Robert Herrick

“ But what was this almighty society, anyhow, save a lot of fools and scamps with a sprinkling of strong souls, who were fighting for life—all of them fighting for what only a few could get? My eyes rested on Hostetter's face in the crowd. His jaw was hanging open, and he was staring at the judge, trying to understand it all. Poor Ed! He wouldn't have much show in the scramble if society didn't protect him. Suddenly a meaning to it all came to me like a great light. The strong must rule: the world was for the strong. ”

“ Nor do men made as I am alter at the sound of words. We are as we are, and we grow with the power to do that which we must do. May was merely an unreasonable and narrow woman, who saw but one kind of good.
In all the forty years of my life there had been no evil as I know evil. No man could say that he had harm from me—unless it might be poor Ed Hostetter—and for thousands of such workers as live from day to day, depending on men like me to give them their chance to earn bread for their wives and children, I had made the world better rather than worse. ”

“ It was a windy, dirty December day, but I was very content with the world as it was and thought Chicago was the finest city in the world. As I sat down to my desk my mind began to dance in a whirl of thoughts—of old plans and new combinations. I wondered what Sarah would say to some of my schemes to make our fortune. Perhaps they would merely frighten her; for a woman is a natural conservative. ”

“ I can help you no more. Believe me, that is the hardest thing yet. I can help you no more! My husband—you understand? No, you need not understand. A woman is bound back and across by a thousand threads, which do not always show to the eye.... I may yet keep my husband from throwing you over, but that is no matter—the truth is I count no longer to you. If the world had been other than it is, my friend, I should have been by your side, fighting it out daily for you, with you. ”

“ Where could you read of a finer thing in all history than the way the people's wrath had compelled the corrupt, self-seeking politicians in Washington to do their will—to strike an honest blow, to redeem a suffering people! It comes not often in any man's life to feel himself one of a great nation when it arises in a righteous cause with all the passion of its seventy millions. Let the panic wipe out my little pile of money. ”

“ Society! I seemed to see old Strauss with his puffy, ashen face, and his broad hands that hooked in the dollars, dirty or clean, and Vitzer, who kept our honorable council on his pay-roll for convenience, and the man who had been with Lou Pierson that night, and many others. Were they better men before the eyes of God these eight misguided fools whom we were about to punish? Who did the most harm to society, they or that pale-faced Fielden, who might have been a saint instead of an anarchist?... ”

“ In that lovely hour, soft and gentle as was ever a summer night, the toil and trouble of men, the fear that was gripping men's hearts in the market, fell away from me, and in its place came Faith. The people who could dream this vision and make it real, those people from all parts of the land who thronged here day after day—their sturdy wills and strong hearts would rise above failure, would press on to greater victories than this triumph of beauty—victories greater than the world had yet witnessed! ”

“ There was a place in Dround's that Will might work into; and before long he could be of use to me in a scheme that was coming around the corner of my mind into sight. As I talked, Will's eyes brightened. Before we left the little office a new kind of look, the look of hope, had come over his face. I thought he seemed already some years younger. It takes the steps of a treadmill, downward faced, to crush the spirit in a man! ”

“ Dround arose from the floor and hung the cloth in its place, touching the portrait softly here and there. Then she stood, resting her hands on the frame, absorbed in thought. A kind of gloom had come over her features.
"This—this scheme you have plotted, is life! It is imagination!" She drew a long breath as though to shake off the lethargy of years. "That art," she pointed [Pg 183] to the picture of a pale, ghostly woman's face, hanging near by us on the wall—"that is a mere plaything beside yours."
"I don't know much about art: that is the work of a man's own two hands. ”

“ I grumbled, thinking of May and Sarah, "it's mighty uncomfortable to be held up by rats like Lokes, Frost, and company, and then be branded as a briber!"
"What do you care?" Slocum asked harshly. "It won't hurt you much. You'll make money just the same, and there aren't many who would lay this up against you. Of course, there are always a few who are shrewd enough to guess just about what has happened, and remember,—yes, remember a story for years! But you don't care for their opinion!" ”

“ Dround," I replied hesitatingly, "that I think Carmichael was right in this rebate business, and in the other matter, too. If I had been in his place I should have done the same thing—any man would. It's against human nature to sit still and be eaten alive!"
Mr. Dround's eyes lowered, and he turned his face away from me. His spirit was somewhat daunted: perhaps he began to realize what it meant to stand out alone against the commercial system of the age. Nevertheless, he said some things, perfectly true, about the honor and integrity of his firm. ”

“ I pray it may not be a worse time for the country!"
To my mind there was something childish in the use of those words "better" and "worse." Every age is a new one, and to live in any age you have got to have the fingers and toes necessary for that age. The forces which lie in us and make those triumph who do triumph in the struggle have been in men from the beginning of time. There's little use in trying to stop their sweep, or to sit and cry like Dround by the roadside, because you don't like the game. ”

“ Sarah talked it over with the young fellow I met on the train, who first put the idea into my head, and she seemed to take great pleasure in the plan, wanting me to give an endowment for the institution, which I promised as soon as my packing-company stock was straightened out. Now that I had failed to put Will and his family down there, as I had set my heart on doing, I had no more wish to go back to the place than Sarah had. And as a home to take boys to who hadn't a fair chance in life, it might do some good in the world. ”

“ While we were talking, Slocum slipped out of the room. It was a pitiful scene.
"Ed," I said finally, "you must go back to the country. That is the only place for you. You'll grow worse in the city the longer you stay. Your belly's got bigger than your brain, and your heart is tainted at the core. I will start you on a ranch I've got in Texas. Think it over and get out of this place as soon as you can. I'm sorry for you, Ed. For you have done something the taste of which will never get out of your mouth." ”

“ From what the papers said you might think there was an anarchist or two skulking in every alley in Chicago with a basket of bombs under his arm. The men on the street seemed to rub their eyes and stare up at the buildings in surprise to find them standing. There was every kind of rumor flying about: some had it that the police had unearthed a general conspiracy to dynamite the city; others that the bomb throwers had been found and were locked up. It was all a parcel of lies, of course, but the people were crazy to be lied to, and the police, having nothing better, fed them lies. ”

“ Sarah remarked gloomily. "No one wants to come here but people like the Webbs and Coopers—people who think they can make something out of your schemes."
"Oh, I guess they aren't the only ones who are willing to come. And what's the matter with the Webbs and the Coopers? If the rest of your friends don't like us, we can get along without their society. I guess New York will stand us, and that's where we shall be before many years, if all goes well. This place is only a gossipy old village." ”

“ I remember that now and then, around Ma Pierson's table, the talk turned on the strike over at the harvesting works. We were all on the same side, I guess—the side of capital; there was enough for all of the good things of life, we thought, if men would only stop their kicking and keep at work. Slocum, for all that he was a lawyer, was the only easy one on the strikers: so long as they respected the laws he was with them in their struggle to get all they could from their employers. ”

“ On our way home after the opera Sarah and I talked of Mrs. Dround. I had never met any woman like her, and I was loud in her praise.
"Yes," Sarah admitted slowly, "she seemed to like you. But did you see how she treated the Carmichaels? Just civil, and hardly that. Nobody can understand Jane. She just does as she wants always." ”

“ I tell you, Slo, nations are like men. They have their work to do in this life. When it comes to an issue like this, they can't shirk any more than a man can. If they do, it will be worse for them. This war will do us good, will clean us and cure us for a good long time of this cussed, little peevish distemper we have been through since '93. That was just selfish introspection. This fight for Cuba will bring us all together. We'll work for something better than our bellies. There's nothing so good as a dose of real patriotism once in a while."
"Van, you ought to be in the Senate!" ”

“ My desk was just outside the manager's private office, and, the door happening to be ajar, I could see Mr. Dround within, striding up and down in great excitement. Carmichael was trying to quiet him down. I could hear the chief's high, thin voice denouncing the anarchists:—
"It is a dastardly crime against God and man! It threatens the very foundations of our free country—"
"Yes, that's all right," big John was growling in his heavy tone. "But we don't want to make too much fuss; it won't do no good to poke around in a nest of rattlers." ”

“ Yet those words have always been to me like some kind of sacred oath—the woman asking, out of her weakness, for love and protection from the one who holds all happiness and life for her, and the man, with his hasty passions, promising of the best there is in him. ”

“ As I rode through the windy, dusty streets, my thoughts went back over the years since that time when at the suggestion of this woman I had just left, I had put my hand to building something large out of Henry I. Dround's tottering estate.
In a busy life like mine, one event shades into another. Each path to which a man sets his feet leads to some cross-roads, and from there any one of the branches will [Pg 240] lead on to its own cross-roads. While the adventurer is on his way it is hard to tell why he takes one turning and not another, why he lays his course here and not there. ”

“ I cautioned him. "Dround'll own you, or I shall. No doing what you want! To work with me is to work under me. Can you stand taking orders from your junior?"
"I guess, Van," he answered without any pride, "you have shown yourself to be the boss. I'll follow."
That night, when Will and May had left us at the junction where we were to take the Chicago train, Sarah brushed my arm with her cheek in a little intimate way she had and whispered:—
"May couldn't thank you. She feels it too much. You have made them so happy—there's a future now for them all. ”

“ She spoke gently, with a little smile, as if, after all, all this must be taken between us for a joke.
"From the beginning, when you and Sarah first came into our lives, I saw the kind of man you were, and I admired you. I wanted to help you—yes, to help you."
"And that you did!"
"Not really. Perhaps no one could really help you. No one helps or hinders. You work out your fate from the inside, like all the powerful ones. You do what is in you to do, and never question. ”

“ Nevertheless, there come times when a man must talk out his whole soul to one who understands the language of it. For he hungers to say to another what he scarcely dares say to himself, what is shut up in the dark of his thoughts. It is not advice that he needs, but sympathy—to reveal to another that web of purpose which he has woven, which is himself. Many a man who has carried burdens silently long years knows what I mean. The touch of hand to hand is much: the touch of mind with mind is more.
Not that Sarah and I failed to be good married lovers. ”

“ And I had observed that what men want when they are thinking of putting their money into a new enterprise is to have confidence in the men who will spend their dollars. My experience has shown me that the cheapest thing to get in this world is money. If you have the ideas, the money will flow like water downhill. At any rate, that was the way it worked with good Mr. Farson. ”

“ Whether it was that Strauss and his crowd were willing to let the mice foregather into one trap before showing their claws, or that they despised us as weaklings, no one could say. We were able, even, to join the great packers in one of those private agreements that made it possible for us to secure our share of the home trade. Mr. Dround was aware of this fact, but averted his eyes. Necessity knows little squeamishness. It must have filled John Carmichael with unholy joy to know that Dround had come to this compromise with his virtue. ”