Casson

“ Griffiths, whose house it undoubtedly was, to put him up for the night. To do that, however, he would of course have to cross the stream. Now Casson had often crossed deep rivers in Norway by stepping-stones, and in crossing these rivers he had twice seen a man slip and, with one agonising shriek of despair, plunge headlong into the seething foam, his body, bruised and battered and hardly recognisable, being found many days later, calmly floating in some obscure nook maybe a mile or so away; and compared with these Scandinavian rivers the stream that now faced him was but a brooklet. ”

“ In all that concerned the honour of the arms of France and the conquest of the three forts, Hayes, Rupert, and Albany, Iberville might be content, but he chafed at, the escape of his enemies.
"I will not say it is better so, Pierre," urged De Casson; "but you have done enough for the king. Let your own cause come later."
"And it will come, abbe," he answered, with anger. "His account grows; we must settle all one day. And Radisson shall swing or I am no soldier —so!" ”

“ He recognised the colours at once; they were the colours of Dempster’s House at Harley. Evidently Wotherall had left the scarf behind as part of the personal effects that he had had to hand over to Mrs. Griffiths, in order to appease her indignation at his failure to produce the rent. Poor beggar, he must indeed have been hard pushed to part with so sacred a memento of his early life. Casson, like every other Harleyan, had the greatest reverence and affection for everything associated with the old School, the mere thought of which even now sent a thrill of genuine emotion through him. ”

“ He was still looking at the picture, and wondering what there could be in it to cause such a sensation of chilliness, when something made him glance at the stepping-stones, and, to his utter amazement, he saw the centre one suddenly begin to oscillate.
Thinking it must be some kind of optical illusion, Casson rubbed his eyes and looked again, but the stone was still shaking, and he fancied he could [190] discern the shadowy and indistinct outline of something or someone standing on it, swaying violently to and fro. ”

“ Slashing at the grass and other herbage with his stick—a trick Casson always resorted to when unsettled or annoyed—he reached the stones, and was about to turn into the yard when he received something of a surprise. A man in flannels, with a chocolate, white, and blue striped blazer, passed him by and, crossing the yard, vanished round an angle of the house. Casson did not see his face, but the back of his head, his figure, and walk at once recalled Wotherall. “If that’s not Ralph,” Casson exclaimed, “I’ll eat my hat! I wonder why he’s come back? ”

“ But yesterday, the word of Cæsar might Have stood against the world! now lies he there And none so poor to do him reverence. O masters! if I were disposed to stir Your hearts and minds to mutiny and rage, I should do Brutus wrong, and Cassius wrong, Who, you all know, are honorable men: I will not do them wrong; I rather choose To wrong the dead, to wrong myself, and you, Than I will wrong such honorable men. But here 's a parchment, with the seal of Cæsar,— I found it in his closet,—'tis his will. ”

“ Just as the wise buyer of to-day asks France for champagne, Germany for toys, England for cottons, and the Orient for rugs, so he will learn to look upon the United States as the natural home and headquarters of the telephone. ”

“ These telephone girls are the human part of a great communication machine. They are weaving a web of talk that changes into a new pattern every minute. How many possible combinations there are with the five million telephones of the Bell System, or what unthinkable mileage of conversation, no one has ever dared to guess. But whoever has once seen the long line of white arms waving back and forth in front of the switchboard lights must feel that he has looked upon the very pulse of the city's life. ”

“ It is a Field of the Cloth of Gold, that adds nothing to the glory of kings, but much to the glory of the common people. Drop the German Empire down upon this valley and its expanse of dizzying, swirling wheat, and the wheat would not be wholly eclipsed. There would still be enough grain around the edges to make a golden fringe. ”

“ It cannot go where slavery and barbarism exist. It will not enter a land where the luxury of the city is built on the plunder of the men and women who work in the fields. Whoever operates a harvester must not only be intelligent: he must be free.
To hundreds of millions of foreigners, the United States is known as “the country where the reapers come from.” They realise, too, that farm machinery represents our type of genius, that it springs out of our national life, and comes from us as inevitably as song comes from Italy or silk from France. ”

“ The children born and bred in this Red River Valley have never seen, except in pictures, a sickle or a flail. Their only conception of a harvest time is that a battery of red self-binders, with reels whirling and knives clacking, shall charge upon the wheat as though each acre were a battalion of hostile infantry, and make war until the land is strewn with heaps of fallen sheaves. ”

“ For every loaf of bread upon a Londoner's table, there will go a cent and a half to the man behind the Reaper. And so, the sale of every wheat-crop means that the gold will come throbbing out into the arteries of business, like the blood from the heart, and on its way back and forth nourish the whole body of the nation.
It is in the very nature of the wheat trade to benefit the masses and not the few. The more wheat that grows, the less danger there is of an aristocracy of wheat. More wheat means more luxury in the farm-house, more traffic on the railway, and more food in the slums. ”

“ He knows that there are more living things in one pinch of rich soil than there are people on the whole globe. He knows that he can take half a dozen handfuls of earth from different parts of his farm, mix them together, send one thimbleful to a chemist, and find out exactly the kind of crop that will give him the best harvest. And more, now that science has given him a peep into Nature’s factory, he can even feel a sense of kinship between himself and his acres, because he knows that the same elements that redden his blood are painting the green hues on his fields and forests. ”

“ After a period of such meditation, he cried aloud, "The die is cast; let us go where the gods and the injustice of our foes direct!" and, spurring his horse forward, he plunged into the stream.
This story, which has been effectively used by a great epic poet of Rome, probably relates what never happened. From all we know of Cæsar, the question of bloodshed in attaining the aims of his ambition did not greatly trouble his mind. Yet the [Pg 214] story has taken hold, and "to cross the Rubicon" has become a proverb, signifying the taking of a step of momentous importance. ”

“ But the highest triumph of wire-laying came when New York swept into the Skyscraper Age, and when hundreds of tall buildings, as high as the fall of the waters of Niagara, grew up like a range of magical cliffs upon the precious rock of Manhattan. Here the work of the telephone engineer has been so well done that although every room in these cliff-buildings has its telephone, there is not a pole in sight, not a cross-arm, not a wire. Nothing but the tip-ends of an immense system are visible. ”

“ If it were possible to trace back a strand in the twisted thread of cause and effect, we would find that many a factory and steel-mill owes its origin to the flood of wheat-money that came to us from Europe in 1880 and 1881—every dollar of it made by the humble harvester.
Without this obedient slave of wood and steel, all our railroads and skyscrapers and automobiles could not save us from famine. If we had to reap our grain in the same way as the Romans did, it would take half the men in the United States to feed us on bread alone, to say nothing of the rest of the menu. ”

“ Amid the darkness and roar of elements Cassio lost all perception of time, and as he tossed on his narrow bed, blessed visions came at last to his storm-tossed heart. The sighing of the wind in his distant well-loved mountains; the prints of the wild boar among the green ferns; the noisy stream bounding from rock to rock; the partridges flitting among the flowering oleanders; the joyful neighing of his black horse, and, above all else, the smile of Paola. ”

“ As gifts to Desdemona;
It must not be. If Cassio do remain,
He hath a daily beauty in his life
That makes me ugly; and besides, the Moor
May unfold me to him; there stand I in much peril.
No, he must die. Be't so. I hear him coming.
Enter Cassio.
RODERIGO. I know his gait; 'tis he. Villain, thou diest!
Makes a pass at
Cassio.
CASSIO. That thrust had been mine enemy indeed,
But that my coat is better than thou know'st;
I will make proof of thine. Draws, and wounds
Roderigo.
RODERIGO. O, I am slain!
Iago from behind wounds Cassio in the leg, and exit.
CASSIO. I am maim'd forever. ”

“ For Cassel is set upon a hill which rises from the interminable plain, salient and alluring as a tor in Somerset, and seems to say to the fretful wayfarer, "Come unto Me all ye that are weary, and I will give you rest." For upon the hill of Cassel the air is sweet and fresh, the slopes are musical with a faint lullaby of falling showers, as the wind plays among the birches and the poplars, and over all there is a great peace. The motor-lorries avoid the declivities of Cassel, and the horsemen pass by on the other side. ”

“ There was a picture that some American-souled artist, when we have one, will delight to put on canvas. How splendid was the contrast, and how significant of the New Age of Democracy, between the suave and feeble Emperor, enjoying the sunset rays of his inherited glory, and the strong-faced, rough-handed Virginian farmer, who had built up a new empire of commerce that will last as long as the human race eats bread!
From first to last, the stout-hearted old Reaper King received no favours from Congress or the Patent Office. ”

“ The reaper was America’s answer to the world’s demand for democracy. Instead of bread riots and red flags and theories of an earthly paradise in which nobody worked but the Government, the United States invented a machine that gave democracy a chance. ”

“ CHICAGO
[v]
INTRODUCTION WHOEVER wishes to understand the making of the United States must read the life of Cyrus Hall McCormick. No other one man so truly represented the dawn of the industrial era,—the grapple of the pioneer with the crudities of a new country, the replacing of muscle with machinery, and the establishment of better ways and better times in farm and city alike. Beginning exactly one hundred years ago, the life of McCormick spanned the heroic period of our industrial advancement, when great things were done by great individuals. ”

“ It was as natural for him to do so as for a fish to swim or a bird to fly. Once, towards the end of his life, when he was sitting in his great arm-chair, reflecting, he said to his wife, "Nettie, life is a battle." ”

“ Men of lesser caliber regarded him with fear, not for any definite reason, but because, as Seneca has said—"In him that has power, all men consider not what he has done, but what he may do." He was so strong, so dominating, so ready to crash through obstacles by sheer bulk of will-power, that smaller men could never quite subdue a feeling of alarm while they were in his presence. ”

“ Unable to speak any language but their own, unused to pomp and pageantry, breezily independent in the American fashion, the Reaper Kings plunged from adventure to adventure, absolutely indifferent to everything but their reapers and success. ”

“ To give the most efficient service, there will always need to be an expert to stand between it and the public.
As the final result of all these varying changes in switchboards and signals and batteries, there grew up the modern Telephone Exchange. This is the solar plexus of the telephone body. It is the vital spot. It is the home of the switchboard. It is not any one's invention, as the telephone was. It is a growing mechanism that is not yet finished, and may never be; but it has already evolved far enough to be one of the wonders of the electrical world. ”

“ From one point of view, the speculator is the driving-wheel of the whole wheat trade. By his energy and his impetus he steadies and equalizes the conflicting forces, and gives the entire mechanism a continuous movement. From another point of view, he is a gambler, reckless and parasitical, who interferes with the natural laws of supply and demand, and snatches an unearned toll from the wheat bins of the world. ”

“ London has no elevators, and never has had, although it buys more wheat than any other city. It has six million mouths to feed, so that the grain is devoured as fast as it arrives. To give bread to London would take the entire crop of Indiana or Siberia. ”

“ Yet less than thirty of the reaper kings became millionaires. Not one can stand beside the great financiers of steel and real estate and railroads. And not one, in his whole lifetime, piled up as much profit as a Carnegie or a Rockefeller has made in a single year.
The get-rich-quick brigands of Wall Street meddled with the harvester business once—and never again. That was twenty-one years ago, when the famous “Binder-Twine Trust” set out with the black flag flying. ”

“ This effort to conquer Time and Space is above all else the instinct of material progress. To shrivel up the miles and to stretch out the minutes—this has been one of the master passions of the human race. ”

“ He acquired a reputation as "a man who would law you to death." He brought down upon himself to a remarkable degree the hostility of his competitors, and prevented himself from receiving the full credit and prestige that he deserved. Instead of being revered as the father of the Reaper business, he was feared as an industrial Bismarck—a man of unyielding will and indomitable purpose, who regarded his competitors as a pack of trespassers in an empire that belonged by right to him. ”