William MacLeod Raine

“ James said dubiously.
“Isn't that conversion—loving your brother? And if a man is willing to live in plenty while his brother is in poverty, if he exploits those weaker than himself to help him get along, then he can't be really converted, can he?”
“Now see here, Jeff, you've got the wrong idea. Christ didn't come into the world to reform it, but to save it from its sins. He wasn't merely a man, but the Divine Son of God.”
“I don't understand the dual nature of Jesus. But when one reads His life it is easy to believe in His divinity.” ”

“ What can be more important than the successes of James K. Farnum?”
The senior looked at him suspiciously. He was not strongly fortified with a sense of humor. “Just now I want to talk about the failures of Jefferson D. Farnum,” he answered gravely.
Jeff's eyes twinkled. “Is it worth while? I am unworthy of this boon, O great Cesar.”
“Now that's the sort of thing that stands in your way,” James told him impatiently. “People never know when you're laughing at them. There is no reason why you shouldn't succeed. Your abilities are up to the average, but you fritter them away.” ”

“ The spirit of commercialism that dominated America during the nineties and the first years of the new century never got hold of Jeff. The air and the light of his land were often the creation of a poet's dream. The delight of life stabbed him, so, too, did its tragedy. Not anchored to conventions, his mind was forever asking questions, seeking answers.
He would come out from a theater into a night that was a flood of illumination. Electric signs poured a glare of light over the streets. Motor cars and electrics whirled up to take away beautifully gowned women and correctly dressed men. ”

“ Jeff could not stand that. He held out his hands, intending to take hers and explain that he was not angry or disappointed at her. But somehow he found her in his arms instead, supple and warm, vital youth flowing in the soft cheeks' rich coloring and in the eyes quick and passionate with the tender abandon of her sex.
He set his teeth against the rush of desire that flooded him as her soft body clung to his. The emotional climax he had vaguely feared had leaped upon them like an uncaged tiger. He fought to stamp down the fires that blazed up in him. Time to think—he must have time to think. ”

“ He dragged himself to his knees and hammered with his fist at an upturned face beside him. Battered, bleeding, and winded, he got to his feet and shook off the hands that reached for him. Dodging past, he lurched along the wharf like a drunken man. The Italian had gathered himself to his knees. When Jeff came opposite him he dived like a football tackle and threw his arms around the moving legs. The newspaper man crashed heavily down to unconsciousness.
When Farnum opened his eyes upon a world strangely hazy he found himself lying in a row boat, his head bolstered by a man's knees. ”

“ The mask of greatness was like the false faces children wear to conceal their own. In the one or two really big men he met Jeff discovered a humility and simplicity that came from self-forgetfulness. They were too busy with their vision of truth to pose for the public admiration. ”

“ James met his frown with a genial eye. “There's a difference of opinion about that, sir. According to the economics of Verden University you fill them. According to the World editorials it's the other way. They fill yours.”
“Hmp! And what's your personal opinion? Am I a robber of labor?”
“I think that the price of any success worth while is paid for in the failure of others. You win because you're strong, sir. That's the law of the game. It's according to the survival of the fittest that you're where you are. If you had hesitated some other man would have trampled you down. ”

“ James spoke sharply and irritably. “No man's guilty till the law says so. They haven't been in the penitentiary. He has. That's what damns me if it gets out.”
Jeff laid a hand affectionately on his cousin's shoulder. “Don't you believe it for a moment. There's no moral distinction between the man who has paid and the man who hasn't paid for his sins toward society. There is good and there is bad in all of us, closely intertwined, knit together into the very warp and woof of our lives. We're all good and we're all bad.” ”

“ Jeff nodded lightly. But his eyes were shining.
“I'm the man that loves her. I couldn't do less, could I?”
“Some men would do a good deal less.”
“Not if they looked at it the way I do. She's the same Nellie I've always known. What difference does it make to me that she stumbled in the dark and hurt herself—except that my heart is so much more tender to her it aches?” ”

“ It was perhaps this habit of making allowance for weakness, together with his call to the idealism in them, that made him so effective a worker with men.
He was as easy as an old shoe, but people sensed the steel in him instinctively. In his quiet way he was coming to be a power. For one thing he was possessed of the political divination that understands how far a leader may go without losing his following. He knew too how to get practical results. It was these qualities that enabled him out of the wreckage of the senatorial defeat to build a foundation of victory for House Bill 77. ”

“ All depends on Reilly now,” Rawson whispered hoarsely to Jeff. “If he sticks we're safe for another twenty-four hours.”
But Reilly, knowing the decisive moment had come, voted for Frome and gave him the one more needed to elect. Pandemonium was loose at once. The Transcontinental forces surrounded him and fought off the excited men he had betrayed who tried to get at him to make him change his vote. The culminating moment of months of battle had come and mature men gave themselves to the abandon of the moment like college boys after a football game. ”

“ But Jeff knew he was no empty talker. All that he had he literally gave to the poor.
“Because the whole spirit of business life is wrong,” Farnum responded.
“Of course it's wrong. It's a survival of the law of the jungle, of tooth and fang. Its motto is dog eat dog. We all work under the rule of get and grab. What's the result of this higgledypiggledy system? One man starves and another has indigestion. That's the trouble with Verden to-day. Some of us haven't enough and others have too much. They take from us what we earn. That's the whole cause of poverty. ”

“ Through the subsidized columns of the Advocate and the Herald all the venom of outraged public plunder was emptied on the heads of Jeff Farnum and Captain Chunn. They were rebels, blackmailers, and anarchists. Jeff's life was held up to public scorn as dissolute and licentious. He had been expelled from college and consorted only with companions of the lowest sort. A free thinker and an atheist, he wanted to tear down the pillars which upheld society. ”

“ He had thought of Verden University as a splendid democracy of intellectual brotherhood that was to leaven the world with which it came in touch.
“Do you mean that a fellow has to have money enough to make a good showing before he can win any of the prizes?”
James K. nodded with the sage wisdom of a man of the world. “The long green is a big help, but you've got to have the stuff in you. Success comes to the fellow who goes after it in the right way.” ”

“ He saw as in a vision the infinite procession of her hopeless sisters who had traveled the same road, saw them first as sweet and carefree children bubbling with joy, and again, after the World had misused them for its pleasure, haggard, tawdry, with dragging steps trailing toward the oblivion that awaited them. Good God, how long must life be so terribly wasted? ”

“ He's only a victim. What we must do is to change the system that makes it possible to defeat the will of the people through money,” Jeff said.
“How are you going about it?” Rawson demanded incredulously.
“We'll go after the initiative and referendum right now while the people are stirred up about this treachery. The very men who threw us down will support us to try and square themselves. The bill will slip through as if it were oiled,” Jeff prophesied.
“Oh, hang your initiative and referendum. I'm a politician, not a socialist reformer,” grinned Rawson.
James said nothing. ”

“ Marchant went on, wagging his thin forefinger at Jeff. “The whole social fabric is made up of lies, compromises, injustice. The only reason it has hung together so long is that people have been trained to think along certain lines like show animals. But they're waking up. Look at Germany. Look at England. What the plutocrats call the menace of Socialism is everywhere. Now that every worker knows he is being robbed of what he earns, how long do you think he will carry the capitalistic system on his back? ”

“ The call of nature awakening from its long winter sleep drummed in his heart. He could sympathize with the bluebottle buzzing against the sunny windowpane in its efforts to reach the free world outside.
Recess! With the sound of the gong his heart leaped, but he kept his place in the line with perfect decorum. It would never do to be called back now for a momentary indiscretion. From the school yard he slipped the back way and dived into a bank of great ferns. In the heart of this he lay until the bell had called his classmates back to work. ”

“ Surplus goods won't sell abroad. The manufacturer, unable to dispose of his produce, will cut down his force or close his plant. Labor, out of work, cannot buy. So every branch of industry suffers because we're too well off. It's a vicious absurd circle born of the system under which we live. Under socialism the remedy would be merely to work less for a time until the surplus was used. It would affect nobody injuriously. The whole thing's as simple as A B C.”
It had been plain to the first casual glance of James that the little Socialist was far gone. ”

“ Why, by fighting the corporations! Wasn't that the way that all the big men got their start nowadays as lawyers? As soon as they discovered his value Frome and his friends would be after his services fast enough. James was no radical, but he believed Jeff knew what he was talking about when he predicted an impending political change, one that would carry power back from the machine bosses to the people. The young lawyer decided to ride that wave as far as it would take him. He would be a tribune of the people, and they in turn would make of him their hero. ”

“ The most potent argument for letting things drift was his own craving for her. She was becoming necessary to him. Whenever he thought of her it was with a tender glow. Her soft long-lashed eyes would come between him and the editorial he was writing. A dozen times a day he could see a picture of the tilted little coaxing mouth. The gurgle of her laughter called to him for hours before he left the office.
He got into the habit of talking to her about the things that were troubling him—the tactics of the enemy, the desertion of friends, the dubious issue of the campaign. ”

“ We swim in a sea of environment and heredity, are tossed hither and thither by we know not what cross currents of Fate, are tugged at by a thousand eddies of which we never dream. The sum of it all makes Life, of which we know so little and guess so much, into which we dive so surely in those buoyant days before time and tide have shaken confidence in our power to snatch success and happiness from its mysterious depths.—From the Note Book of a Dreamer. ”

“ By no catalogue of summarized details could this young woman have laid claim to beauty, but in the flashing play of her expression, the exquisite golden coloring, one could not evade the charm of a certain warm witchery, of the passionate beat of innocent life. The wonder of her lay in the sparkle of her inner self. Every gleam of the deep true eyes, every impulsive motion of the slight supple body, expressed some phase of her infinite variety. ”

“ One cold rainy evening he met Nellie Anderson in the hall. She had been saying good-bye to some friends who had been in to call on her.
“You're wet, Mr. Farnum,” the young woman said.
“A little.”
She stood hesitating in the doorway leading to the apartment of herself and her mother, then yielded shyly to a kindly impulse.
“We've been making chocolate. Won't you come in and have some? You look cold.”
Jeff glimpsed beyond her the warm grate fire in the room. He, too, yielded to an impulse. “Since you're so good as to ask me, Miss Nellie.” ”

“ It had been only a year since Big Tim O'Brien, boss of the city by permission of the public utility corporations, had read Jeff's first editorial against ballot box stuffing. In it the editor of the World had pledged that paper never to give up the fight for the people until such crookedness was stamped out. Big Tim had laughed until his paunch shook at the confidence of this young upstart and in impudent defiance had sent him a check for fifty dollars for the Honest Election League. ”