Guy Wetmore Carryl

“ When men are driven to desperation, when women turn to shame in order to maintain life, when children are heard crying in our streets for bread, to whom shall we point as the author of it all? To Peter Rathbawne, a poor, doddering old man, barely responsible now, if rumor is to be believed, for what he does? ”

“ The strike has had a most curious, a most pathetic effect upon him. Even the doctor is at a loss to account for it. I think that I am, perhaps, the only one who really understands. He has always been so proud of his mills and of his people, so loyal to them, so like a father to them, one and all, that to have them turn against him like this, and, what is worse, get to drinking and rioting, has almost broken his heart. The doctor says only one thing can save him, and that is to see the mills going again and the people happy and prosperous, as they were before. ”

“ He isn’t even ornamental — he’s in a class by himself. I call him Diogenes, and I’m thinking of buying him a tub all for himself, where he can sulk in solitary grandeur to his heart’s content.”
“Perhaps not altogether in a class by himself,” said Cavendish. “There are others, you know, who make no use of their opportunities, and who can never hope to be any thing but ugly and useless, while their fellows are getting all the good things of life, and enjoying them, and giving pleasure of one kind or another into the bargain.”
Something in his tone caused Natalie to look at him suddenly. ”

“ Barclay this morning?”
“An infamous libel!” exclaimed Cavendish hotly.
Miss Rathbawne crumbled the bread between her fingers, and resumed her feeding of the gold-fish.
“You must know that I am the last person in the world to need that assurance,” she said slowly. “It is only another thread in all the hideous tissue of injustice and iniquity which has been wrapped about us like a pall. What a shame, is it not, that such a man as he should be powerless to do the work I think God intended for him? ”

“ If only we can contribute in the smallest degree to the uplifting of our kind, to the advancement of the race, to the maintenance of what we know to be right, what possible difference can it make whether, in the effort to be of such service, we live or succumb? We were put here, it seems to me, very much as separate notes are put into one great harmony. Each note is struck at the proper time, serves its purpose, and goes into nothingness. Each plays its part, how ever small. We can’t all be included in the wonderful final chords. ”

“ For, feeble and broken as he is, he will never give in to the Union. Of that I’m sure.”
“I’m very sorry,” said Cavendish softly. One look at Rathbawne had been enough to show him that the interview for which he had been sent was an impossibility. One look at Natalie sufficed to banish from his mind every thought save that of her pitiful pallor and the pathetic quiver of her lips.
“I had no idea it was as bad as this,” he continued. “Can’t anything be done? You are far from being in good shape yourself, Miss Rathbawne.” ”

“ I should ask nothing better, when my own time comes, than the assurance that, in one way or another, my death had a significance, — that it was for a person or a principle, and not merely a natural phenomenon. ”

“ One man dies in order that two may live. A confederacy — as in the case of our own Rebellion — perishes in order that a nation may endure. Everywhere, in short, the individual sacrifices his individual existence in order that it may contribute to and fertilize the growth of his species. ”

“ We are all apt, no matter how conceited we may be, to underestimate at times the extent of our own usefulness — or, rather, we are unconscious of the direction in which it is most productive. If what you say is so, then all that is lacking is the opportunity, and that is sure to come. We may squander many opportunities, and, hardly less probably, actually turn to account in a way we do not perceive many which we seem to ourselves to squander. ”

“ If it was true that the strike was driving men to crime and women to the streets — and if it was not, as yet, true, it soon must be — who, indeed, was to blame if not he himself, who had said “Fight them!” ”

“ And yet in the death of these last we are able to perceive the working of a vast system which must be the outcome of a direct purpose, and whereby the best interest of each species is furthered. And so, the human race. ”