stur- 
 diness and intelligence, and even, from a common-school point 
 of view (in the rudiments of ordinary learning as it is taught 
 in schools), I grant his education. But when it comes to po- 
 litical and economic teaching, he is either as ignorant as a 
 child or helplessly ill-taught. The ability to spell and ' fig- 
 ure ' does not equip a man to use his political judgment. 
 The bane of the farmer (of course I mean the Western farm- 
 er) has been and is his inaccessibility. In his scattered, iso- 
 lated situation he is not reached through the ordinary chan- 
 nels of information by which the educated, thinking man in 
 the city is instructed. Literature does not reach him. He 
 is not lectured to. He is not in contact with current thought ; 
 it does not circulate in his atmosphere. The difficulty of ar- 
 riving at and arguing with him in the mass is so great that, 
 in each locality, he has been left to the instruction of his local 
 prophets — usually one of himself, a farmer like himself, who 
 has no advantage over him except a certain fluency of speech, 
 and who is shrewd enough to see that politics offers an easier 
 career than farming. This man is as thoroughly unfit to teach 
 as a man could be — mentally unfit, and, what is more, mor- 
 ally unfit, because he has no larger ends to serve than his 
 own advancement. The farmers, as a whole, are having hard 
 times, and vaguely think that they are ill-used and need a 
 change — no matter what. The prophet arises and promises 
 them a change — if they will send him to the legislature. 
 Generally he attacks the nearest railway company, because 
 that happens to be the most tangible manifestation near at 
 
208 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 hand of the concentrated wealth and power of society. On 
 it he unloads all the burden of the farmers' ills — makes it re- 
 sponsible for poor (or too plentiful) crops, and for the for- 
 eign competition which affects prices in European grain-mar- 
 kets. The farmer has no other teaching, and believes him. 
 And there's where the trouble begins. This has been going 
 on all over the West now for some decades. Those who 
 ought to have been the farmers' right teachers have let them 
 alone — left them to the local demagogue. The result is the 
 Populist party. And it has not only been with the farmers 
 proper, but with all Western communities — farming, mining, 
 and, on a small scale, even industrial. The President of Har- 
 vard College, a short time ago, made a speech somewhere — 
 in St. Louis, I think — in which he said that the chief danger 
 to the country lay in the 'uninformed public opinion' of the 
 West. He was badly abused for it ; but I thought it was the 
 best thing that had been said on our public affairs for a long 
 time. It is not only uninformed, it is wm-informed public 
 opinion. The farmer not only needs teaching, he needs un- 
 teaching. He has been neglected for so long and left only 
 to bad influences that the undoing of what has been done 
 wrongfully will be a tremendous task. But it will have to 
 be done. What is needed first is schools — schools — schools. 
 But they are not enough. The rising generation will come 
 out of its schools, and, exposed to the same influences, will 
 go as its fathers went. It is the later instruction, post-grad- 
 uate teaching in the rudiments of sociology and economics 
 that is needed. And it must be given, if the country is to be 
 saved from chaos and catastrophe." 
 
 " It is something of that kind of teaching," said Marsh, 
 " which we are now trying to give." 
 
 There was silence for a while. 
 
 " Suppose we adjourn down-stairs for our coffee ?" suggest- 
 ed the major, and the party rose and moved to the wine- 
 room, where cigars were permitted, much to the disappoint- 
 ment of the waiter, who, notwithstanding his well -trained 
 rigidity of attitude and his imperturbable countenance, was 
 something of a politician himself, and was interested in the 
 discussion. 
 
A TALK AT THE CLUB 209 
 
 When they were seated around the small table in the wine- 
 room the conversation was resumed, but in more desultory 
 and less formal fashion. 
 
 " I know," said the judge to Marsh — " I know that, as you 
 say, you are trying to teach these men rightly, and I honor you 
 for it. I wish there were more doing the same. But, if you 
 will pardon me, my young friend " — and he laid his hand on 
 Horace's shoulder — " I am afraid that, in your enthusiasm for 
 your work and your high ambitions for the party as a whole, 
 you are in danger of failing to see the particular direction in 
 which the party locally is travelling." 
 
 Marsh was silent. 
 
 " Nor do we want you to misunderstand us," said Major 
 Bartop. " Men are at work, of course, all day long and every 
 day — men of both parties — trying to win over men from the 
 other parties. You will not think that we — the judge and 
 myself — have any narrow or merely partisan objects to serve. 
 You know us better. Next year probably Jessel and I will" 
 be enemies again. Just now it seems that all good men are 
 uniting — except you. And we want you with us." 
 
 " No," said Marsh ; " of course I understand all that, and I 
 am flattered that you think me worth working with." 
 
 " We do, frankly," interrupted the judge ; " you are the one 
 man on the Democratic side just now who is worth working 
 -with — the one public man ; which is to say that you are, in 
 our opinion, a good deal the best man in your party." 
 
 Marsh bowed his head in acknowledgment. 
 
 " Well, with all my thanks," he said, " I do not think 
 there is much chance of my changing sides in this cam- 
 paign. There may be personal reasons — in regard to Gen- 
 eral Harter, you understand — which would make it particularly 
 difficult for me to change. But, apart from that, I believe in 
 the cause. I believe in the possibilities of the party. I be- 
 lieve in human nature — it is part of me to do it. I think 
 you underestimate the goodness of the motives of some of 
 the Democratic leaders, and overestimate the danger which 
 the party's success would mean to the city and the State. 
 I don't think you will find that the country will be ruined if 
 the allied parties do remain in pow r er a while longer." 
 
 14 
 
210 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 " Well," said the judge, rising, " a man's convictions 
 would not be worth holding if they could he changed by one 
 talk over a luncheon-table ; but we wanted to have the talk, 
 and I hope you will think over it, and look, if you can, more 
 clearly into the local situation, and the direction in which 
 the teaching of your friends is trending." 
 
 " If you do ever find it necessary to change," said the ma- 
 jor, " you know now that we shall welcome you." 
 
 The party separated at the cloak-room, and Horace has- 
 tened back to his office. It was impossible that the talk 
 should not have made an impression on him ; but as soon as 
 he had separated from his friends the eagerness to receive 
 Jessie's answer reasserted itself. 
 
 As he left the club an incident occurred which he remem- 
 bered afterwards. On the door-step two men were standing, 
 both members of the club — Blakely and Carrington, the lat- 
 ter the husband of Mrs. Carrington, of whom we have already 
 caught a glimpse. The two seemed to be engaged in an 
 altercation of some kind, and barely recognized Horace as he 
 passed. He could not help, however, hearing some words 
 spoken by Carrington. 
 
 " I have not asked you any questions, sir," he said, " nor do 
 I wish to discuss the matter with you. I simply inform you 
 that I do not wish you to come again." 
 
 And Horace, hurrying to his office, pondered over the 
 scene. 
 
 " A messenger brought a note for you a few minutes ago, 
 sir," said Franklin, as Horace entered, "and said the lady 
 wanted an answer. I told him you would send one as soon 
 as you came in. The note is on your desk." 
 
 With a beating heart Marsh tore open the envelope. It 
 contained a short but gushing epistle from Mrs. Carrington, 
 asking if Mr. Marsh would join them at dinner that evening, 
 and if he would promise not to be offended at being asked 
 at the eleventh hour. 
 
 " Is this the only thing that has come for me?" he asked. 
 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 And Horace sat down and gazed blankly out of the win- 
 dow, wondering what the silence could mean. 
 
XVII 
 
 BETWEEN THE CUP AND THE LIP 
 
 When Miss Holt received Marsh's note she glanced over 
 it, and threw it into the fire. The feeling that it excited 
 was chiefly one of contempt of his pretended innocence. It 
 was a shallow trick, at best. How could he imagine that she 
 would for a moment believe that he did not thoroughly un- 
 derstand what it was that had given the offence ? How 
 could he believe that she would for an instant consent to 
 aro-ue the matter with him ? He trusted, doubtless, to his own 
 glib tongue, if an opportunity was given him, to persuade 
 her that he was impelled in his treachery only by the high- 
 est motives. He counted upon her simplicity and lack of 
 knowledge of the world. But she would not give him the 
 opportunity, for she would take no notice of his letter. 
 
 But though she affected to dismiss the matter lightly, and 
 turned away to her household duties with a song upon her lips, 
 as she tossed the note into the fire her heart ached within her. 
 It has been said that if Jessie had met Horace as a char- 
 acter in a novel, she would have admired him unreservedly, 
 and have thought him worthy to win the best woman that 
 lived — the Horace, that is, of the old days — Horace before 
 he fell. Under any circumstances, his cleanliness and ear- 
 nestness of character, his quiet, unobtrusive manliness must 
 have appealed to her. In the crisis through which she was 
 now passing, when the crudest realities of life had for the 
 first time been laid open before her, and when her whole 
 being shuddered at the new knowledge that had come to her, 
 it was precisely he — or such a man as she had imagined him 
 
 to be that she needed. She was so alone in the darkness! 
 
 Out of the abyss her soul cried for some human comfort. 
 
212 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 Not content with threatening the lives of Mr. Holt and 
 the other officers of the two companies directly, the strikers 
 had begun to send anonymous letters even to her. She had 
 already received two in different handwritings, but couched 
 in almost the same words : if she did not wish her father 
 to be killed she had better use her influence to make him 
 yield. She had not mentioned them to any one, but had 
 asked her father whether he had received any threats against 
 his life. 
 
 " Oh yes ; some," he answered, lightly. 
 
 Every moment that he was away from the house now was 
 a moment of torture for her. From the time that he left in 
 the morning until his return in the evening she awaited in 
 terror the news of some calamity. Every ring at the tele- 
 phone, every messenger who arrived at the door, made her 
 heart stand still. Her friends, meaning it well, united to in- 
 crease this fear. 
 
 " I should think you would be very anxious lest something 
 should happen to Mr. Holt," they would say. 
 
 " Oh no," she would reply, calmly. " He has no fear that 
 they will attack him personally." 
 
 But every day her wretchedness grew more nearly insupport- 
 able, and Miss Willerby saw, with secret misgivings, her list- 
 lessness during the day and the heaviness of the eyes, which 
 told of sleepless nights ; and she did what she could to com- 
 fort her. But it was not a woman's comfort that Jessie needed, 
 but that of a man with knowledge of the world — one who was 
 accustomed to look the real things of life in the face ; to 
 whom she could unburden her heart of its load, and appeal 
 for guidance and consolation. 
 
 It was unavoidable that her thoughts should now turn to 
 the Marsh who had been. He was no longer part of her life. 
 No relation existed between him and her heart to prejudice 
 her judgment of him. She could see him now, as it were, 
 impersonally and dispassionately. He was not even a charac- 
 ter in fiction, except in the fiction of her own imagination. 
 He had never existed ; but oh ! if he had — If only such a 
 man were to come to her now, how gladly she would confide 
 in him and trust him, placing her heart and her mind in his 
 
BETWEEN THE CUP AND THE LIP 213 
 
 care. As a young girl dreams of the prince with his sword 
 and his plume who is some day coming to seek her, so Jessie 
 now longed for the prince of her imagining — a latter-day 
 prince, armed only with his courage and the purity of his 
 ambition, who would pass his arm round her and support her 
 while they faced this danger of life together — a prince with 
 just such a face and manner as Marsh had had in the former 
 days. 
 
 As is often the case with better men than he, Blakely suf- 
 fered by the hold which this ideal had upon her mind. Many 
 a lover has failed because the heart that he.would win was 
 already in possession of a rival who had no existence outside 
 of the heart, and who might be an entirely impossible charac- 
 ter. Daughters of men still walk with the sons of God in 
 their fancies, and for their sakes the sons of men are rejected. 
 In the loneliness of her desolation, Jessie never dreamed of 
 casting Blakely for the part of the fairy prince — withal that 
 his face mig-ht better fit the role than Horace's. Without 
 reasoning it out with herself, she knew that it was to another 
 side of her nature that Blakely spoke. He might fascinate 
 and dazzle her so that she would forget the hunger; but 
 satisfy the craving, never ! A drug, however potent and in- 
 toxicating, will not feed the starving, though it may dull the 
 pain and give happiness till the waking come. 
 
 " What a splendid lover Mr. Blakely would make I" Miss 
 Caley had exclaimed one day. 
 
 " And what a terrible husband !" Miss Willerby had added. 
 
 Jessie, as she sat on the other side of the room, apparently 
 immersed in her book, had heard the conversation ; and in 
 her heart she recognized the truth of Miss Willerby's rejoin- 
 der. But when the pain is at its worst, the temptation to 
 seize the relief which the drug will bring may be beyond re- 
 sisting, and the solace of it for a while unutterably sweet. 
 
 Blakely, meanwhile, was constant in his attentions without 
 being obtrusively persistent. Almost every day he sent her 
 flowers — bouquets that were daintily chosen, a few choice 
 blossoms and a frond of fern, perhaps, or a single perfect 
 spray of orchids — on which she could not but see that he 
 had expended some thought, instead of leaving the selection 
 
214 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 of his gift to the taste of the florist. Once she received a 
 book from him — the book which she had been reading that 
 day, and which he wished her to read. It was what is known 
 to-day as an old-fashioned romance, wherein the heroine, fol- 
 lowing the dictates of her own heart, fled with and wedded 
 the reckless, dashing, prodigal son, whom the worldly parents 
 scorned in favor of a commonplace and objectionably worthy 
 suitor of a dull and workaday kind. On the very day of the 
 wedding the prodigal son fell heir to the colossal fortune of 
 an East Indian uncle, and the volume closed in an atmos- 
 phere heavy with the scent of orange blossoms, and with just 
 a glimpse of vistas of ideal and golden happiness ahead of 
 the wisely w T ayward girl. 
 
 Blakely thought that the moral of the tale— that a young 
 heart is better than old heads — might be useful to him. But 
 he had miscalculated somewhat. He had not looked into her 
 mind and seen with what a glory the workaday suitor was 
 invested there. He could not guess how, in passing through 
 the prism of her thoughts, the ordinary white light of day 
 was broken into glorified tints of emerald and amethyst 
 and rose. She only thought the tale dull and " washy" — as 
 it was. 
 
 The evening that Marsh spent with the Carringtons (for 
 he had accepted the tardy invitation, in the hope that he 
 might meet her there) Blakely spent at Jessie's house. Though 
 Marsh did not know it, it was Blakely's place that he was 
 filling — the latter having found it advisable, for reasons which 
 have already been hinted at, to send his regrets that very 
 morning. Jessie had passed a terribly anxious day, for the 
 attitude of the strikers grew constantly more bitter and threat- 
 ening, and she welcomed Blakely gladly when he came. He 
 in his turn was frank and outspoken now in his admiration 
 of her, saying to her things, such as he had said when he 
 parted from her at the carriage on the day of the rescue, of 
 a kind which no man had dared to say to her before. It was 
 always adroitly done, and with such an air of impulsiveness 
 that it was impossible to be offended. Indeed, if it were 
 most ardent love-making, there was nothing at which offence 
 could be taken. 
 
BETWEEN THE CUP AND THE LIP 215 
 
 As she shook hands with him that evening he had said, in 
 low tones : 
 
 " I wish you knew how hard it is for me to let your hand 
 go when you give it to me. I want to crush it, and fall down 
 on my knees and worship it. I would rather you would cut 
 off one of mine than take yours away." 
 
 And when, later on in the evening, she had thrown a light 
 lace scarf over her shoulders, he had exclaimed : 
 
 " What a shame ! My eyes cannot spare an inch of you. 
 But" — as he leaned forward and, making pretence of adjust- 
 ing the lace, let his fingers brush her neck — "at least it gives 
 me the privilege of touching you." 
 
 That evening he had asked her to take a walk with him 
 on the following Sunday afternoon, and she consented to do 
 so " if it were fine." It was fine for an hour or two, and he 
 called for her. As they were starting she stopped for a mo- 
 ment before a large mirror in the hall to adjust her hat. 
 
 " Don't touch it," he said ; " you are too unutterably beau- 
 tiful as you are." 
 
 Then he had stepped into the sitting-room, and, taking one 
 of his own lavender orchids from a vase, had handed it to her, 
 saying : 
 
 " Please put it on, there " — indicating her bosom by touch- 
 ing himself on the chest. " Let me dream that it is I who am 
 touching you there, if only at second-hand." 
 
 And she had put on the flower as he wished. During the 
 walk he was very devoted, seizing every pretext of an uneven- 
 ness in the footway to touch her arm as if to support her. 
 There was no need of assistance, but he wished to convey to 
 her the idea that he longed to touch her. More than once 
 he half stopped as they walked, and, stretching out his arms 
 before him as if in ecstasy, said : 
 
 " Oh, how blissful it is !" 
 
 She was conscious that there was a certain prematureness 
 in all this — a bold assumption of relations which did not exist. 
 The passionate outbursts were rather those of an accepted 
 suitor than of a lover who had still the heart to win. It was 
 no such desperate love that the ideal Marsh would have made, 
 but — well, the drug was sweet. 
 
216 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 But she was rapidly reaching the point when drugs of an- 
 other kind would be needed. The mental distress, the anxi- 
 ety and sleeplessness were having their effect. She was sel- 
 dom ill, unused to giving way to little ailments, and a doc- 
 tor rarely visited the house in a professional capacity. Had 
 she been of the type of woman that takes pleasure in being 
 sick, and welcomes an opportunity to play the invalid, she 
 would have been confined to her bed before this. As it was, it 
 needed effort each morning to face the duties of the day ; and 
 when there was none to see, she would sometimes sit for an 
 hour together, thoroughly exhausted, in some easy-chair ; her 
 arms hanging down, looking blankly into space, and wonder- 
 ing, only wondering, where her father was, and what would 
 be the end of it all. 
 
 At last there came an evening when it was necessary to 
 go to a reception given by Major and Mrs. Bartop. For her 
 own sake, Jessie dreaded going ; for she knew that she was 
 not equal to it. Mrs. Bartop's receptions were formidable 
 functions, extremely starched, and, as Mrs. Bartop flattered 
 herself, very free from anything approaching Western uncon- 
 ventionality. There would be a great crush, with little chance 
 to sit down, much smirking and exchanging of social plati- 
 tudes, and some lemonade. The thought of it unnerved her, 
 but Jessie knew that for the sake of her two friends — or, 
 rather, of one of them (for she would not have hesitated to 
 disappoint Miss Willerby), it was necessary to go. So she 
 braced herself for the effort and went. 
 
 Blakely was there also. He arrived late, according to his 
 custom, and told his coachman to wait — he would not be 
 more than half an hour or so. The invariable brevity of his 
 stay at such entertainments was partly owing to the fact that 
 they really bored him (in which he was not peculiar), but still 
 more because he knew that this line of conduct was socially 
 effective. He did not propose to surfeit society of his com- 
 pany. Doled out in small doses, it would always be in demand. 
 
 He soon discovered Jessie, and was struck by her pallor. 
 Indeed, she was feeling miserable. She was struggling to sus- 
 tain her share in a conversation of nothingness among the 
 group of people of both sexes by whom she was surrounded ; 
 
BETWEEN THE CUP AND THE LIP 217 
 
 but the room swam round her, and she longed for air. The 
 unceasing clamor of the tongues about her seemed to jar her 
 brain, and she yearned to be away from it in the silence. 
 She welcomed Blakely's arrival as opening a possible chance 
 of escape, and connived readily at his scheme to draw her 
 away by himself. He led her from the room (which was on 
 the second floor of the house), and they went down-stairs. 
 But half-way down it seemed as if the stairs in front of her 
 heaved upward, and she was compelled to clutch at the baluster 
 for support. 
 
 " You are ill," he said, with eager tenderness. " I saw 
 how pale you were when I came in." 
 
 " No," she said, wearily, " I am not ill, but I am not well. 
 I feel as if I were going to faint. I ought never to have 
 come this evening." 
 
 She had never fainted, and had all a woman's horror of 
 making a " scene " in company. 
 
 " Well, you must not stay," he said ; " you must go home." 
 
 " How can I ? The carriage will not be here for an hour 
 and a half yet, and I cannot leave the girls." 
 
 "Yes, you can. My coupe is here — I always keep it wait- 
 ing. You can go home in that, and I will tell Miss Willerby 
 and Miss Caley, and see that they get back safely." 
 
 She hesitated ; but the stairs still swam around her, and 
 she felt that her knees would give way. 
 
 " Perhaps I had better," she said, faintly. 
 
 Without waiting for more, Blakely led her back to the 
 floor above, where the ladies' dressing-room was, and left her 
 there. When she came out, he too had on his overcoat, and 
 his hat was in his hand. 
 
 " Come this way," he said, and took her down by a rear 
 flight of stairs where they would meet no one. His carriage 
 was quickly called, and he handed her in, told the coachman 
 to drive to Mr. Holt's house, and stepped in beside her. She 
 sank back into her corner of the coupe without a word, too 
 weak and sick to speak. He laid his hand once gently on 
 hers, saying : 
 
 " Let me know if I can do anything," and relapsed into 
 silence by her side. 
 
218 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 Once in the course of the drive she aroused herself enough 
 to say : 
 
 " It is very silly of me, and I am sorry for troubling you." 
 
 " Do you think it is trouble ?" he asked ; and the drive was 
 completed in silence. 
 
 Arriving at the house, he rang the bell and handed her 
 carefully out of the carriage. When the door opened — 
 
 " You will come in ?" she said, interrogatively. 
 
 " I will if I can be of any use," he replied, and he helped, 
 almost supported, her into the house. 
 
 " Are you any better ?" he asked, so that Thomas might 
 understand that this unexpected return was owing to her ill- 
 ness. 
 
 "I think I am. I know that I should have fainted if I had 
 not got away from the crowd- and the noise. Is Mr. Holt 
 in ?" she asked of the butler. 
 
 " No, miss." 
 
 Blakely slipped off his overcoat quickly, handed it with his 
 hat to Thomas, and followed her into the drawing-room. She 
 walked languidly, threw her wrap over a chair as she passed, 
 and advanced to the fireplace, where, placing her hands upon 
 the mantel, she leaned her forehead upon the cool marble be- 
 tween them. The room was lighted only by the doubtful 
 flicker of the flames in the hearth and the glow which came 
 from the tall lamp by the piano, with the rose-colored shade. 
 He also approached the fireplace, and stood with his hands 
 on the mantel. The house was very still, and they were alone 
 in the semi-darkness. Was she, he wondered, as acutely 
 conscious of it as he ? 
 
 For some minutes he waited, hoping that some word or 
 movement on her part would give him his cue. Meanwhile, 
 the very silence, with their proximity and isolation, was on 
 his side. But she did not move or speak. 
 
 He raised his left hand, and gently, quietly laid it on hers. 
 She did not resist, and he let his fingers slowly close upon it 
 with the faintest pressure. He moved nearer to her, and laid 
 his lips upon her hand as with a lingering caress. Still she 
 did not resist (he wondered how far she was conscious of 
 what he did), but a moment later she drew her hand away, 
 
BETWEEN THE CUP AND THE LIP 219 
 
 and, turning, moved listlessly towards a sofa. He followed, 
 with his arm lightly encircling her waist. As she reached 
 the sofa she fell, rather than sat herself down, upon it, 
 throwing her head back into the piled cushions with her 
 eyes closed. 
 
 Was she about to faint ? He did not know ; but at least 
 the possibility of it was a sufficient excuse for anything. So, 
 sinking on one knee, with his left hand he raised her feet on 
 to the lounge, and with his right pulled away one of the cush- 
 ions, so that her head sank lower. 
 
 She had not fainted, for she opened her eyes, and looked at 
 him with a long, slow gaze, and then closed them again. She 
 was conscious that she was lying at full length before him 
 and that he was leaning over her ; but conscious of it in a 
 curiously far-away manner, and oh ! she was too weak and too 
 ill to resist. 
 
 He felt his heart beat almost stiflingly as he kneeled by 
 her side. How white and clear her face was in the dim li^ht, 
 with the black lashes of the closed eyes and the curved lips — 
 the beautiful lips which were now at his mercy. He did not 
 put his own to them at once, however, but approached her by 
 almost imperceptible degrees. Silently he placed his left arm 
 over and around her, pressing the hand between the yielding- 
 sofa and her back. Leaning very slowly over her, he passed 
 his right hand, palm upward, beneath her head. Still her 
 eyes did not open, and he let his face draw nearer to hers, 
 straining her body gently to him as he leaned. Their lips 
 were but a few inches apart. He felt her breath upon his 
 cheeks, and knew that she must feel his. 
 
 " My darling," he whispered — " my sweet and beautiful 
 darling !" And her eyes opened slowly, but at first they did 
 not seem to be looking into his. He waited until his gaze 
 could entangle hers before taking the first long kiss. But 
 even as he held his breath for the meeting of the lips her ex- 
 pression changed — almost imperceptibly ; but the look in the 
 eyes as at last they met his fairly was not one of passion or of 
 love. Her right hand, which had lain stretched upward against 
 the wall, moved between her lips and his. 
 
 " Let me get up," she said, faintly ; but he did not move. 
 
220 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 " No, my darling, don't !" he whispered. 
 
 " Let me get up," she said again, more firmly ; and he knew 
 that he must do it. 
 
 Slowly he arose and helped her to her feet. She sat for a 
 moment, dazed, before rising, and passed her hand languidly 
 over her eyes. 
 
 " I beo- your pardon," she said, as at last she stood up. " I 
 am not myself to-night, Mr. Blakely. Please imagine it was 
 some other girl. I can hardly see now. I think I must be 
 ill." And she sat down again on the sofa, and buried her 
 face in her hands. 
 
 To him, as he saw her slipping away from him, it seemed t 
 as if the whole world was as nothing compared to the win- 
 ning of her. He had felt so in somewhat similar circum- 
 stances before ; but for the moment he was in earnest. All 
 the other women of earth did not count in comparison to 
 this one sweet, dark -eyed girl, who but a moment before, 
 he had believed, was his, and who was already beyond his 
 reach. 
 
 " Pardon me," he said, and he dropped on his knees at her 
 side — « pardon me ! But, oh ! I do love you so !" 
 
 " No, Mr. Blakely," she said, quietly, as she drew away the 
 hand which he had taken and rose to her feet again ; "it 
 was all a mistake. I cannot say that I was unconscious ; I 
 was not. But I did not know. It seemed to be somebody 
 else that was here — not I. My own mind — my own con- 
 science — was not in my body. It was a mistake, and other 
 things have been mistakes. I have been too wretched, I 
 think, in these days to know what I have been doing or what 
 you have been saying. But I understand now. Please be- 
 lieve me — it was all a mistake." 
 
 She spoke quietly but very firmly, and moved away tow- 
 ards the fireplace again. He felt that it was all over ; but no 
 game is lost until it is won, and in critical moments the bold 
 play is always the best. 
 
 " It was not a mistake," he said, ardently. " Nothing can 
 be a mistake which makes any one as madly, deliriously hap- 
 py as I have been. I love you utterly, Miss Holt. It seemed 
 to me as if Providence had given you to me this evening, 
 
BETWEEN THE CUP AND THE LIP 221 
 
 and I will not believe that you are to be taken from me 
 again." 
 
 She only shook her head and smiled wearily into the fire. 
 He came and stood by her, so close that his arm touched hers, 
 but there was no response to the contact, no evidence that it 
 affected her. 
 
 " The passion of his life," he said, " is not given to a man 
 by a mistake. I have longed by day and dreamed by night 
 of making you mine — of possessing you. Just now you were 
 mine. You were in my hands, and it seemed as if all heaven 
 was given to me." He paused, but she did not reply, and he 
 added, between his clinched teeth, " I wish I had let my lips 
 touch yours before I did. You would not, then, so easily have 
 thrown me aside." 
 
 But she only shook her head in silence, and he dropped to 
 a more matter-of-fact tone. 
 
 " Now you say the past has been a mistake. To - mor- 
 row you may see that you are mistaken now." Then, pas- 
 sionately, again : " You must be mine ! Why did you draw 
 away from me ? Why did you not give yourself to me for 
 just one minute more ? I do love you so ! I could take you 
 in my arms now and crush you, and — " And as if he were 
 unable to end his sentence for passion, he reached out his 
 hands as if to take her. 
 
 But she moved away from him again. 
 
 " No," she said, simply, " I am not mistaken now. Out of 
 my sickness has come sanity. Your words break by me now 
 without touching me. I do not feel them." 
 
 "You are ill," said he, shifting his ground, "and I would 
 give all the world to help you." 
 
 11 Thank you." But it was coldly and indifferently spoken. 
 So he changed his tone, and, laughing lightly, said : 
 
 " But the way to help a woman when she is sick is cer- 
 tainly not to bother her and thrust one's self upon her. I will 
 leave you, Miss Holt. The two poor girls at the Bartops' will 
 be wondering where you are, and I must go and tell them." 
 
 She rose to say good-bye to him, and gave him her hand 
 at parting. He pressed it long and tenderly as he said : 
 
 " It was not a mistake. I am not for one instant going to 
 
222 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 assume that it was. I have been too near to the happiness 
 of my life to let it go so lightly. At worst, I am only where 
 I was before I met you this evening — and that, I think, was 
 at least somewhere on the road to heaven." 
 
 As he left the house, however, he knew in his heart that 
 this was not so. He was farther away than he had been from 
 her since the first night in the theatre, when they had not 
 even spoken. He might renew the attack — he would, of 
 course ; but he knew that, barring some desperate stroke of 
 luck, it was a forlorn and hopeless outlook. He threw him- 
 self back into the corner — her corner, he thought, cynically — 
 and lit a cigarette, and set himself calmly to think it over. 
 Had he made any mistakes ? he wondered. He must have ; 
 because when a man misses a woman, he told himself, it was 
 always by his own mistake. The individual characters made 
 no difference. It was just a question of the man's skill. Up 
 to that evening he could not think that he had made any 
 error. The way had been straight and he had progressed 
 rapidly. And that evening? Had he been foolish in not 
 pushing her more ardently ? Suppose that he had made pas- 
 sionate love to her in the coupe ? He could have done it well, 
 and he pictured to himself what he might have done and said. 
 He might have established a different footing between them 
 before they had reached the house, and would have had less 
 way to make up afterwards. . Then, in the house, too, he had 
 wasted his opportunities. He ought not to have waited so 
 long and given her time to recover herself. But how in the 
 world was he to know that she would do it, and at the very 
 moment when it seemed as if the last chance was gone? If 
 he had lost, it was by the narrowest margin. And his thoughts 
 slipped back into reminiscences. 
 
 When he reached his destination he was thinking of other 
 women. 
 
 Miss Willerby, whom he found without difficulty, received 
 him coldly. She had seen Miss Holt and him go down the 
 stairs together the first time, but had not seen them return to 
 the cloak-room or leave the house. For some time she had 
 supposed that Blakely had led Jessie to some out-of-the-way 
 corner of the house, where they were sitting. At length she 
 
BETWEEN THE CUP AND THE LIP 223 
 
 had grown uneasy, and had started with a companion to look 
 for them. It was only a minute or two before Blakely's re- 
 turn that she had learned from the maid in the cloak-room 
 that Miss Holt had left. 
 
 As Blakely told his tale she looked at him scrutinizingly, 
 and wondered within herself what might have happened on 
 the drive home and at the house. Though he was gay and 
 smiling, he had not, she decided, the air of a conqueror, and 
 was much comforted thereat. She declined his offer of his 
 coupe to take her and Miss Willerby home, as the Holt car- 
 riage must be there by this time. She declined, also, his of- 
 fer to go and find Miss Caley for her ; she was much obliged, 
 but she would do it herself. And she left him feeling rather 
 uncomfortable — as if, in some way, he had been seen through 
 and found out. 
 
 Jessie had waited, standing where he had left her, until she 
 heard Blakely's carriage drive away, and until Thomas had 
 disappeared again to the lower regions. Then suddenly her 
 knees gave way, and she flung herself, kneeling, on the floor, 
 burying her face in a chair, and burst into passionate sob- 
 bing. They were tears partly of shame and humiliation, but 
 in the flood all the pent-up wretchedness of the past weeks 
 found vent. Thank Heaven that he had not kissed her ! 
 That was her only consolation. Thank Heaven that she had 
 recovered her senses in time for that ! But that she herself 
 should ever have been so weak, even for a minute, no matter 
 how ill she was ! Knowing herself as she did, but being un- 
 able to measure the strain which she had been under, it 
 seemed to her to be almost incredible. But she did thank 
 Heaven, prostrating herself on her knees, and praying with 
 all the fervor of her overwrought nature that she might be 
 made stronger against peril in the future ; that she might be 
 shown her path more clearly ; and that the burden of these 
 days might pass from her father and herself. 
 
 To those who have faith prayer never fails to bring solace 
 and peace. By degrees her paroxysms subsided, and she 
 rose from her feet with her mind cleared, feeling less shame 
 for what she had suffered than gratitude that her eyes had 
 been opened in time. 
 
224 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 She went to her room and bathed her face, endeavoring 
 to remove the traces of tears before her friends arrived. So 
 far as Miss Caley was concerned she need have felt no con- 
 cern, for that young lady was plunged in an abyss of woe. 
 Something evidently had gone amiss between her and Barry 
 that evening, and she was too deeply engrossed in the task of 
 bearing herself with the properly tragic air to notice others. 
 
 But Miss Willerby, though Jessie strove to keep herself in 
 the shadow and away from the light, saw that there had been 
 weeping, and felt misgivings. So she was very tender to her 
 hostess, very solicitous as to the sickness which had taken 
 her away from the reception, and very affectionate in her 
 parting for the night. 
 
 Miss Caley did not say good-night. Such trivialities were 
 beneath the dignity of her grief. She wrapped herself in her 
 sorrow as in a robe of state, and stalked haughtily to her 
 room. Ten minutes after the door was locked, however, she 
 was stretched in luxurious dishabille, ecstatically absorbed in 
 the latest and flimsiest novel. 
 
XVIII 
 
 THE FOUNDLING- 
 
 On leaving Major Bartop's house Blakely drove to the club. 
 The night was fine, though dark and moonless, with occa- 
 sional savage gusts of wind. The club was but a short dis- 
 tance from his chambers, so he dismissed his carriage with 
 the intention of walking home. 
 
 Strolling into the wine -room, he had just ordered some 
 brandy and soda when a friend entered. 
 
 " Don't you want to beat me at a game at billiards, Blake- 
 ly ?" he asked. 
 
 " Yes ; I'm willing. Boy " — to the retiring waiter — " bring 
 my drink up to the billiard-room." 
 
 The events of the evening certainly had not impaired the 
 steadiness of Blakely's nerves. He played a dashing game, 
 and defeated his antagonist comfortably. 
 
 " Oh, you're too good for me," said the latter, as he put 
 up his cue. 
 
 " I'm a bit above my form to-night," remarked Blakely, as 
 he leaned over the table to knock the balls around in a final 
 stroke. Then he dropped his cue on the table, and dusted 
 the chalk off his fingers with his handkerchief. 
 
 Fifteen minutes later he left the club. It was now just 
 after midnight. As he descended the club steps he saw that 
 the sky had grown blacker, and a fierce burst of wind which 
 came swirling up the street made him turn his back to it 
 and pull his hat more firmly on his head. He turned up the 
 bottoms of his trousers, thrust his hands into his overcoat- 
 pockets, and set his face homeward. Between the gusts the 
 night was very still, but at each corner the wind, as if it 
 had lain in wait for his coming, jumped out upon him bois- 
 
 15 
 
226 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 terously, compelling him to turn sideways to it, and to hold 
 his hat on his head with one hand. The swinging signs over 
 the sidewalk creaked and rattled, and from the house-tops 
 came sudden noises of loose tiles and chimney-tops swaying. 
 In the shelter of the next block of buildings the stillness 
 would settle down again. 
 
 Few people were abroad, and Blakely was surprised when 
 about half-way between two cross-streets he met a woman. 
 She walked fast, with some kind of a dark shawl thrown 
 over her head, and keeping her face averted from him in 
 passing. Not the type of a woman that interested Blakely — 
 a house-servant probably, out later than she ought to be, and 
 hastening home in fear of her mistress's disapproval. 
 
 At the next turning — perhaps a hundred feet farther on — 
 was a large dry -goods store, with broad plate -glass win- 
 dows and a deeply recessed entrance fronting diagonally on 
 the corner. As Blakely reached this point his eyes hap- 
 pened to fall upon what he supposed to be a dog lying in 
 the shelter of the doorway. Moved by some idle curiosity, 
 he stepped towards it. No, it was not a dog ; it was a cat. 
 No, it was not a cat. And he leaned over it to see what it 
 might be. It was a bundle of some sort. He stretched out 
 his" hand to it. Inside the wrappings was something firm 
 and warm. Suddenly it flashed upon him. It was a child — 
 a baby. 
 
 Then he remembered the woman. Stepping quickly out 
 to the sidewalk again, he looked in the direction in which 
 she had been going. She was standing at the next corner, 
 where he could see her dark figure, motionless, against the 
 street lights beyond. A second later she disappeared round 
 the corner. Evidently she had waited to see if he would no- 
 tice the child. 
 
 Blakely started to run with all his speed towards her. 
 When he reached the corner she was nowhere in sight ; but 
 she could not have reached the next turning. She must be 
 somewhere close at hand. He hurried down the street, look- 
 ing on every hand. In the rear of the first clump of build- 
 ings a narrow alley ran off the main street to the right. She 
 must have gone up that, he thought. A gas-lamp stood at 
 
THE FOUNDLING 007 
 
 the mouth of the alley, but its light pierced the darkness 
 only for a few yards, beyond which all was black. Blakely 
 walked cautiously up the narrow passage. Everything was 
 still. On one side was a deep, brick-arched doorway— the 
 rear entrance to one of the stores which faced on the other 
 street. Was there something black in the shadow of the 
 arch there, or was there not ? Blakely stepped up closer. 
 Yes ; here she was, pressing herself back in the corner of the 
 doorway, her shawl pulled close over her face. Blakely 
 raised his hat instinctively. 
 
 "Excuse me, but is that your child?" he asked. 
 
 There was no reply. 
 
 " I beg your pardon," he said again. " There is a child 
 in a doorway on the next street. Did you leave it there ?" 
 
 Still there was no reply. He waited a moment, and then, 
 reaching out, took her gently by the arm and drew her from 
 her hiding-place. As he did so the light of the gas-lamp 
 fell upon her face. He let go of her arm suddenly. 
 
 " My God !" he exclaimed, "Annie !" 
 
 For answer the woman buried her face in her hands and 
 sobbed. It was some seconds before he could speak again. 
 
 "And — and the child ?" he asked, almost timidly. 
 
 "Oh yes! yes!" and she fell on her knees before him, 
 sobbing passionately. " Oh, you do not know what I have 
 suffered !" 
 
 "But why did you not tell me in time ?" he asked. 
 
 " I could not — I was ashamed to — I was afraid. So I wait- 
 ed and waited, and then I went away." 
 
 " I thought you went to your aunt P 
 
 " No ; I pretended to. And I wrote home a lie about mv 
 having got off accidentally at the w T rong place." 
 
 She was still kneeling in the dirt of the alley, her face 
 leaning on her hands, which clung to his coat, her shoulders 
 convulsed with sobs. He felt the situation to be extremely 
 embarrassing. He ought to show some tenderness for her, 
 he knew ; but somehow he could not frame the words. His 
 chief feeling was one of intense annovance. 
 
 " Well/ 1 he said, at last, " we cannot leave the baby there 
 while we talk. You wait here, and I will go and fetch it." 
 
228 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 lie helped her to her feet and handed her back to the 
 shadow of the doorway, then retraced his steps to where the 
 child lay. If any one had passed in the interval, evidently 
 the bundle had not been noticed. He picked it up, feeling 
 curiously awkward and fearful of breaking it, not knowing 
 which end was which. His child ! He ought, he told him- 
 self, to feel some love for it — some strange yearning towards 
 its helplessness. But he did not; he felt only dislike and 
 bitterness against it for thrusting itself upon him. He 
 hoped it would not cry ; and it did not, but lay still and 
 peacefully in his arms. Why had she not done different- 
 ly? How impossibly foolish women were in times of crisis ! 
 And by what mad freak and caprice of chance had it been 
 ordained that he, of all men in the world, should be the one 
 to come along at just that moment ? Yet perhaps it was as 
 well, he thought. Suppose that some one else had been in 
 his place — had found the child, and then, as he, had fol- 
 lowed and captured her ! Suppose that it had been a police- 
 man ! 
 
 Rejoining her, he handed her the child, and she took it 
 eagerly and, with the quick, instinctive movements of mater- 
 nity, cuddled it to her under the shawl. 
 
 He stood back beside her in the shadow. A gust of wind 
 burst up the alley, making the dim light of the lamp to flick- 
 er, and rattling a loose sign on the wall near by. 
 
 " And now what are you going to do ?" he asked, when 
 the gust had passed. 
 
 She told him. She was expected to arrive home the next 
 morning at eleven o'clock. She had taken an earlier train 
 which had reached the city at nine o'clock that evening, and 
 had left the car with the child at Brooklyn — a poor suburb 
 of the town, some four miles away. From there she had 
 come in by the electric road. She had planned to abandon 
 the child, as he had seen. There was a train leaving the 
 Union station at half-past one that morning — in three-quar- 
 ters of an hour from that time — by which she could go to 
 Jackson, reaching there at six o'clock, and meeting the in- 
 coming train on which she was expected to arrive, which left 
 Jackson at six fifteen. She would return on that train, and 
 
THE FOUNDLING 229 
 
 nobody would know that she had not come all the way from 
 Indiana. She had thought the plan out carefully, with a 
 prescience which surprised Blakely, having even left the 
 train when it waited a few minutes at Jackson and bought a 
 ticket from there to the city, so that it would be unnecessary 
 to show herself to the ticket-agent that morning, or to spend 
 time which might be valuable in getting the ticket now. 
 
 " When I throw off the shawl," she said, " no one will 
 ever recognize me for the same woman as got off at Brooklyn 
 with the baby." 
 
 As he turned it over in his mind, it seemed to Blakely that 
 this was the best plan that could be followed, and he was 
 immensely relieved that he was not to have the responsibility 
 of finding a hiding-place for her that night. 
 
 " Have you money ?" he asked. 
 
 " Oh yes ; plenty," she answered. 
 
 " Then give me the baby. I will take it to the police-sta- 
 tion and say I found it — which I did." 
 
 " They won't hurt her, will they ?" she asked, anxiously, as 
 she handed the child to him, and then lightly moved a corner 
 of the cloak in which it was wrapped for a last look at the 
 little face. 
 
 " Oh no ; they will advertise it. And if no one claims it, it 
 will go to one of the institutions and be well cared for." 
 
 " Can I find out where she goes ?" she asked, eagerly. 
 
 " Yes, I can find out for you," he said. " Now," he con- 
 tinued, when he had bestowed the child upon his arm as 
 carefully as he could, " you have half an hour to catch your 
 train. We must not leave here together. I will go this 
 way — to the right. You wait until I have turned the cor- 
 ner ; then you start to the left, and go straight to the station. 
 Good-bye, and be careful," and he prepared to leave. 
 
 " Kiss me, Marshal !" she said, appeal ingly. " I love you so, 
 dear, and oh ! I have suffered so much !" 
 
 There had been a time when he had sought her kisses 
 eagerly, but now something in him shrank from her. He 
 kissed her, and tried to make the caress seem loving and ten- 
 der. But it was difficult, and he stepped quickly away into 
 the darkness. 
 
230 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 It was but a short distance to the police-station. As Blake- 
 ly entered, an officer lolled, half asleep, on the long wooden 
 bench which ran along the wall. The lieutenant sat at his 
 desk on the raised dais, separated from the rest of the room 
 by a wooden railing. As the door opened, the man on the 
 bench woke up. Blakely advanced to the lieutenant. 
 
 " I have got a present for you," he said, resting the bundle 
 on the railing. 
 
 The lieutenant dropped his pen, and, leaning over, lifted the 
 shawl from the child's face. 
 
 " Jiggered if it ain't another baby !" said the man, as he 
 rose from the bench and came across the room, treading 
 heavily on the wooden floor. " In these hard times, seems as 
 if it rained babies. That's the third this week." 
 
 " You're Mr. Blakely, aren't you ?" asked the lieutenant. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Where did you find it 2" 
 
 " In the doorway of that dry-goods store at the corner of 
 Sixth and Quincy — what is its name? — that place with the 
 large windows and big door opening on the corner." 
 
 " Griesheim's ?" suggested the lieutenant. 
 
 " Griesheim's ; that's it," said Blakely. 
 
 " Mike found one in the same place about a year ago," re- 
 marked the man. " Seems a popular locality. I remember 
 Griesheim gave it a whole outfit of baby things, advertised it 
 in the papers, and worked it for all it was worth. Pretty 
 smart old man, Griesheim. Don't let nothin' slip by him — 
 even babies." 
 
 " Seems to be healthy and sleeping like a good un," re- 
 marked the lieutenant, who was still examining the baby. 
 " Looks something like my youngest did — same kind of 
 mouth." Then he replaced the shawl with the tenderness of 
 a father, and, pulling a big book towards him, he took a pen 
 and began to write in it. 
 
 " Marshal Blakely, isn't it — your name ?" he asked, after 
 writing a line or two. 
 
 " Marshal Blakely," said the other. 
 
 " Now go ahead and tell your story," said the lieutenant ; 
 " only give me time to write it. Found it in Griesheim's 
 
THE FOUNDLING 231 
 
 doorway — Sixth and Quincy — about what ? One o'clock ?" as 
 he glanced at the clock. 
 
 " No ; it was earlier than that. I've been looking for the 
 mother," Blakely explained. 
 
 " Where had you been and where were you going to ?" 
 
 "At about nine o'clock this evening," Blakely began, "I 
 went to a reception at Major Bartop's, on Adams Avenue. I 
 left there at about nine thirty, and drove Miss Holt, who was 
 ill, home to her father's house — Lawrence Holt's, on Jefferson 
 — and got back to Major Bartop's about ten thirty. I left 
 there at ten fifty or eleven o'clock, and went to the Union 
 League Club, and played a game of billiards there with Ar- 
 thur Caiderly. I don't know what time it was when I left. 
 It struck twelve while we were playing — may have been 
 twenty minutes or half-past when I came away and started 
 to walk to my rooms — " 
 
 " They are over here on Eighth Street, are they not ?" 
 
 " Yes ; Eighth, between Madison and Douglas. As I came 
 along Sixth, just the other side of Griesheim's, a woman passed 
 me. I—" 
 
 " What kind of a woman ? Best description you can give." 
 
 Blakely thought a moment. Annie was dressed all in 
 dark clothes, and was slender and blonde. 
 
 "Well, I couldn't see well. She was rather large — tall 
 and, I should say, stout. She had on some kind of a lightish 
 dress — sort of striped print or something, and a black jacket, 
 short. Her hair was dark, as nearly as I can guess. It is a 
 pretty black night, and I did not notice very much." 
 
 "Dark — stout — lightish dress — jacket," murmured the 
 lieutenant as he wrote. " Any hat ?" 
 
 " Let me see," pondered Blakely. " I am almost afraid to 
 say. It seems to me she had a largish dark hat, but I would 
 hate to swear to it." 
 
 " Largish dark hat — uncertain about hat," murmured the 
 lieutenant. " All right. Go on." 
 
 " Then I found this," said Blakely. " At first I thought 
 it was a dog, and I don't know what made me stop. Then 
 it looked like a cat. It wasn't till I touched it that I saw 
 what it was." 
 
232 MEN BOKN EQUAL 
 
 " How about the woman ?" asked the lieutenant. 
 
 " As soon as I saw it was a baby, I started to look for her. 
 I ran back to the corner, but she had a good start of me. I 
 went along Sixth to Harrison, and up an alley there ; poked 
 around in the dark ; then came back along Sixth to Quincy ; 
 stood around for a bit, and wandered up to Seventh ; looked 
 into alleys and doorways and things, but she had disap- 
 peared. I went back to the baby, and stood there for ten or 
 fifteen minutes, thinking she might show herself if I stayed 
 quiet. But she didn't. Then I came on here." 
 
 The story was plausible, and had been given in a straightfor- 
 ward, consecutive way. The lieutenant read it over, and asked 
 a few questions, in the hope of locating the time more exactly. 
 They finally decided that twelve thirty-five or twelve forty 
 was about as near as they could get. Could Mr. Blakely 
 give any better description of the woman — anything pecul- 
 iar in her walk, or anything else ? No ; Mr. Blakely's recol- 
 lection was drained dry. 
 
 " Tell Charlie to come in here," said the lieutenant to the 
 other man. The latter disappeared through a door, and pres- 
 ently returned with another officer. 
 
 "Baby's been found in the doorway of Griesheim's store 
 by Mr. Blakely here," said the lieutenant to the new-comer. 
 " Just before finding it he passed a woman — about an hour 
 ago now — tall, stoutish, light dress, black jacket, dark hair. 
 Just go and hang around there, and see if you run against 
 anybody like her. Tell the other men in that neighborhood 
 — Greeley and Mark." 
 
 The man called Charlie repeated the description of the 
 woman as given to him, and went out into the street. 
 
 "Telephone to the other stations, Maxey," said the lieuten- 
 ant to the first officer, and that individual disappeared into 
 the closet where the telephone was located. 
 
 The lieutenant read his notes over to Blakely. 
 
 " That all right ?" he asked. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 "Anything more you can think of?" 
 
 " No ; nothing else." 
 
 "Just sign your name there, if you will, please," indicat- 
 
THE FOUNDLING 
 
 ing the place on the open page of the book where the notes 
 had been made, and handing Blakely a pen. " And now 
 about the baby." 
 
 He leaned over and moved the shawl aside again, and, put- 
 ting his rough forefinger under the baby's hand, raised the 
 soft, limp little fingers. 
 
 " It's a pretty child," he said ; " look at those fingers ! 
 They are the best part of a baby, I think. About two weeks 
 old — a girl, I guess." And Blakely only just checked him- 
 self from saying " Yes, she said so." 
 
 " You don't want to adopt her ?" looking up at Blakely. 
 
 " No," said the latter, surprised. " Why ?" 
 
 " The finder has the right to do so — provided, of course, 
 the parents do not turn up. Finder has first chance." 
 
 Blakely laughed. 
 
 "No. I confess I have not felt any yawning need of an 
 infant yet." 
 
 " Wonder if she has ever had a bottle ?" remarked the 
 lieutenant. Again Blakely found himself on the point of 
 venturing an opinion. This second narrow escape warned 
 him that he must be on his guard, and the safest course was 
 to speak as seldom as possible. 
 
 Maxey now returned from the telephone. 
 
 " Just go back and call up the < Foundling ' " (as the insti- 
 tution was called among the police), said the lieutenant, " and 
 ask Mrs. White if she can take a baby-girl two weeks old. 
 No message with it." 
 
 Maxey disappeared again. The door opened, and another 
 officer entered. 
 
 "Jinks !" he exclaimed ; " more ' lost or stolens' ?" and he 
 looked inquiringly first at Blakely and then at the lieuten- 
 ant. The former kept silence, so the latter explained to the 
 new-comer where and how the little thing had been picked up. 
 The two men leaned together over the child, while Blakely 
 marvelled at the interest which they showed in every crease 
 in the fat fingers, and the tenderness with which they lifted 
 the shawl by inches away from the small crumpled face. 
 
 " She says * all right,' " said Maxey, returning. 
 
 " Well, you'd better take it up right away," said the lieu- 
 
234 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 tenant. " I guess there is no message with it ; they usually 
 pin them on the outside. Have Mrs. White undress it at 
 once, and bring the clothes back here. Make her look at 
 them first, and see if there is anything about them that we 
 would not notice — in the style of sewing, and so forth — that 
 would be likely to help." 
 
 The lieutenant folded the shawl again over the child, and 
 Maxey lifted it in his hands. The other officer opened the 
 door, and Blakely drew a long breath as it closed again 
 behind the departing policeman. Once more he told him- 
 self that he ought to feel more deeply. It was his own 
 child that was being taken through the black and windy night 
 to an institution of public charity. Surely he ought to feel 
 stirred in some way. But he did not ; only immensely re- 
 lieved — as if a great burden were lifted from him. 
 
 " Well," he said, addressing the lieutenant, " it is nearly tw T o 
 o'clock. If I can be of no more use, I will be of! to bed." 
 
 " No ; that's all, I guess," replied the other. " If we need 
 you in any way — for identification or anything — we can 
 always find you, I suppose. You are going to be around 
 town for a while ?" 
 
 " As far as I know." 
 
 Blakely buttoned up his coat and prepared to go. 
 
 " I am very much obliged to you," he said. " I suppose it 
 is all in the line of your duty — an every-day thing with you ; 
 but I confess I feel as if you had taken a load from me. I 
 did not know what the devil to do when I first found it." 
 
 The lieutenant laughed. 
 
 " It isn't quite the same as finding a silver dollar, is it ?" 
 
 At this moment the door opened, and a man entered whom 
 Blakely guessed to be a reporter. 
 
 " Anything new ?" asked the representative of the press. 
 
 " If you had been here a few minutes ago you might have 
 seen a baby," remarked the lieutenant. 
 
 " Can see all I want at home," remarked the reporter, lacon- 
 ically. " But what was it ?" 
 
 " This gentleman found it. Mr. Blakely, let me introduce 
 to you Mr. Gale, of the World. Mr. Gale is an old friend of 
 mine, and we hope to have him in jail yet." 
 
THE FOUNDLING 235 
 
 " Pleased to meet you, Mr. Blakely," said the reporter. " I 
 know your name well enough — Marshal Blakely, is it not ?" 
 
 Blakely bowed. The reporter turned to the lieutenant. 
 
 "Having quite a lively time to-night, aren't you ?" he asked, 
 playfully, " what with murders and babies — ' births, deaths, 
 marriages, and all uncharitableness,' fifty cents a line for each 
 insertion. Let us have the baby story " — and he took out his 
 note-book and pencil — " and make it short, for I can only run 
 in a stickful or so now. AVhy don't babies come earlier ?" 
 
 Blakely was anxious to get away to avoid further question- 
 ing, but he felt that something was necessary from him. So 
 he asked the reporter, casually : 
 
 " Has there been a murder to-night?" 
 
 " We don't know," Gale replied ; " but it looks like it — an 
 old woman on Fourth Street called Masson." 
 
 " Called what .*" cried Blakely, in a tone which made both 
 the others stare at him. 
 
 "Masson — Mrs. AVilliam Masson, a widow, 317 South 
 Fourth Street. Do you know her?" 
 
 " Yes — or, rather, no," stammered Blakely. " I know one 
 of her daughters slightly." 
 
 " Which one?" asked Gale. 
 
 "The younger — Annie." 
 
 " She's away in the country now somewhere — down in 
 Indiana ; expected back to-morrow, isn't she ?" 
 
 " I believe so." 
 
 " Pretty tough home-coming for a girl," suggested the re- 
 porter. "But she's only a step -daughter. Did you ever 
 meet the mother at all ?" 
 
 Blakely saw that the reporter was making a note in his book. 
 
 " No," he said ; " please don't quote me. I never spoke to 
 the mother in my life ; I never spoke to the other daughter, 
 and only know the girl Annie very slightly." 
 
 " The trouble is," mused the reporter, " that we need some 
 more stuff about it badly. Two other fellows have been 
 working on it, but it only came in late. It's pretty hard to find 
 any one who knows the Massons. This Captain Harrington, 
 of the street-railway company, is engaged to one girl, and he 
 cannot be got at. A printer called Weatherfield is engaged 
 
236 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 to the other, and he lives five miles out in the country. 
 Wollmer, the labor man, boards in the house, and he is the 
 only one who has given us anything. He'll talk all night. 
 He thinks Harrington did it. Do you take any stock in 
 that ?" he asked, addressing the h'eutenant. 
 
 " Not knowing, can't say," said that cautious gentleman. 
 
 " Anyway, AYollmer would fix it on Harrington if he could, 
 naturally, because of the labor matters," said the reporter. 
 Then, turning to Blakely again : " I wish you would tell me 
 whatever you know." 
 
 " I don't know a thing, and I really must protest against 
 my name being mentioned. I shall have to appear in con- 
 nection with the baby. That is enough for one day. I ap- 
 peal to you, lieutenant ; don't you think I am right ?" 
 
 " I guess you had better let Mr. Blakely go, Gale," said 
 the lieutenant, slowly. " You can see him to-morrow if you 
 want to. As he says, he has given you one story to-night. 
 Let it go at that." 
 
 The reporter hesitated a minute. 
 
 " Well," he said, at last, " if you will promise not to talk to 
 any other paper, but will give me to-morrow whatever you 
 have to say, and if the lieutenant here will promise not to 
 mention your name in connection with it to any of the other 
 boys, why, I will leave you out altogether." 
 
 " I promise," said Blakely, and the lieutenant nodded. 
 
 " And now I'm going," Blakely continued. " It's time to 
 be in bed. He," nodding towards the lieutenant, "can tell 
 you all about what you call the ' baby story.' " 
 
 " I guess so," said the lieutenant. 
 
 So Blakely said " good-night," and left. As the door closed 
 behind him, the reporter remarked, quietly : 
 
 " Seemed awfully anxious not to have his name appear, 
 didn't he ?" 
 
 " Young fellows usually are," replied the lieutenant, " when 
 they know one daughter of a family, and have never spoken 
 to the mother or other daughter." 
 
 Blakely was glad when at last he had escaped from the 
 police-station and was out in the street again. It was an 
 unpleasant job, well over. Annie, he thought to himself, was 
 
THE FOUNDLING 237 
 
 now some three-quarters of an hour out of town, on her way 
 to Jackson. There was little danger to be apprehended from 
 that quarter, and he wondered again at the sagacity and fore- 
 thought which she had shown in laying her plans. 
 
 When he arrived at his rooms it was after two, but he felt 
 in no mood for sleep ; so he stirred the fire, lit a cigar, and 
 sat down to think it over. 
 
 His were not cheerful thoughts. He was chagrined at the 
 outcome of the meeting with Jessie. Then there was this 
 confounded child, and the murder coming in to complicate 
 matters. In another affair, also, things had taken a rather 
 unpleasant turn. Altogether, luck seemed to be running 
 against him. He had been in perplexing predicaments and had 
 experienced narrow escapes enough before. But this seemed 
 to be a superfluous accumulation of untoward events. The 
 more he looked at the situation the less it contented him. He 
 even wondered, in a vague way, whether the game that he 
 was playing was worth the candle, and was tempted to make 
 a resolution to be less reckless — not more good, but only less 
 reckless — in future. But he knew himself too well. He 
 had made resolutions of that kind before ; and they had been 
 scattered to the winds when the next opportunity offered. 
 "Adventures are to the adventurous" — a motto which he 
 was fond of repeating, and which had stuck in his mind ever 
 since he had run across it in reading Disraeli's works when a 
 boy. Adventure had its dangers certainly. Everything that 
 was worth doing had. There were times when the dangers 
 seemed to outweigh the pleasure ; and this was one of them. 
 But the clouds would pass, as they always had before ; and 
 the next chase would be just as irresistible as the last. The 
 risk was never very clearly visible when an enterprise offered. 
 It was only when you were over the hurdle — either well in 
 mid-air or safely on the other side — that you saw the width of 
 the ditch beyond. If his horse's hind-legs did get in once 
 in a while, Blakely, so far, had always managed to pull out 
 somehow, and he would again. 
 
XIX 
 
 A HOME-COMING 
 
 On the evening of the Bartop reception Harrington had 
 taken the first holiday which he had allowed himself for 
 many a day. The strikers had not abandoned their plan of 
 warfare. There was no material relaxation of the system of 
 petty annoyances and minor outrages to which the street- 
 railway company, and incidentally the public, was subjected. 
 The assaults on employes, the cutting of wires and injuring 
 of equipment, the holding up of inoffensive citizens — all these 
 things continued. But at least the men had not yet proceed- 
 ed to any concerted and violent action. The company, more- 
 over, was acquiring knowledge by experience. For more than 
 a week it had maintained what was practically its full ser- 
 vice of cars in operation, and each day the new employes 
 became more familiar with their duties, and they and the 
 company grew to have more confidence in each other. The 
 company's property was better protected at all points, and 
 damages, when they occurred, were more quickly repaired. 
 
 About the barns and the power-house especially, where 
 Harrington was in command, the situation seemed to have 
 quieted down. The young electrician had shown himself 
 equal to the charge which was laid upon him. His guards 
 were as well drilled as a military garrison. Their number 
 had been increased, and, by weeding out from time to time 
 any who showed sign of lack of courage or promptitude of 
 action in moments of emergency, he had gradually collected 
 a small force of men on whom he felt that he could thor- 
 oughly rely, and who in turn had perfect confidence in him. 
 The strikers appeared to have reached the conclusion that 
 his little command was unsafe to tamper with. This seem- 
 
A HOME-COMING 239 
 
 ing quietude, however, he believed to be only a temporary 
 respite. The strikers, he reasoned, hoped to lull him into a 
 false sense of security, and then, thinking- him off his guard, 
 would seize an occasion for some more formidable attack 
 than had yet been attempted. What form this attack would 
 take he was at a loss to conjecture. So many things were 
 possible. Of this only he was convinced : that the men had 
 by no means given up the fight, and that they would not for- 
 ever remain content with their present desultory and inef- 
 fective methods. " Something," he told himself, " will drop " 
 — and that before very long. 
 
 Meanwhile there was no reason why he should not take 
 one evening for himself — and Jennie. A certain famous 
 Eastern orchestra, in the course of one of its Western tours, 
 was to give a concert in town. Both Jennie and he loved 
 music, and this was a treat not to be missed ; so, on the even- 
 ing in question, after a final tour of inspection and assuring 
 himself that everything was running smoothly, he jumped on 
 a car that left the barns about seven o'clock, and took his way 
 to his sweetheart's house. 
 
 They started for the opera-house where the concert was to 
 take place with all the light - heartedness of two children es- 
 caping from school. 
 
 " I suppose it will be midnight before you get back," grum- 
 bled Mrs. Masson. 
 
 " Oh no, mother," Jennie answered, gayly ; " the concert 
 w T ill be over before eleven o'clock." 
 
 At the door they met Wollmer coming in. It was an un- 
 usual time for him to be returning to the house, and as he 
 passed them he said something to Jennie about papers which 
 he had forgotten. 
 
 " Confound the fellow!" remarked Harrington. " He knows 
 now that I am not on duty to-night, and may take advantage 
 of it to make trouble." 
 
 In their present mood, however, the incident could not 
 worry them for long, and Wollmer was soon forgotten in the 
 half-loverlike, half-childish nonsense which they talked on their 
 way to the entertainment. The concert was excellent, and 
 they were in a frame of mind to enjoy every note of it. For 
 
240 MEN BORX EQUAL 
 
 botli it was one of those ideal evenings which, however peace- 
 ful, live in the memory long after the most passionate crises 
 are forgotten. 
 
 In one of the intervals of the music Harrington had told 
 Jennie that on leaving the opera-house he must go to a 
 telephone and assure himself that all was right at the barns. 
 At the conclusion he left her in the foyer while he did so. 
 When he returned it was with an air of calamity. 
 
 " Jen, girl," he said, wofully, " I'm afraid I must go right 
 up there. They've been having more or less trouble all the 
 evening, and there is a big crowd of strikers collected now. 
 It is that man Wollmer's fault, as I feared ; and there's noth- 
 ing for me to do but to leave you and get there as quickly 
 as I can." 
 
 " That's all right, dear," she said, bravely. " That is where 
 you ought to be, of course. I need not say that I hate to 
 have you go, but if you have been as happy as I to-night it 
 ought to last us for quite a while." 
 
 So he kissed her under the shadow of a doorway and then 
 saw her safely to a car that would take her home, and him- 
 self boarded another car that was bound for the barns. 
 
 As Harrington had said, there had been trouble all the 
 evening, not only about the central barns, but all over the city. 
 It seemed as if the strikers had decided that the time had 
 come for more vigorous action. 
 
 The car on which Jennie Masson was travelling had made, 
 perhaps, about half the distance to her house when suddenly 
 the lights in the car flickered, jumped up again, and went out. 
 At the same moment the car began to slacken speed and 
 stopped. Jennie saw the conductor in the dim light leaning 
 backward over the railing of the platform looking at the 
 wire overhead, while he pulled at the dangling rope, as if en- 
 deavoring to replace the trolley. A minute later he walked 
 silently through the car to join the engineer. As he returned, 
 one of the passengers asked what was the matter. 
 
 " No current, replied the conductor." 
 
 " What does that mean ?" 
 
 " Well, we will wait a few minutes and see if it comes on 
 again. If it don't, it means the wires are cut, and you had 
 
A HOME-COMING 241 
 
 better get out and walk. It will take an hour or two before 
 they get it repaired." 
 
 For some minutes the passengers sat in the darkness, with 
 an occasional grumble from one direction and desultory wit- 
 ticisms from another, chiefly having reference to the location 
 of Moses when the light went out, or being in the nature of 
 speculations as to how long it would take to get there at that 
 pace. Finally the conductor threw open the door. 
 
 " I guess there ain't no uset in waitin'," he said. 
 
 And one by one the passengers arose and stepped off into 
 the darkness. 
 
 Jennie did not fear the walk, black and gusty though the 
 night was, but rather enjoyed it. Arriving home with her 
 cheeks in a glow and panting from the struggle with the 
 wind, she was astonished to find the front door wide open. 
 The light in the hall was turned low, and flickered in the 
 wind which whistled in from the street. The door of the 
 front room was shut, and Jennie passed on, wondering at the 
 silence and the deserted aspect of the house, to the dining- 
 room. Here also the light was turned down, but as she en- 
 tered she saw that in the front room the gas blazed bright- 
 ly. She passed through the open folding-doors between the 
 apartments, and then her heart stood still. 
 
 Stretched at full length on the floor before her lay her 
 mother, her feet towards her, and her head almost in the fire- 
 place. For a minute it seemed to Jennie that she herself was 
 paralyzed. She opened her mouth as if to scream, but no 
 sound came. She tried to lift her arm, and it would not obey 
 her. She endeavored to walk, and her legs trembled. How 
 still the body was ! 
 
 Slowly the blood and the power seemed to come back to 
 the girl's limbs, and she stepped forward, walking on tiptoe 
 round the thing as it lay. She passed by the feet and up to 
 the woman's farther side. Then the face came into view, 
 upturned to the full glare of the light and ghastly white. From 
 under the head the blood had oozed and trickled over the 
 tiles of the fireplace, where it lay in filmed and stagnant pools. 
 
 Jennie's first impulse was to scream. It seemed as if her 
 whole being screamed — as if every nerve and every drop of 
 
 16 
 
242 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 the blood that had been frozen in her body found relief and 
 united in the scream. As she stood with her hands pressed 
 against her cheeks, which were almost as white as those of the 
 face upon the floor, shriek after shriek rang through the de- 
 serted house and passed out to mingle with the sob of the 
 wind in the street. As suddenly as she had begun to scream 
 she ceased, and, dropping on her knees beside the body, burst 
 into tears. 
 
 Recovering herself, she at last ventured to touch the face of 
 the woman before her. It was warm. Jennie tore open the 
 waist of her mother's dress, and laid her hand upon the heart. 
 She fancied that it beat. For a moment she looked wildly 
 round the room, as if with some idea of lifting the body to a 
 chair or the sofa. Then, rising, she ran out into the hall, 
 flung open the front door, which she had closed on entering, 
 and screamed again out into the night. The letters of the 
 photographer's sign across the way glittered in the electric 
 light, and, scarce knowing what she did, she screamed, " Mr. 
 Eldred ! Mr. Eldred ! Help I" She had never met or spoken 
 to the photographer. A window in No. 319 was thrown up, 
 and a woman's voice called, " Is it fire ?" A front door across 
 the way opened, and a man's figure stood in the doorway. 
 " What's the matter ?" he called. 
 
 " Help ! Help ! Murder !" she screamed. " It's murder !" 
 
 The man came hurrying across the road, and from both 
 directions along the street Jennie was vaguely conscious of 
 people running in her direction. Turning into the house 
 again, she went through the dining-room into the kitchen. 
 When the first-comer entered the sitting-room she was on her 
 knees wiping her mother's face with a towel dipped in water 
 which stood in a pitcher on the floor by her side. 
 
 " Oh, get a doctor ! get a doctor !" she said, without look- 
 ing over her shoulder ; " she is not dead." 
 
 Men were now crowding into the house, and the hall was 
 filled with the shuflling of feet and whispered inquiries from 
 those behind. A heavy hand was laid upon her shoulder as 
 she kneeled, and a voice asked : 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
 Looking up, she saw a policeman. 
 
A HOME-COMING 243 
 
 "Oh, it's my mother! She has been killed I" 
 
 « who by ?" 
 
 " I don't know ! I don't know !" But she set herself to bath- 
 ing the white face again, and chafing the thin, wrinkled hands. 
 
 The policeman turned to the crowd. 
 
 " Come, you must get out of here I" he said, and, pushing 
 with his baton, he thrust the reluctant spectators back into 
 the hall. 
 
 " Has anybody gone for a doctor ?" Jennie said, wildly. 
 
 " Yes," a voice answered, " minutes ago." 
 
 The policeman stooped over the body and laid his hand on 
 the heart. 
 
 "How did it happen ?" he asked. 
 
 " I don't know. I only just came in and found her here." 
 
 " Anybody else in the house ?" 
 
 " No. I left her alone when I went out, and the front door 
 was open when I came back." 
 
 " Who do you suppose can have done it ?" 
 
 " Nobody ! Oh, I don't know !" 
 
 Presently another policeman arrived. The two held a short 
 consultation, in which Jennie caught something about tele- 
 phoning. The later arrival went out again, and she heard 
 him talking to the men in the hall as he pushed them out of 
 the house. The other policeman followed him, and Jennie 
 was alone with her mother; but she heard the murmur of 
 voices without, and knew that one of the officers was keeping- 
 guard at the street door. 
 
 Soon the doctor came — a bustling little man, who set to work 
 in a business-like way to feel Mrs. Masson's pulse. He lifted 
 the eyelids and laid his hand on her breast. Then, raising 
 her head slightly, he began to feel among the blood-clotted 
 hair with his fingers. 
 
 " Is she killed ?" asked Jennie. 
 
 " I don't know," he said. 
 
 " What did it ?" asked one of the policemen who had re- 
 entered the room ; " a blow V 
 
 " Can't tell," said the doctor. " May have been a blow or a 
 fall. It is over the left ear here ; cut the temporal artery. 
 That is where the blood comes from." 
 
244 MEN BOEN EQUAL 
 
 As he spoke, the doctor had been looking up and down the 
 fireplace. Then he leaned over and touched a sharp angle 
 about eighteen inches from the ground, where the marble was 
 bevelled. 
 
 " May have been that," he said, and, wiping the marble 
 with his thumb, looked to see if any blood came off. Bat 
 there was nothing. 
 
 " Be able to tell later on," he said. " We must get her on 
 a bed. Have you a cot in the house ?" turning to Jennie. 
 
 " Yes ; up-stairs." 
 
 " Better bring it down here. Bedrooms are all up-stairs, 
 I suppose. No use in carrying her up." 
 
 Jennie left the room to fetch the cot. One of the police- 
 men met her at the foot of the stairs on her return, and helped 
 to carry the bedding into the room, where Jennie found two 
 other men in addition to the doctor and the policemen. One 
 of the two she saw by his uniform was a superior officer of 
 the police -force. It was, as a matter of fact, Chief AVinley 
 himself. The other, she soon gathered, was a detective. 
 These two looked at her keenly as she entered, and contin- 
 ued the examination of the apartment in which they had been 
 engaged. They walked round the walls, examining the paper 
 and the wainscoting, to see if there were any marks of blood. 
 They scrutinized the floor ; passed into the adjoining room, 
 and subjected that to the same careful investigation. The de- 
 tective leaned over the woman on the floor, and looked at her 
 hands, her dress, her shoes. Nowhere was there any sign or 
 clew ; no evidence of a struggle, nor any indication as to who, 
 if any one, had been with Mrs. Masson at the time of the ca- 
 tastrophe. 
 
 Meanwhile the others had moved chairs aside, and set up 
 the cot in the middle of the room. The doctor and two po- 
 licemen lifted the stricken woman carefully and laid her upon 
 it. The doctor asked for a basin of water, a sponge, and 
 a towel, which Jennie brought. As she returned, Winley 
 stepped up to the doctor and asked him if he needed Jennie 
 for a few minutes. 
 
 " I guess not," replied the other. Then to Jennie : "Have 
 you any other woman in the house ?" 
 
A HOME-COMING 245 
 
 " No ; my sister will return from the country to-morrow." 
 And her voice broke, and tears burst forth anew as she 
 thought of the shock that it would be to Annie. 
 
 " We want some one here to - night. Miss Parley, who 
 helps me in my office, lives close by here, and she might be 
 able to come. Could any of your men go and fetch her?" 
 he asked of the chief. 
 
 The latter nodded to one of the officers. 
 
 "You go, Williams," he said. 
 
 The doctor took a tablet of prescription-blanks and a pen- 
 cil from his pocket, and wrote his messages, which he folded 
 up, addressed, and handed to the man named Williams. 
 
 "That is for Miss Parley," he said, as the officer took one 
 of the notes. " There is the address — 327 Fifth Street — just 
 round the corner. She will probably be in bed ; please wait 
 for an answer and find out if she can come. Then I wish 
 you would take that to the nearest drug-store and have them 
 send me the things I ask for here right away — some anti- 
 septic gauze, absorbent cotton, and roller bandages. Then I 
 wish you would telephone yourself, or have them telephone 
 (better do it yourself), to Dr. Garcelon, who lives on Eighth 
 Street, and say that Dr. Butler wants him to come round at 
 once for a consultation in emergency. A physician prefers 
 to share the responsibility in a case of this sort," he ex- 
 plained to Miss Masson, who stood silently listening. " Two 
 heads, you know." 
 
 Williams departed, and the chief of police addressed 
 Jennie : 
 
 " May we ask you to step into the other room a minute ?" 
 
 Jennie led the way into the dining-room, followed by the 
 detective and Chief Winley. They seated themselves about 
 the table, and the detective began his examination. In reply 
 to his inquiries Jennie told of her departure for the theatre 
 with Harrington — yes, " Captain " Harrington, of the street- 
 railway company, she explained. She recollected the meet- 
 ing with Wollmer at the door, and told of that. 
 
 " What terms was your step-mother on with Wollmer ?" 
 asked the detective. 
 
 Jennie said that they were very friendly, dwelling on Mrs. 
 
246 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 Masson's sympathy with the strikers, and mentioning inci- 
 dentally her curious ideas as to the benefit which she was 
 to derive from General Harter's election, and her disapproval 
 of her daughter's fiance, Harrington. No ; her mother never 
 had any sum of money in the house, nor were there any 
 valuables in the place worth stealing. Resuming the thread 
 of her narrative, she told of her parting from Harrington. 
 Could she give the exact time of that ? asked the detective. 
 Yes, it was just twenty minutes to eleven. Had she come 
 straight home ? As straight as she could ; and she described 
 the interruption of the trip by the cutting of the wires and 
 her walk home. In all, she presumed, it had taken her half 
 an hour — perhaps forty minutes — to reach the house from 
 the time she left the opera-house. 
 
 " It would have been possible, then, for any one leaving the 
 opera-house at the same time as you to have come straight 
 here, say, in a carriage, and have had fifteen or twenty minutes 
 to spare before you arrived ?" 
 
 Jennie understood the object of their questions, but she 
 replied calmly that it would have been — provided that the 
 person could have foreseen the delay to herself. She an- 
 swered many inquiries as to Wollmer and Harrington, Tom 
 Weatherfield and her sister Annie. She could think of no 
 reason which any one could have for wishing to kill her 
 mother. Mrs. Masson had not been a woman who made 
 friends*, but there was nobody who had sufficient ground for 
 hatred of her or interest enough in her death to wish her 
 out of the way. 
 
 " You said that you thought that it must have occurred," 
 said the detective, addressing the doctor, on their return to 
 the front room, "not later than ten o'clock. Can you be sure 
 of that?" 
 
 " We can be sure of nothing," replied Dr. Butler ; " all 
 indications go to show that she had been injured at least one 
 hour and a half or two hours before I arrived." 
 
 " Could it possibly have been done at, say, eleven o'clock 
 — within one hour of your arrival ?" 
 
 " Anything is possible. My opinion is, however, that it 
 must have been done at least one hour earlier." 
 
A HOME-COMING 247 
 
 Jennie was informed that a reporter from the World was 
 in the hall and wished to see her. 
 
 " Cannot some one else see him ?" she asked, looking round 
 the company. 
 
 " I will go," volunteered the chief of police, and he left 
 the room. 
 
 Miss Parley arrived — a spare, prim-faced woman of perhaps 
 thirty years of age — and, with just a nod to Jennie, set to 
 work in a business-like way to remove her wrap and gloves 
 and hat, and, depositing in a corner of the room a small valise 
 which she carried, placed herself at the doctor's disposal, and 
 was soon busy holding bottles and towels, handing him bits 
 of cotton, and tossing blood-stained locks of hair, which he 
 severed with his scissors, into the grate. 
 
 " May I go up-stairs, over the rest of the house ?" asked the 
 detective. 
 
 " Certainly," Jennie answered. " You will find it untidy, 
 probably. On the next floor are Mr. Wollmer's room and my 
 mother's. The third room is vacant. My room and my sis- 
 ter's are on the floor above. Her door is locked. You will 
 find the key on the mirror on my dressing-table." 
 
 The detective went out, and she heard him ascending the 
 stairs. A few minutes later Dr. Garcelon arrived — a large, 
 forceful man, with a red face and a bristling mustache, whom 
 Jennie already knew by sight. The two medical men ex- 
 changed brief greetings, and the new-comer leaned over the 
 cot, while Dr. Butler showed him the wound on the woman's 
 head, and the two carried on a desultory colloquy in under- 
 tones. 
 
 " I think it is safer to wait a while — say until noon to-mor- 
 row," said Dr. Garcelon, straightening himself up. 
 
 " That is what I think," rejoined Dr. Butler. 
 
 " What is it ?" Jennie asked, anxiously. 
 
 " There is a fracture of the skull," Dr. Butler explained, 
 " though the outer fracture is not very serious. The blood 
 has come from the severing of the temporal artery. The in- 
 ner table of the skull, however, appears to be broken also — 
 what we call a depressed fracture — and a portion of the bone 
 seems to be pressing upon the brain. That is probably what 
 
248 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 is the matter. It is that which produces the state of coma in 
 which she is now lying. Dr. Garcelon here and I have been 
 considering the advisability of what is known as trephining. 
 But it does not seem to either of us that the patient's condi- 
 tion at present warrants it." 
 
 " You mean that she could not stand it ?" 
 
 "We mean that it is always a dangerous and critical opera- 
 tion. The patient has lost a great deal of blood, and she is 
 old, and not very strong, I should say, naturally. It may be 
 that she will come out of the coma without our intervention 
 in the next twelve or fifteen hours. If she does not, it will 
 be necessary for us to consider the advisability of an opera- 
 tion again." 
 
 "At present we can do nothing?" 
 
 "Nothing but watch her. Have you any ice in the house ?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Crack a little, then, and do it up in a bag, and keep it ap- 
 plied to the base of the brain — there. I will leave you now, 
 and on my way home I will send some medicine from the 
 drug-store — just an arterial sedative, which Miss Parley will 
 show you how to administer. You can stay here to-night?" 
 he asked of that young lady. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Well, you and Miss Masson can relieve each other as you 
 think best. I will leave the thermometer with you. If there 
 is any marked rise in temperature, you had better let me 
 know. Otherwise, go on as you have heard me say." 
 
 The policemen had all gone, and now the physician and the 
 surgeon withdrew together, and the two women began their 
 long vigil in the silent house beside the sick-bed. 
 
 There were few interruptions during the night. Once Miss 
 Parley went to answer a ring at the bell. It was another re- 
 porter, who was quickly dismissed and told to go elsewhere 
 for his information. Miss Parley saw that a policeman stood 
 on guard at the foot of the steps. 
 
 About two o'clock Wollmer came in, full of professions of 
 sympathy, but Jennie thought his face had never borne a more 
 vindictive expression, and she loathed him even more than she 
 had done before. Finding that his offers to share their watch 
 
A HOME-COMING 
 
 249 
 
 with the two women were not cordially received, he retired to 
 his room. 
 
 Soon after six o'clock Weatherfield, who was an early riser 
 and had seen the news in the morning paper, arrived. When 
 Jennie went to the door, she found that there was already 
 a small crowd of idlers collected in the street watching the 
 house. The printer's distress was transparently sincere if 
 awkward. He was willing to do anything he could (if it 
 would have done Jennie any good to have him lie down that 
 she might trample on him, he would have submitted gladly), 
 but very much at a loss to put his sympathy into words. His 
 woe-begone air, as of a dog that has been beaten, was scarcely 
 more pathetic than ludicrous. With all possible desire to be 
 of use, he felt that he was only in the way — as if he were 
 somehow too large and his feet too clumsy for that silent 
 house. Jennie was grateful to him, but felt none the less re- 
 lieved when he left, promising to look in again before he went 
 to meet Annie at the station. 
 
 At that moment Annie was waiting on the platform at Jack- 
 son. Her train was ten minutes late, and she was nervously 
 uneasy. At last it arrived, and with half a dozen other early 
 passengers she stepped on board and made her way through 
 the train to the sleeping-car, where the atmosphere at that 
 time in the morning was foul and stifling. She explained 
 to the porter that she wished to pay for a berth from there 
 to her destination, and, after retiring to the ladies' dressing- 
 room for a while, settled down in a vacant section which had 
 not been occupied on the preceding night. 
 
 Soon the other passengers began to appear from their berths, 
 looking uninvitingly untidy and unwashed as they made their 
 respective ways to the dressing-rooms, whence each returned 
 much improved in appearance. Among them Annie saw 
 Horace Marsh, who had been speaking the night before in 
 a distant part of the State, and had boarded the train in the 
 early hours of the morning. Harrington had pointed him 
 out to her, and she was afraid lest Marsh should know her by 
 sight ; but he did not. 
 
 At an intermediate station a boy came in with the morning 
 papers. Annie did not buy one. She rarely read the papers, 
 
250 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 and it did not occur to her that the finding of her baby might 
 have already made its way into the news of the day. Marsh 
 took one, however, and was shocked to read of the calamity 
 in the Masson household. He thought of the distress that 
 it would cause to his friend Harrington, but little guessed 
 that the pale-faced girl who sat across the aisle of the car 
 and gazed so wistfully out of the window would be so much 
 more deeply interested in the news than he. Then he saw 
 the account of the finding of the baby — only a short para- 
 graph — and the sight of Blakely's name sent his thoughts 
 back into the melancholy channel which now they so rarely 
 left. 
 
 Breakfast was announced by a wide-mouthed colored waiter 
 with a white apron, who called it "bwek-fuss," and said that 
 it was now ready in the " dahnin' cyar." Annie was sur- 
 prised to find that she was hungry, and a cup of hot coffee 
 and a chop made her feel better. She delivered the check 
 for her trunk, which had arrived the evening before, to the 
 transfer company's agent who boarded the train at Brooklyn, 
 submitted to the ostentatious dusting of the car-porter, and 
 then sat down to await the arrival at the station. Issuing 
 from the car, she found Weatherfield awaiting her. She as- 
 sumed an air of as much gayety as possible, and prepared to 
 make excuses for her thinness and pallor. 
 
 But Weatherfield was too preoccupied with the tidings 
 which he had to tell her to give much thought to her ap- 
 pearance. He noticed, indeed, that she was pale, and won- 
 dered whether she had already learned the news through the 
 morning paper. She, seeing his solemnity, feared lest some- 
 how he had heard of the thing that haunted her, and she 
 could scarcely nerve herself to greet him. 
 
 " Have you heard ?" was his first question. And her heart 
 sickened as she replied. 
 
 "No; what?" 
 
 " Have you heard about your mother ?" 
 
 She shook her head. Her lips were dry, and she could not 
 speak. 
 
 " She is very badly hurt." 
 
 Did he mean hurt in her pride and her feelings at the news 
 
A HOME-COMING 251 
 
 of her daughter's shame ? But she could only look at him 
 blankly, white and trembling. 
 
 " Come here, and I will tell you." And he drew her gently 
 aside from the stream of passengers that flowed along the 
 platform, and, with many falterings and hesitations, he told 
 her all that he knew. She listened in silence, but gradually 
 the blood came back to her face, and in her heart she knew 
 that the tidings which she heard brought more relief than 
 sorrow. At least, as yet her secret was not known, and, she 
 could not help telling herself, this new calamity would serve 
 in some manner to distract attention from herself. 
 
 Weatherfield was surprised at the bravery with which she 
 bore the shock, and in his simple mind remembered that the 
 girls had not, after all, much cause for tenderness towards 
 their step-mother, nor reason to feel deeply grieved at her 
 loss. 
 
 In the course of the drive from the station he made one or 
 two efforts at conversation on different topics, venturing in- 
 quiries as to how she had spent her time in the country. 
 But Annie was unresponsive. As the carriage turned into 
 Fourth Street they could see from the distance of a square 
 away that there was a large crowd gathered about the house, 
 in spite of the cold which had succeeded the winds of the 
 night before. On the sidewalk immediately in front of the 
 door two policemen kept a passageway, but in the road and 
 on the opposite side of the street stood some two hundred 
 people, men and boys for the most part, but with not a few 
 women sprinkled through the throng. As the crowd stood 
 and stared at the front of the house, watching every arrival 
 at and departure from the door with morbid interest, so on 
 every door-step and at almost every window on both sides of 
 the street stood other men and women staring at the crowd. 
 
 The coachman had difficulty in making his way to the 
 house, and when at last the spectators realized that the occu- 
 pants of the carriage were bound for the fateful domicile 
 itself, Annie felt that every eye was fixed upon her. 
 
 " That's the other daughter," she heard a voice say, and 
 the news was passed back from mouth to mouth. 
 
 In the hall Jennie and Harrington were waiting. As the 
 
252 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 two sisters met they reached out their hands to each other, 
 and fell sobbing on each other's shoulder. The two men 
 stood awkwardly by, exchanging now and then a word in 
 undertones. At last Harrington laid his hand on Jennie's 
 shoulder. 
 
 " I don't believe that we can be of any use," he said. 
 " You know that Tom and I will do anything in the world 
 we can. We will stay all day if you wish, but at present I 
 think we are only in the way." 
 
 Jennie, drying her eyes with her handkerchief, tried to 
 smile at him, but could not speak. 
 
 " Is there anything we can do ?" asked Harrington again. 
 
 " Nothing at all, dear ; thanks. You are awfully sweet !" 
 And Harrington kissed her for thanks. 
 
 " How is she ?" asked Annie, in a low voice. 
 
 " She is alive," her sister said. " The doctors are in there 
 now " — pointing to the closed door. " We will go in this 
 way, by the dining-room." 
 
 The two men left without another word, and the girls 
 passed arm in arm into the sick-room. 
 
 All through the long night and the morning the stricken 
 woman had lain in the darkened room without movement or 
 sign of returning consciousness. The doctors, now in con- 
 sultation, decided that it would be unsafe to wait much 
 longer. They agreed to return at four o'clock that afternoon, 
 prepared to operate if no change had taken place, and if the 
 patient's general condition, as indicated by her pulse, seemed 
 to justify it. 
 
 At four o'clock no change had come, so Dr. Garcelon 
 began the operation with Dr. Butler's assistance. For nearly 
 an hour they worked in silence, while the two girls stood by 
 with hands clinched and nerves tense awaiting the result. 
 They were aware of another figure entering the room, and, 
 turning, saw Wollmer standing in the folding-doors between 
 the apartments. 
 
 A minute later there was a movement on the cot. The 
 patient's feet stirred. The doctors straightened themselves 
 up and waited in silence. The patient's eyes were open, and 
 
A HOME-COMING 253 
 
 they roamed aimlessly around the room. She tried to raise 
 herself in bed, but Dr. Garcelon held her gently down. Lift- 
 ing her head slightly from the pillow, she looked blankly from 
 one to another, and clutched at the sides of the cot with her 
 thin fingers. She made an effort to speak, but her voice 
 would not come. Again she tried, and a harsh, cracked 
 whisper went through the room. 
 
 " Where is he ?" she asked. " Has Harrington gone ? 
 What made him come here like that ? I will never give 
 them to him. After all these years — " 
 
 Her voice ceased. For an instant her lips moved, and then 
 it was as if her body collapsed. Dr. Garcelon let her head 
 rest on the pillow. Each of the doctors took one of the 
 yellow hands and placed their fingers on the pulse. Then 
 one laid the hand gently down and the other did the same. 
 
 " She is dead," said Dr. Butler, solemnly. 
 
XX 
 
 ON THE VIADUCT 
 
 When the first shock had passed, and the girls came to 
 talk the sad scene over, they had some difficulty in deciding 
 upon the exact words that the dying woman had used. What 
 did the reference to Harrington mean? Jennie put it down 
 to delirium. Annie, after questioning her sister, wondered 
 whether Harrington could possibly have made his way to the 
 house by some short cut from the theatre, and done this 
 thing before his sweetheart arrived. She could not believe 
 it, and yet — 
 
 Wollmer alone had no doubt as to what Mrs. Masson's 
 last sentences were. Five minutes after she was dead he was 
 on his way to police headquarters, where he found the chief 
 of police closeted with Sullivan. The labor leader hardly 
 waited to exchange greetings with the two men before blurt- 
 ing out his news — the news that Mrs. Masson was dead, and 
 that the last words that she had said were that Harrington 
 had murdered her. 
 
 The announcement elicited no enthusiasm from his audi- 
 tors. On the contrary, in the silence with which his informa- 
 tion was received Wollmer read incredulity and distrust of 
 himself. His temper rose, and he insisted vehemently on 
 Harrington's immediate arrest. The chief remained silent. 
 
 " Ye can't do it," said Sullivan, dogmatically. " It would 
 look like parsecutin' him. The public 's none too friendly to 
 us an' yer dom strikers now." 
 
 " Persecuting him ! Isn't there ground for suspicion 
 enough ?" 
 
 " I doubt it," said the chief. " If he was a tramp or a 
 vagabond, yes ; we should have to arrest him to prevent his 
 
ON THE VIADUCT 255 
 
 leaving town. But with a man like Harrington it is differ- 
 ent." 
 
 " And suppose lie does leave town," Wollraer said. 
 
 The chief shook his head. 
 
 " Not he," he said. " If he is guilty — which, mind you, I 
 doubt — he has too good a chance of making out an alibi at 
 the trial to be scared now — enough scared to proclaim his 
 guilt by running away. Guilty or not, he will stay." 
 
 " There'll have to be an inquest," remarked Sullivan. 
 
 " And it will be time enough," added Winley, " to do the 
 arresting then according to the evidence." 
 
 11 But don't you hold men on suspicion ?" Wollmer pro- 
 tested. 
 
 " Yes ; when I suspect," said the chief, dryly. 
 
 " And you mean that you don't suspect Harrington ?" 
 
 " I mean that there is no use in making mistakes from 
 being in too great a hurry. He will be just as easy to reach 
 to-morrow as to-day. As Sullivan says, it would look bad if 
 we jumped on him too quickly — especially on information 
 coming from you, Mr. Wollmer." 
 
 Wollmer bit his lips and rose to go. 
 
 " Well, I've done my duty. I have put you on the man's 
 trail. If you decline to arrest him to-day, and he escapes, 
 the responsibility is on you." 
 
 " An' if the chief is afraid of the responsibility, I'll take it 
 mesilf," said the Irishman, quietly. 
 
 It was nearly six o'clock when Wollmer left the City Hall and 
 directed his steps to a certain notorious saloon and restau- 
 rant where the strikers congregated, and where Wollmer pro- 
 posed to get some supper. Here in the half a hundred men 
 who were assembled he found a more sympathetic audience 
 than that which he had left. He did not hesitate to spread 
 the news, and on his lips the words of the dying woman be- 
 came more and more sensational and explicit. It appeared 
 that she had said distinctly that Harrington came there to 
 murder her, and that he had done it. " He knew I would 
 never give in to him," she had said (so Wollmer declared), 
 and that referred both to her consent to his marriage with 
 her daughter, and also to the advocacy of the striker's claims, 
 
25G MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 which he had endeavored to make her abandon. Nor did 
 Wollmer spare the chief of police and Sullivan for their re- 
 fusal to act on his suggestion. Secretly he hated Sullivan — 
 hated him for his strength, and because he knew that the 
 Irishman despised him. Indeed, Sullivan had never been at 
 any pains to conceal his contempt for the labor leader. But 
 for Sullivan, Wollmer asserted, Harrington would even then 
 be under lock and key. Winley would have done his duty 
 but that he was afraid of the Irishman ; and Wollmer let it 
 be understood that he had something more than a suspi- 
 cion of Sullivan's political honesty. He could tell things, 
 if he pleased, about the Irishman's relations with some of 
 the Republican leaders that would make interesting matter if 
 they were published. 
 
 Wollmer had smarted under the consciousness of the oth- 
 er's contempt. He had been restrained from saying or do- 
 ing anything which would lead to an open rupture between 
 them partly by an undefined physical fear of Sullivan's huge 
 frame and forceful character, and still more by the fact that 
 it was through Sullivan that he received the funds from the 
 city treasury, so large a part of which went into his own 
 pocket. But, after all, was it not on him — Wollmer — and the 
 labor vote which he controlled that Sullivan and the whole 
 Democratic ticket had to rely for their success at the polls ? 
 What right had the Irishman, then, to treat him as he did? 
 
 Now, in his chagrin at the rebuff which he had received, 
 embittered by the postponement of the gratification of his 
 personal hatred of Harrington, he grew reckless. All his 
 pent-up hostility against Sullivan broke out, and in the con- 
 genial atmosphere of the assembled strikers he let his spite 
 have vent. 
 
 An hour and a half later, when he left the saloon to go to 
 the strikers' headquarters, he was accompanied by nearly all 
 those who had been listening to him. At the headquarters 
 some thirty or forty of the ringleaders of the strike were col- 
 lected, and here Wollmer told his tale again, and it increased 
 in circumstantiality of detail and in bitterness at each repeat- 
 ing. In his hands the figure of Mrs. Masson grew to an he- 
 
OX THE VIADUCT 257 
 
 roic stature. She was a Joan of Arc, a fair champion of their 
 own cause, and had given her life for their sake. Harrington 
 was a cowardly assassin, who, playing upon a girl's confiding 
 heart, had stolen into the house, and by her own hearth-side 
 had stricken down the friend of labor simply because she 
 had refused, even to the death, to abjure their cause. By 
 the mercy of Providence it had been granted that she should 
 come back for one minute from the very shadow itself to 
 confound her slayer, who might otherwise have escaped. 
 Even now, by the treachery of Sullivan, it seemed that the 
 murderer was to be suffered to escape, though her voice had 
 issued, as it were, from the very portals of death to accuse 
 him. 
 
 Wollmer more than hinted that he had private information 
 of plans which Harrington had laid for leaving the city that 
 evening. There was none among the strikers assembled who 
 had ever seen Mrs. Masson, and the glorified picture of the 
 dead woman which "Wollmer drew was accepted without ques- 
 tion. The material which the labor leader had to work with 
 was excellent, and he used it cunningly — the two girls, one 
 blinded and betrayed by this man whom they all hated ; the 
 other plighted to a sturdy workman like themselves, but 
 smuggled off into the country lest she should interfere with 
 the murderer's well-laid plans. The very evening before this 
 poor girl's return the villain takes her sister out, and, under a 
 flimsy pretence of duty calling him, leaves her and hurries to 
 her home, where she arrives only to find that he has done his 
 work. The next day the other sister returns, and now there 
 is only the blasted hearth, with the two orphans weeping in 
 each other's arms and the dead crying aloud for vengeance 
 — the dead who died in their own cause. 
 
 The men in the mass were accustomed to follow Wollmer's 
 leadership. There w T ere his own personal satellites among 
 them, moreover, who took up his theme, and chanted it with 
 repetitions and exaggeration. Fiery speeches were made and 
 demands for the death of the murderer. From the head- 
 quarters the news spread over the city, travelling from one 
 saloon to another, from the crowd at one street corner to the 
 loafers on the next, until all the strikers in the town knew 
 
258 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 that Harrington had killed Mrs. Masson, and had killed her 
 because she had refused to renounce her sympathy with the 
 strike ; that she had told how the deed was committed with 
 her last breath of life ; and that, owing to a conspiracy be- 
 tween Sullivan and the friends of the street-railway company, 
 he was to be suffered to escape from the city that night. 
 
 Meanwhile Harrington himself was busy, and did not hear 
 of Mrs. Masson's death till some hours after it had occurred. 
 
 After leaving Jennie at the opera-house, his trip, like hers, 
 had been interrupted half-way to the barns by the stoppage 
 of the current. He had had farther to walk than she, and had 
 thought it more prudent to go by the less -frequented streets 
 than by the more direct but more travelled thoroughfares. 
 Some fifteen minutes, moreover, had been spent at a telephone, 
 endeavoring to obtain information as to where the trouble had 
 occurred, but without much satisfaction, so that in the neigh- 
 borhood of an hour had elapsed before he finally reached 
 his destination. Here a large crowd was collected, through 
 which he had succeeded, under cover of the friendly dark- 
 ness, in shouldering his way without his identity being dis- 
 covered. 
 
 It had been a stormy and eventful evening, as he had been 
 informed. One of his men, he found, had been captured by 
 the mob, and badly beaten and trampled upon before he was 
 rescued, and he was now lying in the barns on a cot, uncon- 
 scious. About nine o'clock the situation had looked so 
 threatening that an urgent summons had been sent to the 
 police headquarters for additional protection, in response to 
 which Chief Winley had detailed half a dozen officers, with a 
 statement that that was all that could be spared. The pres- 
 ence of these men, though they made but a perfunctory show 
 of opposition to the strikers, had served in some manner to 
 keep the crowd in check. When Harrington arrived, how- 
 ever, there was scarcely a pane of glass in either building un- 
 broken, and stones which were still being thrown at intervals 
 from the rear ranks of the mob made it dangerous for the 
 employes within to show themselves at any of the windows. 
 About a hundred yards from the barns the flames still rose 
 fitfully from the smouldering ruins of a car, which, having 
 
ON THE VIADUCT 259 
 
 stopped at that point when the current gave out, and being 
 deserted by the engineer and conductor, who were compelled 
 to fly for their own safety, had been set fire to and burned. 
 
 This same thing had been done in other parts of the city. 
 On all the lines affected by the severance of the wires groups 
 of masked men had passed along the tracks — evidently hav- 
 ing been in hiding until the moment arrived — and driven the 
 employes away from the standing cars, which were then en- 
 tered, and, oil having been poured over the seats and floor, set 
 in flames. 
 
 It had not been until towards dawn that Harrington had 
 been able to lie down on a lounge in the office at the barns 
 and snatch a few hours' rest, and it was well on in the fore- 
 noon, having had no time on rising to read the paper, that he 
 had heard of Mrs. Masson's injury. He had been at the 
 house at noon when Annie arrived, and then returned to his 
 post of duty. At the time of Mrs. Masson's death he was 
 present at a conference of officers of the street-railway com- 
 pany, at which a formal protest had been drafted for presen- 
 tation to the mayor, calling upon him to more fully protect 
 the property of the citizens, and demanding that, if the city 
 or county government was unable to maintain order, the gov- 
 ernor of the State should be appealed to to call out the militia. 
 A petition was also drawn up to be circulated among the best 
 citizens for signature, in which it was set forth that, the city 
 being practically in a state of riot, and the municipal admin- 
 istration and the officers of the county totally unable to main- 
 tain the peace, the signers prayed the governor to exert the 
 powers reposed in him for use in such emergencies. 
 
 Between seven and eight o'clock, when Harrington had 
 returned to the barns, he heard of Mrs. Masson's death. His 
 informant gave him no details — only the news that she had 
 died. As soon as he was able Harrington hastened to the 
 house, where he found the two girls sitting with the faithful 
 Weatherfield in the dining-room, while through the open 
 doors was dimly visible in the darkness the outline of the 
 white sheet-covered cot whereon the dead woman lay. For an 
 hour, or as long as he dared to remain away from the barns, 
 Harrington stayed, and they talked in subdued tones of the 
 
260 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 dead woman, of the inquest which was to be held, and of the 
 funeral. But none of the other three (for the girls had told 
 Weatherfield) had the heart to mention to Harrington the 
 dying woman's last reference to himself. 
 
 When he left, Jennie accompanied him to the street door, 
 and they stood together in the hall for many minutes, talk- 
 ing very tenderly, and each feeling that they were closer to- 
 gether now than they had ever been before. 
 
 As the door closed behind him and he descended the steps 
 Harrington saw that even at this hour of the night two fig- 
 ures stood across the way gazing at the now notorious 
 house. Somewhere farther up the street he heard the voice 
 of a newsboy hawking the " special extra" edition of an even- 
 ing paper. Harrington tried to catch what he said, but failed, 
 and wondered what the " special extra " might be about. 
 Could he have distinguished the syllables, what he would have 
 heard was : " All about the Fourth Street murder ! The dy- 
 ing woman discloses the name of the assassin !" 
 
 But the boy's voice grew fainter, and Harrington, ignorant 
 of the accusation which hung over him and which was being 
 thus publicly shouted in the streets, buttoned his coat around 
 him — for the night was cold — and started for the barns. 
 
 He had walked but a few steps when he saw coming round 
 the corner and advancing along the sidewalk to meet him a 
 body of men, some twenty or thirty in number. He knew that 
 they must be strikers, for no others paraded the city thus in 
 crowds together. What he did not know was that they had 
 just come from the headquarters, where for two hours past they 
 had listened to Wollmer's fiery harangues and the still more 
 reckless utterances of his subordinates. They were coming 
 full of wrath and fanaticism, as on a pilgrimage, to gaze upon 
 the house where the deed had been done — where their cham- 
 pion and friend had been murdered for their sakes. 
 
 For a moment Harrington meditated crossing the street to 
 avoid them, but it was too late to do this without attracting 
 their attention. It was best to go boldly on, and trust to 
 passing them without being recognized. 
 
 The men advanced in twos and threes, talking loudly as 
 they came. Harrington moved to the outer edge of the side- 
 
ON THE VIADUCT 261 
 
 walk to give them space to pass. Some six or seven went by 
 without a sign of recognition. Suddenly Harrington heard a 
 voice say : 
 
 " That's him, boys !" 
 
 He caught his name mentioned, and an instant later a blow 
 from a fist, striking him on the ear, sent him staggerino- from 
 the sidewalk to the road. Before he could recover himself 
 they were around him. He fought as best he could, striking 
 out right and left, but they were too many, and he was 
 quickly overpowered and was held, panting and hatless, while 
 fists were shaken in his face and the air was filled with 
 curses. 
 
 " Quiet, boys ! Let's take him across the bridge/' said a 
 voice as of authority. 
 
 The clamor of angry voices ceased, and the men with one 
 accord fell into their places around him, and he found him- 
 self being pushed forward at a rapid gait in the direction 
 suggested. 
 
 The first settlement of the city had been on the edge of 
 what had at some time been a river of considerable size; It 
 was now shrunken to a narrow and sluggish stream, but the 
 rest of the wide bed of the old torrent was occupied with 
 railway tracks, which found here a broad right of w r ay of 
 nature's making into the heart of the city. As the town 
 grew it had spread northward away from the river-bank, and 
 what had once been the centre of the young community 
 was now a squalid and unfashionable part of the city. The 
 locality where the Massons lived, as has already been said, 
 was in the older portion of the town, and at a distance of 
 only about a quarter of a mile from where Harrington was 
 captured ran the old river-bed, now chiefly filled with the 
 iron highways, and spanned by a long viaduct supported on 
 iron columns. Many efforts had been made by speculators 
 to induce the town to spread over to the south side of the 
 river, but so far without material success. The low land 
 was all owned by the railway companies, who had covered it 
 with tracks and yards wherein the freight-cars stood in rows, 
 with round-houses and other buildings scattered here and 
 there. Beyond the territory occupied by the railways were 
 
262 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 a number of houses of the meaner sort, some of the less poor 
 of which were occupied by railway hands — the majority, how- 
 ever, constituting what was known as " the Diggings," an un- 
 inviting settlement composed chiefly of Italians who lived 
 sordid and lawless lives, and made their bread by the pursuit 
 of all those miscellaneous and seemingly precarious avoca- 
 tions to which the members of that nationality chiefly devote 
 themselves in our American cities. Beyond the Diggings 
 again rose what were called the Bluffs — high ground on 
 which was located a charitable institution or two, but which 
 was chiefly wild and rocky, sparsely clothed with patches of 
 scrub-oak and sumach, as the white men had first found it. 
 
 If once his captors had him in the desolate regions across 
 the river, Harrington knew that his case would be desperate. 
 The mere fact that they set themselves thus resolutely to 
 take him there showed that they meditated some more de- 
 liberate and formidable vengeance than the hap-hazard beat- 
 ing which they could easily have inflicted in the street where 
 they met him. What form this vengeance might take Har- 
 rington did not care to think. The immediate business in 
 hand was to prevent, if possible, their carrying him across the 
 bridge. But meanwhile they made rapid progress towards 
 it, and he, in the centre of the solid squad of men, was power- 
 less to resist or seriously to retard their march. 
 
 He hoped that they might meet a policeman ; but with 
 every rod that they covered the chance of that grew less. 
 At one crossing Harrington saw a man passing some yards 
 ahead and he called to him for help. But a fist struck him 
 in the mouth, and the stranger evidently thought that it was 
 not his duty to interfere in so unpromising an affair. 
 
 At length they reached the bridge, and as their feet left 
 the silence of the solid road for the resonant structure of 
 the viaduct Harrington's heart sank in him. The men, too, 
 seemed to think that the beginning of the end had come, 
 and, more certain of their prey, walked in looser ranks, while 
 only one man retained a hold on the prisoner's shoulder. 
 There was one last hope, and only one. For the first two 
 hundred yards of the viaduct there were railway tracks be- 
 neath. Then came the shrunken river, some fifty yards in 
 
ON THE VIADUCT 263 
 
 width, and then more tracks. The viaduct was nowhere at 
 any great elevation — not more than thirty-five feet in the 
 centre ; but to leap from it to the tracks would he certain 
 death. Where the river ran, with some two or three feet of 
 water . to break the fall, it would be less dangerous. His 
 guards had apparently little fear now of any attempt to es- 
 cape, and there was, he told himself, just a chance that by a 
 rush he might, when the water was reached, succeed in get- 
 ting to the side of the viaduct and jumping into the stream 
 below — at least, it was worth trying. So, looking out of the 
 corners of his eyes, he watched between the files of men on 
 either side for a glimpse of the water in the darkness. The 
 one hand which still held him was on his left shoulder. He 
 would make his dash, therefore, to the right. At last dimly 
 through the night he caught a gleam of the water not far 
 ahead. Forty paces more, he said, and the time would have 
 come. And he counted the paces stealthily. Thirty-seven — 
 thirty-eight — thirty-nine — forty ! As his left foot struck the 
 road at the fortieth pace he sprang to the right, dashed be- 
 tween the lines of his captors, and, before they realized what 
 had happened, gained the side of the viaduct. Holding to 
 the edge of the parapet with his hands he flung his feet over, 
 landing on a narrow ledge on the outer side. 
 
 Even as he was in the air, however, he saw to his dismay 
 that it was not water beneath him. At two points in the 
 width of the river the columns supporting the viaduct rose 
 out of the water. Around the base of each was a pile of 
 rock, to which the water was constantly making additions of 
 stones and pieces of timber. It was immediately over one 
 of these columns that Harrington found himself, and directly 
 below, instead of the friendly river, was a forbidding surface 
 of hard and jagged stone, stretching some ten or twelve feet 
 on either side of the base of the column, and perhaps twice 
 as far down the stream. He could not let himself drop, as 
 he had intended, straight down, but must leap to one side 
 or the other. The moment's hesitation made necessary by 
 this discovery, when he was deciding which way to jump, 
 was enough for the strikers to collect their thoughts, and 
 already they were around him again. Even as he bent his 
 
264 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 knees for the spring, hands reached over the parapet and 
 clutched him by the arm and shoulder. Wrenching his 
 right side free, he faced his enemies, and, using his right 
 hand as a club, endeavored to break their hold of his left 
 arm. He struck with the fury of despair. As soon as a 
 hand was knocked off, it found a new hold ; but at last came 
 a moment when he was free. He snatched his arm away 
 and leaned backward, already too far gone to recover his 
 balance if he wished to, still fending off the hands that 
 reached after him. 
 
 At this moment one of the strikers thrust his foot through 
 the railing of the parapet. The heavy boot struck Harring- 
 ton's ankles, forcing both his feet off the narrow ledge. The 
 spring which was to have sent him clear of the rocks below 
 spent itself helplessly in the air; and with one sharp cry 
 he dropped — dropped straight down. 
 
 The men above leaned over and peered into the darkness. 
 They heard him strike heavily, with a grinding of the stones 
 below, and as if, with nothing to break the fall, his whole 
 body had met the rocks at once. Dimly they could see the 
 black mass where he lay close by the water's edge, motion- 
 less. For a minute they stood and gazed, and then turned 
 and made their way back in silence cityward. 
 
XXI 
 
 IN THE VALLEY OF SHADOW 
 
 To the most zealous and earnest reformers, it may be pre- 
 sumed, there are times when their beloved cause seems color- 
 less and futile. We know that to the holiest of old there 
 came at some point in their careers seasons of sore tempta- 
 tion, when the powers of darkness appeared, transmogrified, 
 and by all cunning wiles that they could muster sought to 
 lure virtue from its path — on a high mountain, or under the 
 sacred Bodhi-tree, or in the study at Wittenberg. In these 
 latter days the imps come not incarnate, but chiefly in sub- 
 jective forms, disguised as toothache and indigestion and 
 catarrh, whereby the world looks jaundiced ; or, perhaps, a 
 loved one ceases to smile, and the rose-color dies out of even 
 the cause itself ; or, bitterest of all, the reformer finds treason 
 among his own disciples and fellow-workers and those who 
 dip in the dish with him. Then it is that the lean devil of 
 desolation and despair sits by the heart which aches, feeling 
 itself alone in a world of fraud. 
 
 Something of all these malign influences combined to 
 harass Horace Marsh on that morning when he arrived by 
 the same train as brought Annie Masson home. He was not 
 well. The strain of constant travelling, irregular hours, poor 
 food, and of speaking three or four times a week, was telling 
 upon him. The work — any work — was light and easy so long 
 as it was done both for its own sake and for hers. Then all 
 effort was doubly inspired. But now that Jessie's face was 
 turned from him — since that bitter evening and her failure to 
 reply to his note — one, and he wondered if it were not the 
 chief, incentive to labor was withdrawn. He still believed in 
 the work which he was doing — or, rather, in the need of such 
 
266 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 work; but many things, little things individually, but mighty 
 in the mass, had on this last trip come to him to make him 
 feel terribly alone in his ministry. 
 
 Perhaps the echoes of what Judge Jessel and Major Bartop 
 had said disquieted him — as to the present campaign not be- 
 ing one on party lines, but only a conflict of the good against 
 the bad ; of law and order on the one side against anarchy 
 and crime on the other. Certain it was that even in the 
 small towns in which he had been speaking he had been 
 struck by the fact that it was not that portion of the popu- 
 lation whom he would have chosen for his fellow -workers 
 that came to hear him speak and to meet him at the hotels. 
 The feeling of which he had been so keenly conscious when 
 standing in the lobby of the Boston House at Jackson, the 
 sense of an essential lack of sympathy between himself and 
 the men who gathered round him, came to him now again 
 and again. He had grown to expect it, to regard it as nec- 
 essary. His audiences, indeed, listened to him attentively. 
 They were carried away by the fervor of his oratory, and 
 while he talked stood with him on his level. But he could 
 not but discover that it was he, and not any force within 
 themselves, that uplifted them. They did not of their own 
 prompting seek the higher altitudes, but, as soon as the spell 
 of his influence was removed, dropped back into a less rarefied 
 atmosphere — an air thick with the clammy vapors of petty 
 partisan politics and small local issues. Their very congratu- 
 lations were awkward, as when one totally ignorant of music 
 seeks to compliment a master on the excellence of his exe- 
 cution, and fears lest he should blunder into misnomers. 
 Their praise halted, not from insincerity so much as diffi- 
 dence, and they hastened to take refuge on the more familiar 
 ground of the local and the concrete, burrowing into the 
 labyrinthine darknesses of party intrigue, in which Marsh 
 himself was lost. Above all, they spoke of labor questions 
 and the strike with an assumption of his sympathy with 
 the strikers which perpetually affronted him. More than 
 once on such occasions he had replied sharply, in a strain 
 which called forth surprised rejoinders from his auditors, to 
 the effect that they had supposed that the cause of the strike 
 
IN THE VALLEY OF SHADOW 267 
 
 ■was the cause of the party, or that they thought that, being 
 a Democrat, he was, of course, an enemy of corporate capital. 
 
 The news in the paper that morning seemed to be particu- 
 larly distasteful. It was evident that the strikers were grow- 
 ing daily more bitter. In spite of the attempt of the party 
 organ to make light of the outrages of the preceding evening, 
 the list of acts of violence perpetrated was a long and un- 
 pleasant one. Sandwiched in between other paragraphs re- 
 lating to the strike appeared an interview with General Har- 
 ter, in which he expressed himself, without attempting to 
 condone individual crimes, as an ardent sympathizer with the 
 men. Then the sight of Blakely's name, in connection with 
 the baby, for some reason irritated Horace. Finally, there 
 was the news of the calamity in the Masson household, with 
 its bearing upon his friend, and Marsh's blood boiled when 
 he read the long interview with Wollmer on the subject (the 
 reporter had said that Wollmer would "talk all night"), 
 filled with covert innuendoes against Harrington. Without 
 venturing to accuse him directly, the labor leader had laid 
 great stress upon the ill-feeling which had existed between 
 Mrs. Masson and the electrician, and had recurred to the sub- 
 ject again and again in the course of his talk. 
 
 On arriving at his office the first thing that Marsh did was 
 to go to the telephone and inquire for Harrington at the 
 street-railway company's barns. The electrician, however, 
 was, as we have already seen, at that moment at the Fourth 
 Street house awaiting Annie's home-cominof. Determining to 
 endeavor to catch Harrington again later in the day to ex- 
 press his sympathy with him, Marsh repaired to his partner's 
 office, as was his custom, to render an account of his trip. 
 
 The General received him with grandiose cordiality, and 
 Marsh did his best to bear himself with good grace. From 
 conversation about Horace's experiences they drifted to talk- 
 ing of the political outlook in general, and thence to the 
 strike. 
 
 " I see an interview with you in the paper this morning," 
 Horace remarked. " I don't know whether you said all that 
 is ascribed to you, but, if so, I am afraid I can't agree with 
 you." 
 
268 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 " Well," the other replied, cautiously, " an interviewer 
 never gets things quite as one would like them, you know. 
 But you mean that you do not agree with me in my general 
 attitude on the strike V 
 
 " Yes," said Horace, decisively. " I do not think the men 
 are right. They deserve to be beaten." 
 
 " Well, in these cases " — and the General assumed his sen- 
 atorial air — " one must look at general principles rather than 
 at details of a particular controversy. There may be minutice 
 in which the action of the men has been open to criticism ; 
 but in the long run, and on abstract grounds, the cause of the 
 men is the cause of the right. I have not in mind so much 
 Mr. Holt and the street-railway company, or of Wollmer and 
 his men — the question of a few cents an hour or of an indi- 
 vidual labor organization is immaterial. It is the broad prin- 
 ciple which we in public life must consider. Undoubtedly 
 the right position for myself and for the party is one of ad- 
 vocacy of the masses ; not only on grounds of policy, but on 
 grounds of conviction, and for the sake of eternal truth and 
 justice. There is no one who feels that more deeply than 
 yourself, Marsh." 
 
 " That may be," he replied ; " but the names of Truth and 
 Justice, and of every eternal principle of right, can easily be, 
 and constantly are, used to cloak individual and incidental 
 wrongs. The cause of the masses is not going to be ad- 
 vanced by the advocacy of the strikers' present claims, if 
 those claims are wrong." 
 
 " When we descend to the particular," rejoined the Gen- 
 eral, pompously, " it is difficult, as in this present quarrel, 
 for outsiders like you and myself to decide which party is 
 right and which is wrong. There are many influences to be 
 considered. A seeming temporary wrong may be only one 
 facet, as it were, of a permanent right, as we should discover 
 if we could see all sides of it. The best we can do, it seems 
 to me, is to take a stand in line with our general convictions 
 — of course within certain limits," he added. 
 
 " And it seems to me that those limits have pretty nearly 
 been reached," remarked Horace, " when it comes to cutting 
 wires and beating men nearly to death." 
 
IN THE VALLEY OF SHADOW 269 
 
 The General did not reply, and Horace retired to his own 
 room, where he was glad to find Barry awaiting him. From 
 him he might learn some news of Miss Holt. 
 
 The two friends shook hands cordially. 
 
 " I guessed you'd be in about now," Barry said, " and came 
 round to ask if you had seen about Mrs. Masson in the paper, 
 and your friend Harrington." 
 
 " Yes, I have. It's pretty hard on the girl, isn't it ?" 
 
 " Did you read what that man Wollmer said ? What do 
 you think of it ?" 
 
 " Wollmer is a cur," Horace replied. " But how are your 
 affairs going? How's Miss Caley?" 
 
 " Oh, she's all right," replied Barry, but in a tone which 
 implied that that lady's condition was a matter of entire in- 
 difference to him. 
 
 " Why, what's the matter ?" Horace asked in surprise, re- 
 sponding to the manner rather than the matter of his friend's 
 words. 
 
 "Well" — and Barry hesitated — "I don't much like to 
 talk about it, but she isn't quite the girl that I took her to 
 be. There's a fellow called Jones — Fred, she calls him — 
 whom she knew at home in Chicago. I opened a locket of 
 hers last night and found his portrait in it — wearing it round 
 her neck, you know. And she got mad and said — oh ! she 
 said all sorts of things. It appears that she gets letters from 
 him every day. Damn Jones !" he added, moodily. 
 
 " I'm sorry," said Marsh. He felt that the wbrds were in- 
 adequate ; but it was not a situation wherein sympathy was 
 easy to offer. And, after all, it was difficult to take Barry's 
 love affairs quite seriously. " How's Miss Holt ?" he asked, 
 after a pause, to change the subject. 
 
 " She was sick last night up at the Bartops' " — and Barry 
 spoke spitefully, as if he took pleasure in yielding bad news 
 in his present mood. " Blakely took her home." 
 
 " Was she seriously ill ?" 
 
 11 Oh, I don't know — fainted or something. Anyway, 
 Blakely hustled her into his carriage and took her home — 
 did it as if he owned her," he added, wickedly. iVs a mat- 
 ter of fact, Barry's knowledge of the method of Miss Holt's 
 
270 MEN BOEN EQUAL 
 
 departure was of the slenderest. He felt that he was unfair 
 and repented. " But I don't think it was anything much. 
 Blakely came back again soon afterwards." 
 
 On the whole, Barry's visit did not contribute apprecia- 
 bly to the cheerfulness of the day for Horace. All things 
 seemed to conspire to make him miserable. Chief, perhaps, 
 among the matters which gave him uneasiness — more per- 
 sistently present even than the estrangement with Jessie — 
 was an undefined dissatisfaction, which he could not ignore, 
 with the political outlook. He was glad that he had but little 
 more speaking to do — three more nights only, and all three 
 in town. The committee might, of course, call upon him to 
 fill a vacancy or two ; but he resolved if the vacancy was 
 in some outside place to do his best to evade it. The next 
 evening he was to speak in Columbus Hall, where he would 
 probably have the largest audience that had listened to him 
 yet. After four days of respite he was to appear twice more 
 on successive evenings in different parts of town. Those 
 were all his " dates " until election. 
 
 On this day he had to be much out of the office, in con- 
 sultation with a fellow-lawyer. Returning late in the after- 
 noon to the Metropolitan Block, he met Sullivan just leaving 
 General Harter. 
 
 " Hey there !" cried the Irishman. " It's back again ye 
 are, flittin' into the middle o' these troublous times like that 
 onaisy pelican a-ridin' into the heart o' the storm. The 
 plot thickens, me boy, an' there is quare times ahead of us. 
 An' the Gineral tells me this Mrs. Masson was a friend of 
 yours." 
 
 " Hardly that," said Marsh. " I know her daughter slightly. 
 Harrington, you know, is one of my best friends, and he is 
 engaged to her." 
 
 " An' I gather by the papers that there's no love lost be- 
 tween Harrington and Mr. Wollmer " — the Irishman always 
 put a " Mr." before the labor leader's name. 
 
 " Oh ! that whelp Wollmer — " began Horace, hotly ; but 
 Sullivan interrupted him. 
 
 " Aisy, me lad, aisy !" he said ; " that same Mr. Wollmer 
 is one o' the pillars b' the parrty — an' will be till election. 
 
IN THE VALLEY OF SHADOW 271 
 
 Wait two weeks, me boy, an' then maybe there are some 
 others that '11 be wid ye." 
 
 Horace liked the Irishman. His code of political ethics 
 might be peculiar, but, at least, he made no pretensions to be 
 other than he was. In the ordinary way of politics, and to 
 advance the interests of " the party " (which Sullivan always 
 spoke of, as it were, with a capital " P "), he would lie un- 
 hesitatingly, bribe without scruple, and make use, in fact, of 
 whatever weapons the corruptness or gullibility of human 
 nature might put in his hands. In party matters he did not 
 shrink from doing " evil that good may come." But in a per- 
 sonal affair Marsh would have trusted him implicitly. He 
 would never, according to his own light, be dishonorably dis- 
 honest. Open-handed he was and generous without stint, 
 and loyal to his friends. The mere blunt strength of his 
 nature, coarse and brutal though it might seem, had its at- 
 traction. 
 
 It was of Sullivan that Horace was chiefly thinking when, 
 as he sat disconsolate in his room that evening, he said to 
 Barry : 
 
 " It is a good deal easier, after all, for a man to be respected 
 in the churches than it is to be respected in the saloons. I 
 do not mean to say, of course, that the best men are not in the 
 churches, or to deny that the crowd around the saloons is, as 
 a whole, the worst element in our population. But to stand 
 well with that element a man must possess certain good qual- 
 ities which he need not have to hold high place in a church. 
 There is a certain type of man — the worst, in my opinion, that 
 God makes — slinking, hypocritical, and cowardly, who can 
 come to be a church-warden and to have the handling of par- 
 ish funds, yet who could never get credit for fifteen cents' 
 worth at a bar. 
 
 " ' He wa'n't no saint, but at judgment I'd take my chance with Jim 
 Along o' some pious gentlemen who wouldn't shake hands with him !' 
 
 There's a good deal in that. It is pretty hard to put one's 
 self outside the moral environment — the ' climate of opin- 
 ion' — of one's own immediate day and community; but 
 if one could look at men with the eye of eternal Truth, I 
 
272 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 wonder how far his judgment would coincide with the con- 
 ventions and convictions of the times. In other stages of 
 society the recklessness and animal courage — the brutality, 
 even — which are the chief characteristics of the saloon ele- 
 ment to-day, were high virtues. They went a long way tow- 
 ards the making of a knight ; for I suspect that the chivalry 
 and courtesy which we ascribe to those gentlemen — the man- 
 ners which were 
 
 "' ... The fruit 
 Of loyal nature and of noble mind' 
 
 are chiefly the additions of the romancers and scribes of a 
 later day. The average knight was a pretty coarse beast — 
 according to our ideas. And according to his ideas, and the 
 ideas of the world of his day, the qualities which make a 
 man ' respectable ' with us caused him then to be buffeted 
 and spat upon and spanked with the flat of a sword. There 
 is still lurking in the bottom of the hearts of all of us a cer- 
 tain sympathy with those ideas. Is that sympathy only a 
 relic of the brute in us, not quite civilized away, or is it a 
 smouldering spark of a higher than human nature, a fragment 
 of omniscience, which has not altogether been stifled ? Is it 
 better or worse than our current code of morality ? After all, 
 ' respectability ' is only a negation — a lack of certain attri- 
 butes. Are those attributes inherently evil, or is it only that 
 societv — a most ephemeral society — says that they are evil 
 in its cowardice ? Is it better — better, I mean, in the view of 
 all time — to have wine mixed in one's veins and chew tobacco 
 and attend prize-fights, or to be a man whose ' blood is very 
 snow-broth' — and to take an interest in Sunday-schools?" 
 
 " I give it up," said Barry. " But I think I rather like a 
 thorough-going 4 tough.' I know that there are respectable 
 members of society whom I would willingly hit with a brick — 
 but for the police." 
 
 It was the first evening for a long time which Barry had 
 not spent in Miss Caley's society, and cynicism and misan- 
 thropy suited him. So the two sat and croaked at each other, 
 in forlorn antiphony, like two birds of evil omen, far into the 
 night. 
 
IX THE VALLEY OF SHADOW 273 
 
 Horace, hungering for tidings of Miss Holt, and not daring 
 to go and seek them for himself, had endeavored to persuade 
 Barry that he ought to call on Miss Caley that evening, but 
 he had exhausted his powers of sophistry in vain. It rested 
 with her, Barry said, to make the first advances; for that 
 matter, he didn't care whether they ever came together or not. 
 Which was palpably disingenuous. The best that Horace 
 could do with his obstinacy was to wring from him a half- 
 promise that, if no news came from Miss Caley on the morrow 
 and there were no tidings of Miss Holt, he would call on the 
 following evening — merely as a matter of common courtesy to 
 inquire after Jessie's health, Marsh said. On that evening 
 Horace himself would be holding forth at Columbus Hall. 
 
 During the conversation Marsh opened his heart rather un- 
 reservedly. His love for Miss Holt had never before been 
 openly talked over between them, but, as we have seen on a 
 former occasion, Barry was not blind to the situation. Now 
 he listened while Marsh told him of Jessie's behavior on that 
 occasion when Barry had been so absorbed with Miss Caley 
 on the sofa ; and Barry vowed that he had seen nothing of it, 
 and opined that his friend was a victim of his own imagina- 
 tion. But Horace told him of the note which had not been 
 answered ; and the best that Barry could offer in the way of 
 comfort was a banal suggestion that the letter had miscarried. 
 Horace spoke of the article about his speech at Jackson and 
 of his note to her father ; but to all of that he attached little 
 importance. It was more likely that some common acquaint- 
 ance had poisoned her mind against him. And so they united 
 in abuse of Blakely. But whenever Barry spoke of Blakely, 
 he meant Fred Jones. 
 
 18 
 
XXII 
 
 THE INQUEST 
 
 It was not until late in the afternoon of the following day 
 that Marsh heard of what had befallen Harrington. 
 
 For some hours after striking the rocks the latter had lain 
 stunned and insensible. The first sensation which carne with 
 returning consciousness was that of intense cold. He must, he 
 thought, have left a window too wide open, and the bedclothes 
 had fallen from him in his sleep. When he realized that he 
 lay in the open air, the discovery puzzled him. Moving his 
 right hand, he felt the jagged edge of a large stone, and then 
 his fingers dipped into the water. The sudden movement, as 
 he withdrew his hand from the cold contact, sent an excruciat- 
 ing pain through his sides, so that he caught his breath quick- 
 ly. And all at once memory returned. 
 
 He lay partly on his left side, his face turned eastward tow- 
 ards the viaduct, under and beyond the black shadow of which 
 the sky already showed the greenish-gray tinge of approaching 
 dawn. Behind him the water lapped to within a foot of his 
 back. Turning his head slightly, he looked straight upward to 
 where the edge of the viaduct was sharply outlined against the 
 sky — darker here than towards the east — and seeming in this 
 dim light to be lower and scarcely twenty feet above him. 
 How seriously was he injured ? he wondered, and endeavored to 
 move; but the pain in his sides and back was acute, and his 
 legs refused to obey him. How much of the pain and numb- 
 ness was due to injuries and how much to the cold and the 
 roughness of his couch he could not guess. And still the most 
 prominent sensation was that of chill. Another and more de- 
 termined effort to raise himself from his position resulted in 
 such agony that he sank back again, faint and half-swooning. 
 
THE INQUEST 275 
 
 For some time he lay so, dimly conscious of external things 
 as the day grew and noises came to him from far away — the 
 barking of dogs, the rumble of an early market-wagon driving 
 overhead, the clanking and banging of railway-cars from where 
 trains were being made up in the distant yards. And it was 
 very cold. Once or twice he tried to shout in answer to some 
 noise which sounded near, but his voice was thin and weak. 
 Small details of his surroundings thrust themselves upon him. 
 He noticed that the paint was cracking off the iron column of 
 the bridge close by him, aud thought that the city engineering 
 department ought to discover it and give the metal a new 
 coating. He heard the ripple of the water against the stones, 
 and wondered why, when the flow of the stream was even, the 
 ripple at times should be so much louder than others — almost as 
 if some live thing moved in the water. He had noticed just 
 such inequalities — eddies, presumably — in electric currents. 
 
 All at once he became aware of the head and shoulders of a 
 man protruding over the parapet above him and clearly out- 
 lined against the sky. It was a policeman, stopping in his de- 
 liberate march across the viaduct to lean over and look at the 
 slow water and the dim outlines of the mists below. Harring- 
 ton could see that it was a policeman by the form of his hel- 
 met, and he tried to call. At first his voice would not rise 
 above a whisper, and the head above disappeared. A second or 
 two later it reappeared a few paces farther on. Summoning 
 all his strength, Harrington called again and yet again. The 
 figure above remained motionless. At length a voice an- 
 swered : 
 
 " Who's that, and where are you ?" 
 
 " Down here by the water — help !" 
 
 " How did you get there ?" 
 
 " I fell. Help ! Help !" 
 
 His voice died, and he was unconscious again. Some time 
 after — how long he could not tell — he heard the same voice 
 again calling, this time from somewhere on his own level. For 
 a long while Harrington heard him call, and vaguely thought 
 that it was very curious that a man should go on shouting like 
 that. Suddenly he grasped the fact that the voice was calling 
 to him, and he answered, but very feebly. 
 
276 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 " What's that ?" called the voice. 
 
 " Help !" Harrington cried. " I'm cold." 
 
 " We can't hear you," replied the voice. 
 
 How can I help that ? thought Harrington, hopelessly. Why 
 did they not come to him, instead of standing over there and 
 asking questions? But it did not matter, and he ceased to 
 attempt to answer them. 
 
 The next thing that he was aware of was the splash of 
 oars in the water and men's voices close at hand ; then the 
 bumping and crunching of a boat against the loose stones. A 
 moment later two men, policemen both, were leaning over 
 him. 
 
 " How did you come here ?" asked one. 
 
 " I fell over and they pushed me," Harrington said, wearily. 
 
 " Who pushed you ?" 
 
 " Oh, I don't know. I'm cold." 
 
 One of the men passed his hands under his shoulders and 
 began to raise him. Harrington felt other hands lifting his 
 legs. But the pain was horrible — intolerable ; and, mercifully, 
 he became unconscious once more. He was dimly aware later 
 of renewed pains as he was lifted from the boat, and then rec- 
 ognized mistily that he was in some sort of a wheeled vehicle 
 being driven somewhere. 
 
 When next he came to himself it seemed to be mid-day. 
 He was in a room — a large room, very white, with several 
 other beds like that in which he lay — evidently a hospital. 
 He was no longer cold but most delightfully warm, though in- 
 tense pain was shooting up his legs, and it hurt him to breathe. 
 As he lay the figure of a nurse came silently to his bedside. 
 He smiled at her, and whispered, irrelevantly : 
 
 " Thank you so much !" 
 
 " Hush !" she said, and laid a soft, cool hand on his forehead. 
 It was very pleasant, and the room grew misty and faded away 
 from him. 
 
 When his eyes opened again there were other figures around 
 him. The nurse still stood at his left, and on his right were 
 two men. One held his hand, and Harrington saw, after a 
 while, that it was Superintendent Boon, of the street-railway 
 company. 
 
THE INQUEST 277 
 
 " How are you, old man ?" Boon asked, cheerily. " Dr. Gar- 
 celon here says you will soon be about again." 
 
 Harrington could only smile in reply. 
 
 " Tell me how it happened," said Boon. 
 
 " But don't exert yourself to speak too much," added Dr. 
 Garcelon. 
 
 For some minutes Harrington lay silent while he collected 
 his thoughts. Then in a voice which was little more than a 
 whisper, he said : 
 
 " They got hold of me — about twenty of 'em — and called me 
 names. — ' Take him across the bridge,' said some one, and they 
 did. — Nobody came. — Pushed me along till bridge. — Then I 
 broke away — meant to jump into water — wasn't any water — 
 so I fought, and then I fell — and somebody pushed my feet and 
 I went down. — Then policeman came, and it was awfully cold." 
 
 He told the tale with difficulty, and with many pauses be- 
 tween sentences ; but his auditors understood him. 
 
 " Who were they ?" asked the superintendent. 
 
 " Just men — strikers." 
 
 " Did you know any of them ?" 
 
 Harrington shook his head. 
 
 " Could you recognize them again ?" 
 
 " Perhaps — some — dark," said Harrington, wearily. 
 
 "Where was it?" 
 
 " Fourth Street — just leaving Jennie's house." 
 
 " Whose house ?" 
 
 "Jennie's — Miss Masson, you know — Mrs. Masson's dead, 
 too." 
 
 " That will do," said Dr. Garcelon. " No more talking." 
 
 " Just a minute," replied Boon. " Listen here, Harrington, 
 and see if I have got it straight. Don't speak if I have. 
 About twenty men, strikers, got hold of you on Fourth Street, 
 just as you were leaving Miss Masson's house; they abused 
 you, and some one suggested that they take you across the 
 bridge. They did so, pushing you along among them. When 
 you were in the middle of the bridge you broke away and 
 tried to jump into the water. There was a fight, and some 
 one shoved your feet from under you and you fell, not into 
 the water, but on the rocks. Is that right ?" 
 
278 MEN BOKN EQUAL 
 
 Harrington nodded. 
 
 " What time was it?" 
 
 "About ten o'clock." 
 
 Boon and the doctor talked together in low tones for a 
 while, and the former turned to go. 
 
 " Good-bye, old man," he said ; " keep your courage up, and 
 you will soon be all right again. The strikers are not going 
 to get away with you." Harrington smiled, and the superin- 
 tendent continued : " Who would you like to have me tell to 
 come and see you ?" 
 
 "Jennie," said the injured man, feebly. 
 
 "Miss Masson?" 
 
 Harrington nodded ; and the other went away, bidding him 
 again to keep his courage up. 
 
 Then Dr. Garcelon set himself to make further examina- 
 tion of the injuries, during which Harrington was again un- 
 conscious. The surgeon found a fracture of one rib, but what 
 internal injuries there might be he could not guess. The 
 right leg was broken above the knee, and the left ankle badly 
 sprained and swollen, as also was his left wrist. Many minor 
 bruises were scattered over his body, and one ugly scalp-wound 
 ran down over his forehead above the left eye. It had been a 
 terrible fall, and even if there were no other injuries than 
 those which appeared on the surface, recovery would at best 
 be a long and tedious process. 
 
 Leaving the hospital, the superintendent went at once to the 
 office of the president of the company, and told Mr. Holt the 
 story as he had heard it from Harrington. It was decided 
 that the newspapers had better be informed, and messages 
 were telephoned to the offices of both the afternoon papers, 
 asking them to send reporters up to Mr. Holt's office, as there 
 was interesting news in regard to Harrington. 
 
 The fact of Harrington's injury and his present location at 
 the hospital was already known. An outline of the facts — of 
 his having been found by Officer Gleason, and so forth — had 
 been given at the coroner's inquest on Mrs. Masson, which had 
 been in progress for a great part of the day. The announce- 
 ment had created a decided sensation, and two widely different 
 theories were afloat as to the origin of the accident. Accord- 
 
THE INQUEST 279 
 
 ing to the theory of Harrington's friends, he had been captured 
 by the strikers, badly hurt, and then thrown insensible from 
 the viaduct. The sympathizers with the men believed that he 
 had himself leaped from the bridge, intending to commit sui- 
 cide, probably by drowning, to avoid the disgrace of conviction 
 of the murder of Mrs. Masson. 
 
 There were a number of witnesses at the inquest whose tes- 
 timony was listened to eagerly by as many people as could 
 gain admittance. On the general questions as to the manner 
 of Mrs. Masson's death, both Dr. Butler and Dr. Garcelon in- 
 clined to the belief that it was accidental, caused probably by 
 a fall in which her head had struck against some sharp, hard 
 substance — perhaps the jutting angle of the mantel, in close 
 proximity to which she was found lying. Against the theory 
 of accident, however, were, firstly, the fact of the open front 
 door, and, secondly, the deceased's last words, with their direct 
 reference to Harrington. 
 
 In regard to the exact form of those words the testimony 
 was divergent. Wollmer was confident that she had distinctly 
 said : " Why did. he come here to murder me?" He was posi- 
 tive that he was not mistaken. He told, at considerable length, 
 of the unfriendly relations which had existed between Har- 
 rington and the dead woman, and cited various instances from 
 his recollection of conversations which he had had with her, in 
 which Mrs. Masson had confidentially expressed not only dis- 
 like, but bodily fear, of the electrician. 
 
 Annie Masson's testimony was given nervously and in tears. 
 She did not believe that Harrington was guilty, but, pressed 
 for a reason, only said that he could not do it. She spoke re- 
 luctantly of the ill-will existing between him and her mother, but 
 her evidence was only the more convincing by reason of her 
 apparent reluctance in giving it. Her memory of Mrs. Mas- 
 son's last words was confused and vague. She could not swear 
 that Wollmer's version of them was not accurate. 
 
 Jennie was cool and collected, though very white. She was 
 sure that Harrington could never have made his way to Fourth 
 Street and left again before she arrived. She described her 
 parting from him, her trip to the house, and her discovery of 
 the body. Much time was spent in the endeavor to arrive at 
 
280 MEN BOEN EQUAL 
 
 the exact number of minutes which it had taken her, after 
 leaving the opera-house, to reach her home. Her recollection 
 of those accusatory words was clearer than her sister's. She 
 swore positively that there was no mention of " murder," or 
 any word like it. Her mother, she was aware, had never 
 liked Harrington, but she did not believe that he had ever 
 entertained the smallest ill-will towards her. She recalled va- 
 rious scraps of conversation with him, in which Mrs. Masson 
 had been discussed — among others, that which had taken 
 place before her portrait, when Harrington had laughingly sug- 
 gested the possibility of Mrs. Masson's taking Wollmer for a 
 third husband. As she related the incident she looked at 
 Wollmer, who flushed angrily. She told of her step-mother's 
 growing eccentricity, as shown particularly in her mysterious 
 references to the good which was to come to them from Gen- 
 eral Harter's election. The sympathy of the audience seemed 
 to be with her while she spoke ; but then she was in love 
 with Harrington, and could hardly be expected to see things 
 dispassionately. 
 
 Tom Weatherfield was called, and expressed a clumsy but 
 earnest conviction in Harrington's innocence. 
 
 On the subject of the wording of Mrs. Masson's dying sen- 
 tences, both the medical men were disposed to support Jen- 
 nie's testimony, but, with professional caution, each declined to 
 swear that the words could not have been as Wollmer said. 
 They were both strongly inclined to believe that the word 
 " murder" had not been used. Dr. Butler reiterated his opin- 
 ion that the injury must have been caused not later than ten 
 o'clock; but he could not swear that he might not be mis- 
 taken. 
 
 The engineer and conductor of the car on which Harrington 
 had started from the opera-house testified as to the time of 
 the stoppage of the current, and to his leaving the car to walk. 
 
 One of the men from the barns gave evidence as to the time 
 of his arrival there. 
 
 The clerk at the drug- store from which Harrington tele- 
 phoned was on hand, and told of that incident. 
 
 The policeman, Williams, described his arrival at the house, 
 having heard Miss Masson's screams when he was on the beat 
 
THE INQUEST 281 
 
 in the next street; and the detective spoke at length of the 
 position of the body and the appearance of the room, with the 
 entire absence of any indication of a struggle or of the pres- 
 ence of any other person in the house at the time that the 
 injury was inflicted. 
 
 It was nearly six o'clock in the evening before the jury re- 
 turned its verdict. Some members of the body, sympathizers 
 with the strike, were in favor of simply saying that the de- 
 ceased came to her death by a blow or blows given with an 
 instrument unknown in the hands of Charles Harrington. 
 Others did not believe Harrington guilty. Finally a compro- 
 mise was effected. The verdict set forth that the testimony 
 as to the manner of death was inconclusive, and the jury was 
 at a loss to decide whether it was the result of accident or of 
 an act of violence. The leading points in the evidence were 
 gone over, and it was pointed out that there was much to sup- 
 port a suspicion that Charles Harrington was the cause of 
 death. Meanwhile, however, as there was great uncertainty as 
 to the possibility of Harrington being present at the house at 
 the time when the injury appeared to have been inflicted, and 
 inasmuch, further, as the said Harrington was at that time 
 understood to be himself suffering from bodily injuries of 
 such a nature as would keep him in the hospital for at least 
 some weeks, so that there was no danger of said Harrington 
 evading the arm of justice when he was needed, the jury 
 deemed it best to declare that the deceased came to her death 
 from causes unknown. The police department was urged to 
 use its best efforts to obtain further evidence upon the subject, 
 which, together with the testimony given at this inquest, should 
 at the proper time be laid before the prosecuting attorney, who 
 would then use his judgment as to the course to be pursued. 
 
 Altogether, the verdict was as reasonable as such documents 
 commonly are, and no more clumsy than many which are on 
 record. 
 
 Long before the inquest was concluded Jennie had left, and 
 was at Harrington's bedside. He had lain unconscious through 
 nearly the whole afternoon. Once only he opened his eyes, 
 and seeing who it was who held his hand in hers, smiled con- 
 tentedly, and passed again into insensibility. 
 
282 > IEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 During the afternoon Marsh had sat in his office. Having 
 been unable on the preceding day to obtain connection with 
 Harrington over the telephone, he had written him a note of 
 condolence and sympathy, placing his services at his friend's 
 disposal if there was any way in which he could be of use. 
 From the morning papers he had learned of Mrs. Masson's 
 death and of her dying words, which appeared as Wollmer 
 had rendered them. Horace knew that there was a mistake 
 somewhere ; Harrington was incapable of such an action. 
 But he waited anxiously for news from the inquest, which was 
 in progress. When the carrier came into his office and tossed 
 the afternoon paper on his desk, he took it eagerly, and spread 
 it before him to read the report of the inquest. 
 
 The first words which caught his eye were in large black 
 type at the head of a column : " Harrington Hurt. The 
 Captain has a mysterious fall off the Seventh Street viaduct." 
 Reading on, Marsh learned of his friend's accident, not only as 
 it had been reported at the inquest, but in the words in which 
 Superintendent Boon had given Harrington's own account of 
 it in Mr. Holt's office. 
 
 From that he turned to the account of the inquest, which 
 was still unfinished when the paper had gone to press. But 
 he read no further than Wollmer's testimony. "The hound!" 
 he said to himself, between his clinched teeth, " to dare to talk 
 so of such a man as Harrington !" when Harrington himself was 
 lying bruised and mutilated — killed, perhaps — by Wollmer's 
 own lawless followers. 
 
 He looked at his watch. It was half-past five. He was due 
 at Columbus Hall at eight. There would be time enough to 
 drive out to the hospital and back, if he hurried with his din- 
 ner and his dressing. So, sending one of his clerks out for a 
 cab, he hastily put away his papers and left the office. 
 
 Jennie was at Harrington's side when Marsh arrived, and 
 rose quietly to greet him. They had only met once before, 
 but their common interest in the injured man made them 
 friends. 
 
 "He is unconscious?" Horace asked. She nodded. 
 
 " He has only opened his eyes once since I can^e." 
 
 " Do you know what the prospect is ?" 
 
THE INQUEST 283 
 
 " He is very badly hurt — one leg broken and one rib. The 
 doctor does not know if there are any serious internal injuries. 
 If not, he thinks he will get well again." Tears welled from 
 her eyes as she spoke. 
 
 " Do you know how it happened ?" 
 
 "The nurse told me something." 
 
 Horace had the evening paper in the pocket of his overcoat. 
 He took it out, and handed it to her, with his finger on Boon's 
 account of the accident. 
 
 " Have you seen that ?" 
 
 She had not. The nurse had given her the substance of 
 what Harrington had told the superintendent ; with that ex- 
 ception, Jennie knew nothing but what had been contained in 
 the brief announcement at the inquest. She took the paper 
 and moved away from the bed to read it, while Marsh leaned 
 over the injured man and touched his hair caressingly. Hav- 
 ing read the article, Jennie handed back the paper, the tears 
 running down her cheeks. 
 
 " You came here from the inquest ?" Marsh whispered. She 
 nodded. 
 
 "Does he know anything about it — about the suspicions?" 
 
 11 1 think not," she replied. " He was at the house just be- 
 fore this happened, and we did not tell him anything of what 
 mother had said. Unless these men told him something, I don't 
 suppose he knows." 
 
 " All the better," Horace said. " Of course it will be kept 
 from him." 
 
 Before leaving, Horace assured Jennie of his sympathy, and 
 of his desire to be of any service that he could, in words which 
 made her very grateful. Here was at least one friend who as- 
 sumed her lover to be innocent of the crime with which he 
 was charged without stopping to question or to weigh the 
 evidence. Horace explained that he was obliged to leave now, 
 as he had to speak that evening ; but he would return in the 
 morning, and also call at her house to offer his services to her. 
 She thanked him. Mr. Weatherfleld, she said, was very kind 
 in helping them with all the necessary arrangements for her 
 mother's funeral ; but she would let Horace know if he could 
 do anything. 
 
284 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 It was nearly seven o'clock when Horace entered his cab 
 again at the hospital door, telling the driver to go to a restau- 
 rant which lay on the way to his rooms. Here Marsh ate a 
 hasty meal, which could scarcely be dignified with the name 
 of dinner, and hurried home to dress. 
 
 All the way from the hospital his thoughts were of his 
 injured friend and of the double outrage to which he had been 
 subjected — the bodily assault which had brought the physical 
 injuries under which he was suffering, and the greater cruelty 
 of the suspicions which Wollmer had caused to be directed 
 towards him. Horace's heart was filled with indignation 
 against the labor leader and the lawlessness of the men. That 
 afternoon in his office Marsh had signed the petition to the 
 governor of the State, though General Harter had refused to 
 do so, and now, under the spur of these new evidences of the 
 malignancy and blood-thirstiness of Wollmer and his followers, 
 his sense of justice cried shame upon the city government that 
 suffered such things to be. Ugly threats, moreover, were be- 
 ing made by the strikers that the members of other labor or- 
 ganizations would be "called out" — organizations which had 
 no connection either with the steel works or the street-railway 
 company, and whose members had no grievance against their 
 respective employers. The injustice of the tyranny which 
 could compel men who were working peacefully and content- 
 edly to throw up their positions and resign the means of liveli- 
 hood of themselves and their families outraged Marsh's sense 
 of right. A quarrel between a certain number of employes 
 under one employer and that employer might be legitimate ; 
 but when the quarrel was taken up by " sympathy " by other 
 classes of employes, and it became a fight against society, this 
 was at least a conspiracy in restraint of trade, and came meas- 
 urably near to insurrection. 
 
 He hoped that the governor would be compelled to respond 
 to the petition of the citizens. He almost hoped that if the 
 troops were called out their presence would, as the strikers 
 predicted, precipitate open riots, that the lawless element of 
 the city might be taught a lesson which they would not soon 
 forget. 
 
 There might be a superficial inconsistency between these 
 
THE INQUEST 285 
 
 feelings and his public attitude as a champion of the masses. 
 But behind this inconsistency lay truth. As he had told 
 General Harter that morning, the cause of the masses or of 
 labor was not to be advanced by encouraging men to do wrong. 
 
 These thoughts boiled within him as he dressed, and he 
 thanked Heaven that he had not at the outset made the mis- 
 take of professing any sympathy with the strike. He gave 
 little thought now to the speech which he was to make that 
 evening. With experience he had gained courage. Above 
 all, that night at Jackson had taught him that he need have no 
 fear, however ill-prepared he might be, of finding lack of words 
 to express his thoughts when the moment came. His theme, 
 indeed, was usually the same, but each time that he took it up 
 he shaped it into new forms and clothed it in fresh phrases. 
 Some accidental collocation of words in one of his own sen- 
 tences would suggest to his mind new imagery, in presenting 
 which to his audience he found himself led into untried paths 
 which he illuminated as he trod them with illustration and 
 metaphor. 
 
 Columbus Hall was situated but a short distance from the 
 rooms where Marsh and Barry lived, and when Horace was 
 dressed he found that there remained abundance of time. He 
 was on the point of leaving when Barry entered, returning 
 from dining at the club. Marsh asked him if he remembered 
 his promise to call that evening upon Miss Holt. 
 
 " I am going right up there," said Barry. " This is to be a 
 call of state, so I am going early." 
 
 Horace was anxious not to appear selfish, but he implored 
 his friend to remember his errand. 
 
 "If she will not talk to me," he said, "at least make her 
 tell you what is the matter. You may be able to help in 
 some way, and I know you will if you can. I can hardly tell 
 you how much it means to me, old fellow. It seems that 
 everything else in life is so black just now. I doubt if I 
 should keep sane in this condition much longer. Remember 
 that I shall be thinking of you all the evening. No matter 
 what I may be saying to those men, my thoughts are with 
 you and her. I am going to believe that you are succeeding, 
 and I shall talk fifty times better for it." 
 
286 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 " I will succeed if I can," "Barry said ; " but I wish I could 
 be there and hear you talk. I may get in later, in time to hear 
 you perorate." 
 
 Twenty minutes later Marsh was bowing before an audience 
 which filled every seat, above and below, in the great hall. 
 
XXIII 
 
 HORACE PUTS HIMSELF ON RECORD 
 
 Barry had been accustomed of late to inquire for "the 
 ladies " when calling at the Holt mansion. On this occasion 
 he asked with dignity if Miss Holt was at home. Whatever 
 surprise Thomas may have felt at the unusual formula, no evi- 
 dence of it was visible in his imperturbable face as he replied 
 that she was. 
 
 Entering the sitting-room, the visitor found Miss Holt and 
 Miss Willerby only. Neither by word nor manner did he imply 
 that the existence of any third person was of the smallest im- 
 portance to him. 
 
 "Miss Caley is not well," said Miss Holt, as soon as the 
 party was seated ; " she had a headache, and was not able to 
 come down to dinner." 
 
 "I'm sorry," said Barry, in a tone of supreme indifference; 
 " but how are you yourself, Miss Holt ? You were not well 
 the evening before last. Has it all passed?" 
 
 "Oh yes, thank you! It was nothing — only feminine fool- 
 ishness, I suspect," she replied. 
 
 There had, in truth, been no return of the indisposition of 
 that evening. Perhaps the violent counter -irritation of the 
 scene with Blakely had operated favorably upon her system — 
 just as there are cases of apparent authenticity wherein officers 
 have left their beds when seriously ill to lead their troops into 
 battle, and have found themselves at the end of the hard-fought 
 day cured. Thoroughly worn out, moreover, she had slept 
 that night as she had not slept for weeks. Scarcely awaking 
 to drink a cup of tea and eat a piece of toast at breakfast-time, 
 she had slept on dreamlessl} T till noon. It was rest — rest both 
 of mind and body — that she had needed, and the twelve good 
 hours of slumber were excellent medicine. 
 
288 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 Some flowers and a note, short and carefully worded but 
 ardent, were brought to her from Blakely at the luncheon- 
 table. The note did not affect her, and the flowers she handed 
 in the open box to Miss Willerby, with the indifferent com- 
 ment : 
 
 " Pretty, aren't they ?" 
 
 They were pretty — pretty enough to rave over. But when 
 Miss Willerby returned the box, Jessie merely passed it to 
 Thomas, saying : 
 
 " Just put them in water somewhere, please." 
 
 Sitting after luncheon in the drawing-room listlessly, with a 
 book which she was not reading in her lap, she let her thoughts 
 go back over that passionate scene which had occurred in this 
 same room the evening before. It seemed much longer ago; 
 and she looked curiously at the mantel on which they had been 
 leaning and at the lounge. In her present healthier condition 
 she could study the episode critically. What was it, she won- 
 dered, that had brought her to her senses at that moment? 
 W T ith the mood which had preceded the awakening, in which 
 she had permitted so much, she believed, looking back upon 
 it now, that she could honestly tell herself that Blakely's per- 
 sonality had little or nothing to do. If it had been any one 
 else? she asked herself. But there was no one else whom it 
 could conceivably have been; so the question was fruitless. 
 To the extent that he had known so well how to handle him- 
 self so as not to break in upon the spell which held her, to that 
 extent it was he — the individual he — to whom she had yielded. 
 But the spell itself was not of his own weaving, but of her own 
 sickness. If she had not recovered when she did, had he had 
 but a little more time, how far his power would have asserted 
 itself and held her — that was another question. He himself 
 had said : " You would not then have thrown me off so easi- 
 ly." But it was a question which she preferred not to con- 
 sider. 
 
 And what was it that had come to her rescue? Sitting there 
 in the dreamy languor of the silent afternoon and seeming to 
 see again, not without some stirring of her blood, his eyes as 
 he had leaned over her, she knew what it was. Something in 
 those eyes as they met hers had, vaguely through the mist, 
 
HORACE TUTS HIMSELF ON RECORD 289 
 
 recalled to her mind the words of Mrs. Tisserton : " He is like 
 some sort of an evil god ;" and also the words which followed : 
 " I pity the girl who ever finds herself in his power, as many 
 doubtless have done in the past and more will do in the future." 
 It had dawned upon her gradually that she was one of those 
 girls — a girl to be pitied — in his power. And, almost without 
 her own volition, she had put her hand up between their faces 
 and had made him let her rise. 
 
 It was with a comfortable sense of relief and of escape that 
 she sat with all her muscles relaxed and her head thrown back 
 upon the soft cushions of the chair. She was sitting so when 
 Mrs. Tisserton herself was announced. 
 
 " I wanted to come and ask how you were this morning, 
 dear," she said, in her even voice ; " but I had so many mill- 
 ion useless things to do that it was impossible. But how are 
 you ?" 
 
 "Oh, I am really well," Jessie answered. "I was miserable 
 last night, and came dreadfully near creating a scene. But 
 it was nothing, after all ; and I am not sure that I am not dis- 
 appointed. I slept most prosaically last night, and I am per- 
 fectly well — only awfully drowsy," and she raised one of her 
 hands, and let it fall lifelessly again on the arm of the chair to 
 illustrate her heaviness. 
 
 " And how did your escort conduct himself ?" asked Mrs, 
 Tisserton. 
 
 "Oh, about as you would expect him to," Jessie answered. 
 
 " I am sorry to hear that," said the other, dryly, " because 
 under such circumstances I should expect him to behave very 
 badly — about as badly as he could." 
 
 " Well, perhaps he did not behave very well," Jessie said, 
 lightly ; " but then you know you warned me long ago, and I 
 am proof." 
 
 "Yes, I did— and I meant it." 
 
 There was silence for some seconds, during which Jessie 
 could see that her friend was trying to say something which 
 she did not quite know how to approach. So she waited 
 patiently. 
 
 " I really did mean it," Mrs. Tisserton said at last, " and I 
 mean it now. You know me too well to think that I am 
 
 19 
 
200 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 meddling, don't you, Jessie, dear? You know that I love you 
 too well to be really impertinent, even if I seem so?" Jessie 
 smiled and held out her hand, which the other squeezed and 
 went on : " Well, I don't know how to say it, but oh ! Jessie, 
 don't let Mr. Blakely take you in ! Don't, please, let yourself 
 care for him— don't, even a little bit ! I know the type of 
 man so well, Jessie ! I am married, you know — and then my 
 wicked appearance brings them all to me. You will never 
 know as much of men as I do — they will never dare to say the 
 things to you that they do to me ; and until after you are mar- 
 ried you won't know a quarter of what I do. But, please take 
 my word for it, Jessie, don't have anything to do with him. 
 Do you know, darling, that before the reception broke up 
 everybody in that room last night knew that he had taken you 
 home. I heard it a dozen times, and, oh! it made me just 
 burn !" 
 
 Jessie, too, felt herself burning a little, and she said, rather 
 weakly : 
 
 "Do you mean that people talked about us?" 
 
 " Oh, I don't know— not quite that ; but yes ! they weren't 
 exactly nice. It was their manner, you know, more than any- 
 thing that they said." 
 
 Mrs. Tisserton had been speaking with unusual vehemence 
 f or } ier — n ot at all like her ordinarily placid self. It occurred 
 to Jessie that there must be some reason to account for her 
 friend's warmth more than a mere instinctive distrust of 
 Blakely ; she must have some positive knowledge of things to 
 his discredit. 
 
 " Did he ever say or do anything to you f she asked. 
 
 " Oh, he approached me, of course, at first — sounded me, as 
 it were. But that is nothing. Either I was not encouraging 
 enough or he found me too commonplace. At all events, I 
 have not had anything to complain of from him; but" — and 
 she hesitated before proceeding diffidently — " you know that I 
 don't tell tales and carry scandal, don't you, dear? Well, there 
 is a dreadful story going round about him and one of our 
 friends. Jack told me, and says that it's true. I am not 
 going to tell you about it, dear ; but it's horrid. And, oh ! 
 please, Jessie, don't have anything to do with him." 
 
HORACE PUTS HIMSELF ON RECORD 291 
 
 " Do not be afraid, dear ; there is no danger." 
 
 Mrs. Tisserton looked at her doubtfully a minute ; then lean- 
 ing forward and placing her hands on Jessie's knees, she 
 looked into her face. 
 
 "Honestly, darling, there is no danger at all of there ever 
 being anything between you and Marshal Blakely ?" 
 
 " Honestly, there is no danger at all !" and there was a ring 
 in the words which so satisfied Mrs. Tisserton that she got up 
 impulsively from her chair and kissed Jessie warmly twice. 
 
 For the rest of that day Jessie was better and more light- 
 hearted than she had been for a long time, so that Miss Wil- 
 lerby wondered at her gayety. There was still cause enough for 
 anxiety in the aspect of the strike, and the news of the injury 
 to Mrs. Masson touched Jessie deeply. She had met Harring- 
 ton, and of course knew his name well. Of late she had felt 
 most grateful to him for his faithfulness to her father and the 
 company. Jessie wondered whether it would be out of place 
 for her to call on Jennie Masson and tell her of her sympathy. 
 It would probably, she decided, be in better taste to wait for 
 a few days. The next morning came the news of Mrs. Mas- 
 son's death, and in the afternoon the account of the inquest 
 and the report of the calamity which had befallen Harrington. 
 Jessie read the paper with scarcely less indignation than Hor- 
 ace had felt. When her father came home to dinner she ran 
 to him eagerly, and asked if there was any possibility of Har- 
 rington's guilt. 
 
 " None at all, my child," said Mr. Holt, confidently. " It is 
 much more likely that Wollmer did it himself." 
 
 The assault upon Harrington, showing the increasing bold- 
 ness of the strikers, naturally made her more uneasy in regard 
 to her father. He was obliged to go down-town that evening, 
 and Jessie was anxious and nervously restless. It was difficult 
 for her to settle down quietly. 
 
 " I wish there was somewhere to go to-night," she had been 
 saying when Barry was announced. " Why isn't there a thea- 
 tre-party or something — something where one can forget one's 
 self for a while ?" 
 
 With her nervousness and Barry's preoccupation the conver- 
 sation did not flourish. They talked flaccidly of various mat- 
 
292 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 ters — the Bartop reception, the Harrington-Masson complica- 
 tions, and the strike generally ; and all the while Barry was 
 fearful lest other callers should arrive, and wondered how he 
 was to find an opportunity to broach the cause of Marsh. He 
 had taken a seat close to Miss Holt, Miss Willerby being on the 
 farther side of the fireplace. It was not long before that 
 young lady, conscious of the restraint in the conversation and 
 long accustomed to finding herself the superfluous third person 
 at conversations which ought to be tete-a-tete, began to suspect 
 that Barry had something to say to their hostess in private. 
 So, under pretence of going up-stairs " to see how Mary is," 
 she escaped from the room, leaving those two together. As 
 soon as Barry had resumed his seat he nerved himself for a 
 plunge. 
 
 " I have something very particular to talk to you about," he 
 said, in solemn tones. 
 
 "Really? How delightful! I want some excitement to- 
 night." 
 
 " I want to talk about Horace Marsh." 
 
 Her lip curled slightly as she asked : 
 
 "Did he send you here to talk to me ?" 
 
 " Hardly that. He knew I was coming, and implored me 
 to speak to you for him." 
 
 " That was very condescending of him, but a little hard on 
 you and me ; don't you think so ?" 
 
 "No; I think he is a good enough topic of conversation for 
 anybody. What is the matter between you and him ?" 
 
 " He need not have sent you to me to ask that," she said, 
 contemptuously. " Why did he not tell you himself ?" 
 
 " Because he does not know." 
 
 " Because he chooses to pretend not to know," she said. 
 
 " No, you are mistaken," Barry replied, earnestly ; " he 
 really does not know. He knows that you came as near cut- 
 ting him as a lady could in her own house the other evening, 
 and he knows that you do not answer his letters — " 
 
 " I have had only one," she interrupted. 
 
 " Well, his letter, then. But the reason of it all he does not 
 know." 
 
 Miss Holt remained silent, so Barry said again : 
 
HORACE PUTS HIMSELF ON RECORD 293 
 
 " What is the matter? Surely it is nothing so dreadful that 
 it cannot be spoken of?" 
 
 " It is dreadful enough ; but it is ridiculous for him to pre- 
 tend not to know. If I tell you now, it is you I am telling 
 and not him. When a man turns traitor, and, after pretending 
 to be your friend and calling at your house, attacks you bit- 
 terly — not behind your back, but in public speeches, so that it 
 is all published in the papers and the whole town knows of it 
 — what is the use of his pretending to wonder why you no lon- 
 ger like him ? What is the need of explanation !" 
 
 Barry began to think that he saw light. 
 
 " I believe you do Horace Marsh an injustice, Miss Holt." 
 
 "Possibly, according to the views of politicians. Men say 
 things, I believe, in the way of politics and business which they 
 would not dream of saying to each other at the club or in pri- 
 vate life, without either meaning or giving offence. But, for 
 my part, I cannot understand how a man can be one thing on 
 the platform and another at the dinner-table. Perhaps it is 
 only woman's ignorance ; perhaps I am prudish. But the fact 
 remains that I cannot and will not tolerate as a friend and a 
 visitor at this house a man who attacks my father in public and 
 takes part with his enemies." 
 
 " And when did Horace do this ?" asked Barry. 
 
 " I am not keeping a record of his public utterances. I sup- 
 pose that he does it every time that he makes one of his precious 
 speeches — at least, he did it once, and that was enough." 
 
 " I think I can name that one occasion," said Barry. 
 
 " Possibly you can. It was disgraceful enough for any one 
 to remember it." 
 
 " If I am not mistaken," he continued, " the speech you refer 
 to was one that he made at Jackson nearly a month ago — just 
 when the strike was beginning." 
 
 " Perhaps it was. But what does that matter ?" 
 
 " I think you heard of it through the Democratic paper, the 
 World r 
 
 "And what if I did?" 
 
 " Did you ever speak to Mr. Holt about that speech ?" 
 
 Jessie hesitated. "No, I think not. Why should I?" she 
 asked. 
 
294 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 " Did you ever hear that he received a letter from Horace on 
 the subject ?" 
 
 " No ; of course not. Mr. Marsh seems to be fond of writing 
 letters." But even as she spoke her heart was beating violently, 
 and dimly it dawned upon her that possibly there had been a 
 mistake somewhere. 
 
 " Miss Holt," Barry began, slowly, " you are, let me say again, 
 doing Horace Marsh a great injustice. He did deliver a speech 
 at Jackson ; but he never said one word of what was imputed 
 to him." 
 
 " It is very easy to say that now. How can I prove to the 
 contrary ? And how did it get into the paper, then ?" 
 
 "He is not saying that only now. He said it at the time. 
 He was angrier that day when he returned to town and read 
 that article than I have ever«een him, I think, in my life. He 
 told me of it that evening. He wrote to your father that day. 
 He would have written to the paper to contradict it, but he was 
 dissuaded by his partner, General Harter, and other leaders of 
 the Democratic party." 
 
 " Do you expect me to believe all that ? Do you believe it 
 yourself?" But her heart misgave her as she spoke. 
 
 " Certainly I do. Ask your father ; ask General Harter — 
 he would probably tell the truth." 
 
 " And how would such a thing get into the paper at all, I 
 should like to know ?" she asked, defiantly. 
 
 "That was a trick of what is called party journalism. The 
 strike was practically decided upon that day. The Democratic 
 leaders wanted the labor vote, and the Democratic organs pre- 
 pared to bid for the support of the strikers at once, before there 
 was a possibility of the other fellows getting ahead of them. 
 Horace happened to be the only party leader who was making a 
 speech that evening. They took his speech and tacked on to 
 it a lot of stuff as a text on which to preach. Horace, as I have 
 said, was furious when he read it. He was dissuaded from con- 
 tradicting it publicly by the arguments of his friends, who ap- 
 pealed to him not to make a split in the party ranks at such a 
 critical moment. Have you read any of the reports of his later 
 speeches ?" Barry asked. 
 
 " No. That one was enough." 
 
HORACE TUTS HIMSELF ON RECORD 295 
 
 "That is a pity. If you had, you would have known by this 
 time that Horace has never once, in all this campaign, referred 
 to the labor question from the platform." 
 
 " I suppose he thinks that he has expressed himself once, and 
 that is enough. He cannot be accused of not being friendly to 
 the strikers ; there is that speech to prove his friendship. And 
 now he hopes to keep the good-will of the other side — my good- 
 will and my father's — by keeping silent, and in private disown- 
 ing the one thing that he has said. That, I suppose, is clever 
 politics." 
 
 "You are uncharitable, Miss Holt. Such things are not 
 worthy of your lips." 
 
 " And what interest has Mr. Barry in helping him in his de- 
 ception ? Is it his gratitude or mine that you hope to gain ?" 
 She spoke hotly, and knowing that she was wrong. Some- 
 thing within her told her that Barry spoke the truth, and in 
 her anger against herself she spoke blindly and unthinkingly. 
 
 11 Pardon me," said Barry, quietly, " but that is even less 
 worthy of you than the other." 
 
 In the silence which followed an idea occurred to Barry, and 
 he acted upon it at once. 
 
 " Miss Holt," he began, " I am going to make a proposition 
 to you which I should not think of making to a lesser woman. 
 It may sound absurd at first, but I believe your real sense of 
 justice will tell you to act upon it. Horace is speaking to- 
 night at Columbus Hall. I tell you that you have wronged 
 him bitterly. You think you have not. You were wishing, a 
 short time since, that there was somewhere to go this evening. 
 Come and hear him. Come and listen with your own ears to 
 the doctrines which he teaches, and let your own judgment 
 decide for you whether he is a traitor or not. Come !" 
 
 Jessie hesitated. 
 
 " Will there be any women there ?" 
 
 " Oh yes ; plenty. We can stay back near the door some- 
 where, where we shall not be seen. It is now nearly nine 
 o'clock ; we can get there by a quarter past, and he will still 
 have nearly an hour to talk. Come !" 
 
 Again she hesitated. At last she rose hastily from her 
 chair. 
 
296 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 " I will, if Grace will come." 
 
 " I will telephone for a carriage," said Barry, as she left the 
 room to seek Miss Willerby, whom she found, to her astonish- 
 ment, sitting reading peacefully in her own room. 
 
 Twenty minutes later, when the three arrived at the hall, it 
 was so crowded that they had difficulty in obtaining admission. 
 Way was made for the women, however, and two seats at the 
 very back of the hall were surrendered to them by the occu- 
 pants, who stood thereafter with Barry and other men in the 
 aisle. 
 
 Long before she was seated Jessie was already absorbed in 
 what the speaker was saying. At first she had said to herself, 
 " This is not he." There was a strength and a ring to the 
 voice which filled the vast auditorium which she could not 
 reconcile with the subdued accents that she was accustomed to 
 hear from him. He looked of larger frame, too, there in front 
 of the stage alone, and the vigor and manliness of the few gest- 
 ures that he used differed so widely from the quiet movements 
 which he employed in the drawing-room. By degrees, how- 
 ever, the more familiar undertones of the voice reached her, 
 and she settled in her seat breathlessly to listen. 
 
 " I tell you," Marsh was saying, " and not only I, but all the 
 voice of history tells you — all the accumulated evidence of the 
 ages, all the daily experience of each one of you in your walk 
 of life tells you — that there is no other way. Whether it be an 
 individual or a party or a nation, there lies no path to honor 
 but the path which conscience points. There is no man so 
 powerful, not though he be 'born in the porphyry chamber' 
 with ' queens by his cradle,' that he can outrage his conscience 
 and live happy and die in honor. The outward husk of pub- 
 lic honor may be given to him; but nothing can 'save his 
 secret soul from nightly fears ' and the curses and the tears of 
 those whom he has wronged. There is no party, though it be 
 lifted into power by the unanimous voice of a victorious peo- 
 ple, that can hold that people's suffrages if it be untrue to it- 
 self. There is no nation that can do wrong and live. These 
 sound like platitudes," he said, dropping his voice, " and per- 
 haps they are. You hear the same things weekly from the 
 pulpit and daily from the press; you say them to each other 
 
HORACE TUTS HIMSELF ON RECORD 297 
 
 every hour. And how many of you act upon them ? I am 
 speaking now as a politician, not as a clergyman. I do not 
 ask you of your private lives and business morals — those are 
 your affairs. But in affairs political, how many of you will 
 hesitate to gain a party advantage or to help some friendly 
 candidate by tampering with the truth, or playing upon the 
 weaknesses of human nature? Believe me, that when you do 
 that you are doing your party and your friend the unkindest 
 wrong. I have to-night — a thing I seldom do — arraigned the 
 Republican party or some of its leaders for what I take to 
 be the conscious dishonesty of those leaders on certain ques- 
 tions connected with the tariff. I do not do this for the sake 
 of attacking them, of hurting them, or of pulling them down. 
 There is no need of that. The wrong itself injures them far 
 more than anything which we can do or say. The rot within 
 destroys far more surely than the winds without. The ungod- 
 ly never yet digged a pit but they fell into the midst of it 
 themselves. A nation may stand unshaken against the united 
 armies of the world, and crumble by the vice that is within it- 
 self. A party may have recourse to party tricks and may 
 cater to the support of unworthy men, and gain thereby the 
 votes which will win it a given election. It may rise to pow- 
 er more quickly, and it will fall as quickly as it rose. There 
 can be no monopoly of fraud and falsehood, for they are many- 
 sided, and the tricks of one party at one election will be 
 matched by the tricks of the other at the next. But truth is 
 one, and there is no weapon in all the armory of falsehood 
 which can be used against the party which possesses it. The 
 party which rises solely by the use of truth may rise more 
 slowly, but once in power not all the thunders of national ad- 
 versity nor all the lightning of partisan abuse can shake or 
 scathe it." 
 
 Barry, as he stood, glanced from time to time at Miss Holt, 
 and saw that she sat leaning eagerly forward in her chair, lis- 
 tening with parted lips and glowing face to every word that 
 fell from Marsh's lips. 
 
 The speaker had dropped his voice to a conversational tone 
 to tell an anecdote. He did it well, and a laugh ran over the 
 audience. Then he rose to speak in a strain of triumphant 
 
298 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 confidence of the certainty of success which lay before the 
 party — a success which need never end or weaken if the party 
 was but true to itself; and the hall shook to thunderous ap- 
 plause. In closing Marsh made a lofty plea in behalf of the 
 high principles of the Constitution of the United States, the 
 Constitution which, he said, when it was framed, was but an 
 embodiment of an ideal — a hopeless and wild ideal, as it 
 seemed then to all the world but those few patriotic souls who 
 framed it. It was common to believe and say that ideals had 
 no place in politics to-day ; but it was only by virtue of the 
 spark of the divine in it, the high inspiration that lifted it 
 above the level of all other governments of earth, that the 
 United States Constitution had lived. But how far, he asked, 
 had the government, based upon the Constitution, fallen from 
 the first ideal and lost sight of the inspiration which illumined 
 it ? Oh ! for a party which would go before the nation with 
 no platform but the Constitution of the United States, and 
 would live up to the spirit of it ! The party which took this 
 government and placed it once again on those pure principles, 
 and held it there, might live forever. And this was the task 
 which lay before this party now — a task the accomplishment 
 of which would lift the party even above the level of those who 
 first had welded that noble instrument — a task more sure to 
 hold the honor of the ages than any deed which had been done 
 by man. 
 
 He ceased, bowing acknowledgment of the applause. The 
 chairman of the evening advanced to the front of the stage 
 and raised his hand for silence. Before he could begin to 
 speak, a voice issued from under the side gallery, in close prox- 
 imity to the stage. The speaker himself was not visible, 
 though the whole audience turned in his direction ; but his 
 words reached amply to all corners of the hall. " Mr. Chair- 
 man," said the voice, " I should like to ask Mr. Marsh one 
 question, if I may." 
 
 The chairman turned to Horace, who came forward, and by 
 a bow in the direction from which the voice came signified his 
 readiness to answer. 
 
 " I wish," resumed the voice, " to ask you a question which 
 I know will interest everybody here. I have listened to you 
 
HORACE PUTS HIMSELF ON RECORD 299 
 
 to-night and on former occasions with great pleasure. I be- 
 lieve in what you say and admire the way you say it. But 
 neither in the speeches to which I have listened, nor in those 
 of which I have read abstracts in the daily papers, have I 
 known you to express an opinion on a question in which we 
 are all profoundly interested, and which is likely to have great 
 influence upon the party in the coming election. I wish to 
 ask you for your opinion on the merits of the strike now in 
 progress in the city." 
 
 As the voice ceased a murmur ran through the audience, and 
 scattered cries of " Hear !" were heard. Barry glanced at 
 Jessie, and saw her start and her color heighten as she edged 
 herself still farther forward on her seat. All eyes were now on 
 Marsh. He hesitated a moment, and then said : 
 
 "The gentleman is quite right. I never have referred to 
 the strike in any of my public utterances. I have not done so 
 because it seems to me that the subject is entirely irrelevant. 
 The strike is not a party question. It is not a national issue. 
 It is not a State issue. It is a question with which Demo- 
 crat and Republican, as Democrat and Republican, have nothing 
 to do. I am speaking, when I speak in public, as a member 
 of the party, and neither the party, nor I as a member of it, 
 have any concern, publicly, with the difference between these 
 companies and their men." 
 
 " But would you mind telling us," asked the voice, " what 
 your personal opinions are ?" 
 
 " Not in the least " — and Horace spoke very distinctly — " pro- 
 vided that it is clearly understood that I am not speaking for 
 my party, nor as a member of any party ; I represent nobody's 
 opinions on this matter but my own. I speak as a private in- 
 dividual, for whose utterances no party or man outside of my- 
 self is responsible." 
 
 " We understand," said the voice; and a cry came from the 
 back of the hall : " Let us hear." 
 
 " Well," said Marsh, coming nearer to the footlights, "speak- 
 ing for myself and myself alone, I beg to say that I consider 
 that the strikers are wrong ! They were wrong when they 
 struck, and have grown more wrong every day." A murmur 
 of indignation arose from the back of the audience, but it was 
 
300 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 quieted by the shouts of " Sit still !" " Let him speak !" which 
 came from all quarters. " I say," Marsh continued, " that the 
 men in the mass were grievously misled, and that the men 
 who misled them were wickedly to blame." As he spoke the 
 thought of Harrington, lying ill in the hospital, came to him, 
 and he thought of Jessie and her anxiety, and his voice rang 
 clearer as he went on. " I say, moreover, that those men will 
 suffer for it; in what way, I know not — whether by the law 
 or by their own consciences, or by the public contempt which 
 in the end will be visited upon them ; but they will suffer, each 
 man of them, in the measure of all the accumulated suffering 
 which they have brought upon this city and upon the men 
 whom they led astray — in the measure of all the hardships and 
 crimes and cruelties which have been inflicted and perpetrated 
 since the strike began. They will suffer, and they will deserve 
 it!" 
 
 Whether he would have said more is uncertain. At this 
 point the storm which had been gathering at the rear of the 
 hall, where a number of strikers were collected, broke in a hur- 
 ricane of hisses and shrieks and groans. Here and there cheers 
 arose, but they were few, and were completely drowned in the 
 clamor of wrath which seemed to swell louder every second. 
 Amid the din words could now and then be caught : " Scab !" 
 " Scab !" " Kill him !" " Turn him out !" and the like. Jessie 
 clutched the back of the chair before her, deadly white. On 
 the stage Marsh stood unmoved, also very pale, for it was the 
 first time that he had faced a hostile audience, but waiting 
 quietly for the tumult to subside. By his side the chairman 
 was waving for silence. At length the uproar sank sufficiently 
 for the latter to make himself partially audible. 
 
 " Gentlemen," he cried, " please remember that this has 
 nothing to do with the object for which we are assembled !" 
 Gradually the noise decreased until he could be easily heard. 
 " Bear in mind what Mr. Marsh said when he told us that he 
 was not speaking as a politician or a public man or a leader of 
 his party. Many of us — most of us, I think — differ entirely 
 from his private sentiments as just expressed." A burst of 
 applause interrupted him, and it was some minutes before he 
 could continue. " But whether we differ from him or not as 
 
HORACE PUTS HIMSELF ON RECORD 301 
 
 an individual, we are all in hearty accord with what he said 
 when speaking for the party. It is that which I now ask you 
 to bear in mind — the magnificent and patriotic oration to 
 which we have all listened — forgetting entirely his later and 
 personal words, and, in recognition of that oration, I now move 
 that this meeting does by acclamation render to Mr. Horace 
 Marsh its unanimous thanks for the pleasure which he has given 
 us, and the noble way in which he voiced the sentiments and 
 set forth the principles of the united Democratic party !" 
 
 From the rear of the hall came cries, of " No ! no !" but the 
 better instincts of the greater part of the audience responded 
 to the appeal, and, beginning with a scattered cheer here and 
 there, there gradually arose a roar of approval which, if less 
 loud than the former storm of antagonism, was not without 
 enthusiasm. 
 
 Marsh bowed in acknowledgment, but with downcast eyes 
 and a smile upon his lips. As he backed towards the rear of 
 the stage the committee upon the platform rose from their seats, 
 and from among them Sullivan came forward to meet Horace. 
 Laying his hand upon the young man's shoulder, he said : 
 
 " Holy Moses, me lad ! but if it were not that ye can spare 
 the party better than the party can spare ye, it would be readin' 
 yersilf out of the Dimocracy entoirely ye 'Id be by sintiments 
 like them." 
 
 Horace turned to face the Irishman ; looking him in the eyes, 
 and with his color rising, he said, simply : 
 
 " And if the Democratic party wants any other sentiments 
 from me, the Democratic party can go straight to hell !" 
 
 And he turned quickly on his heel and disappeared in the wings. 
 
 Meanwhile the audience was dispersing noisily and amid a 
 sputtering of hisses and groans, which still continued to be 
 heard from various directions. On Barry's suggestion, the 
 ladies waited until the hall was nearly empty before attempt- 
 ing to leave their seats. On the way home Miss Holt said 
 nothing, while Barry and Miss Willerby exchanged common- 
 place remarks across the carriage about the size of the audience 
 and the character of Marsh's voice and style of speaking. 
 
 When they arrived at the house, Miss Holt asked Barry if he 
 would come in. 
 
302 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 11 No, I think not," he said. Waiting until Miss Willerby 
 had passed out of ear-shot, he continued, "And what may I tell 
 him? Shall I say that he may come and call?" 
 
 Jessie hesitated a moment. 
 
 "No; tell him that I will reply to his note, which has re- 
 mained too long unanswered. I will write to him." As she 
 gave Barry her hand she added, " I may not write at once ; 
 he may not hear to-morrow. But he will hear. Good-night!" 
 
 When Barry reached their rooms he found Horace await- 
 ing him. 
 
 " Well ?" said the latter, eagerly. 
 
 " Well ?" Barry replied, with unconcern. 
 
 "Did you see her?" 
 
 " Who ?" 
 
 " Why, Miss Holt, you wretch !" 
 
 " Oh !" — as if he had forgotten — " yes. Oh — yes, I saw her 
 all right !" — and he disappeared into his room to change his 
 coat. 
 
 " Look here," said Marsh, as he came out again, " don't be 
 a mule ! What did she say ?" 
 
 "Well" — and Barry filled his pipe deliberately — "before 
 I say a thing, I want you to promise that you will not ask 
 a single question, but will take just what I choose to give 
 you." 
 
 " I promise. Go ahead !" 
 
 " She said — let me see, what did she say ?" 
 
 " Oh, go ahead !" 
 
 " Well, she said that she would write to you." 
 
 "When?" 
 
 " That's a question. You promised not to ask questions. 
 However, I'll answer it. Perhaps not to-morrow — not at once. 
 But she will write to you. Your note has remained too long 
 unanswered." 
 
 And Barry threw himself on his favorite lounge, and pro- 
 ceeded to smoke in silence. Marsh waited patiently for a while, 
 until he could bear it no longer. Then he came over to where 
 his friend lay, and, kneeling on the floor at his side, said : 
 
 " Tell me one thing more, old man — only one ! Is it well ? 
 Just tell me that." 
 
HORACE PUTS HIMSELF ON RECORD 303 
 
 And Barry puffed at his pipe, and said, sententiously : 
 " It is well." 
 
 As Marsh went back to his seat, the hypocrite on the lounge 
 rolled over and said, deliberately : 
 
 "And now tell me how the meeting went?'' 
 
XXIV 
 
 THE WHIRLIGIG OF TIME 
 
 The influence which had prompted Miss Holt to tell Bar- 
 ry that she might not write to Horace at once was a sud- 
 den and prophetic prompting of a feeling which did not at- 
 tain its full development until the following day. For that 
 night the conflict and turmoil of her emotions forbade any 
 close analysis of her sensations. She knew only that a well- 
 spring of gladness had bubbled up in her heart. It was filled 
 as with music, as of bird-song and of rippling water when 
 winter breaks suddenly — not with happiness itself, but with 
 the hope and promise of the summer days in store. 
 
 Horace had not been the traitor that she had supposed. 
 She had wronged him. He had never spoken the words as- 
 cribed to him. She even strove to assure herself that in her 
 secret heart she had known all the time that he was true. 
 
 So the Horace whom she had believed to be the real Horace 
 had been only a thing of her imagination. Conversely the 
 Horace of her imagining, the ideal Horace, was real. How 
 she had wished — then, when it was impossible — that it might 
 be so ! How gladly, so she said to herself, she would give 
 her trust and — yes, her love — to such a man ! But lo ! here 
 he was ! The prince was at the door. 
 
 And that made a difference. 
 
 To exchange vows with a fairy prince of one's own creation 
 was as easy as telling confidences to the moon. But when 
 Romeo was listening beneath the balcony — 
 
 "I should have been more strange, I must confess, 
 But that thou over-heard'st, ere I was ware, 
 My true love's passion. Therefore, pardon me !" 
 
THE WHIRLIGIG OF TIME 305 
 
 And now — she knew it — this Prince Romeo was sitting 
 fidgeting in his office, only a mile or so away, waiting for the 
 word which she had bound herself to send him. It must be 
 she who must call him to her. The thought was intolerable ! 
 She could never write that letter — never, never! At all 
 events, thank goodness, she had given herself one day's res- 
 pite. So she busied herself with her household duties, and 
 sang as she did them. 
 
 It would have comforted her much could she have known 
 with what discretion Barry had carried her message to the 
 prince. But that she did not know. Doubtless they had 
 discussed it at length ; Barry had put him in possession of 
 all the details of the evening's events — including, she fancied, 
 clothing Barry with a gift of insight which he did not pos- 
 sess, many details which had never escaped from her own 
 breast. They had doubtless talked it over and laughed — yes, 
 positively laughed ! — with the accompaniments of brandy-and- 
 soda and tobacco smoke. Her cheeks burned as she thought 
 of it. 
 
 Meanwhile the world was glad. Even the sun shone, with 
 a last, false gleam of the dying Indian-summer. Miss Holt 
 could not be sad, even in sympathy with Mary Caley's statu- 
 esque desolation. That young lady was bitterly provoked 
 with herself for having gone to bed when Barry was about to 
 call — or, rather, with Barry, for having called when she had 
 retired. He must have known that she had retired. It was 
 evident, at least, that he had been glad not to see her, and 
 did not care a bit about her, or he would have sent some mes- 
 sage. Even Miss Willerby's charitable fib to the effect that 
 he had seemed " awfully distressed " when he had heard that 
 Miss Caley was indisposed was contemptuously received. If 
 he had been so distressed, how had he invited them to go out 
 with him so gayly ? And no doubt he had flirted with one or 
 other — probably both — of them atrociously. They had 
 talked her, Miss Caley, all over ; she knew it. If they had 
 not wanted to talk her over, why had they stolen off in that 
 way, leaving her alone ? Why had they not come and asked 
 her to go with them ? It would not have taken her three 
 minutes to dress, and she would have dearly loved to go. It 
 
306 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 was just what she needed, and would have done her headache 
 worlds of good. Those things always did. Besides, they 
 knew how she longed to hear Mr. Marsh talk and see him 
 sway people. She just adored that kind of thing. 
 
 Altogether she had been abominably ill-used. It had been 
 a conspiracy — a cold, perfidious cabal — between those three 
 from beginning to end. Barry bad probably been waiting on 
 the very door-step when they had smuggled her off to bed, and 
 then they had stolen away. And she stalked rigidly about 
 the house, clutching in her hands a bundle of letters, under- 
 stood to be those of Fred Jones, which she seated herself at 
 intervals in forlorn corners to read ostentatiously and with 
 evident emotion. 
 
 Jessie tried once in a while to pet and console her; but 
 her own heart was too full of her own affairs to admit of 
 maintaining a sustained strain of sympathy. Besides, she was 
 well aware that Miss Caley would " come round " all right if 
 left to herself. 
 
 In the afternoon Mrs. Jessel called for a friendly chat, and 
 Jessie longed to unburden herself on the other's good mother- 
 ly bosom. As it was, Miss Holt was so transparently light- 
 hearted that the kindly Mrs. Jessel was perplexed, and even 
 ventured some remote references to Mr. Blakely. Of all of 
 which Jessie understood the drift thoroughly, but she only 
 laughed elusively, and the older woman was more puzzled 
 than before. It was like conversing with a will-o'-the-wisp. 
 
 Horace that morning took his way to his office, in eager hope 
 that possibly some word from Jessie might have already ar- 
 rived. An hour later he went to the hospital to see Harring- 
 ton, whom he found lying uneasily in his bandages, but con- 
 scious and able to talk. Horace sat with him for an hour, and 
 was glad to learn, by cautious questioning, that the injured 
 man had no knowledge of the suspicion which hung over him. 
 
 Mrs. Masson was to be buried that afternoon, and from the 
 hospital Horace went to the house in Fourth Street. Here, 
 however, he found that Weatherfield had taken everything in 
 hand, and that he could be of little use. So he returned to his 
 office to hope against hope that word would come from Jessie 
 that day. 
 
THE WHIRLIGIG OF TIME 307 
 
 The papers that morning naturally had much to say about 
 the dramatic episode at Columbus Hall. The Republican 
 organs belauded Marsh's courage, and assured him that a 
 cordial welcome was awaiting him within that party whenever 
 he chose to accept it. The World spoke with some bitter- 
 ness of the incident — the bitterness being directed, however, 
 less against Horace, who, the paper was convinced, would soon 
 see cause to regret and change what it could not help regard- 
 ing as the inconsistency of his opinions in the matter of the 
 strike, than against the unknown individual — an emissary, 
 doubtless, of the Republican party — who, by his ill-timed in- 
 quiries, had precipitated the catastrophe. In all other matters 
 Mr.- Marsh, the paper knew, was a good Democrat, and the 
 party could afford to forgive him this one obliquity. 
 
 Marsh had read the editorial lucubrations with mingled 
 amusement and indifference. To the many acquaintances 
 who spoke to him on the street and at his office on the sub- 
 ject he treated it lightly. His partner even had taken the 
 matter more good-humoredly than Marsh anticipated. Per- 
 haps General Harter had spoken to Sullivan, and had imbibed 
 the Irishman's idea that Marsh could spare the party better 
 than the party could spare Marsh. At all events, he talked 
 to Horace in a tolerant, fatherly way, as to a young man who 
 had committed an indiscretion ; but a venial one — one, per- 
 haps, not entirely without some element of credit in it. The 
 General had been in the hall — though declining, as he was 
 Marsh's partner, to occupy a seat upon the platform — and he 
 generously complimented Horace upon what he was pleased 
 to call the dignity of his bearing during those trying minutes. 
 
 Altogether the incident did not seriously worry our friend. 
 It was trivial, everything was trivial, compared to the fact 
 that Jessie was going to write to him — perhaps already had 
 written to him, and the message might even now be on its 
 way to him. He was still waiting for the feet of him who 
 brought the glad tidings when the clerk informed him that 
 " the two Mr. Pawsons " were in the outer office, and wished 
 to see both him and General Harter. By " the two Mr. Paw- 
 sons" Horace knew that Franklin meant the editor, Quintus 
 L. Pawson, and his brother, Marius C. Pawson, the lawyer. 
 
308 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 With the latter Horace was already well acquainted, while 
 the editor he had met but once, and that formally. 
 
 The lawyer entered first — a brusque man of decided move- 
 ments, rather squarely built, with a ruddy complexion, and 
 heavy black eyebrows and side -whiskers. The editor, who 
 followed, was, though the younger, some inches taller than 
 his brother, thinner and paler of face, and with stooping 
 shoulders, telling of years of drudgery at the night desk on 
 a daily newspaper. The same heavy black eyebrows and a 
 certain similarity of the line of the hair as it grew from the 
 forehead gave the two brothers the reputation of resembling 
 each other ; though here, when they stood side by side, they 
 appeared but little alike. 
 
 " You know my brother Quintus, I think, Marsh ?" asked 
 Marius, the lawyer. 
 
 " I have had the pleasure of meeting him only once, I 
 think," said Horace, as he rose to shake hands with his visitors. 
 
 As soon as they were seated the lawyer opened the con- 
 versation, but with evident embarrassment. 
 
 " We have come on a rather remarkable errand, Marsh," 
 he said. "It is really — er — my errand to General Harter. 
 But it happens to be in connection — er — with a matter to 
 which — er — my brother was an accidental witness, so I asked 
 him to accompany me. We want now — er — another witness 
 to be present with us to-day, a witness who is — er — a friend 
 of the General, and who — er — knows him well, as well as be- 
 ing a Democrat. We decided that you were the man that — 
 er — we wanted. Would you — er — mind coming in with us 
 to the General's office, and — er — being present at what may 
 follow ?" 
 
 Marsh was puzzled. There was an air of formality about 
 the proceeding which was in itself sufficient to provoke curi- 
 osity, while the hesitation of the ordinarily fluent, not to say 
 reckless-spoken, lawyer signified that the matter in hand was 
 of something more than common moment. 
 
 " Why, certainly," Horace said, in tones which showed his 
 surprise. " I shall be delighted to be of any use that I can. 
 I ought to be only too glad to be invited into such good 
 company." 
 
THE WHIRLIGIG OF TIME 309 
 
 At the suggestion of the lawyer Pawson, Marsh went into 
 his partner's room, and informed him that the brothers wished 
 to see him. 
 
 " Bring them right in !" said the General. So, returning to 
 the door, Horace signalled to the others to enter, which they 
 did. 
 
 The General was as genial as usual, but it seemed to Hor- 
 ace that the brothers responded but glumly to the cordiality 
 of his greeting, and bore an air of solemnity, as if they were 
 bearers of bad news, and he grew uneasy. 
 
 " Well, gentlemen and brethren," said the General, with a 
 certain magnificent way which he had of making small jokes, 
 and which was very effective with country audiences, " what 
 can I do for you ?" 
 
 The General sat in his revolving-chair at his desk. As he 
 spoke he looked alternately at the lawyer and the editor, who 
 were seated directly in front of him. Marsh had taken a 
 chair beside the big table, some paces farther away, to the 
 General's right. 
 
 "General," began the lawyer Pawson, "I want to ask you 
 a very unusual question. Would you mind answering it ?" 
 
 " Not if I am able to," said the General, affably. 
 
 " Well, I want to know exactly what it was that killed 
 Mrs. Masson ?" 
 
 The question was so absurdly irrelevant, addressed to Gen- 
 eral Harter, that Horace's first impression was that it must 
 be intended for a recondite witticism. A glance at his part- 
 ner's face, however, dispelled that idea, and Horace gazed in 
 amazement. As the lawyer's words reached General Harter's 
 ears it was as if a spectre had suddenly appeared before him. 
 The blood fled from his face, leaving it flaccid and wrinkled. 
 His figure seemed to shrink within itself in his chair. He 
 had grown in a second older by twenty years. When he 
 opened his mouth to speak there came only a strange noise — 
 half sigh and half hiss. The hands which rested on the 
 arms of his chair twitched violently. He moved them and 
 clasped them together in his lap as if trying to keep them 
 still, but they continued to jerk spasmodically, when folded, 
 with a motion like that of St.-Vitus's-dance. 
 
310 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 However irrelevant and absurd the question might seem to 
 Horace, it was evident that to his partner it bore a terrible 
 significance. What was it ? 
 
 Seconds — oppressive seconds — passed before at length the 
 General gathered strength enough to speak. 
 
 " What — what do you mean?" he gasped. 
 
 " I only mean just what I ask," replied Pawson. " How 
 did Mrs. Masson die ? You will have to tell us, General — er 
 — Harrington /" 
 
 The wrong name was used with evident and deliberate in- 
 tention. The emphasis with which the lawyer spoke it could 
 not have been accidental, and Marsh saw, with mingled amaze- 
 ment and horror, his partner bow his face upon his hands. 
 His questioner — or accuser, rather — waited patiently. Sud- 
 denly the General raised his head, and, reaching out his 
 hands appealingly with a gesture which included all his au- 
 ditors, said, vehemently : 
 
 " I did not kill her ! Before God, I swear I did not kill 
 her !" 
 
 " Tell us about it," said the lawyer, quietly. 
 
 " She was angry, and she stepped suddenly towards me," 
 said the General, earnestly. " I do not know whether it was 
 a sudden fit that seized her or whether she tripped. But 
 she fell. She did not say a word, but simply fell backward. 
 Her head struck the mantel. I went to help her up, and I 
 saw the blood trickling over the tiles. And then — then I 
 left the house." His voice broke, and he hid his face once 
 more. Then burst out again : " What could I do ? I might 
 have saved her, perhaps, by calling help at once. But how 
 could I be found there ? What was I doing at her house ? 
 My whole secret would have been discovered." 
 
 It was inexpressibly pathetic to Marsh to see this man 
 whom he had honored bowing his gray head, overwhelmed 
 with grief and shame. That in the brief story which he 
 had just told, not without some dramatic gesture, he spoke 
 the truth, Horace had no doubt. General Harter was not 
 guilty of murder. But what did it all mean? What was 
 this secret? Why had he been at Mrs. Masson's house? 
 And why did Pawson call him " Harrington " ? 
 
THE WHIRLIGIG OF TIME 311 
 
 Pawson meanwhile drew from the inside pocket of his 
 overcoat a large envelope. 
 
 " You may," he said, " wish to know how I came to learn so 
 much. It was quite by accident." Removing the outer en- 
 velope from the package in his hand, he held a small bundle 
 of letters, frayed and discolored, tied up crosswise with a 
 piece of red twine — evidently their older fastening — and 
 again held together with a rubber band, which had presuma- 
 bly been more recently added. 
 
 " « Not to be opened until I am dead ' — signed * Honoria 
 Masson,' " he read from some writing which was on a strip 
 of paper which encircled the bundle. Removing this slip, 
 with the string and the band which enclosed it, he read from 
 a loose half-sheet of note-paper which lay folded on the top 
 of the letters : " ' General William Harter will pay five 
 hundred dollars apiece for these letters.' " 
 
 Marsh looked again at his partner, and saw a tear ooze 
 through the fingers in which his face was hidden. 
 
 " These letters," said the lawyer, " were brought to my 
 office by Mrs. Masson one day some months ago, when it 
 happened that my brother was present. She came to me be- 
 cause I happened to have been the attorney in settling up 
 her last husband's affairs. She told me not to open the 
 package until she was dead. I had no idea what the pack- 
 age contained, and put it away in my vault, scarcely giving 
 it another thought. Once again she came in and undid the 
 package in my presence, and added another letter — this one," 
 touching the top one with his finger — "to those which I now 
 for the first time saw that the bundle contained. I do not 
 think the matter entered my mind again until I read of her 
 death. Last night I took the package home with me to read 
 at night, so as not to waste time during the day. I had 
 very little idea of the surprise that was in store for me." 
 
 The lawyer paused, and, running over the letters with his 
 fingers, selected one which looked very old and worn. " This 
 letter," Pawson continued, as he opened it and read the date- 
 line, " was written nearly twenty years ago. At that time 
 she was a widow — Mrs. Brady. You call her only ' Honoria.' 
 I did not know that you had ever lived in Freehold, New Jer- 
 
312 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 sey, General ; but that is where this letter, as were most of 
 the others, was written. Mrs. Brady lived there also. You 
 sign yourself here ' William Harrington.' There are a dozen 
 or more letters signed that way — all within the space of a 
 few months. Then comes a break of a year, and the next 
 letter is written from Detroit — still to her at Freehold. But 
 you sign yourself " — Pawson had been turning over the 
 papers as he spoke, as if looking for one in particular ; find- 
 ing it, he turned to the signature — " simply ' W. H.' There 
 are three letters from Detroit. I read them all last night. 
 In the last you say that you do not like the place, and are 
 going West. Between that and the next letter," and he 
 opened another, is " a gap of seventeen years. That brings 
 us to less than two years ago, when, of course, you were 
 living here. There are two letters since that one — one writ- 
 ten only six weeks ago, after your nomination for the gov- 
 ernorship, to which you refer in the letter. These last let- 
 ters, like those from Detroit, are signed ' W. H.' " 
 
 Gradually an outline of the facts was dawning upon Marsh. 
 Evidently his partner's name had once been Harrington, and 
 Horace now remembered how little he or any one else knew 
 of the General's early life. Evidently the General and Mrs. 
 Masson had known each other well in the old days, and Hor- 
 ace recollected that in the report of the inquest there had 
 been a mention made in somebody's testimony (was it not 
 Miss Masson's ?) of a picture of Mrs. Masson taken years ago, 
 in which she was shown to have been a beautiful woman. 
 And suddenly, thinking of the inquest, those last words of 
 the dead woman, about which so much had been said and 
 conjectured, came to his mind : " Where is he ? Has Har- 
 rington gone ?" In her last delirious moments her memory 
 had taken up again the name by which she had known him 
 well in the old days. 
 
 " Yes," said the General, rousing himself, as if to face the 
 worst, " the story is all there in those dates and signatures. 
 I am William Harrington. Your friend, Marsh — the one 
 who is now in the hospital — must be some sort of a cousin 
 or nephew of mine. I come from your part of the country, 
 in Massachusetts. That was one of the tbino-s which drew 
 
THE WHIRLIGIG OF TIME 313 
 
 me to you, I think. I have never dared to go back there, 
 not for twenty years, lest some one should recognize me. 
 But I have so often longed to ask you about old people and 
 places there ! I left there when I was eighteen and went to 
 Boston, where I only stayed for three years. For the next 
 five I wandered a good deal, chiefly in New England, and 
 finally drifted to New York, and thence to Freehold. I lived 
 there for nearly four years. It was in my last year that I 
 met Mrs. Brady, and fell in love with her. I trust you will 
 believe, gentlemen, that there was nothing wrong in our rela- 
 tions. There was not. I intended to marry her. We were 
 then both about thirty years of age ; and if I could have 
 afforded it I would have married at once. But I was poor, 
 and had hard times to get along. It was out of my poverty 
 that grew the thing which ruined me. I was honest, or 
 meant to be, but I was in debt, and the debt grew larger 
 every month. My practice was small, and I am by nature 
 incapable of economy. Finally I owed everybody in town 
 money — small amounts. The whole of my obligations did 
 not reach seven hundred dollars. But I saw no way to pay 
 even that ; and I was being dunned — dunned for humiliating 
 sums — until at last I grew wild and — disappeared ! It was a 
 hopeless mistake. I ought to have lived on there, and fouo-ht 
 it through somehow — at least, if I went, I should have gone 
 openly, and with my creditors' consent. But I was inex- 
 perienced in business. I had not the courage to face the 
 music, and I fled — just ran away. I always intended to pay 
 every cent as soon as I had the money ; but I thought if I 
 stopped to tell my creditors so that they would make trouble. 
 So I just left everything and struck West." 
 
 He ceased speaking, and sat drumming on the desk with 
 his fingers, while his mind wandered back over those old, 
 thorny paths. 
 
 " Changing my name," he resumed — " that was another 
 bad mistake. My idea at the time was only to lose my 
 identity for a while until in some way I could make enough 
 to pay my debts and go back to Freehold. But I had hard 
 work to earn a living. In Detroit I failed to get a footing, 
 and wandered on to the Pacific slope, and thence drifted 
 
314 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 back here. Meanwhile I was making acquaintances, and 
 making them under my new name. Then I took to politics. 
 The rubbing against people of all classes and different sec- 
 tions of the country gave me a certain facility in making 
 friends — taught me how to get along in any company in 
 which I found myself. That helped me to come to the 
 front in politics ; but it did not bring me money. I am not 
 over-scrupulous, perhaps, in some ways, and am willing to 
 wink at other men's dishonesty for the party's sake ; but I 
 am afraid that I have always been too honest — or too coward- 
 ly, it may be, when it came to making money for myself — 
 to get rich. Not until the last two or three years could I 
 ever at one time have commanded seven hundred dollars of 
 spare money. I am incapable of living within my means. 
 Moreover, in ten and fifteen and twenty years the conscience 
 rusts. The old debts in Freehold troubled me more rarely 
 as time went on, and there stood always in the way of my 
 paying them some uncertainty how to do it without disclos- 
 ing my identity. I always meant to pay ; but after so many 
 years what especial hurry was there? And how could I put 
 into the hands of my enemies a clew to my past ? Once the 
 debts were paid, there would really have been little enough 
 to be ashamed of. But of a politician in my position, who 
 will believe that he had changed his name and lived for 
 twenty years a life of deception without some good reason ? 
 The discovery would have damned me forever. So time went 
 on, and William Harrington, I believed, was dead forever. 
 Then this woman recognized me. What chance brought her 
 here to live I do not know, but she saw me on the streets and 
 wrote to me. I had changed, it seemed, in appearance less 
 than I had supposed — certainly less than she had, for I 
 should never have recognized her. She wrote to me, and I 
 went to see her. She had kept my letters — for love, she 
 said ; but now she used them only as a means for extorting 
 money. She had me in her power. My election to the gov- 
 ernorship promised me relief. Then I would be able to buy 
 those miserable documents from her, and, as she has written 
 there, I was to do so at the rate of five hundred dollars a let- 
 ter. For ten thousand dollars I was to have them all. I 
 
THE WHIRLIGIG OF TIME 315 
 
 have only seen her to speak to three times since she came to 
 the city — that time when I received her first letter, once 
 again some months ago, and then the other night. I went 
 there to make one last effort to get those things. I have 
 had any number of letters from her — of late very many, and 
 they seemed to me hardly to be the productions of a sane 
 person. I think she was mad that night. There had been 
 hanofincr over me for weeks a constant terror lest in some 
 frenzy she should make the secret public before Election Day. 
 At last the load grew intolerable, and I went to endeavor to 
 persuade her to give me the documents in exchange for notes 
 — notes which I had already arranged with a third party, 
 who was willing to trust me without my telling him for what 
 the notes were needed, to make out in his favor and have 
 him indorse. But she would not listen. She would hardly 
 permit me to talk, but raved with the ravings of a maniac. 
 It was hopeless, I saw, and was about to leave. I was already 
 walking to the door when she took those steps forward — I 
 can see her now with her wrinkled face (to think that that 
 face was the face of Honoria Brady !) and her eyes glowing, 
 her two clinched hands, raised on either side of her head, 
 shaking with her wrath, while her shrill voice rang so loud 
 that it seemed that passers-by on the street must hear. Sud- 
 denly she stopped in the middle of a sentence — I think the 
 intensity of her anger choked her — and she fell." 
 
 When the General finished his story, for a while no one 
 spoke. Marius Pawson began deliberately tying the fatal 
 documents together again with the scrap of red string. He 
 snapped the rubber band around them, and replaced them in 
 their envelope. Then the General, with a new sound of hope 
 in his voice, asked : 
 
 " Can I have them now V 
 
 " I am afraid not," replied the other. " You see that they 
 are part of the estate of the deceased, and were confided to 
 me. She regarded them as a valuable asset ; they are the 
 property of her heirs now. I can only turn them over to her 
 step-daughters." 
 
 :i But now that the secret is known only to you three, and 
 she, the only person to whom it was of importance, is dead ?" 
 
316 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 " That does not matter. It may be that now you would not 
 buy these letters ; it may be that you would. But whether 
 they have any real value or not is not for me to judge. They 
 are in my hands in trust, and I must give them to the heirs. 
 You know that yourself." 
 
 Again there was silence, until Marius Pawson rose, and, 
 clasping his hands behind his back, set himself to pacing up 
 and down the room. 
 
 " You see, General," he said, as he walked, " the trouble is 
 here : This other Harrington, who is in the hospital, is sus- 
 pected of having murdered her. On the evidence now before 
 the public there is a very good chance of his being convicted 
 and hanged. But whether he would be convicted or not is 
 immaterial. The suspicion must be removed from him. The 
 facts must be known. My brother and I have twisted it every 
 way, and there is no way to clear him and do right except by 
 telling the whole story." 
 
 " And my candidacy ?" faltered the General. 
 
 It was the editor who replied to this question. 
 
 " You must withdraw," he said. " There is no other way. 
 As Marius says, we have turned the situation every way, and 
 the facts must come out. The idea of your remaining the can- 
 didate for governor is out of the question. It would kill the 
 party, as well as yourself, forever." 
 
 " And are all these years that I have lived here — all these 
 twenty years, in which I have lived blamelessly among you, 
 and in which I have worked so hard for everything that I have 
 won — are they going to count for nothing ?" 
 
 " They will count for much," replied the editor. 
 
 " Would you have me go elsewhere and start life again — 
 now ?" the General asked, piteously. " Shall I take another 
 name ?" 
 
 " You have done that once," said the editor, " and say your- 
 self that it was a fatal mistake. Stay right here — here, where 
 you have the twenty years of blameless living to your credit. 
 Live it down. You may never be candidate for governor 
 again, but the story will soon be forgotten, and a year from now, 
 though conspicuous public office may be impossible for you, 
 you will find that you are as much respected as you are to-day." 
 
THE WHIRLIGIG OF TIME 317 
 
 " My brother is right," said the elder Pawson. " The frank, 
 straight way is the only one worth taking. Resume your name 
 of Harrington if you will — or comply with the legal formali- 
 ties to make Harter your real name. But let the story be 
 told clearly, and then go on living as you have done. You will 
 find in a few months that you have lifted a terrible weight 
 from your life and from your conscience. You will be hap- 
 pier than you have been for twenty years." 
 
 " The plan that we had outlined," resumed the editor, " is 
 that you should write your resignation at once — to-night, if 
 possible. There are only a few days to election, and justice 
 to the party demands that we should have our new man in the 
 field at once. Justice to this other Harrington is not so ur- 
 gent. While he is in the hospital and ignorant, as I under- 
 stand he is, of the suspicion which hangs over him, the suspi- 
 cion will do no especial harm. But that is a matter for your 
 choice — you can tell your story at once or you can tell it later, 
 after election. When you do tell it, you can place it before 
 the people in such a way as you please. We three in this 
 room are good enough friends to you to keep secret what has 
 passed here to-day. As for the newspapers, I can answer for 
 them — for others besides my own. The press will be generous 
 enough to you when you are no longer an object of partisan 
 hostility. You will be telling the tale from the spontaneous 
 promptings of your own conscience. It need not be said that 
 you were discovered. It was your own innate sense of justice 
 which made you, to save an innocent man, throw away your 
 brilliant prospects, abandon your career, and voluntarily expose 
 the secret of your life to the public eye. It will be almost 
 heroic. You will find that you will get only eulogy for your 
 unselfishness from the press and only praise from your friends. 
 It will show a high sense of honor in you, and, as a private 
 citizen, it will do you good in everybody's estimation." 
 
 The General leaned his head upon his hands and remained 
 sunk in thought. 
 
 " It is bitter," he said, at length — " very bitter. At least, let 
 me have until to-morrow. I am in no frame to write my letter 
 of withdrawal to-night." 
 
 " But to-morrow," said Marius, " it must be. Between now 
 
318 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 and then you can go over the matter in your own mind, and I 
 know you will reach the same conclusion as we have come to. 
 There is no other way." 
 
 The editor rose and buttoned up his coat, standing beside 
 his brother. Marsh also got up. The three stood for a min- 
 ute and looked in pity at the old man with his gray head 
 bent upon his hands. Then the two brothers silently with- 
 drew. Horace advanced and placed his hand upon his part- 
 ner's shoulder. 
 
 " I am sorry, General," he said, softly — " more sorry than I 
 can say. I will help you in any way I can." 
 
 The shoulder on which his hand rested shook with a sud- 
 den convulsive sob. Horace pressed it gently, and, treading 
 stealthily, left the room, closing the door carefully behind 
 him. 
 
 In his own office the brothers were awaiting him, and the 
 three stood and gazed out of the window in silence, as men 
 may who come out of the presence of death. From beyond 
 the closed door the sound of sobbing came to them, and broken 
 groans as of a man in mortal agony. 
 
 " We are obliged to you for coming, Marsh," said the elder 
 Pawson. "It seemed to us both that you were the right 
 man." 
 
 " I suppose I was," Marsh answered, wistfully. 
 
 The brothers prepared to go. With an air of forced 
 gayety, the editor spoke : 
 
 " Well, I am glad to have met you again, Mr. Marsh. It is 
 needless to say that I am familiar enough with your doings 
 and sayings." 
 
 " Yes," Horace said, " and that reminds me that I have a 
 bone to pick with you." 
 
 " Is it a large bone ?" 
 
 " It seemed large at the time," Horace answered. " I made 
 a speech at Jackson a few weeks ago, and you, in your paper, 
 misrepresented me atrociously. Not only was the report of 
 the speech erroneous, but you published a long editorial that 
 was incomparably worse than any inaccuracies in the report — 
 an editorial in which you imputed to me all manner of senti- 
 ments on the subject of the strike, which I not only never 
 
THE WHIRLIGIG OF TIME 319 
 
 expressed, but which were totally different from any which I 
 have ever entertained." Marsh spoke hotly, as the recollec- 
 tion of the wrong revived in him and smarted. " It happens 
 that I was compelled last night to say some things which 
 have put my record straight, I suppose. But it was an un- 
 warrantable thing of you, or the World, to do at the time." 
 
 The editor hesitated for a moment, and then asked, in a 
 curious tone : 
 
 " Do you know who wrote that article ?" 
 
 " I always supposed that you did." 
 
 " General Harter wrote it," said Pawson, very slowly and 
 distinctly. 
 
 « who r 
 
 " I beg his pardon, General Harrington," Pawson replied, 
 calmly. 
 
 " There is some mistake here," said Marsh. " We are speak- 
 ing of different articles. The article that I mean I called to 
 the General's attention when I returned home myself next 
 day, and We had quite a talk about it. He had hardly noticed 
 it before." 
 
 " That is quite interesting," remarked Pawson. 
 
 " The article that I mean," resumed Horace, " was in refer- 
 ence to a speech which I delivered at Jackson on — let me 
 see — the 3d of last month. There was an idiot called Dal- 
 las-^you know him, ' Poker Dallas ' — who was chairman of 
 the meeting. When I had finished he made some remarks, 
 and his remarks did bear upon the strike. In your report 
 you got his remarks and mine mixed, and in your editorial 
 you spoke of the scathing way in which I had denounced 
 the street-railway company — and all manner of trash, which 
 I never said." 
 
 " That's the same article," said Pawson. " General Harter, 
 as he was then, wrote that." 
 
 " You are joking." 
 
 " No, I am not. Ask Sullivan !" 
 
 " Ask whom ?" 
 
 11 Sullivan— Timothy Sullivan— 4 Holy Moses ' Sullivan." 
 
 " Why, I did. I talked it over with Sullivan that same af- 
 ternoon. I discussed the propriety of writing to you about it — " 
 
320 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 " And he stopped you ?" asked Pawson. 
 
 " Yes, he did. Why, he said he would speak to you about 
 it. Didn't he do it ?" 
 
 "Yes. He said that the lad — that was you — didn't like 
 it. You did not mind it for once, when it was necessary for 
 the sake of the party ; but that in future I must be very care- 
 ful to let the public know that you did not speak about the 
 strike. I'll tell you, Mr. Marsh," and the editor sat down to 
 speak, " I had my compunctions at the time. But it was all 
 cut and dried in advance. The strike, you know, was practi- 
 cally decided upon that day, and the party leaders determined 
 that it was to be an issue in the campaign — the issue. The 
 position had to be taken at once. So Dallas was telegraphed 
 to that afternoon, and told what he was to say. That article 
 must have been written before your speech was delivered. 
 The General brought it up to me early in the evening. He 
 came in again with Sullivan about twelve o'clock, and read it 
 over to us aloud from the proof. Sullivan suggested some 
 changes — put in an epithet or two. Can't you recognize 
 Sullivan's epithets ? I can. If there was only one in a column, 
 I could pick it out. Well, as I say, I had scruples at the 
 time, and asked them how you would take it. I did not 
 know you and they did, and when they told me that you 
 would not mind, why, I took their word for it." 
 
 Horace pondered, and he remembered the General's man- 
 ner when Horace had called his attention to the article. He 
 remembered what Sullivan had said, and how plausibly he 
 had argued on the exigencies of the party's welfare. He 
 remembered what the Irishman had told him of his own 
 impressions on reading the article that morning, and how 
 Pawson could not appreciate him — Horace Marsh. 
 
 " I think," Horace said at last, " that this is even more 
 amazing than what has been going on in there," indicating 
 his partner's room. " Sullivan said that you were a blather- 
 ing idiot for having written that." 
 
 " Quite possibly," said Pawson. " Sullivan is, I think, the 
 best liar that we have in the party. He is by all odds the 
 best politician." 
 
XXV 
 
 A TRIP TO THE CEMETERY 
 
 In making the arrangements for Mrs. Masson's funeral, the 
 detail which Weatherfield found most troublesome was the 
 handling of Wollmer. The labor leader was officious to ob- 
 trusiveness. Weatherfield could not well reject bluntly the 
 services of the man who, besides having been the only male 
 inmate of Mrs. Masson's household for many months, had un- 
 deniably been the dead woman's closest friend during the last 
 days of her life. On the other hand, Weatherfield himself dis- 
 liked Wollmer, and Jennie frankly expressed her wish that the 
 labor leader should have no voice in the arrangements. The 
 printer did his best to listen to the other's numerous sugges- 
 tions with patience, and to decline his offers of assistance with- 
 out giving offence. But, with all his slowness to anger, even 
 Weatherfield's forbearance was sorely tried when Wollmer un- 
 folded a project for making the funeral procession an excuse 
 for a public demonstration in behalf of the cause of labor. On 
 this subject words ran high between them. Finally, Wollmer, 
 apparently consenting to abandon his original plan for a grand 
 marshalling of all the allied forces of the strikers on the road 
 to the cemetery, promised to confine the deputation to partici- 
 pate in the ceremony to the officers of the several unions only. 
 With this concession Weatherfield deemed it best to seem con- 
 tent. 
 
 The services at the home on Fourth Street were brief; but 
 while they were in progress a large crowd of idlers assembled 
 in the street, bent on catching a glimpse of the casket contain- 
 ing the body of the woman the manner of whose death had 
 become so notorious. When the cortege started on the long 
 march to the cemetery, which lay in the northwestern part of 
 
322 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 the city, it consisted of five vehicles only in addition to the 
 hearse. The two sisters occupied one carriage, and Weather- 
 field and the minister another, the remaining three containing 
 the officers of the labor organizations. 
 
 In their carriage, over the windows of which the shades were 
 drawn close, the girls sat in silence, each too sadly preoccupied 
 to give thought to anything that might be passing without. 
 From the next carriage Weatherfield looked listlessly at the 
 people standing on the sidewalk to see the funeral pass; but 
 they had gone but a short distance when he saw that which 
 filled him with bitterness against Wollmer. 
 
 A large body of men stood in orderly ranks, drawn up by 
 the sidewalk. They waited with bared heads as the hearse 
 and the carriages containing the mourners passed, and a min- 
 ute later Weatherfield heard the word of command given, and, 
 looking through the small oval window in the back of the car- 
 riage, saw the company falling in to join in the march. A little 
 farther on the same thing was repeated, and again and again at 
 other points along the route. The companies, composed evi- 
 dently of strikers, varied in size from bodies of fifty to those of 
 three hundred or four hundred men. As his carriage turned 
 a corner, still a mile away from the cemetery, Weatherfield, 
 looking backward, could see a solid column of figures stretching 
 almost as far as his eye could reach. 
 
 At the cemetery the girls left their carriage and walked with 
 downcast eyes across the grass to the side of the newly made 
 grave. It was not until, when the coffin had been lowered and 
 the last words said, they turned to go back to the carriage that 
 they became aware of the crowd, numbering over two thousand 
 men, which had followed them. Sidling up to Weatherfield, 
 AVollmer said, in a low voice : 
 
 " I could not help it. I told them not to come." 
 
 But Weatherfield only shut his lips and walked on. 
 
 The men did not return with the carriages to the city. On 
 the contrary, the three last vehicles, which had each held four 
 men on the outward journey, contained now but two apiece, 
 the others having stayed with the strikers at the cemetery. Al- 
 most before the carriages were out of sight, Wollmer's lieuten- 
 ant, Henderson, had mounted one of the small seats which were 
 
A TEIP TO THE CEMETERY 323 
 
 scattered through the cemetery and was addressing the assem- 
 bled throng. Nothing was said inciting directly to acts of vio- 
 lence; nor was there any demonstration which could be called 
 unseemly in those solemn precincts. Rehearsing again the cir- 
 cumstances of Mrs. Masson's death, as the strikers understood 
 them, Henderson paid a tribute in not ill-chosen words to the 
 faithfulness and courage of their dead champion. When weak 
 women, he said, enfeebled with age and with no self-interest 
 nor any motive but their own love of justice to bind them to 
 the cause, could thus face death for its sake, it was not likely 
 that they — strong men whose living and the livelihood of whose 
 families depended on their success — would weaken or prove 
 recreant. In his closing words he spoke bitterly of the tyranny 
 of capital and of the wrongs of labor ; but only in generality, and 
 with a certain soberness and self-restraint. The men listened 
 in silence, and refrained from any applause as he ceased speak- 
 ing. Then, falling again into their ranks, each detachment un- 
 der command of its appointed leader, they started in resolute 
 sullenness on the march towards the city. 
 
 They did not take the same route as they had followed 
 coming out, and which the carriages had again chosen on going 
 home ; but, striking eastward, they came in less than a mile 
 to where the deserted works of the iron -and -steel company 
 stood silent and forbidding. 
 
 As they drew away from the cemetery the sobering influence 
 of the presence of the dead wore off, and the army grew less 
 orderly and more demonstrative. The men shouted and 
 laughed one to another, and bandied jokes with passers-by 
 upon the sidewalks. Flasks and bottles, which had hitherto 
 been concealed in pockets, made their appearance and passed 
 from hand to hand. About half-way to the iron-and- steel 
 company's plant the procession halted in front of a clump of 
 saloons and beer-halls until every man had had something to 
 drink and the flasks and bottles had been replenished. When 
 the works were reached the men howled and shouted curses at 
 the frowning buildings. 
 
 " Pull down the fence !" cried a voice, and immediately a 
 thousand men had left the roadway and were grappling with 
 the gray, weather-stained boards, some five feet high, which 
 
324 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 encircled the iron-and-steel company's property. The barrier 
 swayed and wavered under the weight of the bodies of the 
 men against it. There was a sharp report as it yielded, first at 
 a point near the centre, and a second later, amid the sound of 
 splintering wood and the mingled cheers and hoots of the 
 men, the entire stretch of some two hundred yards of fence 
 lay flat upon the ground. Here and there a post, more deeply 
 rooted than its fellows, stood defiantly alone. Each of these 
 was quickly seized by a dozen men who, swaying their bodies 
 in unison, loosened it in its socket until one after another the 
 last remnants of the fence were pulled up, amid triumphant 
 shoutings, and thrown upon the boards already lying upon the 
 grass. 
 
 For a minute the crowd stood undecided whether to advance 
 upon the works themselves, which stood a hundred feet back 
 from the highway ; but cries of " Fall in !" arose, and slowly the 
 long column reformed itself in the road. At the command to 
 march it moved forward towards the city, but it was no longer 
 a disciplined army advancing in even ranks, but a dishevelled 
 mob, crowding upon itself and filling the road from one side 
 to the other. The effect of the liquor which still circulated 
 freely from man to man was intensified by the excitement of 
 the successful attack upon the fence. It was as the first taste 
 of blood to a wild beast. Many had armed themselves with 
 splinters of the broken boards, to the ends of which they 
 knotted handkerchiefs and waved them aloft. The air was 
 filled with a babel of shouts and cries and laughter, while from 
 various sections of the line voices — perhaps a dozen or a score 
 — rising together, made themselves heard above the din, singing 
 in desultory fashion scraps of marching songs — "John Brown's 
 Body " and " Marching Through Georgia." 
 
 They advanced towards town by the road which Harrington 
 had taken on the day when the strike began. It was not long 
 before an electric car met them. The column parted to make 
 way for it. The engineer, seeing his only chance of safety, 
 put on full speed and dashed at the approaching army at a 
 rate of twenty or twenty-five miles an hour. A roar of wrath 
 arose from two thousand throats, and with the pieces of the 
 fence or whatever they held in their hands the men struck at the 
 
A TRIP TO THE CEMETERY 325 
 
 engineer and the car as it flew past. Cowering back against the 
 door, the engineer escaped serious injury. The conductor had 
 entered the car, and with the solitary passenger within crouched 
 upon the floor, while splinters of glass and wood showered 
 around them. Before the car was clear of the crowd it had not 
 a hand's-breadth of unbroken glass in any of its windows. 
 
 What would happen when the next car was met? Evi- 
 dently the question occurred to some one of cooler head who 
 was leading the column in its progress, for at the next corner 
 the army swung to the right until a street on which there was 
 no railway was reached, and then the course cityward was re- 
 sumed. With every minute the march waxed more disorderly 
 and more clamorous. Whenever a drinking-saloon was reached 
 men, without waiting for order to halt, fell out singly or in 
 small parties, falling in again farther to the rear, wiping their 
 lips or carrying bottles in their hands. The army was now 
 no more than a rabble, advancing with hats and handkerchiefs 
 and empty bottles brandished in the air, and coarse jokes and 
 laughter of hoarse and half-intoxicated voices. At its approach 
 other pedestrians escaped into doorways, and scared faces 
 peered from windows on either hand. The drivers of vehicles 
 stopped when they came in sight of the mob, and, wheeling 
 round, turned up side-streets. And as every one fled before it 
 and made way, the insolent consciousness of its power grew 
 upon the mob. 
 
 Without communication in words, the men knew that posses- 
 sion by right of might was theirs, and that the city was at their 
 mercy. With this knowledge came also the unspoken sense 
 of defiance of the law and of the people. 
 
 Imperceptibly but rapidly their attitude changed towards the 
 individual citizens. Harmless, frightened faces looking from 
 windows saw fists shaken at them. The wooden figures stand- 
 ing at the doors of cigar-stores were seized upon and broken, 
 barbers' poles were pulled down, and occasional show - cases 
 upon the sidewalk were wrecked. When the men entered a 
 saloon it was not to buy, but to plunder. It was no longer a 
 demonstration of strikers against the companies with which 
 they were at war, but a riotous mob beyond the pale of the 
 law, and whose enemy was the public peace. 
 
326 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 As the traveller in Africa crossing a patch of the sensitive- 
 plant sees the gray-green life shrink and recoil from him on 
 every side as if his presence exhaled death, so human life fled 
 at the approach of the mob, leaving it to sweep unresisted 
 along deserted streets. The occasional policeman stood sul- 
 lenly back against the walls of buildings, and looked angrily at 
 the men who jeered and hooted as they went by. 
 
 The first united halt was made at the City Hall, in front of 
 which the crowd massed itself and raised, first, cheers for the 
 mayor and then groans for Sullivan. Word of the coming of 
 the crowd had preceded it, and if any of the city officials were 
 still within the building, for it was late in the afternoon now, 
 they did not show themselves. The faces of clerks appeared 
 now and again at windows, and, being greeted with cries and 
 hisses, vanished. For perhaps a quarter of an hour the men 
 hung about the public building, shouting aimlessly with an 
 undefined expectation that something would happen, until, tir- 
 ing of this, they moved on again towards the strikers' head- 
 quarters. 
 
 Here Wollmer, standing at an open window (the headquar- 
 ters were situated on the first floor above the street), was wait- 
 ing. He signalled for silence, and as the men gathered into 
 a solid mass below he spoke to them, arguing in behalf of 
 peace. 
 
 "We are no lawless rioters," he said, "but peaceful citizens, 
 who have no enemy except the tyrant corporations which are 
 trampling on our rights and destroying our manhood. I im- 
 plore you to keep the peace. If this demonstration ends now 
 it will have served only to show the people our strength. They 
 will respect us for not using that strength, as we might so 
 easily do, for ends of violence ; and with the respect and sym- 
 pathy of the people victory will soon be ours. But we must not 
 give our enemies the chance to say that we are breaking the 
 laws." 
 
 Much more he said, and what he said was good. There was 
 reason enough why he should wish the laws to be observed. 
 But though he spoke vehemently, the audience received his ut- 
 terances with apathy. Inflamed with liquor and their taste 
 of lawlessness, they were in no mood to listen to the voice of 
 
A TRIP TO THE CEMETERY 327 
 
 reason. When Wollmer ceased, another figure arose, standing 
 on a door-step and waving its arms above its head. 
 
 " Let them remember," shrieked the new speaker, " that they 
 shed the first blood ! We have buried her to-day. They mur- 
 dered her, and what may follow is on their heads." 
 
 That was all. But as the voice ceased and the figure stepped 
 down into the crowd again, a roar of approval arose. 
 
 AVollmer had retreated from the window above, and for a 
 while the mob stood irresolute in the gathering dusk. Some, 
 the cooler headed probably, began to make their way through 
 the door and up the stairway to the headquarters rooms. The 
 great mass, however, waited in the street ; but from this mass 
 now parties began to break away. It did not disintegrate 
 into individuals, but parted on the old natural lines of cleavage 
 between the different nationalities. The Poles were the first 
 to leave, led by the man who had spoken after Wollmer. They 
 formed a company of some three hundred strong, and they dis- 
 entangled themselves from the main body of the crowd, with 
 much shouting from one to another of the name of their favor- 
 ite drinking-place as their point of destination. 
 
 Other groups followed them until the army had separated 
 into some eight or ten lesser corps, each formidable enough for 
 mischief in itself, and only a sprinkling of men was left in front 
 of the headquarters. 
 
 An hour or so later Marsh, walking moodily home from his 
 office, brooding upon the strange disclosures of the afternoon, 
 fell in with one of these detachments of the mob. At a cor- 
 ner he found his way suddenly barred by the passage of a 
 body of some three hundred men — a ragged, uninviting regi- 
 ment passing noisily under the electric light, amid the waving 
 of sticks, fence-posts, barber-poles, stray signs stolen from over 
 doorways, and other miscellaneous trophies picked up on the 
 march. Tt was led by a tall man who had twisted a bright 
 red handkerchief around his hat, and who thumped irregularly 
 as he walked a broken drum. Marsh had heard nothing of 
 what had been going on, and was at a loss to understand the 
 demonstration. He stood on the curb for the procession to 
 pass, looking at it in idle curiosity. Some one in the crowd, 
 resenting perhaps the young lawyer's good clothes and appear- 
 
328 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 ance of prosperity, threw a piece of kindling-wood at him, strik- 
 ing hini on tbe shoulder, but without sufficient force to hurt 
 him, while the rest of the mob cheered and hooted. 
 
 Meeting Barry at his rooms, Marsh learned in outline the 
 events of the day. The municipal authorities, it appeared, 
 were at last seriously alarmed at the outlook. The street-rail- 
 way company, after the first collision, which has already been 
 narrated, between a car and the strikers, had stopped the ser- 
 vice all over the city, and had succeeded in getting all cars to 
 the barns before the army had reached the City Hall, at which 
 point they would, under ordinary circumstances, have found 
 cars passing in one direction or the other almost every minute. 
 Barry himself was considerably excited, intending, if occasion 
 arose, to offer his services that evening as a deputy -marshal, 
 or in whatever capacity he could make himself of use. For 
 Marsh, knowing the manner of Mrs. Masson's death, and un- 
 derstanding the absurdity of the strikers' canonization of the 
 dead woman, it was difficult to regard the situation as really 
 serious. But he remembered the old Greek maxim that though 
 revolutions may have deep underlying causes, they are usually 
 precipitated on the most trivial occasions. 
 
 On their way to the club the two friends bought copies of 
 an extra edition of an evening paper, from which, and from the 
 members of the club, they learned how threatening the out- 
 look was. The paper spoke of the city as being already in a 
 state of anarchy and at the mercy of the mob. There had 
 been conferences of the city and county officials, and it was 
 evident that in spite of an effort to use brave language, all alike 
 were seriously apprehensive of what the night might bring 
 forth. A preliminary message had already been sent to the 
 governor of the State by the sheriff, informing him of the sit- 
 uation, and requesting him to issue orders to the militia to 
 hold themselves in readiness, in case the civil authorities proved 
 unable to maintain the peace. The atmosphere of the club 
 was charged with excitement. In the smoking and dining- 
 rooms there was only one topic of conversation. While Marsh 
 and Barry were at dinner a detachment of the mob passed the 
 club-house, and, regarding it as an emblem of the party of 
 wealth and aristocracy, stopped for a minute to hoot and jeer 
 
A TRIP TO THE CEMETERY 329 
 
 at it. It was dark outside, and the blinds were drawn, and, 
 peering under raised corners, the members within could make 
 out but little of what was passing without. It seemed for a 
 time as if the mob proposed to make an assault upon the 
 building; but they presently passed away with shouts and 
 cheers, confining the active expression of their hostility to a 
 bestowal of a dead cat upon the much-scrubbed club door-step. 
 As soon as the crowd had gone a liveried servant picked up 
 the desecrating thing and bore it delicately by the extreme tip 
 of its tail through the hallway, between lines of gazing mem- 
 bers, for disposal somewhere in the rear. 
 
 Marsh took little part in the conversation among the mem- 
 bers. At the dinner -table he suffered Barry to talk uninter- 
 ruptedly, and afterwards, when three or four other men for- 
 gathered with them in the wine-room over the coffee and cio-ars, 
 Horace was absent-minded and silent. He knew so much about 
 Mrs. Masson and Harrington, about events which, daring the 
 next day or two, must have so large a bearing upon the polit- 
 ical situation, which these men did not know, that much of 
 what they said seemed childish and absurd. And he could not 
 enlighten them. Moreover, he was burning with the sense of 
 his own wrongs — of the deception which had been practised 
 upon him, and the way in which he had been used as a tool by 
 his friends and counsellors. Above all, he had not yet heard 
 from Jessie, and he was oppressed with undefined fear of dan- 
 ger which the present outbreak might contain to her and to her 
 father. So he soon withdrew from the convivial circle, and, 
 under pretence of reading a newspaper, seated himself in a 
 corner of the reading-room, and chewed the cud of his thoughts 
 alone. 
 
 Why had she not sent him the promised message, so that he 
 might go to her this evening? And the more he pondered the 
 more uneasy and restless he grew. At length it became intol- 
 erable, and, jumping quickly from his seat, he tossed his unread 
 paper on a table, and walked hastily to the telephone closet, 
 shutting the door carefully behind him. 
 
 "Hello! No. 914, please." 
 
 " Hello ! Is that Mr. Holt's residence ? ... Is Miss Holt at 
 home? . . . Would you ask her if Mr. Horace Marsh can have 
 
330 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 the pleasure of speaking to her for a minute at the tele- 
 phone?" 
 
 As he waited his heart beat so loudly that the receiver which 
 he held to his ear vibrated to it. He wondered whether he 
 could hear her voice when she spoke. But as soon as the clear 
 accent came to him his heart was still. It seemed as if all the 
 world was hushed and silent while somewhere from far away, as 
 if it came over endless stretches of level land and evening mist, 
 came this fairy voice. Only the one word — " Hello I" — but he 
 felt his left hand involuntarily grip the receiver tightly, and for 
 a moment his head swam. He had not considered what he 
 would say to her in the headlong impetuosity of his action. 
 
 "Hello! How do you do, Miss Holt? . . . This is Mr. 
 Marsh. ... I had understood- — or, rather, hoped — that I 
 might have a message from you." 
 
 "Yes. I had intended writing to you to-night," and over 
 the telephone Horace could hear that there was hesitation and 
 diffidence in the voice which spoke ; and it gave him courage. 
 
 " But how can I wait ?" he asked. " The message would 
 have been to tell me that I might call and see you, would it 
 not?" 
 
 " Perhaps." 
 
 "Then may I not call to-night? Let this do instead of a 
 written message. Let me call to-night ?" 
 
 There was a long pause before she answered. 
 
 " Yes, certainly, if you wish." 
 
 " I do wish very much." 
 
 " Well, we shall be very pleased to see you. Miss Willerby 
 is here, but Miss Caley is not very well. Miss Willerby and I 
 will be very glad to see you." 
 
 Horace longed to ask her to say that she would be even 
 more glad than Miss Willerby ; but he dared not frame the 
 words. 
 
 "In, say, three-quarters of an hour from now, then ?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Very well, and many, many thanks ! Good-bye till then." 
 
 It was done ! He would see her again ! He came out of 
 the little closet into the blazing light of the club hallway with 
 his face aglow and every fibre of his being tingling. He 
 
A TRIP TO THE CEMETERY 331 
 
 clinched his hands and hardened his muscles, and could have 
 shrieked aloud in triumph. Under pretext of lighting a cigar, 
 he stopped to let the boisterous tumult in his veins subside be- 
 fore lie rejoined the party in the wine-room. Then he plunged 
 into the conversation, laughing and bubbling with anecdote 
 and comment. It was another man from the morose being 
 who had left that same table half an hour before so silently and 
 moodily. It was as if he had drunk heavily — drunk of an 
 elixir of intoxication and joy. 
 
XXVI 
 
 MY FRIENDS THE ENEMY 
 
 Half an hour later Marsh was in a cab, on his way to her 
 house. In the neighborhood of the strikers' headquarters the 
 street was so crowded that the driver was compelled to turn 
 aside and go by by-ways. At another corner Marsh caught, 
 in passing, a glimpse of a black mass of moving figures block- 
 ing the road, and he heard their shouts and laughter above the 
 rattling of the cab. But he felt no ill-will towards the men. 
 What did it affect him ? Was he not going to her? 
 
 Suddenly from somewhere far away came the dull roar of 
 an explosion. From which direction the sound reached him it 
 was impossible to say. He wondered, indifferently, what it 
 might be — an explosion of gas, probably, or perhaps it was 
 only some blasting going on somewhere. It did not matter. 
 He was going to her. 
 
 As the cab struck into the avenue on which Mr. Holt's resi- 
 dence was situated, two men crossed the street in the darkness 
 under the horse's very nose, running in the same direction as 
 he was travelling. Passing the Carrington house, Horace saw 
 a knot of figures, men and women, coming down the drive- 
 way. Reaching the sidewalk, they too turned northward. At 
 the next corner another figure appeared, running. Others 
 could now be seen on either side of the street, all going the 
 same way. 
 
 At first Horace was interested and perplexed. Then per- 
 plexity gave way to uneasiness, and uneasiness grew to sicken- 
 ing fear. Could it have been at her house that the explosion 
 had occurred? Was it possible that the strikers would do 
 such a thing? 
 
 Looking anxiously ahead, he could see that the number of 
 
MY FKIENDS THE ENEMY 333 
 
 people on the sidewalks increased as he approached his desti- 
 nation. Was there not a dark mass as of a crowd of people 
 there, about where the house stood? Before the horse had 
 stopped, Horace had thrown open the door of the hansom 
 and jumped to the ground. The crowd was not large in front 
 of the house, but round on the south side of the building he 
 could see that the lawn was covered with people. He pushed 
 his way, as with authority, through the throng, and ran up the 
 steps. Thomas stood in the doorway to bar the way to chance 
 comers, but moved aside for Horace. 
 
 " Is any one hurt, Thomas?" Horace asked, breathlessly. 
 
 "No, sir; Mr. Holt had just stepped out of his study when 
 the explosion occurred. It wrecked his desk, and the whole 
 room is in ruins." 
 
 "And Miss Holt?" 
 
 " She is well, sir." 
 
 " What was it — dynamite ?" 
 
 " We think so, sir." 
 
 Horace pushed on into the house. The air within was full 
 of a white dust, through which the lights shone as in a dense 
 smoke. The atmosphere was chill and damp, with a cloistral 
 smell as of moist earth. In the centre of the broad hall a 
 mass of white plaster lay upon the dark rugs, where it had 
 fallen from the ceiling. Upon Marsh's right hand as he en- 
 tered was the drawing-room, and next to that the less formal 
 family sitting-room. Mr. Holt's study was situated in the rear 
 of this last apartment. But all was blackness there. As he 
 approached, Marsh could see that in place of the study door- 
 way gaped a ragged chasm in the wall, and beyond — there 
 seemed to be no room at all. An indistinguishable pile of 
 broken furniture and debris lay upon what had been the floor, 
 and behind that was nothing but the night. The outer wall 
 of the study was completely gone, and in its place was only 
 the open air, with the lights of the adjoining house shining 
 through the darkness. 
 
 From behind a closed door somewhere Mr. Holt's voice 
 could be heard as he spoke at the telephone. Horace, peer- 
 ing through the broken wall into the night, was startled by a 
 sudden sob at his back, and, turning, saw two figures — Miss 
 
334 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 Caley, barefooted and in a night-robe, with a shawl thrown over 
 her shoulders, sobbing with her face buried in her hands, being 
 led gently by Miss Willerby, who had one arm passed round 
 the other's waist. Miss Willerby saw Horace and nodded in 
 friendlywise as she helped her charge to the staircase, and 
 the two figures ascended slowly. 
 
 Marsh retraced his steps towards the hall-door, looking now 
 into the rooms on the other side — into the dining-room first, 
 where gas-jets burned dimly, but which was empty, and then 
 into the library. Here he found her. She was standing by 
 the fireplace in a favorite attitude of hers, with a foot on the 
 fender and her forehead bowed upon the hand which rested 
 on the mantel. 
 
 "Miss Holt!" 
 
 At his voice she raised her face and looked at him. She 
 was very pale, and her eyes shone intensely black and brill- 
 iant. As he came towards her she drew back. Then stand- 
 ing erect to face him, and throwing out her two hands rigidly 
 with the palms upward, she said, in a strange, tense voice, as 
 between her clinched teeth : 
 
 " See what your friends have done !" 
 
 " My friends !" 
 
 Horace stopped and looked at her in amazement ; and as he 
 saw how pale she was and how large and dark were her eyes, 
 the amazement gave way to pity and great tenderness. And 
 as he met and held her gaze he saw the hardness and defiance 
 melt out of her eyes, and in its place came an appealing, help- 
 less look that was all womanly. For some seconds she steeled 
 herself to face him, until came the moment when her nerves 
 would obey her will no longer, and, as instantaneously as the 
 snapping of a violin string, her whole body broke and yielded ; 
 and, with a quick catching of her breath, she sank with her face 
 in her hands into a chair. Immediately he was on his knees 
 at her side. 
 
 " Miss Holt ! Jessie !" 
 
 But she only sobbed. 
 
 "Jessie, my darling!" 
 
 And slowly moving one hand from her face with one of his, 
 and placing the other beneath her chin and gently raising her 
 
MY FRIENDS THE ENEMY 335 
 
 face, he kissed her. And as if at last she had found the rest- 
 ing-place for which, without knowing it, she had longed through 
 all the weeks of wretchedness, she let her head rest upon his 
 shoulder and gave way to her tears. 
 
 But the door of the apartment was open, and any one of the 
 people who were moving in the hall might step into the room 
 and see them. So, tenderly pushing her from him, he said, 
 laughingly : 
 
 11 1 think they must have been my friends, after all." 
 
 She looked at him as she sat up and smiled through her 
 tears — smiled, as it seemed to him, in happiness— and gave him 
 her two hands to take. He held them, and raised each in turn 
 lightly to his lips before rising from his knees. 
 
 "Imust see if I can be of any use," he said. "You stay 
 here." 
 
 In the hall he met Mr. Holt, seemingly as self-controlled as 
 
 ever. 
 
 " It is an absurd time for congratulations, Mr. Holt," Horace 
 said, as he shook hands ; " but I understand that you had a 
 narrow escape." 
 
 "Yes, luck was on my side," replied the other. 
 
 At that moment, from the rear of the house, amid a confused 
 noise of slamming doors and hurrying feet, arose a frightened 
 cry of " Fire !" Stepping back towards the study, the two men 
 saw a thin, yellow flame flickering up from the pile of wreck- 
 age. A man-servant hurried from the dining-room with a 
 pitcher of ice -water in his hands, and dashed the contents on 
 the blaze. Apparently it was extinguished, but only for a min- 
 ute ; and again it appeared, rather stronger than before. Other 
 servants came with buckets and pitchers, which were emptied 
 one after another upon the flames, which again smouldered 
 down and seemed to die out for good. 
 
 "The fire department will be here in a minute," said Mr. 
 Holt. "I have already telephoned for them on the chance. 
 They are good people to have around at such times." 
 
 Even as he was speaking the angry clangor of the gong of 
 an approaching engine was heard outside, and the house shook 
 to the sound of the heavy wheels. Close upon the first engine 
 came another, and immediately it seemed as if they were arriv- 
 
336 M EN BORN EQUAL 
 
 ing from all sides at once. The shouts of authority were heard 
 without auiid the panting of the engines and the din of gongs 
 and trampling horses, and within the hall was filled with hatted 
 and belted men tramping heavily in their large boots as they 
 dragged the long, snake-like line of hose behind them from the 
 front door back to the ruined study. 
 
 There is no martial law, no dictatorship or despotism, so 
 complete as the authority of the fire department when it takes 
 possession of a threatened building. In their rugged, silent 
 presence, so intent are they on the work which lies before them 
 — the work which is the supreme work of the moment — the 
 ordinary man, in the cowardly costume of common life, feels 
 himself grow suddenly impotent. His mere existence becomes 
 an impertinence. Horace, conscious of his uselessness, turned 
 again to seek Miss Holt. She was standing in the doorway of 
 the library, and he could not resist taking her hands once more 
 for just an instant. As their hands met she smiled with a smile 
 which awoke in him an irrational longing to roll upon the floor 
 at her feet. 
 
 " There is no danger, is there ?" she asked. 
 
 " None at all, I fancy." 
 
 " Do you know where the girls are ?" 
 
 " I saw Miss Willerby taking Miss Caley up-stairs when I 
 first came in. Probably Miss Caley is dressing." 
 
 " What a dear, good girl Grace is," said Jessie. " She is a 
 thousand times braver than I." 
 
 " She has not had a thousandth part of what you have had 
 to bear," said Horace. 
 
 Seeing the chief of the fire department passing in the hall, 
 Horace signalled to him. 
 
 " Is there any danger of fire ?" 
 
 " None at all, Mr. Marsh." 
 
 " Any reason why the ladies up-stairs should be told to get 
 their things together, and prepare to escape?" 
 
 " None at all. See that thieves don't get their jewels, that 
 is all." And the chief shouldered his way out into the night. 
 
 As Horace turned to Jessie again Marshall Blakely entered, 
 apparently the only man not a fireman or a member of the po- 
 lice-force whom the watchful Thomas had allowed to pass into 
 
MY FRIENDS THE ENEMY 337 
 
 the house since Marsh had arrived. Horace, in his new happi- 
 ness, felt forgiveness in his heart, and greeted Blakely cordial- 
 ly ; but Jessie met him with a formal bow. Perhaps there 
 was that in Horace's manner or a something in the atmosphere 
 which told Blakelyof his defeat; for he seemed unwontedly ill 
 at ease. 
 
 " I am so delighted to hear that no one is hurt," he said to 
 Miss Holt. " But can I be of any sort of service ?" 
 
 " I know of nothing, thank you," said Jessie. "The police- 
 men and firemen seem to have taken everything into their 
 hands." 
 
 " As they ought to do. But you are not going to stay here 
 to-night ? Can I do anything in the way of going to the hotel 
 and arranging for quarters for you ?" 
 
 " No, thank you. I have not spoken to my father yet, and I 
 don't know what he will do." 
 
 "Am I allowed to go back and see the damage?" he asked. 
 
 " I think so, if you can get through the firemen." 
 
 So Blakely bowed, seeming glad to get away, and passed on 
 along the hall. 
 
 " Come and sit down, and tell me about it," said Horace, as 
 soon as the other had gone. 
 
 "There is nothing to tell," she said, as soon as they were 
 seated on a sofa which was out of range of eyesight from the 
 door. " I was sitting looking at the fire, and perhaps — only 
 perhaps, mind ! — wondering if it were not nearly time for you 
 to arrive, and what I should say to you when you did come. 
 Grace was at the piano. Mary was up-stairs. Father came into 
 the room to ask a question about Wilson's wife, who has been 
 ill, and was just going back to his study when the thing hap- 
 pened. It threw father against the door-post, but did not hurt 
 him. There was a smashing of glass, and the house shook so 
 that things fell off the mantel-piece, and some of the pictures 
 dropped from the walls. The noise was dreadful, but not as 
 loud, I think, as I should have expected, and it was slow. For 
 a moment I thought the whole house was coming down, and 
 for a minute afterwards we could hear things falling and break- 
 ing everywhere. Then we heard Mary screaming, and thought 
 she was hurt ; but it was only fright. We have no idea how it 
 22 
 
338 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 was done; probably they crept up to the house from outside 
 and placed a bomb or something on the ledge of the study win- 
 dow. Just think if father had not happened to come out just 
 at that moment !" And her voice broke as she added, " But 
 it did not only ' happen.' " 
 
 Horace raised her hand to his lips. 
 
 " I heard the noise in my cab on the way up, and wondered 
 what it was. To think of my not guessing ! I supposed it was 
 the gas-works or something." 
 
 Miss Willerby came in. 
 
 " How do you do ?" she said, shaking hands with Horace. " I 
 had not time to speak to you before." And by the light in her 
 eyes and the clasp of her hand Horace saw that, by some mys- 
 terious process of feminine divination, she had guessed what had 
 passed. And when she leaned over to kiss Miss Holt, Jessie 
 also knew that she understood. 
 
 " Where is Mary ?" Miss Holt inquired. 
 
 " She is talking to Mr. Barry in the drawing-room." 
 
 " Is Barry here ?" asked Horace. 
 
 "He just arrived as we came down-stairs." 
 
 "Have you seen father?" Jessie asked. 
 
 "Yes; he is in the dining-room with some men — reporters, 
 I suppose." And she leaned over Jessie again with a caress 
 which bespoke congratulations, and, with another glad smile to 
 Horace, turned to leave the room. As she did so Barry thrust 
 his head into the doorway, and, without formality of greeting, 
 called : 
 
 " Do you people know that the steel-works are burning ?" 
 
 Miss Willerby hurried to one of the windows facing north, 
 followed by Miss Holt and Horace. A dull red glare was visi- 
 ble in the sky in the direction in which the works lay, but the 
 trees and buildings shut out the view. 
 
 " Let us go to the third story," suggested Jessie ; " from the 
 balcony there we can see." 
 
 The three started together and made their way through the 
 hall, stepping over hose and skirting piles of fallen plaster, while 
 the firemen stood back to let them pass. At the dining-room 
 door Jessie stopped and called to Mr. Holt, who was seated at 
 the table with three other men. 
 
MY FRIENDS THE ENEMY 339 
 
 "Do you know the steel -works are on fire, father?" she 
 asked. 
 
 " Yes, dear. But we cannot help by going there." 
 
 The three hastened on. 
 
 " I feel somehow as if I ought to be able to do something," 
 Horace said to Jessie. " But what can I do ? Anyway," he 
 added, in a low tone, " I am too happy to care much whether 
 I do my duty or not." 
 
 On the second floor Miss Willerby turned into her bed- 
 room. 
 
 " You go on," she said ; " I will join you in a minute," and 
 Horace blessed her in his heart. 
 
 The third floor was in darkness except for one light burning 
 in the hall. Jessie led the way across the hard, polished floor 
 of the dancing-room to where a wide French window opened on 
 a small balcony. Horace fumbled for the fastening, and finally 
 succeeded in pushing the window open. Stepping out, they 
 could see how completely the flames had fastened upon the 
 great buildings. Of the main shop itself the roof had appar- 
 ently already fallen in, and the walls, very black against the yel- 
 low background, contained nothing but one huge furnace, from 
 which the flames licked high into the heavens. Other of the 
 buildings were burning either at one side or from the roof. The 
 whole quarter of the sky was lit up to a brilliant orange fading 
 to crimson at the horizon, while black scarves and wreaths of 
 smoke rolled upward and drifted away northward before the 
 breeze. Now and again falling rafters or the ruin of a wall 
 would for a moment smother the raging fire, and the smoke 
 rose in denser columns. But an instant later — as if it were 
 some huge beast which devoured whatever was thrown to it, 
 and only raged for food the more fiercely it was fed — the flame 
 leaped again, and seemed to throw off masses of itself, which 
 floated for an instant detached in the air. 
 
 At this distance of about a mile the roar of the conflagra- 
 tion came to them like the muffled thunder of a heavy water- 
 fall. The light fell upon their faces and tipped the half-bare 
 branches of the trees with crimson, and flashed upon the walls 
 and roofs of neighboring houses. 
 
 Jessie drew a long breath. 
 
840 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 " It is terrible," she said ; " but, oh, it is grand !" 
 
 " It is wicked — wicked — wicked !" said Horace. 
 
 They stood side by side and watched in silence. Then 
 Horace turned his face to her, and found that with the glow 
 of the flames on the high forehead and the rounded cheeks 
 she was pleasant to look upon. Presently under his gaze she 
 turned her eyes to his. 
 
 " Tell me," he said, faltering ; " down-stairs, just now, you 
 meant everything, did you not ? You have given yourself to 
 me?" 
 
 She did not answer, but in her eyes he read that which em- 
 boldened him to take her hands in his and draw her to him, 
 and, holding her closely, to kiss her again. 
 
 " My darling!" he murmured; "and to think that only yes- 
 terday — Do you know what I have lived through during 
 these last few weeks ? Have you any idea of the blackness of 
 life ?" 
 
 " I am sorry," she said, " and I have wanted you, too. I 
 misunderstood — and yet my heart did not believe it. I know 
 now that my heart never could have believed such things of you. 
 I knew it last night, at the meeting, the instant I heard your 
 voice — " 
 
 " At what meeting ?" 
 
 " Why, at Columbus Hall. Did not Mr. Barry tell you we 
 were there ?" 
 
 "No. You heard me speak last night? You were in the 
 hall ? And he— The wretch !" 
 
 "Don't call him names. He persuaded me to go; and if I 
 had not gone and heard you, we should not be here to-night 
 together." 
 
 " He is not a wretch ; he is a god ! And I too," he added, 
 after a pause, " am' a god to-night. If I was mortal this happi- 
 ness would kill me." 
 
 " ' She raised a mortal to the skies, 
 He drew an angel down.' 
 
 Pardon me. I must talk nonsense." As he pondered, the 
 full sense of Barry's duplicity came to him. " If you could 
 have heard that villain — I mean that god — asking me ques- 
 
MY FRIENDS THE ENEMY 341 
 
 tions about the meeting, and the simple, childish interest which 
 he showed in my account of it, and the way he affected to dis- 
 believe — ! He deserves to be smothered — with kindness, bless 
 him !" 
 
 Meanwhile in the distance a fierce fight was raging. The 
 great shop was still but a huge devil's caldron of. flames which 
 did not seem to abate. Where a -smaller building on the 
 south had been burning when they first came out was now 
 only blackness, the firemen evidently having mastered the fire 
 at that point ; but from another building beyond the machine- 
 shop, and only partly visible behind it, a sheet of flame was 
 rising which was a conflagration in itself. Against the yellow 
 the watchers could see the dark lines of the streams of water 
 playing; and the uncertain volume of the blaze and the in- 
 termingling eddies of steam and smoke told how hard a fight 
 was being waged. Then, as they looked, the whole of one 
 wall of the great machine-shop fell inward, the roar and crash 
 of the catastrophe reaching their ears long after the wall had 
 gone. At first it seemed that the flames had been overwhelmed 
 in the avalanche, and only a dull red swirl of luminous smoke 
 filled the space where the blaze had been. But, first at one 
 end and then from the centre, the fire leaped up again, angrier 
 only and hungrier than before. 
 
 " It is wicked — wicked — wicked !" said Horace. 
 
 They were still watching when Miss Willerby stepped from 
 the darkness behind out to the balcony. 
 
 "There is a little girl down-stairs, Jessie," she said, "who 
 wants to see you." 
 
 " What kind of a little girl ?" 
 
 " A very little girl — thin and old-looking. She will not give 
 her name, but insists on seeing Miss Holt." 
 
 Jessie, followed by the other two, went down-stairs. 
 
 " She is in the library," said Miss Willerby. 
 
 The party entered that room, and there, standing very stiff- 
 ly in the middle of the floor, as if seeking to place herself as 
 far from every article of furniture as possible, stood Lizzie 
 Silling. 
 
 " Why, Lizzie," Jessie exclaimed, " how do you do ?" 
 
 " Quite well, thank you," said Lizzie. 
 
342 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 Jessie settled herself in a chair and drew the child to her. 
 " And how is your mother ?" 
 
 " She's quite well. She got Mrs. Balderson's washing yes- 
 terday. She's been try in' to get it for a year." 
 
 " I'm glad to hear that." 
 
 Miss Holt waited for Lizzie to explain her sudden appear- 
 ance, but Lizzie kept silence. 
 
 " Did you want to tell me something?" Miss Holt asked at last. 
 
 " Yes," the child replied, simply, looking first at Miss Wil- 
 lerby and then at Horace. 
 
 " Do not mind these two," said Jessie. " These are my two 
 best friends in all the world, next to my father." As she said 
 it she looked at Horace, who felt his heart leap; and Miss 
 Willerby discreetly kept her eyes on Lizzie and smiled. "This 
 is Miss Willerby and this is Mr. Marsh," continued Miss Holt, 
 introducing them. " This is Lizzie Silling." 
 
 " I wanted to tell you something," Lizzie began, hesitat- 
 ingly — " I wanted to tell you what they was goin' to do to- 
 night, but I come as fast as I could. I couldn't come no 
 quicker." 
 
 " What do you mean ?" Jessie asked. " How did you know 
 what they were going to do ?" 
 
 " I heard 'em talkin'," said the child. 
 
 " Whom did you hear talking, and when ?" 
 
 " To-night. Bart and another man. I was sittin' on the 
 bottom step goin' up to our place, inside the door, an' it was 
 all dark; and Bart and him come in from the street an' stood 
 inside the passage, an' I heard 'em talk. They didn't see me." 
 
 " What did they say?" 
 
 " They said as Bony said as it would go off about half-past 
 eight. Bart was tellin' the other fellow, an' it was near half- 
 past eight then." 
 
 " Who is Bart ?" 
 
 " He's an Italian what keeps a fruit-stand." 
 
 " And Bony ?" 
 
 " He's another Italian. He used to work for the steel com- 
 pany, an' was fired 'cos he got drunk. He's a tough, Bony is. 
 So's Bart. It was Bony as come nigh killin' Dutch Sam' cos 
 Sam sassed 'im. Oh, he's bad." 
 
MY FRIENDS THE ENEMY 343 
 
 " What did Bart say Bony told him ?" 
 
 The child pondered a minute. 
 
 " He said as Bony said it would go off about half-past eight, 
 when Mr. Holt was in his room writin'. He said as Bony said 
 as there was enough of it to kill the whole family." 
 
 "And what did you do?" 
 
 " Jest sat still. I waited till they'd gone, an' that was quite 
 r while. They was waitin' fer it to go off, but they got tired. 
 An' soon as they went I come here. But it's quite a ways, an' 
 I couldn't get here no sooner. I hadn't hardly started before 
 I heard it go off." 
 
 "Did you walk all the way ?" 
 
 " No, I run." 
 
 " You good girl ! But now I want you to tell this all over 
 to somebody else." 
 
 " Not to the police ?" 
 
 " No ; to my father now, but perhaps to the police, too. Why 
 not?" 
 
 " 'Cos I'm scared." 
 
 " Oh no, you are not," said Jessie ; " and if I want you to, 
 I know you will." 
 
 " I will go and find Mr. Holt," said Horace. 
 
 He found him still in the dining-room in consultation with 
 the chief of police and a detective. The reporters had gone. 
 Horace drew Mr. Holt aside, and told him the situation briefly. 
 
 " If you will excuse me a minute, gentlemen," Mr. Holt said, 
 addressing the other two. " I learn from Mr. Marsh that there 
 is somebody waiting to see me whose evidence may be of value 
 to us. If you will wait here, I will be back in a few minutes." 
 
 Lizzie told her story again to Mr. Holt, and yet a third time 
 in the presence of Chief Winley and the detective, more diffi- 
 dently, but none the less producing, under their skilful ques- 
 tioning, many queer odds and ends of information of greater or 
 less collateral value. It was nearly midnight before the police- 
 men said that she could go home, and Jessie asked her how she 
 would go. The child looked puzzled. 
 
 " How will you get home? Will you walk and go alone?" 
 
 "Yes," said Lizzie, wonderingly ; "mother ain't here." 
 
 " But you can't walk all that way alone at night." 
 
344 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 Evidently the child was bewildered. 
 
 " Let me take her home in a cab," suggested Horace. 
 
 "I guess not," was all she said. 
 
 "Better just let her go," said the detective. "She is used 
 to it, and it would never do for any one to be seen with her. 
 They 'Id kill her." 
 
 So Jessie reluctantly let the little one go off into the dark- 
 ness alone, with three long miles of walk ahead of her. She 
 kissed her many times and sent messages to her mother, all of 
 which the girl received with perfect stolidity, and then slipped 
 sideways out of the front door and down the steps into the 
 night, and was swallowed up. 
 
 " And I suppose that I must go," said Horace, as he and Jes- 
 sie stood side by side on the door-step. " You will be safe here 
 now ; but I do not any the less hate to leave you. 
 
 " And I may call again to-morrow afternoon ?" he asked, after 
 a pause. 
 
 "If you wish." 
 
 " And to-morrow evening ?" 
 
 "If you wish." 
 
 " And may I see Mr. Holt to-morrow evening and tell him ?" 
 
 " If you wish." 
 
 " And do you know that I am the most insanely happy man 
 in America to-night?" he said. "And I ought to be. It isn't 
 only a lover's prejudice. I honestly believe that you are the 
 sweetest, truest, dearest, loveliest, best girl living. I know you 
 are. And you are to be mine — mine — my wife ! Oh, my dar- 
 ling!" 
 
XXVII 
 
 UNSTABLE AS WATER 
 
 That night the city lay under a reign of terror. At a 
 dozen different points fire broke out, but, with the exception 
 of the destruction of the steel-works, with little serious dam- 
 age. The street-railway company had massed men enough 
 around its barns and power-houses to protect them, and the 
 strikers, having all the city for their prey, made no attempt 
 to carry any of those buildings by storm. But the windows 
 of the company's offices were wrecked, and through the town 
 the drunken mobs roamed unresisted, plundering and rifling 
 where they would. 
 
 In the gray of the morning special trains arrived, bringing 
 companies of militia from various points, and the local com- 
 panies, assembling at their armories, marched through the 
 streets in the dawning light. Early risers after the uneasy 
 night heard the level words of command and the regular 
 tramp of marching feet, and peered from beneath their win- 
 dow-shades to see the blue uniforms go by. 
 
 Horace, returning to his rooms, sat down to write to her. 
 Barry, arriving an hour later, found him still writing. But 
 Barry appeared downcast and uncommunicative, and retired. 
 And Horace still wrote. He had nothing to say but the one 
 same thing, and he said it again and again — told how he had 
 known for months that only in one way could his life ever be 
 happy, and how unutterably bitter the world had been for the 
 last few weeks. He tried to put into the words with which 
 he told her of his happiness something of the fervor and tri- 
 umph of the swirl that was in his veins ; and in page after 
 page he told her of her own goodness and how good God was 
 to him. And when he had written far into the morning he 
 
346 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 rose and sank into his favorite arm-chair and lit his pipe. 
 More than once during the night the howls and laughter of 
 the mobs in the street reached his ears, and before he went to 
 bed he heard the roll of drums, and the air without was light. 
 
 It was late when he reached his office. The door to his 
 partner's room was closed, and in his happiness Horace's 
 heart ached for the grief and the shame that lay beyond it. 
 Work was out of the question, and he sat and gazed, dreaming, 
 out of the window. 
 
 His dreams were interrupted by the opening of his partner's 
 door. Horace swung round in his chair and prepared to rise, 
 but instead of the General it was Sullivan who issued from the 
 adjoining room, closing the door carefully behind him. 
 
 " Whist !" said he, in a low voice ; " but it's a sad and amaz- 
 in' pecurious situation ; and not the least part of the sadness 
 is that we'll be losin' yersilf from the party, me lad." 
 
 The sight of the Irishman brought back to Horace's mind 
 the recollection of the trick that had been played upon him- 
 self. He rose, and, facing the other, said, very calmly : 
 
 " I think so. It is not so much the party that is at fault 
 as some of the blackguards who lead it and lie to it." He 
 paused for a moment, and continued : 
 
 " Did it ever occur to you, Mr. Sullivan, that in the long- 
 run falsehood and trickery and blackguardism are sure to lose 
 you more friends than they will make ? Did it never occur 
 to you — setting the ethical question aside — that it might pay 
 you to try and be a gentleman ?" 
 
 Sullivan stood patiently and heard him through. 
 
 " Aisy, me lad," said he, when Horace ceased; "there are 
 not many men as could talk to Tim Sullivan that ways, an' I 
 think ye'll be afther doin' me the coortesy to believe that if I 
 don't resent it, it isn't because I'm afraid of ye. It's because 
 I like the nerve of ye, me young bantam, an' because ye're in 
 the right." 
 
 The Irishman seated himself deliberately. 
 
 " Sit down, me lad," he said, and Horace obeyed. Sulli- 
 van placed a hand upon his knee. " I like the nerve of ye, I 
 says, and I like yersilf. Ye'll lave the party, av coorse, an' 
 maybe ye'll jine the inimy for a while. But ye can't stay 
 
UNSTABLE AS WATER 347 
 
 with thim, for ye'll find they're as rotten as us. Thin maybe 
 ye'll jine a new party that's yet to be formed — an' formed it 
 will be ; but whatever party ye goes to, me lad, ye'll be a 
 leader of it, an' ye've got a great career ahead of ye. Ye'll go 
 straight, that I know. An' the man who goes straight goes 
 far." 
 
 Horace's lips curled, and the Irishman saw it. 
 
 " I know what ye're thinkin' to yersilf — that Tim Sullivan's 
 a quare man to be preachin' ! An' maybe he is, an' maybe he 
 isn't. We learn more by our mistakes than by our successes, 
 an' it may be that Tim Sullivan knows better what he has missed 
 than the wurrld gives him credit for. Ye think I'm a success? 
 So I am. I have made me way. But do ye think I never lie 
 awake o' nights thinkin' what I might have been ? I bad me 
 choice, to go right or wrong — to take the long road or the short 
 one. An' I went wrong. I was young then, and didn't know 
 what I know now — that I had success in me — an', looked at 
 frontways, the long road seemed the short one. It's different 
 looked at from behind. It isn't brains that makes a man govern 
 men, nor education, nor money — it's the man of him." Horace 
 was still silent, and again the other went on. " I had the man 
 in me, but I took the wrong road. Ye've taken the right one. 
 Had I chosen as ye have when I was yer age, I'd be handlin' 
 the national government at Washington to-day as aisy as I play 
 with the City Hall. An' ye can have the career that I missed 
 an' more — ye can git what I couldn't have touched. Ye'll pass 
 maybe from one party to another, but ye'll never be in the same 
 party as me. We'll be agin one anither to the end hereafter; 
 but mind this, me lad, ye'll rise, an' I honor ye, an' — barrin' poli- 
 tics — if ye iver need a friend in life, Tim Sullivan's always where 
 ye can find him." 
 
 The Irishman had risen and buttoned his coat. Marsh too 
 stood up, and the two faced each other in silence. Then, by a 
 sudden impulse, Horace held out his hand, and the other took it 
 with a grip that made Horace's fingers crack ; then turned upon 
 his heel and rolled ponderously away. 
 
 " The man of him " — the Irishman was nearly right ; nor 
 was Horace sure that the Irishman's estimate of his poten- 
 tialities was exaggerated. It was a new side of him which 
 
348 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 Horace had just seen — a side which was probably exhibited to 
 few. 
 
 As for Horace himself — yes, he must leave the party. He had 
 already recognized it without definitely formulating the fact to 
 himself. It was the end of a dream which had been very bright ; 
 the crumbling of castles that he had loved to live in. But not 
 the end of the dream, perhaps. The material that he had been 
 working with, and believed to be good and clean, was worth- 
 less. The smooth clay under his fingers had turned to dust and 
 refuse. But was there not good clay somewhere ? Amphora 
 coepit institui — and not so much as a wretched pitcher had 
 come of it. But would the shapely vase never be turned ? 
 Somewhere, though it slumbered deep, the American people 
 must have a conscience. Somehow it could — and would — be 
 touched. They did not understand as yet ; they did not see. 
 They were too busy with other things. But if there is one les- 
 son which is writ large in the history of the nation it is that 
 when once the people are awakened and see and understand, 
 they will have right. Had all the manhood and truth left the 
 race in the course of one generation ? Under the lash of the 
 labor union, had the working-classes indeed become but this 
 mob of rioting, drunken fools whom Wollmer juggled with ? 
 Had the iron of the ward machine so eaten into the soul of all 
 classes that the whole people were no more than these puppets 
 that Sullivan made to dance ? It could not be. When the 
 trumpet had called before, the nation had answered. And 
 somewhere the same stern fibre was in the people — the people 
 whose fathers and great-grandfathers had followed Washington 
 and Grant. 
 
 Meanwhile, Horace had yet two speeches to make, according 
 to the programme of the campaign ; and he took his pen and 
 wrote to the chairman of the committee, expressing his regret 
 that he would be unable to fill the engagements. He wrote 
 briefly, assigning no reason for his failure, and was addressing 
 the envelope when there reached him from his partner's room 
 a sound which made his pulse stand still. 
 
 Springing from his chair, he hurried to the door communi- 
 cating between the rooms. Franklin, in the outer office, had 
 heard the sound also, and wa9 close at Horace's shoulder. Hor- 
 
UNSTABLE AS WATER 349 
 
 ace knocked, but no answer came. He pushed open the door 
 and entered. The shades of the three windows had been low- 
 ered, and through the serai-opaque fabric the light came thick 
 and yellow. The form of the General, seated at his desk, stood 
 out in profile silhouette against the nearest window. He was 
 leaning back in his chair with his head sunk upon his breast 
 and his arms hanging listlessly on either side, as if he had fallen 
 asleep at his work. 
 
 "General!" Horace called, and hurried to his side. But 
 there was no response. Close by the fingers of the right hand, 
 where it had slipped upon the floor, lay a pistol. From the 
 closed lips of the drooping head blood oozed, clotting the 
 tufted beard and trickling across the white expanse of shirt- 
 front. 
 
 " Call Dr. Lawton and notify the police," Horace said, and 
 Franklin left the room. 
 
 Marsh took his partner's wrist to feel the pulse, but he 
 could not find it. He shifted his fingers and held his breath, 
 and still there was no throb. Again and again he tried, but 
 not a flutter or beat of life was there. Horace gently let the 
 arm down to hang as it had done before. He raised the head 
 slightly, and tucked his handkerchief beneath the chin. 
 
 Poor gray head ! Horace looked down upon it, and thought 
 that he might have known that this would happen. The man 
 who, twenty-five years ago, had lacked courage to face his petty 
 creditors in the small New Jersey town could not have stood 
 against the larger shame which threatened him to-day. It was 
 " the man of him " that was wanting. "Unstable as water, thou 
 shalt not excel." But Horace knew the kindness of his heart 
 and loved him. Weak he had been — too weak to bear the bur- 
 den of his own mistakes — too weak to resist being moulded by 
 stronger fingers to whatever form of good or ill they pleased. 
 But to Horace he had been all gentleness and consideration. 
 In the matter of the newspaper article Horace knew that it 
 was not his partner who had planned and done the wrong. 
 In everything else the dead man had been to his young part- 
 ner lovable and full of kindly thought ; and Horace felt that 
 many a stronger and even better man could have been more 
 easily spared. 
 
350 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 On the General's desk lay a sheet of paper on which there 
 was writing. It was signed with the General's name, and 
 Horace leaned over and glanced at it. It was addressed to 
 "The Democratic State Central Committee and the Members 
 of the Democratic Party" — a brief and dignified letter, an- 
 nouncing his withdrawal from the candidacy for the governor- 
 ship of the State. 
 
 Franklin re-entered the room. 
 
 " Did you get the doctor ?" Horace asked. The other nodded. 
 
 " Is he dead?" he whispered. 
 
 Horace bowed his head. 
 
 In a few minutes the doctor arrived. Death, he said, had 
 been practically instantaneous. The General had placed the 
 muzzle of the pistol in his mouth, and the bullet had passed 
 upward into the brain. 
 
 An officer of the police-force came, but there was no need 
 of an inquest, and the doctor called the undertaker over the 
 telephone. 
 
 " Had General Harter any relatives ?" asked the policeman. 
 
 " None in the city, I believe," Horace said. " But he may 
 have some at his home in Massachusetts. It would be best to 
 communicate with the chief of police there, and I will tele- 
 graph to my father, who lives there too. But " — and Horace 
 hesitated — "the General's name was not Harter." He had 
 drawn the officer aside, and spoke in a low voice. " It is not 
 generally known, and I only learned it yesterday. Please say 
 nothing about it until the proper announcement has been made 
 by Mr. Pawson, the attorney. It will probably be made to- 
 day. Meanwhile treat my information as confidential, to be 
 used only in your telegram to the Massachusetts police. His 
 name was Harrington — William Harrington. He was born at 
 Lowell, and lived there till he was twenty. Then he moved to 
 Boston, to New York, and then to Freehold, New Jersey, where 
 he lived for some years — until he came West. Perhaps with 
 this information you can find his relatives. It is possible that 
 there may be further clews among his papers ; but I doubt it, 
 for he had buried his old life deep. The only person in these 
 parts who knew anything of his past is dead — died a week 
 
UNSTABLE AS WATER 351 
 
 Over the telephone Horace told Pawson what had happened, 
 and made an appointment to meet at the other's office at once 
 and decide on the right course to be taken in regard to the 
 public announcement which would have to be made. 
 
 The undertaker came and bore the body away. Horace 
 wrote a short note to Jessie, telling her of the calamity, and 
 saving that he might be later than he had hoped to be in see- 
 ing her that afternoon. Then he repaired to the office of the 
 firm of Pawson & Burt. 
 
 There was not need of much deliberation. To Pawson, the 
 attorney, was intrusted the work of preparing a formal state- 
 ment of the facts, which would be given to the press for pub- 
 lication on the following morning, Horace charging himself 
 with the office of breaking the news to Jennie Masson and her 
 sister. Calling a cab, he drove at once to the house in Fourth 
 Street, but learned that the sisters were both away from home, 
 the elder being at the hospital. This was well; for Horace 
 had intended to see Harrington, and it would be better if the 
 story could be told to the two together. 
 
 Twenty minutes later he was at the hospital, where Jennie 
 was sitting by her lover's bedside. The patient was doing well, 
 and the doctor had promised that he should be about again in 
 six or seven weeks. Harrington greeted his friend cordially, 
 and Horace took a chair on the opposite side of the bed to that 
 on which Jennie was sitting, and began at once to tell his story. 
 
 He told of his partner's death, and the other two expressed 
 their sympathy. Then with difficulty Horace narrated the 
 events of the preceding day. When he mentioned the dead 
 man's real name, Jennie started as if to speak ; but she checked 
 herself, remembering that Charlie as yet knew nothing of the 
 mention of the name of Harrington in the woman's dying- 
 words, or of the suspicion which it had brought upon himself. 
 But Horace saw that her eyes danced with gladness, and tears, 
 which he knew were tears of joy, stole down her cheeks. Har- 
 rington lay and listened in silence until, turning suddenly to 
 Jennie, he said : 
 
 " That's what she used to mean by ' the other Harrington 
 fellow.' How queer! You remember, don't you?" 
 
 And Jennie pressed his hand for an answer. 
 
352 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 Then Horace went on to tell of where the General and Mrs. 
 Masson had first met, and gave the details of the General's life 
 as he himself had told them — how he, too, had lived in Low- 
 ell in his early days, and how he drifted away and wandered 
 till he reached Freehold. 
 
 " Freehold !" gasped Harrington, quickly. " Why, it can't 
 be — but it must ! He was my uncle Will ! I have heard my 
 father speak of him fifty times. I remember seeing him as a 
 child. He was my father's youngest brother. Pie wandered 
 off to make his fortune, and the family lost all track of him 
 at Freehold. My uncle Will !" 
 
 The others listened in silence. 
 
 "Will you telegraph to my father?" he said to Marsh. 
 " Tell him the facts, and ask if the body shall be sent home. 
 They will probably wish it." 
 
 " And how amazingly small the world is," he continued, 
 turning to Jennie, " or how wonderfully Providence works. 
 My father's brother and your father's wife — you and I ! But 
 we shall be luckier and happier than they. They are dead 
 now, but — well, I think I am stronger than he was, and I know 
 you are better than she." 
 
 Horace soon left them to send the telegram to his friend's 
 father, and then, it being now after two o'clock, stopped to take 
 some lunch. His meal finished, he repaired again to Pawson's 
 office, and found that the attorney had already drafted the state- 
 ment for the press. The two went over it together, and Hor- 
 ace found nothing to criticise. Between them they added a 
 paragraph containing the news of the dead man's relationship 
 to the victim of the strikers — a detail of collateral evidence 
 which completed the identification of the deceased. 
 
 " As for the moral to be drawn from it and the exoneration 
 of the younger Harrington," Pawson said, " we need not trouble 
 ourselves. I have seen my brother, and he will take this article 
 up to Mallitt, of the Republican, himself, and talk it over with 
 him, so that Mallitt will get the situation in all its bearings. 
 My brother, I think, is at work on his article now. But what 
 a preposterous outcome it is ! This woman whom the strik- 
 ers have canonized — this martyr to their cause — died only of 
 her own passion for greed, because she would not forfeit the 
 
UNSTABLE AS WATER 353 
 
 chance of blackmailing a man whom she professed to have 
 loved !" 
 
 " It is about as near the truth as some of our ideals come," 
 said Horace. 
 
 " Have you heard," asked Horace, later, " whether there has 
 been any collision yet between the troops and the strikers ? I 
 have been too busy to think of it." 
 
 "I belie^e not. The strikers seem to have disappeared. 
 Whether they have made up their mind to keep out of the way 
 of the troops, or whether they are only sleeping off their liquor, 
 I don't know. I suspect that it is the latter, and that there 
 will be trouble to-night." 
 
 At his office an hour later Horace found a message from the 
 elder Harrington, asking that the body of his brother be sent on 
 to Lowell for burial. He enclosed the telegram in a note to 
 Harrington at the hospital, and sent word to the undertaker. 
 Then at last he found himself free to go to Jessie. Reporters 
 of the afternoon papers, he was informed, had been looking for 
 him all day; but he was glad to have escaped them, and again 
 entering a cab, he started to drive to Mr. Holt's residence. 
 
 He was still a mile from his destination when he saw the 
 familiar, square-set figure of Judge Jessel. Bidding the driver 
 draw up to the sidewalk, Horace asked the judge whither he 
 was bound, and learning that his goal was the same as his own, 
 made room for him in the cab. 
 
 Judge Jessel had already learned of General Harter's death, 
 and he expressed his condolences. Horace received them in 
 silence. 
 
 "But the greater part of the news," he said, "you have yet 
 to hear. I cannot tell it, but you will learn it from the papers 
 in the morning." 
 
 " That's one of the meanest things I know," said the judge — 
 " to hint at a story and withhold it. I would say it was fem- 
 ininely mean, if it was not that I should insult Mrs. Jessel by 
 suo-tfesting that she could do such a thing. She is almost the 
 only woman I know who does not. But I am not sure that 
 the authority of this court would not extend to making you 
 divulge." 
 
 They talked for a while of the outrage against Mr. Holt, and 
 
 23 
 
354 MEN BOKX EQUAL 
 
 Horace felt that there was other and yet greater news that he 
 longed to tell. 
 
 At last the judge broached the subject of politics. 
 
 "Have you thought at all," said he, "of what we were talk- 
 ing of at the club the other day ? Has the course of the strike 
 made any impression on you ?" 
 
 " Some, perhaps," Horace answered, reluctantly ; "but other 
 things have made more. I shall probably vote with you next 
 week — at least, I shall not vote with the Democrats and Popu- 
 lists." 
 
 " That is good ; then you must vote with us. We are not 
 Republicans this year; we are only against the other fellows. 
 And if you will not help them, then you must help us. Not 
 voting at all would be helping them." 
 
 " You may be right, but I am not quite certain yet." And 
 the judge thought it better to let the subject drop. 
 
 Outside the house, as they arrived, Horace and the judge 
 found policemen stationed at each gate, to keep away the idlers 
 and the impertinent, who thronged the sidewalks and the street. 
 On the south side, where the explosion had occurred, masons 
 were at work. Before entering, the two friends walked round 
 to the scene of the wreck, and here, in the daylight, even though 
 the debris had been removed, the terrific violence of the shock 
 was seen. The outer wall, from side to side of the study, was 
 entirely gone, and a broad crack ran irregularly upward to sev- 
 eral feet above the level of the lower story, where it connected 
 with the window of the floor above. Downward, however, the 
 chief force of the explosive had expended itself. The floor of 
 the study was not, except in a few ragged ends of projecting 
 and splintered boards. The outer wall had been shattered down 
 to the level of the lawn, and for a space of many feet the gravel- 
 walk and the grass beyond were torn up. The floor of the 
 study had been some four feet above the level of the land out- 
 side, and through a jagged hole, ten feet across, the basement 
 beneath was laid bare. Here, fortunately, the basement was no 
 more than unoccupied cellarage, for the kitchen and laundry 
 lay on the north side of the house, beneath the dining-room and 
 library. 
 
 Within the house other callers were assembled. Mrs. Tisser- 
 
UNSTABLE AS WATER 355 
 
 ton was there and Mrs. Flail, with others whom Horace knew 
 but slightly or was little interested in. Every one who had 
 the excuse of a calling acquaintance with Miss Holt had been 
 that day, either to express their real anxiety or gratify their 
 curiosity. 
 
 Jessie's greeting to Horace was very sweet, and the softest 
 sympathy was in her eyes as she spoke of his partner's death. 
 She thanked him charmingly for the flowers which he had sent 
 her that morning with his note, written the night before, and 
 which were enthroned, as of old, in the great Rookwood vase — 
 except one large red blossom, which Jessie wore upon her breast. 
 
 In the pause which succeeded the greetings, Mrs. Tisserton, 
 leaning back in her chair, spoke in that evenly distinct voice of 
 hers, and with a certain frank directness of expression which 
 she had and which people who did not like her said came very 
 near at times to being impertinent. 
 
 " Do tell us, Mr. Marsh, about General Harter," she said. 
 " It is so difficult to speak about dead people in the presence 
 of their relations or friends. One never knows whether they 
 reallv liked the deceased or not, and it is so absurd to gush, 
 when you don't in the least mean it, to people who know 
 you don't mean it, and have to gush themselves because it is 
 the seemly thing to do. Please give us the key-note, and tell 
 us how to pitch our condolences. Did you really care for 
 General Harter?" 
 
 " I cared for him very much," said Horace, gently. " We 
 worked together in politics, as you know, and as a partner 
 and a friend he had my deep affection and regard." 
 
 Jessie glanced at him gratefully, and Judge Jessel relieved 
 the silence which threatened to follow by saying: 
 
 " He was, on the whole, a good man. He lacked some 
 strand of manliness which ought to have been twisted into 
 his being, and had he had it he might have been great — 
 
 '"Had I been two, another and myself, 
 
 Our head would have o'erlooked the world.' 
 
 But without it he was still a man to be respected and loved. 
 His heart was large, and, left to himself, he was anxious to do 
 and live rightly." 
 
356 MEN BOEN EQUAL 
 
 " I am awfully sorry," said Mrs. Tisserton. 
 
 The conversation turned to the explosion of the night be- 
 fore, and Jessie answered many questions, until the subject of 
 the strike in general came up, and Mrs. Flail, as it were, took 
 the floor. This good lady seemed to think that in some way 
 the public crisis threw a responsibility upon her — that upon 
 her, in her capacity of general organizer, devolved the duty 
 of restoring public peace. She talked with vigor of what 
 she had done and what she proposed to do. She had hoped 
 to inveigle the strikers into spending their idle hours in the 
 free library, because reading would have opened their minds 
 and been so good for them, she said, and they never had time 
 to read when they were at work ; but she regretted to say 
 that, with all her efforts, the attendance at the library had 
 been no greater since the strike began than it had been be- 
 fore. She had striven to arouse their enthusiasm in behalf 
 of a coffee-house which she had established in a poor part of 
 town, and which some day would grow into a people's palace, 
 she hoped ; but the men had remained deplorably indiffer- 
 ent to the seductions of coffee. She had hoped that they 
 would accept the invitations, which had been extended to them 
 in the advertising columns of the daily papers, to attend the 
 various classes on artistic and literary subjects ; but she had 
 failed so far to identify at any of the meetings so much as a 
 single striker. 
 
 " And so much might be done," she said, " if only others 
 would help. I cannot do it all alone. The softening and hu- 
 manizing influences of art and literature would certainly af- 
 fect them. I have seen Mr. Wollmer several times, and he 
 thoroughly agrees with me — and yet they do not seem to 
 come." 
 
 Horace smiled within himself. Judge Jessel fidgeted im- 
 patiently. Perhaps it was owing to the dissimilarity between 
 Mrs. Flail and his beloved wife ; but for some reason the 
 judge, as Horace knew, had only an indifferent estimate of 
 Mrs. Flail. There was malice in his voice and a twinkle in 
 his eye as he asked : 
 
 " By-the-way, Mrs. Flail, how did the soup-kitchen prosper?" 
 
 " It did not prosper," replied that lady, reluctantly. " It 
 
UNSTABLE AS WATER 357 
 
 seemed as if these men positively preferred what is known, I 
 believe, as the * free lunch' at the saloons to a wholesome 
 bowl of soup at the kitchen. A few came at first, but the 
 number decreased every day, and we have converted the 
 kitchen into a moral parlor." 
 
 " What was it that they did not like ? Did you have any 
 regulations ?" 
 
 " None at all. They were made to wash, and brush their 
 hair, and wait until all were ready. Then they marched in 
 in two rows to the dining-room, and stood up while prayers 
 were said — just short prayers, you know, only ten or fifteen 
 minutes. Then they were served in turn, and all waited till 
 the last had finished, w T hen prayers were said again." 
 
 " What is a moral parlor ?" 
 
 " It is a place with chairs and tables and good books and 
 papers — not daily papers, you understand, but instructive and 
 edifying publications which will be of benefit to them. Then 
 we permit dominos and spillikens for the men to play with." 
 
 " Are they allowed to smoke ?" 
 
 " Oh no." 
 
 " Does anybody come ?" 
 
 " Very few come, I am sorry to say. It really seems im- 
 possible to do anything to help them. If only we could reach 
 them and talk to them and reason with them. The pastors 
 have been very kind. Either Dr. Jones or Dr. Flodder or 
 Dr. Tomkins is at the parlors every evening, prepared to 
 speak to them in an informal, friendly way. But even if 
 there is any one there, they usually go out when the exhor- 
 tation begins." 
 
 " And the men really prefer the saloons ?" asked Mrs. Tis- 
 scrton, as she lay back and looked at Mrs. Flail through half- 
 closed eyes. "Thev are allowed to smoke there, are they 
 not?" 
 
 " I believe so." Then Mrs. Flail made bold to do a thing 
 that she had been longing to attempt for half an hour. 
 " Judge Jcssel," she said, " could I induce you to come and 
 speak at our parlor some evening? I think they would listen 
 to you if they will not to the ministers." 
 
 " On certain conditions, I would gladly," said the judge. 
 
358 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 " If you will take away your edifying publications, and put 
 in their places the daily papers and the comic weeklies ; if 
 you will have music instead of preaching in the evenings — 
 with some one to sing a comic song, and let the crowd join 
 in the chorus ; if you will let them smoke — give them free 
 tobacco, if possible — you will have a thousand men there every 
 night within two weeks, and then I will gladly come and talk." 
 
 But Mrs. Flail shook her head. 
 
 " That would be so demoralizing," she said. 
 
 " Don't you think," said Jessie, " that it is much easier to 
 get people to do what you want them to do, if you begin by 
 letting them do what they want to do first ?" 
 
 " But there are things that you cannot let them do." 
 
 " Such as smoking and reading the daily papers ?" suggested 
 Mrs. Tisserton. 
 
 The judge now rose to go, and at the signal others left. 
 One by one they went away, till at last Horace was alone 
 with Jessie. 
 
 " Where are Miss Willerby and Miss Caley ?" he asked. 
 
 " Grace is up-stairs writing letters. Miss Caley has gone 
 home." 
 
 " What, back to Chicago ! Why ?" 
 
 " She thought that there was danger in the house here, 
 and — and her mother would not like her staying. She was 
 really awfully frightened, poor girl." 
 
 " And Barry V Horace suggested. 
 
 " I think that is all over for good," Jessie answered. " I 
 gathered so from what Mary said." 
 
 " Miss Willerby is not going away ?" 
 
 " Oh no. She refuses to go till I turn her out. She is 
 such a dear girl !" 
 
 "Did she guess anything last night?" he asked. 
 
 " I am afraid she did," laughed Jessie. 
 
 " Did she say anything ?" 
 
 " She said a great deal." 
 
 " And what did you tell her ?" 
 
 " I told her just what you would have wished me to tell 
 her — very much the same things as you told me on the door- 
 step last night." 
 
UNSTABLE AS WATER 359 
 
 Horace could not answer, but only raised her hand silently 
 to his lips, and wondered if this were possible. That he could 
 have won her was wonderful enough — that she should pas- 
 sively consent to be his. But that his love could mean to her 
 the happiness that hers brought to him — that was as yet un- 
 believable. For Horace Marsh had that clean reverence for 
 womanhood which every pure man has, and which forbids 
 him to believe that a woman can wish for a man as a man 
 wishes for her. 
 
XXVIII 
 
 REAPING THE WHIRLWIND 
 
 As Pawson had told Horace, no collision occurred between 
 the strikers and the troops during the day. The affairs of the 
 city flowed in the ordinary channels ; the electric cars ran un- 
 molested, and outwardly the town was at peace. There were 
 those who said that the governor had acted with unwarrantable 
 haste in responding so promptly to the request of a sheriff who 
 had but lost his head ; but the majority of the citizens took 
 comfort in the knowledge that the militia were at hand. The 
 soldiers themselves had gone quietly into camp at two different 
 points in the city — five companies being camped on some 
 vacant ground not far from the central barns of the street- 
 railway company, and the other three companies nearer to the 
 heart of the town, in the railway-yards near the Union station. 
 
 It was dusk before news came that the strikers, gathered in 
 their usual haunts, were showing symptoms of reviving turbu- 
 lence. A car running out to the steel-works was attacked, and 
 the engineer brutally beaten. The street-railway company 
 again suspended the service, and called all cars into the barns. 
 Indefinite rumors of minor outrages, which the police were 
 unable to prevent, came at intervals, and the militia, under 
 arms, stood ready to march at a minute's notice. Then came 
 the definite news that a large body of strikers — estimated at 
 about a thousand men, chiefly Poles and Bohemians — had 
 collected in " The Pit," and, inflamed with liquor, were on their 
 way southward, with the avowed purpose of demolishing the 
 central barns and killing any soldiers who attempted to bar 
 their progress. The mob was advancing by Harrison Avenue, 
 and would presumably follow that thoroughfare till reaching 
 Thirteenth Street. 
 
REAPING THE WHIRLWIND 361 
 
 Silently in the darkness of the early November night three of 
 the companies at the main camp fell in and marched to Thir- 
 teenth Street, then swung eastward to meet the advancing mob. 
 At some distance from the junction with Harrison Avenue the 
 noise of the shouting of the rabble came to them on the night 
 air. A square farther on the order was given to halt, and, as 
 they stood, the roar from the east grew louder, till at last, three 
 hundred yards ahead, the front of the mob came round the 
 corner — a black, moving mass, with here and there a waving 
 torch. 
 
 They did not at first discover the soldiers, drawn in close 
 ranks across the road, but came howling and laughing and 
 shouting forward. Colonel Gray had advanced some twenty 
 paces ahead of his men, and stood with the sheriff by his side. 
 The mob was less than one hundred yards distant now. 
 
 " Halt !" commanded the colonel. 
 
 At the same moment it seemed that the strikers became 
 aware of the presence of the militia. The front ranks wavered 
 and stood still, and the shouting died away. In the compara- 
 tive silence the voice of the sheriff made itself heard, command- 
 ing them, in the name of the law, to disperse and keep the 
 peace. But as he spoke, mutterings that swelled to an angry 
 clamor arose from the rear of the mob, who had learned what 
 it was that had caused their van to halt, and in the clamor the 
 sheriff's voice was drowned. The weight of those pushing be- 
 hind forced the leaders of the mob onward, and bit by bit 
 the space between the two forces lessened. 
 
 The streets were dimly illuminated by electric arc lights 
 which hung at every crossing. Under one of these lights stood 
 the two figures of the colonel and the sheriff. The white glare 
 of the next light fell upon the advancing column of the strikers, 
 showing a ragged and uneven line of figures; and among them, 
 in the very front, could be seen the forms of women. In the 
 light the crowd seemed for a moment to halt, but again the 
 weight behind pushed forward until the two figures, standing 
 alone, were almost equidistant from the opposing bodies. On 
 both sides of the street windows were open, and the white 
 faces of men and women and children looked on in silence. 
 
 Above the angry uproar of the advancing mob the strong 
 
362 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 voice of the colonel, commanding them to halt, rang out, and for 
 a moment there was silence. 
 
 "If you continue to advance, I shall be compelled to com- 
 mand my men to fire. I command you — I implore you — to 
 obey the sheriff and the law, and to disperse." 
 
 " Stand aside !" cried a woman's voice shrilly. " Stand aside 
 and let us pass. We have a right to parade the streets, and 
 if you don't let us pass we'll sweep your boys aside." 
 
 Shouts of approval greeted the speaker, and the colonel and 
 the sheriff strove in vain to make themselves heard. Yard by 
 yard the disorderly front of the strikers drew nearer, and slowly 
 the colonel and the sheriff fell back. At last they were swal- 
 lowed up in the level, immovable ranks of the waiting soldiers, 
 and there was. nothing but the stretch of the street between the 
 forces and the waiting faces of the watchers at the windows 
 on either side. 
 
 Silently the front rank of the soldiers dropped upon its 
 knees. There were sick hearts and swimming heads in the 
 ranks, for they were only boys — boys from the bank and the 
 office and the store ; but they obeyed the words of command 
 and behaved like men. Already the leaders of the mob were 
 approaching the lamp where, but a few moments before, the 
 colonel and the sheriff had stood, and in the pale light the 
 individual faces and figures could be plainly seen. Stones and 
 other missiles now began to reach the soldiers where they wait- 
 ed. Some struck them, and others fell short or flew overhead. 
 Then from one side of the strikers' line came a flash and the 
 sharp report of a revolver. Another followed, and another ; and 
 the soldiers waited in silence. 
 
 Suddenly one of the men in the front rank, as the irregular 
 firing from the mob went on, leaped to his feet, spun round, 
 and with a shriek fell full length in the roadway before his 
 comrades. 
 
 " Steady, boys !" called the colonel, and a howl went up from 
 the mob, who had seen the poor lad fall. And still the dark 
 mass drew nearer, until at last, reluctantly but firmly, came the 
 command : 
 
 " Ready ! Aim ! Fire !" 
 
 In an instant from side to side of the street broke out the 
 
REAPING THE WHIRLWIND 363 
 
 rippling line of flames, and the crash of muskets filled the air. 
 As the reports died away there arose from the mob in front the 
 shrieks and screams of the wounded, the cries of the terror- 
 stricken, and the curses and shouts of wrath. On the ground 
 in front of the line of the strikers those at the windows could 
 see dark forms stretched — some struggling, and some still for- 
 ever. The crowd wavered aud yelled, but neither retreated nor 
 advanced. 
 
 " Good God ! they will not need another volley !" groaned 
 the colonel. 
 
 But even as he spoke the black mass surged forward, and, 
 with scarcely twenty paces separating them from the muzzles 
 of the muskets, the word to fire was given again. Again the 
 quivering line of tire blazed out, and the crash of the discharge 
 — so infinitely more terrible here in the confined streets of a 
 city than on the open fields of war — rang out. And now as 
 the smoke cleared the ground was covered with writhing forms, 
 and the colonel, sick at heart, said to himself, " Surely that is 
 enough !" 
 
 And the mob no longer advanced. The shouting and olamor 
 from the rear grew less as those behind, chilled at last and 
 panic-stricken, fled— fled by the way they had come, and up 
 side-streets and into alleys. The dark lines of the soldiers stood 
 stretched across the street as the minutes passed, until where 
 the mob had been there was no man standing, but only the 
 dark masses of the forms upon the ground. Then the word to 
 advance was given, and at last the soldiers moved forward — 
 no longer to deal death, but to pass among the dead and the 
 wounded, and do what they could to help and save. 
 
 Already ambulances were arriving, and from every house and 
 all directions men and women poured, until the militia were 
 compelled to make a cordon across the street in both directions, 
 and hold the people back with the bayonets. 
 
 In all, at the two volleys, forty of the mob had fallen, aud 
 of these nineteen were dead. And two of the dead were 
 women. 
 
 Horace, driving across town from the hospital — where he had 
 been again to visit Harrington and consult with him in regard to 
 the disposition of his uncle's body— to call on Miss Holt, heard 
 
364 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 the firing, and, bidding the driver to take him to where it came 
 from, reached the spot while the dead and wounded were being 
 gathered upon the ambulances. 
 
 Arriving at Jessie's house, he found that the news had al- 
 ready reached her by telephone, and she met him with tears in 
 her eyes. 
 
 " Oh, Horace," she sobbed, " it is so terrible ! That they 
 should die is bad enough, but that they should be killed in a 
 quarrel with father! What have we done? How could we 
 help it? Are we to blame? It seems somehow as if we must 
 be ; but how ? What could we do ?" 
 
 " Nothing, darling — nothing in the world," he said, as he 
 took her in his 'arms. " There could not be a kinder, juster 
 man than your father, nor a sweeter, tenderer woman than his 
 daughter. I do not know your father's affairs ; but I know 
 that he can only have sunk money without return in the steel 
 company, and, I fancy, in the street-railway company as well. 
 He has done everything that a just man could do. The com- 
 panies have paid good wages so long as they could get the 
 money to pay them ; and when they cannot get the money, 
 what are they to do ? The men must either take less or cease 
 to work." 
 
 "But is there no help for it ? I know that the companies 
 could not pay them what they wanted. Father went over it 
 all with me. If he had taken everything he had and turned 
 it over to the company — all his real estate, and stocks, and 
 this house, and everything — it would only have been enough 
 to pay them for another month or six weeks. He could have 
 beggared himself, and it would have done no good. But 
 what is so terrible is that the men should not understand 
 this. When they are unjustly treated, I can see how they 
 might strike ; but when it is the impossible that confronts 
 them, is there no way of telling them so ? Is there no reason 
 in them ? Was there nothing we could have done ?" 
 
 "Nothing. The blood is not on your father's head — nor 
 yet on the heads of the mass of the men. It is a handful of 
 leaders — it may be only one man or a dozen men — who 
 stand between the employers and the men, and will not let 
 them know the truth. These leaders make their living by 
 
REAPING THE WHIRLWIND 365 
 
 the work. They saturate the men with false teachings — 
 teachings of the tyranny of capital, and making them believe 
 that the employer is their natural enemy. Many of them, 
 foreigners who have already drunk in the doctrines of the 
 bomb in Europe, are only too willing to lend their ear to the 
 same teachings here. And of the rest, some, hearing no 
 other side, come in time dully and passively to acquiesce in 
 what is told them, and the others, conscious of their own in- 
 dividual weakness when opposed to the organization of the 
 unions, keep their peace, and dare not speak." 
 
 " But is there no help ? Will there be no end to this ? Is 
 there no way to save these men from breaking themselves 
 against the wall of the impossible, and giving themselves to 
 be shot because father, and men such as he, do not do things 
 which they cannot do ? Is there no way to teach them % Is 
 there no punishment for the men who urge them on ?" 
 
 " Not as yet. Help will come. In time the nation and 
 the world will recognize that the man who, as a leader of a 
 labor order, persuades men to strike and to riot is as criminal 
 in his anarchism as the men who, under the shadow of the 
 red flag, openly advocate the use of dynamite for the destruc- 
 tion of society. It will come. In another generation the 
 men who do the things that Wollmer and his friends have 
 done here during the last two months will be treated as the 
 most dangerous criminals — far more destructive of society 
 than the man who commits an individual murder." 
 " But why is it not so now ?" 
 
 " Because these same men have votes— all these foreigners 
 who do not know what the American Constitution means— and 
 our public men to-day dare not speak the truth. It must be 
 a slow, slow process; a process of education — education of 
 these men themselves, after they have so far become assimi- 
 lated into the American people as to be capable of education 
 —and still more an education of the larger public, an awaken- 
 ing of its conscience to the foulness of public things and 
 the cowardice of public men to-day. Then, when the strong 
 manhood of the American people rises and asserts itself, 
 when the long patience of the nation is overborne, and the 
 good men — the great silent mass who at present sit back 
 
366 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 and care not — band themselves together to wipe out the cor- 
 ruption that is in high places, and the ignorance and the 
 cruelty that is in the low, and carry the government of our 
 country back to the high principles on which it is said to 
 be founded ; when the government of our country is made 
 again in fact what it ought to be, the noblest government of 
 earth, instead of what it is, one of the clumsiest and most 
 corrupt, then — ! But you have heard me preach before. 
 You know my dreams." 
 
 He stopped, smiling at the wide, earnest eyes which looked 
 into his. 
 
 " But they are not dreams," she said, simply. " They will 
 be found true. It is this thing that is the dream — when 
 men lead other men to shed blood and be killed. Forty 
 men wounded ! Think of it ! Think of their wives and chil- 
 dren ! Oh, it is too horrible ! . . . * One - half of mankind 
 against the other half ! ' " 
 
 Later in the night, in the temporary study which had 
 been arranged in one of the bedrooms on the second floor, 
 Horace spoke to Mr. Holt. He stated his case very simply, 
 and Jessie's father was equally simple and frank in his reply. 
 He had already learned to have a high regard for young 
 Marsh. This, however, was a matter which he should leave to 
 his daughter. There were certain men whom he should do 
 his utmost to dissuade Jessie from marrying if she had seen 
 fit to choose one of them ; but he knew her too well to have 
 had any fear of that. If she loved Horace and if Horace 
 loved her as he ought to love her, he, Mr. Holt, would be 
 satisfied. 
 
 Horace's thanks were less coherent than sincere. Had he 
 followed his inclinations he would have danced and shrieked ; 
 but as it was he said only the commonplace things, and said 
 them only indifferently well. 
 
 But as he walked home that night he pondered how blest 
 above other men he was. The rough political awakening 
 that he had received was bitter — infinitely bitter it would 
 have been but for this new-found happiness. But when she 
 was won, what did other things matter ? And was not God 
 good ? Had he himself not come to know it ? It could not 
 
REAPING THE WHIRLWIND 367 
 
 be that somewhere, somehow, the political dawn was not at 
 hand. 
 
 And he remembered some words of Judge Jessel: " It is 
 not through Populism that salvation will come. It is more 
 likely to be through the reaction against Populism." 
 
XXIX 
 
 ON THE SLEEPING-CAR 
 
 The platitudinist and the preacher love to dwell upon the 
 insignificance of the individual man, and the rapidity with 
 which the place of even the greatest is filled after he has 
 gone and his world adjusts itself to his absence. But never 
 could either have found a better text on which to hang a ser- 
 mon than the death of General Harter. 
 
 The news of his death and the strange story which in con- 
 nection therewith was given to the public could not, even in 
 the presence of the overshadowing sensation of that night 
 battle, fail to fill men's mouths for a day. But his party 
 was too busy hastening to select his successor to mourn him, 
 and in these last days before the election things moved too 
 rapidly for the public to remember a dead man long. 
 
 Horace, reading the World in the morning, found a pretty 
 compliment to himself when the editor suggested that, did 
 not his youth forbid his election to the office, there was no 
 man in the party who could probably so surely command the 
 support of all men in the party as Horace Marsh. He being 
 impossible, the logic of the situation would seem, the paper 
 said, to point to Mr. Timothy Sullivan as the natural candi- 
 date; and Horace, reading, remembered Sancho Panza's aph- 
 orism that "if he knew how to make his Christ -cross it 
 would be enough for a good governor." Mr. Timothy Sul- 
 livan, however, it appeared, had already been consulted, and 
 had absolutely declined to permit his name to be used. Un- 
 der these circumstances, the World hoped that the party 
 would prevail on Major Bartop to accept the nomination at 
 the eleventh hour. 
 
 The article was evidently written after consultation among 
 
ON THE SLEEPING-CAR 3Gy 
 
 the party leaders — probably chiefly at Sullivan's dictation, and 
 Horace was sure that the Irishman was answerable for the 
 compliment to himself — and was intended to arouse a public 
 sentiment in favor of Major Bartop which the major would 
 be unable to withstand. But Horace knew that the major 
 would refuse to be a candidate ; and, courteously but con- 
 temptuously, he did. 
 
 At length, in despair, the leaders pitched upon one Grier- 
 son, an unknown man whose only merits were that he had 
 never been anything but a Democrat, and had not character 
 enough to have made enemies. 
 
 It was not Grierson's fault that he was not elected. Out 
 of a forlorn hope of such exceeding forlornness, not even the 
 most consummate soldier could have carved success. The 
 advocacy of the strike, with its damning and bloody out- 
 come, must have ruined any party, even if the party were 
 not shattered on the eve of battle by the death of its standard- 
 bearer. 
 
 And if the strike killed the party which had supported it, 
 the strike itself ended with those volleys fired on Thirteenth 
 Street. 
 
 For some days the strikers were cowed and terrified. 
 Then, in the rush of election, they found themselves forgot- 
 ten by the public, and when the election was over they had 
 no longer any friends. No man now had any object to 
 gain by conciliating them, and the outburst of the awakened 
 public indignation was too strong for any man in mere 
 quixotism to offer himself as its victim. So far as the em- 
 ployes of the steel company were concerned, they had no 
 longer anything to strike for. The works were destroyed, 
 and there was no possibility of employment. Even if the 
 company should decide to rebuild, it would be years before 
 any workmen of the class of the strikers could be needed. 
 
 Late on the night of the election, as soon as it was evident 
 that all chance of Democratic victory was gone, Wollmer left 
 the city. He had nothing to gain by staying. There would 
 be no more subsidies forthcoming from the public treasury ; 
 and possibly there would be investigations, and possibly also 
 — a consideration which would probably weigh more heavily 
 
 24 
 
370 MEN BORN EQUAL 
 
 with the labor leader — individual strikers, learning how they 
 had been duped and played with, might seek a more imme- 
 diate and violent satisfaction than the course of the law 
 would afford. 
 
 By the clews furnished by Lizzie Silling, the police were 
 enabled to capture and convict the men who were directly 
 responsible for the outrage on the house of Mr. Holt. Others 
 of the strikers also who were identified as leaders of the mob 
 in the conflict with the militia were found guilty of the 
 death of the one soldier who died of his wounds — the man 
 from the front rank, who had been the first to fall on that ghast- 
 ly night — and were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment. 
 
 And so, as is the way of strikes, the great mass of men 
 found themselves homeless and workless and hungry, objects 
 of public charity. A few, perhaps among the most innocent 
 at first, but of weaker nature and more easily influenced, 
 afterwards thrust forward into the position of leaders and 
 made to bear the burden of the bloodshed and the guilt, paid 
 for it by wearing out their lives in jail. The public suffered, 
 directly by the destruction of property and the temporary dis- 
 turbance of commerce and public affairs, and ten times more 
 indirectly by the annihilation of the great industry of the 
 steel-works. The only men who profited were the few lead- 
 ers — Wollmer chiefly, and doubtless others in their degree — 
 who had sold the men who were credulous enough to believe 
 them, and who escaped with such booty as they had made to 
 enjoy it in such peace as their consciences would permit. 
 
 Six months afterwards, when the strike and all that be- 
 longed to it had ceased to be talked about except when some 
 wanderers found themselves in the neighborhood of the 
 gaunt ruins of the works or among the deserted portions of 
 Milltown, there was a double wedding. Horace, who was 
 not to be married for a month yet, was able to keep his 
 promise and act as best man for Harrington, -who had recov- 
 ered from his injuries as satisfactorily as the surgeons had 
 dared to hope ; and at the altar at which Jessie Masson became 
 Mrs. Harrington, Weatherfield also took her sister Annie for 
 his wife. 
 
ON THE SLEEPING-CAR 371 
 
 The congregation in the little church — the church where 
 Harrington had first seen Jennie — saw that there was a 
 minute's pause before Weatherfield placed the ring on An- 
 nie's finger. They could see also that it was because Annie 
 laid her hand on the bridegroom's arm and asked him some 
 question, to which he replied ; but not even the minister 
 caught the words, so low were they spoken. 
 
 " Once more, Tom," she had said, " and for the very last 
 time — you are sure ? Now that you know everything, you 
 are willing to trust me and take me as I am ?" 
 
 " I am quite sure," was all he said ; and a minute later she 
 was his wife. 
 
 The Weatherfields stayed quietly at home after the wed- 
 ding, and Tom went industriously on with the daily work of 
 the printing-office. Harrington, however, took his wife back 
 to Massachusetts to introduce her to his family. A few 
 nights after their return — they had been away for a month — 
 Horace and Barry called at their cosey little home, and they 
 talked of many things. Suddenly, after a pause, Harrington 
 exclaimed : 
 
 " Oh, by-the-way, I forgot all about Blakely. You know 
 we were on the train that night ?" 
 
 " No," said Horace, " I had forgotten it, if I ever knew it." 
 
 " Yes ; and it was very queer." 
 
 11 In what wav ?" Horace asked. " Nobody saw him fall, 
 did they ?" 
 
 " I am not quite sure," said Harrington, enigmatically. 
 
 His wife had left the room, and, leaning forward, he told 
 the tale so far as he had anything to tell. 
 
 " Jennie and I," he said, " were sitting in a section about 
 the middle of the car, sitting facing each other, I with my back 
 to the engine. In the next section on the opposite side of the 
 car — so that they were behind Jennie as she sat, but so that I 
 was facing Mrs. Carrington — were the Carringtons. I happened 
 to be looking at her when I saw her apparently catch the eye 
 of somebody behind me — somebody, as I supposed, who was 
 entering the car. You know the kind of look — a sudden 
 glance of secret recognition and no more. I heard some one 
 coming along the aisle behind me, and I saw Mrs. Carrington 
 
372 MEN BOKN EQUAL 
 
 raise her eyes to hirn again. The man came alongside of me 
 and passed on, and then I saw it was Blakely. He did 
 not speak to Mrs. Carrington or she to him ; but he went 
 straight on to the second section on her side, so that he was 
 directly behind her. Carrington, all this time, had been read- 
 ing his paper. After a bit, when the train began to move, he 
 got up to go to the smoking-car, and then he saw Blakely. 
 He leaned over and said something to his wife, and she 
 flushed up angrily. Carrington then went out. I suppose — let 
 me see — it was ten minutes afterwards that Blakely went out 
 too. This time, in passing, as he came up behind Mrs. Car- 
 rington, he stooped slightly, and said a few words to her 
 in an undertone. She replied, but without looking up, and 
 Blakely strolled out of the car in the same direction as Car- 
 rington had gone. 
 
 " I had happened to notice it," said Harrington, resuming, 
 " but did not think much of it all. I am not sure that I 
 think anything of it now. But it was an hour and a half or 
 two hours later — nearly ten o'clock — and we were waiting 
 while our berths were being made up. Jennie was sitting in 
 some other section, among a lot of valises and things, and T 
 was standing in the aisle, leaning against a seat and watching 
 the porter at work. It was one of those sixteen-section cars, 
 I think they call them, that they run now on the trains that 
 have a regular smoking-car — the aisle, you know, goes 
 straight through at the end out to the vestibule, instead of 
 kinking round a corner to get by the smoking-compartment, 
 as it used to do. You can look straight out to the platform, 
 as you can in a day-coach, from the centre of the car. It 
 happened that I turned my head to the forward end of the 
 car, and my eye lighted on the door just as a man came to 
 the glass and looked in. It was Carrington. He did not 
 come in, but stayed out on the platform, and I saw him open 
 the vestibule door. 
 
 " Again I don't think I thought anything of it, because I 
 turned to watch the porter. A few minutes afterwards I 
 happened to look up again, and Carrington was still out in 
 the vestibule. I looked back to see if Mrs. Carrington had 
 retired, and she had. Then the porter finished our section, 
 
ON THE SLEEPING-CAR 373 
 
 and I put Jennie's satchel into the lower berth and said good- 
 night to her. I had the upper berth above her. 
 
 " While I was saying good-night I was conscious of hear- 
 ing angry voices. I was too much occupied with my first 
 good-night to my wife to pay much attention to them, and I 
 know that I had a sort of vague idea that it was the conduct- 
 or swearing at the brakeman or something. A minute later, 
 as I finished buttoning the curtain of Jennie's berth, the door 
 at the end of the car was opened, and Carrington came in. I 
 sort of squeezed myself against the berth to let him pass 
 me. 
 
 " It was not until I got an afternoon paper at Buffalo the 
 next day that I saw the news of Blakely's death. They said 
 that his body was picked up at a point where the train passed 
 at ten five. I know that when I took out my watch to wind 
 it up that night it was ten twenty. 
 
 " Now I may be talking about nothing at all, and I should 
 never think of mentioning it to anybody except you two fel- 
 lows, and I hope you won't talk to any one else. And yet 
 — did you ever hear any gossip about any trouble between 
 those two, either about Carrington's wife or anything else ?" 
 
 He looked at Marsh as he asked the question, and Marsh 
 shook his head and said " Never !" 
 
 Which was true. 
 
 THE END 
 
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