John Trotwood Moore

“ Alice only knew that she was her mother; who had suffered much; who had been reduced by poverty to a condition straitened even to hardships. To help her the daughter knew that she was willing to make any sacrifice. Unselfish, devoted, clear as noonday in her own ideas of right and wrong, Alice's one weakness was her blind devotion to those she loved. A weakness beautiful and even magnificent, since it might mean a sacrifice of her heart for another. The woman who gives her time, her money, her life, even, to another gives but a small part of her real self. ”

“ It happened that morning that the old Bishop was on his daily round, visiting the sick of Cottontown. He went every day, from house to house, helping the sick, cheering the well, and better than all things else, putting into the hearts of the disheartened that priceless gift of coming again.
For of all the gifts the gods do give to men, that is the greatest—the ability to induce their fallen fellow man to look up and hope again. The gift to spur others onward—the gift to make men reach up. His flock were all mill people, their devotion to him wonderful. ”

“ And the skies all day long, reflecting in its heart, tells to the cool green leaves that shadow it the story of its life, and it catches and holds the sympathy of the tiniest zephyr, from the way it flutters to the patter of their little feet.
All things of Nature love it—the clouds, the winds, the very stars, and sun, because love—undying love—is the soul of God, its Maker.
The rose is red in the rich passion of love, the lily is pale in the poverty of it; but the crepe-myrtle is pink in the constancy of it. ”

“ But vice cannot reason. Immorality cannot deduce. Only the moral ponders deeply and knows both the premises and the conclusions, because only the moral thinks.
Vice, like the poisonous talons of a bird of prey, while it buries its nails in the flesh of its victim, carries also the narcotic which soothes as it kills.
And Richard Travis had arrived at this stage. At first it had been with him any woman, so there was a romance—and hence Maggie. But he had tired of these, and now it was the woman beautiful as Helen, or the woman pure and lovely as Alice Westmore. ”

“ It is I who should bear this burden of sorrow—not you. You who have never sinned, who are so young and so beautiful. In time you will love a nobler man—Clay—”
She looked at him, but said nothing. She knew for the first time the solution of her love's problem. She was silent, holding his hand.
“Child,” he said again. “Helen, you must do as I say. There is happiness for you yet when I am gone—when I am out of your life and the memory and the pain of it cease. Then you will marry Clay—”
“Do you really think so? Oh, and he has loved me so and is so splendid and true.”
Travis was silent, waiting. ”

“ They thundered along, Travis whipping his mare at every stride. She stood it like the standard-bred she was, and never winced, then she forged ahead farther, and farther, and held the old pacer anchored at her wheels, and the wire not fifty feet away!
There was nothing left for the old man to do—with tears streaming down his cheeks he shouted—“Ben Butler, Ben Butler—it's God's way—the chastening rod—” and his whip fell like a blade of fire on the old horse's flank.
It stung him to madness. The Bishop striking him, the old man he loved, and who never struck! ”

“ And the real soldier is not he with his battles and his bravery. All animals will fight—it is instinct. But he who conquers in the great moral battle of peace and good government, overcoming prejudice, ignorance, poverty and even injustice, till he rises to the height of the brave whose deeds do vindicate them—this is the real soldier.
Thousands of Southern soldiers did this, but Edward Conway had not been one of them. For where whiskey sits he holds a scepter whose staff is the body of the Upas tree, and there is no room for the oak of thrift or the wild-flower of sweetness underneath. ”

“ He saw Richard Travis pitch forward off his horse and slide limply to the ground. He saw him totter and waver and then sit down in a helpless, pitiful way,—then lie down as if it were sweet to rest.
And still the boy stood holding his pistol, stunned, frigid, numbed—pointing at the stars.
Silently he brought his arm and weapon down. He heard only shouts of the mob as they rushed against the jail, and then, high above it, the words of the blacksmith, whom he loved so well: “Stand back—all; Me—me alone, shoot—me! I who have so often killed the law, let me die for it.” ”

“ The fight between steel, steam and child-flesh was on.
Shiloh, Appomattox and Atlanta were spinners.
Spinners are small girls who walk up and down an aisle before a spinning-frame and piece up the threads which are forever breaking. There were over a hundred spindles on each side of the frame, each revolving with the rapidity of an incipient cyclone and snapping every now and then the delicate white thread that was spun out like spiders' web from the rollers and the cylinders, making a balloon-like gown of cotton thread, which settled continuously around the bobbin. ”

“ For there on the rug, as naturally as if asleep, lay the only thing he now loved in the world, the old setter, whose life had passed out in slumber.
All animals have the dying instinct. Man, the highest, has it the clearest. And Travis remembered that the old dog had come to his bed, in the middle of the night, and laid his large beautiful head on his master's breast, and in the dim light of the smouldering fire had said good-bye to Richard Travis as plainly as ever human being said it. ”

“ Ancient sentinels, and they were there when the first Travis came from North Carolina to the Tennessee Valley and built his first double-log cabin under the shelter of their arms.
From the porch of The Gaffs,—as the old home was called—the Tennessee River could be seen two miles away, its brave swift channel glittering like the flash of a silver arrow in the dark green wood which bordered it.
Back of the house the mountain ridge rolled; not high enough to be awful and unapproachable, nor so low as to breed contempt from a too great familiarity. Not grand, but the kind one loves to wander over. ”

“ In the fight for life between the machine and the human labor, in the race of life for that which men call success, who cares for the life of one little mill hand? And what is one tot of them from another? And if one die one month and another the next, and another the next and the next, year in and year out, who remembers it save some poverty-hardened, stooped and benumbed creature, surrounded by a scrawny brood calling ever for bread? ”

“ The death song of the crepe-myrtle, aroused by a south wind suddenly awakened, smote her painfully.
“You know—you know how it is, Richard”—
“How it was—Alice. But think—life is a practical—a serious thing. We all have had our romances. They are the heritage of dreaming youth. We outlive them—it is best that we should. Our spiritual life follows the law of all other life, and spiritually we are not the same this year that we were last. Nor will we be the next. It is always change—change—even as the body changes. ”

“ Jud Carpenter found her asleep in the greasy aisle, her head resting on her arm, a smile on her little face—a hand clasping a rounded well-threaded doll-like bobbin to her breast.
It is useless to try to speak in a room in which the Steam Beast's voice drowns all other voices. It is useless to try to awaken one by calling. One might as well stand under Niagara Falls and whistle to the little fishes. No other voice can be heard while the Steam Beast speaks.
Shiloh was awakened by a dash of cold water and a rough kick from the big boot of that other beast who called himself the overseer. ”

“ He knew that Harry Travis loved her in a way—a love he was certain would not last, and in the fullness and depths of his sincere nature, he felt as sure of ultimately winning her, by sheer force of strength, of consistency and devotion, as he was that every great thing in life had been done by the same force and would be to the end of time. ”

“ Fraud's wink to the fraudulent is an open book. Her nod is the nod of the Painted Thing passing down the highway.
Base-born that he was—low by instinct and inheritance, he had never heard of so brilliant and so gentlemanly a piece of fraud. The consummate boldness of it made Carpenter's eyes twinkle—a gentleman and in a race with gentlemen—who would dare to suspect? It was the boldness of a fine woman, daring to wear a necklace of paste-diamonds.
He sat looking at Travis in silent admiration. Never before had his employer risen to such heights in the eyes of the Whipper-in. ”

“ And so, partly from despair, and partly from that instinct which makes even the most sensitive of mortals wish to pour their secret troubles into another's ear, partly even from drunken recklessness, Edward Conway sat on his verandah this morning and poured his troubles into the designing ear of Jud Carpenter. The refrain of his woe was that luck—luck—remorseless luck was against him.
Luck, since the beginning of the world, has been the cry of him who gambles with destiny. Work is the watchword of the man who believes in himself. ”

“ But Trumps was not equal to the clip which Travis had made cyclonic, knowing the horse was sadly distressed. Trumps stood it as long as flesh and blood could, and then jumped into the air, in a heart-broken, tired break. It was then that the old man began to drive, and moving like well-balanced machinery, the old pacer caught again the spirit of his youth, as the old time speed came back, and leaving Trumps behind he even butted his bull-dog nose into the seat of Lizzette's sulky, and clung determinedly there, right up to the wire, beaten only by a length. ”

“ As the Bishop drove shamblingly along down the road, deeply preoccupied in his forthcoming sermon, there came from out of a hole, situated somewhere between the grizzled fringe of hair that marked Bud's whiskers and the grizzled fringe above that marked his eyebrows, a piping, apologetic voice that sounded like the first few rasps of an old rusty saw; but to the occupant of the buggy it meant, with a drawl:
“Howdy do, Bishop?”
A blind horse is quick to observe and take fright at anything uncanny. He is the natural ghost-finder of the highways, and that voice was too much for the old roan. ”

“ And the villagers used to smile at the sight of the little ones around him, especially after sunset when his work was finished. Often a half dozen children would be in his lap or on his knees at once, and the picture was so beautiful that people would stop and look, and wonder what the big strong man saw in all those noisy children to love.
They did not know that this man had spent his life a hunted thing; that the strong instinct of home and children had been smothered in him, that his own little boy had been taken, and that to him every child was a saint. ”

“ And now he dozed and dreamed of them again, with many twitchings of feet, and cocked, quivering ears, and rigid tail, as if once more frozen to the covey in the tall sedge-grass of the old field, with the smell of frost-bitten Lespedeza, wet with dew, beneath his feet.
Travis stooped and petted the old dog. It was the one thing of his household he loved most.
“Man or dog—'tis all the same,” he mused as he watched the dreaming dog—“it is old age's privilege to dream of what has been done—it is youth's to do. ”

“ But how cruelly unfair is the fight of to-day, when the weak and helpless child is made the gladiator, and the fight is for bread, and the Beast is of steel and steam, and is soulless and heartless. Steel—that by which the old gladiator conquered—that is the heart of the Thing the little one must fight. And the cheers—the glamour of it is lacking, for the little one cannot hear even the sound of its own voice—in the roar of the thousand-throated Thing which drives the Steel Beast on. ”

“ They were natural children, whose childhood had not been dwarfed in a cotton mill, and it was exceedingly funny to them.
But the young Cottontowners laughed not. They looked on in stoical wonder at the presumption of the young Hillites who dared to do such a deed.
Humor had never been known to them. There is no humor in the all-day buzz of the cotton factory; and fun and the fight of life for daily bread do not sleep in the same crib. ”